14th Hunger Games: Marissa Whittick, District 6, age 18
It looks like a scene from an old old movie, abandoned buildings with swinging doors, stray horses roaming and tumbleweeds blowing by. Great spiny plants a splash of color against the rocky red-brown landscape. The pair from Ten seem completely at home, working together to take out the volunteers from District One, and several other strong contenders right from the start.
Not her though. She's small for her age, and clever. Good at blending into the shadows of the ramshackle ghost town that surrounds the starting platforms. The others look right past her; she is the ghost of this ghost-town, and that is how she survives.
Every night she steals out of the shadows, lets the darkness whisper to her, telling her the arena's secrets. She steals food and water from the others at first. A ghost, darting in and out past their sleeping forms in silence.
Then she gets braver. A sack full of dirt dropped on the face of a sleeping enemy, her whole body weight pressing down until they stop thrashing. Three times the ghost strikes, nearly as many times as the dominant pair, who tame horses and use them to ride down their foes while the ghost watches from the shadows.
She never sleeps. Sometimes her eyes droop shut and her body slumps, but she never truly rests and she never stays out for long. Ghosts don't sleep. They wait and wait, until the time is right.
The right time appears suddenly and unexpectedly. The boy turns on his partner when it is just three of them left, then falls from his horse when a rattlesnake spooks it.
For the first time in two weeks the ghost leaves her shadows in daylight, sack in hand.