Hunger Games: All-Stars

Chapter 7

Hadley Kinneth POV

"I was dead? And you brought me back?"

How could it be? Where was I all the time I was dead? I was alive. I was sitting in a room. I existed. A few minutes ago I didn't. Was it a trick? Was I ever really dead? You can't be dead and then not be dead. But I remembered it. It was something altogether disturbing and sickening to remember dying. Life and death had seemed so far apart before. Now I shifted between them like it was nothing. Were they nothing? If the Capitol could reverse death, did any of us have to be afraid of it anymore? Only if death was worse than life, and the Capitol could make it be.

I felt alien in my body, like I was floating inside it. It was like a ship I was piloting but not part of. My skin felt real, but it felt like I was feeling someone else. It was hard to reconcile my identity with my physicality. Maybe once I'd been on the other side once, this would never feel like home again.

"So, are you going to do anything different this time?" a nurse asked me. Her voice broke into my thoughts and jerked me to the matter at hand.

"Huh? Oh... sorry, this is really weird," I said.

"It's okay," she said. She went back to writing on a pad. I held my hand up before my eyes and examined it like a specimen in a lab. There was my skin, marred by the same lines and marks I had before I died. None of it was really the same. The only original part of me was the tiny speck of flesh they'd cloned me from. With so much of me different, was I the same person? But then, everyone grows and changes. None of us have any of the same matter we were born with.

Everything seemed warped, like when you realize you exist and it baffles you for a minute. I wondered how my eyes were seeing and how my brain knew it was gathering the information. I ran my finger across my hand and felt the skin scrape against itself. It was real. I was real. I didn't understand it.

Lyte Anderson POV

"I want to be a doctor too," I told the woman as she measured my heartbeat. She smiled.

"Would you like to see my stethoscope?" she asked.

"Cool!" I said. She gave it to me and I held it to my ear and tapped the base. A huge boom screamed in my ear and I pulled back.

"What's that?" I asked as I pointed at something that looked like a telescope.

"That's an endoscope. It shows what's inside you," she said. I picked it up and held it against my arm. When I looked through it I saw a whole bunch of blood vessels swelling and relaxing. I pressed different buttons and saw everything from bones to nerves.

"Are any of you from the Districts?" I asked when I was done. One of the men on the other side of the room looked up.

"I'm from Five," he said. None of the others responded.

"Was it hard to get here?" I asked.

"It's very competitive. Not many District people even apply, and of those that do, maybe three get chosen every year. It's best to specialize in something. The more specific it is the better chance they don't already have someone who does it," he said.

"Look us up when you're trying to get in. We'll put in a good word for you," the head doctor said.

"Really? Thanks!" I said. I looked at more equipment while I thought about the future. It should have been scary knowing I died once, but actually it made me happy. If the Capitol could bring people back from the dead, we probably weren't the first. Maybe they brought all the dead Tributes back and gave them new names. They weren't really mean enough to kill kids. They just did it to scare us. Now that I knew death wasn't permanent, there was nothing to be scared of.

Yasmine Jackson POV

I clutched at my stomach and bent over to look at it. There should have been thin white things trailing out of me, but I was whole.

"I thought I was dead," I said to the people around me. "Did I win?"

"You were dead. We brought you back," one of them said.

"Are you going to let me go home now?" I asked.

"No, sweetie," the man said. He paused. "You're going to try again."

"What? Why? I already fought once. Let me go home," I said. "I don't want to be like that again."

"What happened to you won't happen again. The platforms have been modified to allow weights up to a pound," the man said. "You'll be all right."

"No, I won't. Maybe I won't die then, but someone else will kill me anyway," I said. I tried to say more but tears stopped me. "Please let me go home."

The man took a shaky breath and drew himself in. "I wish I could," he said. His face grew pale and neither of us could say more.

"Please let me go home," I asked each of the people in the room. Each one turned away as I looked at them. One man started to tremble and two of them left the room. It was easy for them. They could just walk away. I had no choice.

Only three from Six. Seven has a ton though so that one will be long.