XLIX: The Games - Day Nine, Morning

Zoya Ossof, 16
Tribute of District Five

The wind blows strong this morning, howling through each gap in the stone. Still not loud enough, in its own enormity, to disguise it.

Wheeze. Rattle. Rattle again, longer this time. It sounds like something is clicking around in there. A long, momentous pause.

Zoya waits. Kai breathes again.

"He's not going to wake up, is he?" Zoya asks.

Ravi sits cross-legged by Kai's feet, stony-faced and silent in his resolve. He couldn't even pinpoint the last time Ravi so much as blinked. Only occasionally does his gaze slip to the side, once again roving over what's left of their medical supplies and the herbs he collected from the gardens. Each time his gaze returns to Kai with nothing to show for it.

Ravi blinks then, finally—at least he's still there. "I'm not sure," he admits. Which, for someone with even rudimentary medical knowledge, is worrying. How can Ravi not know? He's seen this before, right? Surely he has.

"Is there nothing you can do?" he wonders. "I mean he's suffering, right? There's nothing you can do to make it easier?"

Once again he watches as Ravi stares at their medical supplies as if something is going to appear that he's never seen before. It's a second, and only a single one, but there's a shift in his eyes like an idea came to mind. The next time he blinks, it's already gone. Whatever the idea was, it must have been fleeting.

"We only had a few of the pain meds," Ravi explains. "And I gave them to you."

Oh, well isn't that just fucking perfect? Downing pain meds and robbing the kid dying of cancer from a more pleasant death all because Zoya can't handle his fucking boo-boo, like some kind of five year old. That's sure to be a real crowd-pleaser; the people in the Capitol must just be dying to line up to sponsor him.

"Excuse me if this sounds… wrong," Ravi says carefully. "But I wasn't aware you cared. At least not to this degree."

He lets his head thunk back against the wall—at least if he has to hear Kai, he doesn't have to stare at him as well. "Neither was I," he mutters. The only solace that comes along with it is that Ravi won't get all judgmental on him for it. The people he once called allies—Clementine, even Pietro, they both would have gotten on his case.

It's nice, for once, to not feel like he's doing anything wrong.

"Still," he continues on. "You're sure? I could keep rambling, y'know, maybe it would strike you with inspiration or something, give you an idea—"

Ravi holds up a hand, and Zoya is so convinced he's going to be slapped by the look of it alone that his jaw clacks together, eyebrows furrowed. Ravi does not hit him, of course—he wouldn't. But his hand remains up, eyes firmly elsewhere.

Zoya follows his gaze to the door.

The handle is turning.

Only the chair wedged beneath it fully stops its progress, but the frame shakes and creaks, struggling to hold its place. It's not a very impressive looking chair. He gives an odd, hopping-crawl out of his current place—first to Ravi, to snipe the machete abandoned by his side, and then over to the door, the wind muffling each of his noises as he does so. The handle is still struggling to turn, whoever's on the other side of the door absolutely hell-bent on getting in.

It's already occurred to Zoya that there's no real difference here. If he lets whoever it is in, he's going to have to kill them—it's not like he's getting any help from somebody who's unconscious, and he doesn't doubt that Ravi will throw himself over Kai's prone body before he offers up any real assistance. The alternative is to open the door; throw it open, rather, and force whoever's trying to get in away. He'll have the element of surprise.

If there's only one of them, that is. There's no telling how many there are, who it is in the first place. Knowing his luck it's fucking One and her lacky. If he stepped out into that, Zoya thinks he might just die of shame before she got to him.

He pauses before he reaches the door, watching as Ravi rises to his feet. No, he mouths. Zoya was expecting at least that, in the face of whoever's still trying to rain on their parade. They really are determined to get in, aren't they?

Zoya shrugs. Ravi's face hardens, but it's still not intimidating in the slightest. If Zoya didn't want to give himself away, he'd laugh. Don't you dare, he tries. If Ravi thinks that's going to work, he doesn't know anything at all.

Then again, could he really have guessed that Zoya—Zoya, of all people, was going to step up and protect them?

Even Zoya couldn't have guessed that one.

He reaches for the door. Yanks it open.

There's no going back now.

Whoever it is on the other side does a mighty job at concealing their shock. That's one of the things he's learned. Focusing got him in trouble. Looking too long made it worse. He still sees Enna sometimes, sinking to the bottom of the pool in slow-motion. That girl, too, who's name he never even bothered to learn. Though his nightmares are few, he can still see her skin peeling from her bones, the radiation eating away at her flesh.

So he doesn't look. Zoya focuses only on their thrashing limbs—legs working against the stone in their frantic race to steady themselves, arms jerking about as they fight to position a sword in the correct way, fingers clumsy.

Kai's arms have been jerking like that too, involuntary spasms where he seems to be seizing, fighting for control over his own body even in a too-long sleep.

It's becoming harder to watch with every goddamn minute.

In the end, is that why he brings the machete down so fast? Is it so damn reminiscent of the everyday horror that they're facing that Zoya can't stand to look at it?

He didn't think he was that bad, but who the fuck is he kidding? He's been like that since the beginning. No good, wholesome person shoves their ally off a platform into a watery grave, even as a joke. They don't risk it. That's only Zoya.

With the way he acts, he's not really worth anything. That's what everyone has always told him. It no longer stings to prove them right.

They shriek. He doesn't want to know who they are. Doesn't look. "No, please—!"

The blade slashes deep across their chest, and he feels blood splatter against his arms. The strange absenceness of the feeling across his prosthetic fingers is something to behold—he can see it clear as day, but there's nothing else to indicate its presence besides the stark red against silver.

He slashes again. Again. And again. He slashes once more even as they collapse to the ground for good measure, as if he hasn't rained enough blood down onto the floor. The machete drips with it, makes it splatter against his shoes.

A hand tangles around the back of his shirt, and Zoya is unceremoniously yanked back, hard. He nearly sprawls back onto the floor as Ravi drags him back, feet tangled together—it brings him back to the night they found him in the first place. Ravi certainly does drag him around a lot.

He ends up on the floor anyway, Ravi against his side, a hand flattened over his mouth. While Zoya is tempted to bite his fingers just because, he allows it for this moment. "There could have been others," he whispers. "There still could be."

Right. Maybe. But for the moment there isn't, and it appears that even weighing how awful it is, Zoya just might have done something good. He frees his arm from Ravi's grip, using it to drag the chair back over to the door. Thankfully Ravi releases him entirely to correct its position, and sits down hard on the floor in front of it. He looks like a statue blocking Zoya's path, refusing to allow further movement.

He doesn't want to move anymore.

They sit in silence like that, the two of them. The cannon is quick to follow, but no other noise. Zoya waits for it, almost expects it.

The machete still lays across his lap. Blood is seeping through the knees of his pants; it's starting to get uncomfortable.

"Can I move now?" he asks with a wince, stretching out his legs. Ravi grabs his arm, again.

He realizes it's not nearly as tight of a grip as it was last time. In fact, it's almost soft.

"Thank-you," he murmurs. "For…"

"Yeah, I know," he cuts in. "Protection services and all that. I take tips, if you want."

Ravi shakes his head. He removes the machete from Zoya's possession and wipes the blade down on the curtains, watching the blood come away with a poorly-concealed grimace. He's not happy about this—neither is Zoya, really. But it's better than the alternative, right?

He knows he's right about Ravi wanting to live. And Ravi wants Kai to live. In an odd twist of things, all three of them need to be alive in order to work anything out.

If he gives them time, is there a chance they figure something out? Maybe. If they do, the complications begin—two of them will still have to die, and Zoya is aware of just how much he's beginning to not want that. Not just for himself.

He's giving them a chance. He fucking has to.

One way or another.

Tova Revelis, 18
Tribute of District One

Aranza keeps asking her where exactly they're going.

As if Tova knows.

She's more focused on what she does know: every time Aranza so much as brushes up against her, Tova's skin prickles with heat. Not the welcome kind. Not the desirous kind, which is the exact type she knows Aranza wishes for.

Or maybe that's exactly what it is, just not in the right sense. There's always desire for something. The longer this goes on, the more Tova knows exactly what hers is, much as she tries to deny it. There's no talking herself out of it, trying to avoid the truth. She learned it with Maderia, didn't she?

She's a fucking monster.

When she had woken up in that bed, Aranza had been pressed up against her back—Tova still isn't sure if the action was intentional, taken while she was asleep, or something done purely on auto-pilot. The speed at which she had detached herself and moved from the bed had been enough to make the entire room come alive. The bed creaked. The curtains shifted. The air was still.

Aranza, even after being snapped at the previous night, held a smile on her face—one for Tova and for Tova only. It didn't bother her much to be abandoned because in her eyes there were still a few successes under her belt. Milan. Maderia. Tova, all to herself. But where that smile once would have made Tova feel a pleasant warmth, it only further kindled the burgeoning fire building in her gut.

Tova knew what she was going to do, and that was the scariest thing. To know it was eventually coming but to be unaware of the when, the why that would cause her to snap, was the most worrisome of all. How could she call herself a human, or even something vaguely adjacent, when there was nothing in her acting like one?

"Could we take a rest soon?" Aranza asks, and she stills, hyper-aware of the other girls presence at her back.

"We haven't been moving for even an hour."

"Which is fine and all, if I knew where we were going. If I thought we were going anywhere at all. Wandering in circles with you is delightful, of course, but I would prefer if it came to an end."

They haven't been wandering in circles. Have they? She glances back at Aranza, who's carefully measured expression now matches her words. She never used to care so much before about what she said, but she can feel it too. The growing tension. The numbers dwindling. Somehow they both know how this ends.

Aranza reaches out for her hand, and Tova is quick to snatch it away. "Don't touch me."

"Or what?"

She reaches again, as if to begin pulling Tova to a place where they can rest. This time she backs away, putting a foot or two between them. The space is good. It gives her room to breathe, to try and rein her thoughts back in.

"Don't," she says, slower this time. "Fucking touch me."

Not long ago, this would be something like a dream. To be wanted and held and kissed. But this wasn't normal. If she wanted that it had to be back home, and there was no telling if Tova would ever see that place again. Not Aviya, not Maelle, her dad. They might as well be a million miles away.

And besides, she didn't want it. It was like a poison. It ruined everything.

It ruined her, didn't it?

Aranza gives a gentle shake of her head. "Don't go soft on me, One. It's not a good look on you."

Soft? Fucking soft? The mere audacity of the word, spoken in her direction, hits Tova with all the force of a bullet. She has not, and never will be, soft. It doesn't… doesn't fit her, isn't how she cultivated all of this. Like she said, she's a monster. All teeth and claws and defense mechanisms. She doesn't cave to whims.

Except for this one.

She'll show Aranza soft.

She sees the other girl's eyes widen as she realizes where Tova's hands are going, where they've already gone, but the scream that forms on her lips does not have time to pierce the air around them. How many times has she been taught this? How to remove her weapon in the most efficient way, how to strike forwards before the enemy has time to react?

More times than Aranza can count.

The axe finds its mark directly where she intends—the center of Aranza's chest splits open around the blade, but not deep enough. Not enough to kill, at least right away. That's what she wanted. Tova holds on tight, using the leverage to force Aranza down. Her knees, first, slamming into the stone. She refuses to allow Aranza to slip over onto her side. No, she holds her there, bending down until they're eye-to-eye.

"Soft enough for you?" she hisses. She tears the axe free. Aranza slips sideways.

That's far from the end of it.

She brings the axe down again over the same spot, watches the crack widen further as she forces the blade in. Blood is soaking through her shirt in waves now as she forces the blade back and forth, widening the gap. Aranza's eyes are frozen, stuck in that same comical, blown-wide position. Tova gets it, honestly. It's quite fascinating to watch.

Frankly, it's a miracle she has a heart at all, but now Tova can see it, the odd pulse of it as it fits in her chest cavity. She leans down to get a better look, the bloody crater growing larger, watching as it stutters. Tova almost wants to pull it free, watch it twitch in her hand…

She never really thought Aranza was human either. Funny how expectations can be so decisively subverted.

Tova is so stuck in place, so utterly fixated, that she doesn't see Aranza's hand begin to tremble. Feeble fingers press against her cheek, Aranza's palm flattening along her jaw.

Tova looks at her—really, properly looks at her. The agony in her eyes. The growing, satisfied smile twisting her face, blood gathering at the corners of her mouth. As if, even in dying, she's won.

Maybe she has.

"You're beautiful," Aranza whispers, voice a dying breath. "You're so beautiful… the perfect little monster."

It's one thing for Tova to think it, another for Aranza to put words to it. Like that's the way it was supposed to be. She stands, feeling gratification in the way Aranza's hand slips back to the ground, frigid air ghosting along her cheek.

She raises the axe once more. Aranza does not speak again.

Weston Katsouris, 18
Tribute of District Six

He needs to get out of here—Weston knows that much.

Finding the energy to do so is becoming an increasingly difficult task. It's not something he ever struggled with before. Weston was always doing something in order to keep busy. His mind, his hands, his feet… being idle was not for him.

He had a very clear set of expectations for all of this. His allies, for one. He thought he could lead a pack far enough to be beneficial, but not so far that it grew risky. Offing Jordyn destroyed that, of course, but what was he to do otherwise, save for let her get the jump on him first? That was a risk. One he wasn't going to afford to take.

Even worse, though, was the days. Last night Weston had created one hell of a delusion in his head—a true spectacle, if you asked him. Once he realized that it was precisely the same time his own Games ended, he could picture it clearly. Everyone coming together, and he did mean all of them, and everyone dying in a vast shower of blood.

And of course he would be the last one standing. That's how it was meant to be. That's how it would be.

A year ago they took twenty-four kids from Six, most of them pathetic and half of them starving and manic, and somehow the lot of them managed to kill each-other quicker than the group of murderers they had forced in here. Everyone was playing coward while he started and finished jobs, all before they had even started moving.

He couldn't imagine Levi and Vadric were doing anything of interest, at least. Whilst someone had been out there today taking lives, he'd bet against it being them any day.

The delusion was truly the most fun he had in here since this all started. It doesn't get any more sad than that, does it? Weston also suspected, though, that the delusion was coming about because of just a little bit too much time spent down here in the dark.

This was sort of like Freddie being stuck too, wasn't it? Down in that tunnel, waiting for death to come. For all Wes knew that's exactly what he was doing too.

Yeah. He really needed to get out of here.

He begins to pull himself back from the few tunnels that he's made his way into, eventually turning back into the crypts. Though he hoped to find something of interest in the tunnels, they were as empty as they had been since his first journey down. At least that time they had found Levi, though. He had nothing to show for it this time.

A part of him is tempted to collect some of the chains dangling from the walls—nothing to do with them currently, but of course Weston has ideas. Just the kind of shit the Capitol would eat up. They already adore and swoon over him. No harm in ramping it up even more.

Something pushes him out of those tunnels, though. Maybe it's the threat of another delusion taking him out of the game. Maybe it's Freddie's ghost, hovering just above him, whispering in his ear.

He'd recognize Freddie's voice, though. He doesn't recognize this one.

Is it a voice? Weston pauses, head tilted. Only feet away, he swears the pair of twin knights guarding the stairs up shift, their armor creaking ominously. But that can't be real. The mutts stopped an hour or so ago, which means it's morning. It's not real.

Right?

Weston gives one a hard shove. It wobbles on its stand, but stays put.

He can still hear voices, though—not the convincing kind, ones emerging from human mouths, but those carried on the breeze. Faint whispers, murmurs that you swore you heard in the dead of night, up and about and unable to sleep. The kind that weren't real.

They weren't fucking real. He needed to get out of here.

Weston hurries to the stairs, no longer wasting any time. Being down there is good for exactly no one, even if it feels comfortable. He's not scared, but that doesn't mean it's safe. The stairs are better. He can see light again, feel the air growing thinner, less musty. Breathing has never felt like such a gift.

He turns at the top of them, though. Something in him knows he has to. All the way at the bottom, lingering at the edge of the shadows, it's there. He knew it was down there with him—in the crypt, in the tunnels. It was keeping him company, so that he would never truly be alone, not in the way he despaired.

"You coming on up now?" Weston asks, speaking to no one and nothing. He doesn't dare believe that it can hear him and listen.

He's not that lost.

Footsteps begin, though, shuffling into the light. Weston dives for the nearest doorway, pressing himself tight into him. Metal-plated feet clank heavily into the stone, a raspy breathing echoing up the stairwell and directly into his ears just like those voices were. But this is real.

It emerges at the top of the stairs with an awkward shamble—it feels wrong to call it something even resembling a he, though Weston can see the similarities. A crown on its head, made only for a king. He's seen corpses like that a hundred times, but never quite so jarring as this; walking, moving, breathing in its own right.

It does not move toward him, instead turning the opposite way to begin lumbering down the hall, only incrementally faster than before. Wherever it's going, it's not after him. Why would it kill someone it's spent so long keeping company?

"Wreak some havoc," he whispers to himself. "For me."

He doesn't need a pack. No friendships, no lovers. Weston needs nothing except for himself.

The world is turning in his favor.

Ilan Azar, 17
Tribute of District Seven

It's been a long, long time since he's felt panic build like this in his throat.

Ilan knows when it was. Can't think about it. Won't put a name to it, or else it becomes real. He thinks about Vitali instead—gentle face, easy smile, always ready with the right words. That's all he can think about.

At least, alongside Sanne.

It's like she's vanished. Even Amani, he knows, is growing more perplexed by the minute about where she could have gone. It's Amani though who's so far confronted the realism of the not one, but two cannons they've heard during their searching. He hasn't said it, but Ilan knows the thought has crossed his mind: that Sanne is dead, that they'll never find her because she's long gone.

Ilan refuses to think like that. There's no reason for her to be dead because she did what Amani instructed her to. She's just locked up somewhere, afraid. It doesn't matter that they've looked everywhere they expected to find her and come up empty. She's somewhere else, is all. They're going to find her.

Ilan cracks open yet another door, finding only storage crates and rotting, empty shelves. Amani wants diligently at his back, eyes down the hall. "The next staircase should be just down the hall, I think. If she turned wrong and went up that one, there's a chance.."

There's a chance. Maybe the only one. Ilan's all-too aware of the fact that they've looked everywhere else, so unless they've missed her.

"Let me just check this last room," he insists. Amani nods, striding a few paces off as Ilan approaches the door, breath held tight in his chest. He has to be afforded at least this, right? There has to be a break for them.

But the room's empty. Ilan stares, hard, as if she's suddenly going to appear before him.

That would be too kind.

His feet still move with the same urgency, though, as he approaches Amani waiting at the next corner. Ilan will not allow himself to turn defeated. He won't give up on her. Sanne needs him, as he needs her. That's the only truth that matters.

Amani turns on him, grabbing him tight around the forearms. "Not that way," he says firmly. "Turn around."

"What? You said—"

"I know what I said."

He's offered no other explanation, no further words. Amani attempts to give him a shove back, but Ilan digs his heels in, holding onto his arms in turn. "She could be down there," he insists. "We have to look."

"Ilan—"

There's something there in the tone of his voice, only Ilan's name but nothing else. Not quite fear… he doesn't think he can picture Amani being properly frightened. It's something similar, though, a worry and unease that makes the hair at the back of his neck stand up. He tears his arms free from Amani's grip, all too aware that Amani tries yet again to grab him, to stop his progress, and misses as Ilan ducks around him.

He makes it to the corner unscathed—Amani is on him, still, at his back. He grabs a hold of Ilan's arm yet again, but this time does nothing at all.

There's no use in it now. He's seen it. Amani can't turn back the clock to a moment when he has it. His grip is half-hearted, defeated, nearly mimicking the slumped posture of whatever's down the hall, sprawled over the floor.

"What… what is that?" he asks, feeling almost in a daze.

"Let's just go."

It's a body. A girl, he thinks. Dark hair sprawled out over the stone, pool of blood still lingering in the cracks. He blinks. The image doesn't change.

"Ilan, come on."

There's so much more urgency in Amani's tone now, and still Ilan tugs away. As if it was inevitable, Amani let's go. He's moving without realizing it, feet stumbling faster and faster until he's nearly at a sprint. Ilan isn't sure what happens, if he trips or if he allows his knees to crash to the stone alongside it, hands already reaching out.

Not real. It's not real. If he doesn't allow it to be so then it isn't, he can still pretend otherwise, make up a more ideal version in his head.

"Sanne?" he asks, voice trembling. He grabs a hold of her hand, and nearly recoils at her touch; her skin is ice cold, fingers unresponsive in his own. He grips them tighter, bending over her limp form. Ilan lifts her head from the floor, blood matted into her hair and sticky against his fingers. "Hey. It's okay. We found you, you hear me? You're okay now…"

She's so silent. So still.

An arm curls around his middle and gives him such a heave that Ilan's hand slips away from where it had been cradling her skull and the noise, the noise it makes as it hits the floor once again is so hollow, such a dull thud that his stomach turns. Unlike before, the grip holding him is so tight that no matter how much Ilan squirms, it doesn't budge.

"Amani… Amani, we have to…"

"She's gone, Ilan."

No she's not. She's right there, so close. How can Amani say she's gone when she's right here with them?

He needs to get back to her. "Let me go."

Amani, now, is silent in his refusal. Ilan thrashes, yanking against the arm pressed tight to his abdomen, but it doesn't so much as budge. He can't get to her. "No," he pleads. "Amani, please, no—"

They're getting further and further away. Why are they leaving her? They fought so hard to find her, looked for so many hours, and for what? He hears something, distantly. It almost sounds like someone screaming. It might just be him.

"No!" he shrieks, the voice sounding so unlike him. Maybe it is someone else. It's the kinder thing, remember? "Please, just let me take her with us, she needs to come with us!"

Amani yanks him around the corner. He can't see her anymore. She's gone, she's gone, she's gone—

It almost feels like he is too.

13th. Sanne Levesay, District Seven.
12th. Aranza de León, District Eight.

This might be like, the first real thing anyone wants to beat the shit out of me for, but you know what? Worth it.

Plus, I foresee many more upcoming!

Until next time.