Genocide Games Chapter 1, a hunger games fanfic

"Genocide Games"

Chapter One

By Brian Grove

Brian at rescueddoggies dot com

Disclaimer – As I'm British and male, it may come as no surprise that I don't own Hunger Games.

This is a sequel to Vengeance Games and Games Return, but you do not need to have read those stories to understand it, although reading at least Games Return will help you understand the background to this story.

An experienced beta would be welcome.

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There was a lot of grumbling on the train to District Eleven. President Beetee had decreed that we were all to spend a month in one of the poorer districts to, as he put it, see how the other half lived.

Putting it bluntly, who cares? If they were decent hardworking people, they'd be living in the Capitol, wouldn't they?

On the platform at the station we all had to queue up. What kind of place was this?

"Name?" a bored sounding woman asked me.

"Mrs Morrison."

"Una!" she bellowed.

A woman came forward. "You're with me. Three kids, right?"

"Yes. I have three children."

"Right, kids. Help your mum with the bags. We've got a way to go."

At least they didn't embarrass me, they grumbled a little but did as they were told. After we'd walked a few hundred yards, Stefani, my youngest daughter, who was eight, said loudly, "Where's the car?"

Apraxo, at fifteen, my eldest child and my only son said quietly, "Shush. I don't think she can afford a car."

Not quietly enough. "I can afford one, but it hardly seems fair when nobody else can. Anyhow, it's only five miles."

"Five miles?" cried Dorada, my twelve year-old. "I can't walk that far."

The woman turned back. "Your choice. It's walk or sleep in the street and I wouldn't recommend that for a young girl. It's safer than it used to be, but..."

I shot the woman a glare, which she ignored. A month with her? This was going to be hell.

Despite Dorada's objections we arrived fairly soon at Una's house. It was bigger than some we'd seen. "This is your room. I'll leave you to unpack."

"All of us?" Apraxo objected. "I can't share with girls."

"Until three years ago, my whole family had a house with one room," Una explained. "There were eight of us. We survived."

"But this house has, what, three bedrooms?"

"Yes. But I've got to go back to the station now. To meet the family from District Thirteen." She turned to me. "Can you give the pot in the kitchen a stir once in a while, to see it doesn't burn?"

And with that she left us. It was dark when she returned, with a couple rather older than I was, and a boy about thirteen.

She left again for a few minutes and returned with her own children, one of whom was a girl who couldn't walk very well. "I told them to wait with a neighbor until I got back so they wouldn't bother you," she explained.

"Thank you," I said politely.

"Now, I'll bring in the stew and we can introduce ourselves while we eat. Kids! My kids, that is. Bring the bowls and spoons."

We ate in what seemed like a large hall at the side of the house. It was full of long wooden tables and we all sat around one of them. Una quickly returned with a large pot.

She went back to the kitchen as one of her daughters served the stew into bowls for each of us, her little boy handed us each a spoon. Una returned with a basket of dark brown crescent shaped rolls with some kind of seed on the outside. "Help yourselves to bread," she said.

As we began to eat, she said, "Let's get to know one another. This is Lau, she's thirteen, then Cal, who's ten, Kit, who's eight and Ben who's seven."

"The baby," said Cal.

"Am not," Ben retorted.

"Mum," said my Stefani. "I don't like this bread."

"Nor do I," said Dorada.

I began to apologise for my daughters' rudeness, but Una cut me off. "I'm afraid that's all we have here in Eleven. It's made from cheap ration grain, rather heavier than the Capitol bread."

"Can I leave it?" Dorada asked.

"I'll have it," Una's oldest girl, Lau, said, and snatched it from her plate.

"Lau. Apologise at once. You ask if you may have her bread."

"I'm sorry. May I have your bread if you don't want it?"

"I'm sorry," Una explained. "My older children have never really forgotten the years when we were virtually starving."

"There's only five of you. You said eight of you had to sleep in one room," said Apraxo, making it sound like an accusation.

"My husband was killed in the war. He was working in a field when a plane came down and shot at all of them."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"And two of my three eldest children are dead."

Lau got up from the table and ran to get a photograph. "This is Tag," she said, "my twin. He died in the games in Thirteen last year."

The couple from Thirteen looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry for your loss," the man said.

Lau went on, "Tatty, that's the Mockingjay, volunteered to take my place."

"So it was you," I said. "But why would she volunteer for you?"

It was Una who answered. "I worked for President Everdene in the Capitol and when she was busy, Tatiana was almost like another daughter to me."

"If you worked in the Capitol, why on earth would you want to live here?" I asked.

Una looked grim. "During the last games, in the Capitol there were a lot of protests saying it was okay to kill District children, so long as they let the Capitol children go. I realized that we'd always be second class citizens, or worse, to the Capitol, so I decided to come home. I'd saved enough money while I was working for Katniss that the children wouldn't be at risk of starving."

Lau brought out another photo. A tiny girl in a beautiful gossamer gown, complete with wings. "This is Rue, my big sister."

It was Dorada's turn to embarrass me. "No wonder you can't afford decent bread if you spend money on dresses like that."

Una's children looked at Dorada, angry and outraged at what she'd said. Una just said calmly, "We didn't spend any money on it. It was a gift from the Capitol before they sent her to be murdered in the seventy-fourth hunger games. So you see, it didn't cost a cent, just her life."

Dorada looked stricken. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"Do you know what a tesera is?"

Dorada shook her head.

"In the poorer districts, most of us didn't have enough to eat. Although here in Eleven we grew the food, we weren't allowed to keep any, only the little we could afford to buy, most went to the Capitol. Whenever the Capitol used more food, the price went up to us, so we couldn't buy enough to live. But a child could take a Tesera. They could get an extra ration of oil and grain, to make that bread you don't like. In return, for every Tesera they take, their name goes into the reaping an extra time. Rue's name should have been in there just once as she was only twelve, but she insisted on taking a Tesera for each of her brothers and sisters. Maybe if I'd stopped her, she'd still be here. But then, maybe one of them would have starved to death instead."

It was official, I thought. She hates us and with good reason.

"But Mrs Morrison," she said to me, "You haven't introduced your children."

"This is Apraxo, he's fifteen, then Dorada, twelve and Stefani who's eight."

"And Mr Tigue?"

"I'm Sean, this is my wife Deana, and our son Jerard, who's thirteen."

"Now we all know each other, would anyone like seconds?"

To my surprise, Dorada asked, "May I have a piece of bread, please?"

"Of course, child," said Una, "but why? I thought you didn't like it."

"I just thought. If your little girl died so she could get this for her younger brothers and sisters, it seems ungrateful not to eat some."

For the first time, Una smiled at one of us as she passed her the bread.

As Dorada struggled to eat the heavy bread, Una said, "Here. Have some more stew. It goes down easier if you dip it first."

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It was still dark when Una woke us all up. "It'll be dawn soon. We have to be out in the fields by dawn."

It was a long, hard day in the fields, but even little Ben was expected to pull his weight, so I felt I had to insist that mine did as well.

Nobody objected to the bread at midday and again in the late afternoon, even if all we had to wash it down was water.

By evening we were all aching in places we didn't even know we had. At least we wouldn't have to get up early the next day as the children were going on a tour of the arenas used for the hunger games. The twelves and overs were going the next day, the under twelves would follow in two weeks time, the same day the older ones returned.

Stefani was sad that she wasn't going to see her brother and sister for almost four weeks, so Una suggested that she could sleep between them on the floor if she wanted to. Apraxo thought it was silly but Stefani's tears eventually made him give in.

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We cheerfully waved them all off on the third of the trains to leave, one right after another, and the train disappeared into the distance when suddenly screens surrounding the square came on.

"This is Mockingjay Tatiana Everdene, I have an announcement to make and if you want to see your children again, you will listen to all of what I am going to say."

Shocked mumbling circulated the square. "What's happening Mommy?" Stefani asked.

"Shh and we'll find out," I said.

"During the years of the hunger games, the people of District Thirteen, who were supposedly against the games, made the hunger games transmissions their most popular program on television. They also made a great game of betting on the lives of the children being murdered. Last year, when the rogue President Coin ran the games, the rebels were astounded by how few within District Thirteen even tried to protest or speak against them, far fewer in fact, than in the Capitol while it was under President Snow."

"What's she saying, Mommy?"

"Talking of last year, we had hoped that the people of the Capitol had changed, had learned their lesson, but there were massive demonstrations calling for the games to be restricted to District children as before, that it was okay to murder children from the Districts, but not from the great and wonderful Capitol. That caused a great deal of anger amongst the tributes, particularly those, like myself, from the Capitol, who had made friends with the tributes from the Districts. You were saying that our friends' lives weren't worth saving, that they should die."

I felt a hollow ache in my stomach and a sense of dread.

"Some of us were determined to teach both the Capitol and District Thirteen a lesson. My friend, Tito, from District Eleven, begged me as he was dying to make you understand, to stop the games, once and forever. And that is what we are going to do. Every child on the trains that just left the station is now a tribute in the Hunger Games to be fought in the old arenas. There will be one winner permitted from the Capitol and one from District Thirteen. The only children of the relevant ages who are exempt are those who survived last year."

"Mommy?"

"In a few minutes, buses will arrive at the square to take you to have a last visit with your children. Listen for your names. Do not make trouble or the trains will leave even if some or all of you haven't had a chance to say your goodbyes. Unlike President Coin last year, we are at least going to give you that opportunity. Each child has been given a number. Remember the numbers of your child or children. If you program those numbers into the televisions in the houses where you are staying. Your television will then be programmed to concentrate on the cameras monitoring that child or children most of the time. There will be other changes to be announced later."

As the screens played Panem's anthem, the buses began to arrive.

"What's it mean, Mommy?"

What it meant was, two of my children were dead, or as good as. Theoretically one could survive, but only one and the chances of one of my two being the sole survivor out of however many thousand children from the Capitol were on those trains was remote.

There was no nice way to say it. "They are running the hunger games again, darling, and Apraxo and Dorada have been reaped."

"But we're from the Capitol!"

"They know, darling. They know."

"We'll never see them again, will we?"

"We're going to see them soon and we must try not to upset them."

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We end up being on about the twelfth bus to go out to the trains. Tents had been pitched at the side of the track, surrounded by a chain-link fence and we were led through a chain-link gate to one of the tents. "You have fifteen minutes."

Stafani ran forward and threw herself into her brother's arms. "You've got to kill them all and come home alive. I want my brother back."

The Capitol had manuals for just about everything, including parenting. The parenting manual had a serious omission, it never told us what you're supposed to say to your child when he's being sent off to his death. There was so much I wanted to say, but I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

After what seemed like an age of just staring at each other, Apraxo spoke. "Mom, thank you for being the best mom a guy could have."

He's saying goodbye, I thought. He's given up already.

"You're coming home again. You can win this," I said. "You're strong..."

"Mom, there's over a thousand of us. The chances..."

"Screw the chances." Both my children looked at me in shock as I never swore. "Someone has to win. Why not you?"

Apraxo ignored my question and said, "I'll try to protect Dorada as long as I can, but..."

I never heard what the "but" was going to be as a peacekeeper came in to tell us our time was up.

"Mom, I love you," he cried out as we were led away. "And you Steffi. You look after Mom."

Kicking myself for wasting so much of the short time we had been allowed together, I barely noticed that we'd been led back to the bus.

"But we still have to see my daughter!" I cried to the peacekeeper.

"Go back to the square and wait for her name to be called," he explained.

As the bus took us back, I tried desperately to keep myself together for Stefani. The square, which had been full of angry shouting after the announcement, was quiet when we returned, just sounds of exhausted weeping.

It was getting late by the time the bus took us to see Dorada. The long wait had taken a toll on her as well. She tried to look like everything was okay, but we could see the dried marks left by tears and her swollen reddish eyes,

"Mom?"

"I love you, sweetie."

"What's it like to die?"

Her question burst right through the wall I'd built up trying to be strong for all three of my children and I broke down.

Dorada put her arm around me, the daughter I was soon going to lose forever was comforting me. Surely it should be the other way around?

"I was worried," she said.

"What about?" What about? Stupid question, I told myself. She's being sent of to die, probably horribly, and I ask her what she's worried about?

"I was afraid you'd be all false and try to pretend I had a chance." She turned to Stefani. "I guess you get my room now."

Stefani flung her arms around Dorada. "I don't want your room. I want you to come back. Apraxo... Apraxo says he'll try to protect you."

"No!" She sounded desperate. "He can't. He might have a chance, but he won't if he does that. Tell him not to."

"We can't tell him anything," I pointed out. "We can't see him again."

There didn't seem to be much else to say, we just held each other, the three of us. I buried my face in Dorada's hair, as if by taking in the scent of her shampoo, somehow I could keep her with me a bit longer.

At least this time we were better prepared when the peacekeeper came to take us away. "Remember, we love you, Dora. If you have to do awful things in there, nothing will change that."

"Thanks, Mom. Stefani, look after Mom. She's going to really need you now."

What I need is for all three of my children to come home and for this nightmare to end, I thought.

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Both my older children had told Steffi to look after me. Shouldn't it have been the other way around? On the long walk home, it was Steffi who guided me. My mind was virtually a blank.

Una opened the door to let us in. "Did you know?" I asked her harshly. "Did you know about this?"

"No," she answered quietly as we walked into the lounge.

Mr. and Mrs. Tigue were on the sofa, Mr. Tigue's arms around his wife, her head resting on his shoulder. The pain on their faces matched my own. I may have lost two children to their one, but that one was all they had in the world.

Wanting to lash out at someone, anyone, I confronted Una. "You must be pleased. You're finally getting revenge."

She just shook her head, her eyes full of tears. I let her pull me into a hug as the two of us cried together.

Some while later I looked across the room to see Una's daughter Lau, with Stefani sitting on her lap, stroking Stefani's hair as she whimpered quietly.

None of us ate much that night. Even Una's children were upset by what had happened.

The television came on automatically as it did for official broadcasts. "We now go live to the home of Ex-President Everdene."

Katniss Everdene looked like a ghost. Her husband Peeta, sitting beside her, didn't look much better. It was Peeta who spoke first.

"We are speaking directly to President Beetee and to our daughter Tatiana. Mr. President, You spoke out and voted against holding the Justice Games nearly four years ago when twenty-nine children were murdered. We can't believe that power has changed you so much that you are prepared to commit genocide against thousands of children from the Capitol and District Thirteen. We ask you to reconsider."

"Tatiana," Katniss began. "I rescued you and adopted you, but not for this. I don't know how President Beetee persuaded you to go along with this, this atrocity, but you are killing a generation of innocent children. You are disgracing the name Mockingjay. If there is one person who may be able to stop this crazy President, it's you. I beg you not to let this go ahead. Stop this before it's too late."

The screen went dark as the signal was cut.

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The next day was Lau's fourteenth birthday. Everyone still had to work in the orchards but Una had organized a party for after work. Lau begged her to cancel it. "Mom, it wouldn't feel right, having a party. It's not fair on our guests."

"Lau, when Rue was taken for the games, we still had a small party for Cal."

"Yes, Mom, but she was little. She couldn't understand."

"And if it had been your birthday, I would still have had one. It's to say, no matter what happens to any of us, life goes on."

The party was to prove to be eventful. It was quite a small affair, as they'd been living some years in the Capitol, so Lau hadn't really got any close friends here.

There was a knock on the door and Lau went to open it. We all heard a squeal of delight. "Come and meet everyone."

She burst into the lounge almost dragging her friend with her. "This is Pippa," she announced. Pippa was limping slightly.

"I recognize her from the games," said Una. "I trust your injuries are getting better?"

"Yes, thank you," Pippa replied. "A few more months and I should be back to normal. I'm sorry about Tag. He was a nice kid." She turned to Lau. "I'm afraid I didn't bring you anything for your birthday. I didn't know what you would want."

"You're from the Capitol?" I asked her, though her accent gave her away.

"Yes."

"The Mockingjay said that you were all angry at us, and that's why they're running the games again."

"Angry, yes, but I can't believe they're running the games again. You have a child in the games?"

"Two, and this couple have their only child in there as well."

"I'm sorry. None of us wanted this. Ever since Tatiana had that meeting with the President, she's been obsessed. I don't know what he said to her."

Lau asked her, "Instead of a birthday present, could you try to get her to change her mind about the games?"

"You really think we haven't tried? She's just... I think losing Tag, then Evelyn and Tito, then having to kill Gaty to put her out of her misery, it changed her. She's not the Tatty you knew."

There was the sound of a car outside, so Una got up. Cars, I learned, were a rarity in District Eleven, so the arrival of a car meant someone important. Some peacekeepers got out of the car, then stood aside to allow Tatiana Everdene to get out.

Lau ran out to greet her. "Tatty!" she cried.

"Hi. I was in the area, so I had to come and see you on your birthday."

"Come in, come in."

So it was that I met the Mockingjay, the girl who had announced that two of my children were to die. She obviously didn't notice the chilly atmosphere around her as she kissed Una on the cheek, then handed Lau a small box, wrapped up with a ribbon. "Happy Birthday," she said.

Unwrapping it quickly, Lau found a necklace. "It's beautiful," she said, "it must have cost a fortune."

"I can afford it now," Tatiana replied.

Lau surprised us all by putting it back in the box. "I don't want it," she said. "I want you to persuade President Beetee to stop the games."

"I can't do that."

"Well, if he won't stop them, can't you at least get our guests' three children back?"

"I'm sorry," she replied, not sounding very sorry at all.

"But you're the Mockingjay. He'd listen to you if you told him to drop his awful idea, I know he would."

"It was my idea," she admitted.

Lau slapped her hard across the cheek. "Pippa was right. You're not my Tatty anymore. I hate you. Get out!"

I was pleased to see the look of hurt cross Tatiana's face.

As Lau turned to her mother in tears, Una said, coldly, "It's time for you to leave, Mockingjay. You're not welcome here any more."

Tatiana left.

As soon as Una slammed the door behind Tatiana, she slid to the floor sobbing. I realized that this woman had also just lost a daughter, or someone as close as a daughter.

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Brian

THE STORY SO FAR

Chapter 1

A family from the Capitol and a family from District Thirteen go to spend a month with Una and her family in District Eleven. Three of their children are taken for the hunger games.