A/N: FINALLY finished this one; words were just…not coming at all. Blahhhh. That's a problem with planning too far ahead…you miss the trees for the forest. Sometimes you gotta move forward; that's this chapter.
Smoky black shapes floated in front of Sam's heavy eyes like spectral guardians of some hidden lair. Sam felt as if she floated upon some hazy river, pushed by soft currents that bore her body like a weightless litter. She rubbed a lock of hair out of her eyes, her mouth agape and gasping at air.
"-m? Sam, are you hurt?"
Whozat.
"Sam – C'mon, wake up."
Sam's eyes fluttered as consciousness breathed life back into her chest. She shook her head as light shined into focus, revealing Firth's concerned expression looking over her face. A long, bloody scratch ran across his face from forehead to just beside his left eye, bringing up a trickle of blood that carved a red stream down his face. Dust and grime coated his features, bringing out the pale green glow of his eyes – ever the brighter in the damaged interior of the hovercraft cockpit.
"Wha – what," Sam groaned. "What? I'm up."
"Let's get you up," Firth said quickly, pulling the seat's crash straps off of Sam's body. "I don't know how bad this thing is busted up, but I want to get out and see what we're up against."
"This…we're not in an arena again, are we?" Sam opined as she pulled webbing away from her shoulders. "Where are we?"
"I dunno," Firth admitted with a wry grin. "Somewhere in the open sea…I'm just glad we crashed on land, apparently. We can figure it out later."
Sam pushed herself up, grimacing and grabbing her tailbone. Perhaps it'd broken; a throbbing, dull roar of pain shot out from the small of her back as she twisted out of her seat. She'd have to keep an eye on that one; any kind of disability out here in the unknown could be lethal.
The cockpit hadn't fractured as badly as Sam had thought. Frankly, the hovercraft seemed as if it could still get off the ground: While the computers and haptics had been strewn about the floor, the front windscreen had remarkably stayed together. The cockpit itself hadn't even buckled much; only a triangular dent in the floor from the crash even broke up the solid construction of the craft's armored shell. Whoever had designed the thing deserved a medal.
"Is this still working?" Sam asked after surveying the damage.
Firth appraised her with amused eyebrows: "Working? Sam, we just crashed from who-knows-how-far up. I kinda doubt it."
"Just a question," she muttered, more to herself than as a reply. Firth had an irritating quality of being too realistic in his appraisals; she could've used some hope.
The passenger hold had done a superb job of holding together despite the rough landing. Gear and equipment from the rear hold had scattered like a cluster bomb, but little real damage to the hovercraft superstructure had made its way inside. The safety of Sam's fellow captives made the difference in her eyes – aside from a few scrapes and scratches (and a rather large welt just below Lily's blond locks that contrasted rather boldly with her hair), no one had been really hurt.
The landing couldn't have been planned better.
And perhaps that was it…
"Aaahhhh," Cheynne groaned, stretching her back and cracking her knuckles. "Not a very happy landing."
"This is just a mess," Rory commented from nearby, rubbing a growing welt on his arm. "What the hell even happened?"
Sam looked about. Nobody seemed to have much of a plan at this point: Finnick sat re-assuring a thoroughly-stressed Annie; Rory and Haymitch had begun to argue with Johanna about what had happened; Locust sat with his arms crossed and looking angry, and the rest seemed all out of sorts. Someone had to make sense of this situation.
"I'm going to go take a look around," Sam spoke up loudly. "I'm gonna go outside."
"Wait," Firth held her off. "Sam, let's see if this thing can even work, first. If so, there's no reason to leave."
"It's not going to work," Sam replied exasperatingly. "We just crashed. You said it. I wanna go see where we are."
Shrugs met her suggestion. Her companions seemed far more interested at reconnoitering - a strategy that, in Sam's mind, wouldn't accomplish much of anything.
River scooted off her seat, just now unbuckling the straps holding her tightly to the hovercraft. She looked sick; either from the bumpy ride down – or something much worse that had happened over the past two weeks. Sam figured she'd have to be careful with her friend. After watching her tortured in front of her eyes – and Firth's, too – Sam couldn't even begin to imagine what kind of haunting demons floated around the girl's developing brain.
It wasn't something a fourteen year-old should ever have had to go through.
In the end, the group that accompanied Sam out of the hovercraft seemed all too familiar by now – along with River, Lily and Firth tagged up behind her as she shoved open the craft's dented hatch. Salty, breezy air poured in from the outside, along with radiant, hot, tropical sunshine. It brought Sam too far back to the temple-specked rainforest where she'd seen far too much death.
But no jungle was this. As Sam poked her head out of the hatch, taking an uncertain step into a mound of cold, matted sand, she saw just where she'd been deposited – where Nihlus had meant for her to land.
Sand dunes careened off for a hundred meters before tapering away into a crystal-clear ocean. Sun-kissed patches of grass stuck out like dusty islands in between oceans of sand, swimming together into a giant school as it climbed the sandy cay's lone landmark: A hill, maybe sixty meters above the ocean and observing the islet like a grassy, rundown sentinel, watched over Sam and the downed hovercraft. Mounted atop the land, like the forlorn ghost of forgotten epochs, stood a stone-cut hermitage – gray and dead amid the sparkling waters surrounding every side.
Sam couldn't help feel a chill on her back as her eyes crossed over the hermitage. She knew, however – if there was something on this spit of land in the middle of blue seas, it would be at the lone point of civilization.
A strangling sound by River brought Sam back into focus. The girl stood stone-faced towards the water, backing up slowly away from the lapping crystal shore. She'd frozen up; her arms quivered by her side, her mouth drawn into a painful grimace. Sam didn't understand the face at first, didn't put the pieces together – until the memory from a week ago came back.
River – with water thrown over her, electrocuted to the point of shrieking agony by an Inquisitor.
Of course she's afraid of water now, Sam thought. The Capitol ripped the love of the sea from her.
"Hey," Sam put her hand on the small of River's back, her face concerned. "Hey, are you okay?"
River shook her head, a sickly expression on her face. She looked stuck between two worlds – her feet rooted in the dry sand, her eyes looking intently at the lapping waves.
"Lily," Sam picked out the youngest member of their group. "Can you stay here with her? Firth and I won't be gone long."
The blonde-haired girl acquiesced to Sam's inquiry, sticking with her friend from District 4 as River fought ingrown demons in her head. Sam gave her a last concerned look before curiosity took over. She had to find out where they were – what was on the hill, and if there was any way to escape this predicament.
"You seem to be on top of things," Firth quipped as the two tromped out of earshot from River and Lily. "This thing up top there looks like it's been abandoned for…forever. We're not gonna find anything there."
"No," Sam replied furtively, punctuating it with a pump from her hand. "No. Nihlus said he wanted me to see something…he crashed us here for a reason. This isn't just something random."
"Who?" Sam had forgotten that only she and River had any knowledge of Nihlus's existence amongst the victors, given Firth's questioning look. "Is that the guy who shot us down here? And how do you know him?"
"He-" Sam paused before giving away the details. Was Nihlus listening? Was he goading her into revealing too much, trying to push her into a place she didn't want to tread? Perhaps caution would suffice. "It's complicated."
"Cop-out," Firth muttered, rolling his eyes. "So what else is 'complicated?'"
"Firth…" Sam bemoaned.
"Sam…" he retorted in the same tone. "Seriously, Sam. We're stuck on some sandy island in the middle of nowhere. We could die here – it's just like the arena. We can't be running around on false hopes when we can't even tell each other about what we know."
"I-" Sam stuttered. "I can't. Please – trust me."
Firth lapsed into silence, making the rest of their hike to and up the grassy knoll a quiet, uneasy one. The sand merged into tough, dry grass and weeds as the two made their way a mile inland from the shore. Traversing the terrain was easy; only the hot sun beating down on their exposed necks toughened the travel up the island's highest point. The hill gave a look over the entire long, L-shaped island – revealing a broad swath of bright coral reef surrounding the narrow, lengthy island of grass, sand, palm trees, and scrub.
"It's amazing up here," Firth commented, surveying the landscape and sweeping his eyes past the smoking hovercraft crash. "We don't have anything like that water in District 4. I think, Sam, th – Sam?"
His aborted question met deaf ears. Sam contented herself to sniff around the ruined stone hermitage atop the island, looking over the weather-worn building in awe and keen interest. The granite residence itself was small – only suitable for one, maybe two, people for any real length of time, with a roof half-caved in. A cylindrical structure, topped with an odd cross symbol Sam had never seen before, gave Sam the eerie chill that she was treading on sacrosanct land.
"It feels like a tomb," Sam mumbled as she stepped into the building.
Stone floors pitted with rain indentations, hewn over hundreds of years by battering winds and storms. Two fat rats scurried away at the first tremor of Sam's footfall, hurrying off to some hole or another to avoid the unknown interlopers. Most interesting was the side of the foundation – a craggy, rock-strewn area that looked as if it had broken apart a hundred years ago.
Sam's mind told her there was more to the story.
"There is no way that's a good idea," Firth said quizzically as Sam began pushing rocks away from the pile of stones. "That whole thing's gonna fall on top of you. If you get buried, I'm gonna sit here and tell you I was right."
"Thanks. Thanks for the support," Sam retorted sarcastically. "I wanna see what's inside."
"There's probably nothing but more rocks inside."
Half the rock pile suddenly fell away as Sam moved stones, forcing her to jump aside from a cascade of loose grit. She wedged herself into the revealed space feet-first, scrunching her face tightly as she squeezed in. The dark, small opening that welcomed her held something remarkable for such a decrepit edifice.
"Uch," Sam reacted as her eyes settled into the dusk-like ambience. "There's…a body in here."
"A body?" Firth's voice sounded muffled as it half-entered the crawl space. "Like…a corpse-body?"
"No," Sam stood up, her head just falling below the rock ceiling. She let her eyes fall on a partially destroyed stone sepulcher, revealing a yellowed male skeleton long-since forgotten to the world. "No…it's been here a long time. Firth, someone must have lived here, must have…I dunno…"
"Sam, c'mon out," Firth urged, caution creeping into his typically gung-ho words. "I don't think-"
"Wait, there's something else," Sam interjected. She wiped dust and dirt away from a flat slice of granite on the floor. Some of the words on the tablet had long since disintegrated, but the beginning of the phrase inscribed on its surface still rang out clear in the dusky light.
BLESSED ARE THE DEAD
A chill ran over Sam's spine despite the hot, humid air. She kicked dust away from an elevated portion of the unnaturally-smooth floor, revealing a second curiosity – this one urging her every sense of exploration to push ahead without a second thought.
"Firth?" Sam piped up. "There's…something else," Sam repeated. "Hang on."
"No, Sam, let's go – there's nothing left here. Just a dead guy," Firth tried to pull her back.
She wouldn't listen – couldn't listen now. Something from beneath the wide steel grate hewn into the floor called out to her, invited her on with tantalizing knowledge. She couldn't abandon this place – dead man or not. Sam found a small indentation on the grate, still miraculously intact after so many years. She pulled on the steel covering with no success at first, redoubling her efforts and levering her feet against one stone wall. With a great heave, Sam clenched her teeth, strained her legs, and pulled back on the grate as hard as she could.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEK!
"What was that?"
Firth's question barely registered. Sam stuck her head in the seven-foot hole in the ground she'd now revealed, desperate to find out what secrets this place held. Was it a deeper tomb – some other historical curiosity? Or was it something else – something to get off the island, even?
Far away down the hole, a light flickered on. Sam's awe-struck words came in a short breath, full of air and wonder.
"Oh my God."