Author's note: Hello, readers. I'll try to keep this fairly short. First, thanks for reading. Secondly, reviews make me so happy on the inside, whatever they say. Thirdly, for anyone not coming from the link, I'm updating on a Monday and Friday basis. Sorry for the short fillers, chapter 9 and this one, I'm buried under exams. Alrighty, that's it. Continue being awesome, and I hope you enjoy.
-Sabadosh: Day 2 of the Hunger Games-
Andrea Sabadosh pointed at the control panel. "Copley, Puff, I want visuals up on Rhett, now." Taking a deep breath, she ran over the list of things she had to do. Step zero: start recording the individual oral commentary for day two.
On the computer screen, she opened a new sound file, named it "IOC" and double clicked the record button. She continued her to do list.
"Firstly, thank god the audience seems to love Chau and Matt, so I guess they need more screen time. I wonder if I can get them to fight. Naw, there would be no interest if they both were to die at the same time. Secondly, it makes me happy on the inside that, at least for now, everyone seems to be enthused, especially the president. Thirdly, I have to go over to the Inter-district benefit program president and give him an update."
A chill ran down her side.
"That is one scary guy. I have to give him this report on how everything was going twice a week, and ensure him I have been following all the idiotic regulations and bylaws that he gave me, all so he doesn't kill me." She stared down at the screen, and the red "recording" indicator stared back at her. "Whoops, end recording and delete the last thirty seconds."
How many of these kiddos are dead again?
Gesturing to the holographic screen in front of her, she hit the control and the "F" key at the same time. She entered the search criteria: "dead tribute". After jumping past the first result, obviously, she looked at the fourth word to the right of the highlighted phrase.
Then, she clicked to pull up the chronological list of dead tributes.
Aaron (Day -1)
Katy (Day 1)
Lindsey (Day 1)
Zoë (Day 1)
Kamila (Day 1)
Jill (Day 1)
Eva (Day 1)
Danielle (Day 1)
Miranda (Day 1)
Collin (Day 2)
Marcus (Day 2)
"Poor Aaron, he didn't a chance, though I am sorry we had to kill that Avox girl. She seemed a little too innocent to have done that out of malice. And then we have Kate." Sabadosh cursed herself slightly louder than intended, to which the rest of the room of technicians gave a surprised look.
"Sorry." They continued to gaze at her, waiting for some explanation. "Come on, get back to work. I want to make sure there are no animals in the forest. Tonight's event is going to be complicated enough without noise interference as well." A thought came to her. "Also, Copley, make sure the light levels are set to one or zero for tonight and enable the night vision cameras."
Busy back at their work, Sabadosh sighed to herself in the reestablished solitude. "That girl Kate. She made me look like imbecile in front of the president in the first few seconds. If the audience didn't love the drama, he probably would have had me put in there with them."
"After all the action of the Cornucopia, the rest of the tributes either divided into groups, or left alone. I'm surprised that there are a total of three groups. In all the studying I went through to get here, I read that there have only been a max of two large groups like that in the Hunger Games.
"Well, both Matt and Chau have made the best of it. Matt put on a very nice action show in killing Marcus, while Chau provided a sort of convenient comedic relief I can always cut back to."
Interrupting Andrea's monologue, Copley called to her from his seat. "Um Ms. Sabadosh, we have a problem over here."
"I leave you alone for five seconds and..." On the screen above us, the squinting eyes of Rhett brushed dangerously close to a hidden camera.
Through the microphone, we listened to him wonder aloud: "I wonder where they keep the camera. It would make sense to put them eye height of most of the tributes."
Sabadosh stepped back and pushed her fingers against her temples. "Does that tree have a detachable branch we could use?"
"Um," Puff's fingers scrambled through her keyboard, "uh, yeah there's one near the top we can drop."
Sabadosh nodded, "Do it. Hurry, before he sees anything." After a few key strokes, Puff slammed the enter key.
Andrea flinched as a huge crack blared over the microphone, and the log landed directly in front of the camera. It would have crushed Rhett if he hadn't had the reflexes to hop backwards.
Taking a breath, Rhett stared at the fallen branch, as leaves floated around him. "Maybe everything does want to murder me."
Sabadosh shook off her surprise and pointed her finger at screen."What was that? You could have made him another dead tribute. Is this a game to you?"
Puff recoiled backwards. "All of the trees were checked over by you. I assumed you knew that one had a type alpha detachable branch."
Type alpha. Type alpha. Sabadosh racked her brain for what the term meant. After a few seconds of panic, the realization came to her. Alpha meant big, duh.
Cursing (not out loud this time), she responded, "Yeah, I knew that. I was just testing to make sure you knew the consequences of your actions."
"Um, of course ma'am. I'll be going back to work now."
Sabadosh sighed once again; she knew this was going to be a long few days.