error loading tribute's freedom [sierra + maryn]

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

I saw an opportunity and I took it. Theft is not a part of my morale grounds, but someone stole my parents so swiping the odd misplaced touchscreen tablet is going to do no harm? It looked lost so maybe I just found it. Now I am back to being eleven and yelling finders keepers to the other kids that dropped their gumballs in the hallways of the orphanage.

I have had the tablet for about three hours now. It is comfortably tucked away in my bedroom, there was a tracking device screwed into the side of it. That is now enjoying a wild ride through the sewage system. Its display is a continuously updated dashboard of the tribute’s training stats. I even have my own section, with a few uncalled-for comments on my lack of physical strength but that is all I can see. Not one single back door to knock on or a peeping hole to help me crawl through to the network and find the database that I hope exists.

Back home, I work three days a week for a tech manufacturer. Building equipment just like this and loading basic software too it. I guess the Capitol does not want us simpletons being the ones to build their firewalls and secure databases, but I am a quick learner of languages, I just need to get the battering ram out.

Everything is quiet in the District Three accommodation as I slide and tap the screen while sat on my bed, knees tucked up tight to my chest. Is this room experiencing a déjà vu? If I turned back time, would Bellamy be sat just like this right now, magnifying glass at his eye while he sieves through the fine details? I have not found a single hint or clue left behind by Bellamy. I guess he never thought one of us would follow him. I hope none of them follow me. I must make sure that I am the one that cracks the case. The one that halts so many more that are due to walk through the house’s door, a fresh-faced orphan. Over a decade and I have welcomed so many on the monthly check in day.

There is an application on the tablet, notes, surely nobody is that stupid?

Administrator access username and password:

EuniceDudley

14MTHEBESTtrainer

Wow, they really have made this easy. Maybe the administrator access to the training score system will give me a key to the network? They will just think I am a trainer, going about their business, surfing the internet waves.

I type in the account details, and it takes a few moments for the next screen to load. Watching the spinning blue circle of death is excruciating. This could mean nothing. This could mean everything. But everything is a worth a try while the timer is running out of sand.

Network connection lost.
Connect to the network?
Yes No

”Yes!”

The device has not made a sound since I found it but now a robotic voice rings through the speakers.

Voice recognition unrecognized. Try again.

”Yes?”

Error! Error! This device has been reported as lost. System shut down.

The screen explodes, the error message repeating and repeating on the screen. I hit the power switch before sliding the tablet across my bed. It will mean nothing. They can’t track it here. Maybe I should slip it back somewhere in the training center. Nobody will know…

But that is another door slammed shut. There is not a trail in sight. The answers are slipping away and soon so will my life.

Kiah.

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

Time kind of blurs after they tell her what's happening.

One moment she's scrubbing her face with her evening moisturizer, applying perfume to her wrists as if there's some secret entity she's trying to court, finishing off a vodka shot — beautiful, bloodshot eyes glaring up at a stuttering intern. "Speak clear. You're already one strike in." She stands to meet him on his level, staring a dagger into his skull, splintering marrow into dust. If you strike hard enough, you can erase a person.

"No one ever teach you how to knock? Don't come to me for lessons on manners, you won't survive it." Looking back at her vanity, she's just in time to watch the rage rip across her expression as the boy finally says the words with a frightened, albeit even tone. "One of the girls from Three, Sierra Bordeaux, got her hands on a trainer's tablet. She managed to bypass security, and now the firewall has caused a system blackout. The entire statistics board is down."

The air seems thinner in the room, but she doesn't gasp for breath. Her muscles tense, mind racing with the overload of new information, honing in on the hot fire pulsing through her chest. When her lips finally part, a fool could mistake her voice for calm. "What?" She waits for admittance of a joke that never comes, shoving past the frazzled lackey with the force of her elbow. Storming down the hallway, bypassing a few security codes of her own.

"I'll solve this problem myself." Elevator doors close around her, descending straight for the third floor, a cold rush of adrenaline mixing with the fire running through her veins. In a matter of moments, heels clicking against marble, a door is being slammed shut behind her — and then, finally, she has the culprit caught in her unflinching gaze. "Let's not cut corners, you and I. We both know how smart you are."

She strolls casually into the room, treating the space like it belongs to her. "You've been busy. Playing a little game, distracting yourself from the cold truth that in a few days time, I'll be sending a wolf to rip your throat open." She says the words like they cost her no personal toll, like this is not a threat, simply a promise. A guarantee. "You are my property. A guest in my home, playing with my things. A prisoner who seems to have forgot her place."

Another step closer, sheer dominance rolling off of her in heat waves — Maryn snatches the girl's red hair between her fingers, pulling her close. "It's your turn to speak now. What do you have to say for what you've done?" As much as she resents the concept of religion, it's hard for Maryn to not imagine herself as a god, clutching a lamb in her grasp and urging it to realize just how easily it can be killed.

This means nothing to her.

And yet.

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

I keep pushing the tablet further and further away from me. It is now sat on the chest of drawers, a safe enough distance in case it combusts. Power to the device will probably ignite a blaze that I would rather not get swallowed in. Swiping it was so easy. It is going to be one hell of a task to try and slip it back. To wipe my own fingerprints and rinse away any scent that is left behind on it.

It is as if I need to simply erase myself. As if my existence with the device never existed.

Is that what my parents’ murderers thought the moment they deleted their lives?

I cannot waste time on this failed plan. It must be wrapped up and tossed to one side, to make way for plan M. Sitting on my bed, with my legs crossed, patting the duvet covers for my own misplaced lighter is not working on plan M. But just one smoke. I just need one good distraction before I venture onto the next task. A rationed cigarette sits between my teeth, waiting for the flame that seems to have walked from this earth. A gift from Atticus. Gone just like that. I suppose it is not just Capitol trainers who misplace important items.

My bedroom door slams shut, its strength forces my eyes to the tablet on the drawers, but the inferno has not been lit and neither has the cigarette between my lips. It is one of the gamemakers, I could mistake her face for the fiery force that I have been hiding in my room from.

She is spitting flames. It must be about the tablet. It must be. How did they know it was me? My own personal space is intruded, locks of my hair wrapped between my grim reaper’s fingers. Nobody has ever treated me so hostile before. Her own words confirm how much they do truly care about us. There is no definition of the word care at all. All this just because I nearly logged into their precious grading system.

Stunned is an understatement, the gamemaker hands over the mic to me. As if I have anything to say after having boiling wax poured all over me. I spit out the cigarette, careful not to rattle the beast as it hits the floor and not her face. ”If I screamed now, who would come running and would they bring a camera to see us both like this? You can’t hurt me now. Not yet.” I speak as if my heart is not breaking each rib in my chest. She can’t hurt me now; I still have time left. Time to find the answers before the wolf is let loose on my throat. ”Let go of me and I will keep quiet. Like you said, I am a guest. You are not acting like a very welcoming host.”

This is where my low grades on strength and anything physical are shining through but there are other categories on that list that I am the top of the class in. ”I have just proven how weak your security is. Imagine if I was a rebel. Imagine the information that I could have infiltrated. I have saved your skin. Thank me.”

Kiah.

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

^{( TW: violence )}

"Thank me."

Maryn responds by slapping her across the face — dragging the points of her nails clean through the girl's freckled cheek. For good measure, she quickly kicks up with her knee, catching Sierra's chin as she tilts from the force of the slap. In her mind, there is only hot silence. Flames licking up the lengths of her veins, heartbeat drumming through her entire body, singing with the sheer essence of her; of her rage. She feels slighted, and she feels like she could ravage the entire fucking planet.

This brat from District Three be damned.

"Thank you?" She laughs at Sierra before reaching out with her hand, squeezing tight around the girl's throat. Her thumb digs into the soft flesh at the base, deep enough to draw a thin streak of blood, to snuff out all of the air in the room. In a way, they're both suffocating. A mutual self-detonation, but only one of them to bear the scars. "You forget yourself. You are nothing, and you are owed nothing." As if the fury of her words isn't enough, she pushes forward, inching closer to the wall until she hears a hard thud. Even above the gasps for breath, the quiet hands grabbing for life. She hones in on the impact.

"I am a gamemaker. Your gamemaker." Her voice is sharp as glass, fragments burying themselves beneath everything in sight. Until every movement stings; until just the act of being bleeds into agony. She wishes all of this on Sierra, jerking the girl forward only to slam her back against the hard surface again. Again again again — beating like a war drum, like a thunder clap, like an adrenaline charged heartbeat, like a hunger she has never known how to tame, a ruthlessness that she doesn't think to regret. Endless.

She releases her grip on Sierra's throat, moving both of her hands to a pair of frail shoulders. But just as quickly as she sinks her talons into the tender skin there, she throws the girl through the air, crashing roughly against the top of the bedroom vanity. Maryn strides calmly to meet her there, once again tangling her fingers in the locks of ginger hair. "You are a tribute." She says the word like it's a curse — something to be ashamed of, to amend for. Ninety years spent trying to bleed the bones of a lamb already sacrificed. To her, the punishment is worthy.

"You are a footnote in the history of this nation. You are not a citizen. You are a prisoner. Don't you dare speak to me as if we are on equal terms." She leans forward until her lips are by the girl's ear, red lips reciting an ending. "Eighty-nine versions of you have already died to worse monsters than me." The edges of her voice are soft, but even a dull knife cuts. "Your only purpose in this world, Sierra Bordeaux, is to see your way out of it." In the end, it's as simple as that.

It has always been, and will always be, as simple as that.

Lifting her up by the hair, Maryn forces Sierra to stare at her reflection for one long, ceaseless moment — before smashing her face into the mirror, shattering it into pieces, tearing open skin. "I can kill you, and they'll bring you back, just for me to do it all over again. You're right that I can't hurt you." She laughs at a joke she doesn't speak aloud, enjoying the dead weight in her grasp, the power she wields over so many insignificant people. Enough for a god complex. This is her duty, and she will see it fulfilled. There is no wrath like that of a gamemaker. It is her purpose to ruin.

"We will never have this talk again," her fingers release the red strands of hair, causing Sierra's body to crumple atop the vanity and the shards of glass, "because you will never act out like this again." She scoffs down at the severely injured tribute, feeling no remorse — answering a question she had asked herself when she first accepted the position: could she handle being responsible for their deaths? Looking around the room, there is so much blood. It feels like a kind of art. A prelude. "I'll give you an hour to reflect on what I've said here. Medics will arrive then, and rest assured, you'll be good as new by the time the interviews roll around." She strolls to the door, paying no attention to the carnage fading to black over her shoulder.

"Don't use up all of your fight so soon, Sierra."

She closes the door softly behind her — locks it shut.