Author's Note

I do not own the Hunger Games.

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Emeria Delilah Echavoque, 15

By morning, Luminita was considerably less calm than she'd been the evening before. Her eyes were wild and Thorin had taken her knife away.

"Give it back!" she shrieked, bashing a hand against his chest.

"Clearly washing her down didn't work quick enough," he said.

"What do we do?" asked Marcellina.

"Stay away from her. She might infect you too," Thorin explained.

"Can anyone else smell burning?" asked Zephyr.

Emeria cast him a frustrated look. "No!"

He flinched and shied away. "Sorry."

Luminita laughed, but it didn't sound like her, her voice sharp and strange.

"Is she safe to be around?" asked Emeria.

"Not for you," grunted Thorin.

"Then what do we do? Do we leave her?"

Leaving her felt cruel. But staying with her could mean death. Emeria wavered and wished Silverie was here to give the blunt answers to the hard questions.

Zephyr covered his mouth with his hand. "Seriously, you guys can't smell burning?"

Emeria groaned. "Seriously, Zephyr, we've got bigger problems!"

Zephyr nodded and turned away as he collapsed into a coughing fit. Emeria edged closer to Thorin and Luminita, though she dared not get too close. "I hate suggesting it…"

"Then don't!" Luminita's eyes were wild and cruel. "You don't have the guts, none of you do!"

Thorin gritted his teeth. "You want to bet your life on that?"

Emeria shook her head. "No– No, she's right. Please don't. It's just the drugs talking. That doesn't mean she deserves to die."

Zephyr's coughing was loud behind her.

"Maybe we can just… shut her in one of the mausoleums or something," Emeria suggested weakly. It felt cruel and she hated herself for suggesting it, but what else could be done? Luminita was a danger to the rest of them – with the exception of Thorin, apparently.

"But if only one of us can win–" Marcellina said.

Emeria sighed. "Marcellina, we don't know for sure that any of us are going to be allowed to win."

"Wasn't the plan," Thorin muttered.

Which meant it wouldn't matter if they let Luminita live or die. Killing her would be nothing but more blood on their hands.

Zephyr doubled over, gasping and spluttering. Emeria flung her hands up. "Not that I care, but are you doing as well or what?"

Zephyr raised his head to look at her–

Black smoke poured from his mouth and eyes–

A bang, like something exploded–

And then he was gone.

Andreas Amandiel, 18

Good news: after all his whispers and nudges the day before, his newly found alliance looked wary this morning.

Bad news: they were looking warily at him.

"Have I got dirt on my face?" he asked.

Iridescence huffed. "Maybe you should check with everyone first to see if anyone else put some there."

If she was going to insult him, she could at least go with something that made sense. Andreas smiled and shook his head. "I think perhaps we got off on the wrong foot, and we're all tired–"

A cannon boomed across the arena. Their alliance jumped and scrambled to regather, grabbing their weapons.

It all came to naught, as the glade around them was silent.

"We should get moving if we want to lay more traps," Luminescence said.

"Before we do that, can I ask what the point of the traps is?" Andreas asked.

Ares groaned and rolled his eyes. "To do some damage to those three remaining District kids."

Andreas sighed. They still simply weren't getting it. This was what he got for thinking the kind of person that would play a game like this for fun might understand.

"Yes, but why? Surely you must understand whoever hijacked this Game could kill us at any moment by electrifying our pods. What use is lashing out against the District kids going to do? All it will do is make us as barbaric as them."

"Do you hear yourself talking?" Luminescence asked.

"What?"

"We are all going to die." He held his arms out, indicating their alliance one at a time. "Every single one of us. We're all going to be electricuted to death in our pods, and you want us to do…" He flung his arms up. "I don't even know what because pulling a few tricks to make ourselves feel better before we die makes us as bad as the people murdering us. Apparently." He raised his eyebrows. "Am I misunderstanding anything?"

"You're looking at this all wrong–"

Though what else could he expect from this kind of person? Of course he would look at this from which a simple, violent perspective.

"It's about more than just us," he explained.

"I don't care who or what you think it's about," Iridescence said suddenly. "I'm in too much pain to be fucked with this shit. I'm gonna go have some fun now, yeah?"

Andreas made sure his anger and frustration didn't show, hid it all behind his usual mask, but the irritation was there inside him.

Outlooks like hers were the reason the Capital was struggling to progress. But she was so selfish she couldn't even let her death be for some bigger cause.

And there were only eleven of them left now.

Iridescence Sterling, 17

She kept an eye on Andreas. He might have decided to stay with the alliance, but that didn't mean she had to trust him. They all knew full well what he'd been trying to do. And on the one hand, that made her uneasy, but on the other…

They were all going to die anyway.

That was the crux of the matter.

Because Andreas was right.

Nothing they did, whether they fought or sang a song or cooperated or fucking killed each other mattered, because the hijackers controlled everything and she suspected the hijackers would only allow for one of their own District competitors to win.

"It wouldn't change anything, would it?" she said flatly.

Luminescence stopped to look at her. "What?"

"If we just… If we all…"

Ares turned to her, his face steadily losing its colour. "Iridescence. No."

"I'm just saying. None of us are getting out of here alive." She met his gaze, and for the first time since entering this accursed arena, she felt strong. "Maybe I'd like to go out on my own terms."

"That doesn't mean we should… give up," Ares said.

"Yeah, what happened to causing them trouble before we went down?" asked Etheria.

"It probably would cause them enough trouble. We'd be refusing to play this sick game. They won't have anything to point at and make a demonstration of. And we'd be going down on our own terms."

Because when they'd fought, it had always been on their terms. When they'd met in real life, it was on their terms.

If she was going to die…

Ares looked down at the rope in his hands. "Let's set these traps first. Then… if we want to… discuss… that."

That being the five – or possibly only four, if Andreas didn't agree – of them killing each other.

Going out on their own terms.

By their own hands.

"Maybe we should think about it," Andreas said.

Ares scowled at him and drew Iridescence away. "Fuck off."

She grinned. She had come to like this boy. "Let's get down to business then. But we'll talk about killing each other later."

Zephyr Almon, 13

Smoke filled his lungs, choking the air from him. Zephyr lurched forward in the dark, only succeeding in slamming his head against something hard and unforgiving. He yelled at the pain and reeled back, crashing against something else beyond him. An awful heat pressed in around him. He coughed and spluttered, wrenching on whatever was holding his hands. It rubbed against his skin, burning it.

"Help," he mumbled, but none came.

None would come.

One had to look after themselves in the arena.

He wrenched his hands upwards, yanking them free and taking a good chunk of burned skin with them. He brought his hands up and found smooth plastic and glass covering his head. He wondered if that was what was filling with smoke. Though how he'd got here…

How had he got here, Zephyr wondered?

His fingers found a latch on the strange hat. It clicked as he pressed it and the hat swung up from his head. Not that that helped, because he found himself in a confined space with less than two feet of room to move and filled with thick black smoke.

Coughing, Zephyr reached around the little room, banging his hands on the sides. He found a lever to his side and pushed it down. The boots and gloves made a strange clicking noise. Some kind of comprehension began to dawn over him. He wrenched the lever up, and the wall before him swung open – a door. Zephyr fell out onto the cold floor of the pod hall.

There was no clean air immediately, his pod was still billowing smoke. Beside it, Celeste's pod was a twisted mess of warped metal, as though some great hand had squeezed it until it broke. She couldn't have survived that. She must have burned herself out doing… whatever it was she did.

Zephyr struggled to scramble to his feet, groaning at the pain that roared through his burned feet and ankles.

He glanced around, trembling. The smoke filled his lungs. He coughed until his ribs hurt, but it didn't help.

A tall figure appeared at the end of the aisle of pods. A boy, dark haired – and Zephyr recognised him. The District boy he'd killed in the arena.

The District boy must have recognised him, too, because his expression turned angry. "You–"

Zephyr scrambled to his feet and ran.

Author's Note

For the sake of ease, players will keep whatever placement they would have had if they died at that point if they leave the arena alive. So in-Game, Zephyr placed twelfth.