Author's Note

I do not own The Hunger Games.

Emeria Delilah Echavoque, 15

The entire world stood still. She was hot, cold, frozen.

Silverie was still.

A hand caught her arm.

"We have to go."

Zephyr.

"Emeria."

This wasn't true, right? They'd played The Game so many times; she'd watched Silverie lose so many times.

"Emeria!"

A hand around her wrist, a sharp pull.

She stumbled as the world started moving again. Zephyr pulled her back towards the other side of the canyon.

Above them, the pink haired girl was screaming, but wasn't throwing rocks anymore.

"Silverie-" Emeria gasped.

"There's nothing you can do for them." Zephyr looked up at the cliff, which most of the others were already scaling. Their alliance was so big. If they'd stood and fought, they could have done something about these two.

But they hadn't and now Silverie was dead.

"I'll get you for this!" screamed the pink haired girl.

Slowly, numbly, Emeria began the long climb up.

Silverie was dead.

There'd be no more celebrating after a Game, no stolen kisses or whispered secrets. There'd be no more them.

But the tears still couldn't come, because she wasn't safe. They couldn't fall until she was away.

Soil and rocks came loose beneath her hands, clattering away beneath her. Behind, the other girl was trying to scale that cliff, howling for the boy.

Emeria understood how she must feel. She wanted to scream, shout, wail her heartbreak. But she had to focus on climbing. If they were still below when the train came, they'd be crushed.

If Silverie's body was still there before The Game let it fade away…

Emeria made herself climb. One hand in front of the other, one foot above the other. Her heart thumped.

Silvierie's did not.

Before she knew what was happening, she was at the top and Zephyr had started pulling her away from the edge of the cliff.

Away from Silverie.

"I don't want to leave them," Emeria heard herself say, even though Silverie was already gone. Everything that made them them. Gone.

"We have to go," Zephyr said.

Emeria turned to him as some kind of cold realisation began to creep through her. "This is your fault."

"What?"

"You, and your– your crazy retard sister, and your insistence we make this ridiculous alliance– you got Silverie killed!"

"That's not fair–" Luminita started.

"Oh, and you can shut up, little miss peacekeeper!"

Zephyr's face turned red with anger. "Don't call her that."

"What, a retard? But she is, isn't she? Weirdo little freak!"

"I'm sorry about your friend," Zephyr said slowly.

"Sorry? You're sorry?" Emeria shoved him away and he staggered, windmilling his arms as he found his balance. "Thanks to you and your freak sister, my partner's dead!"

"But you're not," said Celeste.

"What?"

Celeste looked up at her with those eerie pale eyes. "You're not dead. And Silverie wouldn't want you to be."

"Of course they wouldn't-"

"Then we agree. We all want out of here, and the way out is this way." She pointed away into the fog. "You needn't come if you don't want."

But Silverie was dead. If she left them, now, she'd be on her own. She could all too easily end up the same way as Silverie within a day.

Emeria pressed her hand to her mouth as the pain boiled inside her.

She was meant to win with Silverie by her side, like in the Forty Ninth Games, where the Gamemakers had broken the rules and announced two Victors for the first and only time.

They'd be hand in hand, vibrant and alive, having beaten the odds.

Silverie was dead.

The ghost of their hand was cold.

Radiance Sterling, 17

All had been quiet since the two canons rang out earlier in the day. A tight ball of nerves had settled in Radiance's chest, and he hated the fact that they'd not know who they were for until the end of the day.

Two canons.

Iridescence and Phoenix.

Luminescence hadn't said it, but he had to be thinking the same thing. They could have just lost their entire world in one moment, everything crashing down around them.

And they still didn't know.

But the compass was still pointing them.

It led them ahead into the fog, where they'd be blind and helpless, lost in this sense-stealing mass.

"How do we know this thing isn't leading us into a trap?" he asked.

Luminescence frowned, tilting the compass this way and that in his hands. "We don't. But right now it's all we have."

To lead them to their sisters. Their desire.

"My heart's desire is to not be stuck in this twisted Game," Etheria asked suddenly. "Can it point us that way?"

Luminescence groaned. "Compass, can you show us the way out of The Game?"

The arrow spun round and round and round for a moment, before coming to a rest on the direction that it had been pointing before, the one they'd thought was Phoenix's.

"Huh," said Radiance.

Luminescence pressed his lips into a tight line, tilting the compass forward. The arrowhead raised up to continue pointing in the direction it wanted to indicate.

"That way either way I guess," Luminescence said, frowning.

Etheria shrugged, peering at the thing. "I know I suggested Phoenix was on the other end of it, but… What if it really is leading somewhere dangerous?"

Luminescence shrugged. "It's leading us somewhere. Best we've got right now. And this is the arena, everything's dangerous."

And this gave them a goal, something they could work towards.

More unsettling about this part of the arena, however, was the strange moaning, tapping noises that kept ringing through the air. They echoed around them, filling the world.

"What were the gimmicks in this arena?" Radiance asked, struggling to dredge information up from his memory. He should know this, he should, and yet he was faltering, his knowledge sapped by the very real threat of death hanging over his head.

"Uh…" Luminescence frowned at the compass in his hands. "Sinkholes, I think. Moving gravestones."

"Oh, and zombies!" Etheria said brightly.

They both turned to her.

Her expression fell. "Was that wrong? I could have sworn this was the zombie arena. The reruns used to terrify me as a kid."

"No," Radiance murmured, looking around them. "No, no, you're right. That's… now what I'm worried about of." He turned to Luminescence. "Don't suppose the magic compass can let us know how close we are to what we desire?"

Luminescence shook his head. "I don't think it works like that."

"Great."

"In the actual Seventy Fifth though, they didn't release the bigger mutts until day seven. It was only smaller animals up until that point," Luminescence said.

Radiance frowned into the fog. "That's such a comfort."

Iridescence Sterling, 17

The truce between herself and Ares had gone back to strangely uncomfortable. Every so often, she caught him shooting her wary looks. She hardly blamed him. Wonder had understood how useless Iridescence was; it would have made perfect sense if she'd wanted to get rid of the other girl. And piston would have been easy. This arena was full of it, and Iridescence was in no fit state for a physical fight.

But it hasn't been her.

And she knew full well it hadn't been Ares.

Which really did mean…

Her sponsor gift had been tampered with.

And that…

That disturbed Iridescence more than anything.

The Gamemakers had either sent Wonder specifically a poisoned water bottle, or she'd been unlucky enough to draw a bad number when the thing was generated.

But what did that mean for other sponsor gifts, future ones? What if they were poisoned too?

"Did you know her well?" she asked Ares. It was a break in the silence, easing up some of the pressure between them.

"No," Ares replied, looking around the woods surrounding them. "She was just an arena ally. She was sorted into District Nine with Apollo."

"Oh."

"She was meant to help us kill you guys."

Iridescence winced. Nausea twisted inside her. "Oh."

"I wish… I wish I knew more about her." He looked up at the sky. "If her parents are watching… I'm sorry. We really weren't friends, so I can't give some grand speech, but she didn't deserve to die and I wish I could have saved her."

"Yes," Iridescence agreed. She felt numb, the words freezing inside her.

"To anyone else watching…" Ares continued. "Please don't send any players any more sponsor gifts. We don't know what might be fucked with in some way. No one deserves to die the way Wonder did." He smiled. "That was her name, by the way. Or what she wanted to be called. Wonder. I wish she'd had chance to be one."

Iridescence took his hand and squeezed it. "The day cycle is going to start ending soon. We should find somewhere to stop for the night."

They found a small copse of trees and built up a shelter with their blankets and an armful of branches. As the arena darkened, the beeping of another sponsor gift met their ears. Iridescence froze. The last gift had killed Wonder.

Ares drew his axe and positioned himself at her side, watching warily as the parachute floated slowly down. On top was a District seal she didn't recognise, almost some strange fusion between Districts Three and Eleven.

"I've never seen that sigil before," Ares said after a long moment of silence.

"Me neither."

"Do we… open it?" he asked.

"I… don't know."

If they did, it could be anything in there.

If they didn't, they'd never know. It could be something to help them.

"Stand back," Iridescence said.

"What?"

"Stand back. I'm already dying–"

"You're not dying–"

"I'm dying. If either of us has to be hit by something in this sponsor gift, it should be me."

Ares looked like he was going to argue, but at last he backed away. Iridescence reached out and smacked her hand down on the button.

She had tensed, halfway expecting it to explode or be alive or shower her with poison, but instead it simply folded down until only the gift returned.

It was a blocky, handheld thing with a thin metal antenna sticking from the top and two dials on the front. Beneath them was a small speaker.

Iridescence picked it up. "What is this?"

"An old-fashioned music player?" Ares suggested, creeping forward to her side again.

She twisted one of the dials. It hissed and buzzed, spitting out popping sounds, but nothing was clear.

"Who would send us this?"