FAILURE TO COMPLY ┃ f. odair

4.8 the blood mutt

President Snow was a great leader. Calypso knew this because he wasted precious electricity powering the vibrant lights of her torture chamber over giving light to his needy citizens. The lights remained and the beeping remained and her exhaustion remained. All her adrenaline was expended now and she was little more than a husk of her former self. No water or pills had been delivered and nothing had played on the screen. Everything was just empty now. Her heart and her mind were empty.

This was what Snow had wanted all along, to prove that he could strip her down to the bare bones of that unruly beast he claimed her and her kind to be. Not victors, not tributes. Beasts. Mutts. She was the bloodiest of them all. Flecks of dried peacekeeper blood still covered her face. She didn't bother getting rid of them. Even though she couldn't see them, they were the only colour she had left.

Click. The door unlocked, sounding like a gunshot in the utter silence. Calypso lifted her gaze tiredly and waited for one of them to come in and stab her in the neck with something, either to cart her off to Snow or to her death. At least she'd be getting human contact again. She'd take sleeping with all her clients any day over this.

No one stepped through the tiny crack, however. Instead, she was met with a small metallic object clanking against the tiles floor, then the door shut again. It released a pale gas that filled the room quickly, making her body tense and kick into action once more. Calypso held her breath and scooted towards the back side of the door. She believed the peacekeepers were definitely stupid enough to fall for the same trick twice, especially when they expected her to be knocked out.

A man came, much bigger than her but unprepared. She slammed the door against his weight, enough to send him down. She was on the ground in a second, redirecting his gun to his head and letting off two shots that nearly deafened her. She paused for a second as she hovered over his body... dressed in black. The peacekeepers didn't dress in black.

Another soldier entered and she held up the gun defensively. Their clothes were too dark after so long of seeing only white and it made her want to kill them all right then and there. Her lungs burned from the lack of oxygen. She readied her finger on the trigger.

"Calypso, wait!" one of them urged, smaller in stature and holding up both hands in protest, fingers far away from the trigger of her gun. Even behind the distortion of the woman's mask, her voice was familiar. She was hallucinating, she had to be. The madness of sleep and sensory deprivation was finally getting to her.

"Monica?" she voiced. The gas invaded her mouth, her nose, and her lungs. For a moment, she panicked, but her mind was already beginning to slip. The gun slipped too, falling atop the body of the dead soldier.

And Calypso went next.

-

Had she been wrong to do it? Had she been wrong to kill someone else? The thought did cross Calypso's mind as she roused from her long-awaited slumber. It had not been peaceful, flitting between a dark void and dangerous nightmares.

Bright lights were once again burning her eyelids. With a heart thumping wildly, she opened her eyes and took in her new surroundings. Grey walls, hospital equipment, a comfortable enough bed, and a doctor replacing an IV bag connected to her arm. She was weak, but she was not that weak. Whatever they were trying to give her, she did not want or need it.

"No," she mumbled, pulling the tubes away from her skin. The man looked over his shoulder, appearing almost relieved. He came closer, body unblocking another ceiling light. Calypso groaned and closed her eyes again.

"Miss Silva-"

Miss Silva. Miss Silva. She was not Miss Silva. She hated that name now, the way it always rolled off of Snow's tongue like a drop of acid into her ear.

"Don't call me that," she growled, rubbing at her eyes. The brightness would simply not go away.

"Calypso-"

She lunged, pushing the man hard against the far wall. In her still semi-dazed start, her attack hardly landed. Any hatred she held was no longer directed at a single person or group of people but at the world. The world was too bright and too quiet. She wanted to coat white walls with red blood and fill the silence with screams. But the man slipped away before she could take hold of him again. Behind him, she heard the door click with a lock on the other side.

"No!" she shouted. "NO!!!"

Calypso pounded at the door desperately, so tired of moving from place to place. Bed or not, it was still a cell. She was still trapped. Hands gripping harshly at her hair, she tried and failed to collect her quickening breath. How had she gotten here? What kind of prison had they put her in now? Of all people, why had they chosen Monica to taunt her with?

"Monica!" she cried out desperately. A sob wracked her body, bringing with it a new wave of frustration. Her hands swung wildly and pushed all the medical supplies of the nearby countertop. She forced the metal trolley over, threw a chair at the wall, used the IV stand to blow out one of the lights. It was like wrecking her home in Five all over again, except this time she had no family to comfort her in the aftermath, and it was far from being a home. "Monica."

Calypso fell to her knees, holding her hands to her chest and letting herself fall apart. How she wished to be a child again when her biggest problem was surviving one day a year until she turned eighteen. Now, even surviving another second seemed like an impossible feat.

-

Hope was burning brightly in Finnick's heart as he followed Katniss and Haymitch through the hospital doors. They were back. Calypso was closer than she had been in months. She'd endured and come out the other end and he was desperate to see her.

It was Johanna they came across first, bruised and scratched and looking so much frailer than she was before. And yet, she had a sly smirk on her face knowing she'd survived hell and come out the other side. Typical, but he knew her well. The façade would not last long.

"Where is she?" he asked. Johanna did not need to hear a name. Her smirk vanished and she simply nodded in the direction of Monica, unmasked and leaning back against the hallway wall, tired eyes closed.

"Monica," he called out. She turned to the sound of his voice as he quickly approached. "Monica, where's Calypso?"

"In there," Monica said, pointing to a door behind her with two of the returning guards standing outside it. "Just wait, Finnick. She's not herself."

Her eyes drifted over to one of the doctors being treated by another, red laceration marks around his neck. His heart dropped once more.

"What do you mean she's not herself?"