I'm terrible at leaving well thought out comments, but at least I'm letting you know that this was amazing and incredibly well-paced and vivid. (you do like using the colon, too, I noticed :P.)

At first, my interpretation of the premise was that the Earth was decaying and those who survived the Games were granted a place on a shuttle that would fly them to a new planet called Paradise. Eheh... my mind wanders off... sometimes in the middle of a fic.