Chapter 1 : Second Chance
Cold. That was the first thing. Cold and hard, like lying on a slab of concrete.
My eyes snapped open. Rough wooden planks above me. Not my bedroom ceiling. Not the hospital room where I'd spent my last months. My heart hammered against ribs that felt wrong—too prominent, too sharp.
I sat up fast. Too fast. The world tilted, and I grabbed the edge of what turned out to be a narrow bed barely wider than a cot. Thin blankets. A room the size of a closet, walls blackened with coal dust.
This wasn't my body.
I looked down at hands that weren't mine. Thinner. Younger. Callused in places my hands had never been. I flexed the fingers, watched them respond to commands from a brain that knew—somehow knew—these hands belonged to someone named Nolan James.
The memories came flooding in. Not replacing my own, but sitting beside them like two strangers sharing a bus seat. I was thirty-four. I was seventeen. I'd died of cancer in a sterile room surrounded by machines. I'd grown up in a district that mined coal for a government called the Capitol.
I swung my legs over the bed's edge. The floor was cold under my feet. Everything here was cold. I stood, knees protesting, and crossed to a cracked mirror hanging on the wall.
A stranger's face stared back. Dark hair that needed cutting. Sharp features, a jaw that hadn't quite filled out yet. Eyes that looked haunted even before whatever put me here.
I knew this place.
The Seam. District 12. Panem.
The Hunger Games.
My stomach dropped through the floor. I gripped the mirror's frame until my knuckles went white. Outside the window, pale morning light crept over rows of identical shacks, coal dust coating everything. In the distance, the Justice Building's clock tower rose above the town square.
Today was Reaping Day.
I pushed away from the mirror and nearly tripped over my own feet. This body was different—shorter than I'd been, lighter, but with a kind of wiry strength my old body had lost years ago. I moved through the cramped space, taking inventory. One room served as bedroom, kitchen, and living area. A coal stove in the corner. A table with one chair. Food stores that could be counted on one hand: a few tesserae rations, some stale bread, half a bag of grain.
I touched the bread without thinking, and it vanished.
My hand hung empty in the air. The bread was gone. Not dropped, not knocked away. Gone.
Panic surged, but before it could take hold, I felt something—an awareness of the bread, still existing somehow, somewhere. I focused on that feeling, reached for it with a thought, and the bread reappeared in my palm.
Storage Space. The words surfaced from somewhere deep, carrying an understanding that wasn't quite memory. I could store things. Remove them from existence and bring them back. The capacity felt limited at this stage—maybe twenty or thirty small items—and I had to touch whatever I wanted to store.
What else could I do?
A rusty nail stuck out from the wall near the stove. I pressed my palm against it, felt the sharp point break skin. Blood welled up immediately, red and real.
I watched the wound. Waited.
Within minutes, the bleeding stopped. The edges of the cut pulled together like a zipper closing. In less than ten minutes, only a faint pink line remained, and even that was fading.
Enhanced Healing. The knowledge settled into place. Minor wounds would close fast. Major injuries would take longer, but I'd survive things that should kill me. The cost was calories—healing burned through energy like a furnace through coal.
The third ability was harder to test. Poison Immunity meant I could eat anything, drink anything, and my body would neutralize toxins before they could harm me. Useful in a world where nightlock berries grew wild and tracker jacker venom could kill or drive you insane. But I wasn't about to poison myself to confirm it worked.
The fourth ability made itself known before I could even think about testing it.
A prickling at the back of my neck. Something like pressure, like being watched. I ducked sideways on instinct, pressing myself against the wall beside the window. Footsteps outside. Heavy boots. A shadow passed by the grimy glass—white uniform, helmet, rifle.
Peacekeeper patrol.
The pressure faded as they moved past. I hadn't seen them through the window. I'd known they were there. Known they were looking in this direction.
Blind Spot. The ability to sense when I wasn't being observed. To feel the gaps in attention, the places where eyes weren't pointed. At this stage, the range was limited—maybe fifteen or twenty meters—and the information came through vague, more gut feeling than precise data. But in a world where surveillance meant death, it was invaluable.
I waited until the pressure disappeared completely, then let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
My first life had been careful. Safe. I'd worked a desk job, paid my bills on time, never took risks. When the diagnosis came, I didn't fight it. Just accepted that some people got unlucky. I died in that hospital bed having never really lived, surrounded by the soft beeping of machines and the smell of antiseptic.
Now I was here. Seventeen again. In a body that could heal, that could hide, that could carry supplies in some pocket dimension accessed by thought alone. And in a few hours, a girl named Primrose Everdeen would have her name called, and her sister would volunteer to take her place.
The 74th Hunger Games.
I knew how this story went. Katniss would team up with Peeta Mellark, the baker's son. They'd sell a romance to survive, inspire a rebellion, and eventually tear down the government that murdered children for entertainment.
But I wasn't Peeta. I was a stranger in a dead boy's body—a boy whose memories told me he had no family left, no friends, nothing tying him to this district except three tesserae tokens and a name on the Reaping list.
I could hide. Keep my head down. Let the story play out without me.
But I'd spent thirty-four years hiding from life, and look where that got me.
I grabbed the stale bread and ate it, not bothering to store it again. The texture was awful, but my body needed fuel. I found a half-rotten apple in the corner cupboard and ate that too, savoring the sweetness beneath the decay. First meal of my second life. I wasn't going to be picky.
There was a small knife on the table, blade dulled from use. I stored it with a thought, felt it settle into that other place alongside nothing else. My entire inventory: one knife.
I ate the rest of the food in the house. Every scrap of grain, every tesserae ration. My healing ability demanded calories, and I didn't know when I'd eat again. The emptiness in my stomach faded, replaced by a warmth that spread through my limbs.
The clock tower bell tolled in the distance. Two hours until the Reaping.
I took one last look around the room—Nolan James's room, my room now—and headed for the door. The Blind Spot sense stayed quiet. No one watching. No one paying attention to one more Seam kid walking toward the square.
The Capitol anthem was already playing from speakers mounted on the Justice Building. That tinny, triumphant music that preceded every death sentence disguised as celebration.
I walked toward it.
Author's Note / Promotion:
Your Reviews and Power Stones are the best way to show support. They help me know what you're enjoying and bring in new readers!
You don't have to. Get instant access to more content by supporting me on Patreon. I have three options so you can pick how far ahead you want to be:
🪙 Silver Tier ($6): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public site.
👑 Gold Tier ($9): Get 15-20 chapters ahead of the public site.
💎 Platinum Tier ($15): The ultimate experience. Get new chapters the second I finish them . No waiting for weekly drops, just pure, instant access.
Your support helps me write more .
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/fanficwriter1