Tuesday Erelle- Into Thin Air D2F
When I just couldn't take it any longer, I got out of bed and checked the computer. The votes had been coming in for hours. They'd been maddeningly even and had stayed that way, fluctuating slightly one way and then the other, until I had to just turn the screen off for a while and try not to think about it. Goodness knows I couldn't sleep like that, though. Hard as I tried, it was a lost cause.
Yes! Twos are the best!: 57%
No! Stay on your own! 43%
There it is, then. I wasn't even sure which one I'd wanted. I was a bit of an extrovert and did enjoy the company of others, but it seemed so risky to leave my setup behind. I suppose I can still blog in the alliance, though. I stared to perk up as I thought about all the possibilities. I'd have a steady source of interviews, for one. I could pivot more to focusing on Two things for a while, like our history and culture. This could work. It might not, but it could.
I clearly wasn't the first Two to reach the second floor. As I wandered the halls, I heard the easy conversation that could only mean enough of them were there that they didn't need to hide.
"Hey!" I called from the hallway outside the nurse's lounge where the voices were coming from. I wouldn't want to spook them by getting too close and get myself stabbed before they saw who it was.
There was a shifting of chairs and footsteps. Joseph poked his head out of the doorway.
"Hey," I said again, waving.
"Hey. Come on in," he said.
Turns out, I was the last Two to find the alliance. Artemis was already sitting back down at one of the tables and reaching for the sandwich she'd put down. Chrome and Jessie lurked by the dinette sink, Chrome looking suspicious and Jessie seeming morose. Flint was boredly peeling the label off of a water bottle. The gang was all here, then. I didn't need to ask about the Kariukis. They already had an ironclad alliance and would only be reducing their odds if they joined us. The only reason Jessie and Chrome were here was that Chrome was so formidable none of us wanted to try it.
"The gang's all here, I guess," Flint remarked, looking up from his pile of paper scraps.
"Good." Chrome stood and headed for the door. "Let's get started, then."
Artemis glanced at Flint, noting Chrome's bossiness and wondering if anyone else was going to say anything. Since I was the newcomer, she looked at me last. I gave a tiny shrug. It might have been a blunt way to say it, but Chrome was right that we were here for business. Meanwhile, Jessie slunk after her sister with an apologetic air. I wanted to tell her I was sorry about Fable, but it wasn't possible. Showing sympathy for One wouldn't be a good first impression. Even if I could have, it might have just made her sad anyway. For my part, though… if I saw Fable while we were hunting, I'd pretend I hadn't.
Priscilla Piscot- Over and Over D1F
The little physical therapy room wasn't much for a full game of hoops, but we'd made do. I found a thick cardboard box and we stomped out the bottom before taping it to the wall. Since Unique wasn't familiar with the full game, we had fun just trying to make baskets. I'd let Unique stand wherever she wanted and if she got a basket, I had to do some ridiculous stance in order to even the odds. I was still winning, though, I might add.
"Why didn't you do this instead of joining the Games?" Unique asked. She flinched a little after, worrying she might have been a bit forward.
"No, no, it's true," I said. "I should have. Or at least, I should have if I could have. There are sixty members on Panem's All-Stars roster. Sixty members, from everywhere in the nation. Really, sixty members from the Capitol. Drafts only happen every few years and almost all of them go to Capitolites. The year I volunteered, there were two Districters on the roster. Two people, out of everyone in the Districts. I was good, but I wasn't that good."
"That sucks," Unique said honestly. There really was nothing else to say.
"I should have found a way," I said, my thoughts drifting back to those old days. I heard the ball bouncing on the shiny wooden floor, the squeaking of my shoes echoing off the wall as I pivoted around someone trying to steal it. "I could have taken some random job to pay the bills and put together an amateur league. Shoot, I could have been a gym teacher and coached the little kids. But you can't go back, can you? You can only make the best out the decisions you've already made."
I turned and threw the ball at the doorway before I'd even fully registered the movement. Chrome's head bounced backwards as the ball smacked into her face. I had to smile a bit at how silly she looked and at the chirping noise she made. Then Jessie and Artemis filed in alongside her and I realized just how screwed we were.
It's over, then. But not quite yet. I launched myself past Unique and at a rack full of weights. I picked up the heaviest and chucked it at the three of them like a discus. I was aiming for center mass, but the weight was a bit heavier than I expected. It arced down and hit Artemis in the knee. Her leg buckled a little and she had to lean against the wall to stay upright. Chrome and Jessie shot around her at me, blood trickling from Chrome's nose. They maneuvered around me as I brandished my spear at both of them. It was a lost cause, but I loved life too much to let it go just like that. Jessie grabbed the shaft of the spear and Chrome threw a series of punches at my face to ensure I couldn't wrestle my spear free.
As the two of them threw me to the floor, I heard Unique screaming as she struggled. The room was too small for her to be able to aim an arrow before Joseph and Tuesday reached her. A broken-off arrow stuck out of Joseph's upper arm as he pinned her down for Tuesday to spear. Behind them, Artemis watched uncertainly to see if anyone needed her help.
Good game, I thought in a final farewell to Unique. Just to remind you, I was totally winning.
Unique Dior- Res D1F
We hadn't said it, but Priscilla and I had known how this would end. I'd died enough times to know when the writing was on the wall. It was nice it had happened after we'd found each other, though. Maybe next time, when I was back with Daisy and Mahi, Priscilla might want to come with us. We were still weren't twelve, but we'd play with all our hearts.
Gaius McClellan- Swing Vote D12M
My chest was tight as we came down the last stretch of hallway to Zibby's lab. I might have been worried, but I knew it wasn't from the paralysis creeping across my body. It was Theo. We'd known going in that this mission was dangerous. I'd tried to tell them I could do it on my own, but they wouldn't listen. I couldn't explain to them that sometimes dying for someone is the easier role. I couldn't explain the helpless, caustic pain of being the one someone died for. I hadn't asked that of them. It was their choice and I respected it, but I wished they knew how hard it was for me to live with.
It wasn't hard to identify the giant round door jutting out nearly a foot from the hallway. The warning symbols dotted around it gave the air of a circle of runes marking out some dark portal. It must have been an eerie presence for anyone who worked on that floor.
"Hey! Zibby!"Todd yelled. There was an unusual edge to his normally jovial voice. If I had to guess, I'd say he was letting out some feelings he didn't want to talk about. He pounded on the door a few times, then knelt to yell into the crack under the door. "Zibby!"
A little sheet of paper torn from a pad slid under the door.
What is the molecular density of Ag2Cu3K?
"What?!" Todd yelled as he read the paper. "What?!" He kicked the door again. "That is bogus! BO-GUS! We went through hell getting here! Theo is dead!"
The door handle turned. The door creaked open. Zibby stood in the doorway, smiling.
"Just kidding," she said. "Come on in. Where's the patient?"
Max supported me as I limped in. Todd stood outside for a second, taking a few breaths, and then followed. Inside, the room was filled with shelves and tables of various boxes and bottles. Scribbled-on sheets of paper covered the walls. I leaned against the first table I reached.
"Let's see what we have here," Zibby said. She poked me sharply in the calf. "Still feel that?"
"Ow. Yes," I said. Behind us, Max shut the door.
"How about this? This? This?" Zibby poked me all over, leaving no spot unmolested.
"Won't that make him worse?" Maxson cautiously asked.
She laughed. "No, you have to actually damage the tissue. Like that." She pointed at my bruised knee under the pants leg she'd rolled up.
"Can you fix it?" Max asked. He hadn't left my side since we reached the lab. While Todd was bent over a table in the far corner of the lab, enduring his pain on his own, Max seemed to have latched onto me as a way to push out thoughts of Theo. As for me, I was once again left as a semi-animate object for others to act upon. I had never in my life more wanted to punch a wall, but doing that, of course, would just leave me with a petrified hand.
"I think so," she said easily. "It's gonna take some experimenting, but, well, I can't make it worse, can I?" She seemed to remember something. She looked at Max. "Oh. First, I need you and Todd to come out with me into the hallway for a minute. I need some dehumidifier solution for one of the tests. There should be some in the ceiling near the interior fans. I couldn't get it earlier since it wasn't safe for me to leave the lab alone."
"Yeah, no problem," Max said. He waved at Todd to follow him. As Todd went past me, he stopped. He looked at me with teary eyes and took my hand.
"We're gonna get you through this, okay?" he said, his voice thick. "We're not going to lose another one."
Zibby Spooly- A Night to Remember D9F
I climbed up on the step-stool and moved a ceiling tile aside. With a little boost from Maxson and Todd, I clambered up into the ceiling. As I'd guessed, there was enough room to crawl around. Normal buildings didn't have nice roomy ceiling compartments, but this was an arena, and the Gamemakers lived for drama. The lovely thing about the hazardous materials lab being on the top floor was that that was where the main air purifier would be, too. I found an air pipe and started following it home.
It took longer than I'd expected to find the central air purification system. Max and Todd might have worried I'd ditched them if they hadn't know how fascinated I was with Gaius' case. He wasn't the only experiment I had going on, though.
At last, a humming noise told me I was close. I crawled forward until I saw the metal apparatus stretching from the bottom to the top of the ceiling compartment, one pipe going in and one pipe going out. You might say it was the arena's heart- bad air came in to be recharged, and good air left to fill the entire building. I took a screwdriver from my pocket and got to work on the outgoing pipe. When it was loose, I lay by the open pipe, ignoring the alarms going off. I reached into my pocket and took out a little vial half as long as my pinkie finger.
There were so many wonderful airborne illnesses. It was so hard to pick I'd thought about adding more than one. That would have contaminated the findings, though, so in the end I settled on just one. Bacterial meningitis might well have been the real-world angel of death. There was no warning. The symptom was nothing but a headache. Then, all at once, you died. Without treatment, the fatality rate was 100%. Your brain swelled, and swelled, and then that delicate material pressed against the very skull that was made to protect it. My only regret, as I laid the opened vial in the pipe and sealed it back in, was that I wouldn't be able to see the effects firsthand. But then, maybe one of my visitors would run afoul of it. I'd vaccinated myself, of course, and I'd be vaccinating Gaius too, though I'd tell him the injection was for something else. For Maxson and Todd, though, we would see if the odds were in their favor.
40th place: Unique Dior- speared by Tuesday
I put Unique as dying first since she's mine so I'll give Priscilla the better placement. Unique was made to be Daisy's friend. This time she lasted longer than her allies and we got to see a bit of her on her own. Hopefully next time the gang will be back together and will maybe even add some new members.
39th place: Priscilla Piscot- Stabbed by Chrome
Priscilla is always a favorite. People like her easy outlook on life and her resilience. She sees through the system a lot better than most Tributes, belying her simple-seeming personality. She might not win, but she's here for the long haul. Hopefully next time she'll get to play hoops once more.