Chapter 10

I wake with a start as Lillianna rushes into my room. She frantically yells at me to get up, and I am hurried into simple clothes by my prep team. I just have time to eat a banana before I am half escorted, half pushed onto a hovercraft. I sleep through the whole ride, and when I am shaken awake, Heebee and I have arrived at the launch rooms.

We take a short walk to the room that has been prepared for me which is neat and small. There is a small amount of food there, and I eat it all, knowing that it could be a while before I eat again. There is also a package sitting out on the table. Heebee opens it, revealing my outfit.

The clothes are simple, but Heebee sees functionality. He points to a pair of brown shorts and a tight green shirt. "These are designed to keep the wearer cool and to dry quickly." The next item is a pair of brown shoes. Heebee tells me that they are waterproof and also very durable. "Given the items so far, I'd expect some sort of watery arena."

That is all there is in the bag. Given past arenas, I know that clothes reflect the arena (except for one year where they threw everyone out in the snow stark naked and put all the clothes at the cornucopia), and these clothes seem to indicate a warm, wet climate.

No sooner have I made this conclusion that the call for me to enter the glass cylinder that I have been trying to avoid looking at comes. I follow instructions, and soon the door closes around me, and my metal plate begins to rise. Heebee gives me one silent nod as I disappear into the darkness above me. During those thirty seconds of blackness, I try to compose myself, settle my breathing, and remind myself that I am responsible for finding food and a weapon before meeting up with the group.

Light breaks above me, and I am greeted with the familiar smell of salt water. It reminds me of home, and for a moment I am comforted, forgetting why exactly I am here. But then I do remember, and I take a look around me.

All around, tributes are rising into a circle around the giant gleaming horn. We are on a bare island of beautiful white sand, surrounded all around by crystalline turquoise water. In all directions, I see islands resembling this one, with the addition of trees. They don't appear to be big, and there doesn't seem to be a pattern to their location and distance from one another.

Two tributes to my right, I see Aurii with a determined countenance awaiting the gong. I decide to run towards her as soon as we are released, thinking that two of us together will be stronger than on our own. The ground before is littered with backpacks and supplies, food and containers of water, weapons, fire starters.

The gong rings out, and the majority of tributes lunge forward. I run straight for Aurii, ignoring the small District 8 girl who is hesitating on her plate. Aurii dashes twenty yards in and grabs two knives. She senses me to her left and nearly drives the blade into my abdomen before realizing who I am.

"Whew, close one!" I say. She nods, and hands me the knife. We run in another ten yards and each grab two backpacks. As we do, we hear the sound of an approaching opponent. We look up and see Tymus, the boy from Distict 2. He has a spear in one hand and a knife in the other. He looks us up and down, waiting for us to make our move.

I size him up. He has large muscles, but something about him just doesn't look too smart. And though I believe that Aurii and I together could take him, flight from this place full of killers is essential. Aurii seems to have reached the same conclusion. She makes as if to throw her knife at Tymus. He flinches, and we pounce at the opportunity to run. With a quick glance over my shoulder, I see that he has abandoned any thought of chasing us when easier prey waits for him at the cornucopia.

We sprint to the edge of the island. A few tributes are already making their way through the water which only goes up about waist high. I look to the cornucopia and see that the tail points a little ways to our right. There, Tessala is already waiting for us, armed with a sword and a large jug of water.

Joining her, we look around the island for a sign of Tycee. We see her, forty yards away, locked in battle with a boy, I think from District 12. He has the upper hand with a sword, but Tycee is quick and continues to evade his blows.

"We need to help her," I say to the other two.

"Are you crazy?" says Tessala, "we'll be killed!" She looks to Aurii for confirmation, but Aurii I can tell is agreeing with me.

"Hurry, before anyone else joins that fight" she says, and we take off towards Tycee. With a resigned sigh, I hear Tessala follow. As we reach the pair, I strike at the boy. He lunges back at me, but I jump out of the way just in time. Aurii tries to split to his other side and attack from there, but he swings the sword around and catches her in the hip, leaving her a mildly deep gash.

Tessala engages the boy with her blade of equal length, and it is clear she is the stronger swordsman. She pushes him side to side, before disarming him. He turns to run, straight towards me, and, before I think about what I'm doing, I reach out and stab him in the stomach with my knife.

His blood runs down my hand as I sink the blade deeper into his abdomen. I hear the breath go out of him, and I look into his dark brown eyes. He stares back at me, but I don't think he sees me. He Is looking past me, through me, seeing something so much more important than the face of his killer.

And suddenly, I hear Aurii calling my name. "Mags! Mags! We've got to go!" So with a last heartless motion, I yank the knife from the boy, and he collapses on the ground. I look at him one last time, then turn away and run after the three girls ahead of me.

We throw ourselves into the water in a dead run. But the height of it prevents moving at great speed. Aurii's injury slows us further, the salt water making her gasp. But we press on, headed towards a random island.

As we progress through the water, it becomes deeper and deeper, and the island seems to be farther away than I had thought. And bigger. But when the water reaches our necks, it seems to bottom out and the floor of the sea begins to tilt up. After about two hours of walking, we reach the island. Worried that we've been in full view of the careers through the whole trek, I tell the other girls to plunge directly into the trees when they reach shore.

There is a short stretch of beach before a thick line of forest. The sand is the same color and texture as the sand on the cornucopia, though without the blood stains. We pull ourselves onto land and into the merciful cover of trees. Throwing the packs in the middle, we sit down in a small circle and gasp for breath.

From the copse in the trees, we look over to the main island with the cornucopia. I can see the hovercraft, collecting the bodies now, while the careers stand off to one side, piling all the supplies together. Unfortunately, all six appear to be there, though one or two are limping.

We decide to go through the six backpacks we grabbed in total (Tessala grabbed the pack and the sword of the boy I had stabbed before we left), and the varied weapons. We dump the contents on the ground, and begin to sort them. We have three full bottles of water, several packets of dried food, six knives, 2 swords, two spools of rope, several packets of matches, a floatation device, a large plastic tarp, two first aid kits, a heavy mace, and a pair of binoculars. All in all, we are overjoyed that we have all survived with only one injury to the group, and with this many supplies.

The only thing we are lacking a significant amount of is food. We have enough to hold us off for a while, but we don't want to plunge into that too soon. So we decide to trek around this island before heading off to another island. We decide that we can't stay here, seeing as the careers saw us coming this way, but it is safe to be here for now while the careers are still on the main island.

As we walk into the forest, we hear the cannon shots. We count on our fingers, until, after the tenth shot, there are no more. Ten dead at the cornucopia. Fourteen left to compete. Six of them are careers, four of them are us. We'll know who the other four are tonight when they show the faces of the dead in the sky.

We don't find anything too promising in the forest, but we do find a solo pineapple and a couple fruit growing on trees that resemble pears. We don't trust the pears, but Tycee seems to remember seeing them at the plant table. She volunteers to eat a small bite, and when she isn't dead within half an hour, we return to the tree and gather the other dozen or so fruit that grow on its branches.

With our fruit, we return to the beach where we landed. Very little change has come over the career's beach except, curiously, there are only five of them there. From this distance, we can't make out who is missing, but we know that nobody has died since we last counted six, or we would have heard a cannon.

We eat fruit on the fringe of the jungle, watching for signs of career movement, but we don't see any until sundown. Then, just as the beautiful orange sun disappears over the horizon, we see a swift moving figure swimming from an island towards them. We watch its progress through the water, and when he pulls himself up out of the water, I realize it is Onyx. With a feeling of dread, I inform my group that Onyx can swim great distances with little effort and great speed. He was probably scouting out the lay of the islands so he could report back to the other pack members.

"Can you swim?" Tycee asks me.

"Well," I answer. "Yeah, I can. Everyone in District 4 can." They all look at me like I can fly, but swimming is just so normal in our district that nobody really thinks twice about not being able to.

"Can you teach us?" Tessala asks.

This question catches me off guard. The nice person in me is just about ready to tell them that I can, that I will. But then the part of me that is thinking about my survival tells me to think about this decision. In this arena, being able to swim is an advantage, no question. It will give me a means of escape from everybody except Onyx. And farther down the road, I just may have to evade my teammates.

So I compromise. "I can teach you how to tread water," I say. Treading water will keep them from drowning, but it will put them in no position to catch me. "Tomorrow, we'll work on it."

As the light fades, the capital seal appears in the sky, accompanied by the anthem. In the sky, we watch the faces of the tributes who died today. The first to appear is the pair from District 3. Then, the boy from 5, both from 6, the girl from 8, both from 9 and 10, and, lastly and most painfully for me, the boy from 12.

That leaves all the careers, us four, and four more. We put together that Tycee was the only one whose district partner died. That means the boys from 7 and 11 are still at large, and, of course Onyx. The other two are the boy from 8 and the girl from 12. We don't remember much about them, so we don't discuss them much.

As all light disappears from the arena except for the fire on the career's beach, we decide it's time to leave this island for another one. We grab all of our supplies and begin to hike to the other side of the island to travel away from the careers' camp.

Hey, sorry its been a while since updating. Hope you guys are still reading!

Let me know how you like the chapter. Getting reviews is the best motivation to keep writing (Big part of why this chapter has taken so long – no reviews ). So just review, it takes like ten seconds! Haha, I'll do my best to update promptly.

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Emmdog1994