Continued in Fife's POV. A lot of answers given and many more questions.
Fife almost tripped on a backpack. It lay there, abandoned in the gloom, identical to those from the train. After prodding it with her pike, Mags crouched and carefully emptied it.
Fife stood back, just in case. She was almost pressed against the cold wall, ten feet away, when it was obvious the bag wouldn't explode.
Two heavy torchlights, a luminous wristwatch and a rather clean blanket. Fife eyed them suspiciously. What a fortunate combination. Well, there was no rule stating luck should only be bad and other tributes might have walked these corridors. Another part of her brain had broken into a litany of curses, urging her not to accept this, to stop and think. She ignored it. Thinking too much about the last days' events would destroy the illusion of calm she had painstakingly wrought. Focus on the present, don't think too much or you'll break down. It was the antithesis of her life philosophy; she'd always carefully planned every move before. Today, it was survival.
"Those could've saved you some storytelling, Fife," Constantine said as he picked up a torchlight. The girl could perfectly picture his cocky little smile despite the gloom. She couldn't resist.
"Did you two notice that Chase's eyes didn't leave your ass when we were introduced to the various scavengers, Constantine?"
Apparently he hadn't. "Excuse me?"
His aghast expression was priceless. "He'd never have shot such a pretty boy," she teased, stifling a guffaw at his reaction. Odd how a male would feel threatened rather than flattered by the attention, even if it was unwanted. She wouldn't mind a girl crushing on her so much. It was nice to see Constantine a little off balance.
"You lie."
Why would he automatically think that, honestly. "No need to. Why do you think he walked behind you instead of next to Atli despite the fact that we were armed?"
She couldn't believe they hadn't noticed. Chase had been the most dangerous person there, after the insane Atli. She almost shivered at the memory of him patting her head.
"Stop it, Fife," Mags said, unable to entirely conceal her smile at the other's outrage.
Fife obeyed, hiding her smirk.
The wristwatch read 9.37 PM. Fife yawned. While she had physically had worse weeks, she had never lived at such high stakes before. Lying to Atli had pumped dangerously high amounts of adrenaline in her veins. The thrill of deceiving such a fanatic, of being responsible for lives other than her own, had surpassed anything she had ever felt, but now that that strength had left her, there was only fear left. A draining fear that made her yearn for a soft blanket and a warm fire. The specter of Teal's husband's death loomed over her like a suffocating presence.
Mags had thrown herself in front of a gun without a thought, Constantine had risked his life just as much, and she... she had waited for them to save her, applying all her willpower to keeping her screams inside and her legs functioning. She was so useless when faced with violence. Talking about Cat and her family had helped. It reminded her that there was a life beyond the dark tunnels and their unsavory inhabitants. Fife wondered if something had changed between her and her allies. She felt naked, as if she had spent the ace up her sleeve.
There was no water trickling down the corridors anymore. They had reached the northernmost wing of the level and the tunnels had suddenly shrunk. The walls were lighter in color, of a rougher material. Fife could see they had nothing to do with any kind of waste disposal. They were walking towards a storage room of some kind. Blankets, piles of folded blankets of various materials, from aluminum to synthetic wool, were stacked in over two dozen piles.
As they entered the large room, Constantine and Mags in front as usual, Fife wrinkled her nose. A faint smell of sulfur mixed with something else hung in the air. The source was easy to pin-point. It wasn't a stack but a messy hip-high heap sprinkled with yellow dust that seemed abandoned near the door. A heap which hadn't been here long. Fife curiously stepped towards it.
It moved. A large hand caught Fife's foot. Silver nails longer than any she had ever seen dug into her soft flesh. The girl gasped in fright and pain. Her knife was out of her belt and into the man's bare sickly chest before he could utter more than another gurgle.
She pushed the lead weight back under the fabric, suddenly processing what she had done and not wanting to risk her health by touching him.
"Hesitating isn't always a bad thing," Mags muttered, looking conflicted. "Do you do this often?"
Had it been anyone else, Fife would have slapped her. Her heart was pounding painfully, as if threatening to flee her ribcage were the rest of her body stubborn enough to stay. No one friendly burst out of piles of rotting clothes; hesitating could very well get her killed. Fife began wiping her knife on a clean blanket, her hands so stiff that she was afraid to cut off all circulation.
A group of street-youths spared her suspicious glances. At this time of the evening, people had to start fleeing their turfs. Beneath her large coat, Fife absently signaled them, her hand knowing the codes by heart. They backed off, satisfied. Under a dozen guises, Fife had talked to each of them.
Her eyes darted to the broad-chested lone figure standing in the corner. The thug was stepping towards her. The girl's hand fastened over the deceptively immaculate knife concealed in her belt. She despised spilling blood, but valued her life too much to ever hesitate. She didn't bother to guess whether he was too foolish, or simply hungry and angry at life, not to back off. People vanished every week and she had no intention to meet their fate. She had killed once already, a miserable live snuffed out, an unnamed corpse dumped by uncaring peacekeepers into a common grave. A pair of hazel dead eyes that sometimes still haunted her nights.
"You got something I could use, Baby."
His shark-like smile reminded her of the reason she tried so hard to pass for a boy.
Fife didn't wait for the man's hand to tighten its grip on her shoulder.
Two pairs of dead eyes, hazel and chocolate, sometimes haunted her nights.
Fife hated killing, she just loved life more. One swift stab before her will left her was all that was needed. She was agile but also physically weak, she couldn't count on breaking free from any male assailant. If she truly felt threatened, she would kill again. Dealing with the guilt was nothing compared to the permanent state of being dead. Recent events hardly helped her keep her cool.
"I try not to," she said, her eyes flashing as she continued to hastily wipe her knife on the cloths. "And please no words on burial, Constantine. He has leprosy or something."
She didn't want to look at his grayish marked skin again. This place was a nightmare, sickness and insanity lurking behind every corner.
The aristocratic boy sighed. "I wonder what my use is if you ladies don't even need to be rescued..."
Fife chuckled weakly, impressed by his effort at distracting them. He'd rescued them from Atli promptly enough. "Apparently, charming wit."
"Thank you," Constantine said with a small bow. "I wonder why Chickaree didn't mention this second group of rebels."
Fife lowered her eyes, hiding the flash of hate that the name sparked. She had just been a tool to those rebels. They were hollow behind the illusion of great objectives, their lives about murder and revenge, meaningless repetitive days spent in the Citadel in the wait of some big opportunity to break the shackles the Capitol held Panem in. Selflessness for the cause they had called it. They strove to erase everything that made them special, human, every bothersome spark of individuality. She had seen only a city of dead beings with beating hearts.
Pleading blue eyes on a battered face. Those would haunt her nights forever, and for what? That peacekeeper should not have been hers to kill. She hated Chickaree.
"Speculation can only sap our courage," Mags intervened, "we can't predict the future."
"Mum can actually," Fife said with a little smile, glad to leave the hidden corpse behind. She wondered what news of the crash had reached the Districts.
Her mother played fortune teller on occasion. She did not advertise it but there were always those desperate enough to put their faith in the intangible. Fife had truly believed in her esoteric powers before the woman had revealed to her the magic of psychology. It had been a very disappointing day for the seven year old. Cards telling the future had sounded so much cooler. Fife's fingers closed over the tarot card her mother had slipped her in the Justice building. The Devil, reversed. Its symbolism made her lips twitch further. Detachment, breaking free, power reclaimed. Her family had faith in her. She had to break free of the darkness around her. She could rise above it, dismiss it, like Mags and Constantine seemed to do so effortlessly. She would find a way to come back.
A spike of dread extinguished her smile. Mags had frozen.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Fife whispered, afraid her own heart had stopped for real, "you look afraid, Mags."
Mags showing honest, blood-freezing fear, did not fit with what Fife had learned to accept from reality. Her allies were the dispassionate ones, the ones that saw violence and barely cringed, the ones that had volunteered to brave this hell, the ones that had accepted to toy with death. Crippling terror was what Fife had struggled to hide from the day of the crash, what kept her eyes riveted on her surroundings to avoid thinking about the future. She couldn't afford to show too much fear. She had seen how Mags and Constantine had looked at Gyan. Eyes so full of pity, blaming the Capitol for its cruelty no doubt, at least in Mags' case. Fife had to act strong. Fortunately, acting was in her blood. Fife swallowed back her fears and forced all her nightmares in a dark corner of her mind.
She shivered, hugging herself.
"It can't just be a fluke," Mags said, a faraway look in her green eyes. "I dreamed of your interview with Marcus Flickerman. You told him your mother saw the future. He asked you about his. You said his son would go far. How could I know…?"
"He has a son?" Fife said, jumping on the occasion to make distracting conversation.
Fife's curious expression dissolved into a frown. The coincidence was suspicious. But dreams not dreams? Dread stiffened her body as the girl hesitantly decided to test that theory. "Constantine, what would you have done in training? Showed off with swords?" She said, keeping her face blank.
Please say yes.
Constantine arched his eyebrow, looking affronted. "I do not need to train."
How can this be?
Fife slowly nodded; her eyes wide as she struggled to process the information. Dreams not dreams, but how? "No. You'd have watched. Your family crest is twin eagles circling a castle on a peak. On a ring you have."
Constantine's face darkened. He took a step forwards. "You searched me as I slept?"
Fife blinked, backing away from the now lethal looking youth. Rapid sentences tumbled out of her mouth. "No, I didn't. I promise. I dreamed of it, in the library. I was in a training room in the Capitol. You fought with that girl, Mirabelle. She called you a weakling for not training. I didn't think twice about dreaming of you acting aloof or having a golden ring. But it's impossible that my brain would conjure the exact crest."
Her words seemed to suck all the warmth out of the aristocratic boy's fiery eyes. He removed his token from his shirt and slid it on his finger. "I didn't want to soil it," he said, his thumb caressing the carved crest.
It was the same design. Fife heart leapt to her throat. She feared she would be sick.
"Memories," Mags whispered. "That's why I had such strong gut feelings about some of the others or why alliances appeared so quickly after the crash. We already knew each other."
When Constantine's fury flared once more, it was so palpable that Fife took another step back. "The Capitol touched my brain?" he growled, his hand white on the handle of his sword.
The idea was terrifying. Fife had heard nightmarish tales of prisoners being freed to sow discord, their perception of reality addled by whatever lies the Capitol had planted in their brains. Fife slumped against one of the stacks, frantically replaying her reaping day, searching for any holes. How could she trust herself if her mind had been tampered with? What else had they changed? Was this even real? A simulation of this magnitude seemed impossible but if her critical thinking skills had been altered...
"Mags, what exactly did I say during my interview?" She said, desperation causing her to grasp the other girl's arm and shake her slightly.
"If we were in the Capitol, these could very well be the real Games. No cannons, no arena but the Capitol is watching," Mags whispered.
Fife's thoughts were jerked to an abrupt halt. She let go of Mags and shook off all the parasitic questions threatening to give her another migraine. Again she had lost herself in details instead of focusing on the big picture. Again she had been a coward, not daring to go beneath the superficial, to risk discovering that she was not in control. Guilt invaded her at not having shared her early disbelief with the others. She'd let the sight of the mangled train override all that she knew about mechanics, and now they would pay the price. Why hadn't she said that it was impossible to cause a train to derail from the inside by doing something that go grease on your arms? Why hadn't she pointed out there was no access to the engine from the wagons? She had been such an idiot.
"We were all sleeping, no escort or mentor in sight except Vicuña," Fife began frantically, "and the kids from Six having grease up their arms when there is no way that's how you get a train to derail, even if they'd gained somehow access to the machinery…. And the train itself! We'd have won the rebellion if Capitol machinery was so prone to burning and blowing up. These torchlights, just there for us to find in the middle of nowhere, right when we needed them…. Everything that happened… oh sweet mercy…." Fife said, struggling to control her ragged breathing.
What did the Capitol expect of them? Were some of those rebels spies? What was being broadcasted? Had she inadvertently said something wrong? What had possessed her to trust Mags and Constantine as if they'd been alone! She turned on herself, her eyes frantically searching for small cameras. She'd heard of insect-looking robots finding rebel spies during the Dark Days. She saw nothing but wasn't reassured in the slightest.
She almost screamed when Constantine let out a sharp chuckle.
"No tribute saw fit to act. The Capitol could be finally seeing how we are when we believe ourselves alone. This is brilliant."
Fife could not find it in her to share his mirth. This had just severely compromised her survival chances. She could feel her mask slipping. She balled her hands and clamped her mouth shut to hide the tremble in her fingers and silence her chattering teeth. A shiver run up her spine. Cold, she was suddenly so cold. And angry. So angry at Constantine for daring to laugh. That idiot had volunteered. He had everything. A life of wealth, friends he loved and esteemed, power and the opportunity to play political games all day long... And he had come to play noble prince in front of the Capitol's cameras. Why?
"Could we have been watched since the beginning?" Mags whispered, looking ill. "They'll never let a too-obvious rebel win."
"What do they want?" Fife exclaimed. "Do you think we have trackers and that we all but gave them a map to the rebel stronghold? But then they could have put a tracker in the peacekeeper, no? And everyone else knows we were in the Capitol for days, so the rebels surely knew the train crash was bogus. And those torchlights, they don't mean much. Anyone would need torchlights after days in the sewers, it doesn't mean they can see or hear us..." Fife let her voice trail away, disjointed thoughts and questions invading her brain.
The Capitol had to want something from them. If she found out what, maybe she could come out of this alive.
Had Chickaree known? Why hadn't they been told, then? Had they been sent to Atli so that the rebels would be spared the chore of murdering them? Painful anger burned in her veins.
"We do not know how they communicate with the outside world. The more contacts they have the more at risk they are. The Capitol may have infiltrated their sources," Constantine said. He was playing with his unsheathed sword, a telltale sign of nervousness, but stood so straight and relaxed Fife felt tears threatening to mist her eyes. How could they take this in stride?
A frightening ring had entered Mags' tone. "And so we are reminded why the Capitol won the rebellion…. Clever, very clever, but why would they want us to interact with these rebels after having found them? Surely sending a hovercraft now and interrogating us would give them the information they sought if we are just bait to launch an attack?"
Fife pursed her trembling lips. Rebel was a big word that spoke of grand principles and commanded loyalty. She could see Mags' glow every time she said the word. Mags glowing spoke of brave sacrifices but Fife would rather be less of a hero but alive. "Half-crazy people who live in sewers and have forgotten what civilized means. Atli's a disgrace. They eat people. The Citadel rebels want to build a super-human race deprived of every flaw and use freedom as an excuse cull out their weak and Teal's group..." She sighed helplessly.
"Fife, I know you really value your life, but please don't try to manipulate me into not seeing them as human."
"Teal's faction should not be underestimated," Constantine said, an odd intensity to his dark eyes. Fife didn't have the strength to read more into it. She vowed to keep an eye on him later.
"You see even your worst enemies as humans, Mags. I'd never succeed. I'm just challenging their ability at offering a true haven for the rest of us."
Fife really didn't want Mags to demand they risk their lives for them. She wanted to go home and hug her parents. She wanted to teach her little brother about girls and life and find a man who would understand her. She wanted to fight with Cat about whose first-born baby was the cutest. She wanted to see the sun again, at least one last time.
"Stop screwing with me," Mags snapped.
Fife looked down and kept quiet. Playing games, guiding people's thoughts where she wanted them to go, that was her only true talent. She had been playing against the greatest foe of them all, the all-powerful Capitol, holding on to tenuous hope, only to discover that all was maybe already lost. She fought down a devastating wave of helplessness. Her arms tightened across her slight frame.
She started as Constantine grasped her shoulder, an uncharacteristic softness to his features. Fife felt so blind, outmatched by the enemy, alone in alien territory with people she had little hold over. She wrapped her arms around the tall boy, wishing the dark tunnels would disappear and reveal the blue sky, wishing Tabor was here, to give her faith when the world was slipping from her grasp.
"The moon was too full on the first night," Constantine muttered, "I had foolishly thought fumes in the air had altered its shape to the eye. A week of memories has been stolen from us."
Fife's lips twitched despite herself as she leaned in his embrace. She could perfectly picture Constantine mourning the dullness of humanity while contemplating the stars. Him and Mags were so odd, holding ideas dearer than reality. Yet if it made them strong, Fife was glad to let them be.
"I smelled it. They'd washed my reaping dress. It didn't smell like anything. It had smelled like Mum's detergent just hours before. I just dismissed it," Mags said, looking furious.
A strangled giggle escaped Fife's lips as she still clung to Constantine. Had Mags been in Nine, Fife would never even have considered trying to con her into anything. The young woman's confidence was unwavering, her beliefs too rooted, and she lacked the pettiness that made others so easy to play. But her emotions… Mags was an open book, displaying an integrity and a courage that humbled one into trying harder with their own lives. Yet Fife had just glimpsed a confused child struggling for a solution. A solution that maddeningly refused to reveal itself.
"What if they actually have means to monitor us like in real Games?" Fife said, repeating Mags' earlier question. "Broadcasting devices shouldn't work under so many layers of stone. Many of those rebels are from Three, they must be aware of the risks, but Capitol technology may have evolved."
She now cursed her poor and all too specialized education. She knew almost nothing of electronics. She suddenly missed Gyan.
"It doesn't matter, does it?" Mags said, looking drained. "The rebels are using us. We are using them because we have no better plan. The Capitol is using us. We can try to do what's right and survive. Right now, let's see what we can influence. If we've been tracked, they already know where the rebel base is. If they have cameras, they have a copy of the maps. If they can hear us, they already know where our loyalties lie and there is nothing we can do about it."
The brunette had never seen Mags so crestfallen. She admired the girl's focus, wondering how she could find it in her to act after everything they'd learned. Fife just wanted to sit down and sleep, hoping for a miracle.
"I'm not the only one here who needs a hug. Thank you," she whispered to Constantine, loosening her hold on him.
Mags smiled as the handsome young man gallantly brought her hand to his lip before pulling her in a tight embrace.
Behind her grin, a part of Fife despaired once more at the bubbling attachment warming her heart at the sight of the other two tributes. She swallowed back tears. Now that they knew that this was a twisted version of the Games, she couldn't hope to escape anymore, only one would win.