Disclaimer: I own nothing anyone recognises.
Feedback: Much appreciated.
Twice Chosen
I didn't have time to think any further about the cause of my sudden strange glow before more water struck me in the fact, and suddenly all four of the other Tributes who had found the cave were floating in the water around me.
"What-?" I began.
"Would you believe idle curiosity?" 'Foxface' said, smiling at me as she indicated the blue glow that was now surrounding her as she floated alongside the rest of us.
"Personally, I wasn't going to leave the kid down here," Thresh added, indicating Rue with a brief smile.
"And trust me, nobody wants to see a little kid drown," Glimmer put in with a pointed stare as she indicated Rue. "C'mon, when we're this early in the Game, that's just… well, it's petty cruelty, really."
"Right…" I said. I didn't entirely buy Glimmer's explanation, especially after what I'd glimpsed of her actions in the opening bloodbath, but on the other hand I wasn't going to question someone's motives when it wouldn't be that hard for her to drown all five of us if she was fast enough. "I don't suppose you have any idea what's going on with all this?"
"Me?" Glimmer looked back with exaggerated innocence that was definitely aided by the pink light around her. "Why should I know anything?"
"'Cause that Academy of yours probably makes you watch every single previous Game until you know them all backwards?" Thresh observed with a cool edge to his tone that was somehow reinforced by his own surrounding black light. "You expect us to believe that you wouldn't remember somethin' like this?"
"Well, when you put it like that… yeah, we've watched a lot of past Games back in the Academy, and they never had anything like this," Glimmer nodded affirmatively. "I mean, where's the point in setting up some glowing wall to lure a bunch of us into one place and then drop us all into some pit? It's got a good bit of suspense for the buildup, but after that it's just boring; there's a reason they try and avoid cold weather being an issue for the Games, and it's not just because it'd be a crime to make us girls wrap up warm."
"I'll… take your word for that," Foxface said, shooting an awkward glance at me which made it clear she wasn't sure how to feel about that observation even if she agreed that the source was likely reliable. "So… what do we do here?"
"Get to the edge-" Peeta began as he indicated the wall.
"Hold on… you all feel that, right?" I said, looking around at the others as I felt that same strange nagging itch that had brought me to the cave in the first place, now driving me downwards for some reason. "It's like… I don't know…"
I finally gave up on trying to explain it and just dived down under the water, trying to get past that strange sensation and find the source of it. For a moment as I swam down I strained to see anything, my eyes unused to the stinging water, before I felt my outstretched hand pass through something and into a dry area. Even more curious as to what was going on, I kicked my legs harder and soon felt the water vanish from around my head, opening my eyes to see that I was looking down into another cave, water beneath/above my head with no obvious way to hold it back.
I fought down an initial panic as I gave another powerful kick, adjusting my body as it reached the edge of whatever-this-was so that I fell out of the water and landed on my feet and hands rather than my face. As I quickly stood up, I looked up to see the other five coming down to join me, four of them glowing with that strange light and the fifth holding onto the black and yellow figures until they reached the bottom. I quickly moved to grab Rue, but the other four followed my own example, adjusting their descent through the water-ceiling so that they all basically landed on their feet.
"Whoa…" Foxface looked up at the water we'd just descended through, the ripples of our departure already vanishing like we were looking up at some kind of inverted lake. "Now that is cool!"
"OK," I turned to look at Glimmer and indicated the watery roof above us, "I feel safe assuming that isn't normal for the Games?"
"I… I don't think anyone could have done that," Glimmer nodded awkwardly, looking uncertainly at the ceiling of water before she turned back to face me. "I mean, force fields have been a thing for decades even outside the Games, but there's no way anyone would create something like that and stick it somewhere that… isolated."
"Something can be isolated out here?" Thresh looked at Glimmer with an incredulous stare. "I thought they literally covered these arenas with cameras?"
"Mostly they can pull it off, but in practice there's always a few obscure areas here and there that the Gamemakers don't realise they've missed until one of the Tributes finds it first," Glimmer shrugged. "It's not exactly something they advertise, and most of the time they can dispatch a drone or two to make up for it before anyone watching realises what's going down, but there's sometimes still a couple of minutes in the live broadcasts where they lose track of the Tributes until they can send something."
"So… there's a chance we're OK?" Rue asked; her tentative expression made me think of the times Prim would take my hand for comfort, except that Rue clearly wasn't sure she knew who to turn to in this situation. "I mean, that we're not being watched right now?"
"If anyone had found that stuff when this Arena was being set up, they'd have cordoned that cave off and be trying to work out what the Hell this was all about while keeping us away from here; Hell, they'd probably have tried to set up a whole new arena to study this place properly!"
"Has that ever happened?" Peeta asked, looking honestly curious at this new bit of trivia. "I mean, they only realise that something about an Arena doesn't work while they're building it… or even during the Games?"
"Comes and goes, according to rumours at the Academy," Glimmer shrugged. "Like I said, they use drones to help track us in case we accidentally find some area they didn't cover with suitable cameras, and that's worked out for the most part. Gamemakers always try and avoid repeating themselves and do some surveys for new future sites each year, and they keep pretty good records, but there's always the risk that some area will turn out to be a habitat for an endangered animal or something."
"People in the Capitol care about that kind of thing?" Foxface raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"I guess some people like the chance to get out for a few days and look at things in the wild," Glimmer shrugged. "Keep in mind I'm still only from One; just because the Capitol likes us more doesn't mean we go there a lot."
"Still a lot closer than-" Thresh began.
"OK!" I stepped forward, raising my hands as Thresh and Glimmer started to glare at each other. "Let's just… take a look at what else is down here before we try and get back up."
"You want us to look around here?" Peeta looked at me in surprise before indicating Glimmer. "With her?"
"Hey, we're all down here, lover-boy," Glimmer looked at Peeta with slightly exaggerated indignation.
"And how do we know you're not going to-?"
"What; start killing you all?" Glimmer looked at Peeta in exasperation. "I'm not some psycho nut, pal; I won't just start stabbing you all in the back because I feel like it."
"Aren't we meant to-?"
"Not like this," Glimmer cut Thresh off. "Even if I'm wrong about there being no cameras out here, there's no way anyone would think this was a good Games strategy; one Career and a bunch of randoms this early on?"
"Randoms?" Foxface repeated with a notable edge to her voice.
"I just meant that there's no way anyone involved in the Games could think sticking us together was an interesting idea this early on," Glimmer clarified, waving a hand at our small group. "I'm not saying any of you are going to be easy to take down, but we lost half the Tributes in the bloodbath and we've barely had a chance for anyone to show off yet. Seriously, putting us all together like this risks ending the Games too early, and that just takes away any chance for a good show-"
"OK!" I said, stepping forward as Thresh and Peeta looked at Glimmer in a particularly cold manner while Foxface moved to place a comforting hand on Rue's shoulder. "Can we just… stop that right now?"
"Just stop this?" Peeta looked at me in surprise.
"Look, I'm… well, it's like Glimmer said; nobody in the Games would do this to us on purpose, so isn't this worth exploring further?" I said, surprised at the words I was speaking even as I looked at the cavern beyond. "If whatever's going on here goes beyond the Games, I think we can all agree to at least a truce at least until we get out of here, don't you?"
"Sounds… good to me," Glimmer nodded, albeit with a suddenly tentative expression I couldn't explain.
"I can work with that," Foxface grinned.
"No problem here," Thresh nodded as Rue gave her own thumbs-up.
"…Fine," Peeta nodded, looking at me in a manner I couldn't entirely understand.
"Let's go," I said, indicating the cave beyond our strange inverted pool, trying to ignore the faint rumbling sensation from the cave around us. My small knife in my hand, I led the way, surprised to find how the rest of us fell into a pattern, Glimmer wiping down her bowstring and drawing a new arrow while Peeta and Thresh stood on either side of Rue and Foxface. As we rounded a corner, I led our strange new alliance into a surprisingly large cavern, about the size of the house I lived in back in Twelve, but my attention was more immediately drawn to the sight at the other end of the cave.
The rocks and the opening around us could have been formed by nature, but the large metal object at the opposite side of the cavern was clearly an artificial structure. Something was literally sticking out of the rock, with a formation that put me in mind of the hovercraft that had taken us to our 'departure points' before the Games began, but it looked as though whatever this thing was had been stuck in the cave for some time. There was a faint blue glow to the object, and as we drew closer, it became clear that there was far more it than the part close to the ground; I wasn't sure if I'd be surprised to find out that the mountain the cave was in was basically just a 'shell' for whatever this was.
"Holy crap-!" Glimmer began, slamming her hand against one of the lower rocks in awe, only to give us all something new to think about when the rock literally broke in half where she struck it.
"What the Hell?" Thresh looked at the rock in surprise before he looked at Glimmer. "Was there some strength-enhancing drug in the Cornucopia we didn't know about?"
"What?" Glimmer looked at him in confusion.
"I was watching the opening bloodbath; if you were tough enough to do that when this started, a couple of fights would have ended a bit quicker."
"That's… OK, point," Glimmer nodded in acknowledgement before she looked more earnestly at Thresh. "But I swear I didn't take anything like that!"
"You don't think…?" Peeta said, looking tentatively at the yellow thing in his hands.
"What?" Foxface looked at Peeta with a smile as she held up her own blue object. "You think that these things gave us-?"
She cut off her own question when she copied Glimmer's action and ended up breaking a chunk off another bit of rock with a nonchalant shove of her hand.
"OK…" Peeta said, moving towards the chunk of rock Glimmer had broken off. He put the yellow coin in his pocket before he bent down to pick up the rock, staring in awe as he effortlessly found himself holding the heavy stone above him when it had to be twice the size of his head. "Yeah, this shouldn't be this light."
"OW!" Rue yelled, prompting the rest of us to turn and see her rubbing her hand as she glared at the wall.
"Nothing happened?" Foxface looked sympathetically at the girl.
"Nothing happened," Rue nodded, looking sulkily at the rest of us with an expression that reminded me of Prim when I'd initially objected to Buttercup joining us in the house. "I guess it is just the coins."
"Coins?" Thresh repeated, taking the black object out of his pocket and studying it for a moment before he shrugged. "Yeah, 'coin' works, I guess."
"Coin?" I repeated, taking my own red object out and holding it up, only to jump back when something seemed to uncurl in the massive metal object above us. Walking up to what looked like a flight of stairs leading up to the new opening, I took a deep breath and placed my foot on the lowest step, and tried not to make my relief obvious when nothing happened.
"For what it's worth, there's no way the Capitol did this," Foxface put in, indicating the walls around us. "Geology wasn't a strong point of mine, but all this stuff… it looks like this thing's been here for so long that the rock's grown around it."
"Around it?" Thresh repeated. "How old would something have to be for that to happen?"
"Getting into millions," Foxface observed.
"Damn," Glimmer said as she stared at the ship. "This is really getting interesting…"
"Should we… really be doing this?" Peeta asked uncertainly.
"You're going to start asking a question like that now?" Glimmer looked at my fellow Twelve resident with an incredulous grin. "C'mon; we've come this far!"
Peeta could only look anxiously up at the open door, even as I found myself cautiously leading the way up into the ship. With the rest of the group behind me, the top of the stairs led to the middle of a strange circular platform, surprisingly pristine despite the apparent age of this ship, with various circles around the walls and four paths leading away from the platform. As the others joined me in the middle of this strange room, there was a faint beeping sound from somewhere above us before the very walls of the ship seemed to move around us, certain 'circles' opening to reveal further passages leading into other parts of this…
I was reluctant to call this a 'ship', but those things had definitely looked like engines for some kind of flying craft.
Even as the staircase we'd just come up sealed behind us, I tried to work out what could have created something like this; how could a flying ship of this size have been stuck down here for so long ago that the rock had grown around it like that…
"What was that?" Rue said, suddenly grabbing me by the leg as she looked towards one of the circles. Following her gaze, I saw a golden light as something appeared at the end of another corridor leading deeper into the ship. Lost for better ideas, I yelled urgently at the others before I ran off down a corridor opposite; whatever was down here, I had a strong feeling that we wouldn't want to meet it with only a few blades and a bow to defend ourselves with. As the other five followed my example, Thresh and Foxface pressed themselves up against one wall while Glimmer joined Peeta and me on the opposite side. Rue was just about to join us when something grabbed her and pulled her back along the corridor, the girl letting out a terrified scream-
"They're real!"