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[b]Vates - Tuborg Heights[/b][/centre]
[i]’What the fucks happening?’[/i] Vates asked himself as he regained his feet from the chaos. He had held onto the vaults hand wheel when the third tremor hit but still managed to knock his head. His vision was slightly dazed and he could feel a warm trickle of blood running down through his hair and around his ear. With a big heave he spun the handle and stood back as it slowly opened up into his apartment. 

Before him out of the shattered window wall of his apartment and over a field of fire and destruction laid the monstrous white gate in all its horrific splendour, a ghastly reincarnation of the Capitol building and the world it had represented. His mouth quivered at the sight and he began to aimlessly wander towards it. As Vates’ dizziness slightly faded, the screams and moans of the city begun to fill his ears, it was a chorus of hundreds of buildings collapsing, of thousands of fires roaring out of control… of millions of people dying in agony. He stood on the edge of the apartment now, a massive drop before him like the way into hell. 

“Aeritus?” he begged, unable to find any words for what he saw. The building buckled slightly then, as if angry at the name he whispered. The jolt sent him forwards out of the window but his hand found the closest window frame, its fractured remnants of glass dug viciously into his hand as he pivoted round and hung desperately to it. He cried out in pain, another voice in the sympathy of destruction. He heaved himself in and slumped to the ground. The building buckled again and Vates began to whimper, an unconscious realisation that he was going to die, that the building would fall beneath him. 

His last thoughts were not of his family, they were of Sierra and the regret he felt for not telling her how he felt. He remembered the sight of her only hours before as she glided away from him, how majestic and free she had looked. The building buckled again sending him sliding back this time, away from the window. He looked out at sky ahead and the storm of light that had begun. He did not wish to see the end of it, he could not bear to. Vates winced through the pain as he tried to climb to his feet, but was knocked down by another small buckle. Again he rose but with more determination, and began to run as fast as his legs could manage towards the window, the pain of each step causing him to roar in defiance. He reached the ledge and leaped out, eyes closed, picturing Sierra as she flew away. He wished to feel that freedom once before he died.

It should have ended then. He could have escaped the pain, the suffering, the chain of possible events that would follow over the next year. But it would not end for him there, not in this life; he would be ‘saved’…