Kernel Lloyd, District 9 male
Day 3
Right next to a pile of crushed car cubes, I find a spring of water bubbling up from a pile of the ground. When I see little birds sticking their beaks into the spring, I sigh knowing it's fresh. As I refill my canteen, I sing a little song about the river that flows through District 9 that is called The River Fish.
I hear a bird whistling my song, and I realize this black bird is actually a mockingjay. Just as I'm beginning to smile, I hear footsteps behind me. I lunge into the dirt behind the pile of crushed cars and see a girl with light brown hair approaching the spring. Concealed by twisted wreckage, I don't even dare to breathe.
But those hazel eyes belong to none other than Demetria, my district partner. I whisper her name and she jumps back, running to another part of the junkyard where scrapped hovercrafts appear to be sitting.
"Wait! It's me, Kernel!" I shout.
She turns back and says, "Oh, you moron! Get over here!"
I run up to her. She's a bit older than me, so she isn't really scared. I see she's bruised on her face. Demetria also wields a knife that has the slightest crusty trails of dried blood.
"Who?" I ask, referring to her knife. Just this morning, a cannon fired.
"Girl from Six. She started it. I just pointed it forward while she jumped onto me. That's it. I swear."
"I believe you," I say.
We walk into the hovercraft's fuselage and sit on a metal bench.
"I can't believe how fast these games are going," Demetria says.
"Yeah, doesn't that mean only seven are left?"
She nods, "Yep. You, me, and the huge alliance."
"Crap," I said, knowing she meant the tributes from Districts 1, 2, and 4 who've been occasionally allying together for the past couple years. Some people refer to them as the Career tributes, but I just call them the Wolf Pack, "How are we going to beat them?"
"I don't know," she said.
A few minutes pass, and we hear a distinct clank on the top of the hovercraft. We both exit the door and see a parachute. Oh! A sponsor! I give Demetria a boost, and she clasps it. When she opens the container, she sees a package of two pairs of gloves.
"Gloves? For what?" she asked.
I pondered why we'd need gloves.
"For the shrapnel?" I ask, because some of us have been using the metal in the junkyard as blades.
Demetria shakes her head, "I don't know. These seem like gloves to protect from burns or something."
"There must be a hot surface we can utilize. Maybe burn them with. We can throw hot water on them!"
She shakes her head, "I don't know."
We go back into the hovercraft and while Demetria sits, I pace around.
"Tarren sent us these because he knew would be able to use them," I say, holding my pair of gloves. Then, I walk up to the front part of the fuselage and feel something slippery on my boots. It is all gooey and nasty. Slime. It looks shiny, kind of fruity too like it'd be lime or apple flavored, like it's some edible gelatin made in the Capitol.
But then I realize this slime was known as Green Sludge. A trap used in the Dark Days. It causes severe rashes that made it impossible to focus on anything else. And that's when it hit me.
"Demetria!" I shout.
"Yes, Kernel?" she says, and when I point to the pile of Green Sludge, she grins and says, "Put your gloves on."
Day 4
We cover ourselves with garments and the gloves, handling the Green Sludge with extra care. Unfortunately, I had to soothe Demetria when the slightest of slime got onto her wrist. She began scratching herself with her nails, and even tried slitting off the skin with her knife. But by morning, she says it itches only as bad as a mosquito bite.
After walking to the Cornucopia which was several miles away, we wait for the sun to rise. All around the clearing where the horn and plates are is a landfill of papery garbage. Those pesky tributes must be hunting us, because there is no sign of them anywhere.
But when we walk into the Cornucopia, ready to coat their food and water bottles in thin layers that wouldn't be visible, we see all five of them sleeping.
It's like we just walked into a den of wolves. Closest to us is the boy from District 1 with his flail. Further inside are other members of the Wolf Pack which include the girl from 1, boy from 2, and both from 4.
"We could back up and escape," I whisper to Demetria.
"Or we could throw it on their faces," she says, angry that I want to wuss out.
"But there's five of us. By the time we put it on two of them, the other three will be awake."
"Good point," Demetria says.
I get an idea and say, "I know!"
I take the bowl of Green Sludge from my backpack and handle it with my gloves. Demetria bites her nails as I get too close for comfort to the District 1 boy. Applying a thin coat of slime to the handle of his flail, I can't help but give a silent giggle.
She takes the bowl of Green Sludge from her backpack and begins applying onto the knives that the girl from District 1 uses. Then I go to the boy from 4 and coat his javelins with some of the Green Sludge. We use our gloves to rub it in thoroughly, so it won't appear to be there at first glance but will still cause that excruciating irritation.
"Wait, leave the boy from Two and girl from Four alone. We'll have some fun with their faces," I say, because we can do that to them now that the others will itch when they take their weapons. Both of us reach into our bowls and take a handful of the slime, and we position ourselves over our victims. I take the boy from 2, and she takes the girl from 4.
One. Two. Three.
We jam their faces with Green Sludge. At first, the two kids just shake their heads and struggle as they wake up. But then they yell in pain. The boy from 2's name is Marcus, I think, anyway he is trying to wipe it off his face but only makes it worse by getting it on his hands and neck. The District 4 girl is freaking clawing her face like a cat would a ball of yarn. Both are too stunned to even know what we did.
"Run!" I shout.
The other three Careers are waking up. The boy from 4, Sailor I think his name is, begins panicking as he sees his allies in pain. When they see us running, I can already hear the girl from 1 saying, "GET THEM!"
A smile crosses my face as I hear her wince in pain at what can only be caused by her touching her knives.
"WHAT THE ****!" she cries, whimpering on the dirt.
The boy from District 1 is running for us with his flail, swinging the spiked ball. But then he tumbles to the ground, scratching his hand with his other hand an spreading the slime onto his forearms. Demetria and I run back, assaulting them with wads of Green Sludge since they are now distracted.
Demetria takes her knife and plunge it into the girl from 1's heart. A cannon fires. I take my sharp piece of shrapnel and hesitate to kill the boy from 1. He has a family and friends.
"Kernel!" Demetria shouts, "You have to do it! For Nine!"
I slit the boy's throat reluctantly. Another cannon fires. We run back into the horn to see the writhing tributes on the ground. Marcus and the girl from District 4 are groaning and moaning in agony. But Sailor from 4 is okay because he didn't even grab his javelins, but instead he's grasping a trident I wasn't anticipating he'd use.
"Sorry guys," he says to his allies. He stabs Marcus in the face, and then his district partner. Two cannons fire. Only three tributes remain. And before I can even do anything, he begins jabbing us. I take an unpossessed sword and begin blocking his trident.
Demetria takes a machete and a gloveful of slime and runs behind Sailor, about to coat it on the back of his head when he slaps the stuff out of her hand. A few droplets land on both of them, and they wince. But filled with adrenaline, they still clash blades. I jump onto Sailor's back, grabbing his head and feeling the stinging itch in my hands from the slime.
He throws me off, but this gives Demetria a huge advantage as he drops his trident. She swings her machete at his left arm and he grunts. I try to bash him over the head with my sword, but he's too fast. Dodging it, he rolls into the side of the Cornucopia and grabs his trident.
We all somehow end up outside in the dirt. Each of us has painful rashes and several wounds, but we don't care.
"Don't mess with my friends!" he shouts, jumping into the air like a dolphin and landing in front of Demetria. His trident is about to cut her stomach, but I stick my sword into his back and he coughs up blood.
When Sailor falls to the ground, I say, "And don't mess with mine."
A cannon fires, and I know we can't be friends anymore. We just stare at each other.
"District Nine won," she says.
"Yeah, we did," I say, "But which of us is going home?"
I can't deal with this anymore. I take my sword and I'm about to stab her when she slits my stomach. An unpleasant feeling of my organs bleeding out is present. I fall to the ground and wail in pain. She's in shock. Tears streaming down her face.
"I'm sorry, Kernel. I just had to do it."
"Demetria," I mutter, loosening the grip on my sword as I begin to shut down, "I need you to tell my mom something." I begin breathing rapidly.
She leans to me and says, "What?"
"Tell her," I say, taking my last few breaths. Or what she thinks are my last few breaths.
I still have energy to grab my sword and jam it into her chest. She gasps and falls over. We lie on the dirt now. Five dead tributes. Two dying ones. Which one of the two will outlive the other? We look into each other's eyes.
"Sorry, Demetria."
"It's okay," she says, closing her eyes.
A cannon fires, and I'm still alive.
