The Non Mortal Games

11: Metallucia: The Secret

I woke up so late the next day that I missed breakfast. Not that I missed an awful lot, from what I heard. Toast and cheap cereal were it for the tributes. I heard that the vampire from District Two had bitten someone's stylist so she could have a proper breakfast of blood. There was still an hour until lunch, so I decided to explore some more.

After getting lost for ten minutes I found myself at the tribute rooms. I could hear some very violent sounds coming from District One's rooms, so I gave them a miss and headed up to Two. Magnus was singing again. The vampire was nowhere to be seen or heard. I listened to Magnus's singing for a bit.

"I'm a neat, sparky warlock guy,
When you do magic the limit's the sky
Sure, it's meant to be 'the sky's the limit'
But hey, it's all the same, innit?

Half demon half human, that's my deal
Ya might not believe it, but yeah we're real
If you're lucky I'll show you a neat little spell
I can do that 'coz my daddy's from Hell"

I honestly didn't know what to think of Magnus's song. Unique, I suppose. That was when the vampire's voice interrupted the song. "His singing's awful, isn't it?"
I didn't know what to say to that. In the end I went with "it's interesting I suppose."
"Whatever-QUIET, MAGNUS!-I'll give you some advice, Shiny. Watch out for Azazel. She's the only thing that'll be a real threat to Magnus and me in the Games. You should've seen what that twisted angel did to her prep team yesterday."
I recalled the unconscious people I had seen the previous day. "That explains a lot, I suppose."
"Well, okay, so I know that other form of yours is all divine silver or something, and that'll hurt anything that's demonic. You're a threat to a LOT of tributes-you might as well be a Career too. But I dunno. Azazel is one mean chick. She won't give you no mercy in the Games, that's for sure."
Something told me that this Azazel would be exactly the kind of person that Magicia would get involved with. I didn't say so however. The vampire might put her at the top of her "Tributes To Kill ASAP" list, and neither Magicia nor I wanted that. I thanked the vampire for her advice and headed upstairs to my floor.

Markus was in his room, eating a baguette. Now where on Earth did he get that from? I thought. He broke it in half and tossed some to me as I sat down on his bed, which was in a terrible state. It looked like he'd had a fight with it in the middle of the night. And lost.
"Where were you at brekky? You were the only person in the whole building that wasn't there," Markus said to me, taking a bite of the baguette.
I took a bite myself. I was quite hungry since I'd missed breakfast. It was a bit cold but it didn't taste too bad. "I slept in," I said, answering his question as I chewed. "Where did you pinch this from?"
"Ummm...well, you know the vampire that bit your stylist? Oh, you missed breakfast so you wouldn't know about that. Silly me."
Wait a minute, I thought. Si was the one the vampire girl bit? I knew she had bitten A stylist, but I didn't know it was mine. Did I feel at all sorry for Si? Not a bit. He was a Capitol snob just like all the other mortals in this building. He was part of the Hunger Games just like all the others. I knew that the Light Sages were supposed to protect mortals, but Capitol people were no better than criminals in my book. I doubt any tribute hated the Capitol as much as I did.

Well, that was all very good, but what exactly did Si getting bitten have to do with how Markus got the food? I asked him about it. "Well," he began, "I used my aura to make a hand and grab it. You know how I can do special things with my aura because I'm half demon? I didn't know I could do that until now. I think my powers have gotten stronger, Metallucia."
Oh. I hoped he didn't figure out the secret I'd been asked to keep from him. I knew exactly why his powers had gotten stronger, and he wouldn't like it. Not at all. "Wow, maybe it would be a good idea to practise that. Who knows what you can do now that you couldn't do before? I might go down to the training room. There's still about half an hour until lunch. Thanks for the baguette, by the way."
"No problem. I might take your advice and practise for a bit. I'll see you at lunch I guess."
I left Markus in his room and walked down the three flights of stairs, thinking about Markus's past. It explained why he suddenly felt stronger than he had before. Saxon and I both knew but we had decided that Markus shouldn't know the truth. He would have grown up hating himself if he had known.

Saxon's father was the leader of a werewolf pack. The Cross pack went around helping non-mortals. Panem's society was rather unfit for non-mortals to live in, especially when they began to suspect that the Capitol knew about the existence of supernatural creatures. Markus had been rescued from an orphanage where he had been forced to live since he was born. He only had thirty days since his arrival to be adopted. If he wasn't adopted within those thirty days, he would have been killed for being non-mortal. The Cross pack got to the orphanage on the last day. They had grabbed him in the middle of the night. Soon after that, the orphanage mysteriously closed. It had been no secret that if a child was suspected of being non-mortal, they would be killed, hidden from prying eyes, if someone didn't deal with them first. Mr Cross had told Saxon and me the story because we were his only non-mortal friends. Even so, Mr Cross had asked us to keep it a secret. Like I mentioned previously, Markus would've hated himself if he'd known that the Capitol was his place of power.