Jeopardy: The Fourth Quarter Quell

Propaganda - Cleo

Cleo

Cyrus' bloodstained hand hovers behind my vision, the exact curl of his fingers, the dirt under his nails. Thank Snow we couldn't see the body. That must have been a horrible way to go, painful and shocking and...and I shouldn't be thinking about this, because all that will happen is that my thoughts will end up on Massey instead. How did he die? Did he see it coming?

Of course he did. You have to see death coming here, or you're not human. It's just the exact moment it leaps at you to sink its teeth in that you can't see.

And Tyra. I never knew her, but she seemed alright. Honest, hardworking, the kind who gets by well in Six. Never on the bad side, always enough to eat. A messanger girl for one of the supervisors; Massey told me that's how they met but didn't expand any more. It was in the past and they're both dead now; does it matter?

The last time I saw them was on the podiums, wrapped around each other and oblivious to the conversation between the tiny little shred of a girl from Eleven and her brother, paying no attention to the dreaded countdown or the shivering boy from Thirteen on their other side. The next I saw of them was the picture in the sky, and the memory of it still feels raw. I don't think it'll ever heal.

Every cannon is a reminder that someone I shared the training room with is dead. Every face in the sky is another family in mourning, another sacrifice carried out to the full, complete. When will mine be done?

And what are we being sacrificed for, anyway? Peace and security? Show me some. Nobody even dares to think it but it's obvious; the Games are the clincher. Anger runs higher as reaping day approaches, instead of simmering as it does the rest of the year. The Capitol should see what every citizen of the districts must; the Games are no longer working to subdue but are now building up kindling, ready to burn again.

But how many more innocents have to die before it explodes?

Volt breaks away from Ginger's support and crouches with his hands covering his face, shoulders shuddering. With Cyrus gone his bravado is shattered and all his energy seems to be seeping out of him. I can't even begin to imagine what he's feeling. Loss, fear, guilt. Before, he looked like a boy who'd never known guilt. Not who'd never done anything worth being guilty about, but who had never felt it. Him and Cyrus' stories of Five mostly revolve around the pair of them running amok, weaking rungs in ladders or hiding hard hats, health and safety terrors. The Capitol is big on health and safety. In the factories huge posters glare down, men and women paraded as examples under the slogan 'Putting the bread in Panem: every worker feeds a nation'. They must have similar, if not the same, in Five.

Putting the bread in Panem: every worker feeds a nation. The more you think about it, the less sense it makes.

Then again, workers are for working, not thinking.

Juddering noises emerge from the huddle that is Volt. Ginger crouches next to him, an arm around his shoulder, muttering softly. If anybody can survive here, Ginger can. Somehow the days haven't drained him, and whereas my empty stomach sucks the energy from my limbs and makes my head swim, he only looks more alive than he ever did back home. The only time he's even looked slightly concerned is when Volt had come to his senses enough to complain about hunger.

"As soon as we see something to catch, we'll eat," he promised.

But there hasn't been anything. Right on cue, my stomach lets out a roar. Ginger looks up at me, face tipped into the rain. Splashes of mud decorate the hems of his combats but the mud he's smeared on his face and hair is running away, brown trickles tracking down his neck and arms. His hair is already forming itself into thin, wet curls clustered around his ears. Volt's spikes have been completely flattened.