There are invisible lines between all the kids in Residential, dividing them into groups of who's done what and who hasn't, who's in the top of their class versus who's scraping by at the bottom having just barely made the cut, but the biggest, starkest line is the one dividing the fourteen-year-olds from the ones below.
Fourteen is the one that matters. Fifteen is when those who are left take their Field Exams, a three-week mock Arena that half of them fail because they're meant to, because it's designed to test and push and bend and break the trainees, and the ones who make it out are quieter, thinner, and at the same time more confident because odds are they'll be going in.
But fourteen is the big one. Fourteen is the first real divider, the first test of a trainee's mettle, and nobody talks about the results except the trainers, except some of the kids in hushed, almost furtive whispers. This isn't like the first broken bone when they're seven or the first time they got hit with a weapon so bad they had to go to Medical. This is the one that matters.
Fourteen is the first human kill test.
Most trainees only talk about one or two details if they're pressed, and it's understood that you don't ask, you don't talk about it. "He cried," one of them will say, wincing. "She begged me not to." "He ran at me so fast I almost didn't have to do anything, just hold the knife and aim it." "He vomited on my shoes."
The ones who've done it band together, not against the ones who haven't, it's not a conscious thing, but as Lyme's fourteenth birthday creeps closer - and that's what birthdays are, now, countdowns, countdowns to more tests and newer challenges and finally, the Arena - she notices how certain kids peel off from their groups and form new ones, silent and hunched and huddled in one corner of the cafeteria.
They're not supposed to let the others' tests affect them, not supposed to pay much attention at all, but Lyme thinks that must just be official speak because how can she not notice when her regular sparring partner disappears one afternoon and comes back the next day, just to sit in the weight room, hogging one of the benches and staring at her hands? They do that a lot, Lyme notices, sitting with their hands out and open in front of them, palms up and fingers curled.
They don't tell you when it will be, but it's always within a month of turning fourteen. The day Lyme's birthday hits starts the official clock, and from then on every day she hardly takes a full breath. She practices as hard as she can whenever she has a minute, and they probably aren't going to give her a knife - sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, sometimes they let the trainee choose - and so she works at killing strokes, tackling the dummies and tearing at them with her hands, watching for the flash of light that tells her she's made a fatal strike. She learns how to twist necks and jab her fingers into vital areas, how long to keep a chokehold until her opponent is dead, not just unconscious.
Fifteen days after her birthday, two trainers come up to her at breakfast and tell her it's time to go. Lyme doesn't say anything - you're not supposed to say anything - and she lets them take her to a hovercraft. This is the first, which means it's just about the killing, not the showmanship; later on they'll take her to the Centre stylists, have them work with makeup and hair, and she'll need to pay attention to the cameras and what looks good and what doesn't, but this is just about the kill. This is about watching what she does when she's taken her first life.
Two trainees dropped out last week, one boy and one girl. Both of them came back shaking, and the boy made it to the end of his recovery week before he picked up a sword in training and threw up all over himself. They found the girl in a corner, curled up into a ball and tearing at her hair as it came out in clumps, her scalp and fingers stained red.
That won't be Lyme. She's come too far for this. The human targets are criminals, condemned to execution, and District Two has the best Peacekeepers and most rigorous justice system in all of Panem, which means every person they send to die deserves to be there. In a way it's easier than the Arena, no kids here. Only adults.
It doesn't stop Lyme from wishing she'd found a way to skip breakfast as the hovercraft hums through the air, but the Centre monitors everyone's caloric intake and they wouldn't let her even if she wanted to. The protein pancakes sit heavy in her stomach and she tries not to think about them.
They drop her in the woods and the hovercraft lifts back up into the sky. Lyme doesn't bother watching it as it disappears; whether it flies out of range or stays, invisible, above her, it doesn't matter. It won't come back until either she or the target stop breathing. May as well forget it's there.
Kids do die on their kill tests. Not many, and the trainers don't tell them to add to the mystery on purpose, but there are rumours. There are always rumours. Lyme won't let it be her.
She walks through the undergrowth, taking soft, measured steps. She's big, the biggest girl in her year and for two years above her, but she knows how to move silently; anyone as big as she does needs to know stealth. The target won't be bothering with that; they'll have been told they're pardoned if they can kill her. A lot of prisoners volunteer for the chance, since they're dead anyway. Why not? If Lyme were sentenced to death she'd want to fight her way out, too.
A branch cracks under her boot - she winces, wipes her hands on her pant leg and tries to centre herself - and then she hears it, the crashing and loud rustle of someone running through the trail and not caring who's around to overhear. Lyme stops moving forward, stepping back and angling herself against the nearest tree. If she'd been smart she would have climbed one and dropped onto the target from above, but then again, without a weapon she'd have to rely on the proper angle as she fell. It's better this way.
It's a man, big and strong and built for work, and he jars loose all the memories of Pa that Lyme has done her best to lock away. For a second she's frozen as he comes out of the trees, the same desperate cruelty on his face, but then she digs her nails into her palms and she's back again.
"Well ain't you a disappointment," he says, stopping well away, and Lyme narrows her eyes. They gave him a knife but not her, and that's a clear a sign of any: she's meant to take it from him. The way he's tossing it in his hand, flipping it end over end in the air and catching it by the handle, means it shouldn't be too hard. He's careless. Arrogant. "Look at you, no tits on you. Though I guess you're a girl down below no matter what, so it's all the same to me."
Lyme's stomach gives a jolt, and the rage fills her like someone's standing above her with a kettle of it, pouring it straight into her veins. She lets out a long breath, curls and uncurls her fists to give him something to look at while she alters her stance, prepares to charge him. "What are you in for?" she asks, keeping it conversational and arrogant.
He sneers at her, gives her a long once-over. "You'll see soon enough. No penalty, they said. Whatever happens here, I get to leave, free as a bird. Shame you ain't one of the pretty ones, but I'll make you pretty in the end, don't you worry."
Everything turns white. Lyme breaks for him; he's big and fast for his size but she's faster, and he might have practice but he's not used to a girl trained the way Lyme is. He gets her with the knife once but either he's playing or the Centre has taught her well because she just keeps going, ignoring the brief flare of fire across her ribs. She's had worse. The women who are the reason he's here have had infinitely more.
She thinks of the women in the back of her mind, the part not relegated to gauging the fight, and she wonders if they were young, or old, if he only picked the pretty ones or grabbed whoever he could. If he liked it when they screamed. If he made them false promises, told them if they did what he told them to do he'd let them go.
Lyme forgets they're watching, forgets even to care. She grapples and fights, uses his weight and assurance against him, and finally his wrist snaps under her grip and the knife falls to the ground. Lyme scoops it up with her foot and picks it up halfway through the air, and finally, finally his face changes. The colour drains from his skin. He wets his lips, holds his broken wrist against his chest.
"You gotta be kidding," he wheezes out, his throat raw from where she sent a punch straight to his windpipe.
Lyme doesn't give him the chance to regroup; she attacks, and soon he's on his back, his arms trapped under her, and he thrashes and shouts and curses - he even works up a mouthful of saliva and spits it right in her face - but Lyme isn't going to let that stop her.
She has him now, like all the times she wanted to grab a kitchen knife and send it right into Pa's gut. A thousand words press up against her brain, fighting and surging to be set free, and the temperature must have risen because her vision is swimming but she blinks hard and it clears.
For a second Lyme sees herself carving him to pieces, pulling his insides out in a long tumble of pink and grey, trying to keep him alive as she guts him like some of the bigger kids from the backwoods talked about hunting, the ones who got sent home because they were too mean and the Centre wants kids they can control. She imagines taunting him with his own dick, shoving it down his throat and forcing him to swallow it.
She stops. She's breathing hard and her face is wet and the man below her is terrified - she feels it between them, the warm, wetness as he pisses himself - and as she looks at his wide, bloodshot eyes, Lyme feels the calm creep through her, chasing away the mindless rage. She's not a monster; he is.
"This is for them," Lyme tells him, and slits his throat.
She staggers back as he twitches and gurgles and scrabbles at his neck - it takes longer than she thought, and she stands over him with the knife ready in case she has to make another strike - but just when she's contemplating going back in to finish him off, the man stiffens, lets out a terrifying rattle, thrashes, and goes still.
Lyme drops the knife. "Son of a bitch," she mutters, scrubbing the blood off her hands against her uniform as the whine of the hovercraft sounds above her. The wind kicks up, whipping leaves into a frenzy, and she presses her palms over her eyes. "Son of a bitch!"
The Centre has to know about Pa; they know everything, and if nothing else the trainers aren't stupid, and they'll know why she showed up with bruises and broken bones that weren't put there by the other kids. They know, and they gave her a man just like him for her kill test, so she could finally, finally chase the last of her demons away.
It's a good thing Lyme isn't keeping track of the things she owes the Centre - no point, she owes them everything and they own her anyway, it's easier just to make it a big round number like infinity - because this alone would have pushed her over the edge into something she'll never repay. Except there is a way to repay them - only one, the one way that matters for people like her, and Lyme is determined more than ever to see it through.
Lyme is determined not to sit in shocked silence, staring at her hands, like the others. He deserved it, the man she killed; it's no different that it was her than the executioner, except she finally got to kill some of her own demons. It's not murder. It's justice. He deserved it.
Still. The cafeteria runs out of salt or something the next day, because everything Lyme eats is dry and tasteless, and none of it wants to digest. She wanders into the weapons room, looks around, then turns and heads back out without touching anything. She sits in the common room for an hour watching the television, only to blink when one of the older kids comes in, gives her a weird look, and flicks it on.
She stares at the bracelet on her wrist, the three orange beads, dull and old from so many showers, next to the bright, shiny red one. Lyme sits with her elbow against the tabletop, her hand at eye level, and she turns her arm so the light catches the bead and sends its reflection bouncing over the walls.
"You okay?" Astra asks her, sitting down in the chair next to her.
Lyme jumps. "He deserved it," she bursts out before she can stop herself, before she's even aware that she spoke, and after she clamps her mouth shut, ears growing hot. She drops her hand and crosses her arms, sticking the bracelet in her armpit.
"Keep telling yourself that," Astra says, only it's not sarcastic, it's serious, and her grey eyes are dark with an understanding Lyme has never seen before but feels deep in her gut. "It'll get easier. Just remember they'd be dead anyway."
She's not just talking about the criminals, but Lyme says "He deserved it," again, almost pleading. Her hands shake, fingers pressed against her ribs.
Astra gives her a small smile, punches her in the arm, and slips out, leaving Lyme alone with her thoughts and the strips of leather and bits of glass around her wrist.
Lyme says it one more time to the empty air. She doesn't know who she's trying to convince anymore - but at least she wasn't staring at her hands. That's something.
Her next test comes in the middle of winter, and this time they give her a woman, terrified and gasping in the frigid air. She'll have done something to deserve being here the same as the man before, but Lyme's guts twist anyway as she looks at the woman's wide-eyed face.
"Please don't kill me," the woman sobs. "Please don't. It was all a mistake."
Lyme rears back. They gave her a knife at the start this time, and she clutches it tight in her frozen fingers. Of course there's no mistake, she reminds herself. There's never any mistakes, not in District Two. It's just fear and desperation and the certainty of death talking; looking the end in the face makes liars of everyone.
Don't look her in the eye. Don't allow a connection. She's not a woman, she's a target, and it doesn't matter who a target was before they came here, in the Arena that's all they are. If it were a man Lyme would have struck already. She wants to close her eyes, give herself a second, but she can't. They're watching.
There's no time to make it okay in her head, no time to think up a justification to fix it. There will be even less time in the Arena, where half the time thinking makes you dead; by the time you finish thinking, the thing you're thinking about has already happened, and likely as not that's your blood all over the grass.
The bottom line is that this is what Lyme's here to do. There can't be anything deeper than that. This is what the Centre wants, and the Centre has given her everything. Lyme steadies her grip on the knife and lunges.
After she hobbles back, and her stomach heaves and she tastes her lunch at the back of her throat but no, they're watching, and she swallows it down, ignoring the bitter taste of bile and the burning in her throat. Lyme sucks in lungfuls of air through her nose and exhales through her mouth, going through the calming techniques the trainers taught her, and soon the nausea passes.
The blood is a bright, bright red splashed across the snow. The cameras will like that, Lyme thinks.
It gets easier after that. Much easier; Lyme hits another growth spurt the following spring, and the Centre dieticians up her protein intake until she's drinking shakes alongside every meal and one in the middle of the afternoon. If she's still here at sixteen - and of course she will be - they'll put her on steroids, not as much as the boys because the Capitol doesn't like their women to look too masculine, but enough that she can keep building muscle mass without having to choke down more food than her body wants to digest.
Lyme's entire life whittles down to training. If she's not working on weapons - she sticks mostly to swords, but she's also wicked with a mace and can throw a spear almost as well as Brutus, though she doesn't feel the same connection to them - then she's running, or lifting weights, or working her shoulders on the parallel bars.
She doesn't make many friends, but it's better not to make friends in the Centre anyway when the majority of her classmates disappear every time there's a round of cuts. Lyme trains, she spars with the others, she talks smack, and she does her best to beat everyone she can.
Once she sneaks into head office and goes through the file, and Lyme grins in the darkness when she sees that they've put her at the head of her year, and looking at the raw scores she's even beating the boys. Not that it matters; she's not competing against them for a spot on the Volunteer stage, so it's best not to think about that until the time comes, but it still gives her a jolt of satisfaction.
Even more than the boys, though, Lyme now feels an ugly pride in beating the other girls in her year, the ones who are prettier, more feminine, the ones the Centre usually picks and the Capitol goes crazy over. Lyme's looks will always be a hindrance - she can manage striking, but she will never, ever be beautiful - and knowing she's beating them anyhow is better than being allowed to sleep in or get an extra piece of fruit for dessert.
She knows they know she did it the next day, when during morning training they pull her out of her group. "You've gotten cocky," they tell her, and Lyme folds her arms and tries to ignore the others watching. This is a show; whatever they're doing, it's meant to make an example, and it's never, ever good to be the one they're making an example out of. "Time to show us how much you can back it up."
Lyme's eye twitches as she fights not to narrow it, and she stands with her hands at her side, forcing an easiness she doesn't feel into her stance. And then the trainer calls over one of the Seniors, and Lyme has to bite the inside of her lip to stop herself from sucking in a breath, because it's this year's Volunteer.
Not for certain - she's seventeen, angling hard to be put in a year early, and there's always the girl above her as backup, but rumours travel faster than throwing knives in Residential and Lyme has heard this one for months - but unless she's injured or killed, likely as not she'll be the one in the Arena this summer. She is beautiful, the most beautiful trainee Lyme has ever seen, but with a smile that hides pain and blood and knives behind it, and a twisting hatred starts up in Lyme's gut. This one will probably get together with Brutus and make beautiful Career babies if she wins.
The trainer leans in and says something to the other girl, quiet enough that Lyme isn't meant to hear, but years of straining to hear her parents' voices to judge their moods and whether it's safe to come out of her room has given her an edge. She hears the trainer say, "Take her down a peg," and the indignation burns in her veins like acid.
They fight, and from the beginning Lyme knows she's lost, because she's angry - furious, the rage coiled in her muscles and making her blows erratic - and the other girl is calm, focused, and secure in her position. As long as she doesn't get herself beheaded she's a sure thing for Volunteer, whereas Lyme still has four more years of scrapping and killing and proving herself.
It's worse because the girl is playing with her. Lyme fights as hard as she can - no point in holding back even though she knows she should try to save a bit of dignity - but she's still losing, and each hold is a second too long, each blow a little harder than necessary. The girl is making an example of Lyme like she's a trainer bringing down an uppity newbie, with everyone watching.
If that weren't bad enough, it's not just a pinning match; the girl is in the running for Volunteer, and that means she fights hard and nasty; soon enough Lyme's choking on her own blood, and she knows without having to check that she'll be going to the infirmary to get her nose set later. Finally Lyme is on her back, shoulders pressed hard enough to the mats that her back aches, and the girl sits above her, expression nonchalant, not even breathing hard.
She shouldn't do it. She should take the loss in good spirit because showmanship is almost as important as winning, but as Lyme struggles to breathe through the blood in her throat and the misplaced bones in her nose, looking up through swollen cheekbones at the picture-perfect girl above her, something snaps. The girl sits back and offers Lyme a hand up, and Lyme sucks in a breath and spits a mouthful of blood and saliva right in her face.
If nothing else, Lyme will cherish the wide-eyed look of shock that crosses the girl's pretty face until the day she dies.
"Lyme," calls out a trainer, and that's a flat disappointed voice and she knows she deserved it. "Suck it up. You're a trainee, not a first grader."
The girl stands without offering to help again, and she laughs - the sound digs into Lyme's bones like a rusty blade - and swipes her fingers across her cheekbones, turning Lyme's insult into a smear of war paint. "Good match," she says and winks.
Lyme hauls herself to her feet and wipes her mouth. Again she should be quiet, again she should return the gesture and shake hands, but she's humiliated now. "Pretty-ass bitch," she spits out.
The girl snorts. "This pretty-ass bitch just kicked yours," she says, and tosses Lyme a jaunty wave. "Try harder next time."
They fix her nose and make her suck on ice chips to soothe her bruised throat in the infirmary, and Lyme never stays there a second longer than she absolutely has to but she does today, curled up at the end of the bed with her head resting on her knees. She'd rather stick her hand into a vat of acid than do that again, feel the whole room laughing at her, and know that if this were in the Arena the Capitol would be glad that someone who was beautiful enough to be there put the homely challenger in her place.
Valeria, Lyme's favourite trainer, comes to find her when she doesn't go back out. "You know why we had to do that," she says, and none of the trainers are soft but some of them pull their punches a little. "You can't be thinking you're better than the other girls just because you're bigger and stronger. You try that in the Arena and the girl from One is likely to put a knife in your eye."
Lyme shrugs and doesn't look up.
"She's also three years older than you," Valeria points out. "That's something that will never happen in the Arena, so why don't you stop your crying and come back out like the trainee you are instead of the baby you're not."
Lyme grimaces. "It's just - girls already have to try twice as hard as the guys if we want to be taken seriously. At least the ones who are pretty have that going for them. Me, they'll write me off because I'm not. I have to be the best."
"So be the best," Valeria says. "Just don't get complacent. That's where you went wrong."
Lyme sighs and pokes at her nose, using the twinge of pain to ground her. "Yes sir."
"Good." Valeria leans over and claps her shoulder. "Up. Do some laps, hit the range, then come back in for dinner."
At fifteen they start image training, and for the first time Lyme hits a snag. She doesn't know how to make friends, how to charm people, and the trainers pull her aside and tell her she'll have to step up, because fighting is only part of winning the Games. She has to win over the sponsors, the Gamemakers, the audience, the interviewers; has to convince them that she's a good investment.
They abandon 'pretty' right away, though they do try it just to be sure. Lyme grits her teeth and stands still as they wax and polish her body, weave extensions into her hair and apply makeup to her face; obediently steps into the silver gown they hand her even though she wants to tear it to pieces with her fingernails. It all feels wrong, but she stands the way they tell her, hip cocked and hand at her side, and tries to match the coy smile the image trainer shows her.
"All right," the trainer says finally, and she's trying not to laugh but it's there in the tightness at the corners of her mouth. "That's enough of that."
Because Lyme is playing the perfect fashion doll like all Twos have to do, she doesn't say 'Thank Snow' out loud, but she certainly thinks it.
After that they dress her in suits, style her short hair up in military spikes, and paint the curves of her biceps with shadows to make them stand out. When Lyme looks at herself in the mirror she sees a warrior, and she's still not beautiful but she is unforgettable, and her breath catches in her throat.
"Yes," the trainer says, mostly to herself. "We can work with that, I think."
They keep experimenting after that, less to find her image and more to get Lyme used to the pawing and invasion of privacy. She learns not to flinch when ordered to strip in front of a room full of strangers, learns how to stand naked and have people circle her like vultures, zeroing in on every flaw and putting their hands places she would never allow in real life.
She's a model trainee until the first time a male attendant touches her, and then Lyme recoils so fast she doesn't even realize she's done it until she notices the circle of trainers has broken. The head of the group raises her eyebrows, and Lyme bites back a curse, wincing. She tries for calm - there will be male stylists, and half the prep team will likely be male - but she can't. It takes all her willpower not to hiss like an angry cat and pull away again. Finally they tell her to put her clothes back on and they'll try again another day.
Lyme heads for the showers, turns the water as hot as she can stand, and scrubs herself until her skin is raw and her sides bleed.
That evening, a trainer stops by her room just before lights-out. Lyme is on the floor doing pushups with her feet braced above her on the bed, and she stops in the raised position, arms trembling. The trainer looks down at her, and Lyme says nothing, waiting.
"Two takes care of its own. We've put a note in your file," she says, and Lyme's eyes widen. "No male stylists. Consider this your one privilege."
"Yes sir," Lyme says, not trusting her voice to say anything else without shaking. Once she's alone Lyme gives herself a minute to be overwhelmed with gratitude, and she sits on her bed with her knuckles pressed to her eyes, unable to believe any of it, that once again the Centre has done more for her than anyone else in her entire life.
A hair under a month after her fifteenth birthday, they haul her out of bed in the middle of the night and drag her to a big white room in the depths of the complex. They strip her down, dress her in an olive jumpsuit and do the bare minimum of makeup, just enough that she knows she has to look good for the cameras. Lyme's never had to wear makeup for a kill test before, and it's not until she's in the hovercraft and one of the silent Peacekeepers steps forward with a syringe gun the size of her forearm that it hits her. The tracker slides into her skin as the realization creeps through her brain.
It's not a kill test at all; it's her Field Exam, a three-week mock Arena with everything the Centre's Gamemaker-imitators can throw at her, from environmental hazards to muttations to artificial tribute analogues, to see if they can break her. If she walks out at the end, she's on the fast track to Volunteering; if not, well, she won't have to worry about what that means anymore.
If no one talks about the kill test they definitely don't talk about the Field Exam, and almost all the trainees who pass get brought back pale and thin and covered in blood to spend the next week hooked up to machines in the infirmary. Lyme's heart pounds and she tries to slow it, because the trainers back in the Centre will be looking at screens with her vitals on the monitor and they'll be able to tell she's scared.
Not scared, Lyme tells herself as her breath sticks in her chest. Excited. Anticipating. She digs her fingers into the armrests and counts out four seconds between inhaling and exhaling. It's not real. It's just a test. It's not real.
Except it is real. They drop her down at the edge of a bluff, and as soon as the hovercraft disappears the wind picks up strong enough it nearly knocks her over the edge. Thunder cracks overhead and the sky opens up as though someone turned on a giant shower above her. Lyme crouches down, flattens herself against the ground and inches her way back across the crumbling cliff face to safety while the rain fills her ears and nose and she spits it out just so she can get enough air to breathe.
It is real, at least in the way it matters. This might not be the Arena but if she loses she's out all the same, and she might not be dead but she will be thrown out, and that's as good as because what else is she going to do? Pa used to tell Mom she had nowhere else to go and Lyme was no better, and he might have been wrong about Lyme then but it is true now. She can't see herself as a trainer or a Peacekeeper or any of the other jobs that Centre washouts take; if she doesn't make it as a tribute then she might as well rip out her heart and throw it on the ground for the ants to carry back to their nest.
The rain pours down in sheets, and as she stumbles through the trees Lyme nearly runs into the artificial target with a '5' painted on its chest. There are twenty-two others hidden inside the square of land they've roped her off in, and she has twenty-one days to kill them all. They won't take each other out or starve to death like in the Arena; it's up to her or nothing. She has no weapons yet, and for a terrified second as she stares at the automaton's blank face, Lyme's staggers in the face of the enormous task in front of her.
But then the target moves, lunging clumsily at her, and her boots skid on the wet leaves and mud and if it hits her in the wrong place she's dead in every way that matters, and she wrenches a branch from a low-hanging limb and drives it into the target's face. She keeps going until it falls, and once it's on the ground she stomps on its head until the gears give beneath her foot and the blue light on its chest winks out, letting her know it's dead.
The rain lets up. Lyme wipes the water from her face, runs her fingers through her hair, and lets out a shaky breath. The Games are on.
Part of the game is giving the cameras something to work with, but in the Arena they can't mention the Centre because they have to pretend, absurdly, that they just picked this all up in their time at the Games Complex. Lyme could think up a whole new backstory for herself but her brain goes blank, and as she digs in looking for inspiration her mind gives her a picture of Pa's face, sneering and disbelieving.
He'd sputter to see her like this, filthy and covered in mud and blood like a savage, and Mom would probably have a heart attack. Lyme starts laughing, and she's up in a tree with a makeshift snare in her hands, waiting for anyone to come close, and she leans back until the bark digs into the space between her shoulder blades and snickers into her hand.
"Not a lady now, am I," Lyme says aloud, swiping a hand over her forehead even though it just smears the dirt around instead of getting rid of it. "Are you disappointed? You always said I'd grow up to be like all the other girls. Well I showed you, didn't I."
She takes out the next target with a blow to the crotch, and she starts laughing when it falls. "That's for you, Pa," Lyme says, and she has a knife now and she sticks it where the target's dick would be if it had one. "That's for you and everyone like you."
Later on after she kills another, she dips her fingers in the mess of blood (motor oil, part of her brain reminds her, but it may as well be blood and so it is) and smears it across her face. "Oh, look at that," Lyme says, laughing again, the sound high and full of broken razor blades. She's lost track of the days. "I've got blood all over me. Do I have to hand in my 'good little girl' card? Or do they make exceptions for the ones who look like men?" She snickers and rubs her fingers together, feeling the liquid grow tacky against her fingertips. "What do you think, Mom?"
She takes another one out with a mace to the face. She has a mace now, and a sword, and she stalks through the Arena, looking for the remaining tributes. This one has a 1 on its chest and an F on its sleeve, and Lyme grins savagely as the face collapses beneath the weight of her blow. "Not so pretty now," she says. "I heard you laughing at me. I know what you're thinking, you and your friends, but guess what. You don't have to be pretty to win." She yanks the mace free and stands over the body, her feet planted firmly on either side of its shoulders. "Being pretty didn't help you, now did it?"
Lyme has no idea how long she's in the Arena. The faint voice of reason in the back of her brain tells her three weeks is the limit but it feels like longer - three weeks isn't that long, she shouldn't be this out of it after a mere twenty-one days - and she can't remember where she is or what she's doing. She just knows that the last target feels softer than the ones before, her sword burying itself deeper, and she doesn't remember the others screaming or the insides feeling so hot and wet under her hands. It doesn't matter. All that matters is another down, and Lyme carves another notch in her forearm with her arm to mark the kill and the bite of pain brings her out of it enough to remember.
Right. She's been doing that, left arm for the days, right for the kills. The ones at the top at her wrist are scabbed over and itchy, the ones closer to her shoulder fresh and swollen. Lyme runs her fingers down the tallies and counts: twenty-one days one one arm, twenty-three kills on the other.
That's it. She's won. She drops her sword and presses shaking hands to her face and laughs - laughs and laughs and laughs - and then the voice comes over an invisible speaker and tells her to wait for the hovercraft.
She's won. It's over. Except then the hovercraft takes her back to a big white building that Lyme remembers, and faces peek around the corner as they drag her toward medical and oh no it isn't over, is it, and winning means that one day she'll have to do this all over again for real.
Lyme turns her face into the pillow and takes short, gasping breaths as the sedatives hit her and drag her down. When she wakes there's a bowl of ice cream by the bed and a silver bead on her wrist.