Anthem - Day 6 IC

It is repetitave now; the blood.

I am indifferent, watching it spray across the snow. I watch four children fall, flicking the cannon's boom on and off like a ticking clock and I am a void. I feel nothing. I am nothing.

That was hours ago.

It is night now and the control room is empty but for me.

The rest are out celebrating the games day, laughing and clapping each other on the back as they left the room, proud of their accomplishment. Snow sent a message, a red rose on a sealed envelope. Two words: Good job.

Good job.

You led four children to their death, good job Azazel.

I threw up in the wastebasket after everyone had left and it tasted like acid and smelled like vodka. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and cleaned it out with more. I don't know who I am anymore, perfectly groomed and carved from marble, I try to feel nothing but i feel it all. Every slice of the blade, every grunt of pain, I know it too. I shut my eyes and I am eight years old, chain around my neck, whip slicing my back open over and over and over and over and ov-

Sobbing.

I hear sobbing.

I blink at the screen and each one is lit with a tribute's crying face. The camera hunts for it, the drama. It wants to find them, to mock them and show them. An automatic sad track plays in the background for those watching at home and I feel like I might throw up again. These pleasantries, these mocking things, they're so fake. I feel ill.

I think about the cowboy, fallen in the snow. It does not hurt any less than the pang of Alejandro's loss. I think about him again, his pure, sweet voice filling up my ears again. If I shut my eyes, I am back in the training centre, before they're all dead. When it was easier and the only reason I drank was to forget Apollo.

Now there are too many to mourn.

"You poor thing," I whisper at the screen, uncertain if I am talking to a tribute or to myself.

I was never one for self-pity.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I didn't know it was charged. When I look at the screen I have thirty-two texts from my son. Apathy grips me and I drop it back into my pocket, unable to bear the thought of what Achilles must think of me after that games day. I bet he didn't know that his father was a murderer.

A screen to my left replays the deaths over and over, a separate channel for those who missed the games day to catch the highlights. Eva Tidestone never stood a chance. She falls so fast it almost looks as if she will stand back up again but the pool of blood forming around her in the snow says otherwise; there's too much.

Gabriel Izar comes next, the clever boy who threw snowballs at his own ally in a desperate move to distract his attackers. The betrayal had been shocking at the time but he's delighted viewers with his quick thinking.

He'd done his job I supposed, Gillian was still alive.

I was surprised to see her last this long, she was so young. I wasn't unhappy for it.

When Maisie fell I felt regret. She had been exquisite. Quiet and brooding but there had been so much strength beneath her skin. I had expected her to go much further.

Our top twelve is disconcerting.

I do not know what today will bring but I flick the moons down anyway, pausing for a moment and bringing Khonsu back down. THere's no tides for him to mess up. I bring him lower so that he nearly takes up the whole sky. His pock-marked presence sits like a weight over the tribute's heads and I find him aesthetically pleasing there.

They should be worried.

"This is the beginning of the end."

[dars]