Author's Note

I do not own the Hunger Games.

Vivaldi Perlman, 16

Vivaldi finally had some level of hope at last.

He could have everything he wanted, Thorin and his life, Phoenix and this adventure, a memory of thrill to add to his art and music–

And then the lights went out again.

It felt like all the air had been sucked from the room. Vivaldi was left gasping, clutching Thorin's hand on his right and Phoenix on his left.

"Hey!" shouted someone.

"Not again!" yelled one of the adults.

"Who keeps turning out the lights?" demanded a third voice.

"This way," whispered Thorin, turning him round and guiding him to the other end of the aisle. Phoenix's hands felt warm against Vivaldi's skin.

But they had hope, now.

They could get out of here.

They could live.

Because Vivaldi had learned that he wanted to live. He wasn't quite sure what he'd been proving to himself in the past, but what he knew now was that he wanted to live. With Thorin at his side. They could have a happy life. And Phoenix would fit in… somehow.

A sharp pain cutting across his side snapped him from those thoughts. He yelled and his bad leg buckled, sending him crashing into Phoenix. She managed to catch him, backing up against the pods behind her so neither of them fell.

"Are you alright?" she asked, her voice sharp with fear and concern.

"I… don't know." Vivaldi patted at his side. His hand came away wet and sticky. "I think I've been shot."

Thorin clasped him around the waist with strong hands and began to pat him down. "It only clipped you. It won't kill you yet. Come on, quickly."

Vivaldi wanted to protest that his broken ankle made 'hurrying' very difficult, but Thorin was already pulling him onwards. Phoenix scuttled ahead, and they almost bumped into her when they reached her. "The Emergency Exit is there. But there's a guard."

Thorin's voice was grim as he answered, "Then we deal with a guard."

Iridescence Sterling, 17

The girl – Marcellina, as she introduced herself – was heavier than Iridescence had anticipated. She wondered if this was what she'd put Ares through in the arena, and not for the first time, considered how much easier everything would have been on him to just let her die.

But he'd saved her in spite of their animosity.

And now they would save this girl.

Stranger or not, Iridescence didn't want to see anyone else die because she'd seen enough people die. The boy in the bloodbath. Wonder. Celeste. Phoenix. Luminescence. She'd watched their life drain from them.

She didn't want to see anyone else face away that way.

So they carried Marcellina between them, dragging her towards where they remembered the Emergency Exit being. Iridescence was still trembling, but she had to do this.

It gave her something to focus on, so she wouldn't keep seeing–

No.

Mustn't think of him, of them, not right now. She had to save Ares, and Marcellina, and then there would be time to think about her brothers and her poor baby sister, who hadn't deserved any of this.

Liquid hit her face.

For a half-moment, she thought another of them might have been shot like Luminescence and their blood was on her face too now and they were all three going to die–

But the water continued, a veritable onslaught from above, as though it were raining inside. Shrieks and yells of protests went up from around the room.

"The sprinklers," she said, forcing her brain to work despite the pain and fog still filling her. "Someone's turned the sprinklers on."

Ares laughed. "Nice. I'll shake their hand."

They should have thought of that. Might have done, if Iridescence knew where the controls for the sprinkler system was. But then she doubted there was a button for it – so had something about the guns set it off?

She picked up her pace and pulled Marcellina a little faster. She whimpered, strange, broken sounds tearing their way from her throat. Ares, too, stumbled, pulled by Marcellina's weight.

"What is it?" he hissed.

"There isn't a button for sprinklers. Something must be burning."

And honestly, Iridescence wasn't sure how good the drainage in this hall was. She hoped there were no surviving players still trapped in their pods.

"Oh. Good point," he mumbled.

Iridescence swiped a strand of wet hair away from her eyes and blinked water from them. More water sloshed around her feet. She shifted Marcellina's weight against her shoulder. "Ares?"

"Mm?"

"Tell me… something positive."

He reached over with his free hand to take her wrist and squeeze it. "We're not in the arena any more. That puts us one step closer to freedom." He shifted and flung his arm out in front of them. "Wait."

They'd reached the end of the aisle, Iridescence realised. Before she'd thought to pay attention. Ares crept forward and peered around the end of the pods. "There's a guard."

Iridescence forced herself to breathe. "Only one?"

"Yes."

"Then we handle them."

Thorin Marcoussis, 17

There were people in the next aisle over from them. Thorin had heard them shrieking and complaining about the sprinklers, as was everyone else in the hall, and could now see one of them trying to peer around the pod at the end of his aisle.

He unholstered his gun and tested the weight in his hands.

"You're… going to shoot them?" Vivaldi asked.

"It's them or us," Thorin replied.

And he would choose Vivaldi, every single time.

Thorin had once been told, first by the Lieutenants that came across him and later by the Captain that raised and trained him, that the Capital could have stopped everything that had gone wrong in his life. They could have saved his fathers. They could have improved the quality of life in Eleven. They could have protected the children there living in the orphanage.

They could have done something.

They hadn't done anything.

They'd let his fathers die, let the children suffer, done nothing as those in Eleven starved.

But living in the Capital had proven that wasn't entirely true. There were class differences here as well. Sure, a good half of them lived in luxury, but the other half spent their time funding and supporting that lifestyle. Vivaldi was part of the first half, but he was also kind and gentle and sweet, and this girl Phoenix was as fierce as any District girl Thorin had met, not at all the kind of spoiled brat that Thorin had been told Capital children were.

They were people, children. Just like him.

Thorin raised the gun, trained it on the guard's chest, and pulled the trigger.

He couldn't see the blood in the dark, but he did see the guard stagger backwards and their own gun fall from their hand. The body fell to the ground.

"Let's go!" Thorin called, holstering his gun at his belt and yanking Vivaldi towards the Emergency Exit door. Vivaldi pushed Phoenix in front of them.

A large yellow sign was hung on the Emergency Exit, indicating where the push bar to open it was. Thorin shoved it open and the three of them tumbled through.

The first thing he noticed was that the sprinklers weren't running in here. There was still water on the floor, but it was seeping in from the pod hall, not raining above. Thin strips of orange emergency lights ran along the corners of the corridor, leading them onwards.

"Where does this go?" Vivaldi asked after a moment of Thorin pulling him down the corridor.

"Alleyway outside The Game Centre."

"It goes straight outside?" Phoenix asked.

Thorin shrugged. "It is an Emergency Exit."

They continued down the the corridor, their footsteps echoing around them. Thorin expected to be stopped at any moment, and it was occurring to him now that Captain Storm could have put a guard on the outside exit, but they had to keep going–

They could decide on the next step when they reached the end of this one.