Day 4, Part II: Desperate Measures.

Sereina Ampere, 16, District 3 Female.

How?

How did Alaric escape?

She stared at the shredded net with wide eyes, her lip quivering. She was screaming, but she couldn't hear anything. It was just silent, save for the rapid thumping of her heart inside her chest. It felt like it was going to burst and shatter into a million pieces.

To the left of the net, a giant limb of the tree lay in the swaying grass. It was the limb that she had tied the rope that held the trap on to, and squinting her tear-filled eyes, she could still see the rope was attached. However, the net had a big hole in it, most of the fibers stained red with blood. Above the scene, the trunk of the tree stood still like a statue, a giant hole where one of its branches should have been.

Raleigh turned toward her, gripping her wrist tighter. Her flesh was turning purple around the spot where he held her. She continued the scream, not really knowing what else to do.

"Dead as a doornail," he growled, repeating the words he had told her earlier. Sereina stopped screaming, looking him dead in the eyes. His blazed with an anger: he had been lied to.

"I—I swear he—he was here—here this morning when I left," she stuttered. "I promise."

"You promised last time," Raleigh growled, gripping her wrist tighter. She whimpered, trying to wriggle free. However, it was no use. He only held her harder.

"He was!" She exclaimed. "The blood, that's his! I swear on my life!"

"Well you won't have anything to swear on soon," Raleigh hissed, releasing his grip on her hand and pushing her to the ground. Sereina hit the hard earth with a thud, the grass breaking her fall slightly. Still, it hurt. She let out another whimper.

Then, she began to scurry backward, her eyes wide with fear. Trying to stand up and turn around to run, she felt a hard boot push her body back down to the ground. She hit the earth again, her chin slamming against a small rock. Red blood began to roll down her face, her soft and smooth skin cut open.

Trying again, she lunged backward and tried to leap to her feet; however, Raleigh was quicker. He stepped forward, giving her a swift kick right in the nose. Her head lurched backward, slamming against the earth with another thud. Instinctively, she cupped a hand up to her nose. It was covered in blood—her entire face was. She screamed again.

Before she had time to try again, Raleigh placed his right foot right in the middle of her chest. She howled and tried to push him off; yet, she was too weak to do so. She couldn't even move his foot a single inch, let alone off of her torso. Then, he angled his spear right at her crooked nose, holding it only inches away from her from her face.

Celeste stood behind him, her eyes glazed over with a glossy film. She looked off towards the horizon line, averting her gaze from the scene. It was almost as if she was in a daze.

"I'm telling the truth!" She wailed, her arms flailing and her legs kicking. They did little to shake Raleigh. "His sword is in the grass, right by the net! I saw it this morning! Please, believe me!"

Raleigh inched the spearhead closer. "I'm done with your games, Tiny," he hissed. "You were probably going to trap us, that's why you lead us here in the first place. You aren't fooling anyone anymore."

The knife. Sereina swore under her breath, instantly remembering what was in her pocket. She brought a knife with her. Although she had no idea how to use it, there was no harm in trying. It was that, or Raleigh would kill her anyway. What did she have to lose?

Raising his spear into the air, Raleigh let out a determined yell. Sereina swiftly reached into her pocket and pulled out the silver knife she'd been carrying around for the entire day, stabbing it right into Raleigh's ankle. He let out a scream, staggering backward and off of Sereina's body. The spear fell into the long grass.

Quickly, she leaped to her feet and began to sprint away from the tree and her attacker. However, she didn't get very far. As soon as she began to run, the world began to spin around her and black intruded on her vision. She felt like she was going to puke.

Blood was dripping from her face. She watched it as it hit the ground, falling into the long grass.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

It was almost soothing, if she didn't think of it as her blood, rather, red water or juice. Yes, it was juice. That's all it was. Just juice, like the kind she used to drink with her sister back at home.

Juice would be nice right now, she decided as she continued to lose more of her vision.

Then she was falling, her knees buckling beneath her. Twisting around, she saw a spear lurch towards her. But she was powerless to stop it, and the last thing she saw was Celeste's wide eyes as her world faded to black.

Grace Peterson, 18, District 8 Female.

She was going to do this. She was really going to do this.

It won't be that bad, she assured herself. You're only stealing, and if you don't steal, you are going to die. The girl would understand. No one will get hurt, you'll just pick up the backpack and run off before she even knows what's going on. That's all. You are doing this to survive, if circumstances weren't this extreme you wouldn't be doing this.

Through narrowed eyes, she watched the girl with the scarred face wind through the narrow and dirty city streets. Arilli was her name, she remembered her from training. She had been following her for the past hour, staying a good distance behind so that she wouldn't be able to hear her. So far, her plan had worked, and Arilli had only turned around once or twice in superstition.

Finally, the moment Grace had been waiting for arrived. The girl she was following ducked into one of the dirty alleyways and stopped, slinging her backpack off of her shoulders. Sighing, she reached into it and pulled out a package of crackers, sitting down across from the place where she had dropped her backpack. Arilli opened the package and began to eat.

Grace held her breath. This was it. She was going to do this. She was going to steal from an innocent girl who had done nothing wrong to her. Once she got the water—Arilli had to have at least some—she'd return the backpack and it would be as if nothing happened. The girl would have her stuff back, and she would no longer be on the brink of dehydration. Everything would be as it should.

Then, all of a sudden, a wave of nausea hit her like a wave crashing on a sandy beach. She felt like she was going to puke. However, it wasn't the first time it had happened. This was becoming a constant now; Grace had been throwing up for the past few days at least every couple hours. A side effect of the lack of water, she knew from her days working at the hospital with her mother. She only had so much more time left before there would be nothing left to throw up.

It's now or never. Bending down, Grace picked up a rock about the size of her fist that was lying by her ruined shoes. Poking out of the alleyway she was in, Grace thrust the rock as hard as she could. It went soaring through the air, landing a few hundred feet away, past Arilli. It clattered against the hard pavement, making a clinking noise as it collided with the ground.

The blonde girl's eyes widened, and she quickly leaped to her feet, gripping her knife tightly in her hand. Grace took a deep breath, picking up another rock, this one slightly smaller. She threw it in the same direction as the first. It soared through the air and fell to the pavement a little further away than the first one did.

Arilli jumped again, gripping her knife tighter. Leaving her bag in the alleyway, she poked her head out, warily gazing around. Grace shrunk back. Arilli didn't see her and stepped out into the street. She began to walk towards where the rocks had been thrown, ready to attack anyone she saw.

Now was Grace's chance. She sprinted out of her hiding place and onto the main street, her legs pumping faster than they ever had before. Thankfully, Arilli didn't hear her, continuing to move towards where she heard the clinking of the rocks.

Grace dove into the alleyway, spotting the bag propped up against one of the dirt-lined walls. She snatched it off the ground and quickly unzipped it. Then, she began to sift through it, looking desperately for a bottle of water in the pile of other supplies completely useless to her.

"Where is it? Where is it?" She muttered hastily, throwing things out of the bag. A flashlight. A bag of chips. A blanket. She looked like a wild dog digging desperately for its favorite bone, savage and animalistic. She didn't care though—soon she'd have water. That's all the mattered. She wouldn't be dead.

She only had a few seconds more, by now Arilli had probably realized that the sounds she heard weren't from another tribute. A box of matches, a rope. Finally, she spotted a silver canteen of water at the bottom of the backpack, glistening in the midday sun. To Grace, it was more valuable than any silver would be. Silver couldn't save her life. Water could. She smiled, cradling it in her arms like a newborn baby.

But then, as soon as she thought she was in the clear, she looked up to see the blonde girl charging at her, knife in hand. Grace shrieked and tried to run, but in her current sick state, didn't get very far. She went a few feet but then felt a sharp shooting pain enter her lower back. Warm liquid gushed out of the newly inflected wound. She'd been stabbed.

Arilli pulled the knife out of her back, and Grace shrieked again. Then, Grace twisted around, instinctively punching her fist in the direction of the girl. She didn't know what else to do, it was her natural reaction to the pain that was searing in her back. The punch hit Arilli square in the gut, and she staggered backward, moaning in pain.

Grace's eyes widened. She looked to the silver water bottle in her hand, then back to Arilli's eyes flickering with pain. What—what did she just do?

She should have used this opportunity to run, to get as far away from Arilli as possible. She could have had her water and been done with the whole ordeal, only the scars of her burns and the wound in her back as a memory of it. However, she didn't run. She stood as still as a statue, her mouth hanging open in shock. What did she just do?

It took Arilli a few moments to recover, for Grace had knocked the wind out of her and maybe had fractured a rib or two. She charged back at the frozen girl with a determined yell, her knife angled right at Grace's left chest. Grace didn't move—she could have. But she didn't. She was frozen in terror. What did she just do?

Everything seemed to slow to a halt. For a minute, time seemed to stop.

Strangely, she thought of her interview the night before the games.

"I'm going to die the way I came in, nobody can change that," she'd said bravely.

"I vowed the heal others, not hurt others. That's not going to change. I'd rather die nobly then lose a part of myself."

"You won't break me."

Apparently, they had.

Time sped up again, and Grace watched helplessly as Arilli thrust her knife right into her chest—right into her thumping heart. The world went black as moonless night.

She wished she could say that she had beat them; that they hadn't broken her and she died with her dignity still in tact. If only she had been a hero and resisted the temptations of her tongue, her lust for water, then maybe she would have kept her promise. But she couldn't say that. There was no use lying. They had beat her, and she had become a pawn in their chess game.

The Capitol had won.

Raleigh Travers, 16, District 6 Male.

"God, she's heavier then she looks," Raleigh grumbled, dragging Sereina's bloody body across the long grass. A trail of red followed behind him, the green of the grass no longer visible under the thick coat of crimson.

They were heading towards the barn—the direction the small girl had tried to run in before she fainted. The sky was a placid blue above their heads; the blades of grass undulating in the cool breeze. If they weren't in the arena, Raleigh would have considered it a nice day, and maybe he would have ridden his bike or hung out with Arial in the trainyard. But here, in the arena, there were no good days. He was dragging a half dead girl across a field after all. No one, perhaps only the careers, would call that a good day.

Celeste was muttering words to herself softly, too quiet for Raleigh to hear. It was more than evident she wasn't comfortable with this, and if she had her way she would have let Sereina go the first time they caught her. Holding a half-dead girl hostage was definitely not something she had planned on doing in the arena, or anytime in her life. It probably went against everything she believed in.

Raleigh didn't care though. He knew that if he was going to win, he was going to have to do things he didn't want to do.

"Maybe you should carry her," Celeste suggested after some time. "We don't want to injure her even more than we have already."

Raleigh shook his head. "No, we do. We only want her information, and we don't want her to run away. The worse condition she's in, the better."

Celeste grumbled in disapproval, yet didn't speak up. She knew that nothing would change his mind.

Within minutes, they reached the red barn. It was a tall structure, with a large sliding door in the front and a small window just above it. White trim lined the edges of the walls and windows, and a black roof lay on top of it all. A small nine was carved into the red wooden planks, but Raleigh didn't think much of it. It was probably just something that told the construction crews where to put the barn when the arena was being built.

Celeste stepped forwards, placing a hand on the door to slide it open. However, Raleigh stopped her.

"Wait!" He yelped. "If its Tiny's hideout, it could be boobytrapped."

Celeste nodded her head slowly, yet looked a bit upset that he was still referring to her as Tiny. "Okay, I'll open it slowly then. Stay back in case it's a net, and if there is one, you can cut me down."

"Good idea," he replied, taking a step backward and dragging Sereina's limp body with him. He nodded his head in approval for Celeste to open the door after he was a decent distance back.

She slid it open slowly, inch by inch. To Raleigh and her surprise, nothing came flying at them and no nets came and scooped them up. However, Celeste gasped when she saw what was inside.

"There's so much stuff in here!" She squeaked, rushing inside. Raleigh followed her in, his eyes widening at the stash of objects lying in one of the corners of the dimly lit barn. Backpacks piled high with supplies were stacked in a pyramid shape, along with nets and ropes that Tiny was probably using to create her various traps.

Raleigh felt his lips curve into a smile. "This place is insane!"

Dropping Sereina's skinny body onto the floor gently, he rushed over and began to sift through the pile of things. Matches, canteens of water, blankets, night vision glasses, a coil of wire were among the many tools and supplies he saw. Celeste hung back, looking around the interior of the barn with awe.

"This girl is smart. No wonder she got a seven in training," she exclaimed. "She even has a little loft up there where she can hide if anyone comes in. Genius!"

Raleigh snorted, continuing to sift through the supplies. "Well, if she's so smart, she would have stayed here and not been out in the open like she was."

Celeste shrugged. "Maybe she needed something."

"Like what? She already has everything she needs in here!"

"Well, you never know. Maybe she could have been looking for something—or someone," Celeste replied.

Raleigh didn't respond, continuing to sort through the mountain of stuff.

"Maybe we should try to ask her to be our ally," she blurted out. "She's smart, and she obviously knows how to steal. She'd be an asset to our team."

He laughed. "You really think she'd trust us after we tried to kill her twice?"

Celeste nodded her head slowly. "I think. If we do something to earn her trust—like maybe protecting her or teaching her how to throw a spear or—"

"I don't think that will work," Raleigh interrupted. "She'll probably just try to run away the moment we let her out of our sight, and I still don't trust her. She lied to us about Alaric, after all."

"What if she was telling the truth though? " She asked. "We still don't know."

"Let's just stick to our original plan," he replied. "Keep her hostage, make her tell us how to build the traps so we can catch the careers ourselves. That way, if she turns out to be a liar and disloyal, she won't kill us in our sleep. It's the safest thing to do."

Celeste grumbled in disagreement. "But—"

Then, all of a sudden, Sereina let out a groan, beginning to stir. Raleigh swore and grabbed a rope from the pile of supplies.

"We have to tie her up before she wakes up," he declared. His ally nodded reluctantly, moving towards Seriena's limp body.

Celeste grabbed Sereina's arms, while Raleigh took hold of Sereina's legs. "Alright, we're going to bring her to that pole over there," he instructed. "Lift on three. One, two, three!"

They hoisted her small body into the air, having little trouble holding her. She was small, only about five or so feet tall from Raleigh's estimate. They carried her over to a wooden post and set her down at its base. She stirred again.

"Hold her in place," he told Celeste. She did as he said, holding her body in a sitting position as Raleigh wound the thick rope around her. Then, he tied it tight and stepped backward, smiling slightly at his work.

"She's not that strong, so that should hold for now. I'll check her pockets to make sure she doesn't pull out any more knives."

Diving his hand into her pant pockets, he only surfaced with a crumpled piece of paper. Throwing it to the side, he discovered that her other pocket was empty. Sereina stirred again, her eyes slowly opening.

"W—where am I?" She murmured groggily, her eyes darting around the dimly lit barn. Celeste went to go find a flashlight, while Raleigh kneeled beside their prisoner, feet away.

"Back at your hideout," he chuckled, giving her a toothy smile. She screamed, trying to stand and run. However, the rope held, and she went nowhere.

"No, no, no," Raleigh scolded, wagging his finger. With his opposite hand, he pulled out a silver knife—the one she had stabbed into his leg a few hours prior. It was still coated with blood. "No screaming or I get to use this. You don't want that, do you?"

Sereina gulped, instantly going silent. She shook her head back and forth, her eyes wide with terror. "W—what do you want with me?"

"Smart girl," he chuckled. "We want you to teach us how to build a trap, like the one you supposedly caught Alaric in."

She frowned, averting her eyes from him. "And why would I do that?"

Raleigh held the tip of the knife to her bloody chin, only inches away. "I mean, if you'd rather die, we can make that happen too."

She let out a frightened squeak, her head pressing against the wooden pole. Her eyes widened even further.

He smiled. "That's what I thought. Now, what the first thing I need to know about making traps?"

Alaric Pyre, 18, District 2 Male.

He thought about what he was going to say to Eris when he saw him again.

"Long time, no see. Maybe it would have been longer if you killed me when you actually could."

"Look who it is, my favorite person!"

"I'm a ghost, prepare to be haunted."

"Where is your stupid honor rule about an eye for an eye get going to get you now? Dead."

"I'm back from the dead, and this time, I'm going to take you with me."

And his personal favorite,

"Hey, loser. Are you ready to die?"

Yeah, he liked that one. It was short and simple and to the point. When he found his former ally, he was going to kill him, and he was going to enjoy it. Look—he didn't harbor resentment towards Eris like the blonde boy from One seemed to hold towards anyone else, but after he had abandoned him in the net and left him for dead they were done. Whatever temporary alliance they had was broken. This year, it turned out that the entire career pack—even him and Eris, were completely unstable and disloyal towards each other. He knew Lena was insane—she had been for the entire year he had known her, but Eris was a bit of a shock. He thought he was at least somewhat normal when he met him.

Apparently, he had been wrong. Eris was as crazy as the rest of them, and he should have peed on him last night when he refused to cut him down. That's what he should have done to that brat. He should have peed on him.

Whatever, it was too late now. Alaric tilted his sword back and forth so that it glittered in the bright sunlight, shining like diamonds. Eris had been stupid to leave the sword just below his feet. Yes, it was meant to taunt him, but what if he somehow escaped? Then he'd be armed, and Eris would just look like a fool.

Speaking of escape, Eris probably should have checked how stable the tree branch was when he had left him hanging there. When dawn broke and Alaric could finally see again, he realized that the branch the net was tied on wasn't even that stable. It was cracked at the joint; only a little more pressure and it would snap in two. Taking advantage of this, Alaric thrust his weight to the left, then to the right until he was swinging back and forth. This had done the trick, and the branch snapped off from the trunk of the tree, sending him crashing to the ground. Then, he had taken the sword Eris had so graciously left him and cut himself free from the fishing net.

He looked ahead at the city of shining lights and shimmering buildings standing before him. Most likely, Eris would have returned to the cornucopia; if he was anywhere, he would be there. He grinned, picturing the stunned look on his former ally's face when he realized that Alaric had escaped and wasn't dead.

Boy, was he in for the biggest surprise of his life. If Alaric could help it, it would be his last surprise too.

A/N: A shorter chapter (not really, but it's not 6k/7k words like my last few, but I hope you enjoyed it. I think it was more action packed then the first part of day 4, and it's only going to get crazier from here! I have some big things planned for later :) And, from here on out, I think I'll only be checking in on tributes once a day since there are only 9 of them left! So see you on Day 5!

10th: Grace Peterson, District 8 Female. Stabbed by Arilli.

Grace, you were an awesome tribute! You had strong opinions and weren't afraid to voice them, but at the end that's what did you in. You were a really great and balanced character with vices and virtues, you were kind but also rebellious, you didn't care what anyone else thought but you never really could see the magnitude of your actions, and you were so stubborn my goodness! At the end though, the Capitol was never going to let out get out alive and had to break you, and did meddle in the games so the only way you were going to get water was to steal it. I think Grace is a testimony that even the best and most driven people in certain circumstances can break if they are pushed hard enough, and at the end, you went against everything you believed in to survive, which I always thought was one of the most interesting aspects of the Hunger Games: how far people will go to survive. And, like Tesserae, you never could win, but I didn't see the Capitol giving you an easy or quick death either which is why I kept you around for so long. You suffered, which was I think the most realistic thing to happen. Thank you DestroynotCreate for Grace, she was a pleasure to write and bring to life, though I imagine you never really saw her as rebellious as I made her, but I think being a rebel really made her personality shine and I hope you are happy with the path I had her take.

Alliances:

Boys Just Want to Have Fun (2): Jaxs, Cinder

Basically Hijacked Sereina's Entire Everything: Raleigh, Celeste

A Hostage Now: Sereina

Loners: Eris, Alaric, Lux, Arilli

I know we didn't hear from like half the tributes but they weren't doing much of anything, so we'll see the rest next time!

paper :)