Nixon Hankook (13) D6M

Factory work was obnoxious. I wanted nothing to do with piecing together cars for someone I didn't care about, a bunch of aliens in the Capitol just wasting our scraps. I didn't like breaking apart metal for scraps just to be used for fake people I'd never be able to preach the truth about. I didn't like anything about it, even the paychecks. I didn't want blood money from the Capitol, money they had taken from us in taxes just to halfheartedly give back in paychecks. Nothing about the factory was right or good. I only liked showing up for the Peacekeepers.

They move so humanly, I thought to myself, watching our guards while they made sure nobody was pocketing any pieces of metal. How could they have been programmed that well? The easiest thing to come up with was that they were human, but that was something I simply refused to believe. No human could be as cruel as the Peacekeepers were, just like no human could be as dumb as the Capitolites were. They were all robots, built for strategic purposes, trying to get some of us to mess up so Ginger could have some fun. Ginger was real. So were the head Gamemakers and the richest Capitolites. But everyone else in the Capitol was definitely fake, definitely made up just to try to keep us in line.

There must be some wiring somewhere. Maybe I can throw water on one of them when nobody else is looking and short-circuit them. No, they're definitely waterproof. The armor makes them impossible to punch out... Pull a loose cord? Maybe that would work. But none of their cords are ever loose... Hnnng. Every day in the factory I plotted how to pull one of the Peacekeeper's cords, trying desperately to show to the whole world that they were fake, that we could just dismantle their cameras and be free forever. How hard could it be? Very.

Still plotting my grand show of fakeness, I cursed my bandaged hand. I could move it so much more easily, sneak the plate off before anyone could react, if my left hand, my dominate one, fully functioned. It was a struggle that it was covered, because that would make it a hundred times harder to dismantle a robot. Sure, I could just wait until it healed, but that could be too long. The Hunger Games were coming up, and despite that fact that no one died in them, if I was Reaped, I wouldn't be allowed back into my District. Only one non-Victor had made it back, and he had had to drag himself back kicking and screaming.

I suppose I could get the aliens to help me. They have no reason to, but they have no reason not to. That thought wasn't realistic at all. The aliens were never seen by anyone. They owned the factory, but either they had amazing disguises, or they just let everyone else run it and took the money now and then, transporting it to the Capitol with technology only an alien could understand. They wouldn't help me. I couldn't talk to them to get their help.

Rhiannon Raimers (16) D6F

Three years ago

District Six was ugly. Nobody would ever disagree with me about that. Smog filled the air from all the cars and car factories. Green grass was a rare sight to behold, trees even rarer. The only living things other than humans were rats or cats, nothing beautiful and real, like birds or weasels. Sure, we got a couple of pigeons, but even pigeons were ugly compared to what I had heard of in the other Districts. Some birds were red. Some were blue. Some shone like diamonds in the sunlight. Why couldn't I have been born to a District with animals like that?

When fate does you dirty, take control of your life back. I wasn't going to sit back and deal with the fact that I was born to one of the ugliest Districts. I was going to fix it. Sure, I would have to do more physical labor in Nine, the closest pretty District, but that was something I could deal with. I could really use to be a bit stronger, after all. I would also be under the Capitol's radar in Nine, immune to being Reaped, but that wasn't one of my priorities. It was just a side effect.

Nobody tried to escape Six, especially not to Nine. Nine was poorer than Six, the labor was harder, and the Peacekeepers were harsher. That being said, the border was one of the least-guarded ones I knew of. It wouldn't be hard to hop over the fence that wasn't even electric, the fence that only existed to slow us down. The other side was the problem. The other side was layered with barbed wire and sometimes kept electric, though our side had been lined with rubber. We couldn't have Nines becoming Sixes, only the other way around.

I was going to risk the fall. It seemed like an easy decision, and it was. I easily scaled the fence, sticking my hands carefully into whatever holds I could find, having to be careful to avoid getting myself shocked. It took a long time, longer than I felt comfortable taking. Trying to leave your District was risky. It was my first attempt, and I wasn't trying to get to One or anything, but I would still be punished if I was caught. Harshly.

"Hey! What are you doing?" I heard a voice yell out from behind me. I tried to hurry my climb, desperately grabbing whatever I could. Something hit my back, and I slowly processed that it was a bullet. Then something else hit me, something I didn't have time to process. I fell to the ground from my position two-thirds of the way up the wall, collapsing in a heap at the bottom. Whatever it was, it hurt when it hit me, when it froze my body. But I would risk it again to escape.

We're full! The list hasn't been updated because I'm using it as a note-to-self, but we are.