CHAPTER 11: DEVIATE

Sixty seconds, that's how long the gamemakers give us to prepare. By the time my eyes adjust, I've already lost five of those seconds. I look around to get my bearings. Festus and Korvin are on either side of me. The girls are to my right. Tori spares me a glance but then focuses on the cornucopia. The 2s are further to my right whilst the 3s are just on my left with the 4s opposite me. I notice that the red-haired girl is directly opposite me with her cousin separated from her by one of the other girls from 4. We are all arranged in a circle equidistant from the cornucopia. It is low enough that we can all see each other but wide enough to accommodate a tonne of supplies and weapons.

Forty seconds.

Having noted everyone's positions, I try to take in my surroundings. It is not what I expected. We are near the banks of a wide river. There is a faint smell of brine so it must be an estuary. A series of roads lead away from the cornucopia, all of them worn and overgrown with dense vegetation but still passable, just about. The roads converge on a circular path, I believe they call them roundabouts in the Capitol and in every direction I look, there are the crumbling ruins of buildings. There is also a bridge, merely a rotten frame of one really, stretching across the river where I see more ruins. Vegetation covers everything, weeds, shrubs, vines, and trees eating into what must have once been a thriving metropolis. This environment presents both advantages and added dangers, exactly what the gamemakers would like.

Twenty seconds.

I try to decide where to run. I know being a Career that my fellow 1s will not come after me. I also know that the 2s will be too busy with them to pay much heed to tributes who are running away. I hope they don't try to single me out for my score or my potential for sponsorship. I can't think of that right now. My survival skills are probably average at best, and I will need some supplies to see me through until I find water. Dozens of items are spread out across the roundabout with their value decreasing with distance from the cornucopia. Just a few yards away is some kind of fine net, probably to keep insects at bay during the night but within a few meters of the cornucopia, there are at least three tent packs. They are of no use to me. While they would protect me from rain and bugs, they would be too insulating in this hot, humid place, and pitching one, taking it down, and carrying it around would cost me time and energy. There are other backpacks that are smaller and probably contain multiple useful items. I spy one that is camouflaged rather than brightly coloured.

Ten seconds.

The other tributes are all readying themselves to sprint. I'm faster than the brothers are, but the girls are the best sprinters. The 2s are all too heavyset to be fast runners, and the 3s look too thin and weak to have much stamina. The 4s are all healthy enough, so they might reach the cornucopia not long after we do, if they don't all run the other way.

Five seconds.

I can't decide where to run after I grab the pack. Every route looks the same and offers no advantages. The river is at my back and if it's brine, it's no use to me as a water source, so I discount the paths running parallel to it and focus on a most dangerous option, running right across the roundabout and deeper into the overgrown ruins.

Three, two, one…

The digital timer at the cornucopia flashes zero twice and then we can run. Had I moved before time, my platform would have exploded, taking my legs off. I don't hesitate. I run straight into the fray. Leandra's probably cursing me at this moment. I was always going to grab something, but she'd probably prefer I settled for the net and made a beeline along the estuary shore, but I can't see the course of the river through the undergrowth. For all I know, I'd end up running straight through the vegetation and over a bank into the fast flowing waters.

No, this is my course, and there's no turning back now regardless.

My feet pound into the dirt-covered tarmac, and I almost trip over a hidden pothole. I grab the net quickly, ball it up, and shove it in a pocket all while on the run. I'm not paying much attention to the other 1s, they are all still behind me, but the 2s are charging in from the side. The boys are too slow to close the distance, and the girls were too far out to begin with. The 3s are closing, too, but they are picking at the least valuable items on the fringes, and one or two have already turned toward the ruins. The 4s are coming right at me. I latch on to the backpack strap, intending to pick it up on the go, but it yanks me back and my legs go flying from under me. I look up. One of the 2 girls, the biggest and least feminine-looking, has a hold of the bag, too, and is trying to pull it off me. Without hesitation, I launch myself up without using my arms, a trick Joss thought me. The girl is surprised, especially when I rip the bag from her grip and wallop her across the face with it. She falls, and I feel a momentary pang of guilt, but there is no time for that. Girl or boy, any one of them could potentially be my killer, especially if I don't get a move on. I keep running. I will need some sort of weapon, especially if I intend to hunt. I race towards the cornucopia, only a few dozen feet away.

The 4s are already there, including her and the boy.

I check behind. The boys from 2 are engaging in a lot of hand-to-hand combat, especially with my fellow 1s. Korvin and Festus have superior fighting skills, but they just aren't doing enough damage to the eldest guy, Victor. William and Reginald are having a surprisingly hard time with the girls who are proving just too quick for them. Tori has already eluded them and is racing for the cornucopia. I won't get much lead-time on her, and I can't be roped into any group action, or my plan to run will be foiled. I need to leave while confusion is still rife. I run in amongst the bags and containers, even a few small crates, until I reach the centre of the cornucopia, the armoury as it's sometimes called. I search frantically. I see swords of every variety, daggers, even axes, but no spears, no throwing knives, no projectile weapons at all.

Bastards!

The gamemakers, they planned this, they knew my strengths, and they've taken them away from me. I only allow myself a moment's rage before I grab a dagger. It will be useless for hunting, and it's a little too hefty to throw effectively, but it could save my life in a close quarters fight. I am about to give up and start running when I notice a crate pushed right up against the back wall. It's a huge risk, I'll be trapping myself, but I have to see what's inside of it. I shove the dagger into the backpack and quickly unclip the crate's lid. Sitting inside, neatly encased in foam, are a longbow and a small crossbow, ammunition and all. The crossbow is almost like the bow version of a Peacekeepers' pistol, and it and its bolts easily fit in my pack. The longbow is another matter. Between the sheath full of arrows and the bow itself, I am very weighed down, and it is definitely cumbersome. I really wish they'd provided me with a normal bow, but I'll have to make-do.

I hear a scream just outside, and other voices.

I've lingered here way too long. I have to go, now. I run out and get clear of the glut of supplies, but something stops me dead in my tracks. The red-haired girl struggling with the two other girls from 2. One has her arm around her neck while the other hold her arms while standing on her calves. I look for the boy. He is screaming and crying for his cousin, but he's been pinned down by Darren, the big guy from 4. Betraying your own this early in the games is considered despicable no matter where you go. I consider briefly that I am betraying my fellow 1s as well, including a friend, but at least I'm not trying to pick them off from the get-go. I hesitate just briefly. This is not my concern. I only told her that I wouldn't be the one to kill them. I never promised to help her on her insane quest. I think what Leandra would label sentimentality wins out. I pull out an arrow, take aim, and let it go. The distance is small and the bow's power incredible. It cuts through the abdomen of the girl who was choking her, and the arrowhead pierces the chest of the other. The first one is dead in an instant. The other pulls herself off the arrowhead, and her chest begins to ooze blood. If the wound is not already mortal, it will become so in this squalid arena. The red-haired girl looks in shock as her impaled assailant falls on her back whilst the one who held her crawls away, holding her chest. She looks at me and seems surprised almost. Darren seems displeased. He clearly is depending on his alliance with the 2s. I see he's armed with a pair of metal hatchets. They're wicked looking things, and he seems quite used to handling them. He's a lumberjack then. Was he really planning to use those to chop up the boy like he would so much wood? He starts to charge. I can't reload and fire on time, not at this close a range. I'll have to fight an armed assailant, another huge risk that Leandra would kill me for.

I drop all my supplies and weapons, readying myself but before he reaches me, Darren yells out and falls on the ground.

He's alive but clearly in pain. I can see why. A steel ball about the size of a plum rests at his side. The boy wields a slingshot, and the projectile must have got Darren between the shoulders. Impressive aim, I think, especially to hurl such a heavy object at his size. I kick Darren into the side, and he rolls over, moaning in agony. Hopefully, Victor will not be forgiving of his failure. I pick up the steel projectile and pass it back to the boy. His cousin joins him immediately, ready to defend him after everything. "Go!" I shout out, as I hear voices nearing. She does not hesitate. They disappear into the trees at the base of the tallest ruin. I will take a slightly different route. I don't know if owing someone one means anything in Province 4. I turn back only briefly as I'm gathering my supplies. Tori and Pallantia have gotten their hands on the daggers and whilst they're hard to throw, they're not impossible, and the 2s are hard to miss. Tori catches William a glancing blow in the calf. It's a flesh wound, but any injury here is an infection risk. The remaining girl from 2 is still dazed, and the other boys are helping her and William away. They've done it. They've scared them off. Technically, my primary reason for running is gone, but I still can only trust one of them. Festus is badly beaten up, and he's looking about, probably for me. I have to go before he spots me. I spot Darren limping away after his friends, disappearing into the undergrowth. I hear screams, begging, Korvin's laughter. I guess I knew how he'd be in the arena. Any minute, my fellow 1s will go on the hunt. I need to create some distance between us quickly. I've already lost so much time. I run across the open ground to the road that leads opposite the river. I swear as I'm breaking into the undergrowth that I hear Festus calling after me. The guilt kills, but it makes me run faster.

I sprint for a solid ten minutes before I need to stop to catch my breath. Even then, I only stop for half a minute before jogging away. I alternate between walking and jogging then, but never stopping. I try to keep straight relative to the river as much as the terrain will allow. I could only see the taller buildings from the cornucopia. There are bare foundations, half-collapsed walls, and even long abandoned vehicles everywhere under the trees. The roads and pathways still leave a visible trail on the forest floor, and the forest grows in square and rectangular patches, a strange place to be in. I keep going until early evening.

That's when the first cannons sound.

A cannon is fired every time a tribute dies, but the initial bloodbath at the cornucopia is so hard to keep track of that they usually wait till later in the first day to fire them. That means the fighting must be at an end, and my fellow 1s have dispersed to go on the hunt, allowing hovercraft to come in and collect the victims. I pause only to count the shots. They go off in quick succession, but I hear nine shots, which leaves fifteen to play including myself. The bloodbath this year wasn't that bloody. Sometimes as many sixteen to eighteen tributes can die on the first day, depending on how vicious the 1s and 2s are. Such extremes are rare, but it is nearly always ten or more. That quiet start will be rectified in short order. Normal Career strategy is to hunt in a pack late into the evening hours. Some tributes get cold and light fires, others just don't know how to conceal themselves. Either way, they get found, and the darkness makes escape harder.

As the sun begins to set, I start slowing down. I've covered a lot of ground despite the rough terrain and right now, I need a good spot to ride out the night. Just past some tall oaks, I see the remains of a building. The walls still stand, but the doors, windows, and roof are gone. The branches of the surrounding trees have, however, created a thick canopy above it, enough to provide some shelter. As a location to hide out, it's pretty obvious, but my legs are dead, I'm thirsty and breathless, and I don't think I can hike on, especially not in darkness. On the flip side, the other tributes might look in here, but my fellow 1s wouldn't. They'd never believe I'd choose such an obvious place to hide. I walk through the empty doorframe. Inside, there is a bed of leaf litter on the floor, and vines and branches sticking in everywhere, but there's an open space by the window next to door, and a convenient root to sit on. I drop the sheath and the bow beside me, so I can start rummaging through my spoils. Besides, the dagger and the crossbow, I have two empty canisters, iodine, matches, metal wire, sunglasses, and a tub of some strange lotion, either an insect repellent or sunblock.

So no water, no food.

All that for nothing, I could have grabbed one of the luminous packs that might have had some dried food and a bottle of water to keep me going and avoided nearly getting killed. The coloured packs would have been simple enough to camouflage myself. I remember then that meagre offerings like that would only tide me over. I would still have to hunt and search for water eventually. Looks like that'll be my goal at first light tomorrow. I lay against the tree root to rest. I didn't get a sleeping bag, but the night is too muggy for one anyhow. Despite everything, sleep does not come hard. I am exhausted from the night before and from running all day. Nevertheless, I leave out the dagger, and I keep the crossbow loaded and in hand.

I am awoken by a scream.

It is still dark, I can't have been asleep for more than a few hours. I get up quietly, grab all of my things, and ready the crossbow whilst holding the dagger in the opposite hand. I peer out the empty window frame. Not fifty feet from where I am, all my fellow 1s stand around a girl, I think one of the 3s, lying on her back on the ground. How did they catch up so fast? They must have given chase almost immediately or as soon as Korvin was finished butchering the injured tributes at the cornucopia. The girl is clearly terrified. I can hear her breathing from here, see her chest rising and falling. She's crying, too, I can hear it in her voice as she begs. "Please, please don't kill me."

Korvin steps forward and squats down in front of her, wielding a nasty looking curved blade. He smiles and says, "But, sweetheart, that's the name of the game, killing. I mean if we don't kill each other then there can't be a victor. I'm sure you understand that this unpleasantness is necessary."

"Please-please, I won't…I can't win, you don't have to do this."

"Well, you see, if I let you go, then I'll just have to come back to you, won't I? You're just putting off the inevitable, sweetheart. Wouldn't you just prefer to have it end now rather than spends days running in fear and slowly dying anyways?"

"Please, I'm begging you. I don't want to die. Please…"

She tries to say something else, but it is lost in her sobs. I feel awful just sitting here. I could easily open fire from here using the longbow, but I would give myself away, and I'd probably only take out one or two them before they scattered and then converged on my position. I would die, and the girl would still die. I duck lower but keep my eyes above the windowsill. Korvin's smile disappears, and he sticks his sword to her throat. She stops crying as he says, "Quit your whining, you sorry coward. At least have some dignity in death, so you don't totally shame your province. I bet your parents can't even bear to watch you whinging on the television for everyone to see."

She grabs up a handful of dirt and leaves and throws it in his face. She clambers to her feet and runs. Korvin screams his fury as he cleans out his eyes. Tori sighs in disdain and out of nowhere, flicks a dagger through the air. It hits the girl in the back, piercing her hilt-deep right about where her heart would be. She falls face flat without another sound. I am stunned. Clearly, Tori has adjusted to throwing the heavier blades. A cannon sounds for the girl and a second later, the death recap begins. I can just see the emblem of Paneire through the canopy. I am watching a giant screen carried by one of the hovercraft, though it appears to be floating in the sky. Back home, every death is covered in detail, but giving us those details would be an unfair advantage to the living tributes because for every tribute death, the others would know who killed them and how, revealing everyone's skills. No, all we get here in the arena are simple headshots like when we got our scores, but this time the only detail beside the faces is their province number. I know all the 1s have made it, obviously, so the first faces to appear are the 2s, the girls I killed, the girl who was impaled by my arrow and died on the spot, and the other who was pierced by the arrowhead but lived and must have died subsequently. I haven't really gotten a chance to think about that.

I've killed people.

It might have been to help another but still, I may have been involved in violence all my life in a controlled environment, but this is my first experience of actually causing death. If we were outside the arena, I would be considered a murderer. I really hope I'm not put in the position to do that too many more times.

Next come the 3s, so I know the rest of the 2s are still alive. Five faces appear including the girl whose death I've just witnessed. Only one of the boys is still alive. Finally, it's the 4s' turn. Three faces appear, a boy and two girls. I let out a breath, what I did wasn't for nothing. The girl and her cousin are still alive but so, too, unfortunately, is Darren. That brings today's toll to ten, fourteen left to play. I wonder why my fellow 1s didn't catch up with more tributes than they did. They had the 2s on the run with wounded, and the rest couldn't have gotten very far. Korvin stands and roars at Tori. "What did you kill her for? I wanted to do that."

She replies, "No, you wanted to toy with her for a few hours, then torture her, then put her out of her misery. We don't have time for that. We need to keep searching."

"Fuck you, you took it from me, bitch."

"Careful, you sadistic twat, or you won't be doing anything to me for the rest of these games."

Pallantia interjects, "Tori, please, it's bad enough that we have to be in your vicinity tonight while you're at it like rabbits."

"Whatever, Pallantia, can we get going? We have no idea how far he's gone."

Festus says, "Shouldn't we call it a night?"

"No, you dimwit, we're gonna keep at it for at least another hour."

Korvin replies, "Fine, but remember we've got bigger fish to fry as far as I'm concerned. For one, we shouldn't have let the 2s go to chase him. That Victor guy is a tank with a high pain threshold."

"And you can have your revenge on him for slapping you around, but later. Right now, Cato is our priority."

I duck all the way down and freeze. My fingers grip the crossbow and dagger so tightly that they start to hurt. They are specifically hunting me down. Is it because I ran, or was it their plan all along? Was Festus aware of it? Was he actually fooling me the whole time, or is he acting out of betrayal? I am shell-shocked. This changes everything. I have to get out of here and keep moving as soon as I can. To my surprise, Ignatia speaks up, "Look, Tori, I know you're in heat for him, and he double-crossed you, but Korvin's right. We should be out killing everyone we come across. We'll get Cato eventually."

Tori replies, "Oh wow, it speaks. Listen here, you, he is the biggest threat out there. He's one of us, and we've seen him at practice. He's good with long-range weaponry, and we know he has a bow. We saw him take out those Province 2 bitches. He'll do that to us given half the chance. We need to corner him and put him down because he's chosen to go against us from the outset. That makes him dangerous."

There's a silence. Then, Korvin says, "Fine then, lead the way."

Tori replies, "Thank you, but in the spirit of teamwork and compromise and all that crap, Festus, check out that ruin." My eyes widen, my breathing quickens.

Festus asks, "Why? Cato would never hide in such an obvious place."

"No, but a stupid little boy from Province 3 would. He might have been with the girl. So be a dear and check, and then bring him to your brother so he can relieve his psychotic urges."

Korvin sniggers, and I hear Festus's footsteps on the leaf litter as he draws closer. I aim at the space just in front of the doorway. I am so stupid. Of course, less experienced tributes would choose to take refuge here at night, why didn't I think of that? Not only that but there are no other escape routes, no windows or doors at the back of the building, just solid wall. Festus is nearly here. I keep cursing myself internally. I'm going to have to kill him and when I do, I'll have seconds to bring the longbow to bear on the others. I'll have to decide who my biggest threat is. Korvin will win hand-to-hand or if he gets close with his sword, but Tori could land a dagger in me from a distance. Whichever one of them I can get, it will have to be. I'll just have to hope I can handle Pallantia and Ignatia.

I see a shadow in the doorway. He's here. I put my finger on the release for the crossbow. He steps inside. Now. I need to shoot now, but I can't, I freeze. As soon as he's in, he sees me, but he does not react at first. Okay' he's taken off guard. Now is the time. I have to shoot, come on! I can't do it. Even though I can't say whether or not Festus has been playing me all along, the possibility that he wasn't has robbed me of my will. He knows it, too. I can see it in his face. He has a sword and only eight feet stand between us. He could reach me in two seconds, or will he drag me outside so Tori and Korvin can have their way with me? My whole body is shaking, my arm completely unsteady. If I fired now, I probably wouldn't even hit him. He looks away from me and starts moving around the space. Is he messing with me? Then, without even glancing at me, he walks out. Is he giving me a head start before he tells the others, drawing out my death? Tori asks, "Well, bonehead?"

"You guessed wrong, Tori. There's no one in there."

"You're sure? You are pretty thick, after all."

"Positive."

"Fine, let's keep moving. There are denser groves of trees that way. Maybe he's hiding there."

Their footsteps become fainter and fainter along with their voices until they are out of range. My breathing eases. The shaking stops. Despite the humidity, I feel cold. Festus just saved my life even though I lied to him and left him behind. I slump down against the tree root, but sleep does not return. I guess I don't deserve to rest easy.