Wheels Turn Beneath My Feet [D8 Train]

In order to transverse the hundreds of miles between the Districts and the Capitol, tributes are put on high-speed passenger trains - one for each District - and sent to the Capitol. Due to the different distances from the Capitol to each Districts, the tributes for different Districts arrive at different times. The longest journey is around twelve hours in length, with the others all taking at least a couple hours. If not for these high-speed trains, it might take up to a week to make the journey. This is where the tributes first get to really meet with the escort and any previous victors. Of course, as District eight has yet to have a victor, Ezero is left without a mentor.

All Aboard

After exiting the Justice Building, tributes are marched to the awaiting train. They are given some time to enter and settle before being expected to spend at least some time with their escort as preparation for what is to come. Only when the train doors close and the train pulls away are the cameras left behind.

I just want to board the train so I can get away from the cameras. I'm already tired of holding this alert facade and every minute that passes makes it that much harder. Our escort looks at us, smiling with such fake enthusiasm that he looked like he would pop his teeth out, and gestures grandly for us to enter. Finally, we might get out of the spotlight for one of the last times of our lives. I suppose in the arena there will be plenty of other things to think about rather than the scores of cameras and the innumerable pairs of eyes that would ultimately be watching us fight and die, but right now I really didn't want to have to worry about anything at all.

When I walk in I feel like I stepped back into the room in the Justice Building. Everything is overly ornate and expensive. I feel like if I touch anything I'll get yelled at for damaging it. Once the door closes behind us with a woosh and suctioning sound that is both comforting and strangely final, I immediately ask where my sleeping quarters are. The escort smiles at me - though his mouth might just be stuck like that - and instructs me where to go. I nod, barely meeting his or anyone else's gaze as I make my way to my own personal area. As I pull open the door I realize they aren't so much sleeping quarters as an entire suite inside of a train car. There's a wall that separates the room from a walkway on one side but other than that the rest of a car is my own personal area. Feeling emotionally exhausted and needing a break, I go to get cleaned up.

Exploration

The expansive locomotive has a dining car, one car for each person staying aboard - the tributes, the escort, a number of mentors, and a number of avoxes - an entertainment car, and other such lavish areas. Many of the items, mechanisms, and food types seen on these trains are completely foreign to the tributes, or have only been heard about and never seen.

The shower took me about ten minutes to figure out how to even get the water running. Standing there, naked, trying to fiddle with the dials and ending up splattering shampoo and soap on the shower walls made me feel like a fool. Soon enough, though, I knew how everything worked and finally managed to get cleaned up. I have to say, the showers are fantastic. The constant falling of heated water really eases fatigue.

The clothes they have for me are all in my size, but none of them look like my type of style. After digging for a time, I finally came across what would be the most casual of the clothes in the dresser: a pair of jeans encrusted with rhinestones and a button-up shirt with some extremely flashy pattern on it. Now dressed, I decided to investigate the train. Walking toward the engine, which I figured I was closer to than the caboose, I meandered through the cars. Most of them from this point on were the quarters of the staff and the escort. In fact, I reached the engine before I found a single other type of room. Turning around, I headed back the way I had come. When I passed my room again I made a note of it before continuing toward the rear of the train.

The car that we had entered through had actually been set up as a receiving room and was eerily reminiscent of the room that I had said goodbye to my parents in. I moved quickly through it, almost rushing from one end to the other. The world outside was blurred and moved at an unsettling pace past me. I strolled on, meandering through a dinner car, a car with a giant television and couch, a car with a circle of comfortable-looking armchairs, and a number of storage cars. When I reached the caboose I had to test the door to the back rail. It was locked, of course. They couldn't have a tribute throw themself off the back of a speeding train. There had to be twenty-four of us, and the twenty-three deaths had to be caught on camera.

Meet and Greet

While unspoken, there is a silent requirement that the tributes must spend at least some time with their escort in order to be informed about what is going to happen. Dinners are the usual time for this type of discussion to occur as every gathers in the dinning car; however, as happens in any place where people are free to wander, encounters will happen and sometimes lead to interaction.

I headed back toward the car with all of the armchairs. No one had been in there before so I hoped to just be able to sit there and think or not think. I didn't want to have to wear a face for anyone. All I wanted was to relax before entering hell. Who says you need to die to see the devil. To me, he is a man with a white beard and rose petals always around him. To me, the devil comes in the form of a man named Snow. Thankfully the armchair room was still vacant when I reached it again and I gratefully sank into a chair in one of the corners.

Curling my legs up, I tried to fit myself into the chair without extending the footrest. The sound of the train racing along the tracks made me queasy for a moment - coupled with the gentle swaying motion gained from the wind, I was ready to throw up - before my stomach settled again. I wasn't sure if I wanted to open up the floodgates and let myself breakdown, or if I wanted to simply turn to stone. If I were stone then I wouldn't feel anything, I would be impervious to damage. Yes, wind and water might weather me, but a weapon could only do so much to me. I could be a golem and defeat the others with ease. Even so, I wouldn't be me and I wouldn't really be alive. My parents wouldn't recognize me and I wouldn't be able to recognize them. Remember us. I could never let my mother down like that.

Resting my head on my knees, I stared silently into the dark hallow my legs and torso made. Faint light peeked from underneath my arm but otherwise I was in shadow. Once more, I was in the dark. Seemingly I kept retreating there, even if it was by no fault of my own. The glass barrier I had, though, the one I had built for the Reaping, that had worked so well until the moment my world shattered. I would still be me, and I could always break out, but until I did so I would be safe and protected. If I can be the guy I see in the mirror, the guy who looks like he is ready for what the day throws at him, the guy who can deal with the world and win, maybe I can go home to my parents and sit at the dinner table again.

I sit in my own little bubble of misery, not noticing at it begins to turn to glass.