The Capital Games

Chapter 14 {THE SECOND NIGHT}

The city looked so different at night. The usual gray, colorless city was near dead, no movement besides the constant snow gently drifting from the sky and onto the streets of the arena. The city was quite massive but with only twenty people in it, it was near impossible to find a trace of life. If it weren't for the periodic brutal teenage bloodshed it could be described as incredibly peaceful. But at night, everything would change. The lifeless city would light up, each building illuminated with the brilliant colors that the capital was so familiar with. Each street was lined with a myriad of different colored lamps and the snow laden streets provided a perfect canvas for the strange colors shined on them. It was quite a magnificent sight to see, whenever the night descended into the arena it was as if the city erupted in a brightly lit carnival that was never attended. Strobe lights shot onto apartments, blue spotlights were shone into the clouds, and projections of a red starry sky were placed onto the sides on the cathedral parallel to a still smouldering pile of ashes.

Merla Nik sat currently in a small apartment building in the corner of the arena, a small box like structure surrounded by a grove of trees. Each tree in the park was covered in thousands of small twinkling lights that every few seconds would change colors. Merla watched them from out a window of a large bedroom that overlooked the front entrance of the building. She kneeled on a red velvet bed cover her head resting on the high window sill. There was a gentle breeze that ran through merlas dark braids and rustled the glimmering leaves of the trees below her. She watched as the colors shifted with the order of the rainbow. Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Purple. Then back to red. It was quite relaxing. She had found a bed amongst the hundreds of empty buildings in the arena- many of which had tricked her into thinking she had found shelter earlier that day. The walls of the squat , silver building made her feel quite protected, even safe.

She knew it was idiotic to let herself feel this way. One should never feel safe in the games. The moment everything felt right was usually the moment when something horrible was about to happen. And yet she couldn't help but let herself sink into the mattress of the bed and let all of her problems melt away. To let the stress of this world start to drift away until she was truly at peace. She knew this was dumb, no one ever got true peace once their name was picked from the bowl.

Merla stared at the window admiring the relaxing beauty of the trees until something caught her eye. There was movement, a clear rustling of the branches that was much harsher than a gentle breeze. Merla sat there wide eyed, her heart beginning to speed up. She sat still, not moving a muscle as she stared at where she saw the trees move. She wondered what it was. Was it an animal- a bird of some kind? She had seen no animals in the arena at this point, in fact nothing quite seemed edible. The buildings had no trace amount of food, there were no edible plants, no animals and no food in the cornucopia. Even the snow was strange tasting, edible enough but there was something wrong with it. Every time she had tried tasting it her whole mouth seemed to be filled with a string metallic tang. It was as if someone had mixed battery acid into it. Maybe animals only came out at night. But what of water? The tributes wouldn't last long without it.

Merla decided to go check it out. So she got off the bed, her boots hitting the bamboo floors were soft thud. She grabbed her jacket from the bed and slipped it on, not bothering to zip it up. Merla found it to be quite warm actually, it's furry insides were quite comfortable and yet its streamline fit was quite athletic. She slowly walked out of the room she was in and through the apartment until she came upon the door to the hallway. She quickly slipped into it, hearing the door softly click behind her. Dammit, it locked? She grabbed the handle and tried turning it, unable to move it.' Why hadn't it locked before' Merla wondered as she proceeded to down the hall, the thick blue carpeting absorbing the sounds of her footsteps. She continued to the end of the hall, filing her way into a dimly lit stairwell. Something didn't feel right. She heard another door lock behind her. She continued down the stairwell, the light behind her turning off as she went, as if the building knew she would never need to see it again. Something was definitely up.