Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games, nor do I have any affiliation with The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, etc. However, the characters mentioned are mine.

The gong sounds. As agreed, I immediately sprint to the Cornucopia. Quirino meets me there, and we each grab a pack, a spear, and a sword. Turning, I see the other tributes, some stunned from our sudden actions, some right behind us.

The boy from District Seven is on top of me in seconds. It's easy, with my military training, to run my spear into his stomach. The problem is he's too close. He tackles me, and we tumble head-over-heels down the pile of supplies. I feel a hot pain in my back and see a streak of blood on a sky blue backpack a few feet above me. There's a knife on top of it, and I know what happened.

I take my own knife, in my right hand, and swing the hilt into the boy's skull as hard as I can. He made one crucial mistake – he didn't bother trying to control my knife hand, just my body as a whole. As a follow up, I bring the knife down between his shoulder blades, and the blade slips in between his bones. He drops, and I yank the knife out of his back and stumble away, hot blood pouring down my back.

The other tributes have either left or are fighting it out closer to the Cornucopia, which I stand about twenty yards away from. Quirino is on the far side, fighting with a girl. Maybe the one from District Twelve, but I'm not sure.

He cuts her leg with the sword clutched in this left hand, and as she falls his right hand comes up, stabbing a knife under her ribs. As she falls, he turns, grabs something from the pile at the Cornucopia, and runs deeper in the forest about ten yards to my left. I dig my feet into the snow and follow.

We run side by side for as long as we can – not long. After the first hour, we're slipping and sliding, falling flat in the snow. It's wet and heavy, so it doesn't hurt, but it soaks us through to the bone. Not a problem right now, while we're moving, but when we meet up with the others and stop for the night, we'll freeze.

There's another problem, too. The snow behind us is covered in blood and my back is both freezing cold from the tear in my jacket and steaming hot from the blood. It's slowed to merely a trickle in the cold air, and it isn't a deep cut, but still I can't go on. "Q."

He turns, notices my dilemma, and stops to rummage through his pack. After a moment, he pulls out a roll of clean white bandages. "Take off your jacket and lean against that tree," he orders me. I do as he asks, and regret it because he smashes a handful of snow into my back. I cry out, but his hand covers my mouth quickly. At first, I'm afraid he's going to kill me here and now, but I relax as he says in a soothing voice, "You're okay, just need to clean out the wound a little bit."

Clean he does. He scrubs and scrubs and scrubs until I swear he's rubbed off all the skin on my back. Just as I'm starting to think this will never end, Quirino stops rubbing with snow and takes a towel out of his bag. He dries me off, and wraps up the cut by wrapping the bandages around and around my midsection. I put my coat back on, and we stumble further into the woods.

I estimate it to be about two in the afternoon – four hours after the gong – when a wolf howl reaches my ears. I grab Quirino's arm to slow him, but he turns around with a knife in his raised fist. Shocked, I duck, but his hand halts. "Sorry man, I wasn't expecting that."

Heart pounding, I shake my head. "It's cool. Just listen." We stand, hands on knees, panting. It's almost five minutes before we hear it again. The same howl, our agreed upon signal. I hope.

"C'mon!" Q says, letting out an unearthly howl before sprinting towards the sound we originally heard.

The sounds change. Next there is a singing bird, then a barking dog, followed by a hooting owl. Suddenly Q lets out the same howl we started with, and I know he's spotted the others.

A bright spot of orange appears in the distance, and with it comes the sound of a bear's growl. They haven't seen us, yet, but together we howl as we march towards them. After a moment, another howl, slightly different, meets my ears. It's more feminine. Good. That means Mayla survived the bloodbath.

We lose sight of the others every couple steps as trees come between us, but it never lasts long. And then they're there. "Mayla, good to see you," I say, embracing her briefly. I nod to Dominic and Xander, and we try to decide what to do next. Should we stay where we are, or try to get on further, exhausted as we are?

"We need to put more distance between us and the others. Has anyone seen anything other than trees yet?" Dom asks.

Grinning, I can't hold back my response. "Of course. The Cornucopia, twenty-three tributes and myself, weapons, sup–"

"Alright smart aleck," Mayla says, cutting me off. "If there are only trees, where are we going to camp?"

This stumps us. No one has any ideas.

"Let's keep going," I suggest. "We don't know what else to do."