ELISSA DE ANGELO- Diamond Stark

A lot of Ones dying lately. I wondered if the Twos had banded together to hunt us down. I hadn't known Elissa, so there wasn't much to feel bad about. If I couldn't win then I wanted another One to, but until I was dead, I was rooting for myself.

EMMELINE BLYTHE- Zibby Spooley

I bet it worked. I'd probably never find out, but I bet it had worked.

CASTIEL WICKHAM- Joseph Carpenter

If he was really right about all this, then he was happy right now. I was starting to see his point about how it was hardly worth hurting other people to stay alive when what came after death was so much better anyway.

Cornflower Fields- District Ten mentor

I'd thought we might be the first ones out. Along with Eight, we had the fewest people, and we all thought Zibby would last a long time, if not win. Resurrection Games were always easier for me. I'd already had to watch all of these people die once. It was easier the second time around.

DISTRICT TEN

The more time went by, the less it hurt to lose people we'd already made peace with losing. The only one who kept suffering was Tillo, and she wasn't here with us. For the next few weeks, the Hunger Games portion of the cemetery would be festooned with flowers and streamers again. Then, slowly, we'd go back to our lives.

Fable Anders- A Night to Remember D1F

I've broken away. Meet me on the floor with the number of letters in the lightning dragon?- JC

A nostalgic smile spread across my face. In any other world it would have been ludicrous to be nostalgic for your own death, but a lot of things in my world didn't make sense. Jessie didn't have to worry about anyone else knowing how many letters were in the lightning dragon's name, since I was the one who had written that story. In the moments before Jessie and I were gunned down, I told her the story of the lightning dragon- Natja Leaper. The fifth floor it was, then.

I'd known she wouldn't leave me. It was horrible she'd lost Chrome, but now we were all we had. I gathered my things and almost ran for the stairwell. Even beside my joy at seeing Jessie again, it would behoove me to move quickly. There weren't many alliances left, but there were still a few, and it wasn't good to be alone. Wow, imagine if I die on the way. Wouldn't that be messed up?

The stairs seemed so much smaller than I remembered. I almost bounced up them, not even feeling the burn in my thighs. I forced myself to pause at the top of the stairwell, checking under the crack in the door to see if anyone might be lurking around. Then I had to crack the door open and poke my sword through to hopefully attract fire from anyone who might have set up a sniping post. It wasn't a foolproof method, since all the other Careers were also trained to do that and therefore knew to look for it, but it helped.

The first thing I noticed about the fifth floor was that all the doors had been welded shut. Or at least all the ones I've seen, I corrected myself. It was entirely possible that whoever was welding the doors- a Career, no doubt- was still on the same floor with me. At least they seemed to be ahead of me, though. Hopefully they were ahead of Jessie, too, if they were here.

The thing about all the doors being welded was that it was a lot easier to find Jessie. As I was walking down a hall, I came to an alcove set into a wall and there she was, leaned against a window. She stood upright and threw up her arms as I leaned forward and clapped my hands to my knees with glee. We both opened our mouths to squeal, then both stopped ourselves at the same moment, looking down the hall for whoever might be with us with comical synchronicity. We both stifled giggles at it as we squeezed each other in a hug.

"You made it!" Jessie managed to shout even though she was careful to say it quietly.

"Of course!" I shout-whispered back, my fingers lace in hers.

We sat in the alcove for a few minutes, just catching up and talking about silly things. We'd talk strategy eventually, but for the moment it was just enough to be together. We'd been through so much, both before this Games and now. Jessie had lost her sister- an elephant in the room it wasn't the right time to address, but for which she'd need support eventually. We'd been forced apart, too, but somehow that didn't seem important. I knew she hadn't wanted me to leave and she knew I'd only left because it seemed like the easiest thing for her. Never again, though. There was nothing that would split us up again as long as we lived, however long that might be.

It was like it wasn't even the Games anymore. Everything just seemed so much better, seeing her again. She had her happy face on- the one she'd been so nervous to show for such a long time. It looked so good on her, her gray eyes sparkling and her tan skin standing out against my paler fingers. I squeezed her hand tighter, just relishing how real she was against me. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was- that it was worth all I'd been through to find someone like her. I wanted it to last forever.

Elara Angelo- Over and Over D12F

"Hold on!"

I jerked awake at the sound. Maybe I was even more on edge after Malcolm, or maybe it was just that the voice was louder than the noises he'd made trying to free himself. There seemed to be some concern in the voice, though I thought I recognized the snooty tone of a One accent.

"What?" Two female Careers together, one with a One accent and one without? Fable and Jessie.

"There's something on it." My stomach sank. Jessie had noticed the glue on the door handle, probably by the slight glint of the light off it.

"Oh, ick, you're right," I heard Fable say. "It's probably poisonous or something." I heard one set of footsteps and then the door shook as one or the other of them fetched a piece of cloth and wrapped it around the handle.

A moment later, the door shook as they both started kicking it in. I had seconds to run through my options. With little time to think of anything else, I slathered my hand in solvent to keep myself from sticking and then started smearing glue on the floor around my bed.

I was still smoothing it down when the door flew open. I leaped upright to hide what I'd been doing before the door opened far enough for Fable and Jessie to come in. They saw me standing right there in the middle of the room and both charged. I backed further into the room, pretending I was so panicked I didn't know what to do. Fable's foot hit the glue and she pinwheeled her arms wildly as her foot stuck and the rest of her continued forward. I glanced down at Jessie's feet and saw that she was going to pass over the line without hitting it. Of course.

I darted sideways, throwing a glob of glue at Jessie's feet as she paused to check that Fable hadn't fallen. The glue hit the back of her calf and heel, smearing her but not sticking her to the floor. As I ran for the door, she threw a knife at me. At that distance, she couldn't miss, though she'd barely aimed. The knife hit me in the back of the knee and I stumbled, giving her the time she needed to catch up to me. She grabbed my arm and yanked me toward her as she stabbed me in the back. I felt the blade stick into my vital flesh and something in me just snapped.

You're gonna kill me? I reached into the pot of glue I still clutched to my chest. Then I'm going to make this hurt. I slapped my open hand directly into her face.

Fable Anders- A Night to Remember D1F

I pulled my foot from my shoe and turned around to see Jessie backing away from Elara, who slid to the floor and started crawling for the door. I was about to go after her when I saw Jessie's face. It was smeared with a thick layer of glue, which she'd raised a hand to wipe off. Her arm stopped suddenly, the glue holding it in place. She tried to pull her hand away and her eyes went wide. She grabbed her wrist with her other hand and started to thrash around as she unsuccessfully attempted to pull off the hand glued firmly over her sealed mouth and nose.

"Are you okay?" I asked dumbly, barely hearing myself saying it. Panicked whimpering noises bubbled out of Jessie as her eyes begged me for help. I could see her chest hitching as she tried and failed to breathe. She waved me away with her free hand as she struggled, afraid I would get stuck too.

She's suffocating. All at once I remembered what I'd been told so long ago, about how you're always three minutes from death and every breath resets the clock. We had to fix this now.

"Lie down and don't move!" I said. It wouldn't fix it, but if she stayed still, she'd burn less oxygen and have just a few more seconds. My eyes fell on the knife on the ground a few feet from Elara's stilling body. I can cut off her hand. Something even more immediate came to my mind. I grabbed another knife from my pocket. Even in the dire situation, I somehow had the presence of mind to be worried about blood-borne illness.

"Hold still!" I screamed. Jessie looked up at me from the floor with terrified eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I'm gonna make a hole!" Before I even finished the sentence, the knife was in Jessie's cheek. Her free fist clenched her pants leg as I punched the blade through and twisted it. It broke me up to see how much it hurt her, but she needed a big enough hole to breathe through. I pulled the blade free and saw the gross sight of blood bubbling through Jessie's teeth as she took in a breath. She shoved two fingers into the hole and spread it apart to get more air in. I sobbed with relief as I listened to the air whistling in and out.

Jessie sat up, starting to calm herself and regulate her breathing. She mumbled something, half the sounds obscured by her sealed lips. From the inflection and from the situation, I gathered what it was. "

"Thank you."

Gabriel Farad- Over and Over D5M

Some three or so weeks into the Games, something occurred to me that I might should have realized a long time ago. I was in a hospital. Hospitals were for sick or disabled people. Hospitals might, therefore, have some assistive devices lying around.

Computer, I signed at the screen. A familiar weird but convenient form popped up on the screen. The artificial human body was somewhere between male and female with ambiguously shaded skin. There was probably a way to customize it, but I didn't care enough, so a bizarre proto-human interface it was. I could have just typed my questions and gotten typed answers, but I'd been the arena a long time at this point, and I honestly liked the human interaction, even if it was with a weird generic AI human.

What can I help you with? The AI signed.

Does this hospital have assistive devices for hearing-impaired people? I signed.

I have many results for that. Is there a specific type you're looking for? The computer responded.

I thought for a minute. Maybe something that vibrates when it detects sound waves?

Yes! We have many such devices, most of which can be worn on the body. You would find them in the occupational therapy ward, located on the west side of the fifth floor.

Awesome! I signed, more to myself than to the computer.

Yes! Very awesome! The computer person signed back, smiling.

I rubbed my hands together at the thought of what invaluable things the hospital might have for anyone who would think to look for them. There must have been all sorts of crazy machines in here that did any manner of helpful things. Perhaps some of them could help even the playing field. Maybe some could even be weaponized?

What are some of the specialized machines in this hospital? As the AI person started to say that they had thousands of results, I tried to think of something more specific. Show me a tour of the hospital, describing some of the more interesting machines and what they do.

It was the most informative virtual field trip I'd ever had. Hospitals were meant to help people, of course, but if you really wanted to, there was a lot of horrible things you could do. An unshielded x-ray machine could melt someone's DNA right inside their body. AEDs could stop hearts as easily as start them. Plenty of medical devices were full of chemicals that were fatal in all but the very specific situations they were used for. It was honestly strange almost all the Threes were gone, since we were sitting in a technological armory.

Awkward double Fable POV since it kind of just fit this time.

25th place: Elara Angelo- stabbed by Jessie

I think Elara didn't get as much meat as she deserved. She stayed cool and lasted a long time like usual, but she didn't get as many cool introspective character moments as I would have liked. There's a lot to fit into this story and at least I managed to maintain her, even if I didn't really grow her. Her victims include Malcolm Royden and also Jessie Cabello's cheek, so she got that much at least. I'm sure she'll be back next time and maybe she'll get some more spotlight.