sloane causey | district two | fin

sloane causey ;

Afternoon madness in a well-lit kitchen, as a mother hustles to have lunch ready in time for a day at the park with her husband and children. It is loud and busy, one kid zipping back and forth while another seems to be making sounds for the sake of hearing their own voice. A husband comes in, bags under his eyes from working a long, honest day.

He kisses her on the cheek; she smiles.

He picks up the oldest child; he smiles too.

Joy, in its rawest state. One heartbeat, shared between the four of them. North, south, east, and west, none alike, but all necessary to see the bigger picture.

Joy.

Alarm. The incessant drumming noise from my stupid sister's clock. Loud, angry garbage, if you asked me. And somehow, ineffective when it came to waking her up, yet full-proof for me, who was across the hallway from her.

"Saria!" I tried.

No answer.

I grabbed a shoe and chunked it through my open door, sighing with triumph as it slammed into hers with a loud thud.

"I'm up! Jesus!" I heard her scream. The music shut off. Good.

Now that I could think straight, I scanned my room. Dirty clothes on the floor, a large crack in the window closest to me, which had not been entirely incidental, since 14 year-old me had very deeply rooted anger issues that needed resolving.

No one except me, though, which was a good thing.

Saria bounded into my room, disheveled hair and smeared eye makeup seemingly a trademark of hers. "Where are your weirdo friends at?" She asked, sliding a cigarette out of her pack and dipping it between her lips. She looked genuinely surprised that he was alone.

"They aren't my friends."

"Then what are they?"

"You know, keep your enemies closer, or whatever."

She struck a match using my wooden floorboards, puffed on the cigarette until it was billowing in putrid smoke. I rolled onto my back, eyes watching as the translucent tendrils danced up to my ceiling and disappeared.

"How the hell did you even meet them?" she asked, wiping her make up off in my mirror.

"School."

She inhaled sharply, exhaled smoke.

"Oh yeah. Shit. I guess we should get ready for that, huh?"

She walked back into her room, and I just laid there, staring at the ceiling as the last bits of smoke faded away.

How the hell did I meet them— how and where does any teenager do anything? Made a new friend? Calculus class. You forgot your pencil, and the teacher was a real dick when people forgot their pencils, so an unfamiliar face slid you one when the teacher wasn't looking.

Made a new enemy? You were playing volleyball in the gym and accidentally smacked the ball into a girl's soda. The soda spilled all over her. She was dating a mammoth, and even though you were a damn good career, you knew he would squash you like a pancake, so you made it a point to avoid both of them.

Learn a secret? Picked your feet up in the bathroom stall. Heard a rumor? Literally listened to any conversation. First kiss, first love, first breakup: Middle school.

My point is, high school was literally the only thing a person knew until after they graduated, and from what I heard, it only got worse from there.

I thought about the dream I had with the happy kids and the happy couple. What a joke.

The man holding me in the picture on my nightstand had been dead for over a decade, and my mother spent more time working than she did with us, which was honorable. She wanted both of us to start working with her in the coming summer, and while I admired nurses and healers, and I respected what they did, taking care of people was never my strong suit.

Actually, it was to my knowledge that anyone who dared to get close to me ended up completely wrecked. Not always by my own doing. Sometimes circumstances just couldn't be avoided, but whatever. That was what led me to wonder why the hell these new 'friends' of mine Saria was referring to had bothered to stick around for so long.

I had lied to her.

I hadn't met them in school. I had actually met them at an underground party, the location of which I was strictly forbidden from disclosing.

(I thought maybe it was an old subway station.)

All of the tunnels ended in collapsed piles of rubble and dirt, and so many of the floor tiles were missing that it looked weirder in the places where they were still in tact. People had spray painted the walls with their initials and whatever colorful language they felt the need to express, and that night, there had been black lights covering anything that would stand still long enough. Teeth and the whites of peoples eyes and glow in the dark body paint silhouettes were all a person could see. And the music had been so loud that I could feel the floor quake beneath my feet, though that also could have been the alcohol.

Saria had mentioned her ex asking her to go with him to it, and how stupid it sounded, and how anyone wanting to go to something like that was just desperate, so I decided I had to go.

A song had just ended, and it was in that little moment of silence, when everyone stopped dancing and started finding their friends or refilling their drinks, and the next song was loading up. In those few fleeting seconds, everything changed. I had been standing on the outskirts of the rave, leaning against a pillar, which probably wasn't such a good idea, considering how unstable the entire place was, and out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something move, and I thought I also heard a scream that accompanied said movement.

I squinted into the darkness, because it was the source of the commotion since things couldn't ever be simple for me, and I didn't see anything. No one else seemed to hear it, as the party was starting to carry on already, but I knew I had heard something weird.

And because I felt so entitled and privileged and young and immune to death, I thought: Hm, I should investigate this! So I did. I hopped off of the main platform, onto the abandoned tracks, and I walked into a deep, dark cave, until I was so far away from the black lights that the painted-on yellow rib cage on my torso was no longer visible. Stark darkness. An absolute stillness that only being underground could have ever offered. It was such a sure thing. Dirt and water and gravity. Weight. Even the air felt heavier down here.

I had almost chickened out when I heard another noise. This time, it was much closer, and definitely malicious. I squinted, hoping I could just see whatever I was looking for from there so that if I needed a running start I would have one.

Nothing.

"Fuck," I had thought, before venturing even further into the tunnel.

Suddenly, the darkness wasn't quite as dark, and the air wasn't as heavy, and then I saw the unmistakable glow of a fire, which was casting shadows against the concrete walls. I hid behind something that looked like a train car except more boxy. It certainly didn't look like it had ever been capable of travelling at speeds of up to 300 miles per hour, but whatever.

I saw them there. All four of them: running around, frantically adding things to their fire. The two boys shared the weight of a huge chunk of wood that must have been a support beam in its hay day, while one of the girls stoked the fire and the other washed something sticky off of her hands with a bottle of water. And then, there, directly in front of the fire, was something big. Something that didn't really belong.

I had to crane my neck for a better angle before I realized it was a dead body.

Also, the better angle was how they had spotted me.


Saria came back in a few minutes later, fresh eyeliner and clothes without wrinkles.

"You're going to be late." she said, holding an ink pen with her mouth while she laced her boots.

"Not if I just don't go."

She sat on the edge of my bed, green eyes glaring daggers at me. "Why have you been acting so weird, Sloane?" She was trying to be sincere, but the ink pen in her mouth took away some of the effect. I supposed the least I could do was humor her.

"I just haven't been feeling good." I didn't like lying to her, but then, I lied to Mom every day for her, so she was just going to have to deal with it. Otherwise, no more smoking cigarettes as a 15 year old, or sneaking out and thinking parties where people got murdered sounded lame a desperate.

"Okay, fine," she exclaimed after finally pulling the pen out of her mouth, "If you don't want to tell me everything, you don't have to. But at least tell me this: does it have anything to do with your not-friends who have been following you around for the past two weeks?"

For a moment, I was tempted to tell her the truth. But what would that have done? Put her in the same situation I was in?

"No," I said in a clear voice. I had always been a good liar. Mom told me once I seemed more sincere when I was lying than when I was telling the truth. "And, as you can see, they didn't stay here last night."

She stood in my doorway, leaning against it with her arms crossed, like she wanted me to say more. When I didn't, she held her hands up in surrender.

"I'm going to head out. I'll write out a fake Doctor's note for you on the way to school,
and I'll drop it off for you."

"Thanks, Sorry." I replied. When we were little, Sorry was a close as I had gotten to saying Saria, and now my mother and I used it as some weird kind of pet name for her.

"Behave," Saria said, despite being three years younger than me.

The second I heard the front door close, I threw back the blanket on my bed, still dressed from the night before.

("Skip school tomorrow."
"Meet us at this address.")

I fished the wadded piece of paper out of my pocket, staring at the 900 Fox Lane scribbled in chicken scratch on its surface. Part of me had hoped I would lose it along the way, so that I would have a valid excuse not to go, but there it was, so I didn't have a choice.

---

Fox Lane, it turned out, was completely abandoned. It looked like it had once been a mining site; it probably got closed down during the recession. Places like these must have been what the 67th Games were based on. There were empty houses made of wood, old buildings left behind in time. I wondered how many people's stories came from this street once upon a time.

I walked the distance, passing a half-finished storage shed and a particularly run down house in which the front door had been ripped off the hinges and all the windows had been busted out before coming to a stop in front of a warehouse sized, single story building, with the number 900 decorating the area next to the front door in curvy letters.

Was I supposed to knock, or?

Luckily enough, the door was already cracked open when I got to it. I took in a deep breath, then pushed it the rest of the way open.

"Hello?"

No answer. I stepped inside, wheeling my way through a narrow hallway, before walking into the main room. A low ceiling, decorated with fairy lights, gave off a very rustic, warm feel. Like what I had imagined in my dreams. The floors were wide and expansive and mostly uninhabited, pardon a couple of couches and chairs in one corner, some beds in another, a small kitchen on the wall nearest to me, and a ceiling high television.

All four of them stood in a line in the kitchen, arms crossed, staring at me.

"See? I told you we wouldn't have to kill him," The smallest one said.

"I'm still not convinced," the biggest retorted.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, annoyed when it came right back.

"Relax," the other girl said, "We're joking. We would only kill you if you did something bad."

"Such as?" I asked, which was stupid. I didn't need to know the answer. I didn't need to be paranoid over everything I did from here on out. But then, that night two weeks ago, I could have just accepted that I was drunk and that I hadn't of heard anything, and then I wouldn't have been here in the first place.

I could still remember the feeling that had washed over me when the little one had stopped stoking the fire and pointed at me. I could still remember thinking run, you idiot! but my intoxicated feet not understanding the command. Whoever these people were, they were making sure their secrets would be taken to the grave, one way or the other.

"Like the things our targets do."

They circled me like vultures, eyeing me like I was freshly dead and they hadn't eaten in a while.

"We aren't murderers," The big guy said, "Well, not in the way that you think."

"We're an organization," the other boy agreed, stopping directly in front of me. He was a few inches shorter than me, probably a weight class below me too. I could have taken him if we were alone.

"We kill the people who do bad things and don't get in trouble for doing them. The rich people who can pay off their crimes and then continue to do them."

"We have an organization for that," I smarted off. Again, stupid, but if I was going to die anyway, why not go out pretending I wasn't morbidly terrified? "They're called peacekeepers. What you guys do is still murder. It's illegal."

The taller of the girls made a face. "Not... exactly. We're sort of a, um... Luka? What would you call us?" The shorter guy, who must have been Luka, opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by a voice across the room.

"They are the Capitol's dirty little secret," the voice called. The others didn't seem entirely shocked to see the woman standing there with her arms crossed over her chest. "People who do bad things, Mr. Causey, deserve to be punished. And we can't have our peacekeepers holding public executions when there is money to be made. So, they created this. Us."

I eyed the woman, who slowly walked closer to us.

"What, so you guys are like exterminators? You kill the people the Capitol doesn't want credit for?"

"That is exactly what we are, Mr. Causey." She folded her arms over her chest, coming to a stop just short of her circling underlings. "And you, for whatever reason, happened to stumble across us doing our work. Call it karmic intervention. And the Capitol doesn't like loose ends."

"You're going to kill me, then?" I asked, though I thought I already knew the answer.

"Not necessarily. You see, protocol says we only intervene if and when you've told anyone. Have you told anyone?"

I fumbled over my words for a moment, stuttering until a solid "No," came out. "Excellent!" She replied. She held a hand out, and the four stopped circling me.

She stepped in closer. She was kind of pretty, for someone who was considering whether or not to believe me.

"I have a business proposition for you." She said. Her gaze never broke from mine.

"I'm not interested."

"You don't have a choice."

I looked back at her, hating myself before I even spoke because I knew it wasn't going to be pleasant.

"Then I think you mean you have a business obligation for me. Not a proposition."

She laughed, and it seemed genuine, which was actually pretty infuriating.

"How about we call it a choice. Your choice." The big guy smiled, and I couldn't help thinking he was hoping I would choose the wrong choice. I looked back at the woman, who took it as a cue to carry on.

"You can walk out of here right now just as easily as you came in. But one of us will always be just around the corner, just out of ear shot, just close enough to keep tabs on you.
Your house would be bugged, all of your conversations now a public discussion for the Capitol, and it would stay like that forever." The idea of leaving this place at all in one piece suddenly didn't seem so tempting.

"What is my other option?" I asked.

"We've reviewed you combat performances. You're good. You have a real talent, and I want you to put it to use. You would still go to school, go home invasion-of-privacy free, live your life, and when we needed you, we would call you." I scoffed.

"You know, when I woke up this morning, being asked to become a Capitol Assassin wasn't exactly how I pictured my morning going."

"Well, when they hit their mark two weeks ago, they hadn't expected a drunken kid with a big nose to butt in, but here we are." I didn't say anything, which was impressive. I was proud of myself.

"There's more, though. We get a cut of every mark's wealth. Meaning your sister and your poor, over-worked mother would be taken care of."

"How much money?"

"More than you'll ever make changing bed pans and bandaging scraped kneecaps."

I bit my bottom lip, chills running down my spine. If this was true, then maybe it wouldn't be all that bad. I had always known there was a possibility that I would kill, should I be reaped. I had trained my entire life so that if I did have to kill, I would be ready. And this was a Capitol-ran organization, meaning I couldn't get in trouble for it.

Deep breath in, followed by a long pause.

"I'm in."