Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
And someone’s definitely rapping at my chamber door. Gently. I hear the turn of the knob, the brush of the wood against carpet.
A figure comes around the door, holding something that emanates a thin beam of light. It’s a pair of boiled potatoes, connected to a pea-sized bulb. Beetee raises a finger to his lips, then tilts his head for me to follow. Careful not to wake anyone, I detach my hand from Lou Lou’s and slip out of the bedroom. Moving away from the door, Beetee and I speak in hushed voices.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
Beetee’s slightly short of breath. “I came up the utility steps from the third floor. Wiress knocked out the power in the building. The surveillance cameras are down. She estimates we have about ten minutes left. Are you serious about breaking the arena?”
“Yes! Just tell me what I have to do. What breaks a machine?”
“Time, usually. With it comes fatigue, wear and tear, erosion, creep. But we don’t have the luxury of time, so we’ll need a different approach. You saw Wiress’s arena last year. Did you wonder how they ran it?”
“From the Capitol, right? They show the control room during the Games. . . .”
“Yes, they show the commands being issued, and some can be triggered remotely. But these days, there’s also a Gamemaker level at the actual arena to carry out certain orders. An entire sub-terranean floor, nicknamed Sub-A, that they never show the audience. It destroys the illusion of the arena being controlled from afar. On Sub-A they manage manual tasks, like unleashing the mutts or stocking a feast. You’ll be launched from there in a few days. But all of that is secondary to the real job of managing the onsite computer system that’s essential to the running of the Games. That’s our team’s target. The arena’s brain.”
My whole life I’ve watched the Games without even questioning how the arenas actually worked. I don’t know what I thought breaking the arena meant – me chopping at some cable or something with an ax? Anyway, it didn’t involve an underground computer that, even if I could reach, I wouldn’t know how to break . . . unless I could go at it with the aforementioned ax.
But Beetee mentioned a team. Maybe I can be the brawn, and Ampert can do the breaking.
“So we’re going to try to find this computer and pull its plug? Enter bad commands?”
Beetee shakes his head. “It would be virtually impossible for one of you to reach it. The computer’s in a restricted area with high-tech security systems in place. But the brain can’t operate unless other parts of the body are sound. Like this building tonight. When the electricity is cut off, the place goes dead.”
“We’re going to knock out the power?”
“Oh, no, Haymitch. Even if we happen to, they have an enormous backup generator at the top end, just outside the arena itself.”
“So what, then?”
“We’re going to drown it.”
“Drown it?” I guess Wyatt was right about the arena being wet. “How?”
“The arena has the capacity to drown itself. Creating the tribute ecosystem requires electricity, plumbing, heating, cooling, ventilation, everything your house would have,” says Beetee.
“My house doesn’t have half those things. Does yours?” I ask.
“I live in the Victor’s Village now, so yes, it does.”
We have a Victor’s Village in 12, too. A dozen fancy houses you get to live in for the rest of your life if you win the Games. Burdock and I used to steal over there and peek in the windows on a summer’s night. In the moonlight, we could see enough to tell they had furniture and hanging lights and bathtubs like the ones here. The village was built after our lone victor, though, so no one’s ever lived in it.
Beetee continues. “My point is that, for at least a few weeks, the arena has to be capable of sustaining the tributes and supporting the set pieces. I haven’t seen the plan for the actual arena, but over a year ago, they had me look over the Sub-A design. In the northern part of the arena, there’s an enormous water tank that sits just below the surface. Arenas can require a lot of water to sustain lakes, create rainstorms, quench fires. This reservoir seems especially large.”
“Then if the computer is the brain, this would be the bladder,” I say.
He laughs a bit. “Yes. Exactly. And once the bladder has ruptured, it will flood the brain, leaving it inoperable.”
My brain’s starting to get flooded as well. “But . . . if I can’t reach the brain, how will I reach the bladder?”
“Throughout the arena, there are hatches that connect the surface to the utility corridors below. You’ll enter through one yourself. The hatches are used by the Gamemakers to introduce elements into the arena. You’ll access the utility corridors by way of a mutt portal.”
“A mutt portal,” I repeat.
“Yes. The plans showed dozens of these. It must be a mutt-heavy program.”
I try not to think about the weasels. “Okay, so I find a mutt portal, climb down to the utility corridor . . .”
“Locate the tank and blow a hole in it, releasing the water. Gravity should take care of the rest. It will naturally flood Sub-A.”
I feel overwhelmed. “Okay, hold on. This is a lot. How am I supposed to blow a hole in the tank? Are you sending me in there with explosives?”
“It won’t be just you. You’ll have Ampert.” At the mention of his son’s name, his voice catches and a spasm of pain crosses his face.
“This plan sounds . . . pretty dangerous,” I venture. “Maybe I can do it without him.”
For the first time, his agony breaks through his restraint. “They reaped him to kill him, Haymitch! To punish me! I can think of no realistic scenario in which he does not die. I can only hope that his death is quick and not in vain.”
I know he’s right. Even without this wild plot to break the arena, Ampert’s marked for death, like me. If the Careers don’t take him out, the Gamemakers will. “I’m so sorry. I’ll try to look out for him in there.”
“Don’t let him suffer,” whispers Beetee.
“I’ll do my best,” I promise.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.