So the real book is "Ten Little..." well, you know. I obviously wasn't naming the chapter that. The bowdlerized version is "Ten Little Indians", which still isn't ideal. But I had this picture book based on that called "Ten Little Kittens". Nothing offensive about kittens.
GAVIN BOOTH- Meenah Turbine
I knew it before I saw the face. But still, when I saw it, my heart sank. Until I saw Gavin, I could pretend he was still in this with me. That there were still two of us that had survived the Careers. It was just them and me now. Three Careers, converging on me like wolves on a baby deer.
Calvary Warsaw- District Ten mentor
Why did Paloma have to be so much like me? She had more tact and was a better friend, but she fought like I did. She was one of the one that could have made it. So much of the Games came down to luck. That was why I could never hope until I saw it happen.
Bambi Kirkland- District Ten mentor
Why did Gavin have to be so much like me? He was one of the ones that didn't push away thought of the value of life. He saw the damage the Games did to people and cared about people other than himself. Now that he was dead, I wished it had happened earlier.
District Ten
Usually we didn't make it this far. We would have thought Paloma would outlive Gavin, but so many times it was just a matter of who the Careers happened to find first. We mourned a little longer that year, having come so close.
Grande St. Leger- District One male
The Arena was starting to get to me. It just wasn't right. People weren't meant to live like this. I knew enough about pyschology to know that darkness wasn't good for humans. We were meant for the sun. We even got nourishment from it. Plants can't live without sun and people can't forever either. It was hard to sleep, and to know if I'd slept. If it wasn't for the Anthem, I would have no idea how long it had been. It had been two and a half weeks. A lot could happen to a mind in two and a half weeks.
It wasn't big changes. What most people thought of when they pictured mental illness was a few big-ticket disorders like paranoia or psychosis. It wasn't that kind of full-force attack. It was the steady water torture of a thousand little droplets. I was jumpier than I should have been. Little noises had me tensing for a fight that never came. I was short-tempered. Elissa had let me know about that one. She was short-tempered enough herself to actually speak up and tell me when I was being obnoxious, but that particular symptom wasn't affecting her as bad. She seemed to be more morose. Rather than fraying out like I was, she was smoldering down. But we were both getting nearer to our limit.
No matter. We just had to get rid of Meenah and the end would come quickly. Whether we killed her or Caio did, he wouldn't drag it out. He would search for us and get the finale started as quickly as he could. He was a warrior, not a lurker. I only feared that he was pragmatic enough to try to pick one of us off so he could have a one-on-one fight. But we'd deal with that when we came to it. It wouldn't be long coming.
Meenah Turbine- District Five female
The beam of my heavy metal flashlight sent a merry little circle of light onto the wall of the cave. Every time I went out to get water, it was a tossup between the danger of using my light to find the biggest trickles and the danger of staying out far longer if I just picked a random spot. Usually I picked the flashlight. While strategy was a consideration, to be honest I did it because I loved being able to take off my glasses and actually see actual light. It was like that military-style metal flashlight imprisoned a tiny little fairy and turning it on let her light burst out. Sometimes I cried while I was getting water.
Before, I wouldn't have heard the nearly silent sound of a pebble rolling. I snapped the flashlight off and fumbled for my glasses. In the instant it took to find them and put them on, I feared it was too late. I peeked around the rock I was leaning against and saw Grande and Elissa at the end of the tunnel. My eyes flicked down the corridor. My tunnel was too far to reach before they would catch me. I huddled with my side to the rock and made myself as small as I could. Maybe they'd go the other way. Maybe they wouldn't.
Elisse de Angelo- District One female
The tunnel split off in a T-shape, giving us two tunnels to explore. Grande turned left and I turned right. There didn't seem to be anything in the tunnel. I could see all the way down to where the corridor ended, and there was nothing but a few rocks and some little holes in the wall. But holes in the wall were exactly where a Tribute would hide, I suppose.
I looked behind me and saw Grande poking around the entrance to a hole a few feet off the ground. I took a few steps down the tunnel and peered at the walls to make out any tunnels I might have missed from farther away.
Eh, I don't think there's anything here, I thought. I looked behind me again and saw Grande a little further away. It wasn't smart for us to be more than a very short distance apart, not with Caio lurking somewhere. Yeah, I think we're good. Wait, you know what? Let me just look behind that rock there. Then I'll get back to Grande.
Meenah Turbine- District Five female
The footsteps were coming closer. I didn't dare look around the rock. I could only listen and judge how much louder and closer the Career was coming. Turn around, I prayed. There's nothing in this tunnel. Please turn around. I clutched the flashlight to my chest just to have something for my hands to clench. I stopped breathing. I was terrified I would make some little whimper or squeak and that would be it.
I saw the movement as the figure crested the side of the rock. In less than an instant, the Career would see me. It was my body and not my mind that acted. It knew it was nothing but a desperate last gasp, but life doesn't let go even when it knows it's over. I aimed the flashlight at the figure and closed my eyes as I snapped it on.
Elissa de Angelo- District One female
A flash of screaming, blinding light shot into my face like I'd stared straight into the sun. I screamed and jerked my head down into my eyes. It was like the flash guns Peacekeepers used when they were feeling merciful. I saw now they might be non-lethal but they weren't non-painful. Stabbing pain wracked my eyes and head and I was totally disoriented. I couldn't even have said which direction was up. Another pain like the strike of a baseball bat bloomed in the right side of my head. There was pressure and moisture against my cheek.
Meenah Turbine- District Five female
I swung the flashlight like a club and hit Elissa while she was still blind. She fell and landed hard on the rock floor. I ran before she could get up. Grande could have reached me before I got to my tunnel, but he stopped to help Elissa. Before I ducked into the tunnel, I looked back and saw him holding her. Her legs were flopping and kicking against the ground. I couldn't see what her head looked like.
Grande St. Leger- District One male
The sound of the hit ricocheted off the cave walls. It was like a bat hitting a baseball. My first thought was that Caio had somehow snuck in and attacked Elissa. While I was turning around, another noise followed the first. My eyes fell on Elissa, who was lying on the ground halfway down the corridor. Beyond her, Meenah was sprinting toward the end of the tunnel.
I saw her, but Meenah didn't enter my mind. I vaulted down the corridor toward Elissa. She wasn't getting up. In the darkness I couldn't tell if the ground around her shone with moisture or blood, but she wasn't getting up. One of her legs kicked when I was almost to her. It was a reflexive, spastic movement.
I knelt by Elissa and bent over her. Her right temple was bleeding. Her right temple, the one that had hit the ground, was bent inward. Her eyes were open but unfocused. Through the night-vision goggles, they looked like glittering glass eyes.
"No, no, no," I started saying. A dozen things ran through my head, from not moving people who might have serious injuries to how critically someone was hurt if they couldn't focus their eyes.
Elissa started to convulse. A trail of colorless liquid trickled from her upturned ear. Foam bubbled from her lips and down her chin.
"Oh god no oh god Elissa no," I moaned. I grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled her tight to my chest. She shook in my arms. I started to wail.
Elissa de Angelo-District One female
I wasn't connected to my body anymore. It was falling apart around me. My arms and legs, once the tools I used to impose my will on the world, were severed from me. I was a passenger and no longer the pilot.
I could feel Grande holding me. He was shaking just like I was. I didn't know what had been damaged when the flashlight hit my head and then I fell full force against the stone ground. I could only feel the effects.
Grande, I wanted to tell him. It's okay. Don't be sad. It's just one life. There are infinite more. But I couldn't tell him. I couldn't make my body do anything.
My limbs fell still around me. I felt the soul that had been trapped begin to slip through the ruined body so it could fly away. In that moment, my body obeyed me.
"I will accomplish what I first begin," I whispered to Grande. And I left this incarnation behind.
4th place: Elissa de Angelo- TBI caused by Meenah's flashlight and hitting the ground
Night-vision goggles enhance very small amounts of light by a lot (at least these ones do). So if there actually IS a lot of light, bad things happen. This is why we get warned in the Marines about aiming our night vision goggles away from light sources. I had this sort of thing planned for a long time and it was just a matter of which outlier would do it and to which Career. Meenah had a flashlight from earlier and Elissa was the unlikelier to win between her and Grande. It's not often I get religious Tributes. Elissa is the first to have an original religion. I had a lot of fun making it up and might reuse it if I ever need a religion for an original book. Elissa was spacey for a Career, which was interesting. She was also probably the deadliest Tribute, with four kills. She was loyal to both her friends and her principles and would have been an unconventional Career Victor had she won. Thanks JAJ for a Career that shows they do have moral codes, just not the normal one.