Chapter Sixteen
The hovercraft set down atop the Training Center roof. When the door opened, Clark shook his head to bring himself back to alertness — the couch was indeed comfortable, and he’d been close to falling asleep, despite the danger of floating. As soon as Dr. Wellwood and the nurses left the hovercraft, Clark followed them, escorted by the Peacekeepers.
Marcius, Haver, Matilda, Rosaline, and his prep team were waiting for him. Marcius was almost dancing with joy — Clark was the first victor he’d had since he’d begun his career as a tribute escort in 60. Haver was more restrained, but he still had a look of relief and pride on his face as he clapped Clark on the shoulder. Rosaline grinned widely, hugging him, while his prep team greeted him joyfully, their strange Capitol attire looking even more garish in the bright afternoon sunlight. Only Matilda hung back, her expression unreadable.
Haver turned to Dr. Wellwood. “When we spoke on the phone a few minutes ago, you said that he’s fine, that he doesn’t need to spend any time in the hospital.”
Dr. Wellwood nodded. “He’s by far the healthiest victor I’ve ever seen. Three or four days to rest and some nourishing food — in small portions at first — and he should be ready for the final interviews and the Victory Banquet.” He stepped away from Haver, his expression turning grim. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have twenty-three death certificates to fill out.” Shoulders slumped, he walked toward the elevator, the nurses following.
Clark heard him and frowned, thinking of the twenty-three other tributes who had died. He wished he could have helped them, could have saved them, but ultimately there had been nothing he could do. Lysander and Lois had died at his hands, Mayson had lost the gamble she had made in hopes of having a better life, and he had failed to protect Becky.
Becky was still on Clark’s mind when Haver spoke to him. “I knew you had a chance. I knew that you might come home. We were all worried at first, when you seemed so sick and then the District 1 girl attacked you, but —“
“Did you put her up to it?!” Clark interrupted Haver, turning on him furiously.
“Put the girl up to attacking you?” Haver looked at Clark in confusion.
“Not Platinum — Becky. I know you thought she was a liability to me. Did you put her up to dropping that ball?!”
“What?! No! Clark, no one knew how sensitive the triggers on the mines were — not even the Gamemakers. They were as shocked as anyone that her token set the mines off — those are meant to deter the tributes from leaving their platforms before the Games begin. No one realized that something so small could set them off.”
Clark looked at Haver disbelievingly. “So, you’re saying that she dropped it by accident?”
Haver and Matilda looked at each other uncomfortably, beginning to realize something. “It wasn’t exactly an accident …” Matilda began.
“You think she dropped it on purpose?! Even if she didn’t know it would set off the mines, you think she dropped it intentionally? She wouldn’t have! Her little brother gave her that ball, and it meant a lot to her. It would have cost her precious seconds to pick it up, and I know how scared she was! She wouldn’t have dropped it unless you —“
“I guess you really don’t know,” Haver said, shaking his head sadly.
“What don’t I know?!”
“Clark, Becky was already dead when she dropped her token,” Matilda said.
“What?” Clark stared at his mentors for a moment. “That’s impossible! She was standing on her launch plate, waiting for the countdown to end — not lying dead on the ground!”
“She dropped her token when she died. If it hadn’t set off the mines, her body would have when she fell off the plate.” Haver gasped in shock as Clark grabbed his shirt and dragged him forward until their faces were inches apart.
“I don’t believe you!” Clark ground out. “You put her up to it!”
“Let go of him!” One of the Peacekeepers tried to separate them, but Clark was unmovable.
The other Peacekeeper pressed his stun gun to the back of Clark’s neck. “Let him go.
Now.”
The feeling of the stun gun pressed against his neck brought Clark to an awareness of what he was doing. He looked at Haver’s shocked, frightened face and let go of his shirt, dropping the handful of fabric that had ripped away.
“Sorry,” he muttered, jerking away from the Peacekeepers. “Sorry.”
Everyone stared at Clark as he stepped away, avoiding everyone’s eyes. The Peacekeepers looked at him with hostility, his prep team and Marcius gaped at him in shock, and Rosaline, Matilda, and Haver looked at him with a mixture of unease and sympathy.
Clark was shocked at himself. He’d realized years earlier that he could never afford to lose his temper and lash out at someone. Even a normal man could do a great deal of damage if he lost his temper, and he was much stronger than any normal man. He was too strong, too powerful to allow himself to take out his anger on anyone, and yet he’d almost done just that twice in the last two weeks — first when he’d nearly set Haver and Dr. Wellwood on fire with his heat vision, and just now when he’d attacked Haver over his suspicions that the man had encouraged Becky to kill herself in order to give Clark a better chance of surviving.
The first time, the sensation of the heat reflecting off his glasses had stopped him. This time, it had been the Peacekeeper’s threat to use the stun gun on him that had brought him back to sanity. The stun gun wouldn’t have affected him, but the fact that it was there had reminded him that what he was doing was wrong and allowed him to back down.
Haver was straightening his torn shirt, giving himself a moment to regain his composure. When he looked at Clark, his expression was cool and wary but compassionate.
“Clark, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here. You’re obviously exhausted and you’ve just been through a terrifying eleven days in the arena. But … don’t you ever do that again! You’re not in the arena anymore, and you can’t attack people. Victors are subject to the same laws as everyone else, and that means that you cannot …
cannot … attack anyone. It’s over. No matter how angry you might feel, you have to keep control of your temper.”
“I know.” Clark hung his head. “I’ll never do that again … not ever. Not for any reason. Not to anyone.”
“Good luck keeping that promise,” Matilda muttered.
“Matilda!” Haver turned to glare at her. “He’s got a hard enough row to hoe. You don’t need to make it worse.”
“I’m just being honest, but then, you never did believe in honesty, did you?” Matilda glowered back at Haver.
“Sometimes, it’s better to keep your mouth shut!”
Clark stared at his angry mentors. Having had a passing acquaintance with them all his life, he had suspected that the glamorous life the Capitol television programs portrayed the victors as having wasn’t quite real, but now, watching Haver and Matilda face each other down, he realized just how unhappy they were. He also sensed that they were both concerned for him, but had very different — and conflicting — ways of showing it.
Rosaline stepped forward, trying to diffuse the tension. She had spent ten years as a member of the prep team for District 4 boys before becoming a stylist herself five years earlier, and had seen two of the boys she had worked with emerge victorious from the arena. In spite of being Career tributes, they too had been traumatized by their experiences in the arena, and had needed time and rest before being able to deal with the people around them again.
“Perhaps the best thing to do now is follow Dr. Wellwood’s orders and allow Clark to get some rest,” she suggested. Then she added, “Clark, they’re telling you the truth. I was watching the beginning of the Games from the launch room. Becky died and, as she did, she dropped her token. No one made her do it, and no one could have stopped it.”
Haver looked away from Matilda and nodded. “There was nothing anyone could have done for Becky. She was too far gone. I know you tried to protect her, Clark, but some things are beyond help. You did the best you could, and if it makes you feel any better about it, you made her final days much happier than they would have been otherwise. How many of the other possible male tributes from our district would have taken the interest in her that you did? I would venture to say … none. You were a godsend to her.”
Clark stood silently, thinking about Haver’s words. He had indeed tried to help Becky, but had ultimately been unsuccessful. He had strength and abilities beyond what any normal person possessed, but he had still been helpless to save the life of one girl — or anyone else.
Becky had been very sick, but Clark still had trouble believing that she had simply died while standing on her launch plate. He wanted to believe what his mentors and stylist said … but he couldn’t quite do so. Not without proof.
Haver gestured toward the elevator. “Clark, Rosaline is right. You need to rest. Your room is ready — all of them were cleaned and prepared for use after the tributes left for the Games.”
Clark shook his head. “No. Not yet. I … want to …
need to see what happened.” In truth, Clark didn’t want to watch Becky die again, but he knew that he wouldn’t be convinced that she had died before the mines exploded unless he saw it for himself.
“Are you sure?” Haver looked at Clark with concern. “You know they’ll be recapping all the deaths during your first victor interview. Do you really want to see it now?”
“I
need to see it. I need to see for
myself that what you are saying is true,” Clark replied.
Haver still looked uneasy, but Matilda nodded understandingly. “I’ll have an Avox get the tape,” she told Clark. “We can watch it in the sitting room on the District 9 floor.”
Clark nodded. He was tired — more tired than he had ever been in his life — but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to rest until he knew for sure what had happened to Becky.
*****
A short time later, as they were preparing to watch the tape, Rosaline pulled out a container and opened it. Clark’s own glasses were in the container. Gratefully, he took off the plastic replacements and donned his own familiar lead crystal glasses. They were in the sitting room, staring at the television as Marcius put the tape into the player and turned it on.
Clark watched as the tributes simultaneously rose into the arena. He saw himself wavering on his own launch plate, barely bracing himself in time to keep from falling, his attention fixed with grim fascination on Platinum’s pendant. He heard Claudius Templesmith announcing the beginning of the Sixty-sixth Hunger Games and saw the clock counting down the seconds until the tributes could leave their launch plates. A separate camera was focused on each of the tributes, breaking the screen into twenty-four blocks. Many tributes clutched their tokens, looks of terror on their faces. Others looked bored — but their body language told another story. The Careers looked eager.
Clark watched as Becky looked around the semi-circle of tributes, one hand clutching her throat and the other holding her token. He noted when she saw him and looked momentarily relieved. Then she bent forward, her face turning blue from lack of oxygen. She gasped for air, her mouth and eyes wide, blood running from her nose and the corners of her mouth. Seconds later, her blue eyes went dull and her jaw went slack. The ball fell from her hand, hitting the ground as she started to collapse.
The explosion tore Becky apart, making the closest tributes scream and curse as they were spattered with blood and debris. Every surviving tribute stared in shock and horror.
He continued to watch and could see something of which he had been wholly unaware. Two launch plates from where Becky had been standing, Lois turned from the horrifying scene and looked at Clark with shocked sympathy. Clark himself had been oblivious, staring at the spot where Becky had been, one hand pressed over his mouth to keep from being sick. Now, seeing Lois’s response, he felt that much worse. Despite her tough exterior, she had really had compassion for him and Becky.
The tape continued to play, but Clark was no longer watching it. He thought back to a comment Lois had made the day before.
“It was a real shame about Becky, but she was just too sick. There just wasn’t anything more you could have done for her.” The truth of her statement was now very obvious.
Lois had known what had actually happened to Clark’s district partner, but had assumed that he, too, knew what Becky’s fate had truly been and hadn’t mentioned the matter further, perhaps in an attempt to spare him further pain. Clark himself had been too sick from the Kryptonite exposure and too focused on his own survival to see what was really happening to Becky.
Until now, Clark had believed that Becky had died in the explosion, though he hadn’t suspected Haver of having anything to do with it until he’d exited the hovercraft. The man’s look of relief and pride had reminded Clark of Haver’s assertion that Becky had no chance, and that trying to protect her could cost Clark his life. In his exhaustion and distress over what had happened in the arena, Clark had jumped to the wrong conclusion and unfairly attacked his mentor.
Clark gripped the arms of the easy chair he was sitting in, his fingernails digging in and tearing the upholstery. The others looked up at the sound.
“Turn it off!” Haver ordered Marcius when he saw how upset Clark was. Cautiously, he approached the young victor. “Clark, are you okay?”
Clark let go of the arms of the chair before he could do further damage. Looking up at Haver, he stammered, “I … I … owe you an apology. You … didn’t have anything to do with her death.” He stood up, facing the older man. “I’m sorry. I should never have accused you of putting Becky up to dropping her token, let alone …”
“I told you before the Games started that I’ve never wanted any tribute dead. I didn’t think she had any chance, but I would never have encouraged her to end her own life in order to improve your chance of survival. I didn’t want her dead anymore than you did, though I knew her death was inevitable. Besides, there was her family to think about. Remember what I told you about tributes who commit suicide in the arena? Even though I couldn’t save Becky, I wouldn’t tell her to do anything that would put her family at risk. Clark, you’re only the second tribute I’ve managed to get out of the arena, but I’ve always protected the tributes’ families and friends. It was often the only thing I could do.”
Clark looked down, knowing that if he had found a piece of Kryptonite in the arena and used it to weaken himself sufficiently for Lois to win, it could have been considered suicide, though in all likelihood only he and his parents would have known.
Haver placed a tentative hand on Clark’s shoulder. “Clark, I accept your apology. Now, though, you need to rest. If you need anything to help you sleep, an Avox will bring it to you.”
Clark shook his head. “I … just want to be alone right now.”
“All right.” Haver went to the sitting room door and opened it, escorting Clark into the hallway. When they reached Clark’s room, Haver said, “An Avox will bring your dinner. I think it’s best if you just rest, rather than coming to the dining room.”
Clark looked down. “Okay.” After a moment, he added, “Haver, I can’t apologize enough for what happened earlier. I was wrong, and … I’m sorry.”
“I already accepted your apology. Clark, no one comes out of the arena unaffected. It’s the kind of experience that changes a person — you’re the sole survivor of a violent game, and in order to survive, you had to do things that had formerly been unthinkable. It’s said that only a victor can understand another victor, and I think you’ll find that it’s true.”
Clark only nodded, unable to speak past the lump in his throat. Without another word, he opened the door to his room and stepped inside, quietly closing and locking it behind him.
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