District Eight – Female – 2nd Hunger Games
It isn't going to happen again. They've made a pact, all of them. Every eighteen-year-old in Eight. No matter what, it isn't going to happen again.
Rakka's little brother had been taken last year, dragged from his sibling's arms to a chorus of piercing screams like shattered glass.
Nella had stood just a few rows behind and remembers every lurid detail. They'd all been too shocked to move, looking around for parents who stood afraid and defeated. Rakka had fought and had his arm and jaw broken; he died from blood poisoning when the District surgeon refused to set the splintered bones.
And his brother...that gentle kid, soft as a puppy, hadn't lasted a day in the Games.
The pact isn't Nella's idea, but she believes in it. If their parents are cowed by guns, they won't be. The peacocks in the Capitol need the fancy clothes their factories produce, it's not like the Peacekeepers will gun them down. Not while the cameras are rolling. They're too important.
That said, the Peacekeepers haven't made it easy for them. Somehow in the weeks before the Reaping their plan leaked and two of the ringleaders were arrested. Messages passed more slowly after that, concealed between pages in textbooks or traced in the schoolyard's packed dirt, swiftly wiped away. Nella's done her fair share of organizing, so that now her heart flips over in a nauseating plunge when she catches the barest flash of white.
On the morning of the Reaping, she walks to the courtyard in front of the newly-constructed cement monstrosity that is the Hall of Justice. What a joke. There's no justice there. It's the home of the liaison government, lit up every night with lights and music for Capitol bigwigs. Feasts and parties, while children go to bed hungry because their parents owe back taxes.
It makes her sick. Just looking at that gray monolith standing so blank and cold against the warm blue sky fans her rage.
Fifty kids of every age are chosen for the Reaping this year, most clutching each other for an illusion of safety. But every eighteen-year-old walks into the courtyard alone. Standing together would be suspicious; instead, they range around the outskirts, lock-jawed, stolid. Nella doesn't look at anyone else, keeps her eyes fixed on the stage where a painted nymph waits, tapping manicured nails on a slim bundle of notecards. To each side of the stage are enormous screens, where their frightened faces are reflected in a choppy whirl of jump-cuts.
There have to be a dozen cameras floating around the yard.
She smiles, hard and tight. Perfect.
The lady gives her glinting microphone a jaunty tap-tap. Everyone tenses; the Peacekeepers might as well have their guns trained on the crowd.
Nella hopes she won't vomit.
"Greetings all!" the woman trills, exaggerated features contorting into a smile. "And welcome. Welcome to the 2nd Annual...Hunger Games!"
She throws her arms up as though expecting applause, and Nella actually thinks she means it. The idiot woman really believes they'll cheer for this pageant of slaughter. Her stomach flutters with a perverse urge to giggle.
"Dumb bitch," someone mutters, and a ripple of curses and insults trickles through the crowd.
Disconcerted by the lack of response, the woman clears her throat and her hands flutter over the cards. With a prissy 'hem-hem', she clears her throat and continues.
"As decreed by the Peace that ended the old world's dreadful civil war and established the new country of Panem, the Hunger Games are to be a lasting reminder and penance for the Districts," she drops a card and flushes under a swell of derisive chuckles. Peacekeepers shift where they stand and Nella's smile evaporates.
"Each year, one male and one female Tribute between the ages of twelve and eighteen are to be Reaped, chosen to compete in a competition to the death. Thus do we remember our terrible history, and thus do we ensure a lasting peace. Panem honors your sacrifice, and we wish the odds to be ever in your favor."
Silence and scuffling. Somewhere a child moans with every breath. No one soothes her.
"We will begin with the..." she trails off, because they've moved.
As one, the teenage sentries on the perimeter step together, linking their arms and herding the younger kids inside. Locked into position, Nella's muscles go rigid. She can't turn to see who is standing beside her. She can only move forward until they're shoulder-to-shoulder with barely room to breathe.
"Thi—This is not permitted! Stand back at once!" she stamps her slippered foot. "At once, I say!" Even with the microphone, her voice has no power.
Someone laughs, jeering, rude. It spreads, infectious, until they're all hysterical; mouths gaping, screaming with laughter.
Nella can't stop even when staring down a wall of rifles raised and cocked.
"I warn you," she scolds like a frustrated teacher, "this will not be permitted! The Reaping must go on!"
"No!"
The cry comes from her at the same instant it shrieks from four or five kids all over the courtyard. They yell, holler, squeal; always the same word. No. No.
They won't go quietly to their deaths. They won't let the Capitol drag one more child to a brutal end.
Nella hears gunshots but doesn't feel two bullets melting through her flesh. She only feels a sudden weakness as she reels, dizzy, cold. So tightly packed against the others, she can't fall even when life slips away.
Thirty-six children died in the District Eight Reaping Riots.
A male and female tribute were Reaped from the survivors.
The male tribute from District Eleven was crowned victor after twenty days of combat.