The rest of the opening ceremony was uneventful.
The chariots rode on to the City Circle, where President Snow gave some speech. Maze didn't listen to a single word of it.
President Snow might have once been handsome, with graying blonde hair and piercing blue eyes that captivated everyone assembled. In fact, Maze recalled their history teacher showing the class a picture of young Snow earlier in the year. Many of the girls, including Cortana, swooned over him, gushing over how handsome he was. Maze didn't get the appeal.
Now, his face had that signature plasticine look of a Capitol citizen who had cosmetic work to keep themselves looking young. Whoever did his nose must not have done a good job, because his nostrils were thin and snakelike. Maze wondered what unfortunate fate befell the cosmetician who did that.
Or perhaps that was the intended effect. Maze had no way of knowing Capitol fashion trends. They all looked stupid anyways.
Once Snow's speech concluded, the tributes dismounted from the chariots, and they were ushered into the Training Center. There, everyone's mentors, escorts, and stylists greeted them.
Beetee smiled as Maze approached him.
"You did great," he congratulated her. "I think they liked you."
Beside him, Troy scoffed. "They thought she was showing off too much. They thought it was embarrassing."
"Don't be like that," Philomena said, silencing Troy with a look. "I think you did wonderful, Maze."
Harmonia, standing next to her sister, nodded in agreement.
Alt approached them then, and Troy stepped aside to talk with him. Beetee made sure he was out of earshot before speaking.
"Between you and I, I believe Troy's simply jealous that you received more preliminary sponsors than Alt. Alt's only preliminary sponsor was the man who puts money on every tribute."
Maze raised her eyebrows. "I have preliminary sponsors?"
So some of the Capitolites did like her. At the same time, it meant more people for her to disappoint.
"A few. Not as much as some of the other tributes, but over an average amount for a District 3 female tribute." Beetee's glasses glinted as he gave Maze a kind smile. "Revisiting our conversation in the Stadium, I think you might be likable enough."
Maze shrugged her shoulders, face flushing with sudden shyness. "Eh. I don't know."
Before Beetee could reply, Troy and Alt came back, and the conversation fizzled out.
Everyone got into line for the elevators in the Tribute Tower. The line moved quickly, and Maze and the rest of the District 3 entourage soon found themselves on the third floor, where Maze and Alt would be spending the next couple of days.
The decorations and furniture were just as ornate as the ones on the train, if not more. A few Avoxes waited with folded hands next to a dining table heaped with food.
While the District 3 entourage feasted, a large screen at the head of the table played the recap of the opening ceremony that had just concluded. Caesar, as usual, hosted, joined by a woman named Melia Ferrero in Claudius' place. Maze forgot her exact role. Apparently, she was well-known to Capitol citizens. That night, she had decided to wear sunglasses, making her look like an utter doofus.
Maze wondered how on Earth the Capitol citizens were considered the elite ones.
"Wow!" Caesar exclaimed when District 3's chariot appeared. "Look at District 3's new digs! They're courtesy of Harmonia Bell, making her debut as a stylist this year. A fun fact for you all: Harmonia is the younger sister of Philomena Bell, District 3's current escort!"
"So, District 3's a family affair now, huh?" Melia asked wryly. Her overinflated lips hardly seemed to move.
"They sure seem to be."
"The new clothes look much better than the old ones Euthymius Thornsdale put them in, I have to admit," Melia commented. "Forgive me for saying this, but that pattern of his desperately needed to go."
Caesar quirked an eyebrow. "I'm sure you're voicing the thoughts of many Capitol citizens, Melia."
The cameras cut to Maze posing and acting cute, as well as some of the crowd's reactions to her. They seemed enthralled by Maze's actions.
Caesar chortled. "Ho ho, the crowd is just eating Miss Donahue up! And she's eating them up, it seems. Adorable! I cannot believe this is the same girl who was yelling and cursing at her Reaping. She did a complete one-eighty!"
"I don't know, Caesar," Melia replied, clicking her tongue. "She's posing and acting like you'd expect from someone from a Career district. District 3 tributes are not nearly prestigious enough to show off like that. Like, come on, you're District 3. They've only had like what, four Victors in fifty-seven years? It's cringeworthy, in my opinion. This girl obviously thinks she's much hotter shit than she actually is, excuse my language."
Maze, biting into a giant fried animal leg, let out an indignant noise.
That bitch!
Troy laughed. "Ha! Told you so!"
Caesar looked taken aback. He gave his co-host a side-eyed glance. "Well, that's certainly an opinion."
The two commentators moved on as District 4's chariot appeared on-screen.
"I never liked Melia Ferrero," Philomena commented, cutting up her meat with her knife and fork. "She always has something negative to say about everybody and everything. People like her are absolutely exhausting."
She glanced pointedly at Troy as she said that. He didn't seem to notice, jovially continuing to scarf down his food.
After dinner and the recap concluded, Maze and Alt were shown to their bedrooms. Maze's bedroom contained a bed even larger than the one on the train.
Unable to help herself, Maze kicked off her boots and climbed on top of the bed, before jumping on it. As she expected, the mattress was elastic and bouncy. She caught good air, letting a few giggles escape her before the sobriety of the situation hit her like a ton of rocks.
She was facing certain death within a couple of days. She shouldn't be bouncing on beds. What was she, a child?
Her giggling ceased. She let herself flop onto her back, her body bouncing one last time as it hit the mattress.
She stared up at the ceiling, stone-faced, for a few minutes and wallowed in her shame for her own naïveté, before getting up and heading to the bathroom to shower.
The shower was more luxurious than anything Maze has seen before, spacious and made of marble and glass, with a control panel that surely confused any tribute who wasn't from 3.
Maze shed her costume and after messing with the control panel, stepped into the shower. The warm water sapped all the tension from her muscles the moment it made contact with her body. Maze had never had such a relaxing shower before. The showers at the community home only had cold water and always smelled like rust and mildew.
Like Paris had said, the hair dye in her hair washed right out in the shower. Maze watched entranced as the blue dye trickled down her legs and swirled in the water around her toes, before making its way down the drain.
She stayed in the shower, under the warm relaxing jets until well after her fingertips pruned up. Then, she dried off with the help of a small black box on the wall that, when she put her hand on it, dried and de-tangled her hair. She vaguely remembered hearing about said device in passing back in District 3. Apparently, it was manufactured in one of the factories in downtown Central City.
As soon as she was all dry, she changed into pajamas and headed to bed.
She'd need all her energy for training tomorrow.
The sound of knocking woke her up.
"Maze?"
It was Beetee, waking her up for the third time in two days. This was starting to become a pattern.
"Breakfast is ready, and then you and Alt will go to training. Harmonia gave me your training clothes to give to you. I have them here."
Maze groaned, not ready to get up from the comfy Capitol bed just yet. It was even more comfortable than the one on the train. She wished she could just sleep in the bed for the rest of her life. Just go to sleep and never wake up again.
She didn't want to keep Beetee waiting, though, so she rousted herself and went over to the bedroom door. She opened it and took the clothes from Beetee, before closing the door again to change.
The training clothes consisted of a heather-gray shirt and black sweatpants, as well as black sneakers and sweatbands worn on the wrists. The shirt had the number '3' in District 3's indigo-purple emblazoned on the sleeves.
For ease of identification, especially within the arena, each district was assigned a unique color. District 3's color was a vivid indigo-purple. It seemed this color-coding was starting at training.
After Maze changed into the clothes, she left her room and went to breakfast. She was the last person at the table; Beetee, Troy, Alt, and Philomena were already there. Philomena looked to be falling asleep into her cup of coffee, her long pink hair spilling onto the tabletop. Alt wore an identical outfit to Maze.
None of them spoke as they ate breakfast, except Philomena, who complained that she didn't sleep well and that it was too early to be up.
Maze silently agreed with her. She wasn't a morning person either. At the community home, she was always the last girl in her room to awaken on the weekends, and most days, Mrs. Tapp or one of the other girls, usually Cortana, had to wake her up for school.
As Maze was about to go wait for the elevator to take her to training, Beetee appeared next to her.
"To give you some mentorly advice, be careful who you show off your skills to during training. You could gain allies, yes, but you could also become a target if you're too good at something."
Maze nodded to show that she heard him, looking straight ahead at the elevator doors.
"You should also divide your time between survival skills and weaponry skills, but favor survival skills more. You can live off of survival skills and no weaponry skills, but you won't live for very long if you just have weaponry skills and no survival skills."
Maze nodded again. "Gotcha."
The elevator doors dinged and then glided open. There were two tributes already in there — the pair from 6, it looked like. They wore identical outfits to Maze, except their shirts had a yellow "6" on them.
"Good luck," Beetee said.
"Thank you."
Maze stepped into the elevator. The tributes from 6 paid her no mind, both of them looking at the floor or the wall. The doors slid shut, and the elevator whisked them down to the training gym.
The tributes milled around the training gym. Everyone stood solitary, except for the clump of Careers, who whispered amongst themselves, and Willow and Sorb from 7.
Maze stepped out of the elevator tentatively, looking around. Behind Maze, the District 6 tributes split and walked in opposite directions.
The other elevator dinged and opened up, revealing Alt and the two District 12 tributes. Alt stalked to the left, not bothering to acknowledge Maze's presence. The District 12 girl briefly glanced at Maze before walking in a random direction. Her hair was in the same bun it was in during her Reaping, the streak even redder than before. Her prep team must have done something to it.
A few minutes later, after all of the tributes had arrived, a Capitol trainer whose name Maze immediately forgot appeared and gave them instructions on training. There were different stations all around the gym for the tributes, each station with a different skill to teach them. The tributes had two and a half days to train, and on the third day, they'd have a private session with the Gamemakers to show off their skills and be assigned a training score.
As soon as the trainer let them go, Maze made her way over to the nearest survival skill station: fire-starting. While the trainer was talking, she had formulated a plan in her mind. She would hit every survival station in sequence, starting with the fire-starting station and making her way to the left until either the day ended, or she ran out of survival stations, in which case she'd go to the weapons station.
She followed her plan. She learned how to start a fire with naturally occurring materials, and once she felt she was proficient enough, she moved on to the next station: plant identification. Then animal identification. Then camouflage. And so forth.
Some of the stations she struggled with. Plant identification was especially difficult for her. She had limited exposure to plants growing up in Central City. They all looked the same to her. She did her best to concentrate on them and gain at least a bit of knowledge, despite the nuances of leaf and berry shapes turning her brain to mush. Knowing which plants were edible or which were poisonous could be the difference between life and death in the arena.
Between stations, she took a bit of time to observe the other tributes. The Careers were swinging around weapons and doing their best to intimidate everyone else. Maze just rolled her eyes at them. Alt was also at the weapons station. He seemed hellbent on trying to learn archery, with poor results. Maze watched from across the gym as he shot an arrow that narrowly missed the District 4 female tribute's head. She glared daggers at him for several minutes afterwards.
After a few hours, the tributes had lunch, before returning to the gym for the afternoon. Maze continued working the circuit of survival stations.
She reached the knot-tying station. She quickly picked up on it, earning the praise of the instructor. The instructor then taught her a few snares, which Maze learned with just as much ease as she had the knots. The snares reminded her of low-tech versions of some of the traps she made for hijinks.
One of the snares the instructor taught her, the one that dangled prey — or a person — from one leg, could have been especially useful for hijinks. Maze imagined herself setting it up in Central City's main park. The snare would then whisk some poor sucker up by their leg into a tree. Maze would walk by then and pretend to be a passerby who just happened to have a knife or pair of scissors and cut the victim down. They'd profusely thank her, and she'd be their hero, and they'd have no idea that the whole thing was a set-up at their expense. Just imagining it made her smirk and chuckle to herself.
A shame she'd never be returning to District 3 alive.
A girl's voice startled her out of her reveries.
"Wow, you're sure good at making snares!"
Maze jumped. Willow and Sorb had materialized behind her while she was daydreaming, and they were now examining the snare she had made. Both had a forest-green '7' on their sleeves, and Willow's red hair was held back with a matching headband.
"Th-thanks?" Maze stammered, unsure how to respond to Willow's praise. Should she even be responding in the first place? They'll be enemies in the arena.
She remembered Beetee's advice from that morning. Be careful who you show your skills off to. Her cheeks flushed and she berated herself for not being more careful.
"Are you just a natural at this, or did you have some practice at something like this back in District 3?" Sorb asked, tilting his head. "Or, feel free not to tell us. It's none of our business."
"I'll keep it a secret," Maze replied.
Sorb shrugged. "Fair."
The pair picked up some of the spare rope at the station and began making knots.
Maze decided to try and make some conversation. They made conversation with her, it felt fair to make conversation with them. "Willow and Sorbus, right?"
The two nodded.
"People back at home call me Sorb," Sorb replied.
"And you're Maze, right?" Willow asked.
Maze nodded. "Yep."
Silence stretched between them. The two continued to make knots, while Maze stood behind them, arms clasped behind her back.
The burning question Maze had since the Reaping recap spilled out of her before she could stop it. "Was the girl who screamed at the Reaping your sister?"
Willow looked up from her knot, directly at Maze. Maze felt foolish for asking such a prying question and looked down at her feet. Her cheeks heated up even more. "S-sorry."
"Yep. She's my sister." Willow managed a small smile. "Her name's Rowan. She'll be nine this fall."
"Oh. I see."
"What about you?" Willow asked. "Do you have any siblings?"
Maze shrugged. "I wouldn't know. I'm an orphan."
"Oh." Willow's little smile fell. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"It's okay."
The conversation petered out. Maze thought this moment was best to exit, so she headed to the next station.
Hopefully Willow and Sorb wouldn't use the information she shared against her.
Eventually, the training session concluded, and everyone headed back to their floors. Maze's mind felt like it was filling with static from all the new information she learned that day. She desperately needed a break.
The rest of the day was uneventful. The District 3 entourage ate dinner together again in near silence. After dinner, Beetee asked Maze what all she did during training, and she told him what she did, excluding the brief conversation she had with the District 7 tributes. He just nodded approvingly and told her to continue doing what she was doing, and to focus on weapons the next day.
Maze followed his advice. The next day during training, after finishing all the survival stations, she made her way over to the weapons stations. Alt was still trying to master the art of archery, with slightly better results. Maze saw him hit the target at least a couple times.
With the help of some of the trainers, Maze tried out different types of weapons. Many weapons, like axes, clubs, and maces, weighed too much for Maze to lift and maneuver. With swords and daggers, she was too clumsy. When she tried archery, she hit the target even less than Alt.
Finally, she found a weapon she liked — the spear. She was good at maneuvering with it, and she had decent aim when she tried throwing them at targets. She fought one-on-one with a trainer and was able to jab at them quite a few times and use the spear as leverage against them.
As she trained with the spear, Maze became aware once more of the girl from District 12 watching her. Like Maze, she went from station to station, but no matter where she ended up, Maze could always feel her eyes boring holes into her. Whenever Maze caught her staring, she'd look away.
By the end of the second day, Maze had gotten the hang of using a spear as a weapon. It was nothing compared to the skills of the Careers, who had years spent training with their weapons of choice, but it was better than nothing.
When she recounted the day to Beetee and told him about how she had trained with the spear, he approved. Later, he asked what Maze was going to show the Gamemakers during her private session the next day.
She didn't know, so the two of them devised a plan for the next day. Something that would show off Maze's strengths while at the same time showing the Gamemakers just how dangerous she had the potential to be. Maze promised Beetee she'd follow the plan as best as she could, but no guarantees that she wouldn't somehow screw it all up under pressure. Beetee seemed satisfied with Maze's promise.
The next day dawned, bright and early. By now, it was beginning to sink in just how little time remained. In just three days' time, Maze and the other tributes would be plunged into the arena. This thought diminished Maze's appetite, and she didn't eat as much breakfast as she had the last couple of days.
She went down to the training gym as usual and in the few hours before lunch, brushed up on the skills she felt like needed work, including plant identification. She still sucked at telling plants apart, but she felt a little more confident in her skills.
Most of the other tributes were at the weapons stations, practicing what Maze assumed they'd be showing the Gamemakers. Their strategies obviously weren't to hide their skills from other tributes.
After lunch, the private sessions began. The District 1 tributes went first, followed by the District 2 tributes. The male tribute was called, then the female. After their sessions, none of them returned to the gym.
Alt got called in before Maze. When he exited the room, he had the same expression he wore during the Reaping, like he was going to be sick again. Maze wondered how bad he screwed up his session.
An automated voice called Maze's name. She took a deep breath to quell her rising nerves, rolling her shoulders, before pushing open the doors to her private session.
A smaller version of the training gym greeted her. This smaller gym, however, had just as much stuff as the training gym. Weapons and materials of all kinds lined the walls, filling up every empty inch of space. From up on a raised platform, the Gamemakers, clad in purple robes, looked down upon Maze.
Those assholes would be the ones orchestrating her doom in a few days.
Maze forced a smile. Only one of the Gamemakers, a heavier-set man, returned the smile. A few others nodded, but most just stared at her with neutral expressions.
"You have ten minutes," one of them said.
Maze nodded, took another breath, set her jaw, and got to work.
First, she dragged a fake tree to the center of the gym. It took all her body strength to do this. Maze imagined the Gamemakers weren't too impressed by her strength. She then grabbed some wire, sticks, and a knife.
Using the knife to whittle the sticks into the necessary shapes, Maze crafted a snare — the same snare that she dreamed of setting up in District 3 as a hijink. Whittling the sticks was the most time-consuming part of her display, eating up several minutes.
Once the snare was set up, Maze went and retrieved a training dummy. She grabbed it from behind, holding its forearms in her hands.
She glanced up at the Gamemakers. Most of them had their eyes on her, but they all had such stony faces. They were incredibly bored by Maze's little display.
A pang of desperation seized Maze.
No! She couldn't be boring! She had to be memorable. Memorable stood out and got good scores — usually.
An idea came to her. An idea that would make her less boring. She decided to roll with it.
Maze manipulated the dummy's arm so that it looked like it was waving at the Gamemakers.
"Hello!" She said in a silly voice. "I'm a stupid tribute in the Hunger Games! Today, I'm gonna go for a nice walk!"
All the Gamemakers were looking at her now. Their impassive masks had cracked, with several raising eyebrows.
Maze walked with the dummy towards the fake tree, singing a little tune in her silly voice. She then moved the dummy's foot into the wire noose laying at the base of the tree.
"Oops!"
The snare worked as intended and snapped the dummy right up into the tree by its foot. Maze let go of it, letting it dangle.
"Ahhh! Oh no! I've been caught in a trap!"
With that, Maze ran across the gym to grab a spear from the weapons rack. She ran back and with a violent cry, stabbed the dummy in the chest. To her shock, the dummy had a rib cage that Maze had to push through. With a second thrust, Maze's spear broke through the simulated rib cage and pierced the innards of the dummy.
If she killed in the arena, she'd have to break a real rib cage. Maze's stomach turned at that thought.
Despite her horror, she plastered a smile on her face and looked up at the Gamemakers.
She could not read the expressions on the Gamemakers' faces.
"Very creative," the same one from earlier said. "Is that all you planned to show us?"
Maze nodded.
"Thank you, Miss Donahue. You're dismissed."
Maze scampered out of the room. It wasn't until she was alone in the elevator that the full impact of what she had did hit her. She groaned, dropping her head into her hands in shame.
She really gave the training dummy a stupid voice. In front of the Gamemakers. All because she wanted to get their attention. They must think she's either childish or stupid or both. Either way, she wouldn't be getting a high score.
Maze really didn't think that one through.
Her head was still in her hands when she stepped out of the elevator, causing her to nearly run into Beetee. He had been waiting for her at the elevator.
"How did it go?"
"I followed the plan," Maze replied, not even trying to mask the despair in her voice. "But then I messed it all up."
"Oh? What happened?"
Maze bit her lip. "I gave the dummy a stupid voice."
Beetee raised an eyebrow.
"You gave the dummy a…stupid voice?" He couldn't hide the astonishment in his own voice.
"Yes," Maze croaked. "I made the dummy say something like 'Hi! I'm a stupid tribute!' and then I walked it into my trap and then I made it yell in horror." She imitated the voice she gave the dummy.
Beetee was silent longer than Maze wanted.
"I wanted to be memorable," Maze explained. Her face burned with humiliation. "But I think I just made a fool of myself."
Beetee finally responded, putting his hand to his chin in thought. "Well, I think you managed your goal of being memorable. The Gamemakers tend to favor tributes who do unconventional things during the sessions and who think outside the box when it comes to scoring."
"Either that or they thought I was totally weird, and they'll give me a bad score."
"Or they'll judge you solely on the quality of your trap and kill, and factor out your…addition." Beetee gave Maze what she interpreted to be a comforting smile. "I don't believe you did as bad as you think. One year, I mentored a girl who stood there and cried the whole ten minutes. At least you did something."
"Yeah," Maze mumbled. "I guess we'll find out. I'm not expecting anything big, though."
With that, she turned and stalked off to her bedroom. She didn't come out until she was called for dinner.
Everyone sat in the same arrangement as the first night, with the screen at the end of the table tuned into the channel that would be airing the scores.
Maze sat and nibbled on a strange food Philomena had called a crab rangoon. The nerves of finding out her score, combined with the knowledge that she had less than three days of guaranteed life left killed any appetite she had worked up during training and her private session. Alt refused to eat, using his knife and fork to cut things up into smaller and smaller pieces. Beetee and Troy silently ate their food, and Philomena tried to spark conversation every once in a while with random remarks.
Finally, the channel started playing the anthem, and the screen cut to Panem's seal, then to a headshot of the District 1 male tribute and his score. Maze dropped her crab rangoon and leaned forward in her seat, eyes fixed to the screen.
As expected, the tributes from Districts 1 and 2 scored high, with scores in the 8 to 11 range. The screen then showed Alt's headshot, along with his training score.
3.
Alt winced. Troy slammed his fork down and glared at him.
"A three?! What the hell did you do, boy?!"
"I did what you told me to!" Alt defended. "I chose a weapon, trained with it, and then showed off my skills to the Gamemakers!"
Troy gave a short bark of a laugh. "Skills? Someone with skills wouldn't have gotten a three. Pathetic. I think you're going to die in the bloodbath."
Alt stared down at his plate.
Maze's face then appeared on the screen. She held her breath as her score appeared a few seconds later beneath her portrait.
8.
An eight? She got an eight? Maze's eyes widened, unable to believe what was on the screen in front of her.
"You got an eight!" Philomena squealed, beaming at Maze from across the table. "Great job, Maze!"
"I told you the Gamemakers favored unconventional tactics," Beetee said, giving Maze a gentle smile. Maze returned it, a sense of relief spreading through her.
Phew. So the Gamemakers liked her little bit of voice acting. Or at least her snare and skill with the spear.
"Unconventional tactics?" Philomena asked, tilting her head. "What did you do, Maze? If you don't mind sharing."
Maze, with a shy smile, looked down at her food. "I snared a dummy and killed it with a spear. I also gave the dummy a silly voice."
Philomena blinked. "A silly voice? Well. I suppose that is unconventional."
"It's childish is what it is," Alt muttered.
Troy shot him a sharp look. "She's the one who scored an eight. Not you. Maybe if you had used a silly voice during your session, the Gamemakers would given you a four."
Maze fought a snicker at that.
Alt shut up and continued to stare down at his plate.
Getting a good score had restored Maze's appetite, so she picked her crab rangoon back up and devoured it, before moving on to the rest of her dinner. Onscreen, the rest of the scores ticked by.
To no one's surprise, the District 4 tributes scored high, with the tributes from 5 and 6 scoring mid to low. Willow and Sorb both got sevens, matching their district. Maze wondered what they showed the Gamemakers. After her short conversation with them, she didn't pay much attention to what stations they had gone to.
The girl from District 12, whose name was Camilee Roebuck, according to the screen, also got a seven, to everyone's surprise.
"That's the highest score I've seen from a District 12 tribute since Haymitch Abernathy," Philomena commented, sipping her drink. "I wonder what she did."
"That girl kept staring at me during training," Maze remarked. "I don't know why. She didn't do it to anyone else."
"Oh. A potential ally maybe?" Philomena asked.
"Or she's marked you as her first target," Troy said.
"I don't think we should jump to conclusions just yet," Beetee said. "Let's wait until after her interview."
Maze nodded. "Yeah. Good idea."