Into Thin Air: The Forty-Second Hunger Games

Chapter 20

Caine Karpos

The training room was closed for the day. That meant I was loosed upon the Capitol. I had an entire building to explore. The girl from Six had the same idea, since she bolted down the hall as soon as the training room was closed, just like me. The Careers clustered together and headed back to their rooms like a bunch of stiffs.

I didn't know where to go first. There were so many floors. I couldn't even start at any one place because I couldn't decide what floor I even wanted. The building went up and up forever. It was way taller than anything we had in Nine. We didn't even have mountains this high in Nine.

It turned out the building was so big because it had literally everything. There was a shopping mall, a water park, a movie theater, a rock-climbing wall, and an indoor baseball diamond. It would have taken a normal person years to see it all. Me, I could probably see it in a week.

It took a lot to attract my attention in a place like this, and it was hard to focus on anything in particular. But the commotion from the dimly lit enclave tucked to one side was enough to make even me look twice. I poked my head in and saw that Six girl again. She was sitting in some sort of machine, yanking a wheel with both hands and making car noises.

"Hey, what gives?" I asked. She looked up from the screen she was in front of.

"Just racing," she said, still steering without looking.

"You good at it?" I asked.

"I'm the best," she boasted.

"I dunno. I think you look pretty mediocre," I said, like a farmer from Nine would know anything about cars. Especially as much as a girl from Six. But when it came to showing off, my mouth was even faster than my brain.

"You wanna find out?" she asked with a daring grin.

"You bet," I said.

I shouldn't have found out.

Ferrari Benz

Training was a blast. I loved watching the Careers killing it as they practiced on each other. I also loved finding my own weapon and trying my best not to kill myself. That was a difficult prospect for me, since I was me. I looked through the weapons and right away picked the most insane, ridiculous thing imaginable.

They called it a "urumi". Basically it was a whip, which was already the craziest weapon ever. Then whoever made it decided it wasn't crazy enough, so he made a whip out of knives. It was the kind of weapon a chest-thumping weapons nut would make after he took a bet that he could make something crazier than a bolo. The assistant said the hardest part was getting good enough to use it without slashing yourself to ribbons. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

All the same, I was also happy when training was over. I was super excited to explore the Games room and see what sort of cool stuff they had in the Capitol. As soon as the doors were shut, I was off like a shot.

They had all the cool stuff in the Capitol. I tried the rock-climbing wall, the roller coaster that went over the edge of the roof of the building, the trampoline slingshot, and the "corn dogs", which were super good. It was then I saw... the arcade.

Capitolites were crazy. Instead of driving around in the cars they all owned, they made fake cars and put them in front of a computer so you could fake drive. But that was good enough for me. I hopped into a sweet technicolor speedster and provided my own sound effects as I roared down a science fiction landscape.

"Hey, what gives?" the boy from Nine called from the edge of the arcade.

"Just racing," I said.

"You good at it?" he asked.

"I'm the best," I said.

"I dunno. I think you look pretty mediocre," he said.

"You wanna find out?"

Lily White

There were a lot of stations. I tried them all, except the high-profile weapons. I didn't want anyone to think I would attack them. I didn't want anyone to think of me at all. The only things I tried that could be called weapons were snares and darts. Snares were safe because I only made small traps and anyone who looked at me might think I was just trying to hunt. Darts were okay because I didn't actually go to the darts station. A blowgun was pretty i***t-proof- just point and blow. I went to the plants station instead and made a note of any of them that were poisonous to touch. The edible insects station also provided some options.

By the end of the day, I was a jack of all trades. I knew a few things about fire making, shelter building, weaving, navigation, water purification and safety, knot tying, fishhooks and fishing, ropes, camouflage, and body mechanics. I didn't know the second thing about anything, but I knew the first thing about everything.

The thing I wanted to train in most was the one I couldn't do until after training was done. What I wanted more than anything else was to run. I wasn't one of the betting favorites. I wasn't even in the middle of the pack. I was in the back, with Socks and Tillia. The only way I could possibly escape the Bloodbath was by outrunning death. After training was over, I found Orchard and we snuck to a dark corner staircase of the Games building. I didn't want anyone to see I how fast I could run. No one was watching in a place like this.

"Why am I here? There are trainers who know all about running," Orchard said at the bottom of the stairs. I wanted to make things even harder so that running on flat ground would be a breeze.

"They won't be as hard on me," I said. "And you know more about running since you did it for real. Did you do a lot of running in the Arena?"

"I did a lot of chasing," she said, and her voice was far away. Maybe that was why was so hard on me.

Sita Alaya

There likely wouldn't be electricity in the Arena. If there was, I wasn't confident I would be able to utilize it. Tributes had made weapons and machines before, but it took genius. I was good with machines, but I wasn't a genius. I was practical, not theoretical. In an indoor Arena, I could use what was there. In an outdoor Arena, I wouldn't be able to make a robot out of a paper clip and some tin foil like some Tributes could. Either way, I had to focus on something else.

Snares were a lot like machinery. Just like a circuit, a snare had a number of components that each had to work in the correct order. The components were just a lot more basic, and that made them easier to master in a short time. A snare consisted of just a noose, and anchor, and a trigger. They could be made of wire, string, or vines. They could be used anywhere from tundra to desert. They could catch small animals or larger prey.

Snares also solved my biggest problem. I wanted to avoid confrontation in the Arena, but I also wanted to win. I couldn't win if everyone else was still around. With a snare, I could run away while they were dangling.

There were two places a snare loop could snag: the leg or the neck. Hooking a Tribute by the leg meant I could run. But I couldn't run forever. I couldn't avoid confrontation forever. My snares started to change in design as I thought about it. It was simple math. Only one could live. If I wanted to live, all the others had to die. Catching them in snares wasn't enough. My first snares targeted the leg. By the time training was over, I was making snares for the neck.

I now interrupt my story to tell everyone that Lily is sixteen. It's on the Tribute list but it's easy to miss. Maybe that will help her be her own person more.