Everett Cannon

## Childhood

Everett Cannon was born the youngest of four to a family with a legacy of Peacekeeping, to parents with a plan for each of their children. Theirs was a language of violence, of order and necessity, of the understanding that you did what you had to do to protect what was important to you. Here, important was Panem, and Everett never had reason to stray from this ideology, to think of the rebels as anything but muck under his boots. As a child, he faced the brunt of his older siblings’ bullying and brutality, particularly Montgomery, as he learned to speak with his fists at the Career Academy and at home. But Everett grew and he, too, started at an Academy — the Peacekeeping Academy. He, too, learned the languages of weapons, and of the body as weapon. He was never taught the language of his own mind or heart. What he felt was never important; what he did to protect the country was what mattered.

The 115th came around and Monty, the brother who had always given him so much grief, volunteered. Perhaps he was afraid for him, deep down, but he pushed it away, not letting himself think too much of it as he watched his brother fight for his life on the screen. After all, what was there to be afraid of? Montgomery had trained all his life for this — and it paid off, he won. He came home, the family moved to the Victor’s Village, and life continued on as normal. Everett told himself he’d never truly cared, while Monty had been in the Arena, what happened.

## 122nd Games

But then, 122 arrived. He was not supposed to volunteer for the Games. That was Maverick’s job. Maverick, his closest friend, someone who had been trained from birth to volunteer and win. In District Two, it was the most valuable prize. Maverick, though, turned out to be an escape from the violence of the Academy, a new path emerging for him, one that he would happily follow without thinking what it meant.

Everett came closer to graduation, closer to his eventual assignment to another District. Maverick would volunteer; Everett would be shipped off to the shores of Four or the fields of Nine. As the separation waxed larger on the horizon, they grew closer. He’d known Mav since they were babies, toddling around and playing with toy knives and swords in the street, learning how to use a bow and arrow together, and moving through the awkward teenage years of outgrowing your own body. But as they grew older, it changed. The space between their bodies lit with a new tension, one like the sizzling of the wires that separated the District from the Wilds. Everett had no language for desire or love. The only thing to do about it was to sacrifice himself at its altar.

The morning of Maverick’s last Reaping, his final chance to volunteer, the 122nd, Mav kissed Everett goodbye and set him on a journey that would lead to his death. Before Maverick could raise his hand to volunteer, Everett did in his place; an effort to escape the love he felt, or some misplaced sense of chivalry — who knows what drives us to our deaths? His token was a family ring of Maverick’s — the token Mav would have used himself, had he been able to fulfill his own destiny. He brought it to Everett when it was time to say goodbye. The last thing he said to him: “I’ll be seeing you then.”

What he thought would be a swift death was not, in large thanks to the people he met in the Tower. He had never thought before of the liminal space between life and death, but if there was one, this was it.

Orpheus. His mentor who told him he’d die, that there was no point in trying. Smoking pot on the roof and kissing on the balcony; fucking in Orpheus’s bed and waking to their picture splashed across the pages of the Gazette. He wanted not a scandal in which his own heart was tangled but a quiet, easy death if he must have one; Panem does not give tributes what they want.

Agatha. His other mentor cared more for her flask than for him, would gladly trade him for a trained tribute. He was death walking, to her, he had done a stupid thing and would deserve a stupid death. She had no time for him, no patience left after her many years of mentoring. She attempted to devise a strategy for him; he blew it out of the water the moment his face was on the Gazette’s front page.

Delta. The girl with the red hair to match her spitfire personality. The first thing Delta had said to him was “What are you staring at? Didn’t your mom tell you it was rude to stare?” She was a tiny rebel without a cause, a person who had no business in the Games, even less than Everett himself did. She was also the only one he knew he could trust in the Arena. Their bickering felt like home and she was like a little sister to him after just a few days.

## 122nd Arena

The 122nd Arena was Pangea — prehistoric Earth. During the Bloodbath, Everett killed two of his fellow tributes: Carlos Xenocrates from District Five and Travela Roads from District Six. He walked away from the fight with a bone dagger.

The very first night he teamed up with his District partner, Isabela, and attacked the two other members of the Career alliance, which he was supposed to be part of. He escaped only after receiving a deep cut in his chest. He ran off across the steppe to find Delta, as had been planned, and Agatha sent down a needle and stitches thread, a show of mercy and perhaps a promise that she might help him after all. Delta stitched him up in the dark, him trying to hold in his screams and her trying to keep her hands from shaking, both yelling at each other throughout the shoddy surgery.

He and Delta stuck together throughout the Games — until they didn’t. A storm whipped up, delivering lightning and thunder, and they came to a river that they had to cross. Delta went in first despite Everett’s protests that he should lead the way; lightning struck, and the redheaded girl died in his arms in the river. The lightning strike left Everett’s eardrums greatly damaged, and he spent a day carrying her lifeless body to the ocean, finishing the journey that they had started together. When he got to the shore he let her go into the waves. Half-made, he came across the only other person on the island, Memphis, who was already half-dead on the beach. He killed him brutally with his knife, unable to even hear Memphis’s cries and pleading, not that it would have made a difference.

He made his way back into the center of the Arena when the land bridges formed, and encountered first a woolly mammoth, then the male from District One, and finally, Alder and Marino. He attempted to shoot Alder with his blow gun but Marino jumped in front of him. The dart injected poison into him, and Alder, in a rage, counterattacked with an axe. The two fought but Everett turned his back at the wrong time and Alder buried the axe into his spine. He died instantly.

## Cloning for the Quarter Quell

That Everett moved on to whatever comes next for killers, but our story picks up with another man, a man who moved in a body very like Everett’s, with a mind like his, too, a memory that was a carbon copy. A clone, factory-made to fight in the Quarter Quell and to lose. One of the all stars, a memorable tribute for his unlikely alliance with Delta and for being caught by the paparazzi kissing his mentor.

Among the resurrected is his old mentor, Agatha Moreau, a much younger, blonder girl, with deep resentment for him. What he finds, though, when he returns, is that life has moved on without him. Maverick, for whom he volunteered, has fallen in love with his killer, Alder. He cannot imagine a greater betrayal, except for perhaps the disturbance of the peaceful dead.

## 125th Arena

There were 40 tributes in total, launched into an abandoned town somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. At the start, they were divided into two teams: red and blue, and given the instructions to only kill the opposite team.

In the Bloodbath he killed a boy from Seven — unintentional payback for Alder, perhaps, though in the moment he felt insane. Before dying, the boy cut his cheek with a knife, giving him a scar. Isabela, his former district partner from 122, dislocated his shoulder but did not kill him. After escaping the Bloodbath, Everett received a parachute from Maverick with painkillers and instructions on how to reset his own shoulder. He did it, screaming in pain and attracting Agatha, who could not kill him, as they were both clad in blue. The two were attacked by a bear and Everett killed it. Agatha gave him a sword, which he would carry with him for the rest of the Games.

After a tumultuous journey in the Arena together, Agatha would give her life for him, as the two were attacked by a pack of wolves and she sacrificed herself so that he could escape.

In 122, he had killed 4 times. In 125, he would do the same: Burly Britches, in the Bloodbath, who left behind a scar on his cheek. Sloane Cruise, who he found after she had been attacked by an animal. She was not dead, but he chose not to save her, his own self-preservation winning out. Seraphina McCabe, a friend and ally, someone who he could have lived a good life alongside, were they not in the world they were in. She was pinned to the ground by a boulder; he killed her at her own request, leaving her with the words, “I’ll be seeing you,” and a choked-out apology after she’d breathed her last. Thomas Tankangine, who he found as the Games were nearing their brutal conclusion. The two fought, and he hit him, perhaps meaning to kill, perhaps acting only in a surge of terror and frenzy. Already weakened, Tommy fell back, using his final words to tell Everett that he wasn’t a monster, and asking him to tell his ma that he loved her. Everett begged his lifeless body for forgiveness.

The Games ended far away from Everett, with a final fight that he had nothing to do with. For him, then, they ended not with a bang, but a whimper, and Everett was airlifted out of the Arena, in shock and confusion at all that he had done, all that had happened to him.

## Post-Victory

He returned, the Quell victor and a mouthpiece for the government, trying to get his footing, trying to understand what kind of monsters would bring him back to life. He has remained loyal to District Two, loyal to Nerissa Snow, and has worked hard to become a better mentor to the tributes of his district. Sometimes it feels like time has passed quickly since the Quell, but other times, he feels as though it is just crawling by. His parents have not accepted him as well as he’d have hoped, and he’s held Monty at an arm’s length, not sure what to make of him, not sure what kind of relationship to have with a brother who is not a brother at all, not anymore. He is trying to figure out whether he’s to carve out a life for himself as the person he is now, or the person he used to be.