A Game of Loyalties || Coriolanus Snow

Chapter 3

Coriolanus POV

Coriolanus ran a tired hand down his face as he clutched his proposal in his fist. He hadn't gotten much sleep due to his brain replaying Arachne's death on a constant loop and the fact that he had stayed up all night writing his proposal for Dr. Gaul. He pushed open the door of the war department, making a beeline for the front desk. "This is for Dr. Gaul please." Coriolanus said shortly, sliding the folder across the counter to the security official. Once he was sure that it was in good hands, he turned on his heels and left the building.

Valyria POV

Valyria has been at the lab since early this morning doing Gaul's overflow paperwork. The Gamemaker has since been preoccupied since yesterday afternoon's shocking events. An Academy student, Arachne Crane, had been slain by her own tribute. The news headlines ran across the television and the Capitol's citizens were heartbroken and furious. Gaul had been the first to alert Valyria of the loss, calling her to the lab immediately to review surveillance footage.

Late last night, as she sat next to Dr. Gaul, Valyria saw the way Arachne tormented her tribute with food and drink, teasing her like she was a primitive being. She watched in horror as the tribute shattered a glass bottle and plunged it into Arachne's neck. Of course Capitol television didn't show the actual death, but Dr. Gaul always got the complete footage.

Screaming, lots of blood, and... Coriolanus Snow? He was immediately rushing over to help his classmate, kneeled over her on the ground. Valyria could see the shock in his eyes. She watched him duck, collapsing on top of Arachne when the peacekeepers started firing into the cage, killing the female tribute who took Arachne's life with an excessive amount of bullets.

The peacekeepers pulled Coriolanus off of Arachne, his hands stained red from the attempt to stem her blood flow. The desperate look on his face as they drug him away would be hard for Valyria to forget.

Now, as she sat at Dr. Gaul's desk she filtered through file folders, alphabetizing them. A lab official enters Gaul's office and drops a folder off at the desk. "See that this gets to Dr. Gaul." The official says.

Valyria picks up the folder and opens it. Inside is none other than Coriolanus Snow's proposal. His name isn't written anywhere on the paper, only on the folder. Is Clemensia writing a separate proposal? Valyria wonders. It is clear as day that this paper was done by one person alone.

Valyria starts to skim through the paragraphs to see what he's got. The proposal starts out tame, bets in the arena, food and water for tributes, and better transportation on the way to the Capitol. Valyria was surprised that he seemed to be wanting to make the tributes living conditions better up until their death.

But then it gets weird. His ideas are so detailed and elaborate, but have no traces of empathy whatsoever. Purely approached from a strategic standpoint. Valyria starts to think that perhaps he left his opinion out, to eliminate bias, but it's becoming very apparent that he has a strong opinion the more she reads.

The worst thing about his ideas is that they're perfect. Every detail is worked out by him, right there on paper, so Dr. Gaul has to do as little thinking as possible. They're cruel, some of them. 

But so intelligent. Valyria hasn't ever seen an Academy student write like this.

The words are so fine and neat and not a single strikeout on any of the pages. She wonders if it took him many times to rewrite the paper perfectly, or if he did in on the first go. She knows there's no way he would have had time to rewrite it, so it has to be that he did it perfectly on his first try.

There's ideas she agrees with, and others she's forced to admit make sense, even if they are radical.

More complex arenas, enhanced Gamemaker interference, and training facilities; all to make the games new and exciting every year. It was frightening. Even the ideas that seemed beneficial to the tributes were really only ruses to get more Capitol attention. Gifts in the arena would force sponsors to participate, to spend time and thought choosing who to donate to.