Disclaimer: I think it's pretty obvious, I do not own The Hunger Games

'Some people will go to great extents to keep a secret safe'.

Secluded Minds: Prologue, Part 1

A Mystery

The First Hunger Games

Josee Ernst, 13

District 7 Female

She was still alive.

Her breath was an unwelcomed gust of air in her lungs as she stumbled through the leafless forest. Twigs snapped beneath her feat as she did the one thing she had ever been taught to do in a situation like this, she ran.

How much further would she have to go? How many more days, weeks, months, would she have to stay in this godforsaken place? She didn't know what was going on and she did not know what to expect.

She had watched the first lot of blood shed. Six tributes had already died and they had only been in there for about two hours.

That was one tribute for every twenty minutes.

Josee didn't expect people would actually start killing each other, she thought they would all just run away and hide in terror, but the moment that girl from District 12 plunged her spear into the boy from District 3, she realised just how real these games were, and they were beyond wrong.

Her ankle wrapped itself around a tree's roots and she fell, face-first into the damp soil. Warm tears fell down her flustered cheeks as she just lay there in the dirt.

She wanted her Mother and Father more than anything in the world. They had wrapped her up in a cotton blanket during the war. Fire and anguish had happened all around her, but she never saw any of it, her mind was pure and innocent when she entered the arena but now, she felt like it was damaged with images of blood and death.

Under her breath, she began to sing the song her mother had sung to her when she was a little girl to help her sleep at night.

'Sleep my little child

Don't weep or cry for me,

Fire and sin surrounds us

but you are safe right here.

So close those little eyes so tight,

And hold my hands throughout the night.

Your Daddy will be home soon

And our lives will be good and bright.'

Her life was far from good and bright.

Her tears finally stopped and she just lay still on the ground, just looking at the world surrounding her. She tried to imagine that she was back home, that she was lying down in her bed and looking through the window. It wasn't hard to do. The tree's here weren't so different to the ones back home in seven, they were all dying.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a piece of a metal. She narrowed her eyes and began to sit up again. She slowly pulled herself along the ground on all fours towards the metal piece, which was just poking up, out of the ground.

With her hands, she dug around it and uncovered it. She examined it in confusion as it rolled around in her dirty palm.

It was a bullet, she was sure of it.

Josee was quite used to seeing bullets, and it wouldn't have usually confused her, but the thing was, there weren't any guns in these games. So, how did this get here?

She looked at it for a few minutes as she tried to piece everything together in her mind, but she was never able to come to any kind of conclusion.

An arrow shot out of nowhere and embedded itself into her chest.

...

Her death, to this day, remains one of the most mysterious deaths in The Hunger Games. Her killer was never caught on footage and no one in the First Hunger Games, ever killed with a bow and arrow again.

Some say that whatever she found, she was never supposed to find it.

A/N- Hello all. Most of you won't know me. So hi I write SYOT's, I have two on the go at the moment but one of them is down to the final seven and just has about five chapters left, and the other is quite close to the games so, I decided it was time to start collecting for my next one which is to start at the end of the other one. *shrugs* I quite like having two stories on the go at once, it gives me variety. Plus I have had this idea for far too long.

Anybody is welcome to submit a tribute, it doesn't matter if you are new to me, new to SYOTs or old to all of them. I will be more than happy to take your submission. Rules and information will be up on my bio so please go and read that carefully. It is a 'secret games' and therefore it will be very different to a normal SYOT. So, I really suggest paying attention to the information given there.

I do not have a particular closing date for submissions. I'm saying the Midnight 1st January right now but that is open to change, I may decide to bring it forward or I may decide to take it back. I just suggest to get your submissions in ASAP and not wait till after Christmas.

Have fun with this!

I would love it if you could leave a quick review on this chapter to talk about my writing in this short prologue, it would mean a lot to me.

Till next time, bye! x