Tom Leary, 16
D7M
North-Northwest of the Cornucopia
9 July 329 AEDD
Snow (Hey Oh) — Red Hot Chili Peppers
As evening fell on the third day of the Games, Tom had eavesdropped on Beemo and while he pretended to go to bed early. "I'm just being pragmatic," Beemo was saying, voice muffled through the wall.
"I'm fine with it," said Twyla firmly.
"He kidnapped children and left them in the woods to die. I'm not saying he's going to betray us, I'm just saying I ought to be prepared."
"Tom is our ally."
"And you trust him?"
"I don't trust anybody, even you."
"We're district partners. You can trust me."
"It's the Hunger Games." There was a long silence while Twyla raked her nails against the coarse grain of the stone table.
"Twyla, please."
"You have enough darts. You can save the rest 'til morning. Tom and I have been getting sleep, but you're staying up so late."
"You're right. I do need to sleep. Will you stay up tonight, though? Just to make sure he doesn't attack us?"
"Sure, but I'm not doing anything tomorrow."
"You don't need to. We have the fort."
"And yet we need a night watch?"
"I'm not afraid of the tributes out there. I'm afraid of who's in the fort with us."
"Okay. Sleep tight, don't let the Gamemakers bite." There was a shuffling as Beemo began to ascend the stairs.
"Oh God, don't even joke about that. Goodnight, Twyla."
"Goodnight," she replied. Tom removed his ear from the floor and pretended to be sound asleep, tucking himself up under the blanket. The obelisk was secure, but not very warm, especially at night. As Beemo shifted around at the other side of the room, Tom contemplated the situation at hand. His confession was the reason for Beemo's feverish poison-making, which was a very bad sign. A nervous ally was a jumpy ally, and jumpy people tended to make rash decisions. If he darted Tom in a moment of fear, he couldn't undo it. It was unclear if Beemo was actually plotting against him or just preparing for the worst case scenario, but Tom was still uncomfortable.
With no better options, he lied to himself. The alliance couldn't end this soon, with so many Careers alive, so many outliers remaining, so much of the arena yet undiscovered. Twyla and Beemo needed him, right? They were honorable, they would stay a team like they'd agreed, they wouldn't use Tom's confession against him like that, right? Right?
Right, he told himself. This was all silly anxiety talking. Of course Twyla and Beemo weren't going to kill him, but he stiffened as he felt Beemo's shadowy form slinking towards the supplies. He knew that Beemo was just getting up to grab his jacket, but he couldn't help but wonder if there was a dripping needle clenched between his fingers, soaked in jungle mutt venom and ready to be pressed into Tom's flesh. There wasn't any way to defend himself from that, and he knew that poison was often among the uglier ways to go.
He needed to get away from this tower, but there were other threats on the outside. Was he safer in here, or out there, where Careers and girls who scored nines in training roamed the rainforest? He shut his eyes and tried to sleep. This worked poorly, especially as he heard the soft snuffles of Beemo's breathing at the other end of the room and wondered if he was in a room with the person who would kill him.
He laid quietly for hours, but his limbs itched, and the urge to toss was forming a lump in his throat, so he crept to the top of the stairs, tucked in a shadow, and watched Twyla.
She was holding a blowgun. He saw her jacket turned inside out, zipped around a backpack, hung on a hook on the wall. It looked disturbingly like a human torso. She fired a dart at it from across the broad room, and it hit the shoulder, sinking into the fabric silently. She fired another, and another, and another. Silver darts were poking out of the jacket everywhere, but most were clustered right over the heart. He watched as Twyla carefully surveyed the target and peppered a pocket with darts. She chose a seam, then outlined a blob of gray amidst the camouflage pattern.
Tom knew what she was doing. This was practice, and she hadn't been doing it when Beemo was down there with her. She might've shared his suspicions of Tom, but she was trying to close the skill gap. Judging from the evidence on the homemade dummy, she was doing a pretty good job of it, and that made Tom feel both better and worse. Now Tom was the odd one out, but if Twyla felt like it, she could take out Beemo in case of an attack.
He slunk back into bed, feeling newly afraid. Twyla had always been fair and calm, but he knew from experience that when the calm people started fighting, it meant things were getting real. Tom wasn't prepared for that. He wasn't prepared for anything, but he was reluctant to run away from the alliance just yet. He knew how to handle the outdoors, but he understood pine forest. The jungle was different, and they had shelter here. The fortress even had a water pump, and that was a huge advantage. Running away from a water source seemed like the kind of move that could upset the Gamemakers.
He was thinking that he could always leave later, but then he realized that no, he couldn't leave anymore. Twyla and Beemo were always around. He was never alone, and now that they were trading off with the night watch, he couldn't just run away while they were asleep. Whether they intended this or not, he was completely trapped, and that was very, very bad news indeed.
He needed a plan, but he had nothing.
Haylia Boaz, 17
D2F
Cornucopia
9 July 329 AEDD
Atta Girl — Lainey Wilson
Haylia was figuring out the Career Pack, piece by piece. It was a strange structure, but little interalliances had begun to emerge, and Haylia was seriously considering the idea of just taking over. She'd never imagined herself as a leader, but Nathaniel was too bad at this to be allowed to continue. He was running the alliance into the ground. He was also Haylia's hunting partner for the day, and she had struck up a friendly conversation with him as they traversed the desert. He was only too eager to spill his guts, and Haylia understood why. She had grasped that he and Tybalt had an altercation the previous day, and he was fishing for sympathy from Haylia.
"You're okay," she said. "The arm's going to heal before you know it."
"Probably, yeah. But what about what Tybalt said?"
"I don't know what he said."
"Yes you do."
"I don't." Haylia was starting to feel a tad bit miffed.
"He said Miss Albacore picked me as a sacrificial lamb so Odicci could win."
"Oh. Well, that's probably not true."
"Probably not true? Excuse me?"
"Not true. No Academy Head would do that unless they had a really good reason."
"What counts as a really good reason? Wait. What if she did have a really good reason?"
"Nathaniel, it doesn't matter how you got selected. You're here now, so buck up and help me find some tributes."
"There aren't any tributes. I'm pretty sure the Gamemakers put us in the Arena all by ourselves," he groused.
"They obviously didn't. Let's think logically."
"And you know what? I'm so fucking tired of beef jerky and instant soup. I want real food. I want cold water from a faucet, not warm water from a blue plastic drum in the desert."
"Then you'd better do something to earn it. Are you hunting? Are you doing something worthy of being sponsored cold water?"
"I've earned everything of value in my life." Nathaniel's voice had a steady bite to it, which Haylia didn't like. "My family is poor. The shack we live in floods every time there's a storm. I used to sneak bread out of the Academy lunchroom to save for our breakfast the next day, or we would go hungry. I wouldn't even be able to train if it wasn't free. My backup plan in life was joining up with the Peacekeepers like Nikita, but everybody knows all the cherry jobs go to the guys from Two. And you know what? I went down to the Justice Building to ask if there were positions available for the guys from Four, and they told me that there's a cap proportional to population. Four is small. Two is huge, so huge that you need five Academies with huge waiting lists, so they get all the Peacekeepers in the world. And Four's lucky if we get thirty spots a year for washed-up Career trainees, and they all go to rich kids whose mommies and daddies bought them a fresh start somewhere with sunshine and lots of room to run. So yes, Haylia, I do earn things. And I really don't appreciate the insinuation that I'm lazy just because I'm upset about the situation."
Haylia found herself frustrated by Nathaniel's inability to understand her point. "I'm not saying you're lazy," she explained, as pleasantly as she could. "I'm saying you're stubborn, and we need to try something else since what we're doing now isn't working. I like you, I really do, and I try to side with Tybalt and his machinations as little as possible, but—"
"But you agree I'm a sacrificial lamb?"
"Stop interrupting me. I'm giving it to you straight. We collectively think less of you as a leader when you make the same bad calls over and over again, so let's try another direction."
"You're no better than Tybalt."
"Tybalt's trying to survive." She stopped walking, grabbed Nathaniel's good arm, and wrenched him around to face her. "Everyone here is trying to survive. But Tybalt's unhappy, Orpheus is unhappy, Nikita's unhappy, and I'm unhappy. It's been suggested that I might be a better leader, and I'm being so real with you, I don't even want that. Being a leader is a thankless job and I'd rather not do it, but if you're determined to sink this alliance, someone will run out of patience and kill you and I'll step up to the plate."
"Odicci's on my side."
"Odicci's working really hard to stay on your side."
"Liar."
"Liar?"
"Liar. Tybalt's a liar, you're a liar, you're all liars."
"Nathaniel, I think we should head southeast towards the greenery."
"Hmm. You know, I just got a sudden urge to take us all northwest."
"Northwest is good too." Haylia thought it would be a less fruitful direction, but anything was better than pacing the same circle of land near the Cornucopia for another day."
"I'm going back to base now. Making a better plan, since you insist on it."
"Okay. I think I'll stay out here for a bit," she said.
"With no partner?" Was he suspicious or concerned for her safety?
"We're noisy when we talk. I might be able to hunt something down if I'm by myself."
"Like a tribute?"
"Like an animal." Nathaniel grunted, which could have meant anything. He turned away and began trudging back in the direction they had come, following the little scuffs their boots had made in the packed dirt. Haylia watched him leave, fingering one of the knives at her belt. It would be so, so easy to send it hurtling into his back, or his neck, or the tender point behind his knee, send him spilling to the ground, send him to the great beyond with regret on his lips.
Haylia wondered if this thought made her a bad person. Then she pushed it out of her mind. Some part of her knew that she would regret killing an ally in anger, so she didn't do it.
But she should have.
Nathaniel Lewis, 18
D4M
Cornucopia
9 July 329 AEDD
Letterbomb — Green Day
Nathaniel was starting to get worried. He needed to run, fast and far, to escape this web of relationships he knew nothing about. Tybalt had been right. The other Careers were outpacing him in ability and strategy. His arm was starting to weigh him down, and he wasn't hiding it well enough. The whole alliance was angry at him. He had always been a hard worker, always been fastidiously honest, always done exactly what he was supposed to. It was beginning to dawn on him that there was a reason so many tributes resorted to underhanded tactics.
He despised the trainees in District Four, and that would never change. Bribery and bullying were the actions of people who would never be good enough for the big leagues, but actually being in the arena, killing, and seeing his kill die, well, he was figuring out a lot about the privileges of being a Career. Careers were invincible together. Careers did not get hurt in the Bloodbath, except Nathaniel had, which was putting him at a severe disadvantage. Careers were famous for trimming the fat when a member proved to be more of a burden than a boon, and Nathaniel knew that he was slowing their progress.
His first instinct was to run. Running was an effective way to exit the alliance, but it was also the fastest way to get five angry tributes on his tail. It would tank his sponsorship prospects, but at this point, he figured the mentors probably would have stepped in to fix his arm if they had sponsors who were willing to put in the money. No, the only answer seemed to be that Nathaniel was failing to impress anybody these days. Fleeing would seal his fate.
Mounting an attack seemed smarter, but that carried its own challenges. First of all, it was inherently risky to fight a Career, even for another Career. Training scores could provide some insight about easy targets, but everyone had scored the same this year, and Nathaniel had witnessed their expertise firsthand. The Academy heads weren't playing around with their picks. They chose the right trainees for the job, and every moment Nathaniel spent in his allies' presence confirmed it. They were remarkably functional for a Pack that had failed to make a single kill after the Bloodbath as they crept up on noon of the fourth day, but the skill surrounding Nathaniel made him uneasy. The Academy heads had chosen well, but Miss Albacore had dubious intentions.
If she had offered him up as a sacrifice, a pawn whose death would clear the path for a queen's rise to power, she was off her rocker. Nathaniel wasn't as smart as Odicci, which stung. He'd figured that out. His cognitive abilities were fine, but his tactics, well, not so much. She had made herself his deputy in the Capitol. She had made herself indispensable, and she was eclipsing him in influence. She was spending too much time with Tybalt. She was whispering with him, and she had not whispered at all during the pre-Games.
Nathaniel needed to prove that she wasn't better than him, and that was going to require a change of plans. The idea had come to him during the argument with Haylia. Splitting up was bad for the Pack, but if Nathaniel was leaving the Pack, reducing its capacity for defense was a good thing. He'd have to gamble on who was going with him since it would raise eyebrows if he tried to decide, but it seemed like the perfect plan. Hike somewhere remote, take night watch, and slit their throats while they slept. If he felt like heading back to the remaining Careers, he'd rough himself up a little and pretend like he'd survived an outlier ambush. If not, he could take his fallen allies' supplies, arm himself to the teeth, and collect some more kills while he waited for the other tributes to take themselves out.
And that gave him an idea. If he stacked the other group with tributes who didn't get along with each other, they'd be much more likely to fracture. He couldn't dictate the halves, no, but he could propose a framework for selection. Obviously nobody wanted to stay at camp, so he would say that he could go on the trip, since he'd had the idea, along with whoever had performed the best so far, and he would argue in favor of Haylia for killing Jeremiah. He wanted her with him since she was good at diffusing conflict, and conflict was exactly what he wanted to foment in his absence. Odicci didn't get along with Nikita, Nikita didn't get along with Tybalt, Tybalt didn't get along with Orpheus, and Orpheus didn't like Odicci because she was so close to Tybalt. No matter which three ended up as the final trio, two would turn on the other.
It was a glorious plan. All Nathaniel had to do was announce his decision to branch out into other parts of the arena, which would itself be very normal. Then he simply had to let the conversation play out, and at dawn the next day, he would set out and take two other Careers to the edge of the arena, send them to their deaths, and proceed as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He was well-equipped to do away with the outer district tributes he came across, and after finishing them off, he'd wipe out the remaining one or two Careers in a blaze of glory, claim his Victory crown, and jet off back to Four to collect his mansion keys. It was everything he'd been working towards, and when he got it, he'd drive a brand-new sports car to the gates of the Academy, head for the topiary sculptures of the tributes of the year, bathe his in champagne, and then run over Odicci's likeness at fifty miles an hour.
It was his crown to win, and no arm injury was going to change that.
Danny Maddox, 18
D6M
Southeast of the Cornucopia
9 July 329 AEDD
TGTBT — Lily Mae Harrington
Danny's life had always been a desperate bid for survival. Every day was filled with thin porridge and thin patience as he scrounged for the means to stay alive. Each revolting lump of gluey flour in the slurry represented extra calories, units of energy that sustained him. The cardboard boxes and ripped construction tarps he found in the local dump were protection from the freezing wet snow that piled up on the ground of the alley Danny usually slept in. The roof of the building overlooking it had a corrugated tin overhang that kept the bed frame of wooden pallets and mattress of cardboard boxes and blanket of construction tarps mostly dry in the inclement District Six weather. Life in the arena was similarly spartan and centered around the avoidance of death, but Maize's presence had already made a world of difference. For the first time, Danny was part of a team. They divided spoils and duties evenly and didn't complain when things were tough, because things were always tough in the Arena. Danny wished he hadn't left Vice behind, but as much as he wanted her to be okay, he knew Maize offered a clean slate that Vica, his district partner, would never be able to. Maize knew nothing of his reputation or his past. Danny didn't feel like he was playing defense because she was a total stranger. He had always been the village idiot, but she would never see that for herself, even if she'd heard things, and everything was less humiliating when he could tell it himself. Maize didn't give her much information about his own life, but she did make up stories. The stories were about hidden fairy kingdoms locked in magical battle. Maize had been very sneaky and wicked and refused to give Danny any hints about what would be happening next in the Land Beneath the Dell. "Come on," he begged. "Is Hyacinth riding at the head of the army or not?"
Maize feigned ignorance. "I haven't a clue. The Queen has yet to select a commander."
"Please, Maize?" He tried to sound as forlorn as possible.
"The next chapter's not until lunch, and that's that." He checked to make sure she wasn't actually upset with him. She was not. Danny knew she had the answer to his question. She formulated the plot points ahead of time, but each new update only reached him at mealtimes. Maize spent the in-between hours coming up with new parts of the story to keep her brain occupied. Danny wished he could say the same, but no. There were just too many things on his mind. He hadn't known it could be this good, to have another person to keep him company. Maize was easy to get along with, and Danny was just afraid he might do something to ruin it.
He hadn't known it could be this good. Friends had never been within reach before, but Maize was easy to get along with and had little interest in arguing with him. Danny had chosen his first alliance intentionally, but once in the arena, he had randomly bumped into one of the best allies the pool of tributes had to offer. Maize had a sword, and that immediately solved a solid third of Danny's problems. Another third of the problems were solved with another person to watch his back, and that meant he only had a sliver of the problems he was dealing with when he fled the Bloodbath. He and Maize were eating and drinking enough. They had been walking a ways each day at a leisurely pace, stopping for meals and resting whenever they felt like it.
They were headed for the oasis. There was green, and green meant water. There had been quite a lot in their packs, which explained why they'd been so heavy—a gallon of water weighed a ton—and had rationed it so it would last. It didn't take much to cook the porridge, but still, they were almost out, and symptoms of dehydration had set in. With Maize's score, she would probably be sponsored some if things got really dire, but both she and Danny felt like the arena would provide. "It's not fun if we all die from natural causes," she had said the previous day. "They put water in here somewhere."
"Of course they did," he agreed. "And Johnnie doesn't have another tribute, since Jeremiah's gone. He definitely would sponsor you water. The only reason he hasn't already is because he thinks we're close enough to it that the sponsor money would be more useful later."
"You know, they say not to eat if you don't have water. Do you think that's going to bite us?" Danny had considered that.
"No. We haven't been gorging ourselves or anything."
"But we're moving so slow," Maize had worried.
"Yeah, so we don't exert ourselves and dehydrate faster. We're close, I'm telling you."
Now, on the fourth day, they were almost to the green. They were close enough to see the trees, the sharp hilly ground, the sweeping blue skies, and the puffy clouds. Somewhere in the distance, a bird of prey wheeled in the air. There was life here, and with life came water.
Danny and Maize hiked up into it with deep gratitude. The climb was incredibly steep, inspiring perspiration and concerning dizziness, but after some time, they summited the great peace and found themselves in a chilly, wooded playground.
So this was the reason they'd been given coats. The urge to frolic became too strong to ignore, and they couldn't resist running around to explore a little after all the effort they'd gone to in order to arrive here. Danny jogged on frozen soil and ran his hands over pine needles, stripping them a few from the tree and cautiously giving them a taste. Then Maize burst into the clearing. "There's a river!" she announced, and Danny ran to go see. There was a river, with a thin layer of ice atop it and fish swimming freely underneath.
Everything was going to be alright after all.
From the desk of Nikolai K. Fassnacht
July 9, 329 AEDD
0600 hours
Interview Chamber 4, Justice Building, District Eleven
OFFICIAL PEACEKEEPING TRANSCRIPT
AUBREY JEAN MICHAELS: Have a seat, ma'am.
ILIANA PACE: Is this about my grandchild? Have you come to deliver their body?
MICHAELS: No, ma'am, I'm sorry. This is Peacekeeping business.
PACE: (after several seconds) You're no Peacekeeper, young man.
MICHAELS: Every Victor is, in times like these. This is a difficult situation, but [GARBLED]
PACE: (interrupting) You're goddamn right it's a difficult situation.
MICHAELS: And I apologize. The Hunger Games are cruel, and I couldn't save Pace, but I'm here regarding your late friend, a Ms. Wisteria Hitchcock. I want to help. They're dead now, but you have information that could save others in the future.
PACE: Is this conversation being recorded?
MICHAELS: For Nikolai Fassnacht only. But yes.
PACE: Wisteria was an honorable woman.
MICHAELS: I understand you were close.
PACE: We were, yes. Wisteria and I lost our sons many years ago, at the same time. Us and several others.
MICHAELS: Is this about Joem?
PACE: [NO RESPONSE]
MICHAELS: Is—
PACE: (interrupting) Yes. We were living thin. Those were brittle times. A few bad years, too little rain, not enough to eat since the Capitol had crop liens, back in those days. They provided the supplies, so we had to pay back the cost of tools and transport in produce before any of it could be ours. Too weak to fight, but unwilling to starve. Four has a rural strip of coast, called the Shoals. There's a current in the fall, where if you can hop a train to Five and start down the river, it takes you right around the coast. There are rebels in Four, rich rebels with Career training and Capitol money. It's a scattered district. There are rural train hubs. If you make it that far and know your way around the Shoals, they'll bring you up to one and send you on a straight leg back home with surplus supplies from the Capitol's Victory gifts, but the way there is hard and dangerous. It's traditional for young men to take turns. We have a large population, and if everyone goes once, nobody has to go twice. Does that make sense?
MICHAELS: Yes.
PACE: The current is strong. The sandbars are hidden when it's foggy and dark and the tide is high. Sometimes boats run aground and people die.
MICHAELS. The Mariners' Ballad.
PACE: Right.
MICHAELS: Joe and 'em. Joem. A real name once, but not anymore. Wisteria mentioned a Joem right before she was executed. But you and I both know that Joem—Joe and 'em—is just John Doe for rebels. Wisteria had some connection who was planning to mess with the Games, but John Doe could mean anyone. Wisteria referred to Joem as 'she' in her conversation. What did she tell you about her?
PACE: She had a hand in the Games and she was someone who made lofty promises of improving things in the districts. Someone who felt guilty about being Capitol, who thought she was on the right side for a long time only to realize she'd been played. She was a Peacekeeper.
MICHAELS: Do you know her name?
PACE: No.
MICHAELS: Did you ever meet her?
PACE: No. I saw her sometimes, from a distance.
MICHAELS: (holding up a picture of a Peacekeeper in uniform) Could this have been her?
PACE: I think so. 5'7" or 5'8." I never saw her with the helmet off, but the skin tone matches.
MICHAELS: (holding up another picture of the same Peacekeeper) Here's one of her from a distance. Do the body proportions look similar?
PACE: Yes.
MICHAELS: When did you last see her?
PACE: The day before Wisteria's execution. Wisteria said her commander sent her to the Capitol for a 'test.'
hehe :D