THE 150th HUNGER GAMES

Escape

To hell if I'm sticking around
Gotta find a way to finally get out

*cue music by Lady Antebellum*

Onyx Quartz's (District 1) P.O.V:

Tonight I must make my move, or I will be thrown into the Games to die. I would prefer that didn't happen.

I have heard rumors. Rumors that 13 is still alive. Rumors that people have successfully escaped to it. And a rumor is enough to convince me to try to find them. If it's true, that District 13 did not perish 15 decades ago, then I can join them and help them by using my medical skills. If not, and everyone died long, long ago, at least I'll still be alive and not dead anyway like I would be in the Hunger Games.

Honestly, though, I haven't really though out what I plan on doing if the place is abandoned. I've sort of been going on the assumption that this will be easy as pie, but it really won't be if I get there and I'm all alone in the middle of nowhere. What would I do then? Go to the nearest District and join it? The Capitol would most likely kill me if they found out I was still alive. Live by myself in the wilds? I don't want an every-day quest for survival, it's just like the Games out there, except they'll never end unless I perish. And those are really my only options. So I'm hoping that the rumors I heard are true.

Now I just have to find out whether I can do this the easy way or if I must resort to the hard way that will make escaping much more difficult for me. Obviously, I'm attempting the easy way out before I start shattering the window in my room and climbing down the building. All the studying of every place I've been in for the past few days has been to figure out if there has been a better opportunity to escape then, but I haven't found anything good except for these ways, and even the hard way is a easy to mess up.

I wait for the clock to strike eleven o'clock before exiting my room silently and leaving the District 1 apartment with no problem. I knew Angel, my district partner, went to bed a while ago, and our escort is partying in the streets with the other Capitol citizens- she had a few too many glasses of wine during dinner. My stylist is in her room probably drawing the next Opening Ceremony's costumes, and besides, she's a very easygoing person; she wouldn't really care if I went for a 'late night stroll'. So I had already been aware that sneaking out would be extremely easy.

I step into the elevator and press the 'ground floor' button, and for seven agonizing seconds am forced to listen to the terrible Capitol pop tunes playing on the elevator radio before the doors reopen. The lobby is deserted; everyone in the building has retired to their rooms or is dancing the night away in the center of the Capitol. Except, of course, for the two Peacekeepers standing guard at the front door, facing me. I calmly walk over to the door and am almost able to step right outside past them, but their guns suddenly make an X shape and block my exit. "Where do you think you're going?" One asks, his voice muffled by his helmet.

I think quickly and smile at them. "Hello, gentlemen," I greet both of the Peacekeepers formally, even though only one of them spoke to me. "I was just going to take an evening stroll tonight. I am having issues sleeping with the Hunger Games beginning tomorrow," I fake a sad smile, sighing. "I have unfinished business that I am unable to get off my mind. So perhaps you would be so generous as to let me pass?" Looking up at them as innocently and hopefully as I am capable of, I await their answer. Hopefully this is going to work and they'll just let me go. I kind of doubt it, though. My excuse for leaving the building is slightly suspicious...

The two Peacekeepers glance at each other, and the second one exhales loudly and removes his helmet, revealing the face of a man who is still more of a boy. He must have very recently became a Peacekeeper; I'm guessing he just survived the final year with his name in the Reaping maybe last year and then joined the soldiers. He studies my face, long and hard, and then speaks. I am utterly shocked by the words that come out of his mouth, not expecting them at all. "I get you, man. I have unfinished business, too," he stares off into the distance. "But I was not as lucky as you."

The young man stays silent for a moment, looking past me at nothing in particular in a way that many people do when they are thinking deeply. Then his blue eyes flick back to me. He lowers his gun, leaving me a clear path outside, and the second Peacekeeper follows his example. "Go," the young man urges me. "And good luck."

And as I race down the darkest Capitol streets as far from the partying as I can and as fast as I am capable of without revealing my presence, I think about what he said. It makes me wonder- the way he said, "go, and good luck" made it appear that he knew that I wasn't just going for a walk. I wonder if he realized that I didn't plan on coming back. He seemed to. But then why would he still let me leave?

Perhaps it was just our shared feeling of unfinished business. Maybe he understood that I couldn't just die tomorrow morning, that I still had so much ahead of me, so many plans, so many dreams, that it just wouldn't do to have the Games interfere. I don't feel as though my life has had a purpose just yet, and I want it to mean something. Joining District 13 and helping people, treating people's wounds, doing something worthwhile, that's what I want to accomplish if I do have go die. I want to make a difference. Even if it's not a big one, like destroying the Capitol and banning the Games, which I wish for also. But I know that it's going to impact the person who's injury I mend, who's sickness I cure, who's life I save. And I know that helping one less death happening will make a change even if it's only for that one person. And that's what I want.

The lights grow smaller and dimmer as I get further away, the music quieter, the silence heavier. I slow to a walking pace, pretty confident I'm far enough away that I don't have to worry that someone's after me. I sigh inwardly.

I have a long, uncertain journey ahead of me.