Writer Games | Masquerade of Martyrs & Family Ties

Task Six: Begin Again (QF) - Females

District One - Jamilla Argentaria

Kase was dead.

It hurt more than she  had thought it would, considering she'd thought him lost long before  that moment. Plenty of people had already died. If her count was  correct, and it should have been, there were only ten tributes left  alive. Nine more had to die before she could go home. Kase had to die so  she could live. If the sentimentality was getting to her, it was  probably as a result of her head injury from the night before.

She had grown weaker  since the Games began. It was something she had begrudgingly admitted to  herself after waking up with an ache in her body that made her fear  that she'd damaged more than just her pride. It had been one thing to  prepare for the Games in theory, years of training and observing and  honing her abilities, but surviving them had turned out to be a whole  other experience. She had never known real hunger. Real pain. Real fear.  And in those moments after seeing Kase's face among the others, who  would soon be forgotten, she met the reality that she'd be unprepared  for.

Another girl might've  given up. A weaker girl. A smarter girl, perhaps. But Jace hadn't  reached that point yet. She had watched for years as fan favorites  slowly caved in under the pressure and the pain and the creeping  tendrils of insanity. Many tributes, ones braver and stronger than she,  had lost their way in the Games. Jace, however, wasn't giving in. All of  the doubt was a product of exhaustion and head trauma.

At least, that's what she kept telling herself.

She hadn't been  prepared for the tunnel to the tomb room to open again. She'd been  waiting for something else. Perhaps a bigger cave in or a stronger mutt  or another psychological twist. Her training had told her to expect the  unexpected but that was hardly useful when she no longer knew what not  to expect. Not that anything fazed her anymore. There was nothing that  they could do to shake her up.

Jace inched forward  into the room, brandishing her knife and checking to see if another  tribute was lurking in the shadows. There was no way that she could be  the only one. With only ten left, the Gamemakers would pull anything to  bring them all together. The viewers were getting bored. They wanted  action. They wanted blood. And Jace knew that her job was to provide it  to them. Part of her was reluctant to keep going but she knew that she'd  signed up for this.

The table in front of  her was set up with ten packages. Each had a name on it, one for every  tribute left standing. Jace spied hers and her mind immediately started  to debate the risks and rewards of accepting her gift. She had enough  supplies to keep going for a few more days and she knew that at the rate  they were dying, the Games couldn't last too much longer. She could  back out and hide before the others arrived.

However, Jace had never been good at avoiding fights.

Her knife was already  buried in her attacker's arm by the time she registered the hand that  had closed around her shoulder. They cried out when Jace dug her sharp  elbow into their stomach and adrenaline started pumping through her  veins. It didn't take her long to shove them against the table, to drive  the knife in and twist it around to make sure it would do enough  damage. She barely had time to register the look on Yuna's face before  the cannon boomed.

Days ago, she  might've been sickened by the blank look in her victim's eyes but her  time in the Games had turned her colder than she'd ever thought she  could be. It had stolen her capability for remorse. Not that that was a  bad thing. Her instructors had often told her that she was too soft, too  emotional. That wouldn't be a problem anymore. As weak as her body had  become, she was stronger than she'd ever been.