“Drown it?” I guess Wyatt was right about the arena being wet. “How?”
“The arena has the capacity to drown itself. Creating the tribute ecosystem requires electricity, plumbing, heating, cooling, ventilation, everything your house would have,” says Beetee.
“My house doesn’t have half those things. Does yours?” I ask. “I live in the Victor’s Village now, so yes, it does.”
We have a Victor’s Village in 12, too. A dozen fancy houses you get to live in for the rest of your life if you win the Games. Burdock and I used to steal over there and peek in the windows on a summer’s night. In the moonlight, we could see enough to tell they had furniture and hanging
lights and bathtubs like the ones here. The village was built after our lone victor, though, so no one’s ever lived in it.
Beetee continues. “My point is that, for at least a few weeks, the arena has to be capable of sustaining the tributes and supporting the set pieces. I haven’t seen the plan for the actual arena, but over a year ago, they had me look over the Sub-A design. In the northern part of the arena, there’s an
enormous water tank that sits just below the surface. Arenas can require a lot of water to sustain lakes, create rainstorms, quench fires. This reservoir seems especially large.”
“Then if the computer is the brain, this would be the bladder,” I say.
He laughs a bit. “Yes. Exactly. And once the bladder has ruptured, it will flood the brain, leaving it inoperable.”
My brain’s starting to get flooded as well. “But . . . if I can’t reach the brain, how will I reach the bladder?”
“Throughout the arena, there are hatches that connect the surface to the utility corridors below. You’ll enter through one yourself. The hatches are used by the Gamemakers to introduce elements into the arena. You’ll access the utility corridors by way of a mutt portal.”
“A mutt portal,” I repeat.
“Yes. The plans showed dozens of these. It must be a mutt-heavy program.”
I try not to think about the weasels. “Okay, so I find a mutt portal, climb down to the utility corridor . . .”
“Locate the tank and blow a hole in it, releasing the water. Gravity should take care of the rest. It will naturally flood Sub-A.”
I feel overwhelmed. “Okay, hold on. This is a lot. How am I supposed to blow a hole in the tank? Are you sending me in there with explosives?”
“It won’t be just you. You’ll have Ampert.” At the mention of his son’s name, his voice catches and a spasm of pain crosses his face.
“This plan sounds . . . pretty dangerous,” I venture. “Maybe I can do it without him.”
For the first time, his agony breaks through his restraint. “They reaped him to kill him, Haymitch! To punish me! I can think of no realistic scenario in which he does not die. I can only hope that his death is quick and not in vain.”
I know he’s right. Even without this wild plot to break the arena, Ampert’s marked for death, like me. If the Careers don’t take him out, the Gamemakers will. “I’m so sorry. I’ll try to look out for him in there.”
“Don’t let him suffer,” whispers Beetee. “I’ll do my best,” I promise.
“That’s a great comfort to me. Thank you.” He wipes his glasses and settles them firmly back in place. “So, do you know how to use
explosives?”
Oddly enough, I do a bit. We have classes in coal produc-tion. Dull as dust usually. But since we’re the future miners of Panem, they do show us how coal gets mined, which can involve placing explosives in a hole in the rock, inserting a blasting cap with a length of fuse attached, and then lighting it. We practice this with fake stuff. Inert, they call it. The real stuff can kill you.
“I know the basics,” I say. “For the coal mines. But where am I going to get the fuse and —”
“We’re working that out now. How to smuggle the materials past security. But unlike the components used in your mines, which as I’m sure you know can be deadly, I have specifically designed these to be safe. Both chemically and structurally. They cannot be set off unintentionally by you or anything else. To set them off, you will need to fully assemble the bomb correctly and light the fuse with fire.”
That makes me a little calmer. I don’t need a blasting cap exploding on me before it’s time to blow a hole in the tank. My fingers find my flint striker. Lenore Dove’s voice floats in from the Meadow. “Only you don’t have to have flint. Any decent sparking rock like quartz will do.”
“Will there be rocks in there, do you think? Flint or quartz?” I ask. “Possibly. I can try to find out. Why?”
“If there are, I can handle that last one.” I lift my chin and display my gift. “Flint striker.”
Beetee looks impressed. “Very clever. Never underestimate Twelve, as I always say.”
“You do?” Be nice if someone said something approving about us for a change.
“I do. You don’t think like the rest of us. You’ve done a better job of holding on to yourselves, despite the Capitol.”
“They think we’re animals, so that helps.”
Wiress appears, startling us. “You better finish. A repair crew just pulled up out front. It could be any time now.”
“More to come. Don’t tell anyone what we’ve discussed.” Beetee vanishes in the dark.
“Best get to bed,” Wiress instructs me.
I return to my watch in the bedroom. After a few minutes, the power surges back with a gush of chilled air and a constellation of lights. A jumble of Beetee’s instructions fills my brain. What did I just agree to? Mutt
portal . . . bladder . . . explosives . . . ? How on earth am I going to pull that off? Doubt consumes me. Probably I should just be the fire maker and Ampert should set the explosives. But does he have the physical strength to
manage the mutt portal and the climb? And what if I do pull it off? What if I break the arena?
How Lenore Dove would love it if she knew I’d bested the Capitol and stopped the Games, at least for this year. There’s glory in that. Dignity. And if I did it using her flint striker? It’d be like we did it together. Painted a poster that no one could ignore. Outsmarted the Capitol and forced their citizens to see us as something other than mindless animals.
“Haymitch?” Maysilee stirs. “I’ll take over now.”
“Okay, thanks.” She doesn’t sound drowsy. Either she woke with a start or she’s never been asleep.
“Everything all right?” she asks.
I wonder if she saw me leave and tried to overhear my conversation with Beetee, but I can’t talk about it. The fewer people who know about the plot, the better, and while I like her more in the Capitol than I did in 12,
we’re not exactly confidants.
“Well, there was a power outage, but they seemed to have fixed it,” I tell her. “’Night.” Curling up in my blankets, I pretend to drift off until I actually do.
In the morning, I find myself tempted to share Beetee’s plan with the others. Doesn’t feel honest not to. Lou Lou’s enough of a distraction to keep me from blurting it out. We decide the simplest way to manage her
appearance is to pretend that while the Capitol miraculously managed to patch Louella up, she’s no longer right in the head. We’re counting on none of the other tributes having spent enough time with her to distinguish the difference between our real Louella and her body double.
Lou Lou’s gone from averting her eyes to watching us constantly, as if she’s trying to piece together a puzzle. She tugs on her ear a lot, which
makes me wonder if it hurts, because that’s what Sid used to do when he had an earache. When she goes to the bathroom, Wiress says, “I think she has an audio implant. Probably a two-way transmitter.”
“Why?” asks Wyatt.
“So they can tell her what to say. Direct her behavior.” “Hear what she hears,” says Mags.
She doesn’t have to explain the ramifications of that. Don’t tell Lou Lou any secrets. There’s a flip side to that, though. We can gain an
advantage by telling her lies. During the Dark Days, the Capitol spied on us with jabberjays, mutts that looked like regular birds but could record the rebels’ conversations and play them back word for word. We figured this out and fed them false information. The Capitol released the jabberjays at
the end of the war, thinking they’d die off, which they did, but not before they’d sired a whole new species by mating with female mockingbirds,
creating Lenore Dove’s precious mockingjays. Now I guess Lou Lou is our own little jabberjay.
When we join the other Newcomers in the gym, Lou Lou draws some questioning looks, but they seem to buy that she’s our girl, only brain- damaged. None of them knew Louella or had more than a passing look at her, after all.
“You have to be careful what you say around her,” Maysilee warns them. “She’s not herself, and might repeat it to anyone.”
When we break up to practice, Wyatt agrees to take her. Which is helpful, as I don’t need a jabberjay at the moment.
Ampert catches my eye and we shake off the rest of the group. I don’t know how much Beetee has told him about the arena plot. But before I can broach that, he says, “My father says we need to get Nine to join our
alliance.”
We spot the yellow-clad tributes nearby at the shelter-building booth. “Any specific reason why? I mean, Five and Eleven are still uncommitted, and they look a lot stronger.”
“He just said they were essential. I tried the first day, but they brushed me off. I wonder if they think I’m stuck-up.”
“You? Why would they think that?”
“Because I’m from Three. Because I know the tech stuff, maybe.
Nine’s in the fields a lot. I don’t think they get much schooling out there, and everybody knows we do. People call us eggheads.”
“Egghead’s not so bad.”
“It’s not a compliment. Anyway, I couldn’t get anywhere with them.
They’re not big talkers.”
Like my pa, I think. He was plenty smart, just didn’t feel the need to share every thought that traipsed through his brain. Nor did he much trust people who did. A lot of the miners are like that.
“I’ll give it a shot,” I tell Ampert. “Why don’t you have another go at Eleven?”
Halfway to the booth, Maysilee intercepts me. “What’s going on?”
This could mean one of several things, especially if she was eavesdropping last night. I decide to play it straightforward. “Just going in for Nine.”
“Do they need help with their tokens?”
We turn to assess their token situation. They each wear a necklace of braided grass with a fist-sized sunflower hanging from it.
Maysilee answers her own question. “Oh, my word, yes. Those are hideous. But you have to give them credit for trying, poor things. I guess salt dough clay’s all they could get their hands on.”
I know the stuff. Once, over at Burdock’s, his ma mixed up some
white flour, salt, and water into dough, and all us kids made little animals and stars and things. Too wasteful for my family, but the Everdeens could afford it on account of being hunters and having a little more disposable income. Nothing like the Donners, though.
“Yeah,” I say, “I guess they ran out of gold.”
Maysilee starts for 9, but I step in front of her. “Stop. We need them, Maysilee. And I can’t risk you insulting them when you think you’re being helpful. Anyway, their tokens aren’t so bad. Just kind of . . .” I struggle to describe the lumpy, overly bright yellow flowers.
“Gaudy. Clunky. Shoddy.”
“Uh-huh. And that’s why I’m going in alone.”
She shrugs and walks away, but not far. Just to a nearby food- preparation booth. Skinning squirrels, making bread on your campfire coals, roasting stuff on a stick. Like we’re all going to a cookout.
I get to the shelter booth in time to participate in a session with the four District 9 tributes. I can’t help thinking about what Mags said, that we’ll likely be on the move. But maybe I can throw something together quick in a rainstorm.
While this booth isn’t dedicated solely to tarps, they’re certainly featured. You can make a shelter by tying one between trees. Or tying a
rope between trees, draping the tarp over it, and anchoring your tent with rocks. Or finding a fallen tree, leaning branches against it, and covering it with the tarp. Or building an A-frame from branches and throwing the tarp over it. Two tarps? Use one for the floor. If there are no tarps in the arena, they’re going to have some mighty disappointed tributes.
Other tips include using your weapon, preferably an ax or a knife, to cut brush and branches, and finding a flat surface to build on so if it rains, the runoff doesn’t soak you.
We’re supposed to work alone, so we each get a tarp and have at it. A half dozen upright posts and a thick column lying on the floor stand in for trees. I build a tent by fastening a rope between trunks and arranging a tarp over it, while quietly observing District 9. Their faces still healing from their last sunburn from home. Their calloused, capable hands. Their lean, muscled arms. Their quiet efficiency. Even without Beetee’s directive, I can see they’d make good allies.
Just as I’m joining a couple of them at the rock pile, who saunters up but Panache. He’s all full of himself, grabbing a tarp and some sticks —
like he’s even been at the lesson — and taking over the middle of the fake forest. The instructor frowns, because she automatically hates him, too, and I can feel District 9 shifting, so he’s not directly in any of their sight lines.
I ignore him, carry my rocks back to my site, and start pinning the tarp edges to the ground. Panache singles out the biggest guy from 9, since, of course, he thinks he’ll be their leader, and corners him against the fallen log. “We’ve been thinking about letting you guys join the Career pack.”
The guy’s face shows no emotion. “No.”
Not “No, thanks” or “No for now but we’ll talk it over.” Just a flat, definitive “No.” Then he goes back to laying branches against the log.
This doesn’t land well with Panache, who clearly thinks he’s offered them the moon. “No?” He takes a threatening step toward the guy, then
notices a Peacekeeper, hand on his taser, and stops. “What’re you looking at?” he says to the smallest girl from 9, who’s not looking at him, just making a bed from pine needles. She refuses to meet his eye, which makes him nuts. He snaps, “Fine. We’ll kill you first, then!” Stepping forward, he yanks her sunflower from its grass braid and hurls it to the floor. The token shatters into a dozen pieces. Panache plows into the crowd before the Peacekeeper can respond.
A small, pained cry escapes the girl’s lips as she crouches over the bits. The sunflower mattered, I think, even more than being her last handful of home. I bet someone close to her made it. Her ma or pa? Her sister or
brother? Someone she loves. They made it to protect her and remind her how precious she is, to give her something to hold on to at the end, if the
unthinkable happened and her name got called at the reaping. And now it’s chunks of salt flour dough dabbed with yellow paint. The other tributes from 9 gather around her, viewing the wreckage as silent tears roll down her cheeks.
I don’t know what to do. I wish I could comfort the girl, but I don’t even know her name. And I can hardly make my move now, even if Beetee says 9 is essential. I’m racking my brain when sud-denly there’s Maysilee, kneeling across from the girl, mixing up some white gooey stuff on a leaf with a twig. She doesn’t ask permis-sion, she just carefully arranges the broken pieces into their original form, then begins to smear goo on the
edges and glue the sunflower back together. And all of 9 just stands there, speechless, letting her.
I notice a little piece of yellow by my boot and retrieve it, then cross to add it to the sunflower puzzle. Squatting down next to Maysilee, I ask, “What is that stuff?”
“It’s glue. I made it with flour and water and salt from the food booth.
It’s the best I could do.” She addresses the girl. “After it’s mended, you’ll have to be very careful with it, since I couldn’t heat this up. Maybe your mentor can find you some proper glue at the quarters, but for now this should hold.”
The girl wipes her tears and nods. Given the lack of communication, I take that as an opening. “That a sunflower?” She nods again. “I love those things. My ma tries to grow them in the garden every year. Guess yours are finer, though, with all that sun you have in Nine.”
There’s a pause long enough to make me think I’ve failed, when she quietly offers, “We have big fields of them.”
“Yeah? Bet that’s a pretty sight.” I spend a minute as if contemplating it. “My girl back home? She sings a song about sunflowers. An old-timey
song.” Since the four tributes look somewhat interested, I give it a go, even though it’s a little weird.
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the travellers journey is done.
Okay, maybe too weird. Maysilee has her lips pressed tight together, like she’s trying not to laugh. Nothing from the rest of the group. Ampert’s right, these Niners are not a chatty crew. I forge on. “Well, it sounds better when she sings it.” The girl laughs a bit, but not mean. “I’m Haymitch, by the way. And she’s Maysilee.”
“Kerna. You’re with Ampert.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say, like it’s been the farthest thing from my mind. “A bunch of us are teaming up. Calling ourselves the Newcomers.” I don’t
reissue the invitation to join. Let them come to us.
“He asked us, too,” Kerna says. “We said we didn’t want to.”
“I said the same at first, then I thought, many hands make light work.”
Okay, thanks for that homey aphorism, Mamaw. I’m worried it sounds idiotic given the circumstances, but they all think it over.
“There,” says Maysilee, fitting the last piece in place. Looks good as new. She reknots the grass braid and carefully places it around Kerna’s neck. “Remember, see if they can get you some real glue at the apartment and reinforce it.”
“Thank you, Maysilee,” says Kerna.
The instructor tells us we have to make room for a new group. We’re running out of conversation anyway. I know if they’re reconsidering, they’ll have to discuss it before they accept.
Maysilee and I join District 11 at the knot-tying booth, where I
struggle with my square knot while she replicates everything they show her on the first try, even the snares. “Now you’re just showing off,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Yes, I’m sure the Careers are quaking in their boots at my clove hitch. Let’s go throw some axes.”
At lunchtime, without another word, the four baby chicks from District 9 sit among us. Ampert has brought in 11 as well. We’re now eight districts strong. At the far end of the bleachers, the orange-clad District 5
has teamed up with the Careers. The lines are drawn. They’ve got more trained fighters, but we outnumber them two to one. Wyatt can barely contain himself as he calculates the odds. The Gamemakers buzz with this new development, gesturing at us, deep in conference, factoring the dual alliances into the Games.
When we’ve finished our sandwiches, District 12 reunites at the edible-food section, which seems heavy on the poisonous mushrooms. Lou Lou keeps sticking them in her mouth, confounding the trainer.
“I don’t know what she’s going to do in her private session with the
Gamemakers,” Wyatt says. “But I guess they won’t be expecting much. Not sure what I’m doing either.”
“You’re an expert on the Games, what with your oddsmaking and all. You could talk about that,” Maysilee suggests. “It’s more impressive than anything I’ve got.”
“You should show them all the things you can do with a piece of
cord,” I tell her. “You underrate it because it’s easy for you, but I think it’s pretty impressive.”
“Hm, it’s a thought. At least it would make me unique. What are you going to do, Haymitch? Throw knives?”
“I could, I guess. Or axes.”
Everyone’s sent back to their respective locker rooms while the Gamemakers begin the private sessions. This will be our last chance to influence how they score us for the general public. Heavy Peacekeeper
presence monitors the tension between the Careers and the Newcomers, but I have to say I feel a lot more secure with my alliance than I did in the shower.
Lucky I’m slated to go last, because I have no idea how to handle the Gamemakers. Surely, they have footage of what went down at the reaping. Me “attacking” the Peacekeeper and being punished with a trip to the Games. And they witnessed my subversive act at the opening ceremonies live. No telling if they know about President Snow’s ultimatum in Plutarch’s library. I’ve avoided thinking about that encounter and how he threatened me with a slow and agonizing death for my loved ones to
witness at the Games opening. I’m not planning to do anything else to call him out before the Games begin, now that I’m part of the plot to break the machine, and I can only hope that will keep me alive long enough to carry out my part of the plan.
So, what can I show the Gamemakers that will reassure them that I’m now harmless to the Capitol? A dramatic shift to being a compliant tribute will be hard to sell. Another wrinkle is Lou Lou. They must know that I
know she’s a fake. Especially since Louella mattered enough for me to carry her lifeless body to the president.
Maybe she’s the key. Maybe I can say that Louella was the one thing I cared about protecting in the Games and now I’m all about myself . . . that I’m using the alliance for one purpose and one purpose only . . . that I’m determined to win these Games and get back to the girl I risked everything for and the family I had a touching good-bye with. I’ll convince them I want to be the first tribute from 12 to live in the Victor’s Village. I’m just a punk kid who tried to escape the Peacekeepers, confronted Snow, and spat on the audience for good measure. A guy who’s only out for himself. This is the one way I might be able to sell myself to the Gamemakers without rousing suspicions about my greater ambitions. To paint myself as a selfish troublemaker who’s determined to get home and live out his life as a rich and famous victor.
The gym’s deserted when I walk out, my footsteps echoing off the walls, except for the neat rows of Gamemakers in their bleachers. The Head Gamemaker, Faustina Gripper, a short, ample woman with close-cropped
metallic silver and gold curls, is distinguished by the purple fur collar on
her snowy robe. She appraises me, then commands, “Tell us about yourself.”
I cock my head, look her dead in the eye, and say, “I’m Haymitch Abernathy from District Twelve. I shouldn’t be here. I was reaped illegally, but no one cares. My neighbor, Louella McCoy, was the only person here I gave a hang about, but you killed her and brought in a body double. So, that kind of frees me up to win these Games.”
“And what makes you think you can do that? We haven’t noticed that you possess any outstanding skills,” the Head Gamemaker says.
“Really?” I smirk. “Because from where I’m standing, looks like I
came up with thirty-one people who’ve promised to defend me. But maybe that strategy’s a little too subtle for you.”
Her mouth tightens. “And you’re willing to let them die?” “Why not, lady? You are.”
They dismiss me. I’m hoping I pulled off unlikable but focused on winning the Games. If I can score in the midrange, maybe I can still get a handful of sponsors.
On the way out the door, the Peacekeepers collect my token for inspection. I run my fingers over the inscription and press my lips against
the bird before placing it in a little basket marked with my name. It kills me having to let it go, knowing they may tag it as unfair and dispose of it. And
besides the heartbreak, losing it means I will have to find another way to
make fire to carry out Beetee’s plot. On the other hand, it’s the Capitol, and all they may see is a pretty necklace. Either way, my neck feels naked without it.
None of us talk much on the van ride home. After a dinner of roasted chicken and mashed potatoes, we gather around the television in the living room for a special announcement of our individual scores. On a scale of one to twelve, the Careers mostly land in the eight-to-eleven range. With the exception of District 11, who bring in similar numbers, the Newcomers generally manage between four and seven. We’re announced last. Maysilee and Wyatt each get a six, Lou Lou pulls a three.
And me? I get a one.
