Author Games: Panem Entangled

When Whacked By a What?! | Entries 1-6

District 1 Male: Morgan Ruidhir

The mirror-man had shattered.

Morgan had known it would happen, from the moment he had exited the train a week prior and gazed upon a blank, unfeeling Capitol. He had known he would adopt a persona there—something palatable, something that reflected colorless color back onto whoever examined him—but he had not known when that persona would crumble. After all, he had never been forced to lie before. He did not know his own capacity to deceive.

All of the usual One tributes had glittered during their interviews. All of them had stamped their painted faces into the Capitol's psyche. But the arena had robbed them of their glitter, and the paint had chipped off of their faces, and in the darkest moments of the Games, they all had become plain.

And so Morgan had predicted the shattering would come in his darkest moment. A week into the Games, perhaps, the Gamemakers would send some natural disaster his way. He would injure himself, lose a hand, forget that he needed to pretend for anyone. The easygoing smile would leave his face. Spectators would stop saying, "There's someone who's happy to be in the Games." Instead they would say, "There's someone who never wanted to be here. There's someone who made a grave mistake."

But it happened sooner than that. The mirror-man was gone now, and in his place was a frightened boy.

Morgan and his rescuer had fled the bloodbath and woven through the alleyways of the arena, seemingly hunting for shelter. His companion moved fluidly and forcefully, as a thunderstorm might if it took on the semblance of a human. Morgan followed him without speaking. At times, Morgan scanned the empty streets around them, searching for other tributes; at other times, he simply stared at the back of the other boy's head. Morgan's relationship with him seemed destined to remain like this: Morgan staring at the back of his head, the other boy going somewhere unknown or doing something powerful.

His name was Nereus. Morgan had remembered it as they'd fled the bloodbath, given enough time and silence to pick through his own memories. Whenever his mentor Hadrian had grumbled about recruiting sponsors, he'd mentioned "beating out Nereus, that boy from Two." Apparently he was Morgan's "stiffest competition," for sponsor gifts and for victory. Morgan had never arranged the facts in his mind, had never placed the name with the face and the body. Now he didn't understand why he hadn't. It all fit together so perfectly—Nereus Ramsay, the boy from Two, the face he'd seen before his interview that had made him feel.

Nereus was who the mirror-man should have been. People probably liked Nereus, with his natural bravado and effortless strength and energy to rearrange the world. Morgan had always been less bravado and more spirit, less strength and more willpower. But according to Hadrian, these traits didn't translate well into sponsorships. Morgan had needed to be more charming and more confident just to compete on Nereus's level.

But all of Morgan's positive qualities, positive or real, had shattered at the bloodbath. He had stood there like a startled animal, and he had revealed his weakness to everyone in the arena. No one would take him seriously now. No one could.

Maybe Morgan could compensate through a stellar performance, starting now. The common One strategy was to claim the Cornucopia, guard the supplies, and pick off the other tributes one by one. Yet there was no Cornucopia here, and the supplies were missing; the arena was stacked against him. Morgan supposed he could still pick off the other tributes, but it no longer felt right—he had nothing to prove anymore. Sheer, self-focused survival was his best option.

But Nereus was with him.

Impossibly, bafflingly, Nereus was with him. He shouldn't have been—if Nereus's mentor had been on the same page as Morgan's, the two of them should never have come together. In fact, Nereus should have killed Morgan the moment he'd seen him falter at the bloodbath. But he hadn't, and here they were.