Chapter 2- Unexpected

We are almost at our base camp, the wood's spinning all around me and my hands and neck hurts where the tracker jackers had stung me. I tried to keep running but my pace is becoming irritatingly slow.

"Keep going," I heard Marvel yell somewhere behind me.

"Come on Clove, we are almost there," urged Cato dragging me along.

We had just reached the camp when Cato said, "You guys stay here, I'm going back."

"What?!" He must be going mad.

And I must be hallucinating because there are two Catos in front of me.

The one closer to me is shaking my shoulders and shouting, "Do you hear me, stay here until I come back, I'm going back to see if I can finish off district 12," he said.

The other Cato stands at a little distance, his arms folded in front of him, and he just stares at me with a blank face. I look at him and then back at the Cato who is in front of me and started to say,

"No, the tracker jackers.." but I couldn't finished the sentence, everything went black.

When I finally came around for good- after what seem like a lifetime of torture, nightmare and hallucinations- I found Cato and Marvel talking strategies and there's another boy, must be district 3.

"Hi, how are you feeling?" asked Cato when I got up to my feet to see if I could stand without the trees spinning again. Yeah they are standing alright.

"I'm good," I said giving him a thumbs-up.

I check my hands and neck but the wounds are already fading. I look over at Cato and Marvel and their wounds seem to be fading too.

"They sent an ointment for the sting, "explained Cato nodding his head towards a small container lying near his backpack. "Tracker jackers are the least of our concerns now." he added.

I sat down with them and asked Marvel, "Glimmer?" but I already know the answer, there was no way she could have gotten away with those many number of stings.

"She didn't make it," replied Marvel quietly.

I didn't say anything and we sat in silence for some time. "What about lover boy?" I asked, not that I was particularly concerned, just to break the silence.

"And girl on fire," I added turning to Cato.

"Well she got away because lover boy gave her time to. So I cut him up instead," replied Cato through gritted teeth.

"But the hallucinations got to me and I had to run back here, he won't last very long with that cut though, so he's as good as gone." He explained with some satisfaction.

And then Marvel said, "Guys, look." pointing at something above the trees, well inside the woods.

Smoke. Another idiot making a fire. Might as well take that one out too. So we left the boy from district 3 to guard our supplies and went after the smoke.

When we reached the place there was no one, just the fire, so we knew it was a trap. Before we could ponder on who could have set the trap, there came the sound of an explosion.

"Boooommm!" it ranged through our ears and shook the ground, then another one followed and the next one.

We ran back to our camp and found what we had dreaded. Somebody had blown up all our supplies. I felt anger surging through me, Marvel is swearing but Cato is mad beyond words.

"Aaarrghh," he screamed and turned to the boy from district 3 who started to flee seeing the look in Cato's eyes. It's no use, Cato reached for his head from behind, holding him in a deadlock.

"Cato!" I shouted, but it was too late, the boy fell to the ground motionless and seconds later, we heard a cannon go off.

"I'm going after whoever set up the trap," said Marvel and left.

I focused myself on trying to calm Cato down. It's not going to be easy.

It's been a few days since we went after that retched smoke. Marvel is gone; Katniss killed him because he killed her little ally with whom she was setting up the smoke trap for us. And girl on fire is also the one who decided to blow up all our supplies; only days after she dropped that tracker jacker nest on us. She has some nerve. So all our allies are gone, and it's just Cato and me now. And I've decided that after all she, Katniss, did to us, I'm definitely going to stand by and watch Cato kill her slowly in his way. She has been asking for it since day one.

I'm wondering how the game will play out now. We were so confident we had more than a good chance of winning this year. But nothing was going according to our plan. The game is changing in front of us and the odds aren't exactly in our favor.

"This will do," said Cato. We were collecting dry leaves and twigs to make a fire. So we sat across each other, warming our hands over the fire and eating some leftovers of the food our sponsors sent us just after Katniss blew up our supplies.

"So, it's just the six of us now – us, both from district 12, a boy from district 11, what's his name?" asked Cato.

"Thresh," I replied.

"And the girl with the fox-face, which district is she?" he asked again.

"I don't know, I didn't bother to find out. I thought we would be fighting the final games with the other careers." I replied.

"I thought so too, this was unexpected," he observed and looked up the sky, lost in thought.

As I watch him, I realized how close we are to the final games. We need to talk about what happens if we are the only ones left in the arena, if we did manage to finish off the others. What then? Should we let the game-makers decide, wait till they work up a strategy to finish one of us? Or should we take matters in our hands and finish this on our own? I tried to muster up the courage to bring up the subject. Just then, he look at me with an uncomfortable expression on his face. And I knew that he must be thinking the same thing.

But before either of us could say anything, Claudius Templesmith's voice boomed down on us, first congratulating the six of us who remains. And then he said,

"Tributes, there has been a rule change in the Games, both tributes form the same district will be declared winners, if they are the only ones left in the arena."

Cato and I looked at each other for a long time, trying to make sense of Claudius' words.