Mika is screaming my name. The net has him good, and he's been struggling, tying himself up worse.
I hack frantically at the net.
An awful thought slams into me like a sledgehammer.
Leave him. This is your chance.
Everyone will understand if I abandon Mika now. It's perfect. There's no time to get him out. If I stay, Soren will kill us both. He'll shoot me in the back while I'm trying to cut this net.
History will forgive me.
If I run, Mika will be killed by Soren or he'll drown in the rising ocean. It will just be me and Soren. I have an axe. I can swim. I would have a fifty-fifty chance of winning.
Leave him. Leave him.
Mika's face is visible through the netting. His huge gray eyes meet mine. He has to know what I'm thinking.
His lips tremble.
"Don't cry," I hear myself saying. "Hold still. I can get it. I can do it. Don't cry. It's going to be okay."
I continue cutting at the net. I'm not even looking behind me for Soren. The fear in Mika's eyes has yanked at my heart, made me desperate to see him safe again.
I don't remember if protecting Mika was ever really entirely an act.
If it was, it isn't anymore.
I'm in the habit of protecting this baby boy, and I'm not going to leave him, not to Soren or the Gamemakers.
Hack. Hack. Thirty seconds have passed. My torn shirt has flapped open, but I don't care.
"Cora, behind you!" Mika screams.
I turn. Soren is there, an arrow aimed at my heart. He fires.
But he's not trained with a bow and arrow, and the wind doesn't help him. The arrow whizzes past my ear.
A huge wave surges up, splashing against the cliff line just beyond us.
The island is sinking faster now.
That means I have a time limit.
I have to kill Soren before the waves reach Mika, who is still trapped in the net. If I can't get to him soon, he'll drown.
I do the only thing Soren, coward that he is, can't be expecting. I run at him.
He's alarmed. He grabs for another weapon, one of his many knives.
I swing the axe and hit his hand.
"Bitch!" he cries. "Bitch! I'll kill you."
What a pansy. I didn't even take the hand off. He's only cut.
I'm breathing hard now, and it feels funny. Oh, I know why. It's because somewhere in the fight with Jax, I lost the bandage covering the hole in my throat. I'm sucking wet air through my chest as well as my mouth.
The sensation makes me feel superhuman. It gives me courage.
Soren's up. He's coming at me.
We trade blows, inexpertly. Neither of us is a good hand-to-hand fighter. And we're handicapped by the rain, which has turned the black earth beneath us into slippery sludge. We're both falling constantly.
I wonder if the audience is enjoying our incompetence, or annoyed by it.
Another wave crashes at the edge of the cliffs, and this time it spills over, soaking Soren and me from the knees down. It's cold, but we're already too wet to mind much.
The wave pulls back, sucking us with it. We end up balancing there, just at the edge, with the ocean raging beneath us.
I'm on top of Soren.
"Get off, you idiot!" he yells in my face.
"Why would I do that?" I punch him, but there's not much strength behind it. My axe, I need my axe. It's fallen just out of arm's reach.
"The next wave will pull us off! You'll kill us both!"
He's right.
And the next wave is coming. It's almost upon us.
I stagger to my feet and try to retreat.
Soren hooks out a leg and trips me.
A dirty trick. A schoolboy bully trick.
Traitor, traitor, traitor.
He frantically crawls over me, gets a knife out – he's going to try to stab me before the wave hits.
He's too late.
The wave rushes over us, heavy and black.
Soren grabs at me to try to anchor himself.
I grab at anything. The grass, the ground.
I'm going to get pulled over the edge, to smash on the rocks below, or to drown.
My hand closes over the axe.
The wave sweeps back, yanking Soren and me over the edge.
But I don't fall.
I'm left hanging over the side by one arm, by Loma's axe. I have managed to bury its head in a crack between two rocks.
Soren is hanging onto my foot.
He is heavy.
The wave pulls all the way back, exposing rocks in the froth fifty feet below us.
I start kicking.
"Cora, don't!" Soren yells.
I'm losing my grip. If he doesn't let go, we'll both fall.
"Please!" he begs. "Please. Cora. I'm your district partner. Don't do this. Help me."
That bastard. After everything he's done, he wants sympathy now? The Games have so hardened me that the thought only makes me laugh.
"Mika's my partner," I say.
I kick Soren in the face.
He falls to his death, screaming "Bitch!" on the way down.
His cannon fires, but I barely hear it with the way my blood is rushing in my ears as I climb back onto the cliff edge.
The wave is returning. I have to get to Mika.
And then what?
It's just the two of us left. Me and Mika. One of us will win the Games today. The other one will die.
My plan to protect him has worked too well.