Author's Note

I do not own The Hunger Games.

Vivaldi Perlman, 16

Everything felt too loud as he stumbled across the pod hall. Every step went pain shooting through his injured ankle, and Vivaldi was sure it was broken. Better than breaking a hand, he thought. That would have prevented him making art or playing music.

A shout went up as he reached the lever and a tall figure appeared only a short way to his right. A man, dressed in black. Holding a gun.

That gun came up.

Vivaldi reached for the lever.

The gun aimed at him.

Vivaldi wrapped his fingers around the handle.

The lights went out.

Vivaldi moved by some strange instinct and threw himself forward, wrenching the lever down as he did so. There was a sharp crawl from the gun going off, but the shot missed him in the dark.

Vivaldi wasn't sure if his leg would hold him, but if he stayed here he'd be shot, so he turned back and staggered into the nearest row of pods. The screens on the outside of them were all flashing now to show the same red lightning bolt.

No power.

"Hey! Who turned out the lights?" shouted a man from somewhere.

"This little brat–" came another reply, another man, familiar sounding as though Vivaldi should know his voice.

Brat.

Little brat.

Phoenix.

He staggered down the pod aisle, crashing into them, blind in the dark – but this was a mistake, he realised now. Phoenix had been following the wall, that would have been the easiest way to did her – and whoever had grabbed her.

There was a series of bangs from somewhere to bits left, boom-boom boom-boom, the sound echoing through the hall. He swallowed his yell and jumped away, throwing gimbal against the pods on the opposite side of the aisle. A half-moment later there was a splitting crack and a bullet hit one of the pods across from him. Vivaldi suckled sideways, feeling for the gap between the pods where he and Phoenix had hidden before.

"Shoot them!" shouted a woman. Vivaldi wriggled inside the gap, but it felt smaller than the other one he'd used and his foot caught on something on the ground.

"But ma'am… surely that's murder?" asked a man.

"And what do you think they do to our children?"

Iridescence Sterling, 17

The burning pain was nearly as it had as it had been upon her entrance to the arena, bleeding over her skin and pounding inside her skull. She struggled to pull her shaking hands free of the gloves and all the whole saw the faces of those dead players in her mind.

They'd been electrocuted.

They'd been electrocuted inside their pods.

She was trembling and she hurt so much – and was that screaming her? – but she had to get out. She had to be free.

She found the clasp for her helmet, but even as she ripped it off something was hissing in front of her and she screamed, striking out at it.

"No– No, it's me, it's me!" Luminescence shouted as she ripped her helmet off.

She was met by more shadows; the pod hall was in darkness. Luminescence was a darker than dark shadow before her, his pale hair floating around his face like strands of mist.

"Get me out– Get me out–!" she spluttered, reaching down to wrench at the boots locking her legs into place.

Luminescence's hands felt around her left ankle to help with the release while she fumbled for the other.

"What's going on?" she whispered frantically as she pulled herself free. "Why's the hall dark? Where are the peacekeepers?"

Luminescence had no answer for her.

Zephyr Almon, 13

Echoing booms rang through the pod hall, impacting against the walls and ringing in Zephyr's ears.

He huddled behind the row of pods he'd managed to climb into, his heart hammering in his chest. The lights… he'd managed to do the lights thing.

Had he managed to do the lights thing, he wondered suddenly? Light switches existed, it could be a coincidence. He'd never been Celeste before now.

There's a storm coming, Zephyr.

He crawled to the next gap in the pods and pushed himself to his feet. Fear rushed through him. Carefully, he squeezed into the gap, shuffling along to get a viewpoint on the aisle beyond. A woman in black military gear charged past to the end of the aisle.

Zephyr closed his eyes, praying that she wouldn't see him. He wished he could be invisible, wished he could transport himself elsewhere, anywhere, so long as it was away from here.

Her footsteps echoed away down the aisle. Zephyr shifted and shuffled over to peer out from between the pods. His head spun. One of the pods opposite him clattered and banged. He startled slightly, his heart jumping to his throat. Someone must be alive in there. Trembling, he slipped out from between the pods and stumbled across the aisle.

It took him a moment of scanning the pods to figure out which one was rattling. Number Sixteen, said the mark on the front of it. Zephyr glanced either way up and down the aisle before stepping up to grasp the edge of the door. The seal was strong, but after a moment of him heaving against the metal, it opened with a hiss and burst of cold air.

Emeria was still mostly wired into her system, though she had managed to work one hand from its glove and lift the visor of her helmet. She lurched forward as she saw Zephyr, but the remaining wires stopped her moving too far. "You–"

He clamped his hand over her mouth. "Shh."

Her eyes went wide with anger and indignation. "There are people here that will shoot us. You can't make too much noise."

She huffed and used her free hand to shove him away. He only staggered a few steps before catching his balance and scuttling backwards to press himself against the pods and check the area again.

"Whose side are you on?" Emeria hissed, yanking her other hand free of the glove.

Zephyr shook his head. "Not here; not now! We need to get out of here!"

"You and that freak sister of yours–"

Her pod spat sparks. She yelped and stumbled from it, despite the fact one of her feet was still wired into it.

Zephyr scowled. "Don't call her a freak!"

"Sorcha was right; she was–"

Bang.

For a moment Zephyr thought the bullet might have missed them, but then Emeria screamed and stumbled back into the pod beside hers, her arm gushing blood. The woman at the end of the aisle raised her gun, fixing her aisle.

He didn't know what to do.

"Celeste, what do I do?" he whispered even as he raised his hand.

The woman pulled the trigger.

The gun exploded in her hands.

Shrapnel exploded across the aisle and the woman was screaming at the bloody mess that used to be her hands, but Zephyr was already moving, racing to grab Emeria's (good) arm and drag her down the aisle. "Go! We need to go!"

"Did you do that?" Emeria shouted.

Zephyr shook his head. "Celeste."

Andreas Amandiel, 18

Andreas was glad that the pods were all enclosed, giving him a moment of privacy as he gathered himself. It gave him a second to think, a minute to compose himself.

Right.

Think.

He was back in his pod.

He was outside The Game.

He was outside The Game.

Did that mean everything the hijackers had said had been a lie? That they'd wanted nothing more than to whip the players into a frenzy to give watchers of this particular Game a better show?

It would be the kind of thing some sadistic people might do.

It would be the kind of thing Andreas might do.

That was a possibility then.

Except…

Were those gunshots he could hear outside his pod?

Bang bang bang, echoing through the hall outside. Bang bang bang.

Definitely gunshots.

Andreas wondered who would be shooting if this was a false hijacking.

But if it was a real one…

It was almost certainly the very real hijackers shooting.

What choices did that leave him?

He could stay here in the pod. That would give him some safety from the gunshots, especially since whoever was out there probably wouldn't know which pods created a live player and which ones held a dead one. It was the perfect hiding place, really.

Except if he stayed in here, he'd have to stay on the seat, half wired in.

And he'd watched what had happened to others in this pod. All the hijackers would need to do would be to send out the signal to all the pods to electrocute the occupants, and suddenly his perfect hiding place would become a coffin.

Which meant he couldn't stay in here.

And he wasn't sure whether any of the other remaining players would be up for helping him by acting as a flesh shield. He would need to do this by himself.

He lifted his hands, bare, which felt odd, he was so used to his gloves, and worked some feeling back into his fingers before reaching down to free his feet from the boots.

Once he was unhooked from everything, he reached for the door. He would need to get out of here as quickly as he could once he opened his pod. Mentally, he mapped out the pod hall. He'd been in it before. The main entrance would be risky, but also the easiest door to get to. There was an emergency exit, but Andreas didn't know where it led, or if it was alarmed. No windows in here, so that was out.

Then he went for the main entrance, Andreas decided. He would have preferred a more long term plan, but there were too many variables.

With some difficulty, he pushed the door off his pod open. With nothing between him and the sound of gunshots, they were ear-shatteringly loud.

He stumbled into the cold air of the pod hall and quietly closed his pod behind him. Step one complete. Now he had to get to that door.

Phoenix Sterling, 13

Voices, so many voices. But she couldn't tell if any of them were her siblings. Or Vivaldi. What had happened to Vivaldi, she wondered. He was her friend, and she'd let him run off, injured and alone.

Torchbeams flashed around the room. Phoenix ducked away into the shadows, shielding herself behind a large wooden advertisement board.

The crack of gunshots echoed around the hall. Phoenix covered her ears with her hands. Bile rose in her throat.

"You!" shouted a girl's voice, dangerously close to her hiding place. "Traitor!"

"I'm not– I just think it's more complicated than what we were told!"

"They murder twenty three children a year and you think it's complicated?" spat the girl.

Phoenix shifted and crouched down, carefully peering under the wooden display. She couldn't see the girl, she was stood in front of the display with her back to it, but she could get a glimpse at the boy. He was lean, with slick hair and heavy eyeliner.

"Look. I just… They're children, Maiya, just like us. They don't deserve to die."

The girl laughed. "Of course they don't deserve to die. They're just repayment."

Phoenix's breath caught. She wondered if that was really how they saw them. Radiance, the Gilmore twins, Cormac, all the others that had died.

They were all just… money.

Reparations.

An eye for an eye, Radiance had once said about the Gilmores.

Phoenix rose to her feet again and grasped the wooden slats holding the display sign upright.

"Remember what we came here for, Enki," said the girl.

It was their fault Phoenix's brother was dead.

She flung herself forward, slamming her weight into the display and bringing it down on top of the girl. She shrieked. Phoenix scrambled over the top of the board and kicked her in the head. Her nose crunched under the blow. The boy she had been arguing with turned and fled across the pod hall, swinging his torch wildly. That left Phoenix in the darkness as she drove her foot into the girl's face again and again, screaming her pain and grief. The floor turned slick and slippery beneath her.

The girl stopped making noise.

Phoenix stumbled back, looking down at the girl. Her heart hammered in her chest.

"Phoenix!" Vivaldi shouted from somewhere.

"Phoenix!" came Luminescence's cry from elsewhere.

Phoenix.

She stumbled back against the wall, looking down at the girl as more people emerged from the neon shadows around her.

Marcellina Arnoult, 16

She fell from her pod and crashed to the cold floor as her body refused to work quite right. Around her, the pod hall was darker than anything Marcellina had ever imagined. She raised her head and squinted down the aisle. Shouting and gunshots were echoing through the pod hall, ringing out all around her. Fear and blue rose in Marcellina's throat. A beam of light flashed down the aisle, bouncing from the pods. Marcellina scuttled backwards, pressing her back to her pod.

"Got one," called a girl's voice, sharp and cruel. Someone somewhere else was screaming, as though their arm had been cut off.

A shadow appeared further down Marcellina's aisle, a gun in their hands.

"Stay away from me," Marcellina whispered, glancing around herself. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. And nothing to use as a weapon.

"Oh, and it's one of the troublemakers," said the girl, bringing the gun round to aim at her.

"Please," Marcellina whispered.

She should have listened to her dad.

She wondered if he'd get her body back in a bag.

"I've never done anything to you," she said.

"You've lived," she said.

"What?"

"Don't you think we might have liked to have a good life?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand. Can't we all just live in peace?"

"I'd love to!" screamed the girl, the gun shaking in her hands.

And then the lights turned on.

For a moment Marcellina saw white, blinded, but she used the moment to turn and bolt the other way, fleeing the girl with the gun. As she reached the end of the aisle, her eyes had adjusted and she could see others ahead, surrounding a display.

"Get back here!" demanded the girl behind her.

Marcellina ducked as she rounded the corner.

And the gun went off.