Content warning: VERY dark thoughts in Robbie's POV. Skip to the end if you need to see who dies.

Robbie Emmers- District Nine male (18)

I thought things could be good in the world. I knew life wasn't always fair and that bad things happened to good people, but I thought there could be good in the world. People could help each other. We could work together to help us all have better lives. Only a few hours ago I'd thought that. It felt like a different person now.

Based on the sun, I guessed it was a few hours after noon. The Bloodbath had been just before the sun was at its highest. The Careers must have picked the opposite direction as I had, since I hadn't been running. I'd been shambling. I'd stood up and started to walk, my body hoping that doing something would drag my mind back from where it was almost sleeping. It was like I'd thought I could walk right out of what had happened.

I knew now why I'd picked the playhouse. It had taken me until just now to reach the top. I'd climbed up the ladder, hauling myself up each chest-high rung until my arms burned. It would have been faster to crawl up the slide. I guess I was scared of how enclosed it was. On the top of the wooden sides of the upper fort portion, hidden under the sloped canvas roof, I could dangle my legs over the side and look out over the Arena. It looked so peaceful. I couldn't even see the Cornucopia can. It was hidden by the shimmering grass.

There was no good in the world. That wasn't it, though. There was good in the world, but the bad was bigger. That was why the Games were here, why Panem was what it was, why the tiny headstones and lamb statues across the Districts could fill a graveyard all their own. Josie lay cold on a slab somewhere, an undertaker cutting open the chest that hadn't even grown breasts yet. Beetee had been through hell and back and all his genius and riches couldn't save his son. The rest of us were going to die, too. One of the Careers would win and the rest of us would die. Octavia had a baby, I remembered. She would die and her baby would never know the woman who prayed so hard she would get through this. Those two boys, the rambunctious one from Six and the quiet one from Five, who seemed to never part from the moment they left- one would watch the other die before he followed. Whoever won would either hate it or not deserve it.

I wished it was night. I dreaded it. I wanted it to be dark so all of this was hidden. I wanted to go to sleep so I wouldn't be thinking. I never wanted to sleep again because I knew there would be nightmares. I wanted time to stop. I wanted the world to freeze and nothing to ever be again. I knew now why I chose the playhouse. It was a long way down.

For the life of me- for the literal life of me- I couldn't see why I shouldn't. I couldn't see why I would want to be in this world. Either another one or nothing at all- either was better than this. Maybe I'd come through on the other side and see all my little allies excited to show me what Heaven was like. If I saw nothing at all, nothing was lost. I couldn't imagine I'd go to Hell. I'd tried so hard to be there for them. But there wasn't good in the world. Maybe there wasn't justice either. Maybe even Heaven was only for the Capitolites.

My family was going to watch me die. I'd thought of that, too. As hard as I was pulling for my allies to make it, they were back home praying for me. I thought of my mother's face as she watched a spear cut through me. I thought of the sound my father would make if an arrow sprouted from my eye. I thought of my baby sisters screaming at the screen to warn me about the hunter I didn't see coming. They would be like me soon. They would know what I knew.

The sun scintillated in the blue sky above me. I looked at it, just far down enough that its light was bearable. It was still bad for me, I knew. I wouldn't live long enough for it to matter. I looked at the sun like I used to when I was a little boy. When it was low enough you could look at it without it hurting, I always thought it was beautiful how if you looked at it for a moment, it changed. Your eyes adjusted to its light and you saw how unlike anything else its color was. Beautiful bright yellow, so fundamental that the word for its shade was "sunny". Around its very edge there would be a white-blue line. It set the sun off from the sky around it. It seemed to run in circles around the yellow like it was backlit. It set the circle off so sharply I always thought it looked like a portal to another world. Just jump through, and what might be over there? A better world than this one.

I sat for hours looking down at the ground. A Tribute passed by once. I saw him wading through the grass. The cerulean sky went blue and then purple. My stomach started to complain. I sat and I looked and I did not jump. I wanted to. I could not say I didn't want to. But I didn't jump for my family. I wasn't going to live for them. I couldn't do that much. I could give them this, though. I would go on and I would pretend to try. When someone came for me I would fight. That was what I would do for them. When I died, they would think I'd had hope.

Taylor Treadle- District Eight female (15)

For a long time Amberlynn and I said nothing. We were trying to be quiet as we waded through the grass. By unspoken agreement we were heading toward the pond. No matter how dangerous, we needed water. At our size, the pond was the size of a soccer field. If the Careers did see us, we might have time to get away, especially if we ran in different directions. There was grass around the pond tall enough to hide in if we made it. I shuddered at the certainty that at some point, one of us would be crawling through that grass as one of the Careers hunted them. I wondered if they'd make it.

Amberlynn and I both looked sideways at a scream. There were more, then two voices, then a cannon, then another. That told us where the Careers were, then, and they weren't near us. It was a rather morbid reason to be relieved.

"So, what was that?" I asked, finally able to.

"What was what?" Amberlynn turned her head back from where she walked in front of me.

"You helped me." I didn't want to say the rest. Since we slowed to a walk I'd been turning it over in my head. Did she want me to be in her debt? Was she angling for sponsors? Was it just safety in numbers and she hadn't been able to woo an ally in the Capitol?

"He was gonna kill you," Amberlynn said.

"Yeah. That would have been good for you," I said.

Amberlynn slowed to walk beside me. It seemed less like she wanted to be closer to me than it did she was thinking hard and didn't notice her pace.

"I don't really know. I guess I didn't think," she said.

"That's what you do when you don't think?" It might have sounded snarkier than I meant. I'd just meant that I hadn't been thinking either, and all I could do was try to run.

Amberlynn's eyes went sad and old as she came to a conclusion. "I guess I still thought things could be okay," she said. "I didn't really believe this was real. But now I do." She shrugged sadly at the implication that she wouldn't do it again. I could hardly complain. Most people wouldn't do it once. It was something to carry with me, until my inevitable and rapidly approaching death, that someone thought I was worth a second shot.

I hadn't noticed how much ponds smelled. From our worm's-eye view, we were much closer to its fragrant elements. I could smell the peaty mud as we got closer, and then the pond scum and algae, and then the leavings of all the pond critters inside it. At least the Careers wouldn't catch us by our B.O.

"I wonder if we could catch a fish," Amberlynn said, her hands on her hips as she stood on the edge of the solid ground at the mud's edge. "Imagine me like 'it was thiiiiis big!' and you see the picture and I'm holding a minnow." I had to admire her resilience. I didn't think I'd be joking anytime soon. I just wondered how anyone understood her. Every sentence she'd spoken sounded like one word. There was a girl in my class who talked like that. She was crazy smart. I'd always thought she just thought so fast that the words all clamored over each other.

"I don't suppose you have any water purifiers," I said.

"I got-" she turned her pockets inside out to reveal nothing- "zilch."

"Yeah, me too." I kicked myself for not at least grabbing something on the way out. I'd panicked and I'd almost certainly devastated my chances.

"Well, guess things are about to get real shitty." I looked around at our assets. "We can at least make a filter with our shirts. Maybe cattail fluff will help. It won't make it worse, anyway."

"We can drink real fast and get it in faster than we can poop it out," Amberlynn suggested jokingly. Maybe she was one of those people who joked when they were scared or sad. If that was the case, the next few days were about to get funnier and funnier.

Lana Mason- District Six female (17)

There hadn't been any cannons since the two a few hours ago. It was foreboding. Every second I expected to hear the sound of someone else's death. Someone had to be going soon. Every second it wasn't someone else, I was afraid it was me.

Sunset came and there still weren't more cannons. A blaring artificial noise sounded suddenly, scaring me so badly I dropped my water bottle and had to fish it out of the shallow pond water, wincing at the splash. There had to be others at the pond with me. I thought I'd heard voices a few times. Probably outliers, then, which was reassuring. Most of us would probably just run if we saw each other.

The noise went on as I picked up my bottle, forming itself into music. I recognized the Anthem and looked up to see who had died. I didn't even know. I'd been so panicked and frenzied in the Bloodbath that I couldn't remember a single death. Maybe I hadn't seen any, or maybe I just hadn't processed them.

The very first face was Kendall. I stared at it, wondering if there was someone else who looked like him. Had the pack already broken up? That would explain the lack of more cannons. It seemed unlikely, but maybe that was it. They were all either patching up injuries or putting together their solo strategies. Even if that wasn't it, there wasn't much of a pack without Kendall. The rest of the Careers were either ambivalent or Reaped.

As the Anthem faded out I noticed how cold it had gotten. It wasn't freezing or anything, but it was a concern. I'd heard people could freeze to death in a lot warmer weather than people thought. It happened a lot in Six- morphling addicts would pass out in an alleyway and just fade away in the night. It was dark, too. My eyes had adjusted to the light of the pictures in the sky. When they disappeared, the sky looked empty for a minute. It was only by one faintly brighter spot that I could tell the moon was behind clouds. It would be hard for the Careers to find anyone like this. We had a night, then. We had eight or so hours of life. The morning would bring the cannons.

Something thunked down on the top of my head. I felt a burst of cold wetness. Oh my god. They got me. They shot me in the head and my brains are all over me. I put up a hand and held it in front of me face, wondering how I hadn't fallen yet. By the dim light, and by its smooth unsticky feeling, I put together that it wasn't brains.

Is it raining? I turned my face up to look. I barely saw the sky before a raindrop hit my face. It was like a water balloon thrown harder than a person could but not quite so hard it knocked out teeth. Water splashed everywhere as I first stumbled backwards and then wiped at my face. After I'd recovered from the surprise, my second thought was that rainwater was pure. The first was that rainwater was very cold.

I need shelter. A night outside in this Arena was dangerous. A night outside and wet in this Arena would kill me. I looked around and saw almost nothing but darkness. The best I could do was pick out a darker patch of darkness in the near distance and hope it was the bush I'd seen earlier. I picked my way across the ground, trying to be careful enough I didn't break my leg tripping on a twig but fast enough I wasn't entirely soaked.

The dry ground under the bush didn't feel any warmer than outside. I plucked off some leaves and tried to towel off. When I was as dry as I was going to get, I took some more leaves and made a nest of sorts. I didn't know much about survival but I thought I remembered that insulation was the key to staying warm. I huddled under my pole of leaves and shivered.

A crochet chirped nearby. I'd never heard one so loud. A split second later, my stomach twisted. It wasn't louder than normal. It was, proportionally, bigger than normal. Another cricket answered its call. Insects didn't like getting wet either. I lay motionless under my leaves. I knew I should look and see what the situation was. Truthfully, I just couldn't do it. I thought crickets ate plants but I still couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear to look out and see myself surrounded by dog-sized bugs. Were there ants out there? Cockroaches? God forbid something I didn't even want to say.

The leaves on top of me dipped suddenly. I froze at the weight of a leg on my stomach. They couldn't know I was here. They weren't that smart. Did they smell me? Did insects hunt by smell? Was it about to oh God break through the leaves and eat me alive?

The pressure of another leg bore down on my thigh. It didn't feel too big- maybe the bug was about the size of a raccoon? Then an involuntary whimper left me as more legs pressed and then released all up my body with speed that made it impossible to not visualize it. It had moved off of me. It hadn't just moved, though. It was unmistakably a skitter.

I'd almost forgotten how cold I was. The bug had done me a favor, actually. I'd been lying so still that my body heat had started to pool around me. I could feel my breath warming my face. I curled me stiff fingers up inside my sleeves and tried to just endure. The bone-leaching cold and the rustling of insects around me drowned out the soothing sound of rain hitting the bush and erased any chance of sleep, but at least I was alive. As time passed, my thoughts distilled to one.

Please no spiders. Please no spiders. Please no spiders. Please no spiders.

It was actually nobody! Like many authors, I avoid self-inflicted deaths since they're not fun to read about and are hard for some people, so why add them? These stories are supposed to be fun. I did decide to explore some darker themes than I usually do, but I didn't go all the way. So far everyone loves to fight another day, though they're very miserable and cold.