p r o d i g a l {ave}

If I was in a nightmare, it might be less terrifying than this.

The corridors ahead and behind me seem to stretch endlessly, like long white arteries inside which I rush like a blood cell. Or perhaps like a virus. The soft rubber soles of my trainers squeak comically on the floor as I run, but the swish of my plastic jacket's sleeves rubbing against the torso panels brings back the sense of clean urgency that is appropriate to my journey. I'm lost, and it's hard to tell if I'm getting any closer to being not lost. Time has slipped from my grasp like a sigh. The only thing I have left to clutch onto are the papers crumpled and flapping in my clammy palms.

Sterile, handleless doors rush past me in a blur, but I get a sense of what's behind each one using my other senses. This one leaks a cloud of moisture, thick with the rich smell of earth. That one barely conceals an ominous groan- no, a growl, accompanied by the already fading shouts of however many humans are trying to tame its owner into suppression. But none are the one I want - the one I'm sure I'll know when I see it. And isn't that as naive as the reason I want to find it in the first place?

I didn't come here to fight. I didn't raise my hand and my voice, in front of my mother, my sister, and everyone within the limited horizons of the city I grew up in, because of a sour desire to kill, or some cold-boiling need for vengeance. I did it to save them - because I know, by my brain and not by my face, I'm brilliant enough to do it.

There are fourteen sheets of paper in my relentless grip and a further six in the backpack I was provided with here. I know it would make sense to have more slung over my shoulder than crushed by my fingers, but like everything here I don't quite trust the bag's simple reality. It's like, if I look away, its contents might vanish completely - a neat, sadistic, Capitol trick. I sometimes get afraid that the food I pile onto my plate at dinner isn't real, either; that it will turn to dust in my mouth. Or poison me. The only solace is in hoping this whole city, the life that I've suddenly found myself in, is also nothing more than an illusion, and soon the mirrors will fold inwards and the trick doors will open and I'll be back home, home with everything and everyone I love and care about - not just as much as I could fit into y pockets; as much as fits into my fists now.

I wonder if I'd have to go to the same pains to acquire the resources for sketching my blueprints if I lived here in the first place. There's no doubt in my mind that the sacrifices to end up where I am - physically, in these corridors, searching for the one door that can surely save me - would be infinitesimal compared to the ones I've made in this reality. I stole, and lied, and gave up other dreams just to get the paper I needed to print my intricate diagrams and theories, and the actual metal pieces could have been detrimental. Would have been, surely, if I wasn't always so cautious, so careful. My past self would be shocked that I could be doing something so reckless as breaking into the core of the Training Centre, the nervous system of the whole Capitol machine, and darting through its corridors seemingly futilely, based on a single, dissipating hope.

Even present me is terrified by the cliff edge of fate I'm hurtling blindly towards.

There - ahead of me - I see something vital. A single white pillar that breaks away from the rest of the sleek interior and begins to stride towards me. An arm breaks away from it and snaps to the waistband, where an almost invisible, but oh so unignorable, taser sparks to life. If only I had one of them myself, turning all those dormant metal skeletons into the vivid creatures they mimic wouldn't be so hard.

The squeaking of my shoes stops abruptly. I halt in place.

The Peacekeeper doesn't.

"Please," my voice is steady, but in the crisp echoes from the curved walls of the tube-like corridor (me the virus, him the antibody come to dissolve me away) I can hear the tremor that lies underneath. "Please, I'm not here to hurt anyone."

The taser practically sizzles, its circuit clicking like the pincers of some carnivorous beetle, waiting to be given permission to strike. The Peacekeeper's eyes flash with malice, and patriotism; he would streak these walls scarlet with my blood to prevent me from doing the same with anyone else's. But I'm not a danger: I raise my hands slowly (so, so slowly) and say as much, "I'm not a danger," palms up, curled blueprints unfolding for him to see, "I'm an inventor."

But of course, his eyes can't see my designs and ideas. They can't even see the sweat of fear that has started to speckle my chin and temples. All they can see is the number 3 emblazoned on my chest. He reduces me to a number, and with that he reduces me to nothing. A future casualty, so nothing more than a present inconvenience.

The taser flickers off again. I'm worth his violent energy as little as I'm worth his time. It doesn't take a physician to tell that, armed with nothing more than papers, a frail child like me couldn't hurt anyone. With a smirk, he turns around and walks back to his post, to blend in with the environment again. But it's already crossed my mind that the fact he's standing outside that entrance at all means that there's something important behind it - and hope and logic tell m it must be the room that I need - so while otherwise I would turn and keep searching, his action causes desperate anger to begin to burn inside me.

My feet carry me forwards firmly, though the rest of my body feels like it's being dragged through a strong current. (That's fear, certainly, holding me back - urging me to turn and give up.) The Peacekeeper isn't even looking anymore, eyes glazed as he listens to some message buzzed into his ear, so I come to a stop in his eyeline and speak up loudly, firmly.

"I need to see Cricket Antoinette. I need to see Hera Levelwright."

The bag swings off my shoulder and hits the ground with a clanking thud - the only evidence that there's been anything except paper in there all along. His hand is back on his belt, but the weapon there stays sleeping. He's still amused - he doesn't take me seriously.

"Take me to Hera Levelwright. Take me to Cricket Antoinette."

I picture their faces in my mind, as if I could will them into existence here. It's not difficult to transpose the fact amusement they wear for their television interviews into genuine awe as I imagine them gazing at my designs. They can save me, save my family. That part isn't the obstacle - this is.

Another step forwards, my tone sincere but stubborn, "I need to see the Gamemakers." A knee bends, I reach into the bag, tentatively feeling around what I know are sharp claws and stingers for the legs which are safe to hold. I don't bring my hand back out the pack at once, waiting for his response; wondering if he thinks I'm holding a gun, or a detonator - knowing he can't imagine it's something so much worse.

Whichever it is, he cracks. The taser is out of the belt and in his hand, crackling and spitting as he marches back towards me. "I need to see the Gamemakers!" I'm shrieking now, standing and stumbling backwards, nowhere near as fast as him but with no need to be, my hand withdrawing from the bag, my fingers uncurling, the winged and venomous metal hornet waiting to be sparked into sentience by the foil trigger I pinch with my thumb. Its glass abdomen swirls with a viscous poison mixed in the gymnasium, the syringe-needle stinger an attachment made this morning. I have no idea if it could actually kill him, but I hope its sinister exoskeleton and minute hovercraft-blade wings look threatening from this far away even if it doesn't.

Still, he advances. Still I stumble backwards, shouting my command now, "take me to Hera Levelwright! Take me to Cricket Antoinette!" The door this Peacekeeper was guarding when I found him is shrinking from view - if I don't make a run for it soon I know I've lost it, and so myself, forever. I won't get a second chance.

I press the foil between the hornet's legs, completing the circuit which powers its electrical heart. The blades whirr, buzzing and humming like the real thing. (A neat, dangerous trick.) It launches from my hand, deadly vial sloshing unhealthily as it lurches messily (but quickly) through the air. My heart catches, squeezes - it's heading right for his face, the needle stinger stretching from the underside of its body, the first point of impact.

I don't wait to watch it hit, as much as I want to. I gather my papers back up in my hand, holding the backpack shut by its gaping zips, and sprint round the Peacekeeper on his non-taser-wielding side. The shriek he makes - the first real noise he's emitted and the only one I could pray to hear - is followed quickly by the clatter of metal gears against a metal wall. I hope the man is as damaged as I'm sure my creation is, but I can't stop and look. My fists are up, my eyes forwards as I reach the door, and begin to hammer, and hammer, and hammer on its impenetrable expanse.

"PLEASE!" I'm screaming, in total desperation, no time to present myself with as much collection as I had minutes ago. "PLEASE! OPEN THE DOOR!" The begging, pleading words come out without any reservation. I need to get away from this dangerous throughway. If he's not blind, or paralysed (or dead?), the Peacekeeper will be back at the door and tearing me apart in seconds. "I NEED TO SPEAK TO THE GAMEMAKERS!"

My fists are numb from slamming on the door, and now in the echoes between my sobs and shouts I can hear soft, slow footsteps - whether from behind me or in front I can't yet tell.

My composure is gone, though I know when (if, definitely if) I'm safe in the Gamemakers' lounge beyond the door I'll be able to gather it again. But right now, I'm terrified, flashes of the types of torture that might be administered on me as punishment streaming through my overactive imagination.

My only solace, as my throat burns and my hands ache and the footsteps shuffle slowly ever closer, is in the fact that I'm too precious to kill. For now. But my hopes of saving myself and my family from any harm at all are vanishing with every heartbeat.