Chapter 25 - The Hunting Of The Careers

My climbing had improved since mine and Blaine's first few days together. He was still a much swifter climber than me, so held out his hand to pull me up to the stronger branches. For a second I wondered if he'd ever been hiding in a tree watching me do something trivial, but I pushed that aside when we got high enough up and peeked through the foliage to see the base.

It was huge. I'd always imagined a large camp, with tents spread out around the food, but even so. It seemed an awful lot of space for only three people, although then again, there had used to be six.

"Woah." I breathed as we looked down. Blaine's expression was hard to gauge – he was obviously remembering the last time he had been here. The supplies had been piled up into a huge mound in the centre of the camp. From our distance it was hard to see what it contained, but there seemed to be a mixture of food and weapons. Piles of excess when others had to struggle with just a little. Around the pile were five tents. Sugar and Sebastian's had obviously been kept to use for something, but Blaine's had been burnt to a pile of ashes and metal. I knew it was his because when he saw it his face grimaced and I placed my hand over his for comfort.

"They really hate me." He whispered, sounding like he didn't like it.

"They hate me too." I replied, trying to reassure him. "And we hate them." We did. Well, I did anyway. My mission from day one had been to destroy the Careers – even before preserving my own life or even thinking about winning. Defeating them was as close as I could get to defeating the Games as a whole. Defeating them meant I had a chance to return to Mother, Stevie and Stacey.

"Where are they?" I asked, keeping my voice hushed. As much as I hated them – I wanted to see the faces of my enemies – check they were still here ready to be killed.

"They could be out on patrol." Blaine whispered in reply. "Or hunting." I guessed from the large amount of food lying around camp he didn't mean that kind of hunting. There were only seven of us left now – slim pickings. Suddenly it became hard to swallow.

"Can we…?" I had been about to ask another question when suddenly the sound of voices made us freeze. All three of the Careers suddenly appeared in the camp. The small blonde figure of Quinn arrived first, her movements quick and confident. I thought back to her expression in the bloodbath and wondered if she had looked like that again since. Next came the huge sight of Puck, and behind him Rachel. I couldn't tell which one it was, but one of them caused a reaction in Blaine.

"There's nothing to do round here anymore." Quinn complained, kicking over a bucket that had probably been used to collect rainwater.

"Sure there is." Puck replied, striding over and smiling.

"Yeah, if you like bench pressing for two hours." Rachel's response was sarcastic and the two girls laughed.

"Shut up. At least I find ways to amuse myself." The three Careers walked over to the supply pile, stopping by it and staring down.

"I'm hungry. Someone make me dinner." Puck said plainly. The words shocked me, not only for their bluntness.

"Get lost." Quinn replied. "Make your own dinner."

"Oh no, Puck never makes his own dinner!" Suddenly rushing over the giant boy grabbed hold of Quinn and spun her around. She squealed and pretended to fight for a few seconds, before he dropped her down and they kissed.

"Is that real?" I asked Blaine, pointing to the couple. For a second he didn't know what I meant, but then he realised.

"No. Well I don't think so." It was hard to tell with the Games – everyone always constantly being on camera. Anyone could be pretending anything. As Puck and Quinn play fought Rachel started collecting together materials for a fire. I saw Blaine staring at her, venom in his eyes. I'd been right – people could very easily pretend. A few weeks ago I'd thought him and Rachel had been a couple. Now, that was clearly untrue. Suddenly he produced his bow from the sling on his back. Drawing the string, he pointed it at Rachel.

"I could kill her, right now." He whispered. The dark haired girl was still building her fire – oblivious to what was being aimed at her. "Just like that."

"Blaine!" I hissed, batting his bow away. For a second he looked annoyed, even angry, but I pushed it down so he couldn't raise it again.

"If you shoot her you give away our position. And you might not even hit her." I knew there was no way Blaine would miss – not after I had already seen him kill two people, but I was trying to get him to stop. Our plan would be ruined if he acted now. My deterrent worked.

"Sorry." Blaine mumbled. He placed his bow back in its sheath and I sighed inwardly with relief. Quinn and Puck had stopped their canoodling to go over and help Rachel now – they were safe.

"If we're gonna kill them," I said, turning away from the Careers and facing Blaine, conviction in my eyes, "we're gonna kill them all together."

We couldn't risk a fire being so close to the Career base, even with my magical fire pit, so as the light drew in Blaine and I ate the last of our food and watched the sun go down. Not much had been said about an actual plan to destroy the Careers – I knew Blaine just wanted to kill them, but I was thinking about a more extensive plan, incase we didn't succeed. If we took out the supply pile, the Careers would have no food. That meant, if we didn't manage to finish them off in whatever battle that was inevitable to happen, they would probably die of hunger anyway. Fitting, in the Hunger Games. As I calculated the idea in my head, trying to work out how I could destroy at least a ton of food and supplies without being stopped, Blaine spoke again.

"Do you miss home?" The question made me stop.

"Of course." I replied. "Every day." There wasn't a minute that went by when I didn't think about my family – they were who I was fighting for after all. The sight of Stacey in the video cave had been a cruel reminder of how separated I was from them, how powerless they were to help me.

"What about you?" Blaine shrugged.

"I think about my mother." The response was strange. There must be some kind of issue there. Daddy problems. Maybe that was why Blaine was so desperate to connect to me. He needed to be loved. Spitting out a raspberry seed I ran my fingers through my hair, wishing there was some way I could have a shower.

"Did they tell you to act like that? In the build up?" Blaine's eyes flashed to mine and for a second there was something in them that confused me.

"What do you mean?"

"When we did the interviews. Did they tell you to act that way?" I was trying not to call him a jerk, although it was pretty obvious that was what I was thinking.

"No." He replied swiftly, his voice suddenly void of any emotion. "That was just me." I was startled. Part of me wanted to ask more, but Blaine seemed not to want to respond. Lying down on the hard ground I stared up into the sky and thought of my time before the arena.

I lay on the metal table trying not to feel awkward. Cinna was looking at some pieces of clothing – his inspection of them far too thorough to be totally normal, so I decided to strike up a conversation to change the mood.

"So how did you get this job?" My stylist turned around and smiled at me.

"As a stylist?"

"Yeah." Dropping the sleeve he had been holding Cinna took a few paces forward to stand beside me.

"Well firstly I had to train."

"Where?"

"At college." My eyes widened. College?

"Yes, there are colleges in the Capitol." The fact I obviously thought this wasn't possible amused Cinna immensely. "Not all of us are aliens."

"Are you sure about that." I replied, my tone dubious.

"Well the small few of us banded together. Once you graduated then there were roads to go down, avenues to take. It takes a lot of work to be selected for something like this."

"An honour." How ridiculous. Primping and dressing children that are going to die in a matter of days. How could that be something to strive for?

"Precisely."

"And you get lumbered with District 12." I lolled my head to the side, beginning to wish this could be over and done with and I could return to the home building. Maybe Tin and I could discuss tactics for the procession. Cinna walked swiftly back over to the costumes, picking one off the rail and then turning to me, matter-of-factly.

"Actually," he said, holding the glimmering shirt up, "I asked for District 12."

"What are you thinking about?" Suddenly I was brought back to reality by Blaine's voice. It was hard to see in the now very dim light, but he was sitting beside me, his hand resting on my arm. He seemed repentant.

"Oh, just Cinna." I replied. It was cold and I was beginning to shiver, so I tugged on his arm and he settled down beside me, moulding our bodies together.

"Whose Cinna?" Blaine asked once he had settled his nose into the crook of my neck. His hands gripped onto my shirt and it felt very much like he wouldn't ever let go.

"He was my stylist." I replied, filling him in. Blaine immediately flicked his head up. His expression had dropped and his eyes looked concerned.

"He was?" Jeez – this already?

"Yes. A great friend of mine." Highlighting the word, and nudging my friend as I did so, he blushed and I shook my head, pretending not to notice. As I leant forward to press a soft kiss to his lips I felt his posture relax slightly and his grip on my shirt lessen. The realisation that Blaine was capable of being jealous already set me off edge a bit, but I wasn't going to let it spoil my fun. Pressing my forehead to his I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep.

We were awoken abruptly by a loud booming announcement.

"Tributes of the 74th Hunger Games!" The voice of Claudius Templesmith echoed out over the arena. Blaine and I stirred, our bodies intertwined with each other's. "Congratulations on making it this far. There are seven tributes that remain." As I stretched my arms and went to roll away, Blaine subconsciously pulled me closer again, his eyes still closed. "To celebrate this, the Gamemakers have organised a feast to be held at the cornucopia at precisely 1pm this afternoon." Immediately I awoke fully.

"Blaine!" Sitting up and shaking my friend awake, ignoring his groans and hands pawing at my legs, my voice was animated and excited.

"What, Sam." Blaine murmured in reply, still not fully conscious.

"Did you hear that? There's going to be a feast!" This was just what we needed. The final piece of our Career destroying plan. Blaine still didn't know what I was talking about. He rose to a sitting position and rubbed his face, his hair sticking up in a rather adorable way. For a second I was almost distracted.

"Are we going?" He asked.

"No you idiot! Of course not! But who will be?" Suddenly it clicked. Blaine's eyes opened wide.

"Of course." The Careers would be. Obviously there was no need for any of them to actually feed – they had their own feast piled up in a tower in the centre of their camp. But they would go to find the other tributes. They would go to kill.

"No-one will want to miss out, If they leave their camp unattended we can sneak in and destroy it. We can destroy it all." Blaine looked excited, his eyes alive with the prospect of winning, of defeating our enemies without them even realising what was happening.

"That's brilliant!" He said. It was. But it hadn't been just me that had created it. The Gamemakers had helped too.

For the next hour of so we launched into action. All our resources were pooled together, food, weapons, ideas. We discussed different strategies, although Blaine was reluctant to choose any that involved us splitting up.

"You can't always protect me Blaine." I said, getting a little annoyed. "And I can fend for myself."

"I know." He replied a little morosely. I saw him staring longingly at my hand but ignored it. We needed to be focusing on the raid.

We decided on a two-pronged attack that would start with us entering together and assessing the situation, before splitting up and taking different areas of the base. Blaine would go around the tents checking for any people and stealing any interesting things we might need – and I would look to destroy the supply pile. Blaine had picked up Artie's taser all those days ago and I was going to try and use it to spark some kind of fire. If that failed, I would just smash everything to pieces with my mace. We had no idea what time it was, but glancing up at the sky saw that the Gamemakers had helpfully provided a huge clock that stretched across the roof of the arena. So considerate. I could feel my heart beginning to quicken with just the thought of our plan. This was the first time I had staged any kind of attack, instead of simply defending myself or other people. The realisation that I might kill someone, in a fully conscious not-crazy way, was a little scary, but I was prepared for it. I was prepared to fight.

As 1 o'clock drew nearer Blaine and I gathered up our things. Blaine's mood was more serious now – he had finally dropped the lovesick puppy thing and was concentrating on his task. I was quite glad he had chosen to side with me now – I definitely could not have done this on my own. And his knowledge of our enemy had been valuable. We actually had a chance.

"Are you ready?" He asked, once I had stored my backpack deep inside the boxwood bush. I had only my mace and the taser in my hands, two throwing knives and my own one tucked into my belt.

"As ready as I'll ever be." I replied.