A/N: I'm sorry for posting this a day late, but at least the wait wasn't as long as it was last time.

The next hour was a blur. After being pulled from the room my mind sort of shut down. I remember being walked onto a ship with all of the other tributes and having something injected to my arm. And eventually I was in a white room with a glass tube in front of me. I only came out of my trance when the glass tube finally opened and I heard the sound of a clock ticking.

"That's right," I reminded myself, "The Hunger Games…"

I slowly began taking steps toward the open glass tube. "This is it," I thought to myself. I turned around and took in my surroundings one last time before stepping into the tube. My breathing hitched when the glass tube suddenly closed again. My panic increased further when the ground beneath me began to rise. I pressed my hands to the glass, hoping that somehow it would stop the movement. My eyes darted around rapidly as the room below me disappeared. I was having a full blown panic attack. I covered my ears and closed my eyes as fear over took me. The only thing I could hear was the sound of my own breathing, fast and hitched.

The movement of the platform underneath my feet stopped abruptly and I instantly opened my eyes. I took my hands off of my ears and slowly began to absorb my surroundings. The ground around me was reddish-brown dirt. My eyes gazed upwards and I saw this dirt covered the vast majority of the arena. The arena was filled with a variety of steep mountains and gorges and there weren't many plants. Only a few low lying shrubs and bushes. There were a few cactuses every now and then as well. We were in a desert. A horrible, rigid, mountainous desert.

The 24 of us were in a circle a large metal structure that I immediately recognized as the cornucopia. I looked to see who was nearest me and happily discovered that most of the Careers were on the other side of the cornucopia. The area immediately surrounding the cornucopia was flat. But about a hundred feet away from the cornucopia in every direction, the ground suddenly went up at an incredibly steep angle. Anyone wanting to escape the flat center to the safety of the mountains would have to climb out.

"3…2…1…"

I had only noticed the countdown at the last possible moment. Suddenly, a gong ran and people were either sprinting towards the cornucopia or away from it as fast as possible. Fear overtook me again and I froze up. I stood shaking as I watched the Career girl Ember pick up a sword and immediately cut through two other nearby tributes. I watched as the Career girl Amalie found a bow and some arrows and immediately started firing at the tributes trying to escape by climbing up the wall surrounding the cornucopia. And I watched as the Career boy Stark used a pack of food to bash a kids head open.

I heard a loud umphcome from right in front of me and I swiveled my head to see what it was. A girl, who I recognized as the one from District Three lay on the ground with a sword in her back. I glanced upwards and saw the person standing behind her. Stark. Uh oh. My survival instincts finally kicking in, I turned and sprinted towards the wall as fast as I could. I was always pretty fast, and that was certainly helping me out. Stark struggled to keep up with me. He was much bulkier than I was and was also weighed down by the sword and two packs that he had slung over his shoulder.

I reached the wall and rapidly began climbing in an attempt to escape to the rugged mountains on the other side. I was almost to the top of the wall when I placed my hand on a ledge, only to have it crumble underneath the weight, causing me to fall down the wall a few feet. "Damn loose rock!" I thought. Suddenly I heard a loud impact above me and saw Stark's sword stuck in the wall right where my head had been only a few seconds earlier. "Never mind," I thought. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Stark standing about twenty feet away from the wall glowering at me menacingly. He started running toward the wall and I hurriedly began climbing again, using the stuck sword to help boost myself upwards. Just as Stark reached the wall, I was pulling myself over it.

"I'll get you sooner or later!" he shouted angrily, out of sight, "Don't worry…You're time will come! And I'll make sure that I kill you slowly too! Your death is going to be the bloodiest of them all!" He was clearly just mad and was shouting those words because he was angry that I got away, but the words still shook me to the core. Frightened, I slowly picked myself up and began running through the mountainous terrain in front of me.

Fifteen shots from the cannon had rung out after the bloodbath from the cornucopia was finally over. Fifteen! It was and still is one of the bloodiest openings to any Hunger Games ever. That damn wall was probably the main reason so many tributes had bit it so early in the game. I had eventually noticed an enormous gray wall on the very far horizon. At the time, I had no idea what it could possibly be. It had been a few hours of grueling walking over horrible terrain. It was one of the most unpleasant walks ever, but I knew I needed to keep pushing forward.

As I walked, I thought about what Finnick had told me right before I was taken to the arena.

"I love you," he had whispered.

Why did he have to say that? As if being thrown into the Hunger Games wasn't already an emotionally traumatizing experience, I had to figure out what I felt about Finnick. Love? I wasn't sure if I loved him back. Although the first thing I wanted to do when he said that to was "I love you, too," I wasn't sure if that's what I would do now.

I was only eighteen and hadn't had any type of emotions similar to these before. I wasn't even entirely sure what love was. I recalled what my mom had said about love when I was a lot younger:

"Love is that special feeling you have when you know you want to be with a special person for the rest of your life. You always want to be with that person, and you're not sure what you would do if you didn't have them. That's what love is."

But was that what I felt about Finnick? Sure, every moment I spent with him was magic, and our first kiss was so blissful that I completely forgot where I was. Sure, I hated being away from Finnick and he's the only person I wanted to have at my side at the moment, but…did that mean I loved him?

The sound of a shrill scream that echoed throughout the arena tore me out of my thoughts. The cannon sounded signaling the death of another tribute, most likely the one that had screamed only moments earlier. I quickly disregarded my thoughts about Finnick. Whatever I felt about him didn't matter right now. I needed to keep moving and eventually find someplace to sleep for the night, because if I ran into any of the Careers, it certainly wasn't going to matter much whether or not I loved Finnick. "I probably won't even make it out of the arena alive, so none of it will matter anyway," I reminded myself. But then I remembered that I had promised Finnick to do my best to win so I recommitted myself to finding a place to sleep for the night.

After a bit of looking, I found a shallow cave at the bottom of a small gorge that would be serviceable for a night.

The Capitol anthem began to play and I looked up into the sky to see who hadn't made it. There had been sixteen deaths that day (!), and I was shocked when I finally made the realization that I had reached the final eight. The faces of the deceased began to appear in the sky. The girl from District Three, Greta, both tributes from District Five, Mott and Nina, both tributes from District Six, Dillon and Daria, the girl from District Seven, Keira, both tributes from District Eight, Heath and Polly, both tributes from District Nine, Myles and Cassie, both tributes from District Ten, Denton and Maori, both tributes from District Eleven, Sal and Sage, and both tributes from District Twelve, Lido and Farrah, had all been killed. So that just left the Careers (Glare, Ember, Stark, and Amalie), Nolan, the boy from District Three (Lyle), the boy from District Seven (Zane), and me.

I took a bit of pride in knowing that I was one of the few people who had been able to escape the massacre at the beginning, even if it was by the skin of my teeth.

A/N: I'll try to update again as soon as possible. I'm reluctant to give an estimate though, because it probably won't be accurate. Please review! I know that some of the chapters haven't been that great, but I liked this one and would like some feedback for this chapter and for the story as a whole!