Author's Note
I do not own the Hunger Games.
Ares Gilmore, 15
Ares put his sword through the chest of one of the players and Iridescence turned another into a pincushion with her arrows, and yet none of it had any impact. No nodes went out. None of the other players went down. No cannons boomed.
And he recognised the face of one of the girls currently trying to claw his eyes out.
She'd died in the bloodbath.
These were… reanimations. Zombies, made with the faces of players that had died. Ares wondered if one with Wonder's bright hair and sparkling eyes was out there somewhere.
"We can't outfight them!" Iridescence shouted.
"But we can't let them herd us!"
They'd both played The Game enough times to know that the things would be trying to push them towards other players. That was what they were programmed to do. Create fights when the audience started to get restless at the lack of excitement.
"Then pick a direction!"Iridescence called.
Ares thrust his sword through the chest of a girl he'd already stabbed three times and sprang aside to put himself back close to Iridescence.
She caught his sleeve with fingers that were trembling too much for his liking, using the other hand to wield her bow like a club. She was nearly out of arrows now, and had evidently decided not to waste what she had left.
"This way!" he decided at last, dragging her into the trees the dead players had been trying to block them from. They ran, but the dead were close behind them, clawing at their backs, crashing through the trees.
"This is insane," Iridescence gasped. Her face was twisted with pain, her cheeks wet with tears. She must be hitting a bad time again.
"Players must not be fighting enough for them," Ares replied.
"The announcer. In the Bloodbath. She made it sound…"
Like she wanted to take as many of them out as possible. Ares had thought about that too, mostly when he was on watch. It wasn't something he wanted to discuss with Iridescence. He'd only scare her.
Iridescence raised her face up to the foliage above them. "We're not going to give them that satisfaction."
They kicked and pushed their way through the trees, probably not careful enough as they broke branches and showered themselves in almost certainly poisonous sap. They'd have to remember to be careful when they finally lost these things behind them.
At last, the trees began to open up ahead of them, thinning until there were no trees at all. They stumbled out onto jewel green grass and breathed in the clean air for the first time in days.
Further ahead, the grass dropped away over the edge of a steep cliff. On the other side, Ares could see more grass, taller than his head, with something grey and misplaced in the distance.
"I thought this was the Fiftieth," he said, frowning over at the grassland.
Iridescence hummed, but she did look thoughtful. "There were train tracks at the bloodbath, I think. And all that noise, you remember?"
They'd been into the trees by then, so not seen what had caused it, but Ares did have distant memories of it.
"Maybe they decided not to entirely use the arena for the Fiftieth." Iridescence edged forward towards the cliff. Ares reached out and took her arm. She wasn't exactly the steadiest on her feet and he didn't want her going head first over however deep this drop was.
"It looks like the gimmick from the Eighty Eighth," she said.
Ares couldn't remember ever competing in that arena. He'd assumed the gimmick was simply too complicated to program into The Game.
Evidently he had been wrong.
"Do you want to cross to the other side?" he asked.
Iridescence frowned, peering down at the train tracks below them before shaking her head. "We'd be rats in a bucket down there. Best stay this side unless we can't help it."
Ares nodded.
He wasn't sure he'd want her climbing anyway.
Luminita Summerfield, 17
Sorcha had fallen behind them.
And then Luminita had left her behind them.
Her sister.
Her twin sister.
Her family.
She'd left her to whoever those attackers were, or whatever was rumbling somewhere in the fog around them.
She'd left her.
And they'd lost Marcellina and Emeria and she'd heard Calpurnia's cannon.
Which meant now it was only her and Zephyr and Celeste, running blind ant panicked in the fog. The groans and moans of something she couldn't see echoed all around her.
"Where are the others?" Zephyr shouted.
"Don't know, keep running," Luminita replied.
For a few minutes they did just that, fleeing into the unknown of the arena. Luminita watched for any shadows that might be her other allies, but she could see nothing in the fog.
The blow that came down against her shoulder came as a surprise. Her armour dropped two points. She screamed, spinning towards the attacker.
She was met by a horror, a girl with her face already smashed in, her features warped and twisted beyond any recognition. Zephyr and Celeste scream too, upon seeing it, and Zephyr lashes out at the thing with his knife.
"It's a mutt!" Luminita shouted, because it had to be, even though it was wearing a player jumpsuit. "Just– keep running!"
For once, someone listened to her, and the two chased after her through the fog. As they ran, it began to lessen, thinning around them. They must be coming up on the train tracks.
"Mind out for the cliff!" she yelled - except there was no cliff, even as they ran and ran. Instead, the fog grew thinner and thinner until they were falling onto blackened grass.
"We're going to wrong way!" Celeste complained.
"We can't go back!" Luminita replied even as she realised where they were. The great golden horn gleamed ahead of them.
"Come on!"
They could climb it, that should put them out of reach of the dead's grasping hands.
"This isn't the right place!" Celeste protested as Zephyr took her arm and dragged her over to the cornucopia. She looked genuinely distraught, casting glances behind her into the fog.
"Stop worrying about that!" Zephyr shouted, looking up at the great horn.
"I'll give you a lift up," Luminita said, crouching and linking her hands together.
Zephyr was heavier than he looked, and she struggled to boost him up rhee side. He must have found a handhold though, because his weight was soon gone from her. She turned to Celeste. "Come on. I'll boost you up, and then you and Zephyr will have to pull me up after you, okay?"
Celeste looked at her with those pale, empty eyes, but she did put her foot on Luminita's hands. Luminita heaved her up the side of the cornucopia, and Zephyr reached down to grab her wrists and pull her up. Celeste made an odd noise, and then she too managed to pull herself up the side of the golden horn.
Luminita reached up, finding a carved lip in thr cornucopia side - probably what Zephyr used to pull himself up, and jammed his foot against the horn. "Help me up!"
Zephyr reached down to grab her wrists, and then more to Luminita's surprise, Celeste followed his example, taking one of Luminita's arms. She kicked against the metal and they pulled and the dead were getting closer, but then she was up, collapsing against the top of the horn alongside them.
Down below, four dead players shuffled closer to the horn, groaning and waving their hands in the air.
"Do you think they'll go away?" Celeste asked.
Luminita pushed herself up and gestured for them to follow her to the highest section of the horn, where the three slopes presumably for the train are attached. "I don't know."
Artemis Gilmore, 17
The screams of the alliance that had caused Apollo's death faded behind her as she ran back to the train tracks. Her lungs ached, her heart thumping hard in her chest.
Artemis skidded to a stop and sat down with a thump to consider her next move. She really ought to cross the tracks back into the grass field, where she'd have better visuals. And she needed to keep looking for Ares. Apollo was dead, but he was still out there somewhere, on his own since she'd seen Wonder's face in the sky. Vulnerable. They'd be stronger together.
But then there was the younger girl, the one she'd led the dangerous alliance away from, with her fire red hair and the confusion on her face.
They'd been good at hiding it, but she'd seen that girl before, hadn't she? Out with the Sterlings, shopping or as they walked to school. She didn't look much like them, maybe that was how they'd got away with sneaking her in right under the noses of Artemis and her siblings, but that shade of hair was memorable.
She could leave her to the mutts.
She should leave her to the mutts that Artemis could hear shambling about in the fog.
She should.
She was a Sterling, and none of Artemis's concern. She needed to find Ares, her own blood. Ares was what mattered in this awful arena.
Artemis straightened, steadying herself.
Ares was what mattered.
Phoenix was the Sterlings' - and Ares was hers.
She nodded to herself and slid herself over the edge of the cliff, scrambling to find a foothold. She found it quickly, quickly descending the cliff. She should have had Apollo to do this with her.
Apollo was dead.
She slid the last ten foot to the ground and hurried to the other side and set about climbing back up.
"Hold on, Ares. I'm coming for you."
Etheria Arquette, 17
The screams were growing louder ahead of them. Nearer. Luminescence held his compass up. "That must be her, the arrows pointing straight at it!"
"Great, now let's not get eaten by fucking zombies before we get there!" snapped Radiance.
The bloodied, burned face of a dead player appeared in the fog too close to Etheria's left. She swallowed her scream and spun round to slam her hammer into his head.
It shattered like a watermelon, showering her and the Sterling brothers with blood and pieces of bone. It splattered her skin and stuck in her hair. Her breath caught.
And the dead girl launched herself at her.
She slammed into Etheria's chest, knocking her backwards and bringing her to the ground in her moment of surprise. Burned, bony fingers dug into her skin. She screamed, struggling to kick the dead thing off.
Radiance grabbed it by the arms and yanked it from her, throwing it to the ground a little way away. "Come on!"
Etheria's heartbeat thudded in her ears. This was meant to be fun, to get her out and active, involved in a challenge of a different kind.
And now she was going to die.
"I can't do this," she cried, her eyes burning with tears.
Radiance dragged her after Luminescence, pulling so hard he might just wrench her arm from the socket. "You can!"
She shook her head. "I can't– I can't– Radiance–!"
"Just keep going!" he shorted.
Light broke through the fog, a long, thin beam that cut through the whiteness to illuminate them.
"This way!" shouted a girl, her voice echoing through the fog. "Come on!"
"Is that Phoenix?" Etheria asked as Radiance dragged her onwards.
His grin lit up the fog around them. "That's her. Come on! We're so close now!"
So close. Safety was right there.
But the dead were so close around them.
Phoenix Sterling, 13
They were so close, they were so close, they were so close.
But now more dead players were stumbling from the fog, reaching for them, swinging rusted sword and broken spears.
Beside her, Vivaldi was whispering, 'Oh fuck oh fuck' like some kind of mantra.
"Luminescence!" Phoenix shouted, leaning over the edge of the white building she and Vivaldi were balancing on to offer her hands down. "Radiance! Come on, you need to climb up!"
Climb up and not get torn apart, come on come on come on. They could make it, they could.
Except there were more dead players closing in now, reaching out with their bloody hands. The girl with them - Etheria, Phoenix remembered from the bloodbath, swung her great hammer and caved in the chest of a stout boy. He staggered back a step but continued moving, now with a noticeable dent in his chest.
"Come on!" Phoenix screamed, glancing across the rooftop and sliding down to a lower section. Vivaldi yelled beside her, climbing down to take her old position. The thought of him trying to pull up one of her brothers, when both were so much bigger than him, was almost laughable, but Phoenix swallowed that reaction. He was her ally after all, and trying to help save her brothers.
Luminescence stopped right beneath her, and she grabbed at him, screaming his name. "Luminescence! Come on; come on!"
But still he hesitated, and she knew exactly why. He was waiting for Radiance. Because no matter how much her siblings loved her, they'd always love each other more. It was Luminescence and Iridescence and Radiance, and then Phoenix off to the side by herself.
One of the dead players caught Radiance by the jumpsuit and he turned, singing his spear out to slam the shaft into its chest. Etheria flung herself forward at the little building and reached up to take Vivaldi's hands. She didn't look particularly big or muscular, but he still struggled to pull her up, gasping and straining. Etheria kicked her feet against the building until she was half-hanging over the roof. Vivaldi grabbed her backpack strap and hauled her up the rest of the way.
More dead players were closing in on her brothers, making that awful groaning sound, their hands scratching and clawing at them.
"Luminescence!" Phoenix screamed, stretching out towards him. "Radi-"
She shrieked as she overbalanced and lurched towards the ground. Vivaldi wrapped his arms around her waist, dragging her back.
"There's nothing you can do! You'll only get yourself killed too!"
"They're my brothers!"
"Radiance!" shrieked Etheria.
There had to be something they could do; there had to be something they could do.
Etheria flung herself forward, reaching down. Radiance spun round, putting himself between Luminescence and the dead. "She needs you!"
And finally, only then, did Luminescence reach up and take Etheria's hands. She pulled him up to the roof, and he fell to the stone beside her, gasping for air.
"Luminescence!" Phoenix cried, stumbling towards him. He turned away, reaching down for Radiance.
Dead players were piling atop him now, and her brother's yells turned to screams.
A cannon boomed.
The world was quiet.
Author's Note
Radiance Sterling, 17. Placed twenty fourth. Killed by arena mutts.
This was an unplanned death. But I felt the time and place was right, as well as the tragedy of Radiance dying as he finds Phoenix, which has been his goal all this time.