DTT: Round One, Walter va Luja

”Arrest him!” A death rattle breath but Walter’s lungs don’t feel empty. Even his body doesn’t collapse around him. His heart is still ticking, and his mind is still sparking with possibilities of a new life that he has sketched out. The one with his very own fireplace and all those commodities he has never had before. It is the life he just spoke to Beck about, ”Beck?”. There is no answer, not in this darkness.

Walter walks forward, there is no backpack over his shoulders that carries his book. Even the sword in his hand has shrunk down to a simple knife. This isn’t how he imagined the afterlife, and this isn’t the life he sketched out for himself.

One light shines bright and that is the realization that the pain has gone. No more agony to torture him. No more broken bones that groan or the torment brought on by guilt for killing Phi, Noel and Eloise.

Is this the punishment for killing them? There must be a reason for why there is a knife in his hand, he is not alone in here. Is this an eternal hell where he must keep fighting another, until...until nothing. It will just keep going and going. The pain will come back. Infinite pain. It sounds like a horror story he has read.

The one that keeps Walter company in this limbo is an unknown to him, he is sure he studied the faces of the Eighty-Fourth, she is not one of them. ”Are you a demon that is here to kill me? Is this hell?” He asks her.

Rule Three - Don’t run away from a fight.

There is nowhere for him to run and the ground below him shakes, a thunderous voice pushes them both together. ”I’ve done it before, you know I have. I will kill again if it means restarting my life.”

”You’re meant to be my nightmare?”

The knife is so light in his hand, it is more of a match to him as a weapon than that sword he dragged around the jungle. It is more comfortable to dance with too, one swift strike like he did with Noel, but the girl still stands. They’re both already dead after all, is it even possible to die twice?

It is like being back in the bloodbath, except he is not clambering over twenty-three others. They all have an opponent they’ve been drawn too, even the girl’s brother. Whoever or wherever he is amongst this mass of eternal chaos.

”You killed your brother? I am in the same hell as someone who killed their brother…” Walter exhales, shaking is head as he looks down at his hands. Life was never going to be heavenly for Walter Blake, his mother’s mistakes chiseled that into his gravestone and Cassidy Sommers helped erect it. All of that was supposed to be his past. Volunteering was meant to be his future. Is this hell his future?

”What do you think happens if you kill me or I kill you? We’re both dead already…is there supposed to be a victor in the underworld?” There’s thousands of corpses from The Hunger Games and they’re not all here. A crown of bones and a throne of skulls. To become Hades’ successor. How many more must he kill to get there?

”Do you think we’re all here? All of the dead of the games? Mine was the 84th, I wonder how many more there have been…” He wonders if Juliet is here.

Rule Number Seven - Make conversation with three different people every day. But are there even days in this underworld?

If there’s a home after this, with a roaring fire and king-sized bed with four posts. He’ll take it. Even if there is blood coated on the door.

”I am not scared. I can’t be, the worst has already happened to me.” Walter tries to copy the knife twirling that the other is an expert in.

”Wow, you were in the 8th games? You must be old…How were the dark days?” A knife dances towards Walter but as he ponders on all of this information, he rubs his chin and steps away from her plunging knife. ”A lot of people who watched your games are probably dead…maybe all of them.”

Being here is overwhelming. All this information is piling onto it. What is one level up from overwhelming? Then there’s the question on why exactly he is here. None of the faces look familiar to him, they must all have some kind of connection, but this girl is not the one to answer his questions. She has already made that clear.

”Which one is your brother?” Okay, maybe one last question.

Walter feels like the smallest one here, that is nothing new. He was so used to it in the living world, in Cassidy’s Den. There may be someone else here from Six who came after him, they may know what happened to Cass or not. He is dead. It is a privilege to know what happens in a future without him. Does he even deserve it?

This girl from the 8th games, one he doesn’t even know the name of. She is the first face he has seen since Beck Hailsham, another that tried to kill him. That succeeded. There is only one way to find out if breaking a pattern will take him somewhere else. ”I hope dying again is less painful…for you.” That’s his attempt at being intimidating, hopefully his knife has more of a bite.