Since he hadn’t bothered to tell her about his proposal, Clemensia was put out. “I can’t believe you wrote up some proposal while Arachne’s body was still warm! I cried all night long.” Her puffy eyes backed up the claim.
“Well, it’s not like I could sleep either,” Coriolanus objected. “After holding her while she died. Working kept me from freaking out.”
“I know, I know. Everyone handles grief differently. I didn’t mean that like it sounded.” She sighed. “So, what’s in this thing I supposedly cowrote?”
Coriolanus gave her a quick overview, but she still seemed annoyed. “I’m sorry, I meant to tell you. It’s pretty basic stuff, and some of it we already discussed as a group. Look, I already got one demerit this week — I can’t afford to let my grades take a hit, too.”
“Did you at least put my name on it? I don’t want it to seem like I was too feeble to pull my weight,” she said.
“I didn’t put anyone’s name on it. It’s more of a class project.” Coriolanus threw up his hands in exasperation. “Honestly, Clemmie, I thought I was doing you a favor!”
“Okay, okay,” she said, relenting. “I guess I owe you. But I wish I’d at least had a chance to read it. Just cover for me if she starts grilling us about it.”
“You know I will. She’ll probably hate it anyway,” he said. “I mean, I think it’s pretty solid, but she’s operating with a whole different rule book.”
“That’s true,” Clemensia agreed. “Do you think there will even be a Hunger Games now?”
He hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know. What with Arachne, and then the funeral . . . If they happen, they’ll be delayed, I suppose. I know you don’t like them anyway.”
“Do you? Does anyone, really?” Clemensia asked.
“Maybe they’ll just send the tributes home.” The idea was not entirely unappealing when he thought of Lucy Gray. He wondered how the fallout from Arachne’s death was affecting her. Were all the tributes being punished? Would they allow him to see her?
“Yes, or make them Avoxes, or something,” said Clemensia. “It’s awful, but not as bad as the arena. I mean, I’d rather be alive without a tongue than dead, wouldn’t you?”
“I would, but I’m not sure my tribute would,” said Coriolanus. “Can you still sing without a tongue?”
“I don’t know. Hum, maybe.” They had reached the gates of the Citadel. “This place scared me when I was little.”
“It scares me still,” said Coriolanus, which made her laugh.
At the Peacekeeper station, their retinas were scanned and checked against the Capitol files. Their book bags were taken and a guard escorted them down a long, gray corridor and onto an elevator that plunged down at least twenty-five floors. Coriolanus had never been so far underground and, surprisingly, found he liked it. Much as he loved the Snows’ penthouse apartment, he’d felt so vulnerable when the bombs had fallen during the war. Here, it seemed nothing could reach him.
The elevator doors parted, and they stepped into a gigantic open laboratory. Rows of research tables, unfamiliar machines, and glass cases spread out into the distance. Coriolanus turned to the guard, but she closed the doors and left them without giving further instructions. “Shall we?” he asked Clemensia.
They began to make their way cautiously into the lab. “I have a terrible feeling I’m going to break something,” she whispered.
They walked along a wall of glass cases fifteen feet high. Inside, a menagerie of creatures, some familiar, some altered to the point that no label could easily be attached, roamed and panted and flopped around in apparent unhappiness. Oversized fangs, claws, and flippers swiped the glass as they passed.
A young man in a lab coat intercepted them and led them to a section of reptile cases. Here they found Dr. Gaul, peering into a large terrarium filled with hundreds of snakes. They were artificially bright, their skins almost glowing in shades of neon pink, yellow, and blue. No longer than a ruler and not much thicker than a pencil, they twisted into a psychedelic carpet that covered the bottom of the case.
“Ah, here you are,” Dr. Gaul said with a grin. “Say hello to my new babies.”
“Hello there,” said Coriolanus, putting his face close to the glass to see the writhing mess. They reminded him of something, but he couldn’t think what.
“Is there a point to the color?” asked Clemensia.
“There is a point to everything or nothing at all, depending on your worldview,” said Dr. Gaul. “Which brings me to your proposal. I liked it. Who wrote it? Just you two? Or did your brassy friend weigh in before her throat was cut?”
Clemensia pressed her lips together, upset, but then Coriolanus saw her face tighten. She was not going to be intimidated. “The whole class discussed it as a group.”
“And Arachne was planning to help write it up last night, but then . . . as you said,” he added.
“But you two forged ahead, is that it?” asked Dr. Gaul.
“That’s right,” said Clemensia. “We wrote it up at the library, and I printed it out at my apartment last night. Then I gave it to Coriolanus so he could drop it off this morning. As assigned.”
Dr. Gaul addressed Coriolanus. “Is that how it happened?”
Coriolanus felt put on the spot. “I did drop it off this morning, yes. Well, just to the Peacekeepers on guard; I wasn’t allowed in,” he said evasively. Something was strange about this line of questioning. “Was that a problem?”
“I just wanted to make sure you’d both had your hands on it,” said Dr. Gaul.
“I can show you the parts the group discussed and how they were developed in the proposal,” he offered.
“Yes. Do that. Did you bring a copy?” she asked.
Clemensia looked at Coriolanus expectantly. “No, I didn’t,” he said. He wasn’t thrilled with Clemensia laying it at his door, when she’d been too shaky to even help write the thing. Especially since she was one of his most formidable competitors for the Academy prizes. “Did you?”
“They took our book bags.” Clemensia turned to Dr. Gaul. “Perhaps we could use the copy we gave you?”
“Well, we could. But my assistant lined this very case with it while I was having my lunch,” she said with a laugh.
Coriolanus stared down into the mass of wriggling snakes, with their flicking tongues. Sure enough, he could catch phrases of his proposal between the coils.
“Suppose you two retrieve it?” Dr. Gaul suggested.
It felt like a test. A weird Dr. Gaul test, but still. And somehow planned, but he couldn’t begin to guess to what end. He glanced at Clemensia and tried to remember if she was afraid of snakes, but he scarcely knew if he was himself. They didn’t have snakes in the lab at school.
She gave Dr. Gaul a clenched smile. “Of course. Do we just reach in through the trapdoor on the top?”
Dr. Gaul removed the entire cover. “Oh, no, let’s give you some room. Mr. Snow? Why don’t you start?”
Coriolanus reached in slowly, feeling the warmth of the heated air.
“That’s right. Move gently. Don’t disrupt them,” Dr. Gaul instructed.
He scooped his fingers under the edge of a sheet of his proposal and slowly slid it out from under the snakes. They slumped down into a heap but didn’t seem to mind much. “I don’t think they even noticed me,” he said to Clemensia, who looked a little green.
“Here I go, then.” She reached into the tank.
“They can’t see too well, and they hear even less,” said Dr. Gaul. “But they know you’re there. Snakes can smell you using their tongues, these mutts here more than others.”
Clemensia hooked a sheet with her fingernail and lifted it up. The snakes stirred.
“If you’re familiar, if they have pleasant associations with your scent — a warm tank, for instance — they’ll ignore you. A new scent, something foreign, that would be a threat,” said Dr. Gaul. “You’d be on your own, little girl.”
Coriolanus had just begun to put two and two together when he saw the look of alarm on Clemensia’s face. She yanked her hand from the tank, but not before a half dozen neon snakes sank their fangs into her flesh.