He should have known it was a spectacularly stupid idea. Of course, that was what made the stunt so appealing. He had thought he was stealthy enough to pull it off; to make it away with the girls bag on his back without her noticing until it was too late.
Of course, Heath Graves was not a lucky person. The girl, Willow Drake of District One, had whipped around the moment his fingers grasped the fabric of the closest strap. For a moment, time slowed. Heath stood with wide eyes, a deer caught in the headlights, as Willow Drake stared at him with a murderous look in her eyes.
A pale hand flicked to her waist, Heath barely had enough time to duck and roll as the knife flew past his head. He was shocked by the precision of the attack, he had never thought she would have improved so quickly. He had seen her mediocre shots a mere five hours ago; by pure chance did she slash open the leg of a fleeing Ethan Marks.
He wasn't about to wait for the girl to grasp another knife. With a single bound of his legs, Heath flew back through the open hatch he had entered through. He only just had enough time to flash the girl a toothy grin and a flirtatious wink before slamming the metal door closed.
Whistling happily to himself and wistfully thinking he was in the clear, Heath leapt for the next hatch, pulling it open and slinking through to the otherside. The room on the other side was an old fashioned library, and it did not take long for Heath to find himself lost amongst the towering shelves that created a boring maze of literature. Despite the present danger of his situation, Heath could not help but pull one of the books from the shelves.
"The Love of a Peacekeeper," He read aloud, and then rolled his eyes, "Pft, romance is a joke,"
He tossed the book aside, unfortunately masking the sound of the nearby hatch creaking open. Heath was oblivious to the other girl in the room until her knife punctured the cover of another book he was checking out. Whipping around, he squealed like a child and bolted, mortally wounded book still in hand.
He weaved his way through the maze of shelves, hoping to lose the girl in the fray. Unfortunately, she pressed on persistently.
"Can't we sit down and talk about this over a nice cup of tea?" He shouted over his shoulder. His answer was a third knife clipping his ear. Heath screamed as a chunk of the flimsy flesh was torn away, leaving him with half an earlobe and a murderous girl still hot on his tail.
He scooped up the knife that pinned the rest of his ear to the floor as he ran past, fumbling clumsily for his bag to shove both the book and the knife inside. He was surprised he was still up and running; he had always been a fast boy. Troublemakers needed to be fast if they wished to remain uncaught. But he was sure the career girl from District One would have torn him apart by now.
Blood dribbled down the side of his face, hot, wet, and sticky as Heath leapt at another hatch, frantically pulling at the handle with nimble fingers. The room beyond was more of a tunnel than anything. A rocky passage stretched onwards before Heath, and soon the boy was tearing down his only escape route. He could hear the hatch slamming shut behind him.
Willow was still hot on his tail, and Heath's only hope was that she was running low on knives. The passage soon opened up into an enormous cavern. Narrow, rocky ledges ran along the dark stone walls of the room, while the centre opened up to an enormous pool of water that was churning faster than Heath's heart was thundering. A whirlpool.
The ledges on the sides were too narrow to run across quickly, and diving headfirst into a whirlpool has never been Heath's idea of a party. So, like the reckless idiot he was, Heath turned around and flashed another smile at the murderous girl charging after him.
She slowed for a moment, and Heath was briefly given the impression that his flirtatious grin had worked. It wasn't uncommon, many of the guys and gals back home had fallen under his spell with a simple smile. Or maybe it was the other way around?
His response was a knife in his shoulder. Heath screamed, voice louder than the sound of water crashing dangerously over rocks below. The force of the impact pushed him backwards, left foot slipping from the ledge and he only just managed to pull himself to safety instead of plummeting to the churning water.
The pain was almost unbearable, dark spots peppered his vision so thickly that he could not even make out the girls face as she stopped in front of him. It took him a moment to realize that she was out of knives; her final weapon now causing Heath pain like he had never imagined. She looked furious, furious enough to strangle him with her bare hands. Could he use that rage to his advantage?
"So, He croaked, smiling weakly despite the blood drenching his shirt and face, "I'm guessing getting that cup of tea if off the table?"
The girl screamed, literally screamed, in anger and charged. Had he not been impaired by the knife, maybe Heath would have been able to dodge. Instead he stood motionless as Willow crashed into him with the force of a speeding truck. Her arms wrapped around his waist, forehead crushing his nubby nose and scream of rage harmonizing with his cry of terror. With no way to save himself, Heath could only scream helplessly as the force of the tackle sent both he and Willow flying over the ledge. They plummeted as one.
The water was colder than he would have expected, the icy chill making the pain in his shoulder and ear that much worse. The force of the current in the water was strong, and Heath only managed to surface for a short breath before he was pulled back under. Willow was no longer wrapped around him; he had lost her in the swirl of the water.
His lungs were already crying for air, and try as he might, Heath could not pump his limbs fast enough. The water forced him downwards, deeper and deeper into the pool. Further and further away from the surface. His eyes were clenched shut, tears torn from his eyes before they could properly form.
Heath knew that he was wasting his energy by moving his limbs. It was of no use; there was no escaping this pool. That was when Heath Graves let go and allowed the current to sweep him away.
Ethan Marks - District ElevenThe crawl was agonizing. Not even the painkillers could numb the immense pain that flared through his torn limb each time the leg hit the chilled floor. He was forced to stop and take a breath every few seconds, some part of him wishing he could turn back. But turning back was not an option, if Ethan Marks was anything, he was not a quitter.
The light of the torch between his teeth flickered about wildly as he crawled; and after a while he concluded that he might as well switch it off and save the battery as he could not see anything anyway.
The passage seemed to stretch on forever, and endless tunnel that would occasionally branch off in another direction. Ethan had never thought of himself as claustrophobic, but as minutes drew into hours with no end in sight, he was starting to grow a little panicked. What if this was just a trap? A trick from the gamemakers, an attempt to weed out the weak and injured who preferred to hide and cower rather than fight.
He had a sudden thought of being attacked in here; some kind of dark creature could lunge from the shadows ahead at any moment and tear him apart before he could even blink. And he would never see it coming.
Frantically, he reached for the torch he had previously stashed in his pocket and flicked it back on, shining it ahead and wincing as if he expected to find some kind of ravenous beast awaiting him.
Instead, the light fell on an opening ahead. It was still a short ways away, but it was definitely there. A soft, blue glow seeped into the passage through the gap, and despite the pain, Ethan began hurriedly crawling towards it.
The small, metal torch clacked loudly against the metal floor as he dragged himself forwards, chest bubbling with eagerness to escape the confines of this tunnel that had so quickly become his prison. He was so frantic to escape that he literally fell from the opening and crashed into the room below chest first; thankfully the drop was not high enough to cast any serious injury.
With a groan, he propped himself up onto his elbows; not trusting himself enough to stand, and took in his surroundings. The room was small, much smaller than any of the rooms he had come across so far.
Before him was a large, black, leather chair that sat in front of a wall of monitors. Those flickering screens were the rooms only source of light; already that faint blue glow against darkening shadows were giving the boy a headache. Slowly but surely, Ethan dragged himself over to the chair that had been bolted to the floor and hauled himself into a position akin to standing, with his injured leg raised and weight resting on the large chair.
The wall was made up of around thirty-five screens, most of which were flickering off and then on again, only to present its viewers with a blur of static. Five of the screens were actually showing something, and with a sharp intake of breath, Ethan realized that the first of them was showing the arena.
He knew because he recognized the girl. The one with the white hair; the one that had thrown the knife that tore apart his leg. He watched out of some sick curiosity as she lunged at a boy who stood teetering dangerously over the edge of a rocky ledge. She crashed into him before he could even react, and Ethan let out a small yelp as he watched the two plummet towards the water below. Right before they made contact with the swirling whirlpool, the screen flickered to show a lone boy sitting with his back against the wall, a spear in his hand, eyes wide open.
The next screen showed three girls sitting in a room. The picture was in black and white, but Ethan knew he had seen the room before. He had seen it the day after his sister's murder. It was an interrogation room.
A young girl lay unconscious across the table, her body dotted with fat spots that must have been painful by the way she was grimacing. A girl wearing nothing but a simple dress watched on with an almost robotic expression as a third girl knelt by the girl on the table. The third was yelling something at the girl in the dress, who only responded with the same blank expression.
The next image confused Ethan greatly, because it could not possibly be the arena at all. The screen showed a crowd of people, all jeering and shouting at a boy who had his back turned to them. The boy was crying, and Ethan winced as a stone shot out from somewhere off screen and smashed into the side of the boy's head. Many in the crowd held signs, the most defined saying 'Freak of Nature'.
The fourth screen showed something less disturbing; actually, it was rather comical. A boy with thick glasses sat in a barber's chair, staring at himself in the mirror in horror. The man who Ethan presumed to be the barber was saying something with an apologetic look, placing down his shaver with shaky hands as the boy reached out to touch his bald head. Something about the look made Ethan shudder, and he suddenly he realized that he was the boy who had died at the cornucopia earlier.
But it was what was on the fifth screen that truly disturbed Ethan. He couldn't stop looking; he couldn't tear his eyes away. The video was of a man and his daughter; a girl who wore an all too familiar grin. He had seen it when she ran from the cornucopia, abandoning him to perish at the hands of the girl with stark white hair while saving her own skin.
She was much younger in the video, maybe around five. She was giggling happily as she pet a dog that had a bow tied around it's head; most likely a present for the ecstatic girl with the insane grin. But what disturbed Ethan was not the young girl, but the man who stood by her. The man that looked down at the girl with pride and happiness. The man who had haunted Ethan's dreams for so many years. The man with a snake tattoo running down the side of his face.
Tracey Smith - District SixTracey could not remember the last time she went to sleep without a drink. She never realized how difficult it would be without one, when did it become a habit?
She sat slumped against the wall, sat awkwardly on a bench one would expect to find in a park. Tracey would know, she had passed out on enough of them. The room was like a prison cell, one hatch on this side of the bars and one on the other, although the one inside the cell was concealed quite well.
The door between the two was locked, but Tracey possessed the key to open it. She had locked it herself. The other side of the bars played host to an actual bed, it looked so out of place in the dark and grimy jail, but for some reason Tracey found herself more at ease inside of the cell. It was familiar. It was home.
She didn't deserve comfort.
The tribute to the fallen did not help her already dampened mood, the music was so loud and painful that Tracey was forced to clamp her hands down over her ears and watch in silence as tears fell. She deserved to be here. This was her punishment. Maybe the gamemakers selected and took those who wouldn't be missed. Those who didn't mean anything to anybody. Maybe they chose people who didn't belong anywhere else.
The first picture was of a small boy from District One, Varick Lamare, the name read. His hair was like the fuzz on a peach, as if he had recently tried going bald and then changed his mind. She had not seen his death, but she had heard it. The sound of that spear exploding through the centre of his chest refused to leave her head. The fact that she was dumb enough to take a peek at the gored body afterwards did not help her guilt. She could have helped. She could have done something.
The second face was of the boy from District Two, Nathan Carlyle. His mouth curved into a smirk that looked almost mischievous. His eyes were wide and overflowing with character. What had he done to deserve the worst punishment imaginable? Had he deserved the death he received in the end?
Tracey could not forget those faces for hours after they vanished. As she curled up on that bench and cried herself to sleep, she couldn't help but think about the fact that the light in their eyes had been snuffed out. How they probably deserved what was coming to them. How she deserved what was coming for her. Tears slowly rolled down her cheeks, she longed for the numbness brought by drinking herself stupid. It was hours before she finally fell asleep.