Barbed Wire
Written by Loverly Souris
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Chapter 2 – Up in smoke
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Wiress wakes exactly five minutes before the alarm bell that signals the beginning of the day goes off, as always. It is usually still dark outside, so while her eyes adjust to the lack of light, she sits up and runs her fingers through her curly hair, then quickly twists it into a tight bun. She can do that without looking into a mirror – not that she has one in her room anyway. When she hears the alarm, she knows that electricity has been turned back on for the day and she reaches towards her bedside table switching on a small bulb. For a long minute, she basks in its gentle light, imagining sunrays caressing her face, with chirping birds and a spring breeze carrying the smell of flowers. A brief escape from reality.
After that, Wiress gets up from the bed and washes her face in the basin filled with lukewarm water. Her uniform is hanging in her small closet – a white blouse, a grey coat with a matching skirt, black shoes and a copper-coloured ribbon. It is required to attend the lessons in these clothes until noon, when they have to change into a suitable working attire for the factory, a grey jumpsuit and steel-toe boots.
As she buttons up her coat and ties her ribbon, Wiress thinks that this is going to be an ordinary day. School, lunch, then work, return to the dorm and sleep. Yesterday was the same, and the day before yesterday, too. Strict, monotone and dull, but carrying a strange feeling of security – she knows what is going to happen, every minute is scheduled accurately. Nothing can go amiss in the Sector of Talents.
However, tomorrow will be an odd day. Tomorrow will not be a same as today. They are not going to have any classes in the morning – instead, all the students will be lead to the Justice Building and take part in an annual event that everybody hates.
The Reaping. Randomly choosing a girl and a boy to send them into a certain death.
Trying to steer her mind away, Wiress sighs and steps to her desk. Last night she couldn't finish her homework before they cut off electricity, so she left everything scattered on the desktop – notebooks, pencils, her calculator and other stuff. She puts them away into her bag, mentally reminding herself to do that remaining exercise before the lesson.
She runs this day's timetable in her head – an hour of Advanced Mathematics, two hours of Electronic Engineering, then an hour of History and another hour of Engineering Drawing. After the one-hour lunch break, six hours of work. Her class is assigned into Factory 4 today, where they are going to wind wire into coils and sort out screws. The older they get and the more experience they have, the more difficult their job becomes – they can often see fourteenth graders building tiny robots and soldering microchips and first years tidying the floors, the mop often taller than the five-year-old children. Wiress' class, the tenth graders are still too amateur to handle the complicated machinery, but they are at least allowed to be around those who actually do some work besides packaging pieces of metal like them.
The clock on the wall says it's quarter to seven. The first lesson starts at seven o'clock. Where on earth is she? We're going to be late, Wiress thinks as she grabs her bag and leaves her room. She walks down the corridor and quickly runs up the stairs to the thirteenth graders' section in the dorm. Several students go in the opposite direction as her, but none of them look at her strangely – they all know Wiress by sight, since her appearance in this floor is almost an everyday routine. A few of them even greet her and Wiress nods back to them as a response.
She stops at a door and knocks. "Lectra? Lectra, are you up? We're going to be late for the first lesson!"
When she only hears a mumble from the other side, Wiress opens the door to find a semi-conscious girl by her desk, still wearing her uniform since yesterday, her face smeared with the graphite of the pencils she used to draw the designs on which she fell asleep. There are books, notes and a flashlight around her chair on the floor with pieces of wire, metal and a lot of other things.
Wiress hurries to her and makes her sit back while the girl groans again. She must have been studying all night, she thinks sadly as she grabs a small towel from the basin and starts to clear away the grey smudge. At this, Lectra's eyes start to open gradually.
"Mornin', Wire," she yawns and looks around sleepily. "Damn, it seems like I fell asleep again."
"Yeah, it seems so," Wiress says as she does her best to make Lectra presentable – she unties her ribbon and knots it again, buttons her shirt and smoothes her collar, quickly braids her long black hair and puts her coat onto her shoulders. When she finishes, Lectra is awake enough to collect her stuff for that day into her bag, and five minutes before seven a clock, they are both ready to go.
Normally, it is Lectra who comes to Wiress' room to pick her up, since it is on the route to the school building, but it is becoming more and more often that the older girl oversleeps. The summer finals are coming up, and though Wiress has exams as well, it is indubitably tougher for Lectra.
"When is your next exam?" Wiress asks as they step out the dormitory and head towards the school.
"Next Tuesday. Nanoengineering. With Haward the Horrible." Lectra rolls her brown eyes. "Seriously, that guy's a lunatic, nobody's gonna pass that exam."
Wiress has already heard a lot about Professor Haward – he is definitely not one of Lectra's favourites.
"I'm sure you'll pass," Wiress smiles encouragingly, and Lectra huffs, but a ghost of a half-grin appears on her lips.
"Nano's not my forte, Wire," she says.
Lectra has never been an excellent Talent, but she is actually very smart. She is not that intelligent by nature – she once told Wiress that she barely passed the test when she was little –, but she has worked so hard that she has reached a level that could be called "above average" by now. Wiress respects her for this, although Lectra just laughs. "I only want to take away from them at least this opportunity to bully me," she always says, and by "them", she means the Sector.
When she was younger, Lectra broke the Sector rules countless times, more than she can remember. It was mainly because of her rebellious personality mingled with arrogance, harshness, passion, bluntness and unique sense of justice and the fact that she has always hated the Capitol, the District and the Sector. However, underneath the cruel façade she showed to other people, there was something warm in her that, until now, only Wiress could find and they became best friends despite of being total opposites. Actually, they are more than best friends – the years they spent together created such a strong bond between them that only siblings have. With the influence of Wiress, Lectra slowly stopped giving the Sector more reasons to punish her, and as an exchange, she protected her like an older sister would.
But the Sector doesn't forget, no matter how hard Lectra tries, no matter how deeply Wiress hopes – they still punish her for random things she didn't even commit.
Their purpose is obvious.
In the lobby, the girls stop. "I have Maths in 308," Wiress says and turns to the staircase. Lectra nods.
"Okay, see you at lunch, Wire," she grins and starts to walk towards the corridor on the left.
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"Damn it! One'd think that they'll go a bit easier on us, finals and all. But no, why'd they, really?" Lectra fumes as she drops her tray down onto the table. "Prof Ybl wants a bridge model for Thursday. Emerson gave us extra amount of homework, and I have to write an essay for History too. Why on earth do we have to study History anyway? Shit!"
"I'll help you design the bridge," Wiress offers, but Lectra waves.
"No, it's okay. I'll manage. You have your own stuff to do." The older girl grabs a spoon and starts to eat her soup. "Besides, tomorrow's the Reaping. No classes, so I can write the essay after that." She adds with bitter sarcasm, "If the odds are in my favour, that is."
Every year, as the Reaping approaches, Lectra's foul mood and hatred towards the Capitol intensifies. Wiress can understand it very well, and in her own silent way, she shares her friend's loathing for the ones who came up with the idea of the Hunger Games more than half a century ago.
However, as if it is not enough that every child in District 3 between twelve and eighteen is subjected to the possibility to be chosen and forced to kill or be killed in an unknown arena, the Sector of Talents has "special rules" regarding the Reaping. Normally, a child can only increase the number of slips with his or her name by taking the tessera. Sector students are adequately fed – which is probably one of the very few advantages of being a Talent –, so they don't need the extra food. On the other hand, since the children here are exceptionally intelligent, the entire District believes – mistakenly – that they have a higher chance to win than the others – so the names of the eligible Sector students are added twice as many times than the "ordinary" children each year. Two entries for the twelve-year-olds and fourteen for the eighteen-year-olds. The majority of the District 3 tributes used to be from the Sector, including one of the two living Victors.
Also, to make it even worse, the slips are a widely used form of punishment between the walls of the school. One can earn "extra chance" by breaking even the simplest rules, like being late for a class, so there isn't a student who doesn't have at least one additional entry. More major punishments mean more slips, even four or five at the same time. And it doesn't matter if the student is under the age of twelve – collecting can start anytime.
So Lectra always has a "maybe this is the year" kind of feeling around the Reaping, since now her name is in the bowl sixty-eight times. As she is seventeen, she is entered twelve times by default, and most of her extras came in for petty rule breakings or recently just without any reason – except for one occasion, when she was thirteen and she committed something so major that it earned her twenty-five slips.
"They will be in your favour," Wiress says with a smile nevertheless. "Don't worry, I think it'll be me this year."
Lectra frowns. "Are you nuts? You only have six slips, plus two from when you accidentally dropped that box of cogs onto Mr. Vieser's leg." She chuckles into her spoon as she remembers the factory supervisor whom everybody hates shouting and spluttering profanities at poor Wiress. His face almost turned into a large plum. After Mr. Vieser had to be hospitalised for three days, Wiress was temporarily proclaimed to be the hero of the factory.
"Hey, it was really an accident!" Wiress pouts and Lectra bursts out laughing so loudly that some people turn towards them. "Don't laugh at me, Lectra!"
"I'm… I'm not laughing…" she mutters between two fits, still barely able to breathe. Wiress shakes her head, but Lectra's laughter is so contagious that she starts to chuckle as well.
Now that she thinks about it, the old bloke really deserved it.
They chat about anything besides the Reaping and the school. Lectra teases Wiress with a boy who was watching her for an especially long time during yesterday's work and she is amused by the way the younger girl blushes into a deep shade of red. She makes fun of various teachers, mimicking them until Wiress almost falls off the chair laughing. By the time they finish their meals, Lectra's mood lightens up a bit.
"We're assigned to Factory 2 today, so we can't meet, only in the evening," she says in front of the dormitory. "At our secret place at ten? It's Monday, so it should be okay."
"Alright," Wiress nods.
"Well, see you then," Lectra smiles and pats her head lovingly before she runs off to her room to change. Wiress just stands there for a long second, and though she is glad that she could help her best friend cheer up, as she watches her disappear, a strange blackness forms in her heart. The bad, suffocating feeling of apprehension.
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On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the dorm supervisor is Leonard Quake, a large – but short – middle-aged man with a balding head. He usually sits in a large armchair all day and watches a dozen of monitors that show the various corridors of the building. His job is especially important after the curfew at nine o'clock, because students are forbidden to leave their rooms after the electricity is cut off for the night.
However, Leonard is not a strict man, at least not to his favourites – this is why he turns away exactly at that moment when a door opens on the thirteenth graders' floor and another one on the tenth graders'. Those two've snuck out so many times these years that they'd have enough slips to fill that bloody glass bowl.
But everyone has their own favourites, don't they?
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"Good old Leo is still on our side," Lectra grins as she pulls out a small paper box and a tiny lighter from the pocket of her nightgown. She opens the pack and draws out a thin roll of paper filled with some special dried leaves – a so-called "cigret" imported from District 11.
In the always polluted air of District 3, people do not care about the health of their lungs, so a lot of them smoke cigret, even though it is highly addictive. As a minor, Lectra would be punished if they found her pack, but somehow, she manages to hide it well – along with the smell which Wiress actually likes. Its smoothness reminds her of Lectra and it calms her.
"Start it for me?" the older girl asks dropping the cigret and the lighter into Wiress' hand. She lights it while taking a small drag, then gives it back to Lectra who immediately puts it into her mouth. This is their own secret ritual.
Minutes pass, and they stare out into the night watching the smoke carried away by the wind. It dissolves before it can reach the barbed wire fence marking the boundaries of the Sector. The fire escape on which they are standing is well-hidden, but no one would see them anyway, so they are not afraid of getting caught.
Somehow, even without saying, Wiress knows what Lectra is thinking about. She knows that her mind is on the Reaping again and how the odds are not in her favour. The nice mood that lingered around them during lunch-time has disappeared, and the way Lectra takes long, almost distraught drags from the cigret, Wiress can feel that her best friend does not have enough power to recreate it.
The darkness strengthens the fears of even the bravest person in the world.
"You know," Wiress starts as she lifts her head and closes her eyes. "It'd be nice to be a bird."
"You know, you're such a hopeless romantic," Lectra says and smirks. "It's not coincidental that we can't see any birds here, Wire. The air is so bad that they all died. No bird can live in such a filthy place." The bitterness in her voice is so evident that Wiress immediately regrets what she said.
"Yeah, I guess you're right. It was just a silly thought. Sorry."
Lectra is quiet for a long second, then she says, "I'd be a blackbird, if I had the chance to reborn."
Wiress looks at her. "A blackbird? But they can't even fly away too far."
Lectra nods, "Yeah, I know, but I wouldn't want to fly away. I'd rather stay. To watch over those I love. Not a bad destiny, huh?"
This is what breaks through the wall, and Wiress' black eyes are filled with tears – because she immediately knows that she is talking about her. "B-but you're not planning t-to turn into a blackbird soon, a-are you?" she stammers.
Lectra really wants to say something encouraging, but she cannot think of anything that could make Wiress' tears stop. Not now, when she would like to cry as well.
So she just steps to the younger girl and wraps her arms protectively around her. The cigret in her hand slowly burns to a stub, the ash gingerly falls down to the ground.
"If you get…" Wiress whispers after her sobs calmed a bit. "If you get reaped, Lectra, I'll v-volunteer for you."
The blood runs cold in Lectra's veins. "No. I won't let you."
"B-but you've done so much for me…"
Lectra grabs her shoulder and looks straight into her eyes. "And so have you for me, much more than I could ever deserve. You don't own me anything. But if you volunteer for me, then I will never forgive you, Wiress. Understood?"
Lectra rarely uses her proper first name, and when she does it means that there is no room for argument. It only adds to the enormous impact of her words that makes Wiress feel like she has just been kicked in the stomach.
Why are you so stubborn?
"Yes…" she mutters and glances away from the brown eyes still boring into hers.
"Then say it!"
Wiress takes a shaky breath. "I won't volunteer for you."
Why?
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"Lectra Torwell!"
It is terrible how quickly one's world can crash down and break into millions of tiny pieces – a mere second is enough to end it all. It is no use to hope, no use to pray. When it is gone, it is gone forever, and there is nothing to do about it.
Wiress cannot breathe. It is like an invisible hand is starting to choke her cutting the air to her lungs. She wants to cry out, she wants to step forward and exclaim "I volunteer," but she cannot move. She stands rooted to the concrete in the group of fourteen-year-old girls and all she can do is to desperately wish that this is just a nightmare. I'll wake up. I'll wake up soon. What is the method again? Pinching my arm?
But she cannot wake up, because this is the reality.
Wiress watches Lectra walking to the stage and standing beside Rufus, the colourful Capitol escort who comes every year. Her brown eyes are frozen with hatred as he pats her on the shoulder and goes to draw the boy tribute's name. When she scans the crowd and finds her best friend, Lectra's lips curve into an almost smug, bitter smirk as if she is saying "I told you it'd be me".
However, Wiress catches a glimpse of her hands when she moves to hide them behind her back – and they are trembling.
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Thank you for reading chapter 2. :)
How did you like Lectra? She's probably the most important OC in this whole fic, so I tried my best to make her interesting. The following two chapters are going to be about her Games – with Wiress' eyes, of course. I've always been really interested in how it'd be to watch the Games, because we all know what it's like to participate in them.
So let me know what you think. I like reviews. :)