Chapter 18:
"You look like crap." Caracalla managed to get out with a gurgling wheeze.
The gray skin, sunken cheeks, drooping eye bags, and wheezing breaths that came hobbling towards Tigris would be frightening if its image wasn't so pitiful. The man could hardly speak without being struck by a painful series of hacking coughs as he approached the hospital bed.
"Mr. President- what are you doing here?" Clemensia asked.
"Same as her, I've heard." Caracalla hobbled up to the bedside, studied Tigris' face, and rolled his eyes: "Food poisoning?"
Tigris only slightly nodded in response.
"Pity." Caracalla shrugged. "Who's going to make Livia's line for my charity event?"
"How do you-" Tigris began.
"I know your tacky, little patterns anywhere." Caracalla leaned in and tapped Tigris on the tip of her nose with the end of his bony finger. "You're not that sneaky, remember?"
Though nearly all of them were dead, Tigris could still feel the castigating looks of the former President's Cabinet on her now again, funneled into Caracalla's singular, condemning glare. Tigris' body was enveloped in a chill.
"Where's your guards?" Clemensia asked. "Where's Birrus?"
"Digging my grave." Caracalla snarled at Tigris and Clemensia. Through phlegm coated, crackling coughs, he explained: "I need your help."
"What help?" Tigris shook her head. "What can we do that the President can't?"
Caracalla looked like he would have laughed if he had the strength.
"Listen, Panem's government is a dog and pony show. The real big wigs- if I've ever met them, I didn't know it." Caracalla took a break to cough. "All the Cabinet really does is wear ceremonial garbs to argue. It's theatre, girls. The Presidency is not an office. It's a role. I'm being recast."
"What do you expect us to do?" Tigris asked.
"My beloved has been poisoning me and to be so honest…" Caracalla shrugged his pointy shoulders. "After everything I've said and done and not done to and for him… I do not blame the man for a single drop. But someone has to die for it."
"I can't kill Birrus." Tigris shook her head.
"I don't want you to." Caracalla replied through his windpipe that strained the air from his failing lungs. "I want you to kill Appius Volpe."
"Why?" Clemensia asked.
"Volpe is the source of the poison." Caracalla explained. "At least, he knows how it's made- where it's coming from. Birrus is just trying to clear up his path to bachelorhood. Volpe is clearing a path to the presidency."
"Even if we did kill Volpe for you- who'll pardon us if you croak thirty seconds later? Maybe find someone else who has a better reason to kill the man."
Tigris felt the crushing grip of the massive hand again. Caracalla replied:
"It looks to me our fight is one in the same. If you don't believe me that Appius knows where to get the poison, fine. But wherever it's coming from, it's the same place." Caracalla hissed. "You have until the start of the Games to kill Volpe or find that poison, or I will use whatever fight I have left in me to make sure you don't live to see a Victor be crowned."
When Goneril had threatened her life over Coriolanus', Tigris felt wholly unable to find a part of her that felt capable of such an act. She couldn't imagine killing her cousin. Murder: wasn't it the worst thing you could do to a person? No, she considered. There were worse things. Tigris had been unwilling to imagine what it would be like to take a life. But, as the trace amounts of venom coursed through her veins, Tigris felt its icy sting settling in her heart. And for the first time, she thought of Appius Volpe and did not feel shame, or sick, or small. She felt angry.
"What happens if I do both?" Tigris asked.
A gray toothed smile spread across Caracalla's sunken face as the door of the hospital room was pushed back open.
Caracalla moved twice as fast as Tigris had thought his decaying body capable- darting across the room and drawing out a silver scalpel from his hospital gown that he pressed to Dr. Fling's throat after sealing the door shut again and forcing him up against the wall.
"Mr. Presi-"
"Shut up, Fling…!" Caracalla dug the scalpel's small blade into the underside of the doctor's chin, causing him to drop his clipboard: "If you think poison hurts imagine the brain surgery I'll perform on you if you make another sound."
"Sir, I don't know what you're talking-" Dr. Fling shivered under the blade's edge.
"Where are you getting the poison?" Caracalla demanded: "Tell me!"
Fling's eyes flitted back and forth wildly: "You've been off your fluids too-"
Caracalla interrupted by scoring a thin bloody line against Fling's neck. The doctor's sharp yelp was muffled by the bony hand that clamped over his mouth. Caracalla spat with rage:
"Where!?"
"I don't know!" Dr. Fling confessed. "Please, we only ever wanted to help people. That's all it ever was supposed to be."
"What is the poison?" Caracalla interrogated Fling.
"They will kill us." Fling warned with shuddering breaths. "They will kill Vickers and me and all of you."
"I'll kill you!" Caracalla leaned his weight into the blade at Fling's throat. "What is the poison?!"
"I don't know!" Fling cried. "It's not like there is a handbook on how it's made."
It suddenly dawned on Tigris:
"I bet there is..." She realized in a mumbled epiphany. Caracalla dug into Fling the same as the blade:
"Tell us what it is or I swear I will carve your head off your shoulders-"
"Rabies!" Fling nearly shouted. "It's synthetic rabies!"
"What?" Caracalla hissed. Fling explained with panting breaths:
"Whatever treatments they developed for the outbreak back during the war have been re-engineered into this substance that hijacks the nervous system as rabies does."
"Where do you get it?!" Caracalla implored.
"I told you, I don't-" A slanted expression formed across Fling's face and snuffed out the sentence he began, instead deciding suddenly: "I'll show you."
Caracalla pulled the pinkened scalpel's blade away from Fling's lightly scarred neck and directed its point at Tigris sitting within a bramble of tubes in the hospital bed: "Unhook her."
With a reluctant exhale, the doctor allowed himself to be led by the scalpel's bladed point towards the bed. With swift, careful motions, Dr. Fling removed the needles embedded in Tigris' forearms and patched up their punctured pricks with adhesive bandages. Clemensia helped Tigris slide herself out of the bed onto wobbling legs. Caracalla clutched the bend of the doctor's arm and guided him by scalpel point to the door, forcing him to open it again to peer back and forth down the hall. The weak grasp on Dr. Fling's arm was suddenly severed as the man broke out into a mad sprint away from the group, screaming:
"CODE 13! CODE 13!" Fling hollered repeatedly at the top of his lungs as he abandoned the trio with his cries echoing down the hall behind him.
Tigris, Caracalla, and Clemensia broke out into a sprint down the hall in the opposite direction. As she helped push through a heavy set of double doors at the end of the corridor, Tigris felt like each of her limbs weighed several tons a piece. No matter how hard she inhaled, she couldn't seem to gather enough air in her weak lungs to ever catch her breath as she sped on. Tigris had to lean on Clemensia for support as they descended. Caracalla was far worse for wear and had to stop to draw ragged breaths into his failing lungs after he led them into a back stairway. His whooping coughs and wheezing breaths led the way, echoing off the walls of the stairwell until the blaring of an alarm supplanted them.
Tigris felt the panic set in as sirens began blaring and the flashing of emergency lights within the stairwell further disoriented her. Caracalla pushed past them and out the door at the bottom of the stairwell's landing. Tigris and Clemensia followed in a rush- though Caracalla's limping, weakened gait was not the speediest of leading charges. It was also not the most inconspicuous- the man's hacking coughs and labored breathing still sounding through the breaks in the screeching alarm. They had no choice but to press on in flight- until the sounds of infants wailing and Caracalla's collapse halted their progress.
Clemensia and Tigris successfully pulled Caracalla to his feet- but he was almost entirely dead weight. Tigris looked up through a window on the wall to see the nursery of squirming newborns in glass incubators sobbing from the auditory assault of the alarms. Tigris made the briefest of eye contact with an expressionless woman wearing a white lab coat inside, prompting her to begin a cross towards the exit into the hall.
"Someone is coming." Tigris warned.
The look on the babies little chubby, tear-stained faces was the same expression Caracalla had when he was righted again by the women. Caracalla wheezed and sputtered like an old car without a drop of gas left in his tank. Tigris knew he couldn't go on any further- and Caracalla appeared to know this as well. In the way Tigris had held onto his hand to save him once, Caracalla seemed to realize something profoundly similar as he let go of Tigris and weakly ordered:
"Run."
She did. Grabbing Clemensia's arm, Tigris fled with her back down the hall and around the corner right as Dr. Vickers emerged from the nursery. Caracalla fell to his chest hacking up dark blood onto the sheen of the linoleum floors. Tigris and Clemensia did their best to avoid being seen- but in the chaos of the alarm ironically meant to capture them, most nurses, doctors, and the occasional Peacekeeper failed to notice them at all. The pair kept on until they found another stairwell that gave them access to a rear fire exit that spat them out into a quiet, darkened back alley of the hospital building. Twilight was falling on the city, providing a crepuscular cover for the two to disappear into. As Clemensia pulled Tigris in one direction- Tigris pulled Clemensia in the other.
Tigris squinted through the darkness and scanned over the litter covering the grimy alley's ground. Then, she spotted it. Tigris kicked away the scattered rubbish that covered the rusted metal manhole cover before she knelt down and used all her strength to pull it away. With a heavy, metallic scrape, the cover was dragged off and exposed the iron rungs that descended into the black hole Tigris uncovered. Clemensia naturally had the look of someone who was about to be forced to crawl into a sewer. She asked Tigris:
"Where are you going?"
Tigris was on her way to kill a man. But first, she had a dress to make.
"Home." Tigris replied.
Goneril had in fact, not lied. Tigris' studio was truly just a ladder away from her entire army. Though, the gray machete slash against the concrete wall beside the iron rungs which did indeed lead up to Tigris' home was the only trace she found of the magenta eyed woman down there. Clemensia and Tigris were lucky enough to have somehow avoided her and the most aggressive of Goneril's Animals soldiers as they traversed the dimly colored tunnels of the Transfer. Tigris climbed the rungs first, pushing against the trap door above, and emerging into her coat closet which housed the heavy, wooden armoire. Tigris could see how she'd lived here for months and missed this secret opening in the floor. After Clemensia followed her up the ladder and into the closet, Tigris lowered the trapdoor on its hinges and watched it disappear back into the carpeted floor like it had never been there.
Clemensia helped Tigris scoot the weighty armoire over the secret door to prevent anyone from accessing it after them. The women cautiously stepped out of the coat closet into the dark studio.
"Something smells… good." Clemensia commented.
"Mew?"
Smax came trotting over from the spot where she must have been sleeping on the couch. The cat was instantly purring as she slid her body against Tigris' bare legs and licked her chops contentedly. Smax looked up at her owner with bits of dark pink meat still stuck to her whiskers while Tigris flipped on a light in the studio. The cat's food bowl was still half full with what appeared to be… was that grilled beef tenderloin? The leftover meat looked deliciously caramelized, with remnants of cooked beets, and seasoned brown rice still stuck to the sides of the bowl.
"That man makes me so…. hungry." Tigris bit her lip and crossed towards her fridge, pulling open its door to examine the three items there: a brown bottle of ketchup, a carton of milk approaching expiration, and a discolored, freezer burnt apple. Clemensia stepped into the fridge's cool glow, her hungry golden eyes scanning over the 'food:'
"That apple looks poisoned."
"It's from May." Tigris explained.
"I'll… wait until I get to the Ostium to eat." Clemensia sighed.
Tigris wandered back into the den, where on the couch beside a cat shaped dent in the cushions was the bag with the chromatifur coat- sitting idle with a matte black sheen. She looked to the top of her television, where a glass vase sat containing a thorny, roseless stem. The seriousness of Clemensia's voice shook off the chill that came over Tigris:
"What are we going to do, now?"
Tigris began to cross towards her room of garments and fabrics, replying:
"I'm thinking some kind of drop neck or sweetheart cut for the bodice. Then, for the skirt-"
"I wasn't talking about a dress." Clemensia interrupted. "I'm talking about… fighting back."
Tigris pushed into her walk-in closet room and flipped on the light to reveal the rainbow of colored clothing and fabrics she had at her disposal to work with.
"I know." Tigris nodded. "I am too."
She spent the rest of the night creating Flossie and Judge's interview costumes. Flossie asked to stand out, so stand out she would. Clemensia kept telling Tigris she was causing more trouble than was worth it with these designs- but Tigris was undeterred. She'd committed to swing back against her enemies. And while she internally organized a plan to kill Appius, cutting fabric, sewing appliqués, and hemming edges, she vowed to wound Coriolanus first- and to do it in style.
Clemensia outdid herself with the work she put in on the little purple velvet pants, and likewise, Tigris felt the dress she'd stitched together for Flossie was possibly the most stunning piece of art she'd ever crafted. And when the two women bagged up the garments, Tigris felt like she was chambering a bullet into a pistol. It was something like practice, Tigris felt, dropping the case of prop ammunition blanks into her purple purse in preparation for the following day. The last thing Tigris did was call Ada Jane with the number she'd given her:
"Butterfly…?" Tigris kindly requested when Ada answered the line: "I may need to borrow your clutch for my look tomorrow…"
Tigris and Clemensia slept until noon- awakened to the incessant ringing of the landline telephone on the wall. It was Livia- explaining to Tigris how she'd called the hospital, was told Tigris was no longer there, and so was inquiring why she hadn't arrived to take Vicky's birthday dress measurements that morning as planned. Tigris wanted to reach through the phone and ring Livia's neck. Instead, Tigris just expressed her lingering nausea along with an apology before promising Livia she had most certainly not forgotten about their arrangement. Tigris quickly threw on a plum velour leopard print wrap dress she'd designed for her line. Clemensia also borrowed a floral, violet-indigo number from Tigris' collection and offered to pay for the cab that arrived to pick them up as a gesture of gratitude for it. However, once Clemensia arrived at her temporary apartment at 74 Cominia and departed the vehicle- Tigris had to fit the bill for the remainder of the ride down the Corso to the Snow's apartment.
'What if he was there?' Tigris wondered as she entered into the opulent lobby of the highrise condominium building. She gripped the coat hangers that held her tribute's bagged looks with white knuckles as she crossed to the elevators. Certainly he wouldn't kill her while she was playing dress up with his five-year-old, she thought as the lift reached the top floor of the building. Tigris stepped out of the elevators, shaking herself off as she approached the Snow's apartment door and rang the buzzer with a shivering finger. Besides- he likely wasn't there anyway, she knew. Back in the day, Virgil's laundry list of duties as Head Gamemaker kept him so busy towards the final days of Pre-Games events Tigris would hardly ever see him by this point in the week. Her nerves were hardly calmed by this idea, however, and she let out a startled yelp as soon as the door to the Snow's apartment was opened and Vicky pounced on her:
"Auntie Tigris!" Vicky latched onto Tigris' leg.
"Ooh! Hey, girlie." Tigris put a hand to her chest as she entered. "You scared me!"
"Is that my dress?" Vicky asked with glee, pointing at the coat bags in Tigris' hand.
"No, ma'am. We have to take your measurements first. But- tell me what you think?" Tigris laid the coat bags over the back of a dining chair and unfolded the sketch of Vicky's rosy birthday gown she pulled from her purse and handed it to the girl.
"Eeeee!" Vicky gleefully beamed at the sketch and darted off with a skip in her step. "Mommy!" Vicky called out down the hall- leading Tigris towards the master bedroom. Vicky pushed into the room proclaiming: "Mommy, Auntie Tigris is here! Look how pretty!"
Livia was sitting on the floor surrounded by dozens of scribbled sketches depicting one a-fashionable silhouette after another. The pregnant woman looked as lost and tired as the designs, but there was an added bite to her reply to Vicky:
"About time." Livia began to contemptuously snatch up the sketch papers lying around her. Without looking at Tigris, she ordered: "Measure the brat."
Vicky was over the moon with the sketched ball gown of flouncy, red rose petals. But, the child's excitement seemed to only perturb Livia more, who grew increasingly short with Vicky's exclamations of appreciation for the design. The way Livia so effortlessly and casually knocked down the small girl's joy had Tigris more furious than usual. But, Tigris was here for one reason: and it wasn't actually for Vicky. So, Tigris tried to bite her tongue as she wrapped her tape measure's length around the child's waist.
"Suck it in, Victoria." Livia ordered the girl.
"No, dear." Tigris contradicted. "Keep your tummy relaxed."
"I'm going to layer it with a corset." Livia explained.
"She's five." Tigris reminded her.
"She'll be six." Livia corrected. "It'll give a better shape." She scowled at the sketch: "This looks like a blood clot."
"I like it." Vicky meekly stated.
"I don't care." Livia replied. "You look-"
"You look beautiful, Vicky." Tigris asserted before she snapped: "Mommy wouldn't know fashion if it punched her in the face."
Livia stopped breathing. Tigris did too. They all looked at one another in the mirror. 'Did I really just say that?' Tigris thought. Livia swallowed and blinked incredulously at Tigris and softly ordered Vicky:
"Victoria… go to your room for a moment."
Vicky promptly left the room without argument. Then, Livia turned to Tigris and spat at her:
"Did that food poisoning affect your brain?"
"Maybe." Tigris honestly replied.
"Who do you think you're talking to like that?" Livia asked.
Tigris couldn't stop herself:
"The mother of Faust's baby."
Instant tears. More than that- a catastrophic, flood level event began to rupture from Livia's eyes. Livia sobbed and begged and wept until she began to exhaust herself, repeating over and over how it 'wasn't her fault,' and how Faust was 'just that romantic and persistent,' and 'blah, blah, blah.' She could have just denied it, Tigris thought. But, the reality was as painfully transparent as the concealer Livia cried off, revealing an even more painful looking purple-blue black eye.
"How do you know?" Livia hyperventilated. "That means he could know."
"Livia, where did you get that-"
"Where do you think!?" Livia shouted. "Who told you? It was Dovecote, wasn't it? That snake can never keep her nasty little forked tongue in her goddamn mouth-"
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"
"I shouldn't have!" Livia threw her hands up in despair. "We are both blond and blue eyed- Faust has hair as black as night. I'm dead when this baby comes out."
Tigris wished she could assure Livia of something otherwise- but she knew with sudden horrid clarity she was right. Tigris was still unsure exactly why Coriolanus wanted her dead. But, Livia's pregnancy presented a far less vague reason for any hypothetical bloodlust on Coriolanus' part. This secret would kill her. That is- unless Coriolanus died first.
Tigris dug into her purse, producing the extra full coverage foundation she carried around with her to do touch ups on her forehead scar when necessary. She handed the small compact of makeup to a sniffling Livia: "This hides everything." Tigris added pointedly: "It's pricey- but worth the cost to help… cover things up..."
Livia blinked at her, instantly understanding: "You want money?" Livia asked desperately as she crossed into the walk-in closet. "How much? I'll give you whatever you want."
"Livia, no…" Tigris pretended to protest, following her into the closet. "You shouldn't-" Tigris noticed the red bow dress she'd designed for Livia to wear to the Reapings hanging on the rack with a torn sleeve. Livia was already pulling open the safe and removing a banded stack of panars. Before Livia closed the safe again, Tigris distracted her by pulling the torn red bow dress off the rack and asked: "What happened here?"
When Livia didn't answer, only grimacing and handing over the money to her, it made Tigris sink a little. She'd never really felt pity for Livia- just mostly resentment and annoyance. But now Tigris felt sorry. Though not so much for what Coriolanus put Livia through but more so what she was about to potentially put Livia through:
"I can mend it for you really quick." Tigris offered after a moment of calculation. "Go- take my concealer and put a new face on. We don't have long until the interviews."
Livia studied the small bottle of foundation through the tears still pooling in her eyes as she crossed out of the closet and left Tigris alone. The safe was unlocked. This was the moment. Tigris slung her purse off her shoulder, digging inside and removing her seamstress kit. A sleeve had probably never been resewn onto a bodice as fast as Tigris managed to. As soon as she'd completed that last running stitch on the red bow dress' shoulder pad, Tigris was carefully pulling aside the safes door- still left open a jar. She looked over her shoulder before digging in her purse again. This time, Tigris drew out her cardboard casing of Capitol Letters prop ammunition blanks. The front door to the condo buzzed loudly.
She quickly reached inside the safe in a hurried panic, removing the case of real bullets. Tigris dumped out eight of the live rounds into her hand- replacing the space left in their case with the identical blanks. Tigris could hear the sound of the apartment's front door opening and slamming shut. Once the prop bullets were tucked into their new case, Tigris swiftly placed the entire bullets back where it had been in the safe next to the silver gun. Her eyes fell on the black notebook. Tigris' hand reached over the gun to snatch up the dark spiral bound book. It entered her hand and was thrust behind her back the same second Vicky was pulling open the door to the walk-in closet proclaiming:
"Here's Auntie Tigris!"
Nerilla stood beside Vicky with a sparking, orange chromatifur trenchcoat in her hand and a suspicious expression across her face.
"Nerilla… is that my coat?" Tigris attempted to play it cool, hiding the notebook behind her back.
"Yes." Nerilla murmured with a restrained leeriness, then, her own sense of performance switched on: "Well- almost. I can't work with this fabric-" Nerilla held up the chromatifur trenchcoat: an unjoined seam at the collar of the front and back panels creating a cavity between. "It's just going to have a massive pocket in the back, sorry."
"You don't have to apologize…" Tigris quipped with a subdued eye roll, reaching out to take the coat. "I can finish it."
Nerilla passed the trenchcoat to Tigris, the sparkling fabric switching from an orange-red to a white-yellow as it was handed over. Tigris was able to remove the notebook from behind her back and conceal it beneath the flowing drapery of the glowing coat in her arms.
"Miss 'Rilla, can we watch the interviews in my room?" Vicky asked Nerilla, tugging on the skirt of her dark, eggplant purple dress.
"Okay, Victoria." Nerilla nodded, though she was still fixed on Tigris. "Why don't you go get things set up for us in there?"
"Okay!" Vicky gleefully raced out the closet, leaving Tigris and Nerilla in a tense silence. Tigris spoke up after a awkward beat, gesturing to the beautiful, mid-afternoon sky through the bay window of the closet:
"Pretty day, isn't it?"
Nerilla said nothing in response, simply staring at Tigris with a disturbed tension. The coat in Tigris' hand began to glow an even brighter white.
"You're his babysitter now, too?" Tigris asked, putting an emphasis on the, 'too.'
Nerilla shifted to the side a bit, her eyes falling to the ground at Tigris' feet.
"Nerilla…" Tigris whispered at the woman, who's gaze was fixed at Tigris' shoes. "Why is he trying to kill me?"
Nerilla's eyes were still locked on Tigris' feet.
"Do you not like my pumps or something? Yeah, they're from last spring. Answer me." Tigris implored.
Nerilla's voice shook as she did answer:
"There's a few doors… he's trying to close."
Tigris looked down to see Nerilla's gaze set on the door of the safe sitting open directly behind her custom six inch heels.
She lunged at Nerilla as soon as she'd turned to run. Tigris clamped her hand over Nerilla's screaming mouth before she could get the cry out. The coat fell from Tigris' grasp as Nerilla struggled to break free and call out for help. The chromatifur sat crumpled on the ground firing off all colors in a vibrant explosion of hues as the women fought against one another. The notebook was revealed in the scuffle- with Nerilla making a flailing effort to snatch it from Tigris' grasp as soon as she wrestled the hand off her mouth. Nerilla reached out and grabbed at the book, and Tigris instinctively shoved forward to force the object from her grasp. It worked. Nerilla was thrown off balance as her grip slipped from the book. Tigris watched as Nerilla toppled over the cushioned bay window seating, crashed through the glass panes, and plummeted nearly two dozen stories to her death.
