Thank you to ladyqueerfoot, Paradigm of Writing, Singular Scissor, Dani H. Danvers, FrostyShadow, Very New To This, & Kkstar47 for the reviews! I'm so happy that everyone liked the Bloodbath and love the great reviews! I will say this every time because it's true, they mean so much.
I went in a completely new direction for myself with that Bloodbath. In my two prior SYOTs, I'v always knocked out a 1/3 of the Tributes. This time I wanted a low count. That was pretty low huh?
Like I said last chapter, I do write brief obituary for the Fallen (just my thoughts on the character and their place in the story), however, I will always write them the chapter after a Tribute dies. That way, if you're like me and like to write out a review while reading, you won't be spoiled by the author's note at the bottom. However, since this is Day 1, I'll wait until the end of it to show the full list. It's not like I'd ONLY kill two Tributes on Day 1, right?… right?
Enjoy!
Chapter XX Tunnels Upon Tunnels
Day 1 of the 58th Hunger Games
The sound of heavy boots on gravel echoed throughout the miles and miles of tunnels of the 58th arena as Tributes fled from, hid from, or pursued one another. In the green tunnel, Hayley and Buck were still running. They hadn't stopped since fleeing the Cornucopia, even when Buck body began to cramp and he struggled to regain his strength. Hayley pushed them on.
"I need to stop!" Buck called out finally, neck still raw from Reko's stranglehold. Hayley pushed on though, as though she didn't hear him. But Buck couldn't keep it up. He came to a stop and leaned over, coughing loudly. His airway felt like there was a couple frogs stuck in it. Eventually, Hayley stopped though didn't turn towards him. Buck, regaining his composure, looked to her in wonder.
"You saved me!." Buck breathed. "You're… you're my freaking hero!"
Hayley began to hurl. Vomit spewed forth, splattering against the gravel and train tracks. Its putrid color was excellently illuminated by the bright green that lit everything in the tunnel. After a moment, and after spitting out the last of the vomit, Hayley was upright again.
"We can't stop. Keep moving." She commanded.
"You need a minute too." Buck said. "And, Hayley, seriously, thank you."
He thought about going in for a hug but stopped when he saw Hayley's glazed over face. The piece of rebar she used to kill Reko was still clutched tightly in her hand, blood visible on it even under the green lighting. She was staring at the tunnel wall, breathing heavily.
'What have I done?' She thought. Instantly her Ma's voice came to her, telling her that she did what she'd been taught to do. To survive the Hunger Games. She could imagine her Ma back in District 10, proud of her daughter, perhaps for the first time in all of Hayley's life.
But she had killed someone! Hayley could barely wrap her head around it. She couldn't even kill animals back on the ranch. Her Ma had to scream at her, lock her in the barn or chicken coop for hours and practically starve her until the deed was done. But here she was, killing a Career as easy as that.
She could still feel how easily the rebar at slid into Reko. And the gush of blood that followed…
"If we stop moving now, we're dead." Hayley said, kicking gravel up over her vomit so nobody could see it and track them. She needed the image out of her mind, needed to focus on something else.
"Hayley… we need to rest." Buck tried again.
"The Careers won't be, Buck. One of their own is dead and the Bloodbath only had two deaths. They're on us now and we need to move. You only stop moving in the Games when you're dead!"
Her Ma had told her that many times. Hayley had thought it a dumb saying but now agreed with it entirely. She took off, not looking back to see if Buck was following.
With a concerned sigh, Buck eventually followed.
It was a patchwork job, but Valdez thought it would hold.
After scavenging through the packs scattered around the Cornucopia, Valdez had found some first aid kits. None of them came with instructions, so Valdez worked off what little first aid knowledge he had to treat Mara. He had poured an alcohol solution on the wounds to clean them, used wipes to remove the blood, and then wrapped bandages over them. By the end of it, his hands were bloody and dirty, but Mara's bleeding had stopped and she was at least sitting upright against the Cornucopia, breathing now under control.
"I didn't see any Morphling in the kits, so you'll have to tough it out." Valdez told her.
Mara didn't reply. Besides the grunts of pain, she had been silent. Already a purple welt was erupting around her left eye, threatening to enclose it. The worst pain wasn't even the bite wound but her head. A chunk of hair and skin was missing, producing a throbbing sensation that seemed to shake her skull every second. Angrily, she looked up the ceiling, wondering if someone would sponsor her some disinfectant or Morphling.
And then she thought… who was going to sponsor her after such a poor start to the Games?
"Did you even see that crazy bitch coming?" Chase asked.
Mara shot him an ugly look, refusing to answer. She hadn't. She couldn't believe she had gotten that lazy. It was all Lana and District 2's fault! They had distracted her with the explosion, knocked her off her game. Otherwise she wold have heard Poe approaching and crushed her like the little insect she was!
"We have to hunt." Mara finally spoke, struggling to her feet. The world swam in front of her and she was quickly back on the ground, her skull feeling like someone had pierced it. 'Damn it!' she fretted. She needed to pull it together.
"You need to rest." Valdez said firmly. "You're no good to the Pack dead. Stay here with Chase and guard the supplies, and get it all organized. I'm going out hunting and will be back in an hour or so."
"Dude, you're leaving me to be the damn maid?" Chase demanded, indigent. He was about to continue but Valdez shot him such a dark look it shut Chase up immediately.
"What if I am? Is there a problem with that?" Valdez asked, voice dangerously low. Chase shook his head, put in his place by someone actually dangerous. "Food in one pile, water in another, anything else gets its own. We'll sort things out properly when the girls and I are back."
"This is bull." Mara erupted, tone whiny like a brat melting down. "I need to hunt, now!"
She screamed that last part and then gasped in agony, the pain in her head and bite mark flaring up. She sunk her head between her knees, nursing her skull and praying the pain dissipated. Valdez made no comment, feeling his point had been made. With their instructions clear, Valdez turned and left to begin hunting. Estelle and Lana had taken off down the blue tunnel so they had that one covered. Glancing around, he remembered through the fog of the explosion that he'd seen the boy from 11 run down the red tunnel. It was as good a place to start as any and Ruddy would be an easy target.
'Good way to start making up lost kills.' He thought, eager to begin the Hunger Games properly.
The night vision scope was proving to be a wonderful starting gift, Alice thought. His prey didn't even know he was being followed.
For whatever reason, Cean had also run down the orange lit tunnel. That suited Alice just fine. The orange tint of the lights was so harsh that it felt as though the tunnel was barely lit. Alice watched Cean stumble through the tunnel, his eyes glowing green through the scope. Fear was apparent on his face. He was using the little battery powered flashlight all the Tributes had received, flailing with it every which way to make sure there wasn't any danger. Occasionally he'd spin around and check, but Alice was finding that the tunnels had plenty of dark nooks and crannies to hide in.
This would be so simple, he realized. Cean may not be the most impressive Tribute – especially after Chase called him out in the interviews – but he was from District 4 and scored a six. Both perfectly respectable in the Capitol's eyes. Taking him down would shift focus onto Alice, who the entire Games had been playing down expectations.
These other Tributes were morons, he thought. They spent their interviews and training time trying to get the Capitolites to love them, debasing themselves for what? Scraps? The Careers were going to get all the good stuff to start anyways.
They were as dumb as Brick. Only looking at what was in front of them. Being told that life only had one path and could only be played one way. Alice could see through that though and knew what they really wanted. The Capitol wanted a surprise. A real show. To watch someone they never expected come alive start racking up the kills. And he was more than happy to give that to them.
His uncle had shown him how powerful someone could become by working in the background, away from the focus of others. How deadly it could be to strike from the shadows. To flip the table so when it came time to reset it, it was you who was setting the pieces as you wanted.
And it would all start with Cean.
The boy from 4 stopped again and spun around, flashing his light every direction for enemies. Alice hid, watching Cean through the scope, enjoying the sight of Cean's shaking legs and terrified face.
Easy pickings.
Back at the Cornucopia, Chase and Mara were organizing the supplies. There were no weapons in any of the bags, but plenty of other items. Bread, food stuff, protein bars, sleeping bags, tents, binoculars, batteries, toilet paper, first aid kits, a heater, compasses, matchboxes, extra socks, extra underwear, and other random items galore. Oddly, there was no water or any other kind of liquid. There weren't even containers to hold water.
Mara was focused on the first aid, scrounging through all of them for Morphling or anything to dull the pain. She kept coming up empty. In a rage she flung one of the first aid kits across the room. She was still fuming over the attack, furious at the weakness it showed in her. All of the Capitol was watching, expecting more from her. She could only imagine what they were saying back in District 4. All the Academy Trainers who were expecting so much from her. This is what all their training had gotten them?
And her sister… freaking Elpis. She was probably sitting at home smug, feeling she had the right of it and Mara should never have volunteered for the Games.
'Pull yourselves together.' She told herself. 'It's just the first day of the Games. They can last for weeks! Rest today and come out swinging tomorrow.'
She kept repeating that to herself but it wasn't helping. Every minute she was inactive the cameras were elsewhere, watching someone else excel. Mara was sure everyone in Panem had their eyes on that stupid cowgirl who killed Reko. She had a dad who died in the Games too. She was usurping Mara's place in the Capitol's eyes that very moment!
She hissed in pain as another flash of it wracked her body. She needed a place to redirect it and Chase was as good as a place as any.
"What the hell are you doing?" She shouted at him, "Get back here and help, 8."
Chase had wandered away from the Cornucopia, exploring the rest of the domed room. He was looking up at the steel box shaped room higher up and didn't even bother to turn around. "You've got it all under control." He shouted back. Mara huffed angrily, silently willing for a sponsor to send her a knife so she could kill him.
Chase was absorbed in finding out what the mysterious structure was. It was a metal rectangular windowed room built directly into the wall, with an elevated balcony like platform next to it. A rusty ladder led up to it, the only way to access it. Chase began climbing it, ignoring how the metal seemed to buckle under his weight. He reached the top and tested the metal flooring of the platform. It seemed to heave underneath him, unsteady with the weight, but wouldn't break under him. Luck had always been on his side and he doubted it'd fail him now. Quickly he made his way to the door of the structure, only to find it locked.
"Oh come on, open!" He commanded. He pounded on the door, kicked it, and even slammed his body into it. The door didn't budge. While the metal of the platform and ladder was thin, the structure's steel walls felt a couple feet thick. He tried to look into the windows that faced out towards the Cornucopia, but they were heavily tinted and offered no view as to what was inside.
"Is it locked?" Mara demanded to know from below.
"Yeah. Think someone will sponsor us a key?" Chase asked with a cocky grin. He bet the Capitolites loved that. "Maybe this is nothing. Just a distraction."
Mara frowned, wincing in pain from the action. "The Gamemakers wouldn't just put this here for nothing. Look around." She commanded.
Chase did so, finding a panel in the wall that opened easily. Inside was a nest of wires and buttons of different colors. Symbols that Chase didn't understand were also drawn next to some of them. "Some sort of science-y thing." He commented. "Hey, I bet if we nab that dweeb from 3 he could figure this out. Aren't they all nerds or something in District 3?"
Mara did not want to hear anything about District 3 right now. Rolling her eyes, she began making her way up the ladder. Hadn't this idiot ever watched a Hunger Games before? The Gamemakers wouldn't add something to the arena that required a bona fide scientist to operate. Half way up the ladder she was distracted by a loud banging noise. Mara panicked, fearing the ladder and the platform above were about to come crashing down.
Instead it was the ceiling that came down. Or, so Mara thought.
"Whoa, water!" Chase commented.
Sure enough, two waterfalls burst from and were falling from the domed ceiling's edge, crashing down into the big empty tiled basins on opposite sides of the room. The temperature in the atrium cooled as the water splashed into the receptacles and, once it was filled, the cascade was cut off.
"At least we won't be thirsty." Chase said. Mara kept climbing, glad for that as well. She could properly clean out her wounds too with some water. Once up on the platform, she examined the circuit box, though didn't have any better luck than Chase figuring out what it meant. Everything inside of it seemed to be in place, but she was hardly an engineer.
Bitterly, she shook her head. Why were the Gamemakers making this so hard? This was the freaking Hunger Games! The goal was to kill Tributes, not waste time with dumb puzzles and hunt without weapons!
There was another sound echoing throughout the chamber now. It sounded vaguely like the engines on the hovercraft. To Mara and Chase's surprise, a drone, box shaped with two powerful engines on it, flew out of one of the tunnels and hovered over the mouth of the Cornucopia.
Directly above Reko's body.
'So that's how they're doing it this year.' Mara realized. In previous Games when a Tribute died, a hovercraft would materialize out of the open sky and deploy a metal claw to remove the body from the arena. It seemed a drone was needed for this year's arena. Sure enough, a claw shot out from the underbelly of the drone and latched onto Reko's waist, pulling up him. It's cargo secure, the drone sped off, Reko's body flailing in the air behind it.
Chase looked over at the destroyed starting plate and blacked gravel around it before laughing. "Guess they'd need a vacuum to get all the parts of Mille back, huh?"
Cara had always liked the color blue and realized that it made her subconsciously pick that color tunnel to run down.
She was definitely regretting it now.
The blue hue from the lights that lined the tunnel was not a soothing light blue like the sky, but a dark angry color like the deep ocean. She could see clearly the outlines the train tracks, the edges of the metal platforms next to said tracks, and most of the features of the tunnel, but the exact definitions of things were lost. She needed her flashlight on to feel comfortable moving, ever afraid of traps the Gamemakers had left for an unsuspecting Tribute.
She had stopped running but not moving. Only two cannons had sounded after the Bloodbath, a number that boggled her mind. The last time the Bloodbath had been so clean was the 41st Games, and that Bloodbath had four deaths! No doubt the Careers were furious and everyone was out hunting. Staying in one place out in the open wasn't viable for Cara.
'What I need is a place to hide out.' Cara thought. But where? If the arena was a subway, everything was probably connected. It certainly seemed so. Going down the blue line, Cara had already encounter a number of forks in the track and different options for tunnels to run down. She had also found plenty of doors and maintenance hatches, but Ss far all the doors that lined the tunnel walls were either locked or just simple rooms without anywhere to hide. She couldn't hide forever of course, the Gamemakers would get angry with that. But she could hide at least until there wasn't more than twenty Tributes left!
Finally, there was a break in the tunnel and things opened up. Looking around, Cara found herself in a proper subway station, lit by the same blue hue as the tunnels. The track line continued through the area and led to another tunnel, but Cara was sick of those already. She took a chance and explored the stop.
Unfortunately there wasn't much. Some concrete benches, empty rooms, and not much else. The only feature of real note was a massive water fountain sculptures of an eagle, horse, and snake – all symbols of the Capitol. Cara looked around for anything she could fashion into a weapon, but no luck. Even the glass windows of the ticket booth had been removed. She was careful with her movements as noise seemed to travel easily. Underground, without the distracting noises of wildlife, insects, or even something as simple as the wind, the arena was deathly silent. The only noises had been her own footsteps and the occasional creaking of pipes in the walls.
At least… Cara hoped those noises in the walls were pipes.
She looked up at the vaulted ceiling, aware that noise probably ricochetted off of that and down the tunnels, calling to any Career out hunting.
Cara ducked into the ticket booth, scrambling to find anything of value. With her flashlight still on, she opened the drawers as quickly and quietly as possible and searched for something, anything of note.
Once again, she came up empty handed.
Defeated, she slumped down, panic overwhelming her. Had she made a mistake? Should she have run into the Bloodbath? If there was a year to do, it was apparently this year! She was doomed without a sponsor and Cara doubted she had done well enough to warrant someone spending money on her.
She moped there for a little, the flashlight falling to the ground. Lazily, she followed it's beam and noticed something on the wall at the back of the ticket booth.
There was an opening. A small one, but one she could maybe fit through.
She crawled over to it and sure enough was able to squeeze through. On the other side was a long hallway, the blue lights humming above her. She walked down it slowly, waiting for some sort of ambush. It never came and she made it to end where a door waited her.
The door opened easily and Cara was immediately blinded. After a moment, she realized by what.
Sunlight.
Cara flung the door open, shocked to see a whole other room hidden behind the train stop. A concrete wall separated the stop from this area. There wasn't much to the area besides its key feature, a giant escalator leading up above ground.
Instantly, Cara was climbing it. The escalator was turned off but it was still early in the Games and Cara had her energy. She made it up the steps easily and, after passing through a metal turnstile, was out in the open. Cara smiled, feeling instantly better. Above her, the sky was crystal blue without a cloud in sight.
There was more to this arena than just the tunnels!
But not much she realized. Cara looked around, finding herself on a small island of grass surrounded by water. The island and water was then encompassed by a ring of mangrove trees, thick rooted into the water and with heavy branches full of leaves that obscured what lied beyond them. On the opposite side of the island, Cara spotted another opening underground. To her right, some sort of building with pipes gutting out of it into the water and into a large pool smack dab in the center of the island.
The pool was currently being filled. Cara took a moment to check it out, noticing that the pool tiles had been designed to show the emblem of Panem, a stylized eagle with six feathers on each wing and a star above its head, representing the Capitol and the twelve Districts. In the corner of the pools were four drains, though they seemed closed for now.
She bent over and scooped up some of the water in her hand. Was it poisoned? Cara debated whether the Gamemakers would do that. Probably not. While the Gamemakers could be stingy on putting free food in the arena, they usually had some sort of water source to prevent "dull" deaths from dehydration.
Feeling daring, she took a sip of the water. It tasted fine. She took another one. Not bad at all.
She kept drinking until she had her fill and then checked out the building where the pipes were coming from. Inside was a machine, the whirring of the engine loud and all consuming. She knew what she was looking at having read about it in a book. Districts 4, 6, and 11 had these, they were desalination machines, which meant that the water around the island was probably salt water. She tested it for herself, spitting it back out when she confirmed it. It wasn't super salty, though she noted she had never tasted ocean water before. She'd never even seen the ocean except on TV. Still, it was almost drinkable, just dirty.
She looked at the mangroves, realization hitting her. She had read about these trees. They could filter out some of the salt from the ocean water, one of the few trees that could do that. 'The trees filter out the salt and the machine cleans the rest!' she put together. It was a clever system, and meant the desalination machine didn't have to work as hard.
Behind her the machine stopped making noise and went silent. The pool was filled with water now, though the drains didn't open. 'Maybe it runs on a timer?' Cara thought. This was maybe the only water source in the arena, a valuable commodity. It wouldn't do to just leave it.
And she really didn't want to go back underground.
She looked out towards the thick branched mangroves and had an idea. Glad she had invested time in learning how to swim in the Training Center, Cara dove into the blue water and swam out towards the trees.
She had her hiding spot.
Review and subscribe for more!
Up Next: Day 1 Continues