Sorry for the long wait. I've been a terrible mixture of busy and uninspired. It's really hard to write the middle of the Games, because I know most of my placings now and am itching to write the finale, but there's still a ways to go. Thank you all for sticking with me, I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Caspar Ophir, 18

District 1 Male

The night is waning, and my guard shift is almost over. Guarding almost feels like a waste of time. This arena is so big, and so rich in plant life, we've hardly seen any tributes besides ourselves for the whole Games. This is going to be one of the long ones. I'm not sure I can last the wait, and my body chafes for action, but I reign myself in. To move to soon would be suicide.

The push will come soon, though. Blast Eleanor to pieces!

All night Mercury has moaned and tossed and turned, his face slick with sweat. Every so often he cries out. Whatever she put in the food, it's doing its job. What I can't fathom is why we all aren't sick. That's the only weak link in my poisoning theory. All the same, I'm sure she did it.

I would, if I was her.

Poison is sneaky and hard to trace, and she is injured and no doubt feeling the peril around her. She must know, must realize from watching past Games, that we hunters do not tolerate weakness well. Her days are numbered, and it must have motivated her to strike first.

Mercury gives a moan, and my stomach flops over. The sounds he gives vent to make me sick to my stomach. I look away from him, scanning the shore for any movement, even though I know I will see nothing.

There's a horrid choking, gagging sound behind me, and I whip around. Blood stains the ground around Mercury, and coats his lower lip. He rolls onto his side, suddenly awake, and heaves again, more blood coating his chin. The sour smell of vomit, mixed with a heavier, more metallic scent, taints the air. I turn away, disgusted unable to watch as he continues to choke, crying out in pain.

Behind me the camp wakes up. I can hear Enzo and Atalanta trying to calm him, to help him, as he whimpers.

Blast them to pieces too!

Enzo thinks he's better than the rest of us, with his girl-back-home, prince-charming story. Sponsors are eating him up, I'm sure of it. And Atalanta. The leader of the career pack, too smart to fall for my playboy ways on the train, but not smart enough now to spot the treachery forming within the camp. A poisoner, not above murdering her own district partner, and Atalanta seems to see nothing.

I am angry, angry at her and most of all angry at Eleanor. What a horrid, low-down trick!

I'd kill her, but it's a risk I simply cannot take. No matter where I turn, my hands are tied. Avoiding looking at the blood-covered sleeping bag and choking boy, or at the others staring at me reproachfully, I take my knife from my belt and begin whetting the blade on a sharpening stone. When the time comes, I will be ready. In the interim, the rhythmic scraping sound and repetitive motion takes the edge off my fear and aggression.

The day will come.

I need only wait.

Eleanor Bradford, 17

District 2 Female

They think I did it!

Whatever's wrong with Mercury, they think I am to blame! I can read it in every glance, every reproachful word. They think I am a poisoner; a murderess!

I don't know why he's sick! I don't know what I might have done wrong! Oh, I wish I had never heard of the beastly Hunger Games!

I've put my foot in it, that's sure and certain. Be yourself, my grandmother used to tell me, so what did I do? I conformed to the rest of my district, a copycat career, whose only worth in life was as a tribute! Be yourself, she said! I finger the rings in my ears, the ones she gave me. I wish she were here now. To tell me what to do. I wish she could hear me, could answer my questions, like: how do I get out of this one alive?

Some careers want death or glory. I just wanted the glory. Death was never an option. But so many things have gone wrong!

What will I do when the storm breaks?

I cannot fight the entire alliance. They will slaughter me. They will kill me slowly, and torture me the way they think I am causing Mercury to be tortured.

I stare at him hopelessly as the vomiting stops and Atalanta grimly watches as he totters back to his mat. I watch as the bloody slick on the surface of the pond gradually dissipates.

What if he dies?

They will kill me.

I will have killed myself.

I didn't have to come here, I remind myself miserably. This was my choice. I dug this hole. This grave. My choice.

My choice.

Can I choose to fight? To survive? I must push through, I must. I have come to far, dug to deep, to die now. I can't give up! I can't! I must fight, I must fight bravely and to the bitter end. I can win, if only I try hard enough, I must believe that. I must.

I cannot die.

Ricotta Erripe, 16

District 10 Female

Carefully, so as not to prick my finger, I pluck a ripe blackberry and put it into my makeshift bag: a piece torn from the hem of my poncho. I'm glad I took only a small piece. Despite the deceptive days of heat after the bloodbath, the weather is becoming dreary again as it was the morning we were launched, and I'll need my water-proof poncho again for sure.

It seems so far away now, as though whole seasons have passed rather than days. On Day One, I was a terrified, untrained child, one in twenty-four, with the bloodbath looming before me. On Day Two I was a very sick tribute, with a bad ankle, lying under the very noses of the careers and praying they did not notice me, nor that I would betray myself through my explosive vomiting. On Day Four I was a starving tribute, desperate to move away from the careers and find something to eat.

Now, I am a bold young woman, one in fourteen, beginning to believe that I can survive. And beginning to plan.

This arena is a wealth as far as avoiding starvation goes. It has the green young plants of early spring, and the nuts and berries of late summer. It has animals, as well, but I have no way to catch them. Laughable, for a tribute from District 10. I ought to be an animal whisperer and an expert butcher. The truth is, I'm only any good at cutting up animals after they're dead. Well, and repairing fences and delivering lambs, too, but somehow I doubt that's helpful in my present situation. The point is, I can't catch anything.

What is helpful in my present situation is my hope. My ankle barely hurts anymore; only if I walk to far, in fact. It bears my weight once again with ease. It must not have been as serious as I once thought, a painful sprain rather than a break or torn ligament. My vomiting and other unpleasantness has cleared up with my discovery of a fast-funning stream: clean water makes all the difference.

I have only one complaint: there is simply not enough food to satisfy.

There were a number of cattails growing around the pond where we were launched. Waterlilies, too. Blackbirds nested among the reeds. And I'd bet there are frogs and maybe even fish waiting to be caught. There is also, unfortunately, the cornucopia, guarded at all times by at least one bloodthirsty career.

But at night...

No one has troubled them. They must be becoming careless. If at night I were to steal down to the water's edge, I could dig as many roots as I wanted. Likely as not their guards will be asleep, and if they aren't, I have only to melt back into the forest before they can launch their canoe. Careers don't like getting their feet wet, poor things.

The girl from Two wouldn't have enough light to shoot me, either. The plan is daring. Foolproof isn't exactly the word I'd use, but I'm no fool, so it doesn't have to be. I would never attempt such a thing unless I believed I had a reasonable chance for success.

Well, I believe I do.

Careers, here's to a good night's sleep this evening. Because I won'tbe sleeping.

Emmett McLean, 16

District 7 Female

Last night, my fire, so welcome during the day, posed an awful quandary.

With only twelve matches, and who knows how long left in the arena, I wasn't going to be able to just strike a match any old time I needed heat or to cook something. On the other hand, I couldn't let my fire burn overnight. This whole time my strategy has been to stay under the radar. At night, a fire would shine out like a beacon, and draw every tribute in the arena to me like moths to a flame.

Only I'd be the one that died.

So, I took a risk. I banked the fire as well as I could with big, wet logs, then covered those over in dirt. I thought it was likely the fire would smother out, but I'd seen coals survive buried under ash before in the fireplace at home. Maybe they wouldn't go out.

All night long, I fully expected to be found and killed. If the fire flamed up while I was asleep, there would be nothing at all I could do to stop from being found. It would be the end of the line. The end of my life.

I would never see Luke, or Keegan, or my mother again. I would never have a chance to make things better for them. Instead, I would simply end. Alone but for my killer or killers. Alone in the dark and the rain.

As might be expected, I didn't get much sleep thinking that way. In fact, I barely fell asleep all night. Finally I did, and no careers or tributes came, and no one died, and the fire still smoldered along under the logs and dirt, and I woke up perfectly safe, if a little wet, and mad at myself for getting so worked up. All those things, though, that I thought.

They're real possibilities. Real dangers lurking just around the corner, waiting for a careless move or even just a bit of bad luck to jump in and end my life. Luke had faith in me. I have to have faith in myself. I look down at the ring on my finger.

Did Luke have faith in me?

Something he said in the Justice Building nags me.

Emmett, one way or another, you're going to be safe by the end of these Games. You'll either be home or . . . you'll be beyond the reach of anything that could hurt you. I want to know something though, before you leave. If you come back, will you marry me?

One way or another. Safe by the end. Home or. Anything that could hurt you. If you come back.

If.

It's such a big if. It might as well be an impenetrable hedge between me and anything else. Try as I might, I can't see past it to an end. I could die. Phoenix, that monster, tried to kill me during the bloodbath. He could have succeeded right then and there. I could be dead. Where do you go when you die? Are your really safe? No one can know, can they?

On the Hunger Games, I've seen death so many ways. There was a girl from District 11 once that I saw in reruns who hurled herself into the jaws of a spider to save another girl. I can't imagine dying that way. It would be too horrible. But she barely seemed to mind. There was a boy, too, that took an arrow to save his district partner. He seemed almost peaceful, for that split second where, arms spread wide, he jumped in front of her. Welcoming death.

But there have been others. A boy, kicking and shrieking, dragged to his death by ravening wolves. And a girl, tortured by careers, begging for death. There are things now too, that I've seen in person. things I don't want to remember.

The little girl from Three, with a spear in her chest, gargling blood. Liam from Twelve, thrashing in pain as the boy from Five skewered him. The boy from Five himself, moments later, the life leaking from him at the hands of the boy from Two. The last thing Liam ever did was kill someone.

What will I be like? I don't think I'll be brave. I'm frightened, and I know it. My face is sweaty and my legs shake. And I'm not even in real danger at the moment. All I did was think.

Besides, how can I trust myself when even Luke would not commit to saying 'you're coming home, Emmett'?

For so long, he's been the only one that I could trust. Mother was too scared. Keegan didn't know what was going on around him. Winnie and Jo were good friends, but they couldn't be like family. And Scott . . . I shudder. My not-father was worse than anything. Family, but a beast. Thank God I am not really his child by blood.

Oh Luke, I wish you were here with me.

No, no I don't.

I could never doom him to this.

That was brave to think. Selfless, to put his safety before my own, I reflect wryly. Perhaps I am not the coward I think I am.

I rake the logs and dirt away from my fire and blow on the coals. The heat bakes my face, and with each breath the coals grow a little brighter. But if I don't blow on them again, they start to fade. That's what my courage is like now. Flickering. Dim. I'm running out of breath, and I'm worried that eventually it will die.

And then I will die too.

Danny Sparks, 16

District 3 Male

I'm beginning to relax. Zita is alive. I am far away from the careers and all other signs of tributes. And my location could not be more beautiful.

Down among a thicket of huckleberry bushes, with plenty of berries to eat, atop a ridge where I can see any visitors before they see me, the ground carpeted in soft, pale-green moss, and all the way around trees reaching toward the sky like tall grey-brown pillars, ending in a tangle of green limbs and leaden sky.

I almost feel safe.

If only there were not such danger, I could almost be happy.

Sometimes, back at home, I felt a lot older than sixteen. With parents I loved, musical talent, and a girl I planned to marry, I was thinking ahead a lot more than others my age. Most boys wanted a toy, not someone to love and cherish, but I couldn't and still can't imagine Ebony as anything but my wife. Anything else would be wrong. Unthinkable, even. Everything was so clear to me. Music, Ebony, family, love, laughter, they were all right. The Games, cruelty, anger, peacekeepers, they were wrong but for the most part comfortably removed.

I can't believe that, the day Eb's dog ran away and I went out after her and got beat up, that I couldn't see the evil happening around me. For the first time, peacekeeper violence was affecting me. Still, I went home, nursed my bruises and cuts, and promptly forgot.

My hand automatically goes to my pocket, seeking the lump of metal. The ring one of the peacekeepers dropped during the attack, and that I brought as a token. I find it and pull it out, reminding myself why I keep the ring. I can be beaten, but I'm the one that gets to choose if I'm defeated.

I'm not sure the words come from the same me. I feel so much more fragile, hurt, and unsure. So many things have happened. I once saw black and white, but the world is beginning to look like a very grey place. How can I stay true to myself amidst all this mess? How do I keep it from just swallowing me, pulverizing me, crushing me: chewing me up and spitting me out.

I see the lock of hair attached to the ring by a chain. The lock Ebony pressed into my palm in the Justice Building.

It's jet black shows starkly against the pale, pink-white of my palm.

Black and white.

Right and wrong.

So easy to feel, so easy to want, sometimes so impossible to achieve. What can I do.

I close my eyes. There's no easy answer, no easy way out. Then what do I do?

It's like I expect some bodiless voice to just suddenly start answering all my questions as I stare up at the darkening sky. Instead, the blare of the anthem fills the air.

Black.

No one has died today. The anthem finishes and the sky goes dark

White.

Every man must find a way to distinguish the two. Tonight, no answer is forthcoming.

I feel so small, and more unsure than I ever have before.

Kills list:

Atalanta Bliss-1 (credited with Wilhelmina Dye)
Caspar Ophir-1.5 (credited with Cotton Ombre and finishing off Liam Cox)
Eleanor Bradford-.5 (credited with partially killing Phoenix Hemlock)
Mercury Medall-2 (credited with Wyatt Foster and Hunter Robinson)
Enzo Garrix-.5 (credited with finishing Phoenix Hemlock)
Wyatt Foster-.5 (credited with fatally wounding Liam Cox, Caspar delivered death blow)
Venna Wilcox-1 (credited with fatally injuring Shahid Howe)
Cyma Dolore-1 (credited with killing Venna Wilcox)
Leon Rayner-1 (credited with killing Alabaster Parker)
Alabaster Parker-1 (credited with killing Leon Rayner by triggering his fatal infection)

Alliances:

West Side Story 2-Zita Moreno and Byron Calvert
Careers-Caspar Ophir, Atalanta Bliss, Mercury Medall, Eleanor Bradford, Enzo Garrix, Cyma Dolore

What do you think of Caspar's current strategy\mindset?

What's going to happen to Mercury?

What should Eleanor's course of action look like?

What do you think of Ricotta's plan?

What do you think of Emmett's current strategy\mindset?

What do you think of Danny's current strategy\mindset?

Pick a tribute. Analyze their position. What would you do if you were in their current situation?

That chapter was a bit shorter than usual. Hopefully it was still good!