Here's the first half of day 3!

Marius Sweeney, 18, District 2

The sun is going to rise soon. If I'm going to do this, I have to do it now.

I slide off the Cornucopia, where I've been keeping watch. I already had the pack I wanted up there with me, plus an axe and a spear. I glance at the new shed where my allies are sleeping, and then run for the woods.

"Leaving so soon?"

I skid to a halt and turn to see Clara walking towards me.

"No, I just, uh… I thought I heard—"

She rolls her eyes. "Relax. I'm not gonna do anything."

I frown. "Really?"

She nods. "I saw how you were yesterday. You really don't like them. I get it if you wanna leave. I'm not a huge fan of them myself, actually. I just don't think it's a good idea to leave this early in the game. But if you want to, I have no reason to stop you."

"So if I leave, you won't tell them which direction I went or anything?"

She shakes her head. "That would get me in just as much trouble for letting you go."

I nod. "Alright. I'm trusting you."

"Hey, we're district partners, remember?"

I smile. "Right. Okay, well thanks. I owe you. And um… good luck."

She just nods, and turns back towards the shed. I watch her for a few more seconds, then turn and run.

Adrielle Harper, 14, District 6

Drops of water trickle onto my face. I slowly open my eyes. Sierra's already awake, of course, because she was keeping watch.

"We should probably just start walking," she says, looking up at the rain that's just started.

"Ugh, in the rain?"

She gives me a friendly slap. "Yes, in the rain!"

I give a big eye roll. "Fiiiiiine…"

Soon I'm marching through the woods, with Sierra trailing behind me.

"Hurry up, slowpoke!" I turn around and grin at her.

She laughs. "Why? Where are we even going?"

I shrug. "I dunno. I just know that wherever we're going, I'm gonna get there way before you do unless you hurry up!"

She sighs. "But I'm tired!" She tries to sound like she's whining, but she still has a smile on her face.

"Excuse me, young lady, but you really need to stop acting like a child," I inform her.

She raises her eyebrows and points to herself. "Me? Excuse me, but I happen to be two years older than you."

"Well by the way you're acting, I could barely tell," I say arrogantly.

"Hey!" she pokes me. Then she looks around. "But really, where are we?"

"I don't know, miss I'm-two-years-older-than-you. Shouldn't you know? You are the oldest, after all."

She sighs. "Alright, alright. We can just pretend we're the same age, okay?"

"Fine."

She laughs again and keeps walking.

I look ahead of us and freeze, grabbing Sierra to make her stop too. She looks at me. "What?"

I point up ahead. "I know where we are."

She looks up ahead and gasps as she sees it too.

We must have gone in a circle. We're back at the Careers' clearing.

Scorpio Monteigno, 17, District 4

I'm woken up by drops of water hitting my face. I look up and realize that, just my luck, there's a hole in the roof right above my head. I'll fix that today. Wait a minute. There's dim sunlight coming through the hole; it's almost morning. Marius should have woken me up for my turn to keep watch almost an hour ago.

I'm closest to the door, so I slip outside without bothering anyone else. A quick look around tells me Marius is gone. I grab a spear and run to the woods. I don't know exactly what my plan is, but I need to find him.

I pause at the edge of the woods, looking for signs of him. Then, I tense up, listening. Yes, I definitely hear something. It's coming from off to my right. It sounds like two hushed female voices.

I take off in that direction, and the voices stop, replaced by sounds of running footsteps. But they're not fast enough. I only need to run for a short while before I catch up enough to see them: it's a pair of girls, a smaller one with brown hair, and a taller one with blond hair. I have no idea who they are; I never really paid attention. But that doesn't matter; I'll find out when their names appear in the sky tonight.

I'm still a fair distance away when I see the smaller one trip and fall to the ground. The blond doesn't notice at first and keeps running, until the girl on the ground calls out to her. She stops and whirls around, but there's nothing she can really do as I advance on her ally. The girl on the ground desperately starts to do a little backwards crabwalk away from me, while fumbling with something at her belt. I slowly come towards her with my spear.

"Adrielle!" The blond calls out. She's crying. "Throw it! Please!"

I look down to see the girl, Adrielle, pull out a stack of metal disks. Whatever, I can just take my spear and—

But I don't have time to do anything as a disk comes flying straight into my chest.

Sierra Reilly, 16, District 9

The boy falls backward, and a cannon fires almost immediately. And then we run. We only go a short distance, though, before we dart up a tree. We go as high as we can manage, before we stop and sit on a branch. I'm still shaking.

Sure enough, the Careers come running. They must have known which way he went because of footprints or something.

Tison's roar tells us they've found the body. "He was brilliant with that spear! He was going to fix our roof! And now he's gone after two days? Who did this?"

"Maybe… maybe one of the ones who turned down being in our alliance?" a girl suggests. It sounds like the blond from 4.

"Uh…Yeah or um… Well, yeah it was probably one of those three." That must be the redhead from 1, trying to be helpful too.

"Well whoever it was, they use metal disks," says the girl from 2. Chills run down my spine. They figured it out.

"Look," the girl from 2 continues. "It's still here." Oh no. It is. It wasn't like we were gonna pull it out.

"Wait," Tison says. "That girl. That girl. She did this. I knew we shouldn't have underestimated anyone." His voice rises to a roar again. "Spread out! Find her!"

Footsteps follow immediately. The blond goes right under our tree.

The next half hour is possibly the scariest part so far. We want to climb higher, or run away. I want to scream, too. But we can't move. We're helpless. The only thing we can do is hope they don't find us.

Finally, I hear the girl from 2 again: "Tison." He voice is surprisingly close. I look way down to see her standing with Tison right under our tree. "We can't find her. She must have gotten away. Let's go back."

He whirls around on her, but she has a sword out and pointed at him in seconds. "Stop," she says, with a surprising amount of authority in her voice. He growls and stalks away.

We force ourselves to wait a while longer to make sure they're not coming back. Then we scramble out of the tree and run for a long time. I don't know about Adrielle, but I'm still on an adrenaline rush. Finally, I collapse, panting. Adrielle falls next to me. I pull out our two water bottles and take a long, deep drink from one, and then hold out the other to Adrielle, but she just looks away. She isn't panting like me; instead, she just looks drained. She crawls over to a tree and lies down in front of it. She's out in seconds. I can't tell if she's asleep or passed out. Even in sleep, she looks anxious, scared, and angry. Last night, she looked peaceful, both when she was asleep and awake. I let more tears fall down my face. We've only been through two days, only seen one death, and this is the state we're in. There's no way we can keep going like this.

Jewel Conroy, 18, District 7

I'm starving. And not starving as in being very hungry; starving as in starving to death. I hunted all day yesterday and this morning, and I haven't managed to catch a single thing. I'm okay with this bow, but I haven't had any practice with moving targets. I rarely even see animals, and when I do, by the time I set up my bow, aim, and fire, they've always run off. I'm starting to feel dizzy. I haven't eaten since two days ago, besides a few berries here and there, and I'm feeling the effects. I'm also feeling paranoid. I only have one weapon, which I'm not too skilled with, and I'm weak from hunger. If I run into any other tribute, I'll die for sure.

I stumble into a tiny clearing and see a small patch of mushrooms growing at the foot of a tree. Food. Slinging my bow over my shoulder, I crouch down, pull one out of the ground, and put it to my lips.

"Stop!"

Instinctively, I whirl around and fire an arrow at the direction of the voice. The boy ducks, but he didn't need to; the arrow misses him by a mile. Panting, I stumble to my feet and glare at this boy, who I realize is Marius. Marius the Career. Oh no. Well, I won't go down without a fight. I pull out another arrow and get it ready. He holds up both of his hands.

"You're being pretty hostile to someone who just saved your life," he says. I frown, but don't lower my bow. He points. "Those mushrooms? They're really poisonous. Even one would have killed you the second you swallowed it. Granted, it would make a pretty painless death, but I figured you would want to know."

I hesitate. "Why?" I ask.

"You mean why would you want to know?"

"Why did you save me?"

He shrugs. "You seem like a smart girl. You have a lot of potential in these Games. Eating a poisonous mushroom would be a lame way to go, don't you think?"

I'm still holding up my bow. "Where are your allies?" I ask.

"They're not my allies. Well, not anymore. I left."

"Why?"

"Can you put down your bow and then I'll tell you?"

I frown. "How do I know I can trust you?"

"I guess you can't know for sure."

I hesitate, but then I slowly lower my bow.

He sits, takes off his pack, and holds out a can of vegetables. I eye it unsurely, but then I take it, sit down, and dig in.

"I thought you were hungry a lot in District Seven," he says.

"We were… We are."

"Well, you just seem really unused to being this hungry. You know, taking any food so eagerly like that."

"In District Seven, we get a full night's sleep, at least a little food a day, and don't deal with the physical stress of running into murderers all day," I tell him.

He raises his eyebrows. "Touché."

"What?"

"I just… Oh, you've never heard of… Well, it means good point."

I shake my head. "Weird."

"Nah, just… Well, yeah, kinda weird."

I crack a smile. "So… You still haven't told me why you left your allies."

"Oh yeah. Well basically… Okay, looking back, this sounds really stupid, but I just didn't like them. Destiny and Jasmine treat this whole thing like it's funny, like the deaths aren't real or something. It's sick. Tison's your typical killing machine, bossing us all around. Clara was okay, but she didn't talk much. And Scorpio… I don't know, we just didn't get along that well either. So I actually didn't leave them for strategy or anything, I just didn't like them."

"No, I get it, they sound awful," I say. "But no offense, during training and stuff it seemed like you fit right in with them. You volunteered and everything, right?"

"Yeah."

"And you've trained for this your whole life?"

He nods.

"But then… Why?"

Marius sighs. "It's been drilled into me ever since I was little. Marius, you are going to volunteer when you're eighteen. That's just the way it's always been. At the academy, they picked me when I was sixteen and started training me specifically to volunteer two years later. It was always, volunteer and be happy, don't and face a life of shame. Losing never even came in as a possibility. But I started questioning it when I was around fifteen or sixteen, if this was really what I wanted for myself. But at that point there was really no choice. If I gave up on volunteering, I would be disappointing my family, my friends, pretty much everyone I knew. Plus if I stopped training, I wouldn't know what to do with my life. Training became my entire life's purpose."

I've been looking at the ground in thought. Now I look up into his face. "That's really, really sad. I… I'm sorry."

He smiles darkly. "Doesn't matter. I'm going to escape that life soon, no matter what happens."

"That's terrible! Don't think like that! The fact that you view your life like that, you think everyone will see it as a waste if you die… It's sick actually, that you've been raised like that. And your parents wanted this for you too?"

"They pushed for it every step of the way."

"WHY?"

"I wish I knew."

"…Is everyone like that in your district?"

"Not everyone. Not me. But a lot of people are, yeah."

"What about other kids your age?"

"They either hated me because I got to volunteer and they didn't, or they admired and respected me for being such a hero," he says bitterly. "Even my friends. They all just hung around with me because I was the cool guy. I was so cool for throwing my life away. For spending my entire life preparing to sign up for an early death!" He slams his fist into the ground. He sits there, fuming. I wait until he slowly looks up at me.

"It's not thrown away," I say softly. "You could still win. You're stronger than pretty much everyone. And then you can go home and start a real life, and try to forget about the Games. You wouldn't even have to mentor; District Two has so many others. You could try to forget."

"I wish I could. You make it sound so simple. But I can't. Every part of me and my life is aimed at the Games. I can't ever just forget about it."

"You could try."

We sit in silence for a while. Eventually he gives a little snort and shakes his head. "I can't believe that just happened. Me, the boy who is destined to win, the glorious victor in the making, who fit right in with the classic Careers. Suddenly I've left the perfect allies and before I know it I'm sitting here spilling out my entire life's fears to a girl I don't even know. I wonder what they're thinking back home."

"Knowing the Capitol, they'll cut a lot of this conversation. You just criticized the Games pretty hard."

"Good. I don't need the shame from back home."

"Maybe they deserve to hear it," I say. "Maybe then they'd see how messed up their view towards the Games is."

"Maybe… You know, I've never talked about any of that to anyone. No one would understand. And how would I know if you would understand either? I don't even know you. I honestly don't know why I saved you. A normal Career wouldn't have."

"You've proven you're definitely not a normal Career."

"Really? Well… Thanks. This is so weird."

"Well it's weird for me too."

"It is?"

"I'm the loner from District Seven. The only other tribute I've talked to is Cedar, and he's gone now. I'd completely pushed aside the possibility of interacting with anyone, besides fighting them. And now not only am I having a civil conversation, it's with none other than the ruthless Career from District Two, who's shockingly left his allies out of nowhere, saved my life, and told me his entire life's story."

"Huh. Okay, yeah I have. Your turn."

"What? My life story? Well there's not that much to say. I'm an only child and my parents died two years ago. Now I reach out to other people and do what I can to help them."

"So… You live alone?"

"Yeah. I bet you can't imagine anything like that."

"Living by myself, no. But I know exactly how it feels to be alone, like no one's there to listen to you."

"Guess we're really not that different."

"Yeah, and neither of us wants to be here either. I'll tell you one difference, though: I deserve to be here, and you don't."

"No one deserves to be here."

"I do. I spent my whole life too afraid to stand up for myself. I could have just not volunteered. But I did. And now I'm here. That was my choice. But you seem like such a good person, always helping people even though you've lost so much yourself. And now you're expected to fight to the death? You deserve to be here probably the least of everyone."

"Like I said, no one deserves it."

"Well, at least now we can protect each other."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," I say. "What?"

"We can work together." He hesitates. "You want to be allies, don't you?"

"I do, but… I can't. You probably don't remember my interview, but I said I really don't like to get too close to anyone anymore. I used to be so close with my parents, so when they were taken away from me, it hurt a lot. And we know for a fact that one of us will have to lose the other eventually. I just… I can't."

"If I don't win, then I think you deserve to. Don't you think we should protect each other?"

"We all deserve to win. There are still two young girls, and tons of us have younger siblings, and older siblings and parents, who are all praying we come home. So actually, I deserve it least, because I have no family to go home to."

"Jewel… Please."

"I told you, I—you know my name?"

He looks surprised. "Of course."

"But…"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"I don't know, it's just… I'm nothing special, you know?"

"Yes you are. I promise." He looks at me sincerely. "Allies?"

I slowly shake my head. "I still can't."

He frowns. "You know, that's another difference between us. We're both lonely, but I go out looking for people to keep me from being lonely. But looks like when people reach out to you, you push them away."

I turn my back on him.

"So… You really want me to walk away?" he asks.

There's a long pause. No, I think to myself. No, I don't. I want you to stay with me and keep me safe. "Yes," I force myself to say. "Please just go." My voice almost breaks. Before I change my mind, I think.

I hear him start to move towards me, but he stops, probably realizing there's nothing he can do. "Well… Alright. Goodbye," he says, and I hear him slowly turn and walk away. He walks slowly, probably hoping I'll call him back. But I don't.

Woo! The rest of day 3 next chapter!