Arena, Day Nine.
Quill Grove — 17 years
District Nine Male
I'm still in the mindset that I never really woke up from my sleep two nights ago.
We survived. I still don't know how. I watched Abigail and Ross kill someone, and then watched two other Careers walk away and let us live, even after one of them pointed a gun at me.
I barely slept last night. Every sound set my nerves on edge, had my heart racing. I still don't have any blood on my hands, at least not directly, but it sure as hell feels like it. I had to stop Acacia. If I hadn't, Ross would probably be dead. Abigail might have snapped. And I didn't have to put a bullet in her head, because my allies stabbed her to death first.
I need air. But I also really have no desire to go outside, and I'm thinking my allies don't either.
Ross had a fever, until Abigail dug around in his pack and shoved some sort of pills down his throat while he was half-conscious, and now he's fine. He's still curled into a ball, out cold in the opposite corner from me, head on his backpack and hand tucked against his chest. There's so many bandages wrapped around it he could probably use it as a club. I did that. Abigail's hands were shaking so bad I didn't trust her to do it. The second I felt my fingers brush against bone I almost threw the bandages in the air and ran away.
But he saved my life, and now I saved his, so we're even.
Abigail's sitting a few feet from him, knees drawn up to her chest, head leaning back against the wall. Even though they're technically across the room they're still only five feet from me at most. The bunker we holed ourselves in is nothing impressive, not even close, but it's dry and it's dark and I'm still in shell-shock over the fact that I'm still breathing.
Abigail tilts her head off the wall, cracking an eye open to stare at me. It takes me a second to realize I'm rapping my knuckles against the floor, soft and unaware. I lean back, feeling my shoulder blades dig into the numerous bolts set into the wall, rubbing both hands over my face before settling them on each side of my face, fingers curled into my hair. It feels like I have no right to go insane, not after what everyone else has done in comparison to me, but I think I still am.
"Sorry," I say softly, and Abigail stretches her legs out, clambers to her feet, and drops herself down at my side, crossing her legs back together. She winces, settling back against the wall.
"Shoulder hurt?"
She nods, offering me a tight smile. There's blood, dark and crusted, all over the front of her neck, soaked and dried into the front of her shirt and jacket. It's a gruesome sight.
"Want me to look?"
She shakes her head, this time. My eyebrows knit together.
I shove myself off the wall, turning until I'm sitting in front of her. Despite her shaking her head, she doesn't stop me when I tug the shoulder of her jacket down, trying to be gentle.
"Christ, what the hell is that?"
There are black lines webbing out from the wound cutting across her collarbone, just under the skin. Even the edge of the wound is black. We didn't have enough bandages, not after I got to Ross' hand, and she said she didn't need them. I'm beginning to think she was wrong. As I watch, I swear I see one of the lines extend themselves the slightest, stretching towards her neck. A few of them have already wound themselves over the top of her shoulder, another few disappearing into the collar of her shirt. She swallows, avoiding my eyes.
"Noticed it earlier. You were still asleep. Don't know what it is," she finishes quietly. She tries to crane her neck to see it herself and winces again.
"But you feel fine?"
Abigail pauses. She shakes her head again.
"I thought I did. Thought maybe it was just the shock, you know? But I swear I'm seeing things. And my hands won't stop shaking, and it just keeps burning the exact same since the second she cut me—"
She breaks off when Ross shifts in his sleep, but he stills a second later. She lets out a shaky sigh.
"There's gotta be something in that backpack, he took half the Cornucopia with him—"
"I checked. You were asleep, remember? There's nothing that's gonna help it. This isn't an infection."
Which means it's something else. I remember the flash of machete before Ross nearly got his hand chopped off. And then a smaller knife when she cut Abigail. And Ross is fine. There's no way it's a coincidence.
"You need to tell him," I say calmly, even though my heart is pounding again. She shakes her head frantically.
"Doesn't he have enough to deal with? He doesn't need this."
"Well he's gonna find out pretty fucking quick if you snap. That, or you drop dead in front of him."
Abigail freezes, like she hadn't considered the prospect of death from something like this. That, or she'd been denying it until we started talking about it. I can't find any fault in her for that. Everyone feels immortal until death's grabbing them around the neck and yanking them back, lurking under their ribs and waiting for their chests to collapse. But Arlo wasn't. Falco wasn't.
Neither of us are.
"I don't know what to do," she stammers, tipping her face into her hands. "I don't want to die. I don't want to hurt either of you."
"You won't," I say quickly, looking her in the eye. She finally looks up, afraid and shaky. And I don't really know how I mean it. Before yesterday I would say she wasn't capable of hurting someone, and then I saw her shove an arrow into someone's neck, utterly unafraid of the consequences, so Ross wouldn't have to manage the burden alone. So he wouldn't hate himself even more than he already does.
But I don't know what's happening. This is evil. Before yesterday, I didn't know if true evil even existed. I guess it doesn't care if you believe in it's existence or not. Something's happening to her and we might not be able to stop it.
If she comes after either of us, it won't really be her. It'll be something else entirely. And I'll stop her from doing it.
Because if it isn't her, if it is something else entirely, then killing her shouldn't be as hard as I keep imagining it to be.
Mulberry Flax — 12 years
District Eleven Male
I've barely moved in the past two days.
All I've done is leave the bunker for a few minutes to look around, or stare at the sky while it got progressively darker, clouds opening up like they were coming down to eat me. They probably could.
I went back inside after I realized I was thinking about the clouds eating me. Turns out being alone this long in here does wonders to your head.
Turns out sleeping on top of the Cornucopia also doesn't do wonders for your health. I've almost had three heart attacks after I nearly tipped off the edge. I don't think I'd die from this angle unless I was extremely unfortunate, but I'd probably break something, and there goes all hope I have of constantly evading my competition while they kill each other.
I'm the youngest one left in here. The closest are the one Seven girl and the Eight boy. Four years older.
It's not a reassuring thought, but none of them have been lately.
I nearly tip off the Cornucopia for the fourth time in the past hour, blinking frantically and star-fishing myself across the metal surface, clinging to it until I can get a leg back up. I look over the edge, eyes wide. Definitely would break something.
There's something at the door.
I freeze in my star-fished position, staring towards the entrance-way. I'd only left one door open, in case I'd needed to get out. Now it's looking like I made a mistake. I've seen a few of the mutts, lurking outside the past few days, but that's the closest they'd gotten and they hadn't bugged me, so I'd left them alone. Now it looks like one of them's getting curious.
Or do I need to move to save my own skin? Has the audience finally gotten tired of me rolling around and complaining bitterly for the past two days?
If they're wanting me to get up and move, then maybe it's finally happening. Maybe they're speeding things up and they need tiny little me as their last puzzle piece, out there fighting for it.
I sigh and sit up as slowly as possible. It doesn't move, but it does run it's tongue over it's teeth, and the thought of dying as today's meal doesn't sound too pleasant at the moment. Probably won't ever sound pleasant, but right now especially. I very carefully rise into a crouch, grabbing the backpack I had been using as a pillow, and begin slip-sliding down the back of the Cornucopia. I make it halfway down before I catch myself on the edge, not bothering to make it the whole way down, and leap off. I land in a crouch, pressing myself back against it. I peek around the edge.
The mutt's still there. It hasn't moved, but it's eyes look much more alive now. Or maybe I'm just imagining it. I wave experimentally at it. It still doesn't do anything.
"I'm just gonna go out this door over here and you're gonna stay over there."
Great. Now I'm talking to it.
"Alright?"
It doesn't respond. I don't know why there was a part of my brain that expected it to. I slowly begin backing towards the door, sighing in relief when my back finally hits it. I reach over my shoulder with one hand and grab the knife I've left embedded in the door specifically for this reason. I've got them hidden everywhere.
Pushing the door open behind me, I keep one eye on the mutt. When the tiniest crack is open, I slip out of it. I'm almost entirely out, half of my eye remaining on the inside so I can try to keep an eye on it for as long as possible, when it leaps. I yelp, slam the door shut, and start running. I hear the tremendous thud as it slams against the other side of the door.
I don't hear anything giving chase, but I'm not taking any chances. I dart down the nearest trench, nearly landing on my face when I round the last corner. And the last thing I do see before I leave the first trench behind is a mutt standing at the entrance to it. Why.
The first stack of crates I find I leap on top of, scrabbling frantically until my fingers lock around higher ground. I haul myself up, landing straight on my face in the mud, but nothing grabs my ankles and there's no teeth digging into my leg, so that's a plus. I look back down.
The mutt's standing there, silent and watching, looking up at me from the trench. I swallow.
"Yeah, fuck you too," I manage. I stick my tongue out at it for good measure. It doesn't respond.
The Gamemakers are laughing right now, I can tell. I'm a joke, and they're loving it.
How insane have I gotten?
I take one last look at the mutt and then turn around. Nothing for miles. No bunker to go back to.
Great.
Kiero Mearlove — 16 years
District Eight Male
"I don't think it's meant to open."
"Then why would it be here?"
Elora shrugs, looking down thoughtfully. We found a hatch in the ground, half-hidden in the mud. Spens has been tugging at it for a few seconds, hands wrapped around the rusted metal, but nothing's happening. He braces himself a little bit more and there's a horrendous creak, metal sliding against metal.
"Almost got it, I think," he mutters.
"How do we know it's not supposed to stay shut for a reason?" I offer. Spens looks up at me and tugs again. The thing comes flying open and he rears back, landing hard. Elora snorts.
"Graceful," she comments. She leans closer to the hole, looking down it thoughtfully.
"Well, there's a ladder. So who's going down first?"
None of us respond, or pipe up to offer ourselves. I'm half-tempted to shove Elora down it for trying to make us pick. Finally, I sigh.
"Fine, I'll do it."
Elora punches a hand in the air, looking pleased that she wasn't forced to. Spens, eyes worried, passes me a flashlight.
"Yell frantically if you get attacked by something? I don't know."
"Was planning on doing that anyway," I point out, and he nods. He grabs my arm while I lower myself into the hole, steadying my feet on the rungs of the ladder. They're soaking wet, and I've only got one hand to keep myself up with. I point the flashlight down. I think I can see the bottom, unless my eyes are playing tricks on me. I look back up again. Elora waves at me, smiling cheekily.
I scowl and start making my way down the ladder. It's painfully slow or not at all, I soon find out. Everything's damp and slippery and one wrong foot placement and I'm going down and probably breaking my neck. It takes less time than I expected, though, to hit the bottom. I hop off the ladder, landing in the thickest mud I think we've managed to find yet. It's almost all water, at this point, and comes up almost to mid-calf. I point the flashlight around.
In short, it's nothing. Or at least it's looking like nothing. It's a small, underground cavern, big enough that I can wander a few feet in any random direction before I hit the wall. It's pitch black.
"Kiero?" Elora calls. I look back up, but I doubt they can see me without a light. I point my flashlight towards the far side of the cavern. There's a tunnel.
Eyes narrowed I sludge my way over to the tunnel entrance. It stretches away farther than my flashlight can reach, but I can see a few other tunnels branching off form it, almost hidden. I take a few careful steps inside. The top is just barely taller than me. I sweep the light across it, narrowing my eyes.
"Kiero!"
Spens this time, and it's louder. It takes me a second to realize I didn't answer the first time.
"Yeah, just give me a second!"
I was right. There is something on the wall, maybe 30 feet down from me. There's water dripping somewhere close to me, echoing in a puddle. I should've made one of them come down with me. I feel like something's going to detach itself from the wall and creep up on me in the darkness.
It looks like a paper, half-hidden by the mud wall. Carefully, I run my free hand across it, trying to clear some of the mud off. It's faded, and rumpled, no doubt from how much water's been cascading down it for who knows how long, but I know now. It's a map.
It's not just the trenches above me. It's the tunnels underneath. There's a whole maze of them. There's a little red dot where the hatch is that I just climbed down, and then absolute chaos. Who knows if it's even possible to navigate down here with this in your hand. But every bunker, every intersecting trench above me is marked clear as day. It's all there.
The tunnel rumbles a few feet down from me. I swear I see something move, further in the shadows. Who knows if you'd even want to navigate down here, when every corner or dead-end could be a trap. Something in my heart skips.
I rip the map off the wall and take off running back towards the cavern. I tuck the flashlight in my backpack when I reach the ladder, enough light pooling from the outside that I can manage to see. The map is still gripped in my hand. I scale up it as quickly as I can manage, Spens reaching down the last foot to grab my arm and haul me up. I scramble away from the hole once I'm safely above-ground. Both of them stare at me. Spens slams the hatch shut.
"Something down there?" He asks. I must look sufficiently freaked out. I feel it.
"Not that I saw. Just a bad feeling," I tell him. He doesn't try to re-open the hatch, so he must believe me. Elora scoots over to my side and grabs the map from my hand, an eyebrow raised. She unrolls it across her lap.
"No way," she breathes, an excited smile growing on her face. I roll my eyes. Spens slides over until he's crouched in front of both of us, peering at it upside-down from where it's held in her hands. She offers it to him, still smiling when he takes it carefully from her and turns it over so he can see it properly.
Elora throws her arms around me from the side. "Good job!"
I feel like a five year old that just got praise for getting a good test score, but she's too excited to manage anything else. Spens is still looking at it thoughtfully.
"It's not like we can find anyone with it, but—" I start.
"Now we don't have to," he finishes, looking up at the both of us.
Elora whoops, the noise so loud and so close to my ear I wince, but she lets go of me with one arm and grabs Spens, doing nothing but shaking his arm excitedly. The map flutters out of his grip and lands between us.
Now we don't have to. Now all we have to do is stay alive long enough to use it.
Hariwin Saylor — 17 years
District Four Male
"You ever gonna tell me what you got in that parachute, or is that another thing I should never expect to know?"
Camilla freezes over her pack, staring at me from the corner of her eye.
"I said I'm an idiot, not blind. Remember?" I remind her. She avoids my eyes.
"How do you even know I have it?" She sighs, tucking some of her hair behind her ear. She still won't look at me.
"Did you not hear what I just said? I have eyes. And a minute amount of common sense, sometimes, but it's still there."
Usually she's more entertained when I'm insulting myself, but this time it's not even provoking a reaction. She hasn't really had one since yesterday.
I still can't believe we let Ross and his groupies go. I try to understand the whole "being nice" thing, but that was just stupid. I killed the Seven girl and they took care of the other one, and then I should've killed all three of them and called it a day. Instead they're still roaming out there sans two of Ross' fingers, and the worst part is that they're still alive when they shouldn't be.
They wouldn't be if Camilla hadn't grabbed my arm after I aimed my gun at the Nine's kid's head and she told me to back off. Leave them alone even though she hadn't done anything and shouldn't have had any right to pull me away. But she still came after me. She knew what would have happened if she hadn't.
And maybe she doesn't want me to be that person, or didn't want to pretend she hadn't let me go off on a murdering rampage because I'm sick and tired of fucking being in here.
So instead I'm sitting in a trench with her, again, resisting the urge to slam my head repeatedly into the wall because I've got nothing else to do.
The parachute flutters lightly into my chest, landing half in the dirt. I look up at her.
"You want to know, right? Stop giving me that judgey look," she complains, turning back to the food she's arranging in her backpack. I frown and unwrap the parachute, grabbing the note as it slips out. I read it over, and then again. And again.
"Astonishing. Really. Thank you so much for letting me read that."
I ball the parachute and the note back up and throw it at her. With the wind, it barely makes it halfway there. I snatch my water bottle off the ground.
"I'm pregnant."
The bottle is halfway to my mouth, and the next thing I know I've crushed it with my bare hand, water leaking out of the top of it. Slowly, painfully slowly, I turn to look at her, the water bottle still clenched in my fist.
"And I'm not kidding," she continues. "So please get that particular brand of what the fuck off your face, because it's really not helping the situation."
I can't make myself move, or say anything remotely intelligent. The water bottle drops out of my hand. Camilla pauses, looks up from her backpack, and stares at me.
"What?"
"What do you mean, what? You can't just fucking say that and then not say anything else!"
"Yeah, well, try me," she spits out. I think we're in a staring contest, now, and I'm guessing she doesn't plan on breaking any time soon. Eventually I look away, fixing my eyes on a random point on the wall across from me. My mouth's hanging open the slightest bit, but I can't find the will to shut it. I imagined a million different scenarios. A million different things that could've been going through her head. And this was never one of them.
"Guess you're a bigger idiot than you thought," she quips, turning away from me. She's acting like it's nothing.
All of my plans for killing her get thrown out the window, under a car, in front of a speeding train. There goes all of those ideas I'd been having.
"Sheridan knew," I say slowly. She gives me an astonishingly slow clap.
"Great job, genius."
"Who else?"
"No one. Besides you and the entire world, but I didn't figure out the last one until yesterday."
Camilla stands up and I follow the movement with my eyes. I stare up and she stares down, eyebrows quirked.
Does she trust me, in some sort of weird way? Does she still after what she saw yesterday?
When did I start trusting her? Maybe it was yesterday, when she grabbed my arm and stopped me from killing three more people. When she stopped me from becoming what everyone already thought I was.
Maybe I am a monster though. There's still thoughts lurking in the back of mind. She has all the sympathy votes, all the money from the people who want her to live her life and raise her damn kid like no one's ever done before. So many people want to see her go home.
And there's a bigger part of me that still doesn't want her to.
I don't even really know what to say anymore about these guys. They're nuts. Looking at you, Hariwin. Still love you though.
From here on out there isn't a single chapter where someone doesn't die. And maybe that's why I don't know what to say, because I'm afraid I'm going to mentally traumatize some of you, but I'm also going to traumatize myself. If any of you need hugs, I don't know, hug each other. I'll be too busy crying in the corner trying to type to do it.
Until next time.
