Hey, I'm back! Would you look at that? It's Monday already! Ok, so I'm kind of excited to get this story going again, and I hope all of you are as excited to read about it. The next few chapters might jump around a lot, but there's a lot going on at almost the same time.
Jerome was bored out of his mind.
He had spent all day setting traps all around his camp, then rebuilding a new shelter and reinforcing it against potential attacks by the tiny green lizard muttations. He had set up several clever traps around his shelter, and was interested to see if they would work. He had stockpiled plenty of ripe bananas from around the grove, and had placed them within his shelter. By the time night fell, he was more than ready.
When the anthem played, he saw the faces of four tributes across the sky: Flash Adams from District 1, Joule Tribble from District 5, Violet Aster from District 7, and Jonah Abagnale from District 8. He had not expected a tribute from one of the career districts to show up, but he nonetheless welcomed it.
Suddenly, an accomplished feeling began to swell inside of him. He had made it to the final eight. He had survived a muttation attack, and felt ready to take on anything. They would be pulling in his family for interviews now. He imagined little Pines excitedly jumping and tripping over his words as he tried to explain how awesome his big brother was, and he laughed at the image.
He slept well that night, only interrupted by a single cannon boom echoing out. Not particularly bothered by it, he took the time emerge from his shelter and check the traps around his campsite. Finding them untouched, he was almost let down that the small green lizards had decided not to visit him.
Nodding at his shelter in approval, he thought again, The Final Eight. No, final seven, he reminded himself, remembering the cannon boom that woke him up. Only seven of us left, Jerome thought, and I can go back home.
Stella, on the other hand, had not been able to sleep at all that night. Though she tried to, she was haunted by images of her past that continued to resurface as she lay in the dark. She had managed to find a pseudo-relaxing state by allowing her senses to dull and had become comfortably numb as she ran her fingers across a strangely shaped crack in the wall, studying it without really thinking about it.
Some time near dawn, there was a soft click, and the room was flooded with light. A jolt of fear passed through Stella as she snapped awake. Her mind still caught in her nightmares, for a moment, she thought she was back on the train. Before she could stop herself, she shouted out, "Rachel!"
Stella sat up, breathing heavily, her heart pounding, as she slowly convinced herself that she was not on the train anymore. Not that being trapped in the arena made her feel any better. Great, she thought, now she was thinking about Rachel again. She let out a heavy sigh, as her initial fear slowly receded.
Blinking in the sudden influx of light, she looked around the newly illuminated room to distract herself. The room was poorly decorated and looked like some kind of maintenance access hallway, each of the doors labeled with their destination. The door behind them read "Visitor's Center", and she walked down the hall reading each one. "Generator Room", "Roof Access", and "Storage" all sounded promising, but she stopped when she read the label on the door at the far end of the room.
She suddenly knew that this was exactly the way she needed to go. The door was locked, but that meant almost nothing to the master lockpicker. No problem, she thought, as she reached up into her hair for the clip. Weaving her hand through her hair, she found that the clip wasn't there. It must have fallen out some time during the struggle the previous night.
Mikey opened his eyes to the illuminated interior of the building. He couldn't remember much from the night before, and he was almost glad of it. He remembered holding on to Stella. If his prosthetic arm had not been stuck in the jaws of the lizard muttation, he may have been able to use its enhanced strength to pull himself through the door, but his right hand was merely human and therefore subject to all the limitations of muscular exertion. Though he diverted all his strength to holding on to Stella, his hands eventually slipped out of her grasp and he was dragged off into the dark.
The door slammed closed, the last of Mikey's hope disappearing behind it. The last thing that Mikey remembered seeing is a blast of sparks flying from his prosthetic arm, illuminating the eerie glow of their yellow eyes and their demonic faces, cloaked in scaly skin, before sheer terror had overwhelmed him and he lost consciousness, fully embracing the inevitable end.
He didn't expect to wake up at all, and was not entirely sure that he still was still alive. Though it was bright, the room was a blur of colors, and Mikey reached up to find that his glasses had fallen off sometime during the struggle. He couldn't see, but hoped beyond hope that the silence pervading the room meant that the lizards had left him alone.
Though he wondered where all this luck had come from, he decided not to waste it. He was as good as blind without his glasses, but if he could find a wall, he reasoned, he could eventually find the door that Stella had gone through. He began to crawl across the floor, hoping that he was heading the right direction.
After a few meters, he stumbled upon one of the scaly bodies of the lizard muttations. Mikey reflexively jumped back in disgust, and sat completely still, hoping that he had not just disturbed one that was sleeping. However, when he noticed that it didn't respond or move, he got closer. Hoping the thing wasn't just playing dead, he kicked it, but nothing happened.
It was completely unresponsive.
Strange, he thought. Not that he was complaining, but there was something peculiar about all of this. Why was he not dead? Had the creatures been distracted? The way the lizard was sprawled out, it almost seemed like the gamemakers had stopped the attack. But if so, why would they have done that? Why would they spare him?
Remembering Joule's words, he wondered if the gamemakers were playing with him or if he really did have a chance in the games. With the information he currently had, he could do nothing but guess at their motives, so he pushed the thoughts aside and instead worked on following Stella, hoping that she hadn't gone too far.
Continuing forward, he found the wall, then, eventually, the door.
It was locked.
He knocked on it, lightly at first, then harder as his courage grew. After a few seconds of silence, he hesitantly cupped his hands and held it to the crack in the door. "Stella? Hello? Are you there?"
He turned his head and flattened his ear against the door. Counting his heartbeats, he closed his eyes and listened to the door as he waited for a response. He would not blame her if she had run and left him, though he hoped against hope that she was still there. Still, he was startled when he heart the click of the lock disengaging, the amplified sound carrying through the solid door and into the ear he had pressed against it.
He stood back and waited as the door slowly creaked open.
Outside, Amagi decided to finish her breakfast before pursuing the tribute who had created the campfire. She didn't think there was a particular hurry. Tossing the last of the banana peels to the side, she moved stealthily and carefully into the banana grove.
The foliage here was not quite as thick as the jungle had been, but she could still see where someone had made his way through here a couple of times. She also spotted several of the small green lizard muttations that had been killed and tossed to the side. Either their meat was not good enough to eat or the person who had killed them already had enough food.
Making her way through the banana grove, she walked right into one of Jerome's traps.
She saw it only barely in time to lift her foot, which lightly grazed the tripwire. Her forward momentum caused her to trip forward, and she rolled with it, lifting her legs up over the wire as she tumbled. She only hoped that she wasn't blindly rolling into another trap.
Stella stared over at the main door, faced with a decision that had no right answer. In order to go through the door, she would need to get to that clip, but to get that clip would mean going back out to face the lizard muttations. Staying put would be safer, but all the supplies were also out in the hall.
As she stared at the solid metal door, she heard a light rap on it. Wondering if her ears had deceived her, she slowly approached it, but stopped when she heard something that she never expected to hear again.
"Stella? Hello?", the boy's meek, muffled voice drifted through the crack in the door.
No, she thought. It couldn't be.
Stella had heard stories of muttations that could mock people's voices, and wondered if the gamemakers wer mocking her. Aware that she would eventually have to brave whatever was out there anyway, she figured she might as well get it over with.
Drawing her knives, she slowly turned the lock and pushed the door open.
Expecting to find herself face to face with a lizard muttation, she was understandably surprised to instead find herself face to face with Mikey. She was as shocked as anyone would be to see someone coming back from the dead.
Jerome made a small fire for himself in the early morning hours and cooked breakfast for himself. The pack he had picked out from the cornucopia had been loaded with plenty of supplies to last him a week easily. However, he soon found that the problem was not surviving, so much as it was just getting through the week.
As the sun rose up, Jerome let his mind wander. He thought of home, of District 11, of his family, and of Samantha. Besides the small lizard attack two nights ago, nothing had happened. With enough supplies, traps set around his area, and a sturdy shelter, Jerome didn't know what else to do.
He once thought that he would enjoy having an unlimited amount of time to just sit and daydream, but now that he had it, he realized how silly that wish was. He thought he would never get tired of daydreaming, but he was wrong. He missed Pines. What he wouldn't give for one of his little brother's annoying questions right about now.
Every once in a while, Jerome got up and checked the traps he had set around the perimeter, but he never seemed to catch anything. That morning, he had seen a group of chirping lizard mutts near the outer perimeter of his area, but they had kept their distance, which didn't bother him all that much. As the day wore on, he worked his way back to his campsite, sat down, and began to daydream again.
