The only rest the tributes would have on the seventh day would be that heralded by a death cannon. The Games started the morning of August 7th. They'd get what sleep they could the night of August 6th. It would be hard to rest at the time they most needed to, especially with the kind of sleeping Glimmer and Cato or Katniss and Gale might be doing. After all, the beds were more than big enough even for two people. I had entered the 70th arena well rested either despite Finnick not being there to calm me or because he wasn't there to keep me up. The Games could very well come down to how sharp the tributes' reactions were in the initial skirmish, not to mention the order in which they were randomly placed around the Cornucopia.
The Careers sometimes added exceptional tributes from other districts to our alliance. The pairs from Eleven and Twelve made it loud and clear they wanted nothing to do with us, but Nathan was interested. He was clever like many District Three tributes, and with Marvel being a few scales short of a fish, Nathan didn't have much competition as the brains of the operation.
There was one group meal when the tributes arrived. There was another right now, the breakfast before the tributes were flown to the arena. It would be the last meal of a lot of the people eating it, and that showed, however much they were trying to put on a brave face.
Information about the arena was treated as seriously as major military secrets. The tributes knew nothing about the arena until they were launched into it, and the audience didn't either. It was part of pretending that the Games offered a fair chance to each tribute. Of course, the reality was anything but. My district and the first two were the only districts allowed to train would-be volunteers. In general, the districts that were somewhat less abused would produce healthier tributes. What a child learned about their district industry and when they learned it might be different throughout the country, which could skew the odds for some and against others in addition to the particular skills an arena called for. Keeping arena details away from the audience helped keep them from leaking to the tributes, and the surprise would add to the viewing spectacle.
The tributes had a minute to take in the arena, a delay enforced by landmines near each starting platform. It was some sort of temperate forest. Would that help the District Seven tributes? That pair hadn't looked too impressive anyway, although Johanna Mason had faked being weak until it was too late for my Titania and the other tributes.
Katniss had a bow and arrows waiting for her in the mouth of the Cornucopia. The arena was planned and built well in advance, but this certainly seemed like one of the minor details that the Gamemakers could change to customize the arena after seeing the tributes. The Careers tended to rush for their weapons of choice; I didn't see why an outer district tribute with a weapon of choice would be much different. However, the archery set being in such a central spot would place her right in the middle of the usual Cornucopia bloodbath.
Katniss could really run, easily winning a footrace towards the bow that had mainly been against Glimmer. Other tributes may have wanted the bow if only to keep it out of Katniss' hands. Now that Katniss had run towards it, could she run back out with it?
Some other tributes who had gotten to weapons were already putting them to use. District Four's own Alex began the slaughter, grabbing a spear and running down the slow boy from Ten. It wasn't pretty, but nobody in their right mind expected it to be, especially picking off the most unlucky tributes early on.
Rue was long gone, having begun to implement the strategy she had announced to Caesar as "if they can't catch me, they can't kill me". Cato singled out Ashton, the boy from Six, for the alleged knife theft. The kill was one of those that stood out even by the standard of arena brutality – Cato grabbed Ashton and snapped his neck, pushing the body down to go find more weapons and targets for them. I went into a bit of shock at the reminder of Jacobus Ostia's beheading. A long-ago rebellion he didn't commit led him to die for a recent theft he didn't commit. Anger at the bitter irony shook me out of my daze somewhat.
Marvel cleanly stabbed a tribute with Nathan bludgeoned another; I was surprised I caught even those details in the chaos. The District Three boy was going through the supplies as his fellow Careers were surrounding Katniss.
Glimmer had detoured to grab a long knife and was charging Katniss when Gale tripped her up. She managed to fall smoothly, not landing on top of her blade or slamming into the ground, and managed to escape Gale's grasp. However, this distracted Katniss just long enough to lose a fleeting opportunity to take a shot at Cato. Unfortunately, my fellow District Four female was Katniss' new target. Not Pearl!, I thought as she fell back with an arrow in her heart. The bloodbath did not give anyone time to mourn, though. Katniss dodged one of Clove's knives, and Thresh kept the District Two girl from getting off another good throw. Alex speared another frail tribute, and Katniss self-righteously made him her next target.
In an ironic way, one of the District Twelve pair most deserved to live after so readily risking death for their siblings' sake. Many people had naturally gravitated towards this year's love stories, none more so than Finnick and myself. We had leaned towards Katniss and Gale because they too had waited, for some reason or another. Someone besides Katniss winning wouldn't resuscitate Pearl or Alex. Yet I lost sympathy for the District Twelve girl because she was the particular one to send my district's tributes home dead. After all, I was only human.
The other Careers brought about a total of three more early deaths. The carnage at the very beginning of the Games was so thick that the Capitol didn't try to clean up the bodies one by one. Ten cannons went off and one mortician's hovercraft swept in. It retrieved the corpses with a claw – nobody was ever in an arena with the tributes during a Games.
Gale had gotten some of the best supplies while his girlfriend had been busy with some of the best weaponry. The two had gotten separated during the chaos at the Cornucopia, and Samuel, the District Eight boy, zeroed in on Gale. Sam was one of the tributes that had survived the bloodbath by avoiding the Cornucopia, but he might not survive for much longer due to the resultant lack of supplies. So he needed Gale's pack bad. He tried to tackle Gale but was off-balance, enabling Gale to easily hold him down and choke him. So Gale had faced more of a fight than Cato, but just as surely killed with his bare hands.
It was clear how incredibly happy Katniss and Gale were to find each other safe for now, and Glimmer and Cato also savored a moment alone after Clove delivered the death blow to a Career quarry and the group made camp. Gale had managed to catch some small game. Him and Katniss made a fire; it was clear they were very good at such things. Their sponsors sent down a loaf of bread to make a meal out of it. Both couples had shared discussions too quiet for the microphones to pick up.
The Career supply pile was pretty much always formidable, since we could go through the Cornucopia at our leisure, instead of grabbing a few items and getting out of there. Nathan had figured out how to reactivate the landmines that had secured the platforms in the opening minute, and wanted to move them to be around the supplies. Much of the Careers' second and third day was occupied with using shovels for their intended purpose.
Nathan's cleverness was one of the few things besides the love stories that had drawn much spectator attention. The Careers drew a lot of sponsor money anyways, but was Glimmer and Cato's situation making them do even better? Were Katniss and Gale diverting the usual sponsor money or were they bringing out new contributors? That part of tribute mentoring I understood.
Gale had laid traps for both people and food animals. You'd have to be darn good at the snare station for the Gamemakers to give you a ten over it, and apparently he was.
Glimmer had hacked apart the next tribute the Careers caught, and it had literally made her sick. There was no such thing as telepathy, but I wished I could tell her that us victors understood. The pair from Five raided Katniss and Gale's camp. Marissa was smart enough to get away, but Christopher was not. However, Marissa had proved herself unable to identify some poison berries, collapsing instantly during the middle of the fourth day, August 10th. That night, Clove casually killed Nathan like it was nothing; sometimes the disintegration of the Career alliance could be just that anticlimactic.
Reaching the final eight tributes tended to be a key event in the Games, and this year was no exception. When the surviving tributes were all awake, the broadcast cut to Claudius' booth for a very special announcement.
I had a feeling that the impact of what he said would go beyond just these Games. "Attention tributes! I have a special announcement. We are now down to the final eight, including both members of both couples. If either couple are the final two, they may win together. Also, there's a baby on the way and a marriage, but for different pairs."
So the Capitol was trying to cut their losses by only breaking up one of the couples. Pregnancy test results could well have been one of the many things whispered between tributes. Somebody must've gone through their district's marriage ritual, but not being from those districts, I wouldn't know what to look for.
I wouldn't have wanted to be Clove, Rue, Marvel or Thresh last night. I really wouldn't have wanted to be one of them right now. However, it was unbelievably great news for Finnick and myself as well as the two couples in the arena. The odds were in the favor of one couple or another. The couple that had gone through a marriage ritual would no doubt want to do that again for real. The other young man would face greater than usual pressure to marry the mother of his child. Besides, sharing such a terribly unique experience, they'd make a particularly good couple.
If Snow was smart, not just sadistic for its own sake, he'd make a joint ceremony out of it in order to control my and Finnick's resentment, although that definitely was not a given.
It was quite likely that a soon to be mother and father would be joining Finn and I as victors. I imagined Finnick having as much love for a child of ours as he already had for me. We were still young, in our early twenties, but had already waited more than long enough to be fully together, and wouldn't wait any longer for this.
Children. I wanted to give them the joy of siblings, something we had never had. What parent didn't want their children to have a better lot in life? I didn't even tell Finnick. It would have been too heartbreaking if those plans for our future were also crushed.
This year's ripples of hope had become a wave.