The first Arena chapter!
Geez I have the shivers.
Part of me was aware I had slept in late, but the rest of me didn't care. It's not like I was in a particular hurry to get to the Arena and die. Eventually Alvis stormed in, ripped off the blankets, and practically dressed me himself. Ushering a groggy me into the dining area, Alvis stood over me as I shoveled down a once hot breakfast alone.
Tapping his foot impatiently Alvis told me that Bay had already eaten and left for the Arena. Hurt flooded my chest making it hard to breathe as I realized he left without saying goodbye. Attempting to get a gulp of air I tried to convince myself that it didn't matter if someone who was only an ally did that. It exactly didn't work.
"Come on girl! Don't make me force you to chew as well." Alvis complained.
Shoveling what should have been three mouthfuls in I stood and barely managed to swallow, "Let's go."
Alvis patted my shoulder, "I won't be going with you."
"Thank you— for everything." His touch still made my skin crawl a little yet I placed a hand on his shoulder.
Peacekeepers busted through the loft door with weapons at the ready. Pouncing down on me similar to the way wolves surround and attack their prey, the heavily armed men dragged me out of the loft, the elevators, and into a car. The Capitol wouldn't delay the Hunger Games now for anything. Even if President Snow himself were somehow assassinated right at that moment, the Games would carry out as if nothing had ever happened. The Peacekeepers threw me roughly into the back of a hovercraft that would take me to the Arena. The ride was long and unnervingly silent.
Upon arrival Gea, my strange and occasionally wonderful stylist, stripped me off and dressed me in this year's tribute uniform so quickly that if I had blinked I would have missed it. Looking at myself I saw the dark teal shirt and thin night green jacket on top. The khaki cargo pants fit loosely but not to the point of swishing around. The black ankle boots weren't too different from the ones I had back home but were sturdier with better grips on the bottoms.
"You are an uncommonly beautiful young woman." Gea smiled and extended a hand out to me, "If you survive, I just might give you a job as a model."
"Uh..." I tried to look pleased, "thanks."
"Sixty seconds until countdown. All tributes in the chutes." A voice announced from somewhere in the room.
Not saying goodbye because I honestly felt Gea only hoped I'd live so that I could work for her, I climbed into the chute which immediately closed, and waited for what felt like forever. If they were just sending me to my death couldn't they do it quickly? All the waiting and parading around made the whole thing that much more unbearable.
Finally the floor began to rise beneath me. Closing my eyes I waited for the movement to stop. Grey light hit the back of my eyelids seconds before I came to a stop. My blue eyes opened to a foggy swamp surrounded by fertile green jungle.
The murky water of the swamp couldn't have been more than ankle deep but it was nearly impossible to tell. Looking around I saw most of the other tributes were surveying their surroundings as well. A couple of them had their gazes fixed on something in the middle of the ring of potential Victors. The Cornucopia.
Gold colored metal gleaming despite the cloudy sky. The structure stood at least twenty feet tall at its peak. Gaping mouth facing me directly, I could see everything inside. The deadliest weapons were stacked inside along with crates of food. Goods and lesser weapons radiated out from the Cornucopia in the water, their usefulness decreasing the further out they were.
For example ten feet from me was a soggy box of matches. Halfway to the Cornucopia was a navy blue backpack with a couple peculiar bulges on the sides. In between was a large sleeping bag.
According to the plans Bay and I had made, the fastest runners in our alliance were to pick up several nearby items and get out of there as quickly as possible. I was undoubtedly the fastest out of the group so I had to lead the other to safety once they had their own goods. The slower tributes were going to sprint straight for cover and use a single fair sized rock and branch to tell their fellow allies where they were. By placing the rock on the side of a path and having the branch just barely poke out of brush on the other side, their allies knew whichever side of the path the rock sat on was the way that tribute had hidden.
Ten.
The booming Countdown started.
Nine.
I glanced at my allies and nodded reassuringly.
Eight.
Seven.
Bay smiled at me and mouthed something I couldn't quite make out at first.
Six.
Five.
Stay alive.
Four.
Three.
The Career girl from Four caught my gaze.
Two.
She drew a finger across her throat.
One.
The gong rang and the Hunger Games officially begun.
Sprinting for the backpack, I didn't see the trouble that was already breaking out. Screams erupted around me but I stayed on course. That is until I slipped in the muddy swamp water and caught a glimpse of what was going on.
Unlike in usual years the main Career alliance had gone straight for the tributes instead of the weapons. The small dark pair from Eleven were quickly losing a hand to hand fight with the quick Career boy from One. Both the girl from Nine and the Boy from Five were in the water. Their necks bent in ways they weren't meant to naturally achieve. Tributes without alliances ran away unharmed. The pair from Three spotted me lying there looking around like an awestruck deer and decided it was my turn to be bent.
"Titania!" someone screamed, "Run!"
Launching to my feet and simultaneously grabbing the closest thing to me, I ran towards the jungle forest that surrounded the swamp. Dry ground met my feet and I was really able to ramp up my pace. Frustrated screams echoed from the swamp as I plunged deeper into the unknown territory. After a mile or so I looked at what I had grabbed and stopped running. I had grabbed a knife that wasn't even three inches long. Hopefully the Elevens' had lived and grabbed something better.
The hilt was stiff and the blade was curved more like a smaller version of the skinning knife the Butcher used back in Twelve. It wasn't technically made for throwing but it was better than the collapsible knives I had seen in past years. One year a kid tried to practice throwing a collapsible knife. To make a longer story short, the blade broke off in the tree and the kid died shortly thereafter.
Looking around I spotted a steep yet narrow hill through the foliage to my right. A high vantage point would allow me to get my bearings and to possibly see any other tributes coming my way. Practically climbing the hill I reached the top and almost died. Not literally thank goodness.
Hills much like the one I stood on top of were spaced about a half mile apart. They seemed to be forming a circle until I looked at the rest and saw that the hills changed direction before coming to a point then reaching back around to me. Unmistakably the hills formed the shape of a teardrop. Beyond the hills were a couple miles of jungle in any direction that was abruptly ended in giant wall-like cliffs of stone. On top of the cliffs was where the force field began.
Skidding down the hill I realized I hadn't heard any cannons go off which usually happened after a tribute died. This let the others know they were one person closer to winning. In the original scramble for weapons and supplies tributes would die too close to one another for the cannon to keep up however. So the Gamemakers would sound off how many tributes had died once the initial fight— rightfully dubbed the Bloodbath— had finished. Shouldn't it be done by now and the cannons gone off?
As if reading my mind a cannon blast went off. And another. Five more blasts and the world was silent once more. My own alliance had been targeted and we had ten tributes total. Had the Career alliance killed off all but three of us? Which two tributes besides me had they not been able to off?
Forcing the worry to the very back of my mind I began to search for my allies. Hope is what kept a person alive, so I needed to have hope that the rest of my alliance had survived and were waiting to be found. Eventually I came across the rock and branch signal.
Off the trail a short distance I found the girl from District Five. Dead. Shortly thereafter I found the boy and from District Nine. His opaque lifeless eyes staring out into nothing; a spear wound ruined what had once been his neck.
Tears threatened to stream down my face as I looked at him. The boy was just twelve years old and he had to die like that. Walking over I closed his eyes. It was becoming increasingly obvious that my alliance had been targeted and someone had betrayed us. It was obviously my fault that they were dead. They weren't the ones that made an alliance so large that the Careers felt threatened, nor had they taunted the killers from District Four. I should have been the one to die not them.
It was all my fault.
Yes, Titania is a little empathetic. That's what makes her such a good character though.
Action, betrayal, and mishaps; am I good or what?