We're exhausted, sprawled out on the sandy earth and gasping for air, but I feel exhilarated. We did it! Leno's got a nasty cut in his side from the spear and another on his head but insists he's okay. I find a jagged gash down my forearm that I can't remember getting, but it's not serious, and Cable's fine apart from cutting his fingers on the wire because he was trying to salvage the length he hadn't used. Vila's lying back against the compacted earth, looking pale even beneath her camouflage. For the first time I notice the dark patch on her shirt that can only be blood.

"We did it!" she gasps, though her smile looks forced to me. Leno sits beside her, stroking her hair out of her eyes, and I wonder again when they became an item.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

"The girl from One stayed behind to guard their supplies. I had to take her out before I could get anything" she says, her voice weak. Her eyes are blazing in triumph.

"Did you kill her?" Cable sounds very young, a child asking the result of a playground game.

"Don't think so. Just knocked her unconscious, I think. But I got..." she struggles to sit up, to remove her backpack, and Leno helps her, gently laying her back against the stones.

We look through both packs. Given how little time she had Vila's done brilliantly. Bottles of water, packs of crackers, energy bars, tins of stew, a first aid kit, a blanket, two more coils of wire, a blowgun and darts and three small cooking knives.

"I just grabbed whatever I could, and ran" she says, actually sounding apologetic. I open a fresh bottle of water and offer it to her, trying to ignore how badly her hands are shaking. Leno helps her, takes a drink himself then offers it to me. Cable and I finish the bottle between us.

"We can't stay here" I say "the careers are going to come looking for us as soon as they get free." I lower my voice "Vila, do you think you can walk?"

"Why d'you think I got that first aid kit?" she demands, managing another shaky grin. "Boys, you pack the stuff and Cyra can fix me up. She's good at that." I start to deny it and then catch something in her eyes.

"Yeah, you just don't want the boys looking up your shirt!" I say with a wink at Leno, who blushes and moves away.

"And make sure you pack the stuff evenly. I'm not carrying all those tins myself!" she calls after them, her voice barely above a whisper. Then she lifts her shirt, and because it's just the two of us, and we're the oldest, practically adults really, and the children aren't here now, her eyes show her fear. She's been stabbed. I can't tell how deep it is, but it's just under her ribs, and her t-shirt's stuck to the wound. I have to pull it off, which of course makes her bleed even more, but I want to cover it with antiseptic cream because it's the most useful thing in the first aid kit. She breathes harshly through her teeth as I cover it with a pad and bandage it right round her body. She's shaking and her skin's covered in a sheen of sweat. I find some painkillers and she dry swallows three, grimacing at the bitter taste. Then she looks straight at me, her voice low and urgent

"Don't tell them."

Her tone scares me. I insist "You're going to be fine."

"So there's no need to tell them." There's a note of finality in her voice. As I finish bandaging her I ask

"So...you and Leno."

"Yeah." she smiles

"I didn't think..."

The smile fades. "I'm not pretty. I know that. I've never had a boyfriend. I know he's only fifteen, but he's a nice boy and...well, I wanted to know what it was like. To...date someone. You know."

I've never been kissed either. Probably never will be, but I don't mention that. Nor do I mention that hiding and running for your lives doesn't exactly count as a date. Instead I say "He likes you. He told me." It isn't exactly a lie.

The spark returns to her eyes "When?"

"In the elevator. That last night, after you..." I hear a sound and my head whips round to see the boys standing awkwardly behind us. I pull her shirt down, covering the bandages, and she nods at me and holds out her hand. I try not to show the strain on my face as I practically lift her to her feet.

"Okay, Vila's not carrying anything. Doctor's orders" I say. Leno and I take a backpack each - they're pretty heavy, but that just means more food for us all - and Cable takes all our other stuff wrapped in the blanket. We make sure Vila's in between us as we start back the way we came, keeping as far from the Cornucopia as we can manage, but it soon becomes clear that we're not going to get far. I breathe a sigh of relief when we see the first clump of thorn bushes in the distance.

We settle her on our new blanket and the boys prepare a meal from the tins. Vila doesn't eat much, and the sheen of sweat on her skin worries me. I'm fairly certain the stab wound has ruptured something inside her, but I'm determined not to mention it. So I keep up a cheery face as we eat, try to cajole her into eating more than a couple of mouthfuls, and add another bandage over the first to hide how much blood she's lost. Sometime during that long afternoon there's a cannon but none of us are in the mood to speculate. Secretly I hope it's one of the careers, the one that Vila fought.

"We're almost in the final eight" Cable comments quietly. He's digging a hole and burying the tins we've eaten from. I wonder why, but he's by far the cleverest of us so there has to be a reason. We spend the afternoon resting and pretending that Vila's going to get better. Leno sits with her, telling her about our district, holding her hand. She manages to smile and occasionally says a few words, her voice weak and breathless.

The anthem after dark reveals that the girl from 11 has died. I feel worse than I expected knowing that we didn't manage to take out any of the careers. Vila's slipping in and out of consciousness by now, and there's no way I can hide that from the boys. When a parachute floats down right outside our shelter the three of us startle, looking at each other. Somehow, there's something that'll make her better, surely?

I open the fabric with trembling hands and find a vial of sleep syrup, and curse myself for opening it in front of Leno. He knows, surely. But neither of the boys say a word. They look at each other and Cable goes out to keep watch. I'm pretty sure he'll sit there all night if we let him. I slip out and join him, but I can still hear Leno. He's still talking, telling Vila that when he gets home he'll visit her family on the Victory tour and tell them how great she was, how happy he is to have been her boyfriend and that he loves her. I wonder if he means it, and just as quickly decide it doesn't matter. When she starts moaning in pain he comes out, his face tearstained, and holds out a hand to me. I give him the syrup without a word.

Sometime in the early hours her cannon sounds.

I'm in the final eight, but I feel numb. Nothing feels real, and I can't even decide if I ever hoped to get this far. Life before the arena seems such a distant memory it might have been a film I'd watched on television, something that happened to someone else. We moved last night; rebandaged our injuries, split our supplies and staggered through the dark until we found another thicket of thorns. Cable kept watch, but I don't think any of us slept much. I ignored Leno's muffled sobs, knowing there was nothing I could say to make it better and unsure whether he wanted to talk. My arm is stiff and swollen and I struggle to move it as I prepare breakfast. The fact that we've got enough food and drink to last for days seems like scant reward now. We eat because we have to, move as little as possible, and salute Vila's picture when she appears in the sky. The next day passes in the same vague blur. None of us can think what to do next. Another attack on the careers would be suicide now we've lost our strongest - our only - fighter, so we do nothing. So we wait a day, then another...

There are no pictures in the sky tonight. I'm keeping watch, staring out into the darkness, shivering slightly because we left Vila wrapped in the blanket when she died. It seemed wrong to take it away from her. There are faint rumblings from somewhere in the distance, and I slip out of my nothingness. A thunderstorm? I wake the boys, thinking we should rearrange our shelter to protect us from the rain that seems likely, but the rumblings are louder now. Louder than any thunder I've ever heard, and they seem to be coming from all around us. We hurriedly start shoving things into our backpacks, eyes wide and staring as we continue to search for the source of the eerie sound.

When the ground starts to shake we start running.

I've heard the word earthquake before, but it was meaningless up until now, just something that used to happen before the Dark Days, before the whole shape of the world changed and the Capitol controlled everything. And now they control even this, the end of my world. We hear a cannon above the rumblings and shifting of the ground and then I'm not even surprised when I see the careers running towards us. The girl from 2 and the boy from 1, with the boy from 4 struggling to keep up with them. I feel resigned that it's come to this, but even so I drop my backpack and try to move faster, because even when the ground is opening in great cracks all around us they're still going to try to kill us.

And in that moment I know I'm as bad as Felix, because the decision has been made. I'm prepared to run to save myself rather than fight for my friends, my allies who have looked out for me, who I've joked with and shared food and bandaged their wounds... and in that moment I stop. Because I will not be like the man who left my mother. Even if I die here, today...now, I'm going to fight for them. For Cable and Leno, who are behind me, Cable by just a few yards, but Leno who turns out to be the bravest of us all had stopped to grab my discarded backpack and is closer to the careers than to us, and I scream when I see the huge boy from One aiming a bow and arrow at his back...

But then it doesn't matter because the ground opens up in front of Leno, so close that he never has a chance of stopping himself, though he tries. His arms pinwheels and he teeters on the edge of the crevasse until the arrow flies through the air.

I don't see what happened next because I shriek and turn my head away, but my imagination fills in the details, and by the time I look up he's falling in slow motion, and both Cable and I are running back in his direction, Cable with the sense to hold his backpack in front of him as a shield, me gripping a short knife which is the only thing still in my possession.

But it isn't enough. The boy from One has already loosed another arrow by the time I'm close enough to throw my knife. It doesn't leave my hand. Another cannon sounds.

Running. Sounds. NotyourfaultCyra Noise. Struggling to breathe. Nonotthatway Running. Voice. Noise. Cannon. Running. Slowing. ItsokayIthinkitstopped Silence. No more running? Dark.

Anthem.

My head jerks up to the sky automatically. The girl from One. The girl from Two. The boy from Four and then...I scream, a sound that rips out of my throat I don't even recognise as myself. There are hands holding mine, a voice, urgent, telling me that it's not my fault, there was nothing either of us could have done. My eyes focus on Cable, shivering in front of me, his hands and face scraped as he pulls the lid off a tin of stew and tries to make me eat. I stare at him, uncomprehending.

He talks to me, telling me that the only others left are the male from 1 and the female from 8. Probably going to be one of those rare years when a non-Career wins. I ignore him. I'm as bad as Felix. I'm a monster. Cable sorts through our supplies and talks me through them. We've got my knife, a broken pack of crackers, three bottles of water, and two tins of stew. He gives me a water bottle and I remember I'm supposed to drink, expected to eat. I remember that people are watching. But I can't react.

Sometime during the following afternoon I come back to myself. I pick up the tin of stew and eat without being prompted, drink from the opened water bottle. Because I've realised that there's a fifty percent chance that either I or this little boy can go home. I want it to be me, but if it comes down to us, I'm not sure I could kill him. So I say nothing, and we huddle together in the ruined landscape, neither of us daring to sleep. I wonder if I'll ever sleep again. We spend the first part of the night jumping at noises that aren't there or are nothing more than rocks cracking as a result of the earthquake. Then we're startled out of our private hell by the Panem anthem.

"Greetings tributes, and congratulations on making it to the final four of the fifty third Hunger Games" comes the unmistakeable voice of Caesar Flickerman "You have fought hard, and your courage and sacrifice is to be applauded. But now we plan to offer you a reward. A feast, to be held at the Cornucopia at luck, and may the odds be ever in your favour"

Cable and I look at each other, our faces expressionless in the darkness. Undoubtedly there's a camera concealed nearby so all of Panem can see our reaction. I'm determined not to give one, even if I could remember how to show emotion.

"It's two against one this time" Cable says.

I stare at him, uncomprehending. "But there's still four of us..."

"But we're the only alliance left. If we're still watching out for each other..." he lets the thought trail off uncertainly, no doubt imagining that it's only a matter of time before I turn against him. But his words have reminded me of my promise to myself. If I can get him through the feast, I'll have gone some way toward redeeming myself. I hope none of this shows in my face.

After a long pause, I nod.

We drink a bottle of water each, banishing the throbbing heads and parched throats for at least a few hours, eat the last tin of stew, and divide the last crackers between us. We may be going to a feast but we're determined to go in healthy. I'm thinking again, and when Cable tells me that he doubts the girl from district 8 will be as prepared as us, I find myself agreeing. Ideally she'll distract the boy from 1 long enough for us to... Uughh. If they kill each other, it's going to come down to me and Cable. I stop thinking again and we begin the trek to the Cornucopia. The gamemakers have clearly planned the games to finish this way, because there's only one route open to us. We don't question where we're being led. In less than an hour we're in sight of the Cornucopia, and all around us seems to be deserted. Laid out on a huge circular table are bottles of water, jugs that must contain juice or milk; whole meals on platters.

But we're not taking any chances. We know the boy from 1 has a bow and arrow and must be around here somewhere. We crouch down and look all around. Nothing. The ruins are the only place he could be hiding but that doesn't seem the usual Career style. Cable and I look at each other. Whatever happens, we'll stick together. Staying as low to the ground as we can, we creep towards the table and the Cornucopia. If we can just get there we've got a place to defend, something to have to our backs...

I hear the arrow before I see it, grab Cable and pull him down on the ground just as it whistles past his ear. He gasps, but already he's twisting around to face the direction it came from. District One has lost the element of surprise but fires the second arrow anyway. We roll and get to our feet and that one misses as well, but he's running towards us, no doubt thinking he can easily take out a pair of scrawny kids. I pull my knife, ready to face him, see Cable darting away out of the corner of my eye. Good, he's getting out of here I think vaguely, but then he's jumping in front of me holding a discarded arrow like a spear, and the Career has a knife as well and everything happens in a blur as Cable throws the spear and it glances off the Career's ribs, and then he throws his knife and is grabbing another one, all the time getting closer and closer, and then he moves his arm back to stab Cable...

...and suddenly, incredibly, the Career is writhing in the ground, both hands clawing at his face. I hesitate for maybe a second before stepping forward, my knife raised.

"Do it..." says a voice beside me, and I don't stop to consider why Cable isn't standing any more as I bring the knife down and down and down and down and hear a cannon. It's only after the Career's hands fall to his sides that I realise he isn't a monster after all but just a boy maybe a year older than me, a boy with a snake fang hanging from a bit of homemade twine sticking out of his eye.

"Never underestimate a homemade weapon..." says a small voice.

Cable is half-sitting, half-lying on the ground, holding himself up on one elbow, the other hand pressed against his chest. I refuse to think about what that means as I crouch beside him.

"Get your...knife" he says. I stare, uncomprehending. I don't want it, not now it's been responsible for the deaths of two people - three, if you count the girl on the third night - but Cable's the cleverest of us all and I reluctantly do as he says.

"We're not...last..." he says, though its more of a gasp this time. I ignore him, or maybe I just don't understand

"You need water" I say firmly, because I'm not going to think about anything else, and I walk towards the table, and I'm just reaching for a bottle when a blur streaks out from the mouth of the Cornucopia and rushes towards me, screaming. It is female, with long, dark, matted hair, but there the resemblance to anything human ends. What clothes that remain are torn and ragged and she's so streaked with blood and dirt its impossible to tell her original skin tone. She carries no weapon but her own nails, encrusted with gore and filth, and she's throwing herself at me, shrieking incoherently even as I bring up my only weapon.

In years to come I will wonder if I killed her or if it doesn't count when someone runs directly onto your blade. But now, as she falls to the ground and I run back to Cable with the water, I only have time to think about helping him, because for the moment I've forgotten why I'm here and the purpose of the games, and that there's always one winner as I lift his head into my lap and open the bottle of water, panic rising because his eyes are half-closed and he's not responding and there's blood, so much blood...

A cannon fires.

A cannon fires.

A fanfare.

I scream.