Author Games: Panemdemic

Xander McColl's Reunion

A boy with a conflicting personality who had played with both sides of the coin all his life, who had always been both the angel and the devil, should have been regarded as a threat...but since he got to the Capitol, he had been stripped of that.

The longer he spent in the arena, the less he felt like himself. He didn't feel like the boy who had once aided others with all the pain they felt. He didn't feel like the boy who was unafraid to beat someone up with a simple strike of his foot and fist. The habit of jumping between the opposites had all but died, giving him a clearer image painted with many shades of expectation and hues of the socially accepted stereotypes placed on twelve-year-old boys like him.

But he knew that in the end, whoever he was destined to be all came down to his actual state of being and living.

You're either alive, or you're dead.

Xander didn't quite notice Edelina coming in until he heard her cough from behind, and it wasn't just a normal cough. This one was so severe that it made Xander flinch as he turned to see her, shocked at what she had turned into. Her tall willowy figure was now dotted with tumours and dead flesh everywhere, even marring the flowers that he had always admired on her right arm tracing out such a beautiful image of nature. As he watched her, he felt something discomforting rise within his gut, and before he knew it he yanked off the mask from his face and threw up, the sight of scarlet blood mixed with clear bile and mucus spilling all over the floor making his eyes water and his nose wrinkle in disgust.

How much longer would it be before the Gamemakers started to wipe every single one of them out with the sickness that had pervaded in the arena?

"Plague..." he heard Edelina cough. "Too strong. It's too strong. And to think that moments ago, we were the ones curing the ill. Now we are becoming a part of them!"

Xander waited until all the contents from his upset stomach had left him, and once they did he wiped his mouth and nodded in agreement. "They're making all of us deliberately ill, and that's all I know. Whatever game it is that they're playing, it has to stop."

Admittedly, he couldn't understand exactly what was going on. In other years, he remembered tributes killing each other with weapons—weapons they could hold, throw, and use as tools of relentless slaughter. Now it was the Gamemakers who were having all the fun. He released the corpse's hand and clenched them both into fists, the coin in his other hand digging hard into his palm making him grit his teeth in pain.

It was all too confusing.

"Mr. McColl? Please come with me."

The sound of another woman's voice made Xander look up in confusion, turning around to see another figure with the bird-like mask and long overcoat standing behind him. "What—where am I going?"

"You need to follow me. There is something I would like you to do," she simply stated monotonously.

Xander eventually knew better than to protest. With a final nod at Edelina, he eventually took off his coat and followed the woman out of the wing. As he passed by the other corpses laying limply on the ground with empty stares cast on the ceiling, he gave a small sigh, glancing down at his arms which he knew, simply from looking at Edelina, were covered in bulging tumours of black and white and grey, his fingers dotted with black flesh of a rotten corpse. He shivered and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before opening them again and following the doctor. This was not the time to pity the dead; this was not the time to pity even himself.

Soon, they reached another room, where three telephones were mounted in a row on the wall across from him. The doctor then turned to him. "Please, call your family. They would not be able to talk to you for long; this would probably be the last time you would ever get to talk with them."