Chapter 10: The Alliance Maren Did Not Plan For

The staircase is exactly where she said it would be.

Cael finds the door before she does — he was already moving northeast, which means he had already identified it, which means he had already decided. She files this away without comment. He holds the door open not as courtesy but as efficiency, the way you hold a door when you're carrying weight and the other person isn't, and they go up single file, Cael first with both packs, Maren behind with the knife loose in her right hand.

The stairwell smells of rot and iron. The walls are stained in horizontal bands — water lines from previous floods or previous rains or the Gamemakers running simulations before the tributes arrived. She counts the bands. Seven. The highest is at her shoulder on the first landing, which means the water has been here before, which means the Gamemakers know exactly what this building does when it fills.