Talise Cicero- District Four female (16)

It was very anxiety-inducing to be a deaf Career. I had no idea if my hearing would come back but for the moment all I could hear was muffled mumbling and the maddeningly constant sound of a high-pitching whining ring. It felt uncomfortably like I had cotton stuffed in my ears. It must be what it feels like to be old.

Other than that, things could be worse. Our supplies- most urgently, all the unpoisoned water- were gone, but we were both alive and one more competitor was gone. Alice's face was half-covered in a reddish rash but the skin wasn't sloughing, just flaking like a bad sunburn. It was visible that she was in pain but she was still moving around and planning future violence.

Alice mumbled something.

"What?" I asked. My own voice sounded rippled and remote.

She looked at me in confusion, her hearing as garbled as mine. Realization crossed her face and she moved closer.

"I said this sucks," she said.

"At least the horses didn't run away," I said, pointing to Misty and Prancer a few hundred feet away where they'd bolted during the explosion but were now starting to pick at the sparse grass. We were waiting to approach them until we were sure they were totally calm and wouldn't kick.

"Let's just get everyone killed and kill each other so one of us can go home and get to the doctor. I hate this," Alice said, rubbing at her ear in the same gesture I'd been periodically making in the vain hope I could rub away the ringing.

"We still gotta find them all," I said. For the first time in the Games I felt something like despair. It wasn't that I was afraid I would die- that was still just a remote worry I wasn't facing yet. I just despaired of how long it would take to ferret out and kill everyone left in such a large Arena. I couldn't stomach the thought of spending another week in the same clothes and with 1800s sanitation.

Alice threw up her arms in annoyance. She glared at the ground for a minute, then smiled.

"I have an idea," she said.

"What?" I asked.

"Some of the others are hiding in the rubble," Alice started. "The half-knocked-down, unstable rubble. If we go from house to house and stomp on the rubble, eventually we might squish some of them. Horses are heavy."

"What if the horses fall over and break their legs or panic?" I asked.

"Misty's nice but that's a chance I'm willing to take to get out of here," Alice said.

I kept my expression neutral as I turned to walk toward the horses. Alice really would do anything to get out of here. I guess I always had some rosy idea that even people who didn't care about people still loved animals, or at least cute ones like horses. And Alice did obviously like Misty. But she was willing to throw her under the bus in an instant to achieve her own ends. I wasn't judging her for it- I wanted to live too and had volunteered for the Games- but it reminded me that under her quirky and chipper exterior Alice was a killer and would kill me just as easily. The biggest threat in the Games was constantly right next to me.

Veda Keate- District Eight female (16)

I was so hungry. I still had some nuts and stuff but I didn't know how long they needed to last. Ever since the Games started I'd been in a constant state of nagging hunger. I'd never really thought about what that felt like before. I wondered if people in Twelve felt like this all their lives. It seemed so senseless that some Districts had so much more than other Districts. Even Eight was still poor but at least we had food every day. If I had been born in Twelve I didn't think I would ever want children. People must have a lot of hope if they can live like that and still think it will be better someday. But none of that took my mind off my hunger for long. Funny thing was that I was glad to think about the hunger because it kept me from thinking about something else.

I'd killed a person. Malcolm was a Career and I couldn't be blamed for his death but that didn't stop me from feeling the guilt. Even though I knew I had a right to stay alive it would never change the fact that it was wrong he died. All alone down in my tunnel with nothing to do but think, it crept closer to the front of my mind that I wasn't the same person anymore. I wasn't sure I regretted changing from who I had been but I knew I wouldn't have picked to become who I was now. If I got out of the Arena and had a new life I would never forget that I had killed someone. Malcolm might have gotten out of the Arena as well. He might have married and had children. There were generations who would never exist because of what I did. And all the people in his life- his parents, his siblings, his friends- all of them would spent the rest of their lives with a hole in their lives. My chance at a happy ending came at a cost I had never wanted to pay.

But what about your family? Even as I mourned for the family of my enemy I grasped that there were people who needed me, too. Since I'd seen how constricting my past life could be I didn't want Kass growing up in it. I absolutely didn't want her to be raised by a man who would marry a child. Just like it awed me that I'd killed a man, it awed me that once my body had produced a new life. Kass would outlive me and she had so long left in this world.

Kass.

I was stopped in my thoughts by a sudden rush of unbearable loss. Humans can bear so much and make a new normal but every time I really thought about my daughter my heart broke all over. I wanted my baby. I wanted to see her, to hold her, to touch her. To know she was all right. I wanted her to know her mother was there. Living without Kass was like living without my sight. I could survive. I could make a new normal. But every second of that new normal I would miss the old one. I pressed my face to my hands and tried to think just about being hungry again.

I actually welcomed the Careers when I heard them. I knew they couldn't see me but their presence was unsettling enough that I could focus my thoughts on just them and not something worse. Their footsteps sounded strange, though. There were too many of them for the two girls and they sounded weirdly flat.

When the footsteps sounded directly above me I went still and almost held my breath. I realized an instant too late how fragile my tunnel was. Just as I lifted my head in alarm the top of the tunnel collapsed in on me. I was blinded by dust as the rubble over me bore down on me and pinned me in place. I tried to breathe in and was stopped by both the dust and the crushing pressure of the rubble.

The footsteps continued uninterrupted and I wondered if they had any idea of what they'd done. As the dust settled I could see a faint pinprick of light, the only thing keeping me from panicking. If I could just see the light in the distance I knew there was something more, even though I couldn't move or take a real breath. I tried vainly to rise and knew I was only burning my last breath away faster. I tried anyway. If I was going to suffocate I wanted it to be fast. And I was going to suffocate, I knew. All the thoughts of my life cleared away and I found myself thinking forward to the next one. I didn't think anymore that it was going to be what I'd been told as a child. I didn't know what it would actually be like. Beside all the fear and regret, the tiniest part of me was excited to find out.

I kinda spoiled this one by the format since I was too lazy to write another POV.

7th place: Veda Keate- crushed by the Careers

Yikes, what a heavy POV to end on- I felt bad even while I wrote it. Veda was definitely Victor potential. She had the drive, the improvement throughout the story, and a compelling motivation. She did well with the voters all throughout until the latest shift in numbers caused people to have to revoke some life votes and she got the worst of it (-4 at time of death). That she got this far means the readers saw the same potential I did. This one's really just a tragedy and I don't have much to say to make it better. Thanks Maia and, well, just kinda this sucks.