HG OCT: Round 1 Part 1: Prelude

Elan awakens to the clanging of metal.

"Wakey wakey eggs and bakey!" hollers the hulking jailer, rapping on the bars.  "Get your ass up and out so we can put in some real criminals."

The events of yesterday flood back with utter clarity, and Elan leaps up, the aching bones and bruises suddenly forgotten.  As the jailer slides the door aside, Elan seizes the giant's uniform.

"Hvor er min dreng?  Hvor er Garrett?"

"You wanna spend another night in here?"  The jailer wrenches free and scruffs the shorter man.  "Stop spouting nonsense and get yourself on that shuttle.  It's back to work for you."

Escorted out by two equally bulky Peacekeepers, Elan finds himself on a familiar bus en route a familiar highway back towards the eastern edge of District Six.

He should have been on this bus yesterday.  With Garrett.  Listening to him invent all the ways to catch fish without reel or bait.

Do they expect him to return to a normal life?  Pretend like nothing happened?  What about that girl chosen to be onstage?  Where is her family?  Her mother and father?  Had they just stood there and watched?  Or had they simply not been there?  Or perhaps they had known fighting would get them nowhere.

Elan had known it.  He had known from the moment those soldiers gathered around them that resistance would be futile.  It hadn't mean there wasn't hope, just, not a lot.  But he'd be damned if he let them take his son without a fight.

He hopes to whatever God is out there that blue-haired bøsserøv is smart enough to give his son the ring.  It will serve as a reminder of home, and as a herald.  The fight isn't over.

He's coming for his son.

* * *

At five feet and eleven and a half inches, Hacken Joel likes to imagine himself as a big manager, walking around in shiny boots and shouting things and mostly doing nothing at all.  He'd have an office all to himself, coffee in the morning, maybe coffee in the afternoon too, and a nice cozy house to go home to.

But it's an illusion he gets to experience only when looking at himself in the bathroom mirrors, sometimes even playacting when he's the only one there.

Today's not his day.  A man has been standing next to him at the sinks, washing and washing his hands.  Hacken can't even make his usual "boss" faces at the mirror.  He waits there pretending to inspect his shirt, but the other man doesn't leave.  People come in, people go out, and he feels like the two of them have been at the sinks for over an hour.

He thinks he's seen the guy around before, some newbie stuck on paint duty, never says a word.  But he can't be sure, because the guy he's thinking of is blond, and the one next to him has got black hair shining with grease.  Smells of it too.

The door swings, another worker leaves, and finally–finally–this guy's done washing his hands.

"That took you a while," Hacken snaps.  The other man ignores him and goes to dry off.  Hacken huffs to himself and inhales deeply.  He needs to calm down and get in the groove.

He closes his eyes, and never sees the hammer coming.

* * *

There's blood on the hammer head.

Oh God, he better not have killed him.

But there's no time to ponder that.  Elan drags the body into one of the larger stalls and immediately sets to stripping down.  The man's uniform is filthy, but not any cleaner than what he's wearing right now.  He needs the disguise.  This man is one of the autocarrier drivers, those with special permission to leave the district and deliver shiny new automobiles to dealerships across Panem.  If he expects to make it all the way to the Capitol, he needs to leave this district first.

He swathes the man's head in toilet paper, and mops away any blood on the floor and sink.  Ironic, he thinks, that erasing evidence of real crime is easier than erasing official records of political scandals.

But where to hide the body?  If he leaves the body here and locks the stall, the janitor is likely to find it within the next 24 hours.  He needs more time.  He needs–

Of course!  The janitor!  Elan removes the large trashbag beneath the paper towel disposal.  He'll simply do the janitor a bit of service, taking out the trash and all.  He carefully folds the man into a fetal curl, and pulls the bag over.

Elan knots the bag, pulls the cap lower against his face, and hopes no one will look too closely.