Hadley Kinneth- In Your Hands D6F
Usually in the arena, it was a toss-up when to move around. In daytime you were more visible, but the Careers knew we'd try to hide in the dark, so they were more active at night. In the hospital, it didn't make a difference. For large stretches of the building, the hallways didn't have windows. It was like a casino- time blurred until it didn't mean anything. I hesitated to speculate what that, combined with my lack of sleep for the past few days, would do to my long-term mental stability. Oh, well. If I get out of this, I bet Victors know how to get all the really good drugs.
I looked around the floor for a long time before I settled for the vending machine. I hated how long they took to break open, and how much noise it made. Then you had to wonder if a Career had been staking out that particular machine and had mapped out exactly how many items were in there. One purloined bag of chips could tip off a killer that I was somewhere very close by. I never sat it coming. It really was like they said: before you knew it hit you, you'd already died. That's exactly how it would have been for me if it hadn't been for the armor under my shirt. The arrow hit the side of my chest like someone really angry had poked me in the ribs. I jumped at the suddenness of it, my hand flying to the spot even though the armor had caught the arrow and I wasn't bleeding. With a flash of foresight, I turned and took a quick step in the other direction, then collapsed on my stomach, the arrow impact hidden under my body and hand and my face turned in the direction the arrow had come from.
"Bullseye!" a female voice came from down the hall. I opened my eyes a tiny bit and saw a girl with black hair and a sword coming toward me, another girl with pink hair a few steps behind, carrying a bow. The first girl was smiling and the second looked disappointed.
"I missed the heart," the pink-haired girl said. "She'd already be dead." Don't shoot again. Don't shoot again. Come closer and check, I mentally begged. If I'd run, she'd have caught on that I had armor and would have sent her next arrow into my head.
"Just because you have a crappy bow," the first girl said. "She's just bleeding out." That's right, I thought. Bleeding out, and you can't see the blood since it's on the other side and my clothes are catching most of it. I felt my finger resting on the trigger cap of the can wedged against my breast my arm curled in front of it and hiding it.
"I'll get her," the black-haired girl said. She stood over me and I heard her sword slide against its scabbard. I took a deep breath as I sat up and sprayed. The girl let out a high-pitched yelp as she jumped back and threw an arm over her face. Behind her, the pink-haired girl gasped, then coughed as the spray diluted in the air but still reached her.
I was afraid the two of them would still come at me in before the two minutes were up, but they both bent over, coughing increasingly painfully. I rolled over and ran down the hall away from them. Maybe I'd come back for their weapons later. I wasn't going to risk staying close. That, and I didn't really want to see it.
Shale Beecher- Tyger, Tyger D2F
They gave out poison spray now? That wasn't fair at all. Even Careers knew it was low to use poison. It hadn't even been permitted when I was at the Academy. It took away every bit of merit and planning and made the Games a roll of the dice. We'd been doing so well, too. Two cavewomen with a sword and a toy bow had been doing so well. First I'd died to a girl who'd done nothing but hide under a tree, and now I'd lost to an aerosol can.
Chrysolite Astor- Tyger, Tyger D1F
It got Shale faster. I got to watch my own death on a slight delay. She coughed harder and harder, her breath sliding up into a thick wheeze. Her lips and cheeks went blue. I'd always thought that was something subtle, that only doctors could see. No, it really did look like she'd put on blue lipstick. It looked even bluer against her bloodshot eyes. It was a relief when she fell facing away from me.
We came so far, I mourned. It ended so quick. Shale watched me die once, I mused. Now I've seen her. I guess we're even now.
Chrome Cabello- Heart of Darkness D2F
I was rudely awakened from my nap when Jayden's elbow jammed into my shoulder.
"Ow! Careful!" I said as I sat up.
"Oh, sorry," Jayden said, looking over her shoulder. She and the rest of the girls were clustered around the computer, with Fable sitting in the desk chair as the others leaned over her.
"What's all this?" I asked as I got out of bed after relishing a stretch of my arms. "They let Tuesday put a blog up!" Fable said. "Like, in the arena."
"Fascinating," I said boredly. What did I care if some nerd wrote about her inner turmoil and feelings? Why would you join the Games if you wanted to be a writer? You'd either die or be rich enough you wouldn't have to. And you'd always wonder if you only got published because you were famous.
"She wrote about me," Fable said, pointing to the one-way screen I couldn't see anything on from my angle. "Come look!"
I peered over Jessie's shoulder at the screen.
Intrigue in the Arena: The Enduring Legacy of Arno Dupont and Elise Delacroix's
What with the goings-on of trying to stay alive and whatnot, it's been a while since I've thought of Elise and Arno. Usually once a Tribute dies, interest in them dies too, but this pair left too many unanswered questions. I don't have internet access past this site, so I can't look things up, but I can read comments. Does anyone out there know anything about the still-unsolved murder of Gilbery Delacroix? Elise wasn't able to solve her father's murder, and Arno died still convicted of the crime. Elise never stopped saying it wasn't true, and Arno always maintained his innocence. Why would a completely nonviolent young man, who had nothing to gain from this crime and who loved the victim's daughter, do something like this? Someone out there knows something. Right now I have all of Panem as my audience, and this is what I'm using it for.
"Cool, I guess," I said. I didn't really care in the slightest if my dead ally, who I had killed, was part of some murder-mystery, but maybe we'd get some screen time out of it, and screen time meant sponsors. Or maybe the opposite, since I was the one who killed her. But you never know with Capitolites.
Fable motioned downward to reveal more text.
I've got something! My uncle used to go to the same club where Gilbert hung out. He would never talk much about it, but he said Gilbert saw something and wasn't going to keep quiet, since he was one of those religious nuts.- GimmeGimmeGimmeSomeCandy
It was Arno. Had the case reached trial, we would have been able to show the evidence we'd gathered. Elise's mother used her money to get him off. Guess she believed his lies too.- IamTheLaw
It's just a rumor so I don't know if it's true or not, but I heard a local hit man claimed responsibility. I was too scared to ask for his name, sorry.- C tsrrrqt
"It goes on like this for pages," Fable said.
"Neat. Since you're all clearly going to be there for a while, I'm going to nap some more."
Priscilla Piscot- Over and Over D1F
"You ever get the feeling we're just running in circles?"
It would seem to be an incongruous sort of thing to ask. I was sitting on a hospital bed, an x-ray machine across the room from me, and Miall was messing around with an one of those IV trees with the needle dangling off that you could roll around. It was certainly not a situation we'd been in for a long time- me since I'd gotten my tonsils out when I was twelve, and him since he'd dislocated his knee during training.
Miall sighed. "For a long time." He let the empty IV bag fall and it flopped against the metal pole as he heaved himself onto the foot of the bed.
"Every time we come back, it's a bigger pool. It means slimmer chances to win. They keep pulling us back, dangling that carrot again, and each time it's easier to just start preparing for the next time it happens again.
"Wow, depression central," I said. "I didn't mean all that. I just meant it seems like this might be our lives from now on."
"That's what I just said," Miall said.
"Yeah, but not like that," I said. "I mean… it could be worse. We get to see crazy new arenas every time we wake up. We get to see Panem keep moving forward and all the inventions and crazy new fads the mentors come up with. Kinda beats a boring post-Games life in the village, in some ways."
"You can stick around. I want a boring life," Miall said.
"What would I even do with a boring life? I think I'd just sit around playing hoops until I was too old," I said.
"Must be nice to be so content. Me, I thought I'd do something in life. Maybe just start a family, though that's not really a 'just'. Maybe do something as a Victor, like build a school or fund some young inventor. I thought it would have a beginning, and a middle, and an end. I didn't think it would be just an endless middle."
It is nice, I thought. It was nice to be so carefree. I was happy with new sights and an un-aged body and the scary but exciting mix of Capitol luxury, the thrills of the arena, the tiny chance of victory, and the safety of knowing my death would probably never be permanent. And if it was… I couldn't say I hadn't had a pretty full life. But Miall wasn't as relaxed as I was. He saw past his own surroundings into the bigger world. He even thought he could change it. Me, I didn't see the point of trying to change a world that already threw me away half a dozen times. Let Rome burn. I was having fun fiddling.
Toddward Howard- Swing Vote D9M
Tyler and I peered at the metal apparatus. It was not at all what I'd pictured in my head all my life when I heard the phrase "Bunsen burner". I'd been picturing something almost like a kerosene lantern. I thought it would have a big container at the bottom for fuel and then some sort of gas oven-type flame on top with a metal cover to rest things on. No, instead it had a long, skinny neck on top of a disc-shaped piece of metal on the bottom. There were two bolt-looking things screwed into the side near the bottom. The top had a round opening. It looked more like the front half of a futuristic rifle than a camping stove.
"All right, surely between the two of us we can figure this out?" I said, clapping my hands together as I stood next to Tyler. While Gaius and Maxson were talking about some boring philosophy stuff, Tyler and I were getting medieval. If the beloved and brilliantly-written Paladin of Scion serieswas correct, we were about to make some alchemical magic- with some modern modifications.
"I suppose you need this, since it was there," Tyler said, holding the lighter we'd found in the box with the burner after raiding some nearby laboratories. "Let's try this." He held the lighter up to the top of the burner. After a moment of bated breath, nothing happened.
"Next hypothesis: maybe it's this," I said, and twisted one of the knobs at the base of the burner. When I twisted one end the other twisted as well, suggesting they were one piece joined in the middle. Nothing happened, but we both noticed a faint chemical smell.
"Oh, now we light it," Tyler said. He held out the lighter, then yanked it back. "How big do you think the fire is at the start?"
"Good catch," I said. After some discussion, we both took off our shirts and soaked them in the sinks.
"You two starting some cult?" Gaius asked from the table across the room.
"Um, it's called 'science'. Look it up," I said as we returned to the burner and wadded up our wet shirts in front of our faces. I had very pretty eyebrows and I didn't want to deprive the ladies of the world.
Tyler cautiously held out the lighter, yanking it back as soon as the flame spiked out into the gas. We both flinched, then snickered at ourselves when only a tiny flame an inch across on the burner's tip.
After that, things were pretty easy. We set the wire frame we'd found in the lab over the burner and put some folded hospital gowns under it to protect the table. We set the bedpan over the frame and poured in the glucose bag, covering it with the lid that best fit the pan out of what we found lying around. After some trial-and-error, and a scorched finger when I forgot metal was hot, we had some pretty thick and congealed sugar.
"What's that?" Maxson asked after wandering over. The sugar had by that point congealed further into a stick, bubbling mess.
"Sugar," I said proudly.
"You making a cake?" he teased.
"No," I said, my voice rising mischievously. "Know what happens when you boil sugar?"
"Caramel. Yum," Maxson said, peeking into the pot. "My mom used to make caramel. Kinda gross from a bedpan, though."
"This caramel's not for eating," I said. Exciting as it was that it had worked, I hoped we didn't have the occasion to use it. Owen Frith, the titular Paladin of Scion, was an experimental test subject taken from a prison and successfully sent back in time. Problem was, he landed in the middle of a huge battle, and as a time-traveler and all, he was held up as a divine champion to deliver the kingdom. He didn't know much about warfare, since he was a career pickpocket and had been in prison for five years before the experiment. He had learned a few things in the big house. One of them was how to make what they called "prison napalm".
58th place: Shale Beecher- Poisoned by Hadley
I looked over who it would make sense for Hadley to do this to and landed and Shale and Chrysolite. Her poison had the potential to wipe out multiple Careers at once, and of course I had to go that more dramatic route. Shale and Chrysolite have been popular these last few chapters so I went ahead and killed them for that more dramatic route. Since they're kinda submitted by me so their eligibility for victory is dubious, but they were cool to have to see a snapshot from the oldest of my stories and an older period in Games history. Shale was always the more active so she walked faster, but that's the only reason she died first. Bummer of a way to go for two girls who really made the best of a huge paradigm shift.
57th place: Chrysolite Astor- Poisoned by Hadley
Chrysolite and Shale both had no innate personality, since I didn't write forms for them originally. It was fun actually giving them some detail. We didn't get to see as much of them as we could have, but maybe they'll come back sometime. At least they're now eligible for a One Shot At Victory chapter. It's sad to see how normal older Careers were, before the culture shifted so much and kids from Career Districts were raised in violence. Shale and Chrysolite were weird combinations of Career and outlier. I guess they paired up because even if they killed each other, they're the only two who could understand each other.