Full Summary:
Fifteen-year-old Allegra Nadeau has just been through the most terrifying times in history: the fall of the world we know as the United States and the annihilation of District 13- which were fifty years apart. The dictator that led the army that destroyed the United States, "President" Bartholomew Snow, made her immortal when she was captured as a POW as punishment for the single-handed slaughter of many of their best war generals. Though watching everyone she loved die dragged her into depression, she acts as though she's a regular teenager in District 12 and attempts to help the struggling District. Now she is coincidentally thrust into the world of the first annual Hunger Games, along with her best friend Atlas Snow, the illegitimate child of the current President who volunteered after Allegra was picked. No one knows what to expect as 24 children are thrust into the world of the brutal Hunger Games, where unlike succeeding Hunger Games there are no rules or precedents to follow. [Summary under revision.]
Prologue—The Decimated States of America (A History)
I was three when the war started.
I was five when the invader army recruited my dad.
I was six when we were informed our dad died in combat.
I was eight when they knocked on the door for my brother.
I was ten when I was recruited myself, along with my younger sister, Everlie.
I was eleven when, during training, my sister and I were told "with the greatest condolences" that my brother was blown to bits by a haywire nuclear bomb and were given a month to console our mother.
I was thirteen when I graduated and became a soldier for the takeover army.
And when I was fifteen, I single-handedly handicapped the invader cause by taking out their greatest generals and scientific masterminds.
My life can't get much more messed up, right? Wrong. This is my story.
For years before I was born, there was a clear division in the United States. Our country was split into two groups that disagreed on everything from abortion to what to spend our money on. As one group stayed as they were and just floated along through life, the other group planned on rebelling. At the head of this group was none other than Bartholomew Snow, who was orchestrating the downfall of our country through an underground organization with many influential speakers and commanding generals to lead his mass takeover. Bartholomew got some of the best on his side—including nuclear bomb techs. When the war began, Bartholomew soon unleashed the potent bombs as his secret weapon, taking out most of California, Oregon, and Washington.
It soon began that every house was equipped with the necessary provisions to survive an attack, bomb drills were a daily thing, and soldiers regularly patrolled the streets. The war, which lasted for thirteen years, devastated the entire United States beyond the west of the Appalachian Mountain Range with nuclear bombs that would make it impossible to set foot there for at least the next 500 years. And as the first group fell into the dust, the rebellious second group only gained power. Eventually the first group was no more and the second group took the dying country into their hands. Bartholomew rose up as the dictator president and completely reshaped the life we lived by. He set up a whole new political system and gave the smaller country a new name—Panem.
Panem was set up into thirteen districts based on their geography and what goods they could produce, with a thriving city planned at the heart of everything called the Capitol. The Capitol's master design was to be marvelous. Now all the new dictator Bartholomew had to do was decide what to do with the POWs, or prisoners of war. Most were spies, so he cut their tongues so they could never betray someone again and forced them to serve the Capitol. These people were given the name Avoxes.
Others were not so lucky. The other part of the POWs were traitors and influential people from the opposing party. They were executed one by one on live TV, required viewing for all of Panem to watch. I was a prisoner of war myself, but fate wasn't letting me get off as easy as becoming an Avox or being executed. In their eyes, I had committed one of the single most terrible blindsides of the war—taking out some of their best on my own. I have to admit, it was not an easy feat, and I'll spare you all the details. But my punishment was something that made what I did to deserve it look like child's play.
Bartholomew always wanted to be the ultimate being. He strived for power none of humanity could reach. All of his scientists were commanded to search for the immortal elixir, something to make him truly invincible. And who would be their guinea pig? Me.
When he finally found it, I was the first to be injected with the stuff. That was how they found out it worked. I have to admit, it was pretty cool for a little while. All my injection wounds healed and I felt completely invigorated, which is more than I had felt in a long time. But after a while, I realized what this meant. It meant I would have to watch my family get old and die without me. I would have to live out eternity alone, walking the earth with a bunch of strangers I didn't know and didn't care to.
And it only got worse.
Snow had gotten my sister after the war was over and had been running the same tests on her. It was to make sure it worked on everyone, he said. I was strong; he needed someone weak to make sure it wouldn't kill them. I knew that he had also done it to hurt me even more in a way he hadn't even thought about before—hurting someone else close to me.
Most would think I would be happy that he injected my sister with the immortal vaccine, that it would be good to have someone to spend eternity with me. But think about it: would you really want someone you care about so much to go through the same pain you did? No.
Needless to say, I was outraged. I needed to get back at Bartholomew and hurt him by taking away the one thing he wanted most. So when everyone went home and left me locked up in the lab alone, I made my move. Luckily, I still had some of the warrior spirit in me, even after being locked up for months. I broke out of my cell, grabbed my sister, and ran away from the lab as far as my feet could take me. Not before burning it all down, though.
We ran all the way to District 13, getting some major help from the Districts' people along the way. It took us a long while, but we made it. Surprisingly our mother was already there. She had escaped to District 13 after the war was over. She claimed she felt safer in the district that produced nuclear weapons.
Over the next fifty years, Everlie and I stayed in District 13 with no interference from the Capitol or Snow. My mother had finally had enough and started to seek comfort in pills. She died of an overdose ten years after her two daughters had escaped the lab.
We heard talk of a rebellion from the Capitol's corrupt ways but shrugged it off and tried not to think of the possibility. There was so many rumors floating around, and we were raised not to believe a rumor. No one outside of Thirteen could have predicted the people's hatred of the Capitol was so strong. Then, it happened.
The Capitol had gotten wind of the rebellious talk that went on in District 13 and launched a surprise attack on the District's nuclear plants. Residents were told to evacuate immediately, but for many, it was too late. That was the case for my little sister, Everlie.
I was in our house when the warning was sent out for everyone to evacuate immediately. I wanted to go farther back into the town for Everlie, who had been taking a walk in the woods behind the power plant, but the officials organizing the evacuation would not let anyone go back into the District for any reason. I knew in my heart that I had lost her.
Just because we were immortal didn't mean we could die. Snow's definition of immortal was a human that never aged and had a body that could cure most injuries, which had nothing to do with invincibility from death. Everlie died that day because of Snow's insecurity that had flagged him since the war. His insecurity to die.
However, shortly after the invasion Bartholomew did die. His son, Torrence Snow, rose up in his place and finished off what his father had started. During this battle, I fled to District 12 out of grief. I lived there in solitude until the invasion ended and Torrence would announce the beginning of something that would rob the innocent of their lives—the Hunger Games.
Just when you think everything has gone as far south as possible, it only gets worse.
A/N: Hello, everybody! I'm planning on this being the first big fanfiction project I've ever done, and I've already got a head start since I started this as a side project for NaNoWriMo last month. My goal is to update regularly, not discontinue the story, and- oh yeah- make it not suck. Also, this isn't an SYOT story, it'll only be from one point of view, and it won't be like anything you've ever read before (trust me). So be nice, leave a review, and tell your friends if you like it!