VASLAV NIKULIN- Arroyo Cardoso

So that was who it was. Maybe I should have stayed to make sure he died quickly. I'd been afraid I would miss and just hit painful glancing blows again and again and just torment him. But maybe I should have stayed.

Lacey Weaver- District Eight female (18)

Bathroom breaks were always stressful. Our washing machine wasn't really that much safer than anywhere else in the Arena but it felt like home. People are superstitious and I wasn't immune to it. Our washing machine was our stronghold. It had a talismanic protection- as long as we stayed in there we were safe. It was my mind's way of telling me I had some control over my life. It was funny how I could know that was true and still believe it.

So much of the Games was just normal. In the Capitol I looked ahead to it with dread and disbelief, like I was about to get launched onto another planet. But when I got to the Arena it normalized itself. For the next few weeks this was my life and I went about my day almost like things were normal. Like it was normal to be constantly in fear of my life. Even that went away a little. I knew about the danger but my mind wouldn't let me think about what it really meant. It was like how people know car crashes are one of the most common ways to die and yet people drive cars every day and never even think about it.

There are people out there living normal lives. I hadn't come home from the Reaping but all over Panem there were people who had and who went back to their lives with nothing but a shudder and a prayer of thanks that it wasn't them. By now the visceral fear of the Reaping had passed and they were back to studying or playing with friends and only watching the screens with a secondhand sadness that cared about their Districtmates dying but didn't really know their pain. Just like I'd done every Games until my last eligible year. Funny how often eighteen-year-olds get Reaped. Maybe it's just statistics, or maybe it's the Capitol reminding us we survive our childhood only if they allow it.

When I came out of the bathroom Jacquard was already there. He was looking at the vending machine in between the male and female restrooms. He was so deep in thought he didn't even look up when I opened the door. I knew how hard it was for him to force himself to take that step. He was so focused he didn't see what I saw- the reflection of a spear flying at him from behind.

I shouted a warning too late. The spear hit Jacquard before he had time to turn around. I fled. There was nothing I could do to save Jacquard and I had only a narrow hope of saving myself. I ran down the hall to my left and learned I had a chance when I didn't see a Career waiting for me. As Arroyo ran in behind me and yanked his spear out I smashed into the stairwell door, bruising myself as I shoved it open and ducked behind it a second before the spear hit it. I jumped down five or six stairs at a time as I sprinted down two levels and ran back through the door before Arroyo could make it to the stairwell and know what level I was on.

Minutes later I was huddled behind a stack of paper reams in a supply closet, knees drawn to my chest with my arms clasped around them. At some point the cannon must have gone off but I hadn't heard it. Jacquard was dead and I hadn't even listened for his cannon. I sat crying into my knees, stunned and how wrong I was. Life didn't go on in the Arena. It didn't go on at all.

Fleur Laveau- District Eleven female (18)

All right, what else in here is horribly poisonous that we can use to kill people?

Morbid thoughts like that were a dime a dozen in the Arena. Walcott and I staved off our consciences by saying we were aiming for the Careers. Which was true- we just might not be able to aim that precisely. If my memory of the Bloodbath was right our acid rain had only killed Careers. There was no way of telling how many outliers might be limping around horribly burned, but that was something I just tried not to think about.

"Why can't there be any edible cleaning supplies?" Walcott moaned as she poked through bottles. I'd gotten sponsored some food and I'd shared it but it wasn't much for almost an entire week in the Arena. We weren't moving much and theoretically we could make it another two weeks, but at that point we wouldn't be putting up much of a fight when the Careers eventually found us.

"There might be some vinegar or baking soda," I said hopefully.

"Can you eat that much of that? Like can you just chug vinegar?" Walcott wondered aloud. She looked at the ceiling with an expression of such fervent wonder that it made me smile. "I bet you can. It would be really gross but I bet you wouldn't actually puke."

"If you find some you should try it. Then if you don't puke I'll try it," I said.

"Hah hah," Walcott said. "I wonder how many calories vinegar has."

I moved some bottles of window cleaner around to see what might be hidden behind them on a slightly damp shelf. A cannon sounded. I pulled my hand back in irrational fear at the death-noise and a second later went back to looking. My pinky finger brushed a small glass bottle tucked against the wall. I pulled it out to see what it was.

Ready-to-use Rat Bait, the little bottle read. Kills rats, mice, and other noxious rodents

Well that's probably poisonous, I thought. The little bottle was a little more than half-full. I felt a prick of amusement at the thought of some Gamemaker pouring out half a bottle to simulate that the nonexistent workers had used it on nonexistent rats. Tiny beads of condensation stood out on the smooth dark brown glass. If I'd been poetic I would have said they were rat's tears.

I turned around and held up the bottle. "I found something we can use. Definitely don't chug it though."

Oaken Mushroom- District Seven male (17)

It was kind of fun having the secret run of the Arena. We hadn't seen anyone else in the tunnels and they pretty much went everywhere. We'd found everything from what looked like the CEO's office to a smaller office belonging from someone who loved ice cream enough to have a mini-fridge full of it. It might have been a Gamemaker trap with poisoned pints of frozen goodness... but it wasn't. Unless it was really slow-acting poisoned ice cream.

The drawback of all of that was actually wiggling through the tunnels. They weren't that small but even being just a little constrained got claustrophobic after a while. I kept getting nervous that the Gamemakers might decide to mess with us and randomly tighten the tunnels while we were in there. It brought back memories of watching the cave Games on television. No one who saw that ever forgot it.

The metal thumped around me and Claire as we skittered through the vent. The soundtrack of my life had become reverberating sheets of metal, the squeak of shoes when they skidded as we pushed ourselves forward, the huffing and muttering of two tired and worn-out Tributes, and the soft whisper of fabric rubbing against itself as our legs and arms moved. My pants had two noticeably lighter spots on my knees and my shirt had matching patches on my elbows. It worried me to think about what would happen when eventually the fabric wore through and it was my skin that was getting rubbed.

Claire screamed in the tunnel ahead of me. She'd prevailed and taken the front position this trip and guilt flashed over me almost in equal to the fear. I reared up in the tunnel, cracking my head on the ceiling, and rushed toward her as she started backing away, running into me and not stopping.

"Backbackbackcockroaches!" she screamed. The intensity in her voice made it clear it wasn't just a few bugs she was talking about. I started backing up as fast as I could, peeking over my shoulder for the fastest exit. I knew I shouldn't look but there was no one on earth who wouldn't look.

It wasn't a few. It was a carpet of them. Hundreds of cockroaches pouring toward us down the tunnel. The only small mercy was that they were normal-sized but that was barely a mercy at all. Which is worse, getting eaten by one giant cockroach or getting eaten by a thousand normal ones?

WhatamIgonnadowhatdoI do? I couldn't fight that. How do you fight a wave of endless insects? If they got to me and Claire we would die. That was all there was to it. All we could do was creep backwards down a tunnel and hope to reach an exit. The smell of cockroaches hit my nose. I'd never realized how bad they smelled.

I looked over my shoulder and saw an opening twelve feet down the hall. I had no idea where it led but anything was better than this. Claire screamed and I saw a cockroach crawl over her hair and down her back. I reached the opening and backed into it, breaking through the fragile grate with my weight and falling halfway into a room I couldn't see. I grabbed Claire's leg and yanked her down with me as I let myself fall the rest of the way.

We landed hard on the floor. Pain bloomed in my tailbone and in the elbow that hit the floor first. Claire landed sideways on top of me, her arm bent under her head to keep her skull from smashing on the luckily carpeted floor. She batted at the air as cockroaches started raining down on us. She sat up and launched off me, unintentionally elbowing me in the stomach. I rolled over and followed after her, running through the door and slamming it shut.

Claire mewed and wiped at her clothes, knocking free half a dozen cockroaches. The skin on the back of my neck prickled and I swatted one off of myself.

"Ew ew ew ew," Claire said, trying not to cry. She wasn't afraid of a few bugs but this was something else altogether. I wrapped my arms around her and we just stood there hugging for a minute.

12th place: Jacquard Crock- speared by Arroyo

I purposely didn't give Jacquard a send-off POV but there's a reason. Eating disorders are very difficult and take a long time to recover from. It's not something that can be fixed with a happy word from someone you just met. I left Jacquard looking at that vending machine to leave uncertainty. Was he about to eat something? Would he have lost his nerve? Up to the reader. I won't give a falsely happy ending but I also won't give a hopeless one. So I'll give no ending at all. Thanks to Silver for Jacquard, who reminded readers of the very sadly overlooked reality of men with eating disorders and body image difficulties. To all my bois out there, you have struggles too and you're important.

Timeline: day six