Author Games: Age of Rebellion

Semi Finals - The Crescendo - Auriel DeFarro

For the first time in forever, I'm actually alone.

Everyone else is downstairs asleep, preparing themselves for the attack on the President and the Gamemakers. I had tried, but no matter what I did sleep wouldn't come. All I was doing was lying on the couch awkwardly with my eyes wide open, gazing into the setting sun through the cracked windowpane. It hadn't been long before I had gotten up and climbed out to the elegant steel fire escape, climbing to the roof to see the sunset from a different perspective.

The view from up here is much better then the glimpse of sky I got from overtop the building across from us. In the pale orange light I can see much of the Capitol, even in its tattered and broken state still beautiful. Lines of dark grey smoke shoot upwards into the orange sky,  scattered all across my view. Smoke lines and skyscrapers make for a very interesting horizon, though they're slowly disappearing as night looms closer. No matter what, everything will fade into darkness someday. You can't outrun it, it's always right there.

Always.

I've tried to run from the darkness for so long. For my first sixteen years, it was easy. Then I made a mistake that night with Eryn, and all the sudden it was at my doorstep. Fighting, the rebellion, they were all ways of keeping the darkness out of my mind. Now however I stand alone, the youngest member left of this so called army. Everyone I care about is dead. I've signed our last hope up for a suicide mission. It's all my fault, and no matter what I do that fact will not change.

Rising to my feet I approach the edge of the building, staring straight into the darkness ahead of me. Most nights the Capitol would be alive with colourful lights and many exciting parties, but since the rebellion started once night arrived all there is has been bleak darkness. A once happy place has been ripped from its hinges and thrown off a cliff, taking the very fibre of what it's known for and taking it away. The damage I've caused here is irreparable, no matter how hard people will try. There will always be scars or casualties, lives ruined because of me.

That's why when I step off the edge of the building, I'm not thinking twice.

For a millisecond or two I'm flying through the air, letting all my worries go. It's not long until the fire escape interrupts my fall however, leaving me with nothing but a slightly sore foot from the impact. I can barely see the ground below me, but I know enough that if I had chosen a different location to jump I wouldn't be walking away.

I sit down cross legged on the steel of the fire escape, letting my thoughts run through my head like a giant stampede. I have no idea what I was just thinking. The darkness had been so close to consuming me, controlling my every move. I had actually just tried to kill myself, which would have cost us a soldier. One less person to fight against the President, once less person to defend the others. We're so close, yet I just tried to give up my only shot at firing a bullet into one of those gamemaker's heads.

The fact that I would feel guilty for trying to kill people who every year kill almost thirty children is almost comical.

Just imagining how close we are lights a burning feeling inside of me, an odd mix of how I felt the day I signed up for the Rebellion and the day they cut out my tongue. Excited and angry. Hopeful and seeking revenge. The darkness is being chased away by a blazing inferno, that nobody can stop. All at once my mind starts racing, a plan forming in my mind. The Capitol's lost its colour recently, and as my mind seems to fill my head with words and images from our time attacking the Capitol I know exactly what I'm going to do.

I rise to my feet in an instant and bold down the stairs of the fire escape, my eyes quickly using what light's left from the setting sun to plan out my idea. It's disappearing fast however, but being under the cover of darkness doesn't intimidate me. It gives me an odd rush of adrenaline, just thinking about it. How well it'll work, I don't know. It's worth a shot.