Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games or the following characters.

I'm not sure if anyone's still reading this, because I know I probably wouldn't be if I were you.

I won't give you a million excuses as to why I haven't been writing lately or anything, because I think it's too late for that. I'll just say there's been a lot going on lately that I haven't handled in the best way.

So if you don't want to read, that's fine with me. And the updates might not be a once-a-day thing. But they'll be here. Longer and better than this one, I'm sure. I sort of rushed through this one because I wanted it out ASAP.

And if you do read, well then, you know, thanks so much for all your guys' support. Especially Penelope Wendy Bing, who gave me a little bit of inspiration with her review.

Happy holidays. :)

Peyton Bieda's POV (FD4)

All we've been doing is blowing stuff up.

Which, if it keeps Angel busy and all, by all means is perfectly fine by me. I just mean… there are more important things than blowing up walls to satisfy the Devil's bloodlust. I've tried to tell her that, too, except she just waved a stick of dynamite in my face and threatened me.

I responded by saying she could be pretty if she smiled once and a while. I'm still not too sure if it was a compliment or not.

She grimaced.

I told her to show her teeth and it'd suffice as a grin.

The result was scratch marks down the length of my cheek.

"I think we should head back to the Cornucopia," Kimberly says slowly, cautiously, after Angel's knocked away another rock wall. "We've been out here searching for people for hours, and we haven't found anything."

"Pathetic," she spits, but doesn't object to the request. I guess even she's gotta sleep some time.

So we head back the way we came, the thread we retrieved from the Cornucopia leading the way. It was my idea, the thread thing, actually. I salvaged it after my district partner's death and announced if we were to go hunting tonight we better lay this stuff out behind us to guide the way, just so we could find our way back and not get lost in the place.

Angel picks up the end of the string and we all—Lia, Kim and I, as Summer is back guarding the Cornucopia—follow silently. I want to say something. Anything that might show Angel that she isn't in total control of the alliance. But then again, I'm not exactly feeling suicidal at the moment.

Maybe in the morning.

If there is a morning without a sun.

"Pa-Peyton?"

Lia, who is currently taking the back, grabs a hold of my shoulder and pulls me back a couple steps, out of pace with Kimberly. Deciding that even if she wanted to kill me she probably couldn't, I obey and stop for a second.

"Yeah?" I say.

"We have to kill her."

No stutter, no hesitation: the least thing I would expect from the District Two girl. So I blink a few times. "You mean… District Seven plus one?"

This code takes her a while to understand. But with her hearing ability, Angel could be eavesdropping on a conversation a mile away, and as long as she doesn't hear her name or district I doubt she'll care much at all. To her, nobody is really much of a threat anyways.

"Yes," Lia confirms.

"I know. Of course we do—"

"DISTRICT TWO AND FOUR, WHAT ARE YOU DOING BACK THERE? HAVING A TEA PARTY?"

"S-sorry!" yells Lia to District Seven Plus One. She starts walking again and I do the same, but I make sure I'm close enough that I can still hear her speak quietly to my back. "W-we can't attack her. She g-got a t-twelve, and if K-Kim doesn't want-t-t to help we have no chance in a f-fight."

I nod to show that I understand, but she doesn't continue, so I guess she thinks it's my turn to talk.

"Poison," I murmur softly. "She has all the dynamite on lockdown, it looks like."

But before either of us can extend the plan to assassinate Angel, we hear a shout of frustration from the front from Seven Plus One herself, another from Kim, and then a loud, booming, echoing noise that signifies she has blown yet something else up.

When the two of us turn the corner we find Angel and Kim on the ground, Kim unconscious and Angel kicking at a rock wall, screaming incoherently but absolutely furious nonetheless. Lia seems too scared to ask what happened. I don't feel like asking myself.

Though I go, "What's wrong with Kim?" anyhow.

All of her words are slurred together and pointed towards the wall she's currently abusing. "Idiot—rebounded—string's gone—moving walls—fuck them—the Gamemakers—bastards—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, count backwards from one hundred and calm down."

Luckily, she's too busy screaming profanities to hear me.

After a couple more minutes, she's settled enough to yell at me directly, rather than at inanimate objects. "Do you recognize this wall, Four? DO YOU?"

I pretend to examine it, for her sake. "Uh, it sort of looks like every other wall we've seen. You know… grey… made out of stone… that kind of thing…."

"This—wall." She accents every word with a punch to it. "Was—not—here—be—fore!"

"How can you tell?"

Seven Plus One glares, like she can't believe the nerve of me, asking a question. "Because the string is under the wall."

Lia cowers behind me as I step forward to look at this wall more closely now, running my hands along the bottom of it and finding, somehow, our string, which lays right underneath, disappearing behind it. Moving walls? I wouldn't put it past the Gamemakers and I can't see any other explanation for our string suddenly being hidden under a wall that's apparently appeared from nowhere. I stand up calmly—one of us in this group has to be—and brush off my hands. "That's unusual."

Her glare broadens. "So will the way I kill you be."

Well, I can't say I wasn't expecting that.

I change the subject while cracking my knuckles, looking for somewhere to look other than at Angel. "So what, then? Did Kim get hit by this moving wall?"

"No, moron," she says. "I tried to get rid of the wall with dynamite but it rebounded before it went off and landed where Kim was standing. He obviously didn't know how to move in time. It's his own fault."

Lia's tending to her district partner in a millisecond, checking his pulse and announcing with the stutter that he's not dead, so that's one less thing I'm required to worry about. I sigh and close my eyes, and for a second, imagine what I would be doing back in District Four right now, if I hadn't been reaped. I would be at Blaise's house, sitting on his window seat in his room while he sat across from me on the edge of his bed, neither of us saying anything, staring out at the street below and hoping that somehow both of our tributes would come back this year. I hate watching people die. And I wish they didn't have to.

At least, not this way.

I open my eyes again to find Angel's consistent glare penetrating me.

"Okay. Well, we'll have to blow this wall up then. This time without almost killing each other, if you can manage to pull that off."

She's already yanking out another stick of dynamite.

Calla Lilly Warbuck's POV (FD12)

We run after Keed dies.

It's cowardly and whatever, but that's what we do. Did anyone really think that we stood a chance with Luke and Natalia being the main fighters of this alliance, and Keed dead? It's the Threes. And Naller. I'll count Sale out, because of her low training score, but even if it was only the three of us against Anna-Marie and Farrow we'd have no hope.

Thankfully, while we're running, neither Natalia nor Luke finds the strength within them to argue with the other. Their dispute only gets as far as: "I'm out of breath. Can we stop for a second?" "Suck it up, princess." "Natalia, shut up, I was talking to Calla. Not you." And then they both clamp their mouths shut as we run for a little more in utter silence—something I haven't heard in quite the while.

We come to a turn in the road, and I'm about to turn it, leading both of my allies, when something slams in front of me blocking our path. I knock head-first into the rock wall, falling backwards. I hear Natalia stop abruptly behind me. I hear Luke curse. Panic is gradually setting in.

I don't know what's going on exactly, but I'm smart enough from watching former Games to know if we stay here any longer then we're most likely going to die. I shout, "GO BACK", but it's too late, and I can see that Luke's banging on a wall that must have shut us out the way we came, too. I only ponder for a quarter of a second over the moving walls thing. All the blood is rushing to my ears so quickly I can't hear my own thoughts.

I can't die here.

I won't die here.

Natalia and Luke are arguing, but I stand up slowly and yell at them, somehow my voice stable, to shut the fuck up. They both do so. I'm not too sure if it's because they're shocked that I swore, or because they're really listening to me for once, but I don't reflect over that for too long, either.

I open my mouth to speak, but I'm cut off by a hole uncovering bit by bit in the curved, rocky roof above our heads.

We all look up.

And then, after a few long moments, water starts to pour in.

Anna-Marie Schleben's POV (FD3)

I know where I'm going.

I know I said I didn't, and that I don't remember anything that's happened the entire past year, but I do.

I remember everything.

I also remember Sale trying to push me out of the cart before we crashed, before everything went black and Farrow shook me awake. Does that make me a bad person, lying about something huge like that and risking the safety of my alliance?

Maybe. But I think it might make me just as sneaky as Sale, too.

But then there's the question, why would I do this? Maybe the only reason they were keeping me around at all was because of my navigational knowledge, and now that that's 'gone', they have no reason. But it was also true before that Farrow and I fought like cats and dogs, and now, this is like a new beginning.

This could be severely stupid. Or it could be brilliant.

We'll see.

They run, that other alliance with the Twelves and a Seven and a Ten, but we don't follow. Sale's district partner is dead and Farrow proclaims that that's enough. Nobody bothers to bring up the subject of what and who killed Keed exactly until the other alliance has booked it at least a mile more down the tunnel.

"The hell?" says Naller, glaring pointedly at Sale. "Where did you get the knife from? The silver wrappings that you just found lying on the ground?"

I stand there innocently and watch like I'm completely oblivious as to what's going on.

"I—" Sale starts.

"And how did you hit him with your pathetic training score? You had to be at least—what?" He turns to Farrow. "Twenty-five meters away at the least, right? There is no way you could've hit him, Sale, not with anything below a six in training. Are you not telling us something?"

Her eyes flit from Naller to me, like she expects my help after attempting to kill me or something, to Farrow, to the roof and then back to Naller again. Obviously she's not telling us something. I know that. Naller knows that. Farrow knows that. We aren't stupid. But I don't know whether or not it'd be in her best interest to tell us.

Then again, judging by the way his hands are clenched and his eyes widened, it looks like Naller might just kill her either way.

"I found the knife in the silver wrappings," she sighs finally. "It wasn't for me though, I swear, because they were already opened. I didn't want to tell you because I thought you might take it away from me because of… well, you know." She looks away. "My pathetic score. So I kept it. And I didn't mean to kill Keed, it was just instinct and I guess it was just… a lucky throw."

He looks doubtful; so does Farrow. Deep down, I'm certain we all know that she's lying. But it'd make me a hell of a hypocrite to jump on her for it, so I don't.

The thing is, I volunteered to save a poor, innocent family from my district. There's no doubt in anyone's mind that I hold a much brighter candle to the other contestants here than the other girls in my district. But now that I'm here I sort of kind of really want to get home to my own family. Seeing me like this must be absolutely terrible on them.

And maybe this lying thing will help. Who knows?

All I know is that if Sale is going to die right here, I won't stop Naller and my district partner from doing it.

"Sale," Farrow says mildly. "You understand that from our point of view, you look suspicious, don't you?"

She nods vigorously.

"And you know that looking suspicious gets people killed here, right?"

Her head bobs up and down some more.

"Then why in the world would you do it?"

There's a slight pause where her eyes wander around again. I can't meet them. I know that helping her would be a fatal move, but not helping her makes me feel horrible, considering I'm using nearly the same technique she is. But I can't. Living as a hypocrite is better than not living at all, isn't it?

Unexpectedly Sale bursts into tears. She sinks to the ground and covers her face with her hands, sobbing and hiccupping so loudly I think people on the other side of the arena might hear her. Farrow tries to comfort her but Naller looks on in silence, making eye contact with me just long enough so that I know he doesn't believe her whatsoever. I shrug, as if I'm still recovering from losing a year of my life.

"Please don't kill me," she hiccups. "Please, please don't kill me!"

"We're not killing you," Farrow says quietly, after some deliberation. "But if you're bullshitting us… we'll find out soon. And then—we will kill you."