Elecsai Excalibur's heart can be compared to that of a rabbit without any flaw, beating nearly ten times a second to his perspective. Dashing down the hallway with his stacks of paper, he looks much more like an official working for President Cummings instead of the eloquent assistant he is. As he turns the corner to the Presidential Hall, a piece of paper is sent flying and he cusses to himself as all the rest of the stack is sent out of his arms.
Dropping to his feet, he scrambles around desperately, gathering every sheet of paper into a haphazard pile of loose paper. He reaches the door to the Presidential Suite and struggles to get the door open with just his index finger. He finds Cummings sitting worriedly at his desk, but as soon as he turns to see Elecsai, his worrisome face morphs immediately into one of grandeur.
"Have you got the proposal ready?" asks Cummings, getting up from the leather chair on wheels.
"That's exactly what these are," he says, dropping the sheets of paper on the President's desk. After receiving a glare from the man, he grabs the papers cautiously and moves them to another, much smaller desk.
Eyeing the papers, Cummings looks to Elecsai with a look of surprise in his eyes. "I asked for a proposal, not an essay," he mutters under his breath, flipping through the papers. "I have hope in you yet," he adds with sarcasm.
"Yes, yes. I'll give you just a brief summary then?" Elecsai asks reluctantly.
"Does it look like I've got the time to sit through a three-hour long proposal?" Snaps the president. "Yes, tell me the brief summary, I've got places to be."
Elecsai nods. "It's called Project M.U.T.T., meaning-"
"I don't care what it means, just tell me what it is!" the president roars impatiently.
"Please, just hear me out. I spent hours trying to come up with this."
"That's right, and I expect it to be executed in less than an hour."
Elecsai grins heartily, "What if I said that it is ready to be executed on your command?"
This grasps the president's attention. "Tell me more," he says, the slightest bit intruiged.
"Meaning Mutation Utility Transcription Transformation, it's-"
The president chuckles under his breath. "I'm guessing that your little team of scientists came up with that."
"Well, yeah. But, in simpler terms, much simpler, it's a genetically modified animal, or G.M.O., but the thing is that the animal we had in mind was a human." Before Cummings could think of anything smart to say, Elecsai continues. "Because we had little to no time to come up with this, we decided on using the human genome and structure."
"And then what will you do with it? In what way will you play with it?"
"Well, as clearly known, eight tributes are already dead, so we could use the blood samples we collected from each of them to create a reanimated version to walk around through the streets."
The president looks at Elecsai in confusion. "The streets in the arena are flooded, Excalibur," he reminds his assistant.
"Yes, I know. That's why we are going to drain it."
****
The sounds of eight cannons can be heard throughout the arena, so strong to even be heard through the waves and dense water. These eight cannons signal the death of eight tributes:
Alecks Glint, Grady Hudson, Chris Davies, Noah Masons, Juniper Fall, Charity Lightning, Georgina West, and Chloe Bishop.
The remaining tributes know that change is coming in the arena, but they just don't realize how yet. As some of them huddle in corners, hiding from their fate, and others hunting down others, in alliances or not, most fail to see the water lowering, and eventually washing away, revealing a dusty, hellish landscape beneath.
They are indeed in a city, with giant skyscrapers reaching to the sky. Beneath are the streets, suddenly covered in dust and crawling with people. Beyond is a desert, which stretches as far as the eye can see. It seems that with the blink of an eye, the arena has changed.
Tributes venture down, not aware that these 'people' look exactly like various tributes, all victims of the games, in various forms of decomposition.
The gamemakers have done it again.
****
TASK: So, staying true to tradition, this task is the mutts task. These mutts aren't like the normal ones, bred between multiple animals, but instead, the mutts can only be described as your casual walking dead. Your tribute MUST travel down onto the streets, no matter what his or her condition is. These zombies look exactly like the dead tributes.
ARENA: This task, the arena has changed. Instead of a sunken city, it turns in less than hour to an arid hell. Beyond the city is an endless desert, where it is void of life, and almost everything else.
DEATHS: TWO tributes shall die in your entry, no matter how, and you must add THREE ballots.
VOTING: SIX will go up for votes and HALF of them will be saved, and the latter eliminated.
DEADLINE: Friday, April 8th at 4 PM PST
WORD LIMIT: None
Good luck tributes, and may the odds be ever in your favor!
YOU ARE READING
Writer Games: Pending Secrets
RandomWelcome to the world of Panem, where the great rebellion has just ended and District Thirteen destroyed. Though there seems to finally be peace in this harsh world, President Apollo Cummings paces in his office, desperate to come up with a punishmen...
