MARGO CASPIAN- Tulsi Sa
We looked at each other philosophically.
"I thought she'd last longer than that," Arielle commented.
"Kind of the way he would have wanted to go," Emma said.
It sounded absurd at face value. Margo's ideal way out was a chainsaw to the face? But no, it really did make sense. Margo lived big. Maybe this wouldn't have been her exact choice, but she'd have wanted to die big.
VISENYA LLOYD- Vulpes Kerr
She thought I was a good person. I didn't know how long she'd been wrong. Somewhere there was the point where I made that choice, where I couldn't go back anymore. If I made enough good choices now, could I undo that? I didn't even know what she would have said.
DECIDUOUS STOWERCRAFT- Tyler Alvarez
The Capitol must have been furious I'd outlived him. They must have cheered when Tulsi came at me. He'd always said I was the rebel, but he was the one who died fighting them. I hoped my life would be worthy of its price.
ARLEEN LIMERA- Majesty Miraval
I grumbled to myself as I prepared dinner. She could have at least fixed me a plate before I killed her.
TIMBER FALDUN- Nene Palmer
He'd been an outsider to the alliance, like I was. Maybe it was because I hadn't been there from the start either, but I'd always thought of him as just another one of the gang.
ELLE PHANT- Richard Franklin
We lost her again. Again someone had come for her and we hadn't been there. She was the quietest of us. We should have listened harder.
Stevie Pagett- Swing Vote D11F
People didn't know that hospitals this size were almost tiny villages of their own. It took hundreds of people to run a place like this, and each of them had their own human needs. There were multiple break rooms on every floor, and someone like me knew how to find them. Each one had a microwave, and a refrigerator, and even a coffee machine. There wasn't a huge supply of food, but if I ran out here, I'd just find another one.
At the sound of the jiggling doorknob, I froze, a half-eaten pastry in my hand. I reached down for the shotgun propped against my chair. It felt so eerie, having it so close to me. I'd never even seen a gun aside from the ones the Peacekeepers held. It was unimaginable for a Districter to touch a firearm. It felt ugly and brutal as I pulled it closer. I ducked behind the table, praying whoever it was would just go away. I didn't want to think about what a body looked like after a shotgun.
The doorknob fell silent. Just keep walking, I prayed, my eyes riveted on the door. Find someone else. That's horrible, isn't it? But it's what I want.
The door shuddered and my hope died in me. They were kicking down the door. I looked around the room for somewhere to hide. I might have been able to squeeze into the cabinet under the microwave, with the coffee filters and paper plates, but did it really matter? They'd find me.
The door flew open. I held up the shotgun, my arms shaking. It didn't even matter if I aimed. That was the thing with shotguns… I waited until I saw Lyon's face to fire. Then something came over me and I pulled the trigger before I knew what I was doing.
Lyon flew back before he even saw me. He crashed into the wall and bounced off, sliding to the ground on his side. Something seemed off about the way it had happened, but I wasn't sure what. Then he put his arms under himself to sit up, and I noticed there was no blood.
Lyon coughed as he sat up. He put his hand to his chest and winced. He looked over at me and our eyes locked.
"Stay away," I said, pointing the shotgun at him as panic crept over me. He had body armor. I'd him him right across the chest, but it hadn't mattered. My shotgun shells were buried harmlessly in layers of bulletproof fabric.
Lyon sat for a minute, his arm cocked on his knee. "You don't have any more," he said. He sounded almost sad.
"Yes, I do!" I tried to sound forceful, but I already knew what he was getting at. My body screamed at me to run for it, but he was sitting right by the door.
Lyon got to his feet. "You would have shot again," he said. He started toward my table.
"I'll shoot!" I screamed, my thin voice giving away my lie. I backed away, almost tripping over my chair.
"That really wasn't fair, was it?" Lyon said as he advanced. He might have meant about the shotgun, but somehow I knew he didn't. He meant that he had armor, and a sword, and even a shotgun couldn't give me a chance. It wasn't fair a minute later, when I lay dying in a hospital, surrounded by the best medical equipment in the nation, with not a single person who cared enough to use it.
Marley Astero- Wandering Souls D2F
I'd been right to risk taking my own bag. I'd giggled like a little girl when I saw the blowgun and the little hypodermic darts next to the vial. It had taken all of my patience to find a pair of gloves before I started pouring the poison from the vial and measuring it out into the darts.
Who I took hardly mattered to me. The morgue would be in the basement, so I headed in that direction. It was worth dying to have come back to an arena like this. What a delight to find myself in the only arena that could possibly have a room made just for me. Not only would I get my canvas at last, but I'd have a treasure trove of tools.
It was morbidly beautiful how I found my marks. It was the sound of laughter that called my attention to one of the rooms in the basement. I heard two voices and knew I had to be cautious. It pained my soul to wait, but I forced myself to find the nearest restroom and take up position tucked beside the door of a room halfway between it and my target. For hours I waited, the concrete wall digging into mu back, my brain running through the wonderful things I could do when my patience finally paid off.
I thrilled at the sound of footsteps on the concrete floor. A shadow appeared at the edge of the doorway, lengthening and then splitting as the two approached, one taller than the other. I focused my attention on the taller shadow as the likely more dangerous target.
I waited until they were both in sight before I shot. The blowgun was already at my lips, my tongue running over its mouthpiece in excitement, when the boy appeared. I blew a puff of air and the dart went into the back of his neck. His hand went up to check at the tiny prick he'd felt. He didn't seem concerned- it would only feel like perhaps a phantom pain or a fly bite. His fingers reached the dart and brushed it free before his arm went slack and his knees fell out from under him. As the girl bent in concern, I shot her. The two of them fumbled on the ground for a moment, the boy almost able to rise as his heavier weight weakened the dose. In another moment they were still.
The boy had fallen over the girl, trying to shield her. I tugged him free with great difficulty. Clearly he wasn't the one to bring with me. I was not a tall girl, and he was solid and muscular. Luckily, the girl with him was much smaller. I'd been hoping for one of the young ones. They were just more fun to me. I hooked my arms under her armpits and slowly dragged her toward the morgue.
Emmeline Blythe- Over and Over D3F
Someone was in my hideout. I heard them walking around and moving things. I felt a strange sense of indignity, like someone had rudely walked into my home without my permission.
"Here we go, let's get you on the table," a female voice came. What? I thought. Is she… She couldn't be. What were the odds someone with a perverse interest in dead bodies had gotten Reaped. Unless… she volunteered…
"Ooh, what's in here?" I heard the sliding of metal as one of the drawers on the wall around me opened. I made a horrible face, made even worse by what came next.
"Oh, cool! They're really in here!" Another drawer slid open. Left to right, drawers slid open, sounding higher than me but not at the highest level. Was the girl too short to reach them? Her voice did sound like it was coming from a low height.
Tell me she won't. I knew it was coming before I heard the next row of drawers slide open. You've got to be kidding me. She was opening every drawer. I had found the perfect hiding place in the history of the Games, and some corpse-obsessed freak was going to blow it all.
I shuffled around in my bag, trying to keep the noise down as I rearranged myself. Someone this freakishly obsessed with corpses would see the very obvious difference between me and the actually dead bodies. I waited as she went through one drawer after another, swearing under my breath. At last, she reached mine. I felt my drawer moving and then the bag peaked up as she pulled at the zipper. The moment she revealed my head, I shot out my fist right into her face.
"SO, YOU WANNA DESECRATE THE DEAD, DO YA?!" I screamed as I sat up in my bag, watching her fall over backwards with a dumbstruck look on her face. I half pulled and half flopped myself out of the drawer on top of her. I could not remember the last time in my life I had been so furious. I thought of everything. I arranged every detail so I wouldn't have to fight. I was literally dead and someone still had to come give me trouble.
The girl shoved at me in a panic as she lay under me, trying to pull free and scoot away. I kicked her in the head, hopping away out of range of her arms as she recovered. As I looked around the room for a weapon, I saw the girl on the table. She was still alive, but she was motionless. Her shirt was torn open. That was what tipped me over. She was dressed out for a butterfly cut.
I looked at the other girl with a mixture of contempt and revulsion. She was already standing, one hand to her jaw and a murderous look in her eye, clearly having already recovered from getting yelled at by a corpse As she ran at me, I knew from her movements that I'd picked a fight with a Career.
I turned as the girl came at me to shoulder-check her in the face. She evaded the blow and did some fancy footwork to try to trip me. I grabbed onto her so we both fell down. She kicked me in the stomach and clambered up on the autopsy table's legs. I saw she was aiming for a bag, no doubt the one that had whatever she'd used to poison the girl. I grabbed her long hair, wondering why any Career would risk butt-length and very grab-able hair, and yanked. The girl's frame was so light that my pull sent her head thwacking against the cement floor. She lay unmoving for a second. I didn't give her another second. I pulled her head up and smashed it down again, and then again. Blood started to ooze out and leave a red smear as I bashed her. After the sixth blow, her arms curled up spastically, one flexed and the other pointing upwards. I never thought I'd see it myself- it was a sign of severe brain damage. I bashed her twice more and her cannon went off.
The girl on the table was still motionless when I went to her side. Her eyes were closed, I noticed. From her shallow breathing and slightly blue-tinted lips, I guessed the dose had been too high. She was almost certainly unconscious and quite likely dying. If I had the time and the supplies I might have been able to save her, but could I honestly say I would have made that sacrifice? I watched her as she lay tiny and vulnerable on the table. One human to another, I could do this much. I laid my hand on hers and waited until she was gone. Later, after I'd zipped myself back into my bag, I heard the floor rumble and then the cold and remote sounds of some low-ranked Gamemaker slotting two bodies into bags and laying them alongside me.
71st place: Stevie Pagett- Stabbed by Lyon
Though this seems like a theme, it's not the case that guns are a kiss of death to get in my stories. It's just the guns in this case were balanced out by how many Careers got body armor. Stevie was on her own this time, and she made it to the top half, so that's cool. This was a familiar arena to her, but it got balanced out by the sheer number of killers in there with her. Sad she ended up where she wasted so much of her childhood, but she got to live life a little in the Capitol.
70th place: Marley Astero- Beaten to death by Emmeline
Marley likes dead bodies. When Emmeline went into the morgue, this became inevitable. I wasn't going to pass up the chance of someone opening a body bag and getting punched by an offended corpse, so here we are. Marley got closer to her dream of live mummification than ever before, so may she die content. Also now SHE'S a corpse, which she'd probably like.
69th place: Mati Berlin- Poisoned by Marley
RIP Mati, one of the only tributes light enough for 4'9" Marley to move. Flint lives to see another day entirely because he's heavy. Unless someone finds him, he'll recover in a few hours. Since I wanted to go light on her, Mati took the poison poorly and fell unconscious pretty quick, so she didn't know Marley was trying to vivisect her. RIP to the last true Jayhawk standing, and may Flint find a place with them when they see how he guarded her.
Emmeline's POV was extra long since she also had to provide the wrap-up for Mati, who was comatose. Her form said she does have crazy rage when she finally snaps. After all these years, we finally got to see that.