PLATINUM • THE HUNGER GAMES ²

| 27. MISERY'S END

BOOK TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

( MISERY'S END )

ABSENTMINDED, my feet stuttered around the feeling of weightlessness as I began to worry endlessly into the sharpness of light cascading into my eyes as they peeled open. The temples of my head throbbed continuously; bile rose up and down my throat, taunting the urge to release the poisonous taste in upon my lips.

          My thoughts found themselves wandering desperately around the hallowed room, the sight of pristine white and clinical ornaments clogging up my view. Etchings in my memory recalled those colours that of the Capitol — rich in a pale, lifeless glean.  Yet stories of death and the reapings of existence played out beneath its outward shine, the paint screaming that what I lay in held no remanents of life and prosperity. Apart from a lifeless hum and the echoings of my breath, nothing could be heard. Windows presented no escape for my tired eyes to gather a sense of where I was. There remained a further depletion of convenient holes in the wall for me to peer through at my wish. Slouching back against the chilled bed was my only option, drained and unmoving.

          Perhaps this is what death felt like? After all, I should have been dead. I should have died the day I rose from the ground, a phoenix void of all healing feathers.

          Clinging onto the very sense of hope that kept me alive, my hands tackled against the restraints beside me. The prayer in brute force seethed through clenched fists, pushing, pulling, doing whatever was necessary to set me free from the embargo of movement surrounding me. If this was living, then I intended to scale whatever challenge living threw my way. If the Capitol demanded more of Silver Quinn from District Ten, then this certainly wouldn't be my last bow.  If I still had blood surging into my arms, fighting against the coarse strap which held me down, then I could not give up just yet. This was not the end of me... This was not the end of all the thing I still have left to fulfil.

          Another jolt to my wrists and the pain grew near ten-fold. The movement worked away at the skin that battered my restraints; first, it turned purple — bruised beyond belief; then the unmistakable haze of pink... red... deep crimson. What was once blunt became sharp, the metal clasps forcing it down, struggling to regain a grasp of both me and the bed. Even writhing and tossing my abdomen alone in the blank box of a room pushed aside isolation and ran it into a rage: pure, undiluted, fierce in all its passion. The back of my neck ached; it felt as if someone had wrapped their hands around it and squeezed as hard as they could.

          This couldn't be my end. This couldn't be my undoing.

          Just as hands receive one more sting, the metallic hum shattered — crescendoing into a cruel sound of scratching. Above flickers blue, white, grey, black one right after the other. Something torturous and futile praying on my eyes, lamenting in every possible way in the sight of a hologram desperately attempting communication, yet failing in every way possible. Damned be the consequences — the Capitol was trying to reach inside the room they locked themselves. For a brief moment, it seemed like someone else was trying to reach me too.