There she was, standing right before me. How long had it been since I’d seen her? A week? Two weeks? Had it been a month? I couldn’t deduce an answer, for time elapsed painfully slowly without my twin sister stapled closely to my side. The overwhelmingly urgent instincts of survival and powerful fear of destruction that had been swirling in my head since the Games began had been unable to rid my heart of the longing I felt without her. Without the only family I had ever known, without the bright sun to my dark moon. Even now, she radiated in my thoughts, her golden blonde hair seemed to glow, projecting an angelic halo around her perfectly porcelain features that defined natural beauty…
“Eliana!”
My feet began to move forward without being commanded to do so, voyaging off into the unknown ruins before me without as much as a spark of caution. I trotted away from the concealment of the circle of tall trees and into the open pasture, my heart taking the reigns of my body, telling me to reunite with my sibling. I had just heard her. She was here. Screaming. She needed me.
“El?! Where are you?” I pleaded with the wind desperately, being met with silence, “Eliana!”
My boots began to click along the marble as I ventured into the destitute remains of a once vibrant metropolis. I could almost hear the faint echoes of its previous residents reverberating off of the eerie stone…
“Luna!” Zayn’s voice was a low growl, almost irritated for my bold venture into center stage. I could feel the fiery and intense gaze of every one of the remaining twelve Tributes focused intently on the daringly brave girl who stepped foot into the ghost of the Capitol city before them. Zayn snatched my wrist with a constricting and protective grip, “Are you mental? This is what they want! It’s a trap, we need to go back, now. Don’t you see that—”
He was interrupted by a faint shuffle of pebbles about ten meters away, the tiny rocks bouncing across the dusty cement floor. Our necks snapped around in a simultaneous motion to zero in on the source of the sudden motion, anxiety boiling through my veins at the possibilities. It was deathly quiet for torturous seconds following the noise, the thud of my accelerated heartbeat punching through my chest. Silence. With trembling fingers I reached for Zayn’s hand once again, feeling completely vulnerable as the faint whistles of the wind taunted my bubbling paranoia.
“Luna, I love you,” He whispered, his quiet voice almost lost to the air.
He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring blankly ahead, his expression unreadable and as stony as the marble pillars that towered beside him. My widely blinking eyes were frozen on the striking facial features of his profile; the sharp jawline that was a weapon all its own, the thin hue of rugged stubble that speckled his cheeks, the mysterious maroon eyes that held secrets I had yet to discover.
Had they planned this? Had the Gamemakers really been so intelligently foretelling to know that the pair of Tributes from Twelve sworn to hatred would morph into love? I didn’t have time to think. I didn’t have enough minutes to process morality; the trickery of what is right or wrong. My keen and cunning nature to plan my every move and map my mode of discourse fizzled to its core, replaced with pure emotion and inclinations of the soul. I had no time to do anything but agree with what my insane heart had been telling me to say, “I love you, Zayn.”
But everything about our words sounded like a goodbye.
The beginning of the end.
A young boy appeared before us. Give his height and maturity of his bone structure, I guessed he placed around ten years of age, a child budding into the prime of his youth. I tilted my head to observe him, narrowing my eyes to piece a visual of the unknown specimen, cataloging his every detail. His skin held a strange grey hue, and embodied a peculiar texture similar to worn leather, sagging and exhausted. His hair was jet-black and speckled with dust, complimenting the strange gloomy tint to his skin perfectly. Beneath his piercing forest green eyes were dark, ominous circles, illustrating many sleepless nights for the young child. His pants were ripped up the front in several places, and his shirt was stained with dirt and something else… something crimson. Dried blood.
I took a stammering step backward, but Zayn contrasted my path, striding forward.
“Apollo.”
I inhaled a short breath of air, the oxygen seeming to leak completely from my body as my mouth fell open in shock. Apollo, Zayn’s younger brother, standing directly before us. It took another glance before recognition flashed across my face, but the small boy’s body was there standing upright, staring back at us, like a miniature version of Zayn with deep green eyes instead of brown.
But something was fatally wrong about this boy. The strange hue of his skin, the tattered clothing, the bones poking through his ribcage, the scornful look in his eyes… it was dead.
“Zayn, stop,” I warned in a low whisper, tugging his hand backward, desperate for him to retreat with me, “Remember what you were saying? We need to go. Now.”
“Apollo…” Zayn repeated, ignoring my pleas as if he had not heard them, “Apollo, can you hear me? I’m trying to make it home back to you. I’m trying to make it home…”
“Zayn, he’s not here. That’s not your brother. That’s not…”
From behind my shoulder, another figure appeared. She was just about my height, with bright yellow hair that fell past her shoulders, matted with clumps of dirt and dried leaves. Her skin acquired the same pasty grey color that Apollo’s had, with the same purple circles dusting the area beneath her eyes.
“Eliana,” I exhaled shakily, swallowing the nervous lump in my throat at her appearance that I knew was designed to trick me. She blinked back at me, lifeless, her hands in fists by her sides. Her mouth was overturned into a tight pout, but my mind decorated her mouth to be laughing, the way Eliana always had back home…
They began to appear everywhere. People I didn’t quite recognize, but lifeless bodies, hovering around the ruins with emotionless faces. They were all different; tall and short, thick and thin, people in their eighties as well as toddlers who had just grasped the concept of walking. The only thing all these strange people shared was the ghostly grey color of their skin, shredded clothing, and circles beneath their eyes. Like they had been dead for days.
I heard the rustling of grass echo in my eardrums, taking a quick scan of the perimeter so see other Tributes beginning to inch forward, recognizing the faces of their loved ones they had left at home.
“Mom?”
“Daddy, is that you?”
“…Melanie? Melly, can you hear me?”
“Nana, how did you get here?”
By the time the weight of the situation sank into my system and processed, the stage had been set. Helpless Tributes, drunk with infatuation upon seeing the faces of those they longed for most had been seduced into the marble stone arena, a poetic backdrop for the finale of a battle that was being sketched for all of Panem to view.
My gaze shifted back to the phantom of my twin sister, who had slowly moved a few feet closer to me in my daze. Her lips twisted into a venomous smirk before she lurched forward and tackled me to the ground.
My head smacked against the marble flooring with a deafening crack, the pain searing through my skull upon impact. She pinned me to the floor, her skin frigidly freezing against my shoulders as her grimy nails dug into my skin. I gaze up at her helplessly, seeing the same eyes of my childhood friend, a flicker of the angelic glow of Eliana…
“It’s me!” I cried, struggling to free myself from her constricting grip, “El, it’s me!”
I didn’t expect her to listen, but my helplessness at the moment left me no other option. The zombie of my sister released a haunting cackle, as if she were mocking my pathetic efforts to save myself as she smacked me coldly across the face. Doing my best to ignore the sting blazing across my cheek, I turned my head to the side, were wrestling matches had began to erupt all across the field.
Tributes fighting to the death against the faces they loved the most.
As much as my survival instincts were telling me to retaliate, I couldn’t. The mind trickery was preventing me from attempting to inflict any damage onto the creature that so closely resembled the girl I cared about most in this world, so I was left defenseless and pinned. Left to be beaten to death by the hand of my sister.
Shrieks of agonies and cries for mercy echoed throughout the plain, and slowly the white marble of the ruins were splattered with deep red drops of blood, illustrating the pain across a stone canvas.
With all the energy I could muster, I gathered momentum and rolled my body to fling her off of me, jolting her body to the side. I scrambled to my feet, standing just in time to feel her icy hands lace through my hair and yank it backward with a powerful grip. She used my hair as a rope, tugging me toward her until she grabbed hold of my neck, slowly constricting my airway.
“Stop,” I begged breathlessly, “Please…”
I heard sporadic sputtering close by, stealing a quick glance to my left during the commotion to see the small form of Apollo mounted upon Zayn’s chest, raising a rock in his small hands before bringing it crashing down onto Zayn’s rib cage. Zayn released a choked sob, the severity of the pain etched across his agonized facial features. I would have given my last breath of air in exchange for his pain to cease.
The symphony of agony deafened me; the outburst of cries, excruciating shouts and the exasperated shortness of breath combined to create a melodic piece of lethal music, the sounds of death mixing with the gentle sounds of the rain forest’s nature surrounding the scene.
No way out. I could hear Tributes taking their final breaths around me; Niall and Crya, Kaysie and Liam, submitting their lives to the show for the entertainment of those watching on television. My muscles gave up, slackening to the unrelenting force of the familiar creature who’s sole purpose was to destroy me. I accepted defeat in the hands of the Games. I accepted the fate that was so cruelly and unfairly drawn out by the Capitol.
I closed my eyes, whispering my final goodbyes to Zayn.
His face was the last thing I saw before it went black.