Archibald Pell, District Eight male (13)
What's it like to be a Career?
I had water and for the moment I had enough food. Once things like that were taken care of I had the time and energy to be able to think about things. Ever since seeing the last few cannons in the sky, it had been the Careers on my mind, probably since no one else could have killed Connor. They were out there somewhere right now, looking for me or anyone else to kill. They seemed like boogeymen now. I remembered back in the Games building they looked like people.
What makes someone like that? They must have been little kids someday. They were my age once- probably already training by then. Actually, by the time they were my age they'd probably been training for at least five years. I didn't know when Careers started training but with their skills I estimated it had to be at the very least five years, which meant if they were eighteen they'd been training since they were at the very most thirteen. I couldn't imagine killing someone. I could make a picture of it in my head but it wasn't any more real than imagining a dragon. I wasn't even sure I would know what it meant entirely. I knew what death was and all that but I couldn't imagine what it meant to strike at someone's body with the intent to end their life. It was so far from what the world was supposed to be that it felt silly to even think about.
I guess a lot of it is culture. Every District had its culture. Surely everyone from Three didn't actually care about technology and school. A lot of them were going along with it because they thought they were supposed to or because they were afraid of getting teased. I didn't always fit into Eight, with my love of animals and secret thoughts that maybe I should have been born in Ten. And somewhere in Ten there was probably a boy who wished he could design clothes.
Thinking about it that way made me a little sad for the Careers. Imagine being eight years old and living in a place where everyone around you says that surely you're going to go to the Academy, right? Everyone wants to go to the Games, after all. So pick up a spear and learn to stab people because that's the highest goal in life. I wondered how many of them just went because they liked seeing how proud their parents were when they won a fight. How many of them were scared their parents wouldn't love them anymore if they didn't go, or that they were broken for not wanting to. How many didn't want to when they left but after years in that world they started wanting to.
They were probably scared when they died. Every one of them was probably scared when they died. They must have thought that made them failures. They would put on a brave face so their families wouldn't see it and stop loving them. And they'd go home in a box and time would pass and eventually no one would love them anymore. They would be just a stone in a graveyard, a footnote in history, someone whose life was cut short because they wanted to make someone else proud and were left with nothing but dust. Their parents would slowly learn that as they mourned the child they sent away to die. I think most Careers learned it long before that.
I thought the clouds were shifting when a shadow fell over me. When I saw Anthony I didn't try to get up. I looked at his face as he raised his trident. I didn't see fear or celebration. It just looked like routine for him.
Anthony Morgan, District Four male (18)
So much of our lives was decided by chance. My mother said something milder than most of us had said, but she happened to say it in front of the wrong person and just like that she lost her freedom. I was born in Four and just like that I never had to be afraid of being Reaped. And eighteen other kids were born in the Districts and just because of that they had to fear me.
I wondered sometimes about what it was like to live in the non-Career Districts. Any District other than Four, really- even the other Career Districts were totally different in everyday life. Would I just have a different life if I'd been born there, or would I be a different person? The world around you shapes your personality, even if some things are just from nature. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be as aggressive as I was if I was from Ten or Twelve. In Four fighting can get you ahead but in a District swarming with Peacekeepers it will only get you killed.
The Games wasn't like they said it would be. The instructors said the outlying Districts had such hard jobs that they were all tough and strong. Some of them were, like Bess and Kjole, but in the Games building I'd seen that a lot of them were just kids, some little enough they probably weren't even allowed to walk to school alone. There wasn't much honor in killing someone like that. The instructors must have known what it was really like. I didn't know what they were getting out of this. What could they gain from buying into all of this and psyching us up until we were clamoring for a chance to go? It must be something but I wasn't sure I wanted to know what.
I'd been following the trail since the sun was rising and it was almost halfway to the top of the sky. It was a long time to think about what I was doing and what I would do when I got to the end of the trail. Careers didn't actually have the supernatural tracking skills that some people thought we did, but I could tell from the height of the broken branches that I was tracking a young Tribute. There was a long stretch of time as I followed the trail that I could have broken off. I guess I knew what I would do at the end because I kept going.
It's not my fault. Not the killing people thing. That was my fault. But it wasn't my fault the Capitol made it unfair. If they had made it an even playing field for everyone, so everyone in Panem had a fair chance to risk it all for a better life, it could have been justifiable. Someone from Twelve could volunteer for a chance at real food and an escape from the mines. Someone from Three could volunteer to get away from an abusive family. Someone from Four could volunteer to get a pardon for an unfairly Avoxed mother. It still wouldn't be fair overall, since none of those things should have happened in the first place, but at least we would have some claim of morality.
I stood for a moment watching Pell when I came up behind him. He was sitting by a small waterfall. I felt guilty that my second thought, after noticing how pretty it was, was that the sound would cover my approach. A little boy was sitting by a waterfall, dangling his feet in the water. When I killed him he might fall in. I wondered how far downstream he would go. And it was a when, not an if. I stood for a while behind Pell, knowing what I was going to do. All my moralizing and philosophizing was just empty talk. It was too late for any of that now. I knew I was the bad guy but I also knew I didn't want to die. I guess I understood better then how people could do something they knew was wrong.
Omar Beatriz-Calvert, District Ten male (15)
I'd never seen so many new things in my life. The Arena was an endless sprawling wonderland filled with new animals and plants like I never dreamed I'd be able to see. I knew some of them from books and it was delightful to see them in real life. I drank the fresh, clean water from a bromeliad like a living bowl. I saw a green tree boa coiled up on a branch looking lazily at me but making no move to attack. I ran my hands over an orchid, wishing I could bring it home to my mother. They say some of them cure cancer. So many other plants did other amazing things that I didn't even know about.
One plant I did know about was tannia root. I'd read a book about the Amazon when I was about eight years old and for some reason one of a few things that had stuck in my head (another being white tent bats) was tannia root. I recognized the arrow-shaped leaves right away and tried to keep my hands somewhat clean as I pulled up the roots. I was hoping it would taste like a potato but it didn't really. It tasted more "natural" somehow, like cultivated food had changed over the generations and I was eating the original wild version.
I wish I had a notebook. I would have loved to draw and write about all the things I'd seen. Of course it didn't really matter in the end. If I won I'd be able to study them at my leisure. If I didn't I'd never read the notebook again anyway. But as it was, it was cool to feel like an old-timey explorer going down the Amazon to places people had never gone before. And not the colonizers, either. The real explorers who first saw all that stuff hundreds of years before foreigners came over.
Not that I was entirely alone. I was pretty sure someone else was in the rainforest room with me, since I'd heard a few birds scream suddenly like they'd been shot. I hadn't seen anyone, and the dead birds indicated it was someone who knew how to hunt, so I was a little nervous because it was probably a Career. Had they all split up already or was it all of them? I guessed they had probably split up, because if all the Careers were in the same garden with me they would have found me by now.
A stick squished under my foot as I trod on it. I had just enough time to think must be a damp stick, it didn't snap when I felt the tiny stabs like I'd accidentally stapled myself. I pulled my leg up in surprise and pain and watched as a patterned brown snake slithered off into the grass.
Snakes do warning bites, I told myself. I didn't know what kind of snake that was or if it was venomous but I was sure the Capitol wouldn't but a harmless snake into the Arena. Especially since the area was already numb and suddenly I felt like I was going to throw up.
Stay still. Don't excite yourself. Keep it below your heart. Snakes weren't common around our houses in Ten but most of us still knew the common-sense rules. None of that made any difference. All the treatments for snake bites revolved around keeping the person alive until they got to a hospital. There was nothing I could do. Slowing it down was only prolonging it.
My heart was speeding up, even though I didn't feel scared so much as unbelieving. I slowly sat down as my legs started to feel weak. Tightness settled over my chest and I started to breathe more deliberately. It was almost claustrophobic the way the tightness just kept getting worse.
Such a beautiful Arena. Such a beautiful, peaceful Arena I was just walking through without hurting anyone. And it killed me for no reason at all.
15th place: Archibald Pell- stabbed by Anthony
Pell got away a long time since the Careers were focused on eliminating threats systematically. However, process of elimination would eventually lead to him, and this time it was his trail Anthony found. Pell did better than he thought he would, since his realism and sometimes pessimism meant he didn't take risks. He was a long shot to win so I took him out here. It's often hard to get younger and weaker Tributes so thanks elim9 for taking one for the team.
14th place: Omar Beatriz-Calvert- bitten by a fer-de-lance
Omar's form suggested he get betrayed by an ally. Bess was dead so I did my best. Omar was having a great time exploring the forest with his scientist mind so this seemed like an appropriate way to go. While fer-de-lances ARE one of the more dangerous snakes in the world, it usually takes a day or two to die. No one wants to read about that so I condensed it. Sorry he didn't win Fiona, but I do see he's still kicking in some other stories at least.
