Gaius McLellan- No Way Down D12M
"This can't be good for us," Todd said as he sipped at a bag of sugar solution like a hummingbird vampire.
"Am I the only one who's not pooping?" Theo said.
"How would you be the only one? We're all eating the same food," Todd said. "Can't speak for all of us, but I'd guess none of us are pooping."
"That can't be good for us," I circled the conversation back.
We all looked up at the sound of a chime. A tile in the ceiling moved to the side and a parachute kind of awkwardly flopped out, catching a little on the tile and not really coasting so much as plopping to the ground.
"Hope it wasn't glass," Maxson said as he scooped it up. "It's for you," he said, handing it to me.
Oh, cool. It wasn't every Games that a Twelve got a sponsor. It was even cooler with so many of us here. I opened up the box and found a king-sized bag of beef jerky. I took it out as my allies hooted in celebration, Todd and Theo triumphantly belly-slamming each other.
Oh, a note. I fished out the paper. Love never dies 3
"Huh?" Theo said as he peeked over my shoulder.
"Ooooh!" Todd whooped as we all heard the chiming again. I opened the package and revealed the hunting knife. Come home for her :), the note read.
"What, now?" Maxson said in confusion. "You married or something?
"I don't think so," I said, momentarily wondering if I'd somehow forgotten a wife.
A third parachute dropped through the ceiling. "Good, maybe this one will explain something," I said in bemusement.
Underneath a tube of that icky cheese that never goes bad, the note read, You and Isabella make such a cute couple.
"What? You and Isabella?' Todd asked. My three allies stared at me, looking like a trio of gleeful gossip columnists.
"I mean… I guess," I started. We'd had some moments in the Capitol, sure. She was a really cool lady. We couldn't really do much, since she was part of the staff and all, but yeah, we'd felt the chemistry. Apparently enough for her to tell everyone.
"Aw man, I wish there was a TV in here!" Theo said. "She must be out there gushing about you."
It may not have been visible, but I could feel the heat in my cheeks. We had enough between us for her to do all of this? She couldn't give directly, of course, but she could talk about me and let the people fill in the rest. If there was anything the Capitol loved more than teenage death, it was teenage love. Kind of messed-up, really.
"We gotta capitalize on this," Todd said. "Find some paper and write her a love poem. Or a love song! Yeah, do that!"
I had to keep a straight face. "I'm not going to cheapen our love like that. I love Isabella for her, not for her money."
"Oh, right," Todd said. "That's true." There was both support and a little mischievous humor in his surreptitious wink.
"I wish I had a sugar mom," Maxson joked.
"Should have been hotter," Theo said.
Yttria Noxus- Descent into Madness D3F
There are a lot of things you can do with cleaning supplies. First, you can clean things. You can also do all sorts of fun science things, like throwing them in a fire to make it change color (after you check which ones are safe). You can also use them to kill people. Most people know about the mixing bleach with bathroom cleaner one, but there are a lot of others.
Paloma looked at our little bag with trepidation. When we'd first found the janitorial supply room, I'd felt a twinge of conscience when my eyes landed on the ingredients and the idea came to my head. Antimony mixed with hydrogen fluoride. Paloma had been so nervous when I'd mixed them, but chemical reactions weren't like the movies. They didn't immediately bubble and fizz, usually. It had taken most of an hour for the two to incorporate. When they did, we had fluoroantinomic acid, the deadliest known to man. The coating on the bag prevented it from dissolving, but should someone open the press-together sandwich-bag-type seal… whoever was attacking us wouldn't be anymore.
"It doesn't feel good," Paloma commented as we sat across the room, eating the chips we'd gotten from the vending machine down the hall.
"It doesn't," I agreed. I'd gotten by telling myself that only a Career would attack us for no reason. Then it would be fair that we could defend ourselves. If it wasn't a Career, I didn't know if I would be able to use it. But there was no way around it. Even if we were careful to take food from the back of the vending machine after we'd broken into it, someone would still notice eventually. I could only take comfort from the hope that anyone looking that closely would be a Career.
"Let's try again," I said to distract us. I got up and went over to the collection of bottles and tubs where I'd been trying to make a mild irritant that we could flood the halls with so whoever came near our room would start coughing and give us warning.
At the jiggling of the door handle, I knew it was too late. The door was locked, but whoever was out there was close enough to have heard us talking. Paloma and I locked eyes as we heard a metallic scrape. The door shuddered, the frame bending a little underneath the handle. Paloma ducked, the row of counters behind us blocking the view from the door. I felt my hand close on the bag before I followed her.
I held my breath as I heard the door give and open. I looked over at Paloma, both of us terrified at the intruder and horrified at what we were both considering. They'd broken in. They had to be a Career, right? One that would kill us on sight? I felt the bag of death in my hand, squishing around in my shaky grip. A shadow appeared at the end of the row of tables, and all at once I knew I didn't want to die. I popped open a bit of the seal and threw, clenching the bag and angling my wrist so the open part would be pointing away from us.
I hadn't thought I'd hit him in the face. Arroyo's spear clattered to the ground as he seemed to shut down for a split second. I saw his shocked eyes, and his mouth fallen open, and then the screams. I hadn't known he would make that noise. I thought it would wash over him and he'd dissolve like a drawing someone erased. But no, he was running in mindless circles, shrieking and smashing into counters and the wall as he wiped at his face and the skin of his fingers stayed after his hands left. Paloma had run past me and out into the hallway, but I'd turned as I was about to go through the door, and I was past moving.
His face was sliding off. The screams varied in pitch as strips of his mouth peeled loose. I thought it would be like… the movies. I hadn't thought at all about how acid killed you. It had to get to your vital organs. In between your brain and your face, there was so much flesh. Arroyo had left the crowbar by the door. I picked it up. Fluoroantinomic acid dissolved almost instantly in the air. I didn't need to worry about fumes, only direct contact. If there was a shred of humanity in me, I needed to end this. I ran toward Arroyo where he lay curled on his side. I drew back the crowbar and aimed it down at his face- at his oozing, flesh-pink face like someone had melted a doll until her face dripped like a marshmallow. I made the screaming stop.
Stevie Pagett- Swing Vote D11F
People talk about how they hate hospitals. Of course people hate hospitals. It's not quirky or unusual. When you're at a hospital, something is wrong with you. You're likely in pain, and you're certainly scared and confused. You're at your most vulnerable in a hospital. Everyone hates that.
For me, though, being here was almost like being at home. I'd spent so much of my life inside a hospital. Thinking of my childhood was as likely to conjure an image of a hospital ward as it was of my own bedroom. I knew as much about my nurses as I did about my mother- more, it turned out later. As I walked the halls of the arena, I saw so much that stirred up memories. I saw an IV machine and remembered trying to navigate a bathroom while wheeling around a coat rack attached to my arm. I saw the examination couch and remembered its plastic feeling on the back of my legs. They say smell is the strongest trigger for memories. Whoever made this arena had done it right. That acrid, industrial smell wasn't found anywhere else.
It was a beautiful, sprawling hospital. I was in the gastrointestinal ward, since I- rightly, it turned out- suspected they'd have some food around designed for people who couldn't eat the normal stuff. From the sign outside my room, though, I could see this hospital had just about everything. X-rays. Oncology. Behavioral health. Pediatrics. Surgery. Anything that could be wrong with a person, they could treat it. And no one, no one at all, would benefit from it. Half this country had access to little more than a run-down repurposed few rooms with some castoff medication, and this oasis was here for nothing but entertainment. When I was about nine years old, a kid down the road from me had a stomachache and died. I didn't know until I was far older, but he'd had appendicitis. The doctor knew it. It just took a simple test- you just pressed on that spot on the stomach. But our surgeon was halfway across the District. She traveled between six hospitals, since she was one of a handful of surgeons in the District. She couldn't possibly have gotten there in time, even if she hadn't had a dozen critical patients where she was. So the doctor told the parents it was appendicitis, hours from bursting. He told the parents to take the boy home and gave them what painkillers he could. A thousand patients, and no hospital. Here was a hospital, and no patients.
Sometimes the thoughts bubbled up about all the work they'd done on me. It wasn't my fault, I knew that. You should be able to trust your mother. I was a scared little girl who just wanted to be healthy. I couldn't have known I was the entire time. But I thought a lot about all the time the doctors and nurses spent on me. All the time they couldn't help other people who actually needed them. All the medications that didn't go to a child who was hurting. In one of the rooms, there was a wheelchair folded up against the wall. I wondered sometimes which little kid didn't have a wheelchair because I was using theirs. Maybe it should have made me want to be a doctor or nurse, so I could try to make sure it never happened again. But it wasn't my fault, and I didn't need to put that on myself. I'd seen enough of hospitals.
Emmeline Blythe- Back to Normal D3F
If ever I was going to win, this was the time. This was my arena. No wide-open spaces where I couldn't do anything about a Career hunting me down. No bullshit mutts (so far) that you had no chance of killing. I had a thousand weapons at my disposal, most of which many of the others wouldn't even recognize. This Games would be won by strategy, not strength or speed. This was my make-or-break moment.
So far I had survived by staying out of sight and biding my time. Whatever big moves I wanted to make, I was going to wait until there weren't hordes of Careers stalking the halls. It would be easier to go unnoticed when they were down to a dozen or two. A lot of the other Tributes would run on encountering another Tribute, or at least not attack. I didn't plan to do any of my fighting face-to-face.
The basement was musty and dimly-lit. It had the industrial feel of a subway station more than it did a hospital. Most of the others would avoid it. I wasn't entirely alone down here, though. Jay and his allies had been down here. I'd always been able to hear them coming far before they arrived, though, so I hadn't been concerned. I'd just kept to myself, not wanting the complication. Most of them died, one after another from the sound of it, so that meant someone else was down here. The speed between the cannons, coupled with the lack of anyone but Jay and his friends in the sky that night, led me to believe they may have been betrayed by one of the surviving allies. The only thing I couldn't figure out was how Mati had escaped. They seemed to have cleared out after the attack. I hadn't heard anyone in the halls since then.
Over the last few days, I'd begun slowly exploring the basement. Some of the security guard rooms had small stashes of food. I just wished there weren't so many chips and crackers. It was maddening to have to put them in my mouth and wait for them to get mushy so no one would hear me chewing.
When I opened an oddly thick door, I knew where I was right away. The smell of alcohol and formaldehyde, coupled with the stark, tilting tables, was unmistakable. Usually there were only a few body shelves in a hospital morgue. It wasn't often there was a large amount of deaths in a single day, and most bodies didn't need to be kept for autopsy. I took a quick count of the shelves. Fifteen rows of ten- 150. 150 Tributes, plus a few extras for symmetry.
A ghoulish sense of peace came over me. I'd found my home. It was the last place anyone would want to look. Anyone who came in would leave in a rush. It was the perfect place to hide. Even if someone did go so far as to open one of the shelves, they wouldn't open all of them. If I wanted to live, I had to be willing to do anything.
I slid open one of the drawers at waist-height. Maybe it was macabre, what I was about to do, but not as macabre as dying. I slid out the bag, grateful to feel it was somewhat light. Embalmed, then. Already drained and therefore lighter. Bracing the bag against my knee, I heaved it up on the examination table. I paused with my hand on the zipper. I wasn't doing it out of morbidity. I hoped they knew that. I just wanted to stay alive.
Jezzebel's face was pale and waxy. It looked artificial, almost. Her hair was bunched up against the sides of the bag. She'd died in the Bloodbath, yet there was no sign of decay. Clearly we were going to be here until the finale. I left her there as a nightmarish Career repellent. Even if someone was brave enough to stay in the morgue, they wouldn't stay alongside her. There was another table across the room from her. When I unzipped the second bag, it revealed Callum as her companion.
From the one hundred and fiftieth drawer, I removed the body bag. I filled it with odds and ends from around the room, mostly fabric so it had a body-ish form. I slid it into Jezzebel's empty drawer. The other bag I laid out in Callum's drawer. I put in some of my snacks. I tore a little hole at the top of the zipper, small enough to overlook but large enough to poke a finger through. I climbed into the drawer and laid myself into the bag. I put my hands on the roof of the drawer and pulled it closed, one hand-length at a time, leaving only a little gap for air to circulate. I zipped the bag shut, bending my wrist at the end to get the last bit through the hole I'd frayed. This Games wouldn't be won by physical strength, but mental strength. How strong did I have to be? Strong enough to sleep with the dead.
93rd place: Arroyo Cardoso- acid attack by Yttria
Yttria's the type to shoot first and ask questions later. She values herself enough not to risk her life for someone she doesn't even know. She didn't think it would be like this, though. Arroyo got the VERY short end of the dying stick, but honestly we've seen worse. The double-edged sword of infinite resurrection slots means that for a lot of people, they just kind of die for no reason. I hadn't picked Arroyo to win, so might as well kill him now. It wasn't a reflection on his potential. I was just clearing the way for a smaller pool.