Finnick's Games - The 65th Hunger Games

Chapter Three

The train seems to be gliding across the water. Rising out of this - river? Lake? - is a towering silver city, glassy and pristine. Shapes I didn't know you could make buildings out of decorate the cityscape: huge metallic spheres, a golden pyramid topping a skyscraper like a spike, colossal whisps and belts of silvery material reaching up into the sky. There's smaller buildings too - we're zipping past them now - in pastel pinks and patterned cladding. Vivid-green parks dotted with trees that look like candy; shopfronts with holographic signs, selling things I've never even heard of: bustier tops and rhinoplasty and macarons. And the people; though we're zooming past them, I can see a chartreuse cape here, a lofty crimson hairstyle there. Powdered - and unusually puffy - faces turn up to watch the train as it drifts through the city. There's some pointing, some exclamations. Realization that a new pair of tributes is entering the Capitol.

When we pull into the station, we're met with a riot. Not the violent kind - though it might as well be. Hundreds of Capitol citizens squashed up against each other, holding small metal devices like cameras. Their faces warped with excitement, animated eyes blinking behind spiky colorful curtains of what can only be false eyelashes. One man has a completely bedazzled face; another sports a ridiculous handlebar moustache in neon yellow.

"This way!" 

Lucinda Pont beckons to the four of us from down the corridor. When we gather in front of her, she fussily pushes Adella's curls around, straightens my top and tells Hector his grin is alarming. Then she clasps those thin bejeweled hands at her heart and says, "I do hope it is everything you've imagined." She turns to the door, where a train attendant has been waiting patiently to command it open. "The cameramen will follow us from right here until when we're in the vehicle. Everyone's showmanship should be in full bloom. Remember, posture." She directs this last sentence at Mags, which I don't think is fair since Mags is an old woman and a straight back is likely a thing of the past. Mags meets my eyes, wordlessly gesturing to her mouth. Smile.

If it were Hector giving me this order, I probably would refuse. Smiling, at this time, feels similar to lifting forty-pound weights with the corners of my mouth. But something about Mags makes me want to trust her. So when the door opens and we're swarmed by these strange, fragrant people, I return as many of their beaming expressions as I can. At one point I even laugh when someone begs me for an autograph. The five of us are like a squadron, soldiering through battle. The cameras spinning around our group, consistently pinned on my face. I hope they don't pick up the onsetting panic behind my smile. 

"Oh, you're already famous!" Gushes Lucinda Pont once we're in the car, as though we've been dealt a hand of winning cards.

***

A solid glass elevator glides upwards and stops on the fourth floor of the Training Center, letting us spill out into a glossy gray-stone foyer. Lucinda Pont delights herself with showing Adella and I around. "These are the District 4 quarters - all to be used to your disposal during your stay in the Capitol." She leads us through the apartment, which seems to take up an entire floor of the building. It's never ending. She's babbling on about the quartz tabletop in the dining area, what a pain it was to import the crystal light fixtures, how the brutalist structure of the building offers a blank slate for the "nov-ter design style the Capitol enjoys today". Our escort is in the midst of explaining why certain structural beams are clad in paper-thin lapis lazuli when I realize that, hell, I don't care. There's other things I could be doing with my time right now. Like crying in the shower, or launching myself from the window.

"You sure know a lot about architecture." I say.

"You'd hope so," says Hector, appearing in the room, "she built this place."