The desperate search for my little brother, Altar, had availed Monica and I absolutely nothing. Altar was alive, but no trace of him seemed to surround us. We'd wandered the perimeter, looked around and in every tree. We even started shouting his name, hoping desperately for acknowledgement or response. Instead, we got dead silence. We found nothing. My little brother was nowhere to be found. And yet he wasn't dead. For five nights straight, his face was absent from the skies as anthem played. The idea that Altar was alive out there, but missing, it made my blood run cold. During those five nights, I'd let Monica rest while I kept watch with the fabrication that I'd wake her up so we can take turns. Initially, I simply did it because I could not bring myself to trust the girl from District 4, even if she did look out for my little brother and promised to do the same for me. However, after a while it became clear I did it to hide my restlessness. My little brother was out there, and I couldn't find him. He'd been all alone for a while, no thanks to the rules of this particular arena. But this was different. We'd been reunited and as if life were out to spite me, Altar went missing all because I went off to take a piss. As the sun rose on yet another day in this horrid arena, I rubbed my face, frustrated by all of my woes. Soon, Monica rose from her slumber, as if perfectly timed with the rise of the sun.

"What's up?" She asked. I warily looked over in her direction before I shook my head, frustrated.

"It's nothing." I sighed before laying back and resting my head on the ground. Monica looked at me a skeptical frown before letting a soft cough.

"I know how you feel. I hope we can find him pretty soon. He's got to be out there. Somewhere..." Her sentenced lingered on as she stared out into space. I couldn't tell you what she was drifting off for, but I wasn't going to bother thinking about that. I was just too tired, to frustrated to properly feel anything at this point. These 20 days had long since drained me. I got on my feet and opened my bag where I helped myself to a gulp of water from my bottle. I was so bitter that I hadn't even bothered eating or drinking much in the past few days. My own thoughts stung at me every waking moment. Eating away at my sanity. In all honesty, I feel more like I was just running away from the truth. At this rate, we were never going to find my Altar. I couldn't understand though, where did he go? And why? Once again, I rubbed my face with frustration. I really just wanted to just let out a huge yell at that moment, but I was so tired I just didn't have the energy for it.

"You could get some rest you know." Said Monica as she bit into a cracker. I sighed, annoyed even more.

"I can't. Not with Altar out there. Once we find him, I'll rest." I said. I yawned right after I said that though, as if my body was letting me know it didn't agree. Monica just shook her head.

"Again, I understand how you feel. But this isn't healthy. You're going to tire yourself out before we even have a chance to find Altar. Do you want that?" She asked rhetorically. She had a point, as much as I hated that. I was getting weaker by the days, no thanks to our slowly dwindling food supplies and my lack of sleep. There's no telling when my body might just give up on me. I tried to ignore that, but at this point it was clear I would have no choice but to give in.

"I guess you're right." I laid over once again, using my bag as a pillow to rest on. It wasn't exactly ideal, but soon enough I felt myself drifting off. In spite of that, there was something on my mind as my mind did drift off. Five days ago, I wasn't sure why Altar had run off on his own but now I was starting to come up with theories. First I had figured that a tribute had chased him away. There were quite a few left after all. I was certain the culprit was one from five or nine. Possibility both, since last time I checked the tributes from those districts had been in one huge alliance, though I wasn't sure if they'd remained like that even now. If they were all together, it was a miracle Altar was still alive. Some of them were decently trained, and even then there were at least 5 of them still alive so for Altar to have escaped them was incredible. He was good at throwing knives, but he's also one 12 year old boy against a bunch of a teenagers. Altar, at least, was a fast runner. I assume that's why Altar is alive. On the bright side, all of the tributes from nine and five had recently turned up dead. Their names all lining the skies one after another. I hate the fact that it had pleased me, but at the very least it meant they wouldn't be a threat for me and Monica, nor Altar. But I felt my stomach churn remembering who that left. Ceres and that girl from 10. Those thugs were wandering the arena doing whatever they wanted, and I doubted that Altar could last even a second against either one of them whether or not he ran. If Altar had the misfortune of running into their path, he was a dead man. But at the same time, it was possible that Altar had been chased off by an animal, maybe a mutt. If so, that was unfortunate, but thankfully Altar was alive and at the end of the day that was all that mattered. As I felt myself drifting closer and closer to a good deep sleep, I finally felt a sense of ease with that in mind. Altar was out there, alive and hopefully well too. Hopefully soon they'd be reunited, and he could send his poor brother home, at last...

"Snow?" I heard Monica mutter as my eyes slowly began to shut. It had gotten pretty cold over the last few days so snow was no surprise. It was clear that a big part of this arena was the insane daily change in climate. The first arena I was in was nothing of the sort, being nothing but a dry desert, but this other side was a forest that seemed to have a back and forth between being insanely hot or insanely cool. It'd been cool for a while, and it seemed it was so cold out now it was snowing. But even as the cold surrounded my body, I found myself lulled into sleep in spite of it. Five days with little sleep does that to somebody. Ah well...


I woke up to a boot kicking into my side. I yelped and bolted upwards, half caught completely off guard and half outrageously furious that somebody had the audacity to wake me up in the middle of my much needed respite. I was quick to assume that this was a tribute who made the mistake of not just killing me on the spot and instead decided to play with fire by kicking me around first. I scrambled around in order to evade any potential attacks and tried to find my weapon only to realize that there we no tributes in my vicinity other than Monica. At the same time, I also realized something that made my blood run cold. Monica was screaming something, but I was so caught up in my fear that I wasn't paying her words any mind. Right before I went to sleep, it was apparently starting to snow. Now, me and Monica were surrounded by walls of fire. A wildfire had consumed the forest while I was out and asleep from the looks of it. It was still snowing though, somehow, and it was honestly still chilly out in spite of the wildfire, but that was all irrelevant. Within seconds, me and Monica starting running as fast our bodies would take us. We needed to get out of here as quickly as possible. However, as we started running, it wasn't clear exactly where we should head.

Within seconds, however, what direction we meant to head in became all but irrelevant as me and Monica found ourselves face to face with some... thing? We found ourselves cornered by what looked to be a huge mutt. It was dog like, with three heads instead of one. Simplistic but terrifying in that simplicity. I grit my teeth and Monica readied her weapon.

"I don't think it'll be worth it to take this thing head on. Let's just run." She shouted all of a sudden and within seconds she darted in the direction to my left. I didn't even have a chance to process her words but soon enough I quickly joined her in a desperate attempt to escape the area with my life. Behind us, the mutt howled and I could hear its loud, large footsteps quickly approaching us.

"It's gonna catch up anytime now!" I cried out as I tried keeping up the pace in order to outrun this mad mutt. At this rate, we'd be much better off stopping and fighting the thing instead of running away, but as I just about to come to halt and try and hold the thing off, Monica began speaking.

"Trust me, I don't think that's gonna happen." She confidently asserted as we dashed our way through the burning woods. "Think about it. This late in the game? Knowing how they usually work, I suspect we're being led somewhere. Somewhere were we'll end up finding some old enemies." She explained. I was quick to recognize what she meant. It's common for this strategy to be deployed by gamemakers during the games. Try and lead the tributes in a specific direction by means of arena event in an attempt to bring all of the remaining tributes together. It meant that while our situation did not exactly look good, as long as we followed the expected playbook, we were not in any true danger.

At least not yet.

Discounting the lack of true danger in spite of the burning air mixed in with the cool snow on top of the giant Mutt, the true threat that lay in front of us was the tributes we would find at the end of this path. There are only five people left in the arena. Obviously me and Monica were two of those people, but on the other end of that coin are the girls from District 11 and 10. They are very likely the people we would run into sooner or later. However as me and Monica continued our mad dash through the forest, it did make me consider the possibility that we could find Altar along the way. As the thought that Altar lay somewhere along our path starts to enter my mind, I considered slowing down a little and observing my surroundings a little more. However it seemed at that exact moment, Monica had the exact same thought.

"Altar is more than likely going to be at the end of the fire corridor alongside those other two..." She slowed down, as if to contemplate what word she should use to describe our targets with.

"Those monsters. I don't know if that means Altars joined them for survival, or maybe he's also getting led out here." She said to me.

"I hope that's the case." I replied, nodding my head. That did make me worry about the possibility that Altar would die while trying to make it to the location of this final confrontation. I prayed that that wouldn't be the case.


We ran for a while, but eventually we found ourselves in a large clearing in the middle of a forest that had long since been torn apart by what may have been a storm. Much of the trees in the surrounding area were already knocked down, and by the time we'd made it to the area many of the trees were being burned to a crisp by the fire in the area. The snow was also much heavier in the area, though I couldn't tell you why. The most striking feature of the area was the golden cornucopia that laid in the middle. This was this arenas cornucopia. Somehow, it looked a lot more hostile than the one I'd dealt with in his own arena days prior. But without thinking, I quickly collapsed to my knees and held my right hand to my chest.

"You good?" Monica asked, out of the breath. It seemed we were both in the same boat. Both out of breath now. I nodded before falling face first into the snow. Somehow the snow didn't feel too cold. After all that running my entire body was felt like it was on fire. This was needed. I even started doing snow angels just to make sure my entire body could cool off. That was what I needed right then. Monica fell on her rear and rested next to me. We were both so incredibly tired, I wasn't sure how the hell we were going to even fight in our condition. Unfortunately I didn't have time to think about whether or not I'd be able to do it because as it turned out, a particularly big and angry woman happened to be right behind us. If it wasn't for Monica's quick thinking, I'd be in two pieces right now. Monica had quickly brought out her sword and blocked Ceres' own weapon with it. I was quick to notice that Ceres, like me and Monica, was completely out of breath. I have no doubt in my mind that she would've been able to kill me if it weren't for the fact. I got up as quickly as I could, hoping to take advantage of this situation. However, before I could even do anything, I heard the sound of snow crunching behind me. That was when I realized that the other girl was slowly but surely approaching me from behind. I turned around and caught her in the act. She was holding the side of her abdomen with her left hand and a sword in the right. She pointed it at me and gritted her teeth, seemingly out of pain.

"Get her!" Monica yelled at me, motioning me to move out of her way so she could fight Ceres without me getting in her way. I did so without a second thought and I attempted to dash across the snow with my weapon in front of me. However, the snow was up so high that I essentially had to jump up every time I moved. There was no easy way for me and this girl to have a fight in this terrain. But at the end of the day, this was the Hunger Games and there was nothing I could do about it all so I continued dashing towards her, ignoring the lack of air in my lungs. Soon, we were so close I could probably reach out and slap her if I wanted to. I stabbed my sword in her direction but in spite of her injury she just shoved my sword aside. I tried taking a step back, but my feet were so implanted into the ground that all I ended up doing was falling backwards into the snow. I began to try and get up but before I could make any traction, the girls shadow loomed over me. The District 10 girl looked down upon me with a apathetic gaze before she shoved her sword downwards. Without thinking, I bring my sword up and block her slash with it. She angrily grunts before she tries pushing the sword down harder. I keep my sword up but my arms were slowly losing energy. I knew it, I was done at this rate. Quickly, I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the inevitable. However, instead of the feeling of a sword stabbing through my body, I felt the entire body weight of somebody land on top of me. There was a loud but incredibly irritated yell followed by several colorful words and soon I was being punched in the face repeatedly. The girl was pretty tall and weighed a lot, likely just under 200 pounds, but I was equally as tough so I began rolling over and pushing her to the ground. Soon, I was on top of her and I was punching her in the face left in right myself. Soon I grabbed my sword and readied for the finishing blow that would finally put and end to this scuffle-,

"ALL OF YOU. STOP FIGHTING. THAT'S ENOUGH."

The voice of the announcer boomed across the arena loud enough for the entire place to shake a little. All of us stopped what we were doing and looked around. Immediately once I'd kind of digested what the man just said, I was lost. Why would anyone make us stop fighting. I was sure that's why we were gathered here after all. However before my mind could think anymore, I was punched in the chest and knocked backwards into the snow. Bella stood up and once again loomed over me. However, instead of continuing our scuffle she instead breathed out and walked away, holding her abdomen even more noticeably now. Soon, Monica was approaching me alongside Ceres who eyed Monica with visible hatred. Monica also seemed to be incredibly angry herself, a far cry from what I'd seen since I'd known her as she mostly displayed a calm demeanor. Monica held out her hand and helped me get back up to my feet.

"So how'd you do?" She asked me. I sigh.

"Could've been better." I said. Her anger disappeared and in its place, a smile and a chuckle.

"Same here." She patted me on the back. Ceres and Bella seemed to be having a conversation up ahead of us. Both turned their heads over at us briefly before continuing their conversation. From the corner of my eye, I could see Monica's rage boiling back up. She took a step forward but I put my hand in front of her.

"Not yet." I told her. She just looked at me with a bitter face before pushing my arm out of the way.

"I know." She said before walking off, her bangs covering her face now. I took in a deep breath and looked up at the sky. I, for the life of me, could explain what was happening or why it was happening. All I knew was that I wanted some answers, especially since I was so so close to killing the girl from 10. But then I stopped and thought about the thought I had just had. How willing I was to go through with that without a thought. Suddenly, I felt the cold in the air as I started to feel chills.

"What the hell is wrong with me" I thought to myself. I've always been a little hesitant to do something like that, but I guess with the adrenaline running high and being so so close to finally putting a close on these games, I didn't even give what I was doing a second thought. I looked down at my hands, now dirty from everything I'd done in the arena up to this point. I was becoming the monster that the people watching want me to be. I hated that feeling. I shook my head before following Monica. Monica was sitting down next to the cornucopia, trying to catch her breath it looked like. Meanwhile the District 11 and 10 girls were just standing by the opening of the cornucopia. Ceres was checking out the other girls wound without paying me any mind. I was ready to follow suite and just ignore her too, but then I was stopped dead in my tracks by the sight of my little brother.

"A-ALTAR!" I shouted, dashing inside the cornucopia past Ceres and her friend. Altar was sitting down on top of a crate in the back, his eyes staring at me. I quickly hugged him before softly punching him in the shoulder. I smiled widely, so damn happy to know my little brother was alive and well.

"I can't believe you made it out here all on your own. You're incredible, you know that!" I shouted happily, not caring what scene I was causing. Again, I was just happy to see my little brother. But, I soon realized something was off about him. His eyes were staring at me but he seemed so... dazed out. As if he was sleeping with his eyes open. His eyes were only really half open and he seemed to be mumbling something.

"W-What is it, Altar?" I asked him. I got on my knee and tried to listen closer, but all he as saying was something along the lines of "He's dead.". It didn't take long for me to understand what was wrong. But I couldn't bring myself to even think about the implications of what it meant. All I knew was that within seconds, I was on both of my knees, screaming in anger and frustration. Was Altar even alive at this rate? Physically yes but mentally? He's no longer with me. I scream out, punching the floor. My eyes widen with rage as I turn my attention to Ceres and the 10 girl.

"Did you do this to him?" I yell, stomping in their direction. Ceres squares up and holds me back with her hands.

"Wish I had. But he was already in that condition by the time me and Bella got here." She says before shoving me. However I go back in and shove her back. Within seconds me and Ceres were throwing fists without thinking. She made it clear she hadn't done it but I was so caught up in rage that I just started fighting her. Soon, Monica ran into the room and pulled me off of her while the District 10 girl did the same for Ceres.

"That's enough. They told us not to fight, so stop fighting." Monica yelled at me, dragging me back outside and throwing me to my knees and into the snow. I just put my face in my hands, frustrated by the turn of events. Altar, god knows what happened to him. God knows it he'd recover.

"What happened to Altar? Is he alive." Monica asked.

"It seems like it. But mentally he seems completely out of it." I punched the ground in frustration. "I was this close to getting him home!" I shouted. Monica just sighed, exhausted.

"Whatever that means, there's no telling whether or not something like that will be permanent. We'll have to wait and see for now." She kneeled down and put her hand on my shoulder before looking up at the cornucopia.

"Meanwhile, I'd love to know why exactly we were told to cease our fight. I've never seen anything like this before." She said. Me and her both. A Hunger Games finale randomly cut short? What could this be about? I couldn't even begin to put my finger on what they gamemakers were planning.

"If they hadn't stopped me, I probably would've easily taken care of that girl from 10, Bella was her name I think."

Monica groaned, throwing her hands in the air. "Well that's just great. Could've saved us the trouble."

"How did you do against Ceres?" I asked Monica. She just made a "hmph" sound before ignoring my question entirely.


I don't know how much time passed, but I'm going to assume it was an hour before we were given an update on what exactly was going on. The sound of a hovercraft echoed above the arena causing all of us to look up at the sky. Soon, all 5 of us remaining tributes were joined by a tall, skinny man who joyfully approached the cornucopia from the now burned forest. He waved at us from afar, only getting scowls (and a rude gesture from Ceres) in return but it didn't seem like he minded it. It was clear that this man was from the Capital and was here to do... something. I still could not tell you what was going on. If somebody wanted to update us, they could have easily done it without sending a person down to tell us personally. Honestly, sending in a Capital man to talk with us tributes was a suicidal idea. None of us exactly love the Capital after all. However the man seemed to not care. Soon, he was followed by a crew. A man with a camera and a woman with a microphone. Then, he started shouting at us from the distance.

"Hello! I am Insecta Guidonis. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintances." He said. Us tributes just remained silent as he approached us. The man continued talking.

"Why don't we head inside the cornucopia and chat." He told us. Then, Monica spoke up.

"Can you explain what's going on here? Why did you interrupt the games?" She asks. The man just laughs before entering the cornucopia.

"You children are participating in the most historic Hunger Games yet and we just wanted to have a bit of a chat before we finally ended it all." He smiled as he took a seat in the back of the cornucopia next to Altar who was still motionless in the back.

"Let's kill them." Ceres flatly said as she pulled out her sword and made it plainly clear why this was a bad idea. However, Insecta just laughed at her.

"Ceres, District 11. See, if any of you try and kill one of us." He chuckled before his face became much more serious. "Your tracker will self destruct. So I wouldn't recommend doing something so foolish." He uttered. Ceres put down her sword and sighed.

"As I was saying. Hostilities will be ceased for the next 24 hours so you kids will have time to rest. How's that sound." He clapped. I nodded. That's appreciated. My body still aches from all the running me and Monica did and I don't doubt that Ceres and Bella are feeling the same amount of pain.

"What a drag. I just wanna get this over with." Bella groaned.

"Well in the meantime, I came here to interview all of you for the audience. See how you're all feeling about your odds." He said. He motioned all of us to sit around in a circle while the camera guy began showing all of us. We all begrudgingly agreed. I figure we all just wanted to get this over with.

"So. Let's start with you, Ms. Bella. How do you feel about your odds of winning?" The man asked her. She replied in kind by spitting on the camera man. Insecta just laughed.

"I see. I take that as confidence. Now, how about you, Monica." He asked Monica.

"Eh." She shrugged

"A valid response. I take that was a 50/50." He laughed again. The rest of us (except Altar) gave negligible answers that got the same response from Insecta. He continued asking random nonsensical questions until he was on his last one.

"Now, for our final question. Why do you want to win?" He asked.

"To get back at the people that put me in here." Responded Ceres.

"I don't know." Responded Bella.

"I don't feel like answering that." Responded Monica.

"Well... I just wanna protect my little brother. We want to win because back home we weren't allowed to say goodbye to our momma. We're both pretty pissed about that." I said.

"Ah. I see. But you do know that only one of you can win. Between you and Altar, who do you think should win." He asked me.

I scowled, finding such a question insulting. "Altar." I responded anyways. The man just laughed.

"I'm not sure if he has it in him to continue. I feel his heart may be hoping you'll take the win in his place. You get me?" He said. I glared at him and briefly considered standing up a punching him in his square jaw, but I stopped myself.

"Why don't you go ask him yourself." I asked. The lady with the mic stood up and put the mic to Altars mouth. All he muttered was, once again, "he's dead.".

"Hm. Guess we'll never know. But unfortunately that is all the time we have. It was nice chatting with all of you." He stood up and waved. "Before I take my leave however. I should note that we recently ran a poll on the most popular currently living tribute. These were the results." He said before pulling out a hologram that showed our names, faces and place on the poll.


#1 ~ District 11 Male 1 (Altar)

#2 ~ District 11 Female 1 (Ceres)

#3 ~ District 4 Female (Monica)

#4 ~ District 11 Male 2 (Alma)

#5 ~ District 10 Female 1 (Bella)


It was surprising to see it, but Altar ranked higher than all of us. In fact, he received an overwhelming majority of the votes. I guess his cute appearance got him quite a large following. Meanwhile, Bella rolled her eyes. We were pretty neck-in-neck when it came to votes but it looked like I came out on top. It really didn't matter to me though. Otherwise, nobody in the room seemed to care about the results.

"Actually. Will this in anyways affect our fight? Do we get weapons or something based on how high we scored?" Monica asked.

"Oh no. Not at all." Insecta said before leaving the cornucopia. "By the way. I should clarify that in 23 hours now, you all will fight to the death and conclude the 100th Hunger Games. I should add however, that there will only be one rule in this upcoming battle however." He says before pointing in the back at my little brother

"You can kill anyone here, but he has the be the last one among you that dies. Otherwise, well... you'll wish you kids were never born. Toodles." He says before walking away with is crew. Ceres immediately pipes up.

"So, should we kill the boy?" She grinned.

"Absolutely not." Monica yelled as she glared in Ceres' direction. Ceres just gave a cheeky grin, shrugged and walked off with the girl from 10.

"That aside, while I appreciate that my brother is being left out of the coming fight, why is that the case?" I said, turning towards Monica. Her attention turned away from Ceres and towards me, and she just scratched her head.

"It could be because of the poll. Maybe the top person is excluded from the action?" She considered. I figured that was an okay answer.

"Though," She continued, "Altar has a considerably higher number of votes than any of us in the arena combined. Maybe it's just so the audience can hold onto their favorite tribute just a bit longer. But that's just speculation." She said. I gave it some thought, and that made less sense than the prior assumption but I figured that could have been one of the many possibilities.


As the morning turned to noon, the fire had gradually calmed down and the snow around us began to melt making way for spring air and green grass. Me and Monica didn't really say much to each other over the next few hours, but it was clear that our thoughts were around the coming battle, and the fate of Altar, my little brother. In the meantime, food was dropped down from the sky in parachutes for us remaining tributes. Really good and plentiful food in fact. Essentially a full course meal. Of course, being some of the best food I had seen in what had felt like over a month, I ate all of it without giving it a second thought.

Eventually, noon turned to night and me and Monica began preparing for tomorrow; what would be our final day in the Hunger Games. Better yet, the last day of our alliance and our brief, tense friendship. As darkness began to take hold on the sky, Monica and I had made it a point to sleep as far from Ceres and Bella as possible. Obviously, they wouldn't kill us before our 24 hour grace period but that didn't mean they wouldn't try and injure us while waiting or something like that. Because of that, me and Monica chose to take turns sleeping as we usually did, or at least were supposed to given I usually stayed up all night.

"I'll take watch first." Monica said.

"You go ahead and sleep. I'd prefer if I did it." I responded.

"You always go first."

"I know. I think it's better that way."

"Do you still not trust me?" Monica's question somehow caught me off guard in spite of the fact that she had a really good point. I always took the opportunity to sleep first and then I'd never wake her up because for the longest time I didn't fully trust her.

"I just... I don't know if I can sleep well tonight after seeing Altar like... well, the way he is." I said. Monica, once again, made a "hmph" sound.

"I getcha. I'm feeling a bit restless myself. But I know we need to get as much sleep as possible. We need to be ready for this battle." She reminds me. I decide not to push the situation any further and I begin to get to rest. Laying down reminds me how I was rudely interrupted from my sleep earlier today when the whole fire thing happened, so it's nice to get back to it once again. But again, I'm feeling a little restless and I can't find the ability to sleep. I turn over to Moncica who is starring over at the cornucopia which is where Altar is.

"Do you think those monsters will do anything to Altar?" Monica asked me, somehow noticing I'm not asleep while even looking at me.

"I... Not really. Like us, they should figure that the gamemakers would prefer we not touch him until we're done here." I said.

"I see." Monica responded quietly. Afterwards, we stopped talking. I wished that would've been the end of our night out here, but I still couldn't sleep. I was imagining what I'd do tomorrow if me and Monica survived our bout with Ceres and Bella. It would be as much of an accomplishment as winning the Hunger Games in itself, but I wasn't sure what would happen afterwards. The plan, at least to me, had always been that if me and Altar survived together to the end, I'd die for him and let him win. But now that we're here... I don't know. My body doesn't agree with that notion. I hate to admit it, but I'm too afraid of dying. I've always had the threat of being killed held over my head in this arena, but now more than ever it feels like death is an inevitability in this arena. I'm sick to my stomach thinking about it. Especially seeing as Altar is like a broken bird now. I wondered if it'd be best if put him out of his misery, but in all honesty the idea felt more like I was using it as an excuse to come out of this situation with my life than anything else. Besides, I would never be able to forgive myself if I did it. And I doubt Momma would forgive me either. But that aside, there was another layer to this that I'd conveniently ignored. Monica. What were here thoughts on all of this. What would she do if me and her defeated Ceres and Bella. I was somewhat willing to give up my life for my little brother, but I completely doubted that Monica would share the same feelings. I turned over and looked up at her. She was sitting on her bag and looking down at her shoes when she noticed my eyes gaze up at her.

"What's wrong?" She asked me. I sighed.

"Tomorrow if we win... what do we do after that?" I asked her.

"What do you mean by that?" She asked.

"Well... when me and Altar got in this situation I imagined that if we both made it to the end, I'd be willing to sacrifice myself to let Altar win and go home. I just thought as his older brother, that was what was best." I admitted. "But I don't know about you. I don't expect you to feel the same for my brother." After I said that, she just sat silently for a couple of moments before she breathed in and began speaking.

"You don't have to worry about me. If we survive, Altars win is guaranteed." She said, surprising me.

"You're going to do the same?" I asked, trying to make sure I heard her right. She nodded.

"I have a little sister at home, I think she'd be really happy if I survived and made it home..." She said. "However, I don't think I can face her once all this over. With all the blood my hands, I don't think I'm the same sister she looked up to anymore." She clenched her fist.

"Come on. Don't say that." I try and argue against it but she just shakes her head.

"Even in spite of that... I can't face her again. It would just remind me of them." She mumbled.

"What?"

"My alliance. Byke and Troy. I could've saved them, but I got cold feet and now..." She said. For a second, I heard a whimper come out of her and I expected some tears but instead she just punched the floor.

"I'm not going to go home after this. I don't deserve it." She said. For my part, I wasn't sure how to respond, but soon she began to say more.

"Besides. I don't care whether I live or die anymore," She uttered. "All I want it to murder those monsters. I don't care if they send me to hell. If they do, I'll drag them down with me if that's last thing I do."


Currently Remaining Tributes

District 4 Female (Monica)

District 10 Female (Bella)

District 11 Female (Ceres)

District 11 Male (Alma)

District 11 Male (Altar)