Chapter Twenty-One

"Chuck…" he whispered without thinking, guilt and fear mingling coldly in his stomach.

A hand appeared on his shoulder, but he didn't even move, rooted to the spot by the awful cry. And then it got worse. The scream pitched, and instead of the horrible pained scream words formed.

"Noooooooooooooo…"

Thomas closed his eyes as grief rose like suffocating waters, weighing him into the ground. Chuck was crying, screaming through the air and Thomas didn't know he was crying until he felt the dampness seeping through the fabric of his shirt.

"Thomaaaasss! Help meeeee!"

Minho's hand gripped him hard when he moved without thinking, and the asian boy moved closer, whispering harshly in his ear when Thomas began to struggle.

"Jabber-Jays, shank! They're Jabber-Jays! Whoever you're hearing isn't in the Arena, how could he be? It's not him! It's a Jabber-Jay Thomas!"

Thomas sobbed, covering his eyes with his hands and pressing so hard that black and blue spots appeared behind his eyes.

It wasn't Chuck.

Chuck was dead.

It wasn't Chuck.

There was no possible way for the dead boy to be screaming. They were using Jabber-Jays.

It was a Jabber-Jay.

He gasped around the grief and loss that choked him, his shoulders shaking. He felt sick and guilty at the thought that Chuck could have screamed like that. He had given them the knowledge that Chuck was important to him. He had blurted it out to Flickerman and the Game Makers had used the little boy against him in the cruelest way. He hoped Mary wasn't watching. He hoped she hadn't had to hear her son scream again. He looked up at the air through the tears, knowing they'd be filming him then, broadcasting the way he'd reacted, showing they had tried to break him and it had worked.

"I'm sorry, Mary." he said out loud, keeping his face turned towards the sky. "I'm sorry. I should have Volunteered for him, he should have been safe at home with you. He was only a kid."

He hiccuped down another sob. He was glad he was with Minho instead of Newt right then. He didn't want the blonde to see him like this, to know the Arena had gotten to him so. He needed to be strong, to get Newt through this. Eventually Chuck's screaming stopped, as suddenly as it began and Thomas could breathe again as though a constricting bind had been lifted from his lungs.

He was just getting himself back under control when the screaming voice was replaced by another, a sound even more awful because it sounded like a much younger child. She cried out around sobs and even though he didn't have a clue who she was Thomas felt his heart breaking.

"Nooo! No, please! Don't- Aaaarrrrghhhh!"

They were startled when a voice replied from what could be only a few hundred metres to their right, a young voice that Thomas didn't recognise.

"Rachel? Rachel!"

Suddenly Thomas could hear the crashing of someone running their way, and Minho had jumped back, drawing a knife with each hand as Thomas unshouldered his bow and grabbed an arrow. The figure crashed through the trees behind them, both boys whipping around when he appeared. But he didn't seem to see them, bolting across their path like a startled deer. Thomas recognised him as the slight, dark-haired kid from the Training Days. The combination of the thudding of the boy's run and the girl's screaming was making so much noise in the otherwise quiet Arena that Thomas had to fight the urge to cover his ears.

He looked to Minho, an anxious urge to do something crawling under his skin as he listened to the tortured screaming of the little girl. The kid was shouting after her. Minho looked back at him and shook his head, lowering his knives and relaxing out of the defensive stance he'd been in.

"No way. Shank's going to attract the Careers, probably the others. It'll be another BloodBath."

Thomas felt torn. He knew Minho was right, but the thought of such harmless-looking thing running right into the Careers was sickening. What if it was Newt?

What if it had been Newt in the Arena on his own, chasing the screams?

He wasn't thinking.

Thomas knew what the boy was feeling, had he not just felt it himself? The kid looked fourteen at most. He was as small as Chuck had been last year. It felt wrong to just let him run towards the vicious tributes. The screaming had frayed his nerves, he could feel the tremble in his hand. Minho shook his head fiercely as though he could see what Thomas was thinking.

"Thomas, no!"

Thomas was off.

"Get back to Newt- keep him safe!" he threw over his shoulder as his feet leapt into the underbrush.

He could hear Minho's hissed shouts but he wasn't really thinking properly as he followed the smaller boy's path. The screams were playing havoc with his senses. His ears felt raw, even his eyes were sore. Everything was too bright, too vivid. He forced himself to focus on the path, on breathing in and out and putting one foot in front of the kid had made no efforts of stealth, broken branches and crushed undergrowth leading Thomas right to him.