iii. contamination || lucien day one

Lucien's footsteps are choppy. The adjustment to whatever-the-fuck this suit is has been grueling on his muscles, with every attempt to take a step forward leaving his feet to collapse with exhaustion. They weren't lying when they told the tributes that on the final night before the Games, eat to your heart's content. It's cruel, in a way, that they were given a proper final meal as if on death row and he chose to save some leftovers in the fridge. Lucien's stomach ached this morning, sore from the worrying that jolted within his bones, and he didn't reopen the container.

He carries on, looking around and letting the suit around him almost guide his way. This arena is aged, much more than the Game Makers may have been able to fabricate it. There's history here, from the steep rusting walls to the little mechanical suit displays. If there's anyone, or anything that knows this place, it's whatever he's got on around him. What looks like a miniature city, destroyed by ruin and reindustrialization, stands before him. If he could place his money on the aesthetic, Lucien assumed steampunk; District Ten if it had a city that was run over by a nuclear warpath.

Lucien forces his way into one of the open shipping containers with about as much noise as one would assume a metal suit that expands his body width would make. He sits down with pans clashing onto the boxes and crates. His hands are cold against the lotus-like animal Lucien has possessed. He pulls out the book that he'd found next to the suits in the junkyard and begins reading with the little daytime he has left.

Enthralled in the book, he's unable to notice, unaware to feel the numbing sensation beside his hip.

[picks up needle and thread, 1 antidote, water purification tablets, and maybe other things]