The Capitol doubled the efforts made for Arachne’s funeral, which Coriolanus felt appropriate for the twins. More speeches, more Peacekeepers, more banners.
“Enlighten us, Festus,” said Professor Demigloss. “Simple. We go straight to the punitive,” Festus answered. “Instead of suggesting people watch, make it the law.”
For today's ceremony, however, students were instructed to be dressed fashionably but with the solemnity the occasion dictated. Tigris had said to trust her, and he did. Only his cousin's cleverness with a needle had saved him so far.
Coriolanus stood on the empty train platform, awaiting his tribute’s arrival, a long-stemmed white rose balanced carefully between his thumb and index finger. It had been Tigris’s idea to bring her a gift.
He made a wrong turn, then another, and found himself in a ghoulish section of the lab where the glass cases housed humans with animal parts grafted to their bodies.
Watching the bright pages of his picture books — the very ones he’d pored over with his mother — reduced to ashes had never failed to bring him to tears. But better off sad than dead.
Dean Casca Highbottom, the man credited with the creation of the Hunger Games, was overseeing the mentor program personally. He presented himself to the students with all the verve of a sleepwalker, dreamy-eyed and, as usual, doped up on morphling.
Tanner bounded over to them. Mizzen grinned and raised his hands for a victory slap. Tanner had just made contact when Coral drove the second trident into his back. He fell forward into Mizzen, who, braced by the pole, shoved him away.
Clemensia gave a bloodcurdling scream, shaking her hand madly to rid it of the vipers. The tiny puncture wounds left by their fangs oozed the neon colors of their skins. Pus dyed bright pink, yellow, and blue dripped down her fingers.
The world still thought Coriolanus rich, but his only real currency was charm, which he spread liberally as he made his way through the crowd. Faces lit up as he gave friendly hellos to students and teachers alike, asking about family members, dropping compliments here and there.
Snooty Juno Phipps admitted she’d been disappointed to get tiny Bobbin. Didn’t a Phipps, a member of a founding family of the Capitol, deserve better than District 8? But he’d won her over when he told her five different ways he could kill someone with a sewing needle.
Sejanus had arrived on the school playground ten years ago, a shy, sensitive boy cautiously surveying the other children with a pair of soulful brown eyes much too large for his strained face.
“But take heart,” Dr. Gaul continued cheerfully. “Like most of life’s circumstances, war has its ups and downs. And that’s your next assignment. Write me an essay on everything attractive about war. Everything you loved about it.”
The page began with basic stuff. Name, district address, date of birth, hair and eye colors, height and weight, and any disability. Things got more difficult with family makeup. Both Lucy Gray’s parents and her two older siblings were dead.
Keeping his eyes on his notebook, Sejanus persisted. “Hardly rebels. Some of them were two years old when the war ended. The oldest were eight. And now that the war’s over, they’re just citizens of Panem, aren’t they? Same as us?”