A Game Called Revenge ✭ Cato Hadley

Twenty One - Do You See What I See?

"Gloss. Shut up." Cashmere hisses. "I know what's in here and if you don't shut up then we'll all be dead."

"What is it?" Gloss whispers.

"Not so fearless now, are we?" Cato mutters under his breath at the sudden alarm in the other man's tone.

"Everyone just shut up." Cashmere repeats in a low voice. "I had these mutts in my games, and they took out five tributes. They're giant spiders with venom strong enough to paralyse your nervous system and they track you by sound. If they hear us then we're all fucked. No one speak and no one fucking move."

The jungle seems to close in on them, towering trees and tangled undergrowth forming an intricate maze that seems to shift and writhe with invisible, undetectable movement, feeling like it spins even in the absence of vision, images of the pitch black nights in her first arena flooding Clio's mind. She tries to take a deep breath, but nothing enters her lungs and she clutches at her chest as she curls up on herself the best she can. Arms wrapped around her stomach she tries to force air into her lungs. Her jaw clenches as do her fingers, her arms moving to her shins as she hugs her lungs into her body. She hears her breaths start to whistle before she covers her mouth, forehead falling against her knees as she trembles silently.

Tears flood Clio's eyes but she fights her hardest to force them back. She doesn't want to cry and she certainly doesn't want for the light to return and the whole of Panem to find her bawling her eyes out for no reason other than it was dark. That would be embarrassing, she thinks, careers don't cry.

Something awful twists inside Clio's gut, the feeling nauseating and icy - the snowstorm erupting inside her chest a stark contrast to the humidity of the air around her. The sweat on her brow opposite to the ice travelling to her mind, spreading throughout her head as she clenches her eyes shut and wills herself to think of the flashes of paranoia that are contorting the fragments of her memories. It's too dark in this heightened atmosphere to drown away the ghosts of the various tributes in the abandoned city that have come to haunt whatever was left of her mind. Each turn of her head, each sound of a crumbling building, each fabricated sound of footsteps was a glass shard stabbing into her memory like an infinite recurring nightmare that she can't wake up. Sometimes it was the sight of deserted streets in dim lighting, sometimes the taste of slightly rusted water from the busted pipes, sometimes the sound of a cannon blaring through the empty room, sometimes the texture of blood as it drips from her hand, sometimes the brain matter of a thirteen year old girl painting the wall of the cornucopia as multiple weapons split the bones apart.

She lays her cheek against her uncomfortable, bony knees; breathing unsteady, humid air and trying desperately not to look at the bright red dots that threaten her vision. The sound of scratching of the spiders over the leaves and branches makes her skin crawl and infiltrates her brain like a toxin, reminding her of the scurrying of the giant rats. She can see the rodents, almost, painting vivid imagery of the hoards of tribute-eating vermin, with their eyes glowing a bright orange as she scales the sides of buildings, bolting her way up sets of desolate stairwells and out onto barren rooftops; bathing her in true darkness that demanded to constrict itself around her breath. Like a snake wrapping around its prey. Like the hands of the District Ten male squeezing at the flesh of her neck until her bone threatens to shatter like glass.

There was still something inside her - something festering, something evil - and it had been so easy for the gamemakers to bring out that part of her. It had been so fucking easy for Zeus Melia to subject her to her weakness. It had been so easy for him to shatter all sense of control she felt. Her hands run through her hair, as if it would help to soothe her mind, while her movements cause her lucky pendant to fall against her collarbone underneath her wetsuit and remind her of the searing pain she felt when her scar was inflicted upon her.