Culling

Part I • Chapter XII

Despite the haughty exterior, Danielle really did appear to be nothing more than a scared little girl. Maybe. I wanted to reach out and pet her hand, but I had a feeling that wouldn't be welcomed. "I don't know what I can do, but I'll try."

"Figure it out." She flipped her hand in the air and I woke up.

☜♡☞

"Hey." A deep voice captured my attention drawing my eyes to sitting area of our bedroom. 

Nathan, North, Silas and Gabriel were lounging around, a film of some kind playing on the large screen television behind them. All four of them were looking at me with various looks of curiosity and worry, and I wondered if I had been saying anything suspicious in my sleep.

Silas had been halfway standing up out of the chair, and sat back down when he saw my eyes on him. Nathan gestured for me to join them at the couches. 

I got up still groggy, wrapped myself in a throw, and sat down on the couch in between North and Gabriel. 

Silas continued, he had been the one to call out to me when I woke up. "Are you ok? We were just about you wake you."

Now they are going to worry because I had psycho dreams. I wondered if I had been doing something strange. Not good. "No, it's ok. I just had another weird dream."

North put his hand on the top of my head. It almost made me giggle because the spread of his hand was massive and the feeling was comforting in a weird way. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I sighed, snapped out of my amusement. "Not right now, maybe later." I needed to change the subject for now. I looked around for a clock but didn't see one. "What time is it? Do you think it'll be ok to go take a bath now?"

After the incident this morning and my confession about showers, I had been worried about what we were going to do about the bathing situation moving forward. There was no way that I wanted to be by myself outside of this room anymore, not even to take a bath. Because of Greg I was too paranoid about being caught alone. Anywhere. Ever. 

I forced myself to stop thinking about it, otherwise I would probably panic.

Breakfast, morning practice and most of lunch had all been finished by the time I got back from my visit with President Hendricks. After his job offer, if you could call it that, and the conversation following where he outlined my new job description, I had been taken on another tour.

This time I was shown to the less than pleasant areas of the building. I shivered slightly as I remembered some of rooms. 

Directly after lunch, Mr Blackbourne had ushered me back into our room. Karen had stopped by our table at the end of the lunch period and informed us that every other day tributes had a free afternoon. Tributes were expected to use that time to spruce up on our physical appearance, do extra training, or catch up on rest and relaxation. It all came down to using this time to make ourselves as impressive as possible to potential sponsors.

It was also during this free time when we were expected to either accept or reject private media interviews. From what Karen told us, our group have been advised to accept one or two interviews during these four weeks in order to make the media friendly towards our group and as individuals. 

Mr Blackbourne said it was up to us if we wanted to talk to a reporter, and so I've been planning on avoiding answering any requests, personally.

Three weeks from the day we had been selected as tributes, begins the final week before the arena opens. It was during that time when every tribute will be sent through a procedure that will rank our chances of survival on a scale of one to ten. Every year the standards and tests change, and no one outside of the examiners know what the actual event entails.