Plum had woken to her prep team jumping on her bed at the crack of dawn. They seemed impatient with her and tsked at the sight of dark circles under her eyes. It was getting harder to sleep despite the fact that she was needing it more. Her fears were growing. It was hard not be afraid of what was to come. She foresaw torture before death. Maybe that's what scared her most.
They had her shower before they put a mild amount of makeup on her face - enough to make her look livelier than her current tired features. Her hair was braided first and then pinned into a bun over her neck. She felt lighter as she dressed in the spandex training suits so typical of tributes. They were black with differing colors on the shoulder to mark each pair as they all came from the same district. Her's was white, a fact not missed on her. As she was escorted down the hall she met up with a handful of the other tributes, Sorrel among them with his white and black training suit on as well.
As she ate a croissant Plum kept to herself, pulling at the flaky bread with a hopelessness as some of the boys chattered excitedly across the room. This concerned her. She heard laughter between them as they addressed to one another about their skillsets. What weapons were they going to use? Could they teach one another? Plum swallowed her breakfast bitterly. They would all be trying to kill each other in a matter of days.
Breakfast concluded at 6:30am and they were ushered into the basement for training. Three days of this, trying out tools and learning, before they would demonstrate their skills to the gamesmasters and be scored. All this before the interviews and then finally their launch into the final arena. All she wanted it to do was go by quickly.
As they approached downstairs she was surprised by how many of them there were. It disturbed her to think that 23 would die. Would history view them as the final victims of the revolution? Or as the final tributes in a cruelly imposed games? Would they be remembered with time at all?
A woman approached them, standing on a small platform before the door into the training center, and began to instruct them about how the center worked. There were twenty experts in different areas of the room teaching them everything from snares to swimming. The weapons, she told them, were not all guaranteed to be in the arena and she advocated that they spend more time learning survival skills. Plum tuned the woman's voice out, focusing on her nails. She'd chewed them down with her nerves. Her hands trembled and she fought a growing headache from the stress of it all.
When the doors opened, many others raced inside. She knew they had 36 hours between today and the next two days to learn. It was no race and if it was it was only to the arena and their death.