Chapter 15: Voss and the Broadcast She Intercepts

The workroom smelled of sizing compound and singed fiber, the same smell Voss had carried home from eleven tribute preparations, and she had stopped noticing it the way you stop noticing the sound of your own breathing. She noticed it now. She noticed it because she had turned the sound off on all three screens an hour ago and the silence made everything else louder.

The feeds ran in columns. Left screen: the Career pack moving in formation through a flooded lower corridor, their torches cutting orange paths across the water's surface. Center screen: a split between two empty factory floors and a distant aerial of the plaza, which had risen another several centimeters since the morning broadcast. Right screen: Maren Ashby.

Not performing.