The Great Games - Chapter 1

     I awake to find a small, warm body snuggled up against mine.  I don’t have to bother to even think to know it is Mary.  Brushing away a hint of annoyance, I slide away from her touch, and out from under the ratty blanket–all the warmth we can call ours.  She must’ve had nightmares again, and goodness knows no one would ever want to snuggle with Mycroft.  Though why Mary would consider me the better choice, even I can’t deduce.
     It’s not like I care about her.
     Still, there is something about Mary that practically no one else has.  She is fresh, innocent, and everyone loves her.  Even dull-eyed Mycroft, my elder brother, who hardly makes an effort to do anything, seems to liven up a bit when Mary is around.
     Me?  To me Mary is a burden, but it isn’t like I can just send her off now.  After her parents died in a cave-in ten years back, leaving a traumatized six-year-old behind, Mycroft’s wife–who was a sentimental fool; why else had she married my brother?–had insisted on taking Mary in, rather than leaving her to the mercy of the imbeciles who run the Institutions.  Then Mycroft’s wife up and died of malaria a few years later, leaving my elder brother an emotional wreck, Mary a twice-over orphan, and me responsible for the both of them.
     Maybe I hated his wife for dying.  Maybe I was just irritated at how inconvenient it was for me.  But somebody had to get food, and Mycroft wasn’t going to do it.  He’d told me in no uncertain terms that he was done doing “legwork”.  It is hard for me not to resent him; while I scrounge in the rubbish bins for something minutely edible, or set traps for rats and other small vermin, he sits staring off into nothing.  I’m often tempted to bring back food only for Mary–I hardly eat that much anyway–and let him waste away to nothing until he finally pops off.  But I know Mary’s look of rebuke would be too much for me to handle, if I did try.
     Somehow, she manages to pull off that look.

     The sewers are cold, damp, and reek of human waste.  That’s where we live–Mycroft, Mary, and I.  Along with thousands of others.  Those who still remember–or have just had the story passed down to them–call this place the Tube, because of some underground tunnels which used to house an archaic vehicle called a “tram”, which took people from one end of the city to the other.  There are still stairways that lead up to the surface at different “stations” where the tram would stop to let passengers off, but most of them are blocked by either very solid steel doors, or have Red Guards stationed there.  To keep us dirty Tube-dwellers away from the decent people who live on the surface.
     The Tube is blocked off from the surface in all areas, except for the very farthest reaches, over three hundred miles to West, North, and South, beyond the city limits.  If anyone makes it that far, there is still a 10-foot tall, electrified fence surrounding the exit, and a Red Guard outpost.  But still, people try, if only to get a glimpse of the sun more than once a year.  Those who go that way generally turn back, or starve before they’ve made it very far–they don’t receive government food rations if they leave.  The Eastward passages are off limits; the security is very tight in that direction, and no one that’s headed that way in attempt to escape the Tube has ever come back.  I’ve ventured that way myself, and found bodies; all of them were shot.
     I crawl out from the mess of fitted-together boxes, sheets of tin and plastic that make up our home.  It’s pitch dark out, but that’s normal.  The guards don’t bother to turn on the lights until past eight, and it can only be five AM.
     Not that I care; I like the darkness and the quiet.  When the Tube is awake, there are so many people moving, talking, thinking, it drives me mad.  The only time I have to myself–when I can think–is now, in the early hours, when everyone else is still asleep.
     I know my way around the passageways in the dark; to me, it’s as if the lights were on at full power.  I’ve memorized every turn and T-intersection.  I can avoid stepping on a sleeping body just by listening for their breathing, or judge the width and depth of the sewage stream by the volume of the noise it makes as it rushes past.  Every noise is accentuated in these tunnels, so I’ve learned to tread softly and listen carefully.
     In the pitch dark, I check my traps for any catches, and by 6 I’m heading back “home” with three strangled rats hanging by their tails from my fist.  There had been a mouse in one of my traps, but it was too small to even make a decent bite, so I threw it into the sewage stream.
     There are only eight hours left.
     Eight hours until the Reaping.
     When I was younger–when I wasn’t in full possession of all the facts, I used to ask my mother why we had to live in the sewers, on the brink of starvation every day.  Why people up Top got to live in luxury, eat good food, while we scrounged for trash.  She told me it was because there were people who possessed so much power they could decide who should live and who should die.  Mother laughed indulgently when I told her one day I would take that power for myself, and make sure she lived in comfort until the day she died.
     I was never naive enough to believe there was a “forever”, but at five years old I’d believed my mum would at least live a long time.
     Then her name was picked at the Reaping, and I got to watch her die.
     That’s when I realized that dying is what people do.
     When I found out that if I tried hard enough, I could stop it all.  I could stop feeling.
     Love is a dangerous disadvantage.
     Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side.
     And I won’t lose.