Caged | The Hunger Games AU ✓

xxiv. ardor

twenty-four - ardor

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the cannons are more frequent now than ever, which i guess is what the gamemakers want. every booming sound makes me jump and sends a chill down my spine. this is what the games were always supposed to sound like. the air is supposed to be smothered with the sense of death, and now with the tributes coming back to life and needing to be killed once more, it will be twice as horrible.

matthias, emmanuelle, and i sit in her tent with a large piece of paper in the middle of our circle. i don't ask where she got it from. she seems to have everything– even a pencil.

emmanuelle taps the tip on the paper with a determined expression on her face. "let's see what we know about these bastards."

"i noticed the cannons don't go off when you kill them," matthias recalls almost without thought. "maybe because they're already dead?"

emmanuelle nods. "good observation." she leans over and jots a quick note of it in loopy handwriting. "thalia, anything?"

i shrug, thinking back to my fights with carly and bliss. "i mean, they're obviously not the tributes themselves– just clones or something. they're immensely strong and fast, never seeming to get tired. killing seems to be their only intention. and they're getting closer and closer to the real tributes. when we found carly's clone, she didn't make a sound. bliss' actually had her voice."

we sit in the tent for about an hour, sharing our observations and making note of them. emmanuelle is an incredibly fast writer. the pencil moves across the left side of the paper at a quick speed and somehow her manuscript isn't messy in the slightest. she doesn't even seem to pick up her wrist as she writes.

she sits back, moving her shoulder-length dark hair out of her face. "i saw astrid and emrys fighting two at once. the clones or whatever didn't even seem to notice each other."

i purse my lips, pinching my eyebrows. "that's weird. maybe they're designed to only sense when a living tribute is near?"

matthias snaps his fingers as if he has just made an important scientific discovery. "body heat. that's how they can tell."

emmanuelle's eyes sparkle with excitement at this breakthrough and scrawls it onto the paper. i send matthias a smile, to which he quickly returns. the picture of his grinning face sends a flurry of butterflies in my stomach.

"has anyone been keeping track of how many tributes are left?" emmanuelle asks, her brown eyes flickering between the two of us. our smiles drop off our faces and are replaced with troubled looks. matthias and i share an uneasy glance at which emmanuelle sighs. "no? okay."

"i did at first," i explain quickly. "but eventually i got too caught up in trying not to die."

emanuelle nods in understanding. "okay. well, we can start off with the ones we know for sure are gone." the pencil hovers above the paper for a split second before her wrist rests back on it. i wonder why she hesitated, but it isn't my business to ask.

soon the paper is filled up with notes and theories. emmanuelle spins it around so we can read it. i lean slightly forward so i can see it more clearly.

•canons don't go off
•high bloodlust
•clones?
•don't sense other clones - body heat
•no natural needs
- don't get tired
-strong
-fast

•titus
•lana
•cable
•asher
•bliss
•cooper
•nina
•carly
•grover
•cael
•milo
•arley
•khylin
•eve
•maika