THE DESCRIPTION ON THE BACK OF THE
TAPE LABELLED: "68TH HUNGER GAMES"

THE 68TH ANNUAL HUNGER GAMES WAS SAID TO BE THE MOST FRIGHTENINGLY INTENSE HUNGER GAMES, WITH THE UNFAMILIAR ENVIRONMENT BEING A HISTORICAL CINEMATIC SETTING, COUPLED WITH THE ROAMING MUTTATIONS BEING MORE DANGEROUS THAN THE TRIBUTES THEMSELVES. ADDITIONAL DANGERS INCLUDE HOSTILE SHRUB LIFE, POISONOUS VEGETATION, FLORA THAT INDUCED THIRD DEGREE BURNS AND SKIN RASHES. THE TERRAIN COMPRISES OF A VALLEY, WITH HILLS AND MOUNTAINS AND RIDGES THAT ARE DIFFICULT TO SCALE AND NEAR IMPOSSIBLE TO NAVIGATE, AS WELL AS PADDOCKS AND OTHER FORMS OF ENCLOSURES MEANT TO HOLD PREHISTORIC LIFE.

THE GAMES SPANNED ACROSS A DURATION OF 7 DAYS, BUT IT HAD BEEN THE QUICKEST 7 DAYS THAT THE PEOPLE OF PANEM HAD EVER SEEN.

THE EMERGING VICTOR IS DISTRICT TWO'S IKO MORIYAMA.

* * *

IKO WATCHED HERSELF CRASHING THROUGH THE BOTTOM OF A RAVINE. This part of the arena was unfamiliar, but she was already running from something else. Another monster she'd stumbled upon earlier. A T-Rex, Caesar had called it, in his commentary as the screen began to flush with greenery so intense Iko nearly flinched in her seat onstage. She must've blacked out at this point, right before she'd gone on her rampage to track Sage down, since she didn't remember tripping, didn't remember leaving Alex's body in the shed, didn't remember dragging herself through the jungle, all her heartbreak forming jagged edges around her body, making the world bleed as she hurt.

Prior to this, Iko couldn't watch the video, the montage of the pre-arrival scenes in the Reaping, the tribute parade, the interviews. Even when the bloodbath began to splash the screen with its sea of red, the harsh lights flaring over the audience's hungry faces, lapping up every single moment of the action, Iko couldn't bring herself to revel in her victory, in the fact that she'd risen above the ashes, richer, sharper, scarred.

Iko touched a hand to her arms, fingers sneaking up the sleeves of her interview dress to her mutilated skin. They'd fixed her up after they'd lifted her from the arena, but she couldn't remember if she'd told them to leave her scars alone or if they knew she wanted them with her, a new set of armour. Now, she felt along the harsh ridges of scar tissue from where the mutts had ripped her flesh open. She felt thinner than she'd ever been, but she was also stronger. Hardened. The sounds of the audience reacting to the confession, the revelation, all the pieces of the puzzle aligning right before their eyes as truths unravelled barely reached her. In this cold fortress she'd built for herself, Iko was alone. For real, this time. There was no one waiting for her back home.

When the screen had flickered darker, the lights dimmed, Iko thought it was over, but one glance caught Alex's face cradled in her arms, his smile, so present, and so gone, and she couldn't stop the avalanche between her lungs, the crack in her chest nearly fissuring her invulnerable facade as the threat of tears wrapped around her neck, constricting like a barbed snake. Iko couldn't look. Instead, while the audience watched on in silent reverie, Iko spent the entire time staring at the corner of the screen, at Caesar's crimson suit until the colour burned into her vision, turning her stomach, until she couldn't handle the colour red anymore. Anywhere else but Alex.

And then: the hole in her memory, a void space where she'd supposedly torn apart the arena, ripped through every thicket of trees, every building, scaled up the watchtowers, overturned the underbrush for Sage. 

This disconnection, this slice of desiccated reality, wherein she couldn't remember what she'd done, only the swelling intensity of her rage, the whining in her ears. As she turned to her onscreen self, shock pierced through her chest like a spear. There was nothing in her eyes. An all-consuming darkness where the light had been extinguished, a murderous hunger for blood, for vengeance. She looked half-possessed, crashing through the undergrowth, covered in blood and lacerated skin, something ripped from a nightmare, this object of abject horror. Something inside her had died that day, too. Strange to think this was only a day and a half ago.

She watched herself getting chased by the mutt—a huge reptilian beast with jaws that could crush through metal and a roar made of pure, unadulterated fury, so thick with this dissonant quality Iko could taste how much it hated her, how much it hated the world—and she couldn't recognise herself. Iko remembered none of this—not the new buildings rising in the distance, tripping up and nearly getting crushed under the mutt's foot, rolling clear and continuing to press through the jungle, scrambling uphill until she arrived at a new building, pounding up the stairs towards a helipad. And Sage, standing there, waiting. Above them, the flying mutts—or what Caesar had called pterodactyls—wheeling in the sky, a menacing presence of shadows on the ground. They hadn't attacked.

The moment Sage spotted Iko, she'd begun shooting without relent. Iko didn't know how she'd managed to evade the hailstorm of Sage's bullets tearing through the air, but she'd done it. Fuelled by rage, riding on the coattails of a hellish grief ripping up the last remaining centres of softness within her. Without warning, Iko launched herself at Sage, and the audience winced as Iko came down on her like a storm, knives out and blades glinting in the sunlight. Red hair and knives flashed in the light, teeth gnashing, eyes gleaming with a ravenous malice. They were both bloody and bruised and battered, but there was still fight left in them. But even though she was wounded—with pleasure, Iko had noticed the delicate way she was shielding her bleeding sword arm—Sage managed to overpower Iko, throwing her to the ground where they'd abandoned all weapons, and began going strike for strike, fists raised and bones colliding. At one point, Iko's lips twisted in dissatisfaction as she watched her onscreen self get thrown to the ground again, and in one fell swoop, Sage had brought her heel down and smashed the bones of her left hand. Iko's onscreen-self, filthy but undefeated, roared in pain.

"Your throwing hand!" Sage mocked, feigning horror, though nobody missed the gleeful satisfaction in her expression.

Swaying on her feet, Iko rose to her feet, and the audience cheered. Glancing down at her palms, resting in the folds of her navy blue dress, Iko flexed her left hand, felt the bones of her fingers move. They'd fixed it up while she'd been unconscious, and Iko still couldn't wrap her head around the Capitol-grade technology. They'd healed everything up in just one day. From a near-crippled state, she'd been repaired and restored to practically good-as-new.

Trembling with rage, Iko's onscreen self flexed her right hand, snatching up another knife from her belt, the last one that she had.

"I have two hands, bitch," she'd snarled, and lunged, a knife in her unbroken hand, slashing and stabbing like a tornado of steel.

Seven lightning-fast slashes from her blade and Iko had cut Sage to ribbons.

Sage stumbled back, stunned at first, but by the time she recovered, Iko had forced her towards the ledge of the helipad, where the ground tilted beneath the camera, emphasising on the fall. Teetering on her feet, Sage was bleeding profusely from the dozen gashes in her neck and chest, crimson tide spilling down her front. Iko's face dripped with it, splattered with the blood of her enemy. There was no hope for salvation now. Without mercy, Iko pivoted and slammed her foot against Sage's chest, sending her pitching backwards, mouth open in a half-scream, eyes bulging with fear.

And then the mutts descended, and Iko watched herself watch, remorselessly, as they snatched Sage up from mid-air, tossing her broken and screaming body between them, tearing her limb from limb between their sharp beaks.

The canon went off, and the camera panned away. There was the announcement that she'd won, and, still, even though she was sitting on-stage in the Capitol, right in front of Caesar Flickerman, a victor's crown adorning her head, its golden laurel wreaths atop her brow, Iko had to pinch herself to ensure she wasn't dreaming.

When the lights came back on, Iko met Caesar's toothy grin with a cold stare.

She'd won, but she felt the furthest thing from victorious.

* * *

          WHAT'S THE SECRET? They ask her, glittering champagne, pearly-toothed grins.

          Simple, she tells them, eyes on the camera, her piercing gaze reaching past it, through it. You work hard. You get strong. It can happen.

          You rise.

* * *

FINAL AUTHOR'S NOTE.

anyway. welcome to the end! thank you for reading this you guys!!!! if you've stuck around this long, i love u so so so much and i appreciate the hell outta you! this book has been cooking longer than SKOD has. it's been with me all throughout high school and i've spent so long revamping this fic until i was satisfied with the results but nothing seemed to be working UNTIL THIS VERSION. i'd love to someday be able to rewrite this. i KNOW this isn't my best writing. i know i can do better. in an edited version i'd love to expand the arena a little and make the descriptions more vivid. alas, i'm still happy with what i have now and i'm so fucking relieved that i can tick off my second completed work on this page!!!!! i need to stop giving up on ideas halfway lol.