A/N: Kimbra's POV

I almost wished I'd had the night watch when I woke up in the arena and had to wonder where I was. If I'd spent all night awake at least I wouldn't have been confused. When I recognized my surroundings and stretched the stiffness out of my arms I remembered that Callum was dead and wouldn't be joining us again. My stomach turned, and I decided all I could do was eat breakfast and try not to think about it.

"Here," Kirby said, passing me bread and a bit of apple. "Something to start with."

"We can eat more than this," Raelynn said, horrified.

"Maybe, maybe not," Kirby said coldly as I took the bread and apple eagerly. "You can never have enough to waste."

Raelynn raised her eyebrows, puzzled, and Janette said, derisively, "And what exactly is that little nugget supposed to mean?"

Kirby straightened his neck and said, "Yes, we can eat more now, but if something happens and we lost part of our food supply, we don't want to be too used to eating more than we have to."

"We have sponsors for that sort of thing," Janette said, waving her hand dismissively.

"Maybe, maybe not."

I shifted as I nibbled on the apple, trying to make it last. Whether it had occurred to Kirby or not, I knew this speech would be attractive to sponsors if they were showing us on the screens. What sponsor didn't want to back the Career who would make the money last, who wouldn't waste or take anything for granted? Not to mention he already had a kill to his name, and I closed my eyes, recalling vividly the look on Vera's face just before he killed her.

I wondered what it would be like to kill someone. Of course the thought of it appalled me, but I hoped I would find out soon. I didn't want to be in a position where my only kill was the last one. That was the sort of thing that ruined the mind, messed with perception of the experience. If it came to that, what if I panicked and didn't kill whoever else was left standing?

"What's that smell?" Hugo asked, tearing a bit of bread off his piece and rolling it into a compact ball before popping it into his mouth.

We all sniffed the air, and I frowned. I couldn't quite place it, but there was something familiar.

"Smells like," Raelynn said, turning her head. Her eyes suddenly grew what seemed to be painfully wide and she said, "Woah."

We all turned to see what had so surprised her, and it didn't take long to figure it out.

"That's way too much smoke for a campfire," I said softly.

"No kidding," Janette said, smirking. She picked up her mace. "C'mon. Spread out. Hugo, take Kimbra. Raelynn, Kirby, you're with me."

"What's the plan?" Hugo asked, picking up his machete calmly.

"If that's a campfire gone out of control, they're going to flee," Janette said. "And if it's the Gamemakers trying to move people around, there's people over there, and they're still going to flee. We're going to get them."

Kirby seemed not to approve of the plan, but while he was arguing with Janette that he should stay to protect the supplies, Hugo and I decided to leave. I picked up a shortsword and we headed in toward the smoke.

"What if they scatter in a different direction?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"What if we all miss each other?" I asked. "Even if they go outward, they could be going outward on the other side of the fire, or maybe they'll go toward the Cornucopia in a different direction."

Hugo shrugged and said, "Maybe they will. But we won't know unless we try, and if we don't try we won't get any of the ones who do come our way."

I nodded, knowing he made sense, and I ignored the way my hair bounced around my head as I tried to keep pace with Hugo. Kirby was probably still sitting with the supplies, as I had no doubt that he talked Janette into giving him his way.

I held up my hand as we grew closer to the fire and Hugo held perfectly still. I could have sworn I'd heard something moving in the underbrush, but as we stood there I wondered if perhaps I hadn't imagined it. Hugo was frowning, his ears twitching as he strained to hear. The fire was close, and it might have even been the crackling of flame on sap.

But I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Without thinking, I turned and stabbed the source of movement, just as I'd been trained to do since childhood. The scream confirmed my kill before the cannon did.

"The boy from Ten," Hugo said, kneeling down to look at the blood billowing around the wound in the boy's stomach. "Nice hit."

I felt slightly sick to my stomach as I looked at the boy's glassy eyes. He was younger than me, probably one of the twelve-year-olds. Barely old enough to qualify for the Reaping, and I'd stuck a sword through his belly.

That morning I had been wishing to make a kill soon. I was already beginning to regret that wish.

"We're too close to the fire to expect any more," Hugo said. "We should head back at a different angle, circle around, see if we can catch the trail of any more.

I agreed, silent the rest of the walk. I didn't have anything to say, and I wondered if the betting on me had changed at all since I made that kill. Of course it would have gone up, but how much? Killing a twelve-year-old from an outlying district was hardly difficult. The way I did it, though, hearing something Hugo didn't hear, seeing just enough out of the corner of my eye, reacting perfectly as I was trained to do, making the kill so quickly the boy couldn't fight back…

Those things would surely count for something. Maybe they would count for enough to win me sponsors, to keep me alive.

We heard two different cannons, close together in time, on our walk back, but we weren't close enough to the bodies to see who they were as the hovercrafts pulled them out.

"Probably not our people," Hugo said when I jumped slightly. "See, they were from different parts of the arena. Raelynn and Janette were together, and even if Kirby wasn't with them, the hovercraft wasn't by the Cornucopia."

I knew this, but it didn't help how I felt.

When we arrived back at the Cornucopia, though, Kirby was doling out lunch to the girls. He looked up at the sound of our feet and began to divvy up more food for us.

"Were any of those you two?" Raelynn asked through a mouthful of apple.

"Chew and swallow," Kirby said sternly.

"Kimbra got the boy from Ten," Hugo said, tossing down his machete and accepting his food. "Were you responsible for one of the others?"

Janette spat out an apple seed and said, "Not a damn one."

Raelynn shrugged and said, "We went to the water. We figured the smoke and heat and running would drive a few out to get a drink, but either they had come and gone or Ten was the only one that close to the fire."

"Probably an out of control campfire, then," Hugo said as Kirby handed me my food. "We'll get more later. Plenty of time."

"The Games don't last forever," Kirby said. "We will have to go hunting, sooner or later."

"Or they'll come to us," Raelynn said with a shrug. "Sometimes they get driven in by things, or it's their only way of getting food."

I shook my head.

"We can't count on that, though," I said. "We need to hunt as well. Maybe like today, maybe three people in a hunting party and two back to guard the supplies. We could take turns."

Janette glared at me. She didn't seem to like that I was making suggestions, perhaps feeling that I was trying to circumvent her authority, as she no doubt felt Kirby had done that morning.

"We'll see," she said darkly. "Hugo, you're on first shift tonight, as soon as it gets dark. Raelynn, you're making the fire."

Raelynn wrinkled her nose, but she did as she was asked, taking the wood that we had gathered the night before and starting a fire with some effort.

"I'll get more wood," Kirby said, picking up one of the axes. "I'll be just in the trees there. I'll try to stay within sight."

We all agreed, not that we were very worried. He would be able to handle himself, especially against anyone stupid enough to remain so close to our base. I helped Raelynn move our stones around the fire to keep it from spreading, and I watched the flames dance and pop as I waited.

"Kimbra," Janette said sharply, "you should get some rest as soon as you eat dinner. I want you on the night shift. You should get your sleep now, because there's no telling what the Gamemakers have in store for us tomorrow."

I nodded. It was a good, sensible policy. After all, the mornings were often a time when the Gamemakers sought to shake things up, a way of getting the viewers reengaged in the action right away.

Kirby came back with the wood just as we heard a grunt followed closely by a shriek and the sound of a fourth cannon. We turned and hurried around the Cornucopia to see Hugo with his bloodied machete sliced across the throat of the girl from Twelve.

"There's another outlier down," Raelynn said softly as he withdrew his machete and wiped it on the grass. "We should stand back so they can retrieve the body."

We went around to the other side of the Cornucopia, and I tried to express interest in Raelynn's frustration that the hovercraft put out the fire she had started. As soon as the wind from the retrieval cleared she set about starting the flame again, but I couldn't stop thinking that the girl from Twelve had been my age.

That night when the Capitol put the faces of the dead up, we learned that the boy from Eight and the girl from Six were the other two killed, although who killed them was still a mystery. I clutched my sword during the night watch, but nothing of consequence happened. Nothing of consequence happened on the third day, either. At least, not to us. Maybe somewhere interesting things were happening, but no cannons sounded and all of our searches came up empty.

I woke in the middle of the third night to see Kirby staring at the dying embers on the fire Hugo had started, his face looking strange in the moonlight. It had begun to snow, which must have been what woke me. I didn't show that I was awake, didn't say anything or stir. I just watched him, looking thoughtful. I wondered what he was thinking about, what he was planning. That was what Kirby did, plan. He wasn't brutal or vicious or even especially deadly, but he was excellent at thinking several steps ahead.

Had he already planned all our deaths? Had he planned mine?

Somehow, I thought he had. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep again, but all I could see with my eyes closed was Kirby standing over me with a knife in hand, even though I knew he hated using knives. None of our group used knives. They weren't a challenge. We only had them in case we needed them for camp.

I was learning that sleep was never an easy thing in the Arena, but it was especially uneasy that night, and when I woke on the fourth day I felt stiff and unrested. Kirby handed me my food for breakfast and I found I had no appetite.

I ate anyway. It was still snowing

We had a track on a couple of people, so we agreed to have three go out in the morning to track one, and three in the afternoon to track the other. Perhaps because of my hearing, I was going on both tracking parties. Raelynn and Hugo had the first watch, which left me with Janette and Kirby that morning, trudging through the snow, which was already several inches deep.

"We're going to struggle to light fires now," Kirby said. "I doubt there's any dry wood left in the arena."

I groaned. He was probably right, and if we couldn't light fires, we would struggle to keep warm. The outfits were not a cure for the cold, and there was nothing in our supplies that would do us much good if the snow kept going. Fires were our only hope, but we hadn't managed to gather and keep dry enough wood to last a couple of weeks.

We assumed we would always be able to cut more.

"One thing at a time," Janette said sternly. "We're not out here to worry about what might or might not happen. We're here to kill someone."

In reality, Kirby and I were there to make certain that Janette's kill didn't get away. As Kirby and I both had a kill to our names, it was only fair for Janette to make the kill that morning, at least according to the unspoken rules of our alliance. Kirby and I didn't really care, as long as there was one less person in the arena, and Janette wanted to prove that she was a contender, as much so as anyone in our alliance, perhaps more than most of us.

Several minutes of silent walking more and Kirby put his finger to his lips, frowning, standing perfectly still in the snow. I tried not to shiver, tried not to breathe as I waited for him to move, to point, to strike at something.

Finally he did. Slowly, silently, he pointed at a bush just behind Janette, who nodded, gripping her mace, turning to the bush and motioning for me to go around to the other side of it in case the girl tried to bolt.

She didn't.

The girl from Ten, twelve years old and shivering, looked up at us with lidded, sleepy eyes and an expression of resignation. I braced myself as Janette swung the mace at the girl, once, twice, and then the cannon blew and I turned away, leading the way back to camp, away from the bloodied corpse of the girl from Ten.

I had seen plenty of people killed with a mace last year on the Games, as it was the weapon of choice for the girl from Seven. There was something different, though, between seeing it on television and standing right there as it happened. Kirby looked at me and I knew he wanted to ask if I was okay, but he wouldn't do me that discourtesy.

Another cannon sounded as we walked back to camp, and I took a deep breath to keep myself from looking too alarmed. It probably wasn't one of ours, but anything was possible.

When we arrived, though, Hugo and Raelynn were both alive, and Hugo was divvying up lunch in anticipation of our arrival.

"Got her?" he asked.

Janette nodded, sitting down and taking her food.

"Raelynn?" I said, frowning as I watched the girl shiver, huddled up in a ball.

Hugo shifted, shaking his head as he handed me my food.

"She's not dealing well with the cold," he said in a low voice. "Janette, I know we said Kirby was going to stay back with her, but I'm guessing District Four doesn't get a lot of snow?"

"None," I said softly, marveling silently at how pale Raelynn looked, how her lips looked almost blue.

"So they won't know how to help her," Janette said, frowning thoughtfully. "No, you're right. I'll stay back, you three go on and get the next one after lunch. Any idea who the last cannon was?"

Hugo shook his head, and we ate in silence. I tried not to look at Raelynn. Every time I did look at her I got a terrible uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, a feeling that made it harder for me to eat.

After lunch we track off to find the second prey of choice, this one designated to be Hugo's kill.

"Is Raelynn going to be alright?" I asked.

"Probably not," Hugo said, frowning. "If we had the means to light a proper fire, and a good number of blankets and hot foods it might be possible, but I think it's only a matter of time before she freezes to death. She's quite small."

I almost felt colder when he said that her size had something to do with her condition. I knew it was probably my imagination, that I couldn't let it get the better of me if I was going to survive, but it wasn't easy to remember that when I felt so cold.

"There she is," Hugo muttered, smiling to himself. "Wait here, Kimbra. Kirby, D'you see her?"

"Yeah."

"Can you go around, get on her other side? Can you whistle like the birds do?"

Kirby shook his head, but he walked around to the other side of the girl from Eleven, who was doing a fair bit of shivering of her own. I squeezed the hilt of the sword in my hands, breathing the freezing air in through my nostrils. I ignored the stinging as Hugo closed in on the girl, ignored everything but the rhythm of my breath and the stinging in my nostrils.

A scream, then a cannon, and it was over. I turned my back to keep from looking at the scarlet on the white ground, and I tried to pretend it wasn't still snowing as we walked back to camp.