Author's Note

I do not own the Hunger Games.


Calpurnia Catallus, 16

The screams and shouts came from all around her in the fog. Some were from her allies, voices she knew after their time together in the arena, voices she wished she didn't know, but others were unfamiliar, belonging to older players that were laughing and jeering.

"Jackpot!" shouted one boy.

"Go on, run!" crowed a girl.

"We're gonna get you all anyway, Capital scum!" yelled another girl.

"We'll get you all!" jeered that same boy.

Marcellina. Where was Marcellina? Calpurnia could ditch the rest of their weird allies and their bizarre quests, but she needed Marcellina. They'd leave together, find their way back to that disgusting old prison.

"Come on, might as well show your faces!"

Three voices, a boy and two girls. But there could be more players than that.

"Marcellina!" she shouted, whirling round to look for her friend. "Marcellina! Where are you?"

"Here!" came the shout, somewhere in the dark and the fog and the mayhem. "Calpurnia!"

Calpurnia ran towards the sound, clutching her sword in one hand and swinging her backpack onto her back with the other. Her heart pounded in her chest. "Marcellina– oof!"

Something sharp cracked across her back, sending her stumbling forward. Her armour dropped to eight. "What-"

Another strike hit her, hard and punishing, leaving a streak of fire across her chest. Her armour dropped three points this time.

"Calpurnia!" Marcellina shouted, her voice echoing around her in the fog.

Calpurnia stumbled to steady herself and looked about, searching for the sound. "Marc-"

Another strike, and now there was a boy, tall with slicked back hair, the kind of boy that played the bad boy love interest in holo-dramas. He raised the whip in his hand again.

She flung her arms up. "Wait! Please!"

And–

He did, freezing in place and eyeing her up. Calpurnia glanced around herself. Where had she last heard Marcellina? Surely she wouldn't leave without her, she had to be here somewhere.

"Please, I just want to go home," she said, trying to work out the best way to get away to wherever Marcellina was.

"So did all the tributes you lot sent to their deaths," he replied, raising the whip. "So were my fathers."

"Your fathers-?"

The whip came down across her, and this time it sliced her face open as her armour dropped to zero. She screamed. Somewhere closeby, Marcellina screamed.

"I'm sorry," said the boy.

A second boy sprang from the fog, sword in hand, and plunged the blade through her chest.

The pain - fuck, she could feel it, the cold of the blade into her and the pain of her ribs rendering apart. Calpurnia screamed, dropping to her knees. Blood spilled from the wound, pooling around her. She choked for air, but it did her no good.

The boys joined up and left her there, vanishing into the fog.

And then she was bathed in blue light, the familiar hum of machinery ringing around her.

She was back in her pod.

This had all been some terrible-

Then pain, worse than she'd ever felt, burning through her until there was nothing left of her.

Maximillian Marcus Badondé, 18

He'd seen no one at all the day before, so he'd spent most of it making his way through the arena in search of… anything, really. Other players. A more populated part of the arena.

But he'd reached what seemed to be the edge of the forest, and it ended in a long, narrow trench that stretched out in either direction as far as could be seen. Worse, the other side was what looked like open green grassland, filled with tall, dry grass as high as Maximillian himself. A large grey building stood in the distance, towering above everything else, but beyond that, there was nowhere else for him to hide, nowhere for him to use as a sniping location.

Maximillian decided to stay close to the French and follow it back onwards. Presumably this was one of the tracks those terribly loud trains had shot down during the bloodbath. Other players could have found it and followed it the way he was now. It felt more productive than simply hiding in the trees.

He kept his bow in hand, scanning the trees around him and the tall grass on the other side for any signs of life. At one point, there was a terrible low moan from somewhere beyond the treeline, and Maximillian had stopped and tensed, raising his bow. But nothing ever appeared, so he kept moving, though a little more uncertain and on edge before.

And then, a long while into his walk, a figure appeared on the other side of the tracks.

A boy, younger than him, armed with a sword.

Maximillian nocked one of his remaining arrows. He really needed to get hold of more, but even after receiving his sponsor gift of rope, he hadn't worked out how to access the sponsor store himself.

He ducked behind one of the trees and raised his bow, lining up his shot. The boy glanced either way up and down the tracks, as though searching for something. Or perhaps checking for something.

It didn't matter.

Maximillian fired his arrow.

It missed the boy's chest but caught him in the arm, sending him staggering back. His armour dropped to only four, being already damaged. Maximillian groaned and took another arrow, lining up the shot as the boy turned to run the other way.

It didn't even feel like a fight.

He fired.

The arrow hit the boy in the back, extinguishing the last of his armour nodes. He fell with a startled cry, throwing his arms out in an attempt to catch himself. Maximillian nocked one of his makeshift arrows, wincing at its flimsyness and fired.

It caught the boy in the neck and wasn't enough to kill him outright, but the poison he'd coated the arrow in soon dealt with him. His cannon fired.

Maximillian ventured from the woods, looking down at the train tracks. Was it worth trying to cross this thing to get the other boy's supplies? He'd be just as vulnerable as the boy had been when Maximillian shot him down. But he needed his bag. Supplies, something that might keep him alive for a little longer.

Maximillian swung his bow over his back and began the long climb to the bottom of the gorge. His heart beat harder in his chest.

By the time he was climbing back up at the other side of the cliff, the boy's body was glowing. Maximillian grabbed his backpack and wrenched it from his shoulders, falling back on his arse as it came free a moment before the body disappeared. Maximillian let out a breath of relief and tied the bag to his front before beginning the climb back to the other side so he could see what he'd won himself.

Andreas Amandiel, 18

The two of them. The three youngest players to enter. Two of the three players that had been sorted into District One with him.

Andreas frowned. Who else? It was easier, when the actual Hunger Games were playing, to keep track of who the tributes were and their alliances. It had never mattered during The Game before, beyond him trying to work out which big alliance remained that he should target.

Now though, he needed to know. Which tributes were a danger to him, how he should separate them.

Though all of that would be far more useful if he actually had an alliance to–

He stopped at the sound of voices in the fog. Marquis froze beside him. Andreas glanced around and found the dark shadow of one of the gravestones. He pointed at it and gestured Marquis over to hide behind it.

More than one player, Andreas counted two- three- four!- voices. An alliance. And a decent sized one. That was perfect. So many weak spots.

But…

As the other players grew closer, it became apparent something was… different. They had torches, not just small ones but large, heavy, industrial thing that beamed through the fog.

"One! We only got one! Out of however many there were that we ran into!" bemoaned one of the girls.

"Buck up, Maiya," replied the other girl.

"Yeah, we've got time," said a boy.

The other boy shook his head. "We might not. People are going to know about the situation by now. They're going to be trying to shut this Game down."

One of the girls, a tall, sun browned brunette, nodded at him. "Exactly. So we need to take out as many of these murdering Capital scum that made light of a death match as we can."

Capital scum.

So these were District kids. Interesting. How had they ended up in The Game? This must be something to do with the hijackers, it had to be. Nothing else made any sense.

A cannon boomed across the arena.

Marquis jumped. Andreas glanced at him and mouthed, "Stay quiet."

There was more to this than they'd been told at the bloodbath. Something else happening.

Andreas wanted to know what.

The more information he had, the more he could try to plan. His hands trembled–

No.

The ground trembled.

Marquis yelled, cutting the sound short with a hand over his mouth even as Andreas turned on him.

The torch beams swung in their direction.

And in their light, Andreas could see the reason for Marquis's scream. It was another player, a girl, though all the nodes of her jumpsuit were out - and there was a red slash through her throat. Her bloody fingers were wrapped around Marques's throat, digging in deep, leaving deep red marks against his skin. The nodes of his armour flicker dangerously.

Andreas looked back at the District players, who seemed hesitant to come his way. Wasn't this part of the plan?

Then he looked at Marquis. He wanted an ally; he liked having an ally, it was someone to rely on–

He looked at his bladed fans.

One strike, and if he couldn't get her off, he'd leave Marquis to his fate. He was here to survive, not be a hero.

One strike, straight through the girl's throat.

The first thing he noticed was the lack of resistance, like he was stabbing through cheese. The second was the lack of blood.

But the impact must have done something, because she let go of Marquis, so it seems Andreas's 'valiant act' won't go to waste. Marquis scrambled to his feet, drawing his sword, but there are more of these things around them, lumbering in the fog. He can hear them, shuffling and moaning.

The District kids must have decided them a lost corner, perhaps assuming the zombies would kill them, because they had already turned to run back the way they had been coming.

"Come on," Andreas said, squinting through the fog. "We need to get to higher ground."

Sorcha Summerfield, 17

They seemed to have lost the bulk of the alliance after them, as well as Emeria and Marcellina, but one of the girls was still following. Sorcha had only seen her in snatches over her shoulder, but she looked bigger than her and was armed with one of the biggest axes Sorcha had ever seen in the simulated arena.

Anyone to get caught by that…

She grabbed Luminita's arm and attempted to yank her off to the side, leaving an open path to the freak and her brother.

"What are you doing?" Luminita shouted.

"This way!" Sorcha replied, pulling on her arm.

"What?"

Fuck, she was such an idiot sometimes.

"They'll lead her away," Sorcha hissed, pulling her away from that torch beam scanning the fog.

Luminita wrenched her arm free. "You really are unbelievable."

"What?"

"Whatever. Do what you want. I'm done."

"What?" Sorcha asked again, because none of it made any sense, not until Luminita was running away from her to rejoin the Almons, pushing them on ahead of her.

Sorcha groaned.

They were stuck with the freak then.

She kept running until she was sure they'd lost the attackers.

Or…

She'd lost the attackers.

Because looking around…

She was alone.

She opened her mouth to call for Luminita - but that would only attract attention to her from the other players.

And there were more of them than her. She still wasn't sure exactly how many there were, but certainly more than one.

Of which she was just one.

Alone.

She scanned the area around her, but there was nothing but fog.

She needed to get back to the grassland she'd been in before. Visibility there had been limited too, but at least she'd been able to see something.

But which way had she come from?

Which way had the others gone? Why would they leave her? She was the leader, they needed her!

"Luminita," she whispered, fearful of raising her voice too much. "Luminita!"

But the arena around her was quiet.

Sorcha closed her eyes and evened out her breathing, a familiar swimming exercise. She was swimming in the fog, her head was swimming-

Something grabbed her ankle.

"Took you long enough-" she said as she turned to whoever had found her first-

Only to find herself facing a player she'd only seen during the interviews, a tall, lithe boy with blood splattered across his front. He stumbled towards here, making a terrible, rasping round. Blood bubbled from his lips and spilled down his chin.

Sorcha screamed.

Suddenly finding her allies mattered less than getting away from whatever this thing was, so she turned and ran, her heart hammering in her chest.

The boy-mutt-thing chased after her, his own footsteps crunching across the black grass.

She couldn't die here.

She couldn't die like this.

She was meant to be so much more.

She kept running until the fog broke and the ground dropped away before her. The train tracks. She'd made it. Sorcha skittered to a stop and glanced over her shoulders at the boy that had been chasing her. He was grinning, a terrible thing.

"Fuck you," she shouted, and threw herself over the edge of the canyon, digging her fingers into the side of it.

She half slid, half fell to the bottom, landing with a thud that knocked all the air from her lungs.

The zombie thing above her didn't follow.

Etheria Arquette, 17

The last boom of the cannon had brought the arena around them alive with the sound of groaning and soft whispers. The distant cracking and moan of stone echoed through the fog. Luminescence cradled his beloved compass in his hands, holding it against his chest.

"Mutts in this arena?" Radiance whispered, still holding the spear he'd taken from the other boy - Ignatius, his name had been Ignatius, he'd had a name - in one hand. His mace was kept strapped to his back, but the spear was an easier weapon in an emergency.

Luminescence glanced at him. "Small animals for most of the games. Insects, rats, and I think a cat."

"And what about the last part?" Etheria asked.

Luminescence was quiet.

"Go on," Radiance said. "What about the last few days?"

"Zombie mutts," Luminescence whispered.

The Seventy Fifth Games had been before Etheria's time, but she'd seen clips. She couldn't remember seeing zombie mutts in any of them.

"I don't remember that," she said.

"They cut those days out of most public clips," Luminescence explained.

Etheria's heart dropped with the horror. Was it really that bad during this round of the Hunger Games? What did that mean for them?

They found out a moment later, as an bloody horror lurched from the fog, reaching for her with hands that looked shattered.

Etheria screamed and swung her hammer, feeling the sharp crack as it connected with the horror's arms and they shattered.

It made a terrible rasping sound, lunging towards her. Around them, more dark shadows were closing in, their feet dragging over the ground.

"Time to go," said Luminescence.

Radiance grabbed her arm. "Which way?"

Luminescence checked his compass - that damn compass, Etheria wished he'd never been sent it - and pointed. "That way!"

Radiance pulled on her arm as another creature stumbled from the fog - and this one she recognised, the girl with the stripy hair, the one they'd killed.

Etheria screamed, the girl screamed, Radiance screamed when he realised what they were looking at, and then Luminescence had hold of their backpack straps and was pulling them on after him, into the fog.


Author's Note

Calpurnia Catallus, 16. Placed twenty sixth. Killed by Thorin Marcoussis and Magnus Calix.

Ahh, Calpurnia. She was kinda bitchy, but I came to enjoy writing that for her. Unfortunately, this one became a case of who I could take further plot-wise and narrowing down that unwieldy big group of players. Thank you for her, Victoria the Bipolar Tribute!