The Eleventh Hunger Games~ A Mags Fanfic

Chapter Eight: The Launch

This has got to be the quickest update I have ever done.  Eeeeeeee writing the last part of this was so...Scary? Nerve-wracking? 313 reads?! You guys are too amazing. Thank you all for reading, and may the odds be ever in your favor. (hehe) Enjoy!

Chapter Eight

The Launch

I ride in the large glass elevator up to the roof, where the hovercraft will meet us and bring us to the arena. Awkward silence fills the vast expanse of space between me and Lorem. I glance at him, and, surprisingly, notice a faint tinge of fear behind his eyes. "Good luck." I offer. He may end up killing me in the Games, but in the end, he's just like me: a person being torn from their life and forced to survive in god knows what. He grunts in response.

"Have fun rotting in the dirt, little rat." A look of disgust forms on his face as he says it towards me. Well, I tried. As the elevator makes its way towards the roof, thoughts of previous Games consume my mind. Games such as the Fifth one, where the victor killed his opponent by slowly decapitating him with only a small dagger.  Or in the Seventh Games, where three people were burned to death after the victor trapped them in a cave filled with dry grass and tossed in a torch. A brilliant, yet disturbingly, gruesome idea. I just hope that when I die in the Games, it will be fast, like a stab through the heart. But I know that will not be the case. The Games are about entertainment, and what is entertaining about seeing a weak 16-year-old girl getting stabbed in the heart? A shudder runs through me. I could die today.

The elevator stops abruptly, and the instant the doors slide open two Peacekeepers grab us by the arms and lead us to the large hovercraft. I sneak a glance off the side of the building. Down below, thousands of Capitol citizens chant "the Hunger Games" while waving their arms and clutching signs. Sick. I think. My Peacekeeper shoves my arm and pushes me forward until I stand next to the two ladders trailing down from the hovercraft. The moment I place my hands and feet on the lower rungs and am automatically glued to the ladder. I crane my neck and gaze at the morning sky. Pastel colors bleed through the city, welcoming the birth of a new day. A day that could, in reality, be my last. I inhale one final deep breath before I am pulled into the hovercraft.

"This is your tracker, Mags." A nurse comes up to me and holds out my arm, where she pulls out a syringe. I wince as the needle pierces the inside of my forearm, delivering the tracking device under the skin. The moment she finishes the gate on the hovercraft floor opens and Zip and Lorem's stylist appear in the room, small bags carried in their decorated hands. Zip gives me a curt nod before leading me to the buffet table. Although I am far from hungry, I grab some food anyway, knowing that I'll need as much energy as I can get in the Games. At the last moment, I grab a jelly filled pastry. For Theodore.

. . . .

One hour later, the hovercraft finally lands; its windows were blackened a half hour before landing. The gate in the floor opens again, and I am glued to the ladder, where it takes me down a tube into a small, plain room. The room underneath the arena. Zipporah follows closely behind and automatically starts pulling out dark brown clothing. It's just the two of us, and although the silence must be deafening, my heart is hammering in my ears. I look up at the ceiling, as if I could see the arena. I picture all of the possibilities: It could be a barren desert, and all we would fight with would be sharpened bones. Or it could be nothing but hard packed snow and pickaxes. Or who knows, maybe the Gamemakers are feeling generous and are giving us a forest.

Zip hands me a pair of tawny light brown pants, a short sleeve brown shirt, and a loose brown jacket with a thin layer of fur covering the inside. "Okay..." I trail off, inspecting the clothes and putting them on. I look down at my feet. "Shoes?" Zip bites her lip and scuttles over to her bag where she rifles through it, and at one last desperate attempt, she folds it inside out. Her brow furrows and she shakes her slightly pink bald head.

"None."

"Wait...what?" Horrific thoughts plunge into my head: the ground made out of nails or scorching sand. "Are you sure?"

"Positive." Zip shakes her head and examines the outfit. "At least they gave you a fur jacket. Expect cold days."

"But what about my feet?" I ask, practically tasting the fear in my voice.

"Use what you have, I suppose." Suddenly a female voice pipes through the intercom.

"Tributes, prepare for launch." I swallow my cry and feel it swell my heart with complete and utter terror.

"I guess this is it then." Zip says. She holds out her hand to me. I numbly grasp hers.

"Th-thanks." I squeak, my eyes never leaving the clear glass tube in the corner of the room, where it will send me up into the arena of the unknown. But instead of pulling her hand away she grips it tighter and pulls me towards the tube, where I stumble into the cylinder and release my hand, now cold and shaking from anxiety.

"Good Luck." Zip says curtly, just as the glass curved door to the cylinder closes, locking me in a transparent coffin. I stare at Zip in horror, trembling with fear. It's okay. She mouths. No. It most certainly is not okay, I think. All at once the tube begins to rise, and I am enveloped in total darkness. And suddenly a gust of cool air and dim light surrounds me. I breathe in a smell that I can only describe as rotten. As if vegetables were left out too long in the sun. And then President Bristol's voice booms through the foreign space.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, let the Eleventh annual Hunger Games begin!"

Don't you just love Cliffhangers?! Next chapter should be up soon! (possibly even tonight...) 11 more days until Mockingjay part 1 ASDFGHJKL.