seven
a story of war,
friendship,
and betrayal
I.
august seventh
1776 Cean avenue
Thaeris island
Done.
We stand in this gray building that stinks of despair and this year it is over. Done. We seven are the only ones, the chosen. Gone. Done. The Few have decided. We are being sacrificed so that our society is not weak. It is a great honor, or so they say.
This is the first year Thaeris has been entered into the pan. Pan after the Greek god of nature and fertility. They think it is natural because the deaths are in the wild and they convince us too. The other continents, they are powerful, have entered for the pan years in a row. This the first for us.
Seven.
Seven of us ready to die, unleashed into the wild to fight. Survive. They count us in their heads, thinking, betting on us because that’s all it is for them. A game. Seven of us. .
Seven.
~•~
Lupe is a wolf name, so I am the daughter of a wolf . My dark hair and dark eyes and fear are trapped inside a glass cage and haunts look at us through the window. In a matter of hours, I will be released to fight against these people who could have been my friends, and none of it will matter anymore, but it does now, and hurts.
It hurts now and I stand in the middle of a white room, picking my death dress. I think the dress is wasted. I have no chance of getting out anyway, but they say I have a better chance pretty, a better chance beneath a mask as it is in the real world. This much is true I know, but as it was, I guess I’d like to live.
In the end it is the one that had first caught my eye, plain, simple, flowing, sleeveless. The white silk falls just above my knees and a thin tan belt cinches it at the waist, orange designs curving in ripples and waves against the ivory fabric. It might as well be water against my legs, this silk, so light and effortless, shifting with every move.
I twirl once and a smile appears on the chapped lips of the nine year old behind me, dark hands clasped, golden eyes laughing, supposedly a servant. But she is so young I cannot think of her this way and so she is a sister, not a helper. I can’t help a smile onto my own face as i step down from the podium, twirl again as I inhale the rich scent of coffee. A real grin spreads across the girl’s face and she sits me down, grabs something and wipes my face over with it.
I ask her if she likes her job through the gunk on my face.. She answers me with a confused blink and parts her lips slightly. Then she shrugs, unwilling to answer. She gives me a tube of some shimmery liquid to put on my lips, which I do, and then swipes the area around my eyes with a powder. I open my eyes, cross them and fake sneeze in the cloud surrounding us. She laughs and moves around to the back of my chair for hair styling.
Her hand is light, lighter than Mother’s, and panic rises up inside me at this affection. I cannot love without hurting, so I chose to love as few people as possible. It scores down to the insides, but as long it does not do the same to the others, I survive, with conflict. This inspires. I draw in a sharp breath and let it out, mouth curving out and in, skin creasing. The girls stops for a moment, thinking she’s hurt me, but I shake my head and she gives me another swipe with the brush before setting it down.
She reaches over to gently take a clump of hair from near my face. As she does her skin brushes mine and I shiver involuntarily at the contact. She draws back the clump and splits it, and then out of the corner of my eye I see her hands flashing. A word comes to mind: braiding. I’ve heard of the technique but never seen it. I wonder what it will look like. In the moments it takes me to ponder this she has finished the braid, trailing to my waist, and secured it at the one-third mark to the back of my head. She starts and finishes the other one in a minute or two and secures that one too. She does something else to it, but I can’t tell what, and then she tells me to stand up and look at myself in the mirror.
I do not believe what I see.
This girl’s tiny hands have transformed me. My skin is flawless., the flecks of gold in my ice-blue eyes are more prominent, outlined by the most subtle shade of gold powder on my eyelids. My simple white dress flows so easily around my body, as light as air, the pale orange patterns rippling across the fabric; My feet are clad in clear sandals, with many transparent straps criss-crossing along my legs, and my dark hair flutters down my back in elegant waves, wearing a crown of braids and scarlet ribbons. And... something else. A-
I gasp.
Suddenly, the girl screams.
I whip around, my upper body twisted in the most painful way. Three Deputies- the protecters of the Center - have burst into the room, white jumpsuits flashing. Their knuckles are tipped with some sort of metal, fists clenched around light iron-enforced wooden-handled flails. One slides a hand into the girls temple, leaving a gash and something that looks like a burn mark, and another trips her, pins her, and lashes the flail once against her back. The last catches sight of me and lunges forward, but I strike out with my foot and send him into the wall. The other two pounce and we crash to the floor. As I make contact with the ground, I roll to the side and strike out with one leg, sending one deputy into the other. I am fighting for no reason, just an obsession, a screaming impulse to survive. But something is sinking into my arm. The deputies stagger away with the girl, and someone stands up above me, a woman with bond hair in a tight ponytail.
“You know why they took her?” she hisses.
“Yes,” I snap. Peel the word rebel of off my forehead and let it fall to the ground.
She bares her teeth in a smile, and the lines in her face soften. “Good, good. Anything to say before you go in?”
I don’t know where in is quite yet, so I twist my head to the side.
Then the thought occurs, and I black out.
rissana
I have never seen anything like this.
I have to kill and that is fine, I do not feel remorse, but as I stand knee-deep in grass on the plains, deposited in my random starting point, and see the two youngest tributes, just 13 and fourteen, racing away from each other, my heart drops into my blackened shoes. The Pan started just fifteen minutes ago and I already see a mangled body lying near a lone tree. I recognize the body as one of the tributes from Madagascar. I scramble up into the highest branches of the tree above the body after a quick sprint to think.
There a lot of us, at least twenty or thirty, and I can only guess because the Central people wouldn’t tell us. I can only stomach killing people my age or older, I think, despite being brought up by war. I am a soldier and a fighter, though. I play offense.
I kill.
A rustling sounds above me and I snap my head back, turning around quickly on the branch. MY boomerang is clutched in my hand, my bow and quiver of arrows slung over my back. At least they give us our choice weapons before me go in. I shift again, uneasy, and my boomerang lowers a few
inches.
Then the face appears.
I recognize it as Lupe, the girl I saw running away, the girl who tried so hard not to cry on the morning we were reaping, as her family collapsed. A low growl sounds in the back of my throat and my arm tenses, but the boomerang doesn’t shift. Lupe draws back slightly and her hand reaches up to carefully disassemble the crown of braids on her head. She changes her wind and wipes away the red flecks on her forehead instead.
I fall silent for a moment. “No.”
She swallows and sits on the branch with her legs dangling off and glaces to the left. She opens her mouth to say something but I interrupt, blurting out, “Will you be my ally?”
She bursts out snort-laughing, and when she stops to catch her breath, she gasps out, “You- you sound like- like, like- like you’re- p-p-proposing!” She hiccups once and crouches suddenly on the branch, shrinking. She must have realized she just might’ve alerted everybody to our position. Her voice drops to a whisper. “But yes.”
And then she tells me, “Up.”
So I slither after her up the branches, and after we’ve climbed a good twenty feet higher she stops and crawls up to a thick branch on the side of the trunk opposite from me. I crouch down with one hand on the branch above me and one near my feet. “What’s down there, and who else?” I ask, and Lupe twists her arm and slides out to the end of her branch to look out. I see that her hand is covered in tiny scratches from the bark and wince.
She stares out for a while and finally draws back into the foliage. Her eyes glitter with fear, and for one split second I hate the Center for making us murder each other. Then it subsides, but she melts into the dappled shadow, tiny, frightened.
“Well,” Lupe tells me at last, there’s a good bit of plain around us, with this being the only tree, and a way off there’s a nice forest, and opposite there’s some cliffs and way out there’s this big swirly mountain, like one of those clipped hedges. It doesn’t look like we’re in the middle,” She adds absently, “Because there’s things beyond the mountain and we’re all swirled around it. And the only person I can see is Lethe, that girl from The Roughs. She’s right below us, actually, just swinging her axe into the trunk.”
My lips move quickly, “we should enlist her.”
Lupe shrugs, but the movement brings out a squeak.
“I’m going to bring her up here,” I say.,
“You shouldn’t,” she tells me, and I snap back “Too bad.” Her eyes narrow in hurt and distrust and anger and she climbs up another ten feet and melts into the foliage, I slither down the slick branches until I’m only a couple feet above the girl’s head, nestled in the crook of a branch on top of a layering of leaves.
“Hello,” I say.
The girl jumps and jerks her axe out of the tree. It whistles as it passes my head and comes to rest in her palm and she backs away, snarling.
“What do you want?” She spits.
“An alliance,” I say simply.
Her eyes flicker away from mine, search the plains. I see her hand turn white from gripping the throwing axe. I can see she is tense. Ready for anything.
“I don’t trust anyone here,” she whispers softly, hissing, frightened.
“I know,” I say, lips barely moving, “But there is strength in numbers.
Her shoulders relax; I see the muscles in her body slide away, become loose, and she looks up into the tree. “anyone else?” I nod. “Lupe. Fourteen.”
At this Lupe slides out of the tree, resting in a branch ten feet above Lethe- her name is inscribed in the axe handle - and sitting tersely on top of it. Her darkening eyes flash. Gingerly she crawls down to rest on a limb just above me, as I am now on the ground.
I see her lips move in exadgerrated motions, but her voice is barely audible. I frown at the words: “We should go to the forest.”
“No,” Lethe argues immediately. The plains are better, there’s wheat and things and less tributes.”
“Actually,” I agree, “I think the woods are the worst choice right now. I don’t like the plains much but it’s childish to choose just for favorites, Lupe.”
Her eyes widen with anger and flash, but she just closes her lips and slides down the tree.
We stalk off towards the plains, Lethe in front and me in back. We are shielding Lupe, not knowing why, as we walk, and we reach the knee-high fields in only an hour or two, although the grass is waist-high for the small Lupe. But hunger has begun to gnaw at us, at the reflexes and emotions in our insides and at dusk we all crumple to the ground, exhausted. The backpack deposited next to Lethe at her starting point come in handy, because there’s A dark flint chip and a knife inside it, and after we all crawl around clearing a space it is easy to light a fire.
After a few minutes, Lupe looks up and tells us she’s going to hunt.
I grab at her sleeve and haul her down.
“Idiot,” I hiss, “You could get lost!”
She jerks away, growling. For some reason we are all in bad moods. “I’m not a little kid anymore!” She snarls, crouching low, quivering with tension. “And you can’t just go around ignoring the other person’s requests in an alliance! I don’t need you to protect me!”
Then she turns and melts into the night.
quill
The four of us face each other.
I focus on the spot between two of them, Hermes and Deejay, and the other, Jason, barks at them from beside me while I let out guttaral snarls like an animal.
We are all against each other.
Deejay strikes first, a stupid slash with his iron sword to hit me in the chest, but It’s all too easy to duck. Suddenly jason turns and strikes me in the ribs. I fall and take the opportunity to roll right into Hermes’ legs, and he falls to the ground as well. I smash my razor-sharp boomerang into his gut and he lets out a wild howl. Deejay snarls and lunges at me as I scramble backwards and I block his blow with my weapon, twist the sword out of his hands at the same Jason crashes into him. Deejay flies into a rock but just before he falls unconscious he kicks me and i roll into a thistle patch, and out of the corner of my eye see Hermes, grimfaced, whip jason across the face and punch him in the gut. He falls to the ground convulsing, emptying his stomach and choking out pleas, falling still.
I am pretty sure he’s dead.
At this it’s too much and I retch out everything I’ve ever eaten until my throat burns and I can’t see, but someone is dragging me up, whispering urgently, telling me I will be safe. I’m too sick to say anything, so I am slung up to hang halfway from something and start being carried away.
Everything is so much slower and dangerous without sight somehow. I don’t even know why I am blind right now, but I am alert to every single sound and smell because it could be something that wants to come and kill me, or maybe it is just the Pan itself. Panic rises. I don’t know who’s carrying me. They might want to torture me, and I don’t know where I am, where I’m going. But there’s nothing I can do.
In a half hour or so I am dumped unceremoniously on the ground and the contact blows my head open, or so it feels like, and then suddenly in a short blast of light my eyesight returns. I am lying down in a grass patch under a canopy of trees. I see Hermes stirring the ashes of a fire, a hunk of meat on a leaf beside him, deejay stabbing his sword into a tree a few feet away. I sit up and Hermes looks at me. A faint smile crosses his lips.
“You’re a gang?” I ask, as if we were talking about the weather, because I really don’t care that much.
“If that’s what you want to call us,” Hermes chuckles, and Deejay twists the sword in his hands.
I frown and deejay growls, but hermes waves him off, obviously being the leader.
“What do you want me for?” I ask, curious now.
“Fighting force,” He answers. “bigger is better, in this place, anyway. We’re getting rid of the weaklings first and then we’re going to take on the bad guys.” He laughs.
This is just about the worst plan I’ve heard, because if they get injured in the weakling fights, the stronger guys will take advantadge of it. But I don’t object. Better to get these guys off my back.
“So basically I have no choice but to join you,” I say, cutting straight to the point.
Hermes shrugs and Deejay snaps, “Well, basically.” Then he snorts and stalks off to a berry bush a twenty or thirty yards away from us. Hermes shakes his head, Tells me to ignore him, and Hands me the hunk of meat, I start to devour it greedily, and as I do I wonder how they got all this because it’s only the first day. I don’t ask, though.
I take what’s left of the meat after my first three bites and crawl over to rest in a hollow under a network of tree roots. Here I finish it off and rest, still feeling a bit sick. I finger the boomerang in my belt and start assessing the situation.
I’m stuck with them, at least for a couple days. It isn’t so bad actually, because the way I’m injured I won’t be able to walk a lot, much less fight, So I suppose I’ll be laying around eating, maybe foraging. I don’t know how many tributes there are, but I’m betting there won’t be many of them in the forest, because there are next to no trees on the listen. Most of us aren’t accustomed to the trees.
Besides that, I have only hope to hold on to.
The pain in my stomach has subsided, though it still growls with hunger. My head has worsened, breaking and bending with every blow it takes from the pain. I’m well enough to move now, and this is what information I can gather. I slowly finish the rest of the meat and haul myself out of the hole. I have no plan and I never did but it will work out as it always has.
I limp across the damp forest floor and decide to teach myself how to climb. Hermes and Deejay are comfortable here, so we probably won’t be leaving soon, and if I decide to come back the skill be handy.
I stumble over to a tree with a hip-high branch and place my hands on another branch just above my head. I jump and stumble onto the limb, lifting myself with me arms, and then stop, panting, because I’m so weak this simple movement exhausts me. I sit with my head between my knees until the dizziness fades and so does the pain in my arms. Then I carefully climb up another few branches, stopping after every step, and peer out of the foliage.
The noon light has faded to a pale violet-grey low, although I can still see the sun. I can’t see anybody on the ground, but then I see a white flash at least twenty feet higher than me and perhaps 75 yards away. I freeze and stare until it emerges again, and this time it’s moving down through the leaves, a human form. It catches sight of me, golden eyes as far as I can tell, and I slide out the edge of my branch because there’s no point hiding now.
It turns it’s head and then disappears, reappears closer until it is in a tree next to mine. A girl, maybe fourteen, dark hair in a white dress. Her fist tightens around her bow. She sits comfortably on a slim branch and stays quiet.
“You aren’t in an alliance?” I ask finally, because I thought everyone be in one.
Her eyes flash, dangerously bright for a moment, burning gold. “No,” she snaps, lifting her lips in a snarl, and she reminds me of a wolf. I fall silent as an apology.
Her look softens, but she tucks her legs under her in a tense crouch. “Touchy subject,” she says, straining at something. “Nevermind. Who are you?”
I introduce myself, happy to change the subject, and she tells me her name is Lupe, like Canis Lupis, the wolf. I nod. She asks me questions, I answer, and the answers turn into question. Almost normal.
Suddenly Lupe’s eyes grow huge, discs of light like the sun. She hisses, “they’re coming,” and disappears.
Pain suddenly slams into my arms and I fall out of the tree, crashing to the ground. I arch my back on impact and scream. I roll and a spear hits the ground where I was, and then there is a scream that is not mine. I find Lupe thrashing on the ground, blood pouring out of her side. A flash of metal appears, a throwing axe and catches Hermes in the stomach. He gasps and tears out the axe, throws it back at his attacker. I stand and I’m knocked to the again by an arrow the shoulder. I see a rock shelf and dive under it.
Two girls, One with a throwing axe and one with a bow and boomerang are attacking Lupe, Hermes and Deejay. Tears fill the axe girl’s eyes and she is screaming at Hermes, who is hoarsely yelling back, something about sisters and murders.
Him.
There has been a string of murders on Cean, the killer remained uncaught, and it always went for children, ripping families apart. Hermes, the murderer. I know he’s an orphan and had half his life, his remaining brother killed by the government. He cannot attack them really but he has found away to, and it’s sick but understandable.
An arrow hits the ground in front of me and my thoughts are interrupted. I look up and see Lupe stringing an arrow, blood trickling out of the corner of her mouth. The axe girl advancing on Hermes, the other one drawing boomerang.
The arrow flies.
Hermes darts to the side, but the arrow catches him in the legs and he screams and cracks his whip in a half-circle. The two girls jump back but Lupe is not fast enough and falls to the ground, a thick red mark running across the back of her knees. The girls run off suddenly, and Deejay kicks Lupe before he and Hermes walk away.
I crouch under the rock until I’m sure everyone’s gone and crawl out. Lupe is lying on the ground, whimpering quietly, and as I drag myself closer her eyes grow huge and she rolls away. I frown and step. she rolls again. After what seems like eternity, I pounce and drag her into the forest, although she kicks, dump her unceremoniously into a ditch and cover her up. SHe lies still under the coating of fungi and leaves and grass and I back up on my hands and knees, dizzy.
It is all I can do.
CHAPTER TWO
lupe
Breath. My chest rises and falls in shallow earthquakes, unsettling the bones my chest. MY eyes are shut against the light outside, and there is only pain and breath. Pain everywhere and breath all over. A whisper of cool air and there is cold.
I struggle to sit upright. A freezing wind blows into my face, I burn with pain all over and the sun has only just a touched the sky, leaving it a darker shade of gray. Three feet up there's the rim of the ditch I woke up in and I'm sitting on a pile of leaves and grass. I squint to make out shapes in the darkness. Something round and compact is scratching against the ditch. A rabbit.
My stomach lets out a guttural snarl at the sight of potential food. Slowly- as so not to alert it and also because my shoulder screams at any small movement - I reach into my quiver and pull out an arrow. Smooth. Deadly. I brace, wait, lunge.
I have hit with accuracy. The flint arrow head completely disappears into the rabbit’s side and warm blood spurts onto my hand. I yank out the arrow and breathe deep breaths into the corner, head pressed against the wall. My arms shake under me, straining to hold up my body. I roll back and rock up and down on my back until I’m not mentally screaming, and then I slowly, slowly, roll onto my stomach and launch myself back into a sitting position. I drop the arrow, take up the knife in my pocket and gut the rabbit, dumping it’s contents into a hole, skinning it, setting it out to dry.
I need shelter. I can hear voices screaming, and far away though they might be they will be close soon, and it will rain. I turn and turn with the rabbit in my fist until I find a scoop in the hardened wall of the ditch and kick into it until I can crawl in. I need to start a fire but I don’t have tinder. Unless...
I dart outside, snatch up a handful of crumply, dried leavs and arrange them in a teepee with some twigs dropped into the ditch. I take up the knife in my pack, set an arrowhead against the pile of tinder, and strike the knife against the arrrowhead. Almost all Arrowheads are flint, and flint and steel spark, so sparks and glowing wriggling heat jump into the tinder. I pull back my hair and blow until everything is white hot and my face is burnt and some of the tinder catches fire. I jerk back as the teepee erupts in flame and then dies down to a steady source, backing against the wall of the hole. I fold myself down into a position like a rabbit’s and it starts to rain outside.
I stretch out into a sitting position with my legs crossed and as I thread a piece of rabbit onto a stick I reflect on my luck. I have food, a potential source of water and now a means of starting fire. Some would take this as a chance to go out and fight and show their strength, but I am not a leader. I take what I have and don’t stretch it and don’t push it. I am fine here; I do not need anything more.
I set the sit to dig into either side of the tunnell over the fire to cook and the rain becomes a steady pitter-patter and sheets of water. The sun is up but hidden by clouds so everything is a moody gray now, darker than it was at dawn. It is all so peaceful I actually stretch out and allow myself to relax, drop the bow and just watch the rain. Eventually I start drifting in and out of a light doze until the rabbit is done; then I take the cooked piece, thread a raw piece onto the stick and set it up before taking a bite. Fat runs down my chin, and blood; my teeth catch on a bone but the meat is so good, so nourishing I wolf the rest of it down and burn my fingers. I hold back a whimper and a growl and think of the rabbit skin outside, soaking.
The fire crackles. I shift in the dirt and sand and twist my elbow towards the heat while my ankles burn from the angle holding me up. I shake and spasm in a bizarre display another control until I collapse and become aware of the heat in my head and my heart pounding up in my throat. Fever.
Danger. If I burn up I won’t be able to move, my mind will melt, muscles lock. i throw dirt on the fire and stomp and turn until I sweat and panic and then I plunge into the rain.
It comes down in icy sheets, unbroken and freezing and fog wreaths through it and clings to my skin; I shiver and spasm as the icy water splashes over my arms, unnaturally cold, altered. Like everything. I stand until my mind slips out of my hands it seems and I sing to keep sane and alive. But it doesn’t work well because anyway I feel any sane emotions or thoughts disappear and my fingers claw at my face and steam starts pouring off my shoulders.
I form on my fingers; I dart into the cave as my fingers erupt in a bizarre display of spasms showing my chill. I start up the fire again, breath blowing like a tornado, turning to mist as it exits my mouth, and blister my face close to the heat before jerking back and turning in circles. The charred bit of rabbit hanging over the flames enters my mouth and I sit and sift through the meager belongings i gathered and stole - knife, arrows, sheath, bow, rabbit, tarp, rope. My heart rises up into my throat and beats out quick, although I can’t tell why. I stuff everything into the sheath, skirt around the fire and carefully crawl outside.
Something shifts at the top of the ditch. I back up and put out the fire, sling the sheath over my shoulder and catch a glimpse of who it is. My lips curl back against my teeth in distaste, although my head spins with the thought of having to kill it. Someone who could have saved my life, for all I know. But I pull an arrow out, sleek and streamlined, slip the notch into the string. I slowly circle and draw the string back to my chin. The bow is solid in my hands. The arrow thrums. I stop and it sings again against my fingers.
And I let the arrow fly into his back.
He lets out a low whistle of pain but my shaky hands have placed the arrow just into his side. He staggers backwards and crashes into the ground. My eyes sting as another two heads, blond and black, reach over. Rage infects my system. One throws a spear and i smash myself to the ground; it whistles over me. I shoot an arrow at Hermes and he ducks but lets the arrow catch in Deejay’s shoulder, who screams a curse and launches himself at me. I hold out an arrow and his momentum throws him onto the point. His weight knocks me over though, and I roll to the side just too late, because something rips into my arm. I shriek and launch myself into a flip, turning over and landing on Deejay and I smash an arrow into his neck so hard the shaft breaks. A whip catches me in the back and I tumble over with a long red gash and blood underneath but Deejay is dead, eyes coming over with a dull cast. I am soaked to the bone and my back is on fire; Hermes howls and flings himself onto me, slamming his fist into my face. I let a ripple come over my body through my head, grab his elbows, and roll so I am pinning him down and his head is ground into the dust. I slam it again and again until he passes out. Something catches me in the back- Quill. I suck in a breath as I roll over my head and land on my haunches. Quill advances, hunched over. Blood trickles out from the arrowhead in his side; his eyes are vicious. I back up nervously and pull my lips back against my teeth in a snarl. He throws up his head and I release a guttural snarl.
Another head appears over the rise- on I haven't seen before, I think but is familiar - slanted gray eyes, waxy skin, golden hair like an alien. I back up and he launches himself into the ditch; as his legs hit the ground he bends ahead into a neat forward roll. I slam out my leg but he catches it and twists and I flop over onto my stomach. I fall limp, his grip relaxes and I lash out, catching him in the stomach, scrambling back.
Suddenly Quill convulses. a sharp jerk. He curls back, a wounded animal, clear eyes fogging like a storm is just behind the skin. A noise rises up, an undulating whimper, sick, and the other boy freezes. Tears start pouring out of his eyes, cutting through some of the grime on his face. He crawls over to Quill, rocking back and forth, letting the noise rise up. piercing. and a thought crosses my mind. I could kill them both.
Half of me screams and the other half is quiet. thinking about the animal I have become, thinking of murder, although I could, and end it right here and now. But one is crying and one is possessed, and they are both crazy, for some reason I cannot understand. I squeeze my eyes shut.
Breath in my ear. Hands on my face, honey-smells filling my nose. Something whispers; a strange feeling rises up into my head behind my eyes. My lips part; breath in shaky laughs, dizzy. White instead of black against my closed eyelids. The songs dance before me, twisting and closing. Farther. The water rushes up; everything disappears.
Lost.
HI BACCA!
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