+ Shout out to ArtemisCarolineSnow and QuirkyIntrovert15 for the two wonderful reviews, and big thanks again to everyone following and reading along! Sorry for the long wait for this chapter as well; originally this was going to be two chapters, but I decided to merge them after I cut out some excess. Also, some weird ish goes down in this chapter. It does have meaning! It's not just weird for weird's sake, although I'm certainly capable of that, too.
/ / / / /
The white peaks of the mountains surrounding the Capitol shrank into the eastern horizon, their rocky ascents lit up with the orange light of the setting sun. Cyrus nursed a glass of gin and gazed out of the window of the train, trying his best to drown out Cicero Templesmith's excited jabbering from the television mounted on the wall of the lounge car. The juniper smell of the gin was putting him to sleep. The train wouldn't make it to District 4 until the morning, and he wasn't in any mood to watch tributes battle it out in the arena. He'd have turned off the live screening if it wasn't for his traveling companion.
"Just vile!" Julian Tercio said, leaning forward in his seat, shoving a handful of grapes in his mouth, and sticking out his tongue in mock disgust. "That boy from District 4 is absolutely a bull. Goring that girl from 6 in the heart like that – mmm, gruesome, but I can't stop watching the replay. From that reverse angle, it's just like an explosion of gore."
"We'd all be happier if you kept your recap to yourself," Cyrus groaned, taking another swig of gin and wishing he could jump out the window and magically arrive in District 4.
Julian laughed. "Just you. Does party-pooping run in your family?"
"Two people on a train isn't much of a party."
"Big enough for me," said Julian. He ran a hand through his mop-like mane of hair and leaned back, rolling a grape between his thumb and index finger. "Besides, it'd do you good to get festive. You're going to District 4! Reigning champs. Good food. Consider it a vacation."
Cyrus scowled at him. "You know damn well why I'm going. Someone needs to smooth over things before tensions turn into real violence."
"So if they're already uptight, and you're uptight…how well do you think that's going to work out?" Julian said, rolling his eyes. "People get mad, Cyrus! If they were serious about their demonstrations in 4, Taurus would just roll in hovercraft. People get mad, they get it out of their system, they get drunk, they say some things they shouldn't, they fuck, it all gets out of their system. Maybe if we let that happen rather than overreacting so much, this wouldn't be a problem."
"Then tell Creon that."
"Oh, like he'll listen to me. He'll listen to you."
"I'm a little worried he's listening more to Taurus these days."
Julian laughed and tossed a grape at a chrome cup seated on the glass-inlaid wooden table in the center of the room. The fruit bounced off the rim and rolled into a dark corner of the cabin to collect dust. "Look at you. Cyrus Locke, Coriolanus Snow's right hand man, moaning about how Snow two-point-oh thinks his rival offers better advice."
"Big words from you," Cyrus snarled. He didn't need snarky insults from the Capitol's logistics architect, of all people.
"At least I laugh along with my detractors," Julian said. "I wish they'd come up with something new. 'Julian Tercio. Lazy man runs off with his parents' money and estate. He's only got his job because of them. Shame they're dead.' Helps that they're right. But hey, they should try keeping a city of three million running on a daily basis. At least I won't have to hear them complain when they clog the sewage grid again while I'm in District 1…for a week…oh, I wish it were two weeks."
Julian squinted at the television and snatched a cream-covered pastry off of the table. The train lurched, and his attempt to bite into the confection smeared frosting across his chin. As he scooped it off with his hand, he pointed up at the screen and said, "Not taking things too well, is she?"
In the Hunger Games studio, Cicero Templesmith feigned pity as Terra huddled against a mound of rubble and bawled her eyes out. The bloody splotch of Glenn's blood glistened in the flash of a lightning strike.
"Can you believe I sponsored her?" Julian said. "What a waste of my money. Elan Triste is a real con man."
"Is this all you do with your money?" Cyrus scoffed. "Throw it at the Hunger Games?"
"Well, I also host parties I don't attend. But don't sound so cynical. Maybe I saved little Terra Pike's life. Although given the display we're watching, probably not."
"I'm sure that's why you did it. Goodness of your heart."
"Oh, I'm a paragon of virtue, Cyrus," Julian said. He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees and lowering his brow. "But I did get some tidbits out of Elan, in any case, and maybe it wasn't such a waste. I'm guessing you already know we're working closer with this year's victor going forward?"
Cyrus frowned. Considering where he'd heard that, he guessed who'd been dumb enough to let that secret slip. Mental note: Do not tell anything private to the Head Gamesmaker. "I do. Can't say I'm happy about it."
"Come on," Julian said with a wry smile. "You're a smart guy. You at least have principles, even if you stick to them like glue. I like you a helluva lot more than Taurus and Lucrezia. Now, we're going to be working with the victor. That means, just like Creon, there's going to be a lot of people in his – or her – ear. You consider that whoever wins might be a little more sympathetic to a sponsor who helped them get out of the arena alive?"
Julian stuck his thumb towards the screen as Terra cradled her face in her hands. "Just something to think about."
/ / / / /
I had to do it. I had no choice. It would have been worse if I hadn't killed him. Glenn wanted to die. Wanted to. It was mercy. I did good.
Every consolation I could think up couldn't wash away the pain. Maybe it was the way Ember looked as if he were worried I'd kill him next, or how I couldn't look away from the bloodstain on the rocks until I'd forced myself to get away from that place. It hadn't hurt so badly when I'd fought off the boy from 7, but this time…this time the weight of what I'd done had come crashing down with the force of every blast of lightning raining down from the sky.
Ember knelt nearby as I lay in the dust beside our crackling fire. He played with his thumbs, turning them over and over while throwing the occasional glance my way. "Terra?" he asked, his voice soft and hesitant. "You alright to get moving?"
I shook my head. The red and gold flames took away some of the pain of this place. I didn't want to wade through the darkness again to get…to go where? Neither of us had a clue where we were going, or even what we were doing. Glenn had been right: Three measly days of training had been nothing but a joke. We weren't prepared.
"What'd he mean?" Ember said after a long silence. "Your district partner. The Flame Gates, what he wanted...all of that. What did he mean by that?"
Ribbons of smoke peeled off in tiny circlets high above the fire. I imagined one was Glenn, leaving this horrible place that he'd hated so much to go somewhere else. Somewhere unknown. Somewhere better.
"He wanted to die," I grunted.
"Why?"
"He believed in the Gods and all that."
"The what?"
"You don't have a church in District 12?"
"A what? No."
I sighed and sat up. Explaining things would at least take my mind off of the blood staining my thoughts. "The Church of the Triad. It's a spiritual thing a lot of people believe in back home, and supposedly in some of the other districts, too. There's three Gods, okay?"
"Three what?"
"Like...like people who watch over everything and make things happen. Like kings of the world. There's the Sun, the Moon, and the Flame."
Ember laughed. "Wait a sec. You mean people actually believe the sun is some sort of king of the world?"
"No, it's a metaphor. They just use the name 'Sun.' The Sun is kinda the overlord, the Moon is the king one, and the Flame is the warrior. They're the Gods of light, and on the other side, the two Gods of darkness oppose them. There's the Night and the Shadow. One's sort of outright evil, the other's more insidious. Each looks over a realm where the dead who lived according to their creeds go to. The Flame Lands are for warriors and fighters, for instance. The Shadow reigns over Oblivion, where cheats and traitors go. The Dark Hell is for the murderers and other really bad people, and according to the people who preach this stuff, it looks sort of like the arena here."
"Do you actually believe this stuff? This sounds ridiculous."
"No. Some people don't. I don't."
"So why does anyone? I mean, c'mon. The Sun is not talking to me."
"It's just a metaphor! I already told you that. Besides, I think it's supposed to give people some sort of meaning, like everything they do is worth it, even if it feels bad now. Hope. Like there's someone always there watching -"
A squeak outside interrupted me. The noise made Ember flinch as if we had imminent invaders, and I tensed up a fist. Probably nothing. Just to make sure we were alone, I struggled up on me feet and picked up my crowbar. "I'll go look."
I bumped my shoulder into the wall of the burnt-out hut we squatted in, swore, and nearly stepped on a fat black rat. The animal skittered about, its four little legs hustling like a butterfly's wings as it hurried to nowhere in particular. The animal chirped and squealed: Something had spooked it. Off to my left down the debris-strewn street that bisected the ruins, a shadow fidgeted. I rubbed my eyes, squinted, and froze.
A hundred – hundreds – of rats rushed down the path, rushing in a giant wave towards me like some horrible, disease-ridden flood.
"Ember?" I said. "Ember, we should go."
"Why?"
"Get your stuff and let's go! Now!"
The air thickened with the smell of bile and rotting meat. I gagged, covering my mouth and turning away as Ember hurried out of the hut. His eyes bulged.
"Just follow them," he said, pointing towards the rats.
I didn't get a chance to reply. The most horrifying noise I had ever heard, something that sounded halfway between a rusty iron door closing and a coyote baying at the full moon, howled from somewhere down the road. Whether the wail that warbled in and out of clarity was a war cry, a warning, or something else entirely befuddled me. I only knew I wanted no part of it. Ember was already sprinting down the broken cobblestone when I broke out into a run. Rats skittered around my feet, their furry bodies bumping and grazing my ankles.
Ember stopped dead in his tracks at an intersection, and I stumbled over my feet to keep myself from slamming into him. A hot wind raked the back of my neck.
"Which way?" Ember asked. Down the road to our right, the stony ruins faded away into dunes of black sand in the distance. Crumbling watch towers and time-worn tenements decayed to our left as the city grew denser.
"Deeper into the ruins!" I panted, dashing left. My thighs burned, and I prayed we could find a hiding spot among the nooks and shadows of the dead city. The rats burst off in every direction, some slipping into tiny grates hewn into the broken street, others scampering up ruined facades.
Left, right, forward – the world blended into a rush of amorphous black and gray as I ran headlong into the necropolis. A shower of lighting erupted in the distance as a pair of moaning gas bags floated over the ruins. Getting shocked seemed like a nicer fate than whatever was causing that nauseating smell behind me, however. I struggled to keep my stomach's contents down as I ran.
Crack!
Ember dashed ahead of me just as the ground gave out beneath my feet. I stumbled and flailed in the air as stones tumbled into the break below. At the last second I reached out, snatching a hold with one hand with my legs dangling in the air.
"Terra!" Ember shouted, bounding backwards and reaching down to help. "Gimme your hand!"
I reached up as my handhold slipped. Flailing, I whipped my hands out in front of me until I grabbed a smaller nook right at the edge of the fracture. A rushing sound echoed in the hole below – water, or something worse. Ember hurried forward, but another long, mournful howl from whatever was chasing us stopped him in his tracks. He glanced up, his eyes gaping, his lips parted in uncertainty and fear.
"Go!" I said, looking below me. I didn't think the fall would hurt me: Maybe fifteen feet below me, a slow-flowing dark fluid coursed through a stone aqueduct. "Ember, just go! I'll meet up with you!"
He bit his lip, glanced back down the street, and dashed away. I was alone again, but if I didn't hurry, something – or someone – far worse would be on me in seconds. Sucking in my breath, I let go of my handhold and plunged into the darkness below.
Splash!
Cold! The water was freezing! I hit the ground and fell onto my side, spitting and choking as I scrambled to my feet. At least it was only water. I didn't have time to think about my surroundings, however. My crowbar had fallen down into the underground with me, fortunately, so I grabbed my weapon, steadied my resolve, let out a loud exhale, and charged into the dimly-lit corridor ahead.
A sea green glow lit up the subterranean passage. Spores like the ones I'd seen earlier collected all about the tunnel, but in much thicker clouds than the ones that had coalesced around the obelisks above. They smelled of dust and mildew, filling my mouth with the taste of stale bread and old cheese. Greasy ooze dripped from the walls into the water, and tiny lights swam about around my feet. I gripped my weapon tightly and pushed ahead as the corridor turned, cutting me off from any sign of the danger above – and from sight of the sky. I was alone, and I was trapped underground in a graveyard's catacombs.
The tunnel didn't change the further I walked, but the haze and the spores intensified – and my head clouded up more and more with every step I took. After several minutes, it felt as if I was swimming through the air. My eyelids drew down as if weighed by anchors, and I missed my footsteps and stumbled. Macabre shadows danced in front of me in the haze. They were images and people I felt on the verge of picking out, their identities slipping away from my mind's grasp with inches to spare. I heaved and panted in the thickening haze and plowed forward. I had to keep going. I couldn't go back: If I went back, who knew what would emerge to terrorize me from the darkness? I had to keep going through this stuff. Had to. I didn't have a choice.
No choice.
I rounded a bend in the tunnel as the walls leaked gallons of pus. The current underfoot tripped me up, and I slipped onto my hands – but when I looked up, something had changed. I'd stepped into a large, rectangular chamber with an arching ceiling lit up by a swirling cloud of the green haze. It wasn't the most drastic change, however. I wasn't alone anymore.
A girl no taller than my hip watched me from the center of the room. She didn't look more than about five years old, but from her dark brown ponytail to her deep blue eyes and her blue polka-dotted dress, she looked familiar. It was strange. I'd had a dress just like that years ago. The girl held a finger up to her lips and shook her head, backpedaling away from me towards a corner of the chamber.
My mind swirled, but something about the whole situation struck me as oddly normal, as if I expected her to be there. None of it seemed out of place, and for a moment, I forgot I was even in the Hunger Games entirely. I didn't feel much of anything, like I was some observer watching life play out in front of me. My head lurched in confusion.
Terra. Snap out of it. You're seeing things. It's not real.
A stomping sound made the girl jump, and she spun away from me. The glow from the spores lit up a tall figure in the corner. It was a man dressed in a ratty shirt covered in red dust, his hands clutching a plastic half-gallon jug filled to the brim with a milky white liquid. I sniffed, and the old, familiar smell of palm wine took me another step away from the cobblestone ruins. Something about this man was familiar too, even if I couldn't see his face. Maybe it was the way his veins popped out on his tired, weathered hands, looking all the more prominent in the hazy light, or perhaps the slow, steady, deliberate way he turned towards the little girl who trembled before him.
Don't turn around all the way, I thought. He couldn't turn around. Something terrible would happen if he turned around.
The girl shook, as if she knew what was coming next. The green glow glistened in the man's dead white eyes. He dropped his jug to the ground, and it rolled towards me – sploosh, sploosh, sploosh. Fear coursed through my veins. Don't say anything. Don't make him mad. If you get his attention, you'll make him hurt you.
The girl pulled on the man's pant leg.
A gaping hole ripped open in the man's face, howling like the wind in the midst of a towering dust storm back home. Cockroaches tumbled out of the hole, and far away, someone screamed.
I sprinted towards a tunnel opening to my right. The screaming and the howling grew louder and louder, and I clawed at my face as I ran. Get it out of my head! The spores made me choke and cough as I ran, and the smell of wine overwhelmed me with its sickening sweetness.
Bang!
A loud thud from up ahead stopped me in my tracks. Bang! I shook my head and held my crowbar out in front, ready to fight off whatever was coming for me, be it the flood of rats, the hole-faced man, or whatever else would come my way. Tributes, even. Those existed.
The source of the banging, however, wasn't coming for me. Red dust swirled around and between the clouds of spores, seemingly billowing out of the craggy ceiling and oozing walls. Ahead, a lone figure stood ramrod-straight, facing the wall. The person, a girl around my age and height by the looks of it, had the same dark ponytail as the little girl in the chamber. A threadbare yellow scarf dangled from around her neck. She didn't make a noise, and I couldn't see her face, but the girl bent backwards, reared up, and slammed her forehead into the wall.
Bang!
I gasped and recoiled. She didn't seem to notice. The girl leaned back again and smashed her face into the wall a second time without a grimace or yelp of pain. Her back hunched and her shoulders stooped, but she reared back and smacked her forehead into the stone yet again. Bang!
With each step I took forward, the girl slumped down another inch. I held my weapon out to protect myself, but she was far more preoccupied bashing her brains out over and over and over. By the time I passed her by, she was on her knees, still smacking her forehead into the wall. A patch on the stone just above where her face impacted glistened, shining with a bright, silvery hue like the solar panels at home.
Bang!
By the time I turned the corner down another corridor, she was lying flat on her stomach. Still the girl tipped her head back, her ponytail swinging behind her as she pressed her face into the wall with as much force as she could muster. Bap.
Another chamber like the first opened up after a series of winding corridors, and standing in the middle of it was the same girl – or at least one who looked identical to the face-mashing one. She wasn't engaging in self-destruction, however, but standing over a large stone basin, her hand rhythmically moving up and down. The girl chortled with a laugh somewhere between a groaning cackle and a halting moan, stuttering and shattering the frayed ends of my nerves. My mind thickened and flowed like molasses, and when I approached her, the air around me felt like cotton fuzz.
She glanced over her shoulder. Something about her face was so familiar, from her full cheeks to her blue eyes and thin eyebrows, but I just couldn't make it out. She shook her head and smiled as tears flowed down her cheeks. Something wailed atop the basin.
When I caught a glimpse of what was going on, I nearly died of fright. The girl clutched a knife in her hand and jabbed it again and again into the stomach of a boy no older than eighteen. The wound didn't bleed, however, but howled with black gusts of wind that seeped out above him. With each hit the boy groaned and cried out in pain. Like her, he, too, was familiar. His gaunt cheeks and slender build reminded me so much of Glenn, in a way, but the way his shoulders bunched up with packs of muscle mirrored the boy from District 7's stocky frame. His thick arms, his dull eyes, his fine brown hair and rugged brown jacket that the girl's knife had shredded, all of it piqued little familiarities that I couldn't place.
I stared on in grotesque curiosity as the girl stabbed him again and again. I couldn't take my eyes off of the scene. Then, with her knife halfway down for another stroke, the girl stopped. The water around her feet ripped, and she glared at me, her eyes accusatory, her brows furrowed in anger. She smiled, laughed, and held the knife up to her own throat. I thought she'd slice it open, but instead, the entire world exploded.
An inhuman howl blasted the girl and the boy into shatters as slimy pale tendrils rushed at me from the haze. Whatever I'd been watching, it was gone now – and what was attacking me was very real.
I scrambled backwards and flailed with my crowbar. Some sort of giant water beast lurched out of the darkness, its head still concealed in shadow but its many arms whirling in a storm in front of me. One of them slammed down into the water and reached out at me, snaking towards my feet. I screamed and brought down my crowbar.
"Hroaw!" the beast howled and heaved forward. Its tentacles were ghastly things, each one as thick as my torso but lined with tiny, marble-sized suckers and sharp, black, needle-like teeth. They flailed at my ankles, and one grabbed hold with a grip like a vise. I yelped as it dug its needles into my skin, pulling me towards the darkness with incredible force. I smacked at it with my weapon, whacking aside another incoming tendril and smashing at the beast with the crowbar's point until it released me with a groaning scream.
I got to my feet and ran. A tentacle lunged at me, missing my feet by millimeters as I rushed towards the nearest corridor exit I could see. Behind me the beast snarled and splashed, with waves lapping at my legs. It wasn't giving up. I had to move.
Run! My feet ached as a godsend opened up down the corridor in front of me – stairs! I sprinted up the cobblestone as the spore-infested haze thinned out and my mind cleared. The beast howled behind me, screaming its inhuman obscenities as I dashed towards the growing light of lightning strikes up above. When I emerged into the open air with the ruins rising around me, the dusty air tasted like honey.
Who would make a place like that? Goosebumps ran down my arms as I glanced back at the dark pit behind me. The beast howled again. I didn't know what I'd seen down there. Whether it was real, some manifestation of my mind, a series of hallucinations, a gamesmaker trick...I didn't know. I didn't want to explore those underground depths for one more second.
"Terra!"
Ember's shout cleared the last of the haze from my mind. I spun as my ally came sprinting up the road, and a wave of relief washed over me. "Ember!" I yelled,, smiling and dashing towards him as something buzzed by my ear.
Whizz-thump!
Ember stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes bulged and his mouth gaped. I paused, confused, until I saw the obsidian knife buried halfway up to its hilt in his chest.
"No! Ember!"
He fell to his knees, his face frozen in shock. I didn't know what I was doing. Heat washed over me as I sprinted towards him, desperate to help him to his feet, dead-set on clinging to the one thing in this place that wasn't trying to tear me down.
I didn't get that far. A massive hand grabbed my shoulder and hurled me to the ground. The impact knocked the wind out of me as colorful lights danced in front of my eyes. I just made out a towering shadow jumping at me before a blow to my head turned out the lights.