A/N: Thanks for the reviews, sorry this chapter is short, I wrote it while taking train trips to and from uni for the last week. Delays are likely to occur from now until the end of the year, I will try and update when I can. I have a feeling that this short little chapter might be the last one I can write for a while. Please let me know what you think and enjoy.

All errors are mine, there are probably some I missed, I apologise in advance.


Chapter 11

Six Feet Under

Helia sat still while a pair of stylists worked on his appearance. They removed his contact lenses and changed his hair colour back to its original hue making him look to the mirror in front of him and see a new man. His cover under enemy lines, and the things he had witnessed, had changed him a lot since he innocently stepped into the arena. Then he was pure but now he was tainted, bloodied, standing in the thick ocean of corpses who had died after his actions. His hands were stained with their lives and each one wore heavily on his conscience.

"Do you want us to hide the scars?" A young girl to his right asked and he shook his head.

"No, thank you, they remind me of what I'm fighting for." There was a knock on the door before Flora poked her head in and smiled. The two stylists made their way outside while she kept the door open and walked back into his arms. He pulled her close and breathed in the fresh lavender scent of her hair. "You ready?"

"Yeah," he answered, leaning back and taking something from his pocket. He held it for her to see. Sitting between his fingers was a crumpled photograph of Galatea and Derrick. "I've kept it with me the entire time."

"Where did you get this?"

"Just before Galatea... made her choice." Floras fingers traced their smiling faces, they both looked so happy.

"Flora." She lifted her gaze as his fingers curled around hers. "I need you to promise me something."

"Anything."

"Don't be mad." She looked confused. "I don't want you to hate me for keeping what I'm about to share a secret but people need to know collectively otherwise the districts could all be blinded by the news and stop working together."

"We've done okay so far," Flora replied over the slow hum of the airships engines, "but I promise I won't be mad."

"Estimated time of arrival is ten minutes, please prepare for descent."

Helia made his way to the window and peered outside at his home below, it was nothing, not even the shadow of its former self. Every building had turned to rubble, every street was lined with ash and even from above he could see where piles of corpses had been left to rot. He sincerely hoped that his uncle's death had been swift and quick, a bullet to the head rather than bleeding out in pain for hours but he doubted it would be true. Suffering was the ancestress' specialty; he knew the pain all too well.

When they'd landed and the doors opened, Helia walked down the ramp with Flora's hand in his own. There was no call to victory, no sea of smiling faces and all their chants and laughter were nothing but an echo amongst the ruins of what was once the most beautiful district in the magical dimension.

Barbatea stood in the distance and gave the small group a wave before entering a hollowed out building. It was the last of its kind among the broken and seemingly unrepairable district homes.


Helia stepped inside and watched the Zenith team work together, plugging cords and cables, yelling okay signs and setting the cameras into position. Once ready, Sky directed Helia to where he would deliver the important address from a brick wall just wide enough to mask their true location. "Okay, play the promo."

The connection lights illuminated as the screen played the introduction. Sky gave Helia the signal to begin and be suddenly realised just how difficult it must have been for Flora to do the same. To stand and command attention from an audience millions of miles away. Drawing strength from the air around him, he inhaled a deep breath and forced his lips to part.

"My name is Helia. I promise you that your eyes are not deceiving you and that this is not a trick. I was captured and killed by the ancestral witches but managed to uncover a secret that they have been hiding away from all of us. What I am about to tell you will either be something you wished to be true, something you think is impossible or your greatest dream becoming a reality... Please, if you are not already doing so, take a seat." He paused for a moment though none of the rebels before him followed the instruction.

"You watched me be executed by the witches and a man named Valtor, a soldier and commander who had been sent into the arena from the very beginning to make sure that Flora and I never escaped, killed me. Flora, my fiancée, asked how this could be true and I have the answer." Inhaling a deep breath he released it slowly before looking straight down the camera's lens. "It's possible because every tribute that has ever been forced into the district games... is alive."

Every jaw in the room dropped collectively and Helia could hear the gasps and shrieks from the magical dimension entering his ears. "Have you ever wondered why they stipulate that tributes leave the bodies of those in the arena immediately after death? Have you ever wondered why funerals for those that died are never an open casket? Have you ever wondered, or had questions about, how tributes were processed after death? It's because not a single one of them has died! After being shot to pieces with bullets I awoke to find myself floating inside a tubular shaped glass filled with a strange greenish liquid that had been magicked with oxygen and other effective healing substances. I and a fellow captive managed to escape their facility to make our way home to Linphea." He could hear the witches screaming, robbed of possible location details they so desperately desired.

"We hijacked a ship heading towards Zenith after changing our appearance and returned to the rebellions side. The bodies of those that I saw inside the facility and recognised included Musa, Galatea, Derrick, Jared, Icy, Stormy, Darcy, Rose and Stella but all five hundred and seventy tributes who have been sent to the arena over the games long twenty five year history are alive with prisoners of war and avoxes."

Flora's eyes were wide and disbelieving, how they had realised why the information had to be delivered in one go. If anyone knew before others than it would have spread like wildfire as a rumour rather than a fact.

"If you want proof then here it is." Helia explained before removing his shirt and showing them the forty or so bullet marks that healed over his chest and back. He turned around once before pulling his shirt back on. "For too long we have been plagued by questions rather than answers, and forced into slavery to make goods and provide services for Magix when our own basic needs have not been met. Now is the time for it to stop, for today is the day and now is the hour, for us to make the odds forever in our favour."

The broadcast stopped and the districts fell into rebellious chaos.


Roderick shovelled the graves of his children, flinging dirt over his shoulders as other joined in, all of them digging six feet under to find the truth. When the caskets were free he bashed the locks with his shovel and before sinking to his knees and lifting the lid. Inside lay nothing but a pile of bricks, Galatea and Derrick's bodies were nowhere to be seen and the happiness written in his features was unfathomable, but the hatred he held for the witches was now stronger than ever before.

"NOTHING! DIG UP THE OTHERS!" He ordered and hundreds of men and women started the task of checking each casket, their eyes needing to behold the truth.

Every district did the same, each one uncovering a truth that had been in front of their eyes and under their feet the entire time.


"Is it..." Flora paused, words failing to communicate past the mixture of joy and surprise that hit her like a train at top speed. Helia nodded his head as Sky's untraceable phone started ringing. He checked the messages before bringing up every callers holographic image in a conference call. Instantly he was overwhelmed with questions.

"Everyone stop!" He yelled, making the faces floating before him stop talking. "We will conduct a formal meeting in twenty minutes, we will respond to your questions then."

Once the equipment was on the ship they blasted their way back to domino, hoping to channel the anger, happiness, hurt, surprise and extreme aggression in the right direction.

Upon arrival sky ushered everyone into the elevator and they descended to the conference room, overhearing news reports instead of hold music as they went.

Sky raced down the corridor and immediately patched the districts online while Arcadia and Oritel made their entrance.

"Status reports!" Sky ordered, hearing screams and yells in the background. "District One has dug up the coffins of previous tributes, they found bricks inside."

"So did we," Du Four explained, "all of them were missing, every coffin was empty. We have to figure out what we are going to do."

"Which is what exactly?" Zarathustra challenged. "My district is falling into chaos, order has been thrown out the window and citizens have started chanting in the streets."

"It's the same situation here." Bartleby explained. "Battle cries, people ready to take action, they are asking for answers."

"Then we will give them some," Flora stepped forward, "if they want answers than we will give them what they want."

"What they want is action!" Diana, earth's representative snapped. "Can we really give them that? Some of our supplies are not ready."

"And what is to say that all the districts want to fight?" Oritel added. "District thirteen isn't rebelling in the streets."

"Because they haven't had tributes ripped from their districts for the last twenty five years!" Aurora yelled. "What we need is to finally put an end to this, to finally do what the rebellion has said, 'make the odds forever in our favour'!"

"We'll," Sky began, turning to face Helia, "you released the information, what do you expect us to do?"

"To do what Aurora said," he explained simply, "it's time we made our first move; it's time to show Magix that the rebellion has had enough. If they want us to play their games, then we will play to win."


A/N: Thanks for reading and please review.