The Mentor

I'm glad that Lumas had convinced me to eat something. There have been so many close calls today, I would've probably fainted from hunger and anxiety.

The close call at the moment is the fight between Fawkes and the mutt that had dragged him away from Binah - a massive thing with dozens of tangled tentacles, a familiar shade of vivid green. There's a tentacle wrapped around Fawkes' leg. He's screaming for help and clawing at the floor in panic, desperately trying to break free. When the mutt pulls him down a ragged hole in the floor, he manages to find a purchase only for the rotten floorboard to come away in his hands.

I glance over at Manel, who's staring at the screen, silently. I know that there's something going on between him and Fawkes, something that I'd never picked up on until it was too late. I wonder what he's thinking, now that the boy he's fallen so hard for is struggling in the tentacles of something he hates more than anything else in the world.

I wonder what he was thinking earlier, when Fawkes had pulled a switch that brought a mutt to life, when he'd used Binah's anger against her.

When he'd held a knife to her throat and gloated.

Now, Fawkes lands with a thud on the basement floor. The mutt looms over him, jaws wide, rows and rows of teeth out. It sinks it's teeth into his leg.

Fawkes seems to be seized by a strange, primal instinct. He grips the rotten floorboard and smashes it into the mutt's jaw. He swings and hits it, again and again, until the mutt lies still.

"He... killed it?" Manel asks, tentatively.

"It looks that way." Beetee says. I think back to something Fawkes had said earlier.

"When you're afraid, you can move mountains or you can crumble."

"That's my boy!" Manel says.

The intensity of the day begins to fade, as it becomes clearer that both Binah and Fawkes are separated for now. Most of the mentors who've lost tributes today are leaving. Lumas stays. He sits in Finnick's chair, so we can talk.

"It looks like it's your year." He says, gravely. We both know what that means.

If news gets out that Alex was poisoned, I'll have nowhere to hide.

"I'm sorry about your tribute." I say, remembering that Ernest was the first casualty of the feast.

"It's okay." Lumas says. "I was actually hoping he'd die. He was planning to kill Binah."

"Really?" I ask. I'd always thought that Ernest was a little too quiet but, out of Binah's allies, Fawkes had always been the biggest threat.

"He told me that he wanted to find an ally to protect him, make them trust him and then kill them last-minute and... I'm so sorry. Binah was just the easiest target. I felt awful lying to you but... I couldn't just give up on the kid and tell you."

"It's okay." I say. "It's got to that stage in the games where no-one can be trusted."

"Are you sure? I know you're pretty attached to Binah." Lumas says. "If Ernest had killed her... I'm scared you'd never have forgiven me."

"I would've." I say, automatically. Then I begin to wonder. Would I have? If Ernest had killed Binah and I'd learned the hard way that Lumas, the closest thing I have to a best friend, who'd known exactly how much was riding on Binah's survival, had been lying to me the whole time...

Would I even be in a position to judge him for lying to me? I'm only alive because I'd lied to my allies.

There's something else, something that's been bothering me ever since I watched the girl with the same name as me slit Ernest's throat without even blinking. I saw some of my dark side in Ramona Lopez. She was cold and calculating. Brutal when she'd needed to be. But I'd never really needed to be brutal.

She'd killed a twelve-year-old. But she'd done it to live. She hadn't volunteered. I had.

I'd wanted to be in that arena. I'd wanted to be a piece in the greatest game of all. I'd spent so many nights sleepless, I couldn't even pinpoint when I'd shifted from having nightmares about being reaped again to being too excited to sleep, the plan that would win me the games - make me the victor - swirling around in my head.

I'd volunteered for the Hunger Games because I couldn't control my obsession with it.

I'm a monster. I was born with this great hunger inside me and it had turned out to be a hunger for blood.

"Lumas," I say, "I volunteered because I loved the Hunger Games. I still love it. Does that make me evil?"

"Why do you love it?" Lumas asks, his expression guarded.

"It's just so... massive." I say. "All that effort that goes into it, every year. It changes. It's hard to predict. I'm always wondering where the patterns are. I'm always wondering who'll win. Sometimes I forget that they only win because twenty-three other kids have to die."

"You're not evil." Lumas says. "I know you. You don't like watching people die. You just..." He hesitates. "You like competition. You get obsessed with it. It doesn't make you a bad person but... maybe it'd be better for you if you got obsessed with something else."

"Something else?" I ask, a little stunned. It's a perfect idea. My mind is always active, always thinking about something.

Apart from three days ago, in Lumas' room. Only then had my mind fallen still. It must've been out of grief or exhaustion.

"This is a good year for it." Lumas points out. "You can retire from mentoring if Binah wins. You don't have to think about the games ever again."

For a moment, I consider it. I could finally break free from the games. Then I realise that there's one part of mentoring that I can't leave.

Lumas.

"I can't." I say. "If I retired, I'd never see you again."

His eyes light up and this strange feeling that I can't quite name fills me. I'd found it again. Calm. Stillness. The eye of the storm.

Whatever happens, whether Binah lives or dies, whatever I feel like when I return to District 3, I know that, every year until we die, Lumas and I will find each other in the Control Centre. He'll always be there for me, living proof that I don't poison everyone I touch. I saved him. Now I feel like he's saving me. I want to tell him that, after everything he's done for me, he won't owe me anything.

But I feel like he already knows. It was never a debt that had kept us together, or an alliance. It was friendship.

Maybe something more...

"Ramona," Beetee turns away from his screen to look at me, "Do you think Fawkes was poisoned by the mutt?"

I peer over his shoulder at the screen. Fawkes has propped himself up against a wall and is tending to his wounded leg. He has no medical supplies, so he has to make do with tearing strips from his ruined trouser leg and using them as bandages. His face is pale, eyes unfocused (although that could just be because he'd lost his glasses in the fight with the mutt). There's a feverish sheen of sweat on his skin.

"Probably." I say. "It could just be because he's wounded. Try sending him some bandages."

"I can't." Beetee says. "They've taken all medical supplies off the item list."

I wonder why the gamemakers would do that. I can see why they'd separate Binah and Fawkes after so many deaths at the feast but not why they'd deny Fawkes bandages or medicine for his leg. Gamemakers like exciting finales. Once it comes down to the last two tributes, they usually try to keep them both alive until they can fight.

Unless...

I remember why the mutt had looked so familiar. It had been the same colour as Caesar Flickerman's hair. I remember what he'd said during Fawkes' interview.

"You'd make an excellent gamemaker, Fawkes."

And he did. He'd learned all the arena's tricks and used every advantage he'd had. What he'd done with the voodoo dolls and Frankenstein's monster must've made Seneca Crane look like an idiot. Seneca had been upstaged by a tribute, one that he wasn't even allowed to kill for the first few days.

So he'd waited. Bided his time.

That mutt that had attacked Fawkes hadn't been put there to draw out the finale. It had been revenge...

Whatever poison's coursing through Fawkes' veins is sure to be something really nasty. And I'm sure that Seneca Crane will try to keep him alive for as long as possible, prolonging his suffering. The arena won't kill Fawkes Chau.

But Binah can.

I study my tribute. She hasn't left the Cornucopia at all since Fawkes had been dragged away. She's not even making an effort to look for him. All she's doing is examining the scratch that Ramona the Second had left on her arm.

I realise, my horror growing, that Fawkes isn't the only one looking paler than usual. Binah looks sickly as well. And she'd had that dizzy spell during her fight with Fawkes that had almost caused her death...

Ramona Lopez. My copycat. She hadn't been able to copy my strategy directly, but who's to say she couldn't have used my weapon? It would've been so easy for her to coat her knives with poison.

Binah and Fawkes have both been poisoned. They could both be dying and I can't even send an antidote.

They could both be dying from my weapon.

I know I have to get Binah to Fawkes. I imagine whatever poison Ramona the Second had coated her knives with is a lot quicker than whatever poison Seneca Crane had given his mutt. Fawkes could win this simply by outlasting Binah.

I scan the item list, searching for something - anything - I can send to Binah to stop her from just sitting there and waiting for Fawkes to die. I soon find something that could work.

It could work.

I buy it. All I can do now is hope.

"Are you alright?" Lumas asks me. "You're crying."

I hadn't noticed. So many tears have spilled out of me the last few days, I can hardly feel a thing.

"Ramona the Second poisoned Binah." I say.

It's all I need to say. I feel exhausted, hollowed out. I just want the Seventy-Second Hunger Games to end. I want either Binah or Fawkes to win and the other one to die and neither of them to suffer for any longer.

But I can't make that happen.

My hand finds Lumas' hand between our chairs. Whatever happens in the arena, at least I'll have him to stop me from hurting myself. I know I've done all I can.

The rest is up to Binah.

This chapter is very much the calm before the storm. It exists to set up the finale. Now we know that both Binah and Fawkes have been poisoned. But do they?

It also serves as a conclusion of sorts to Ramona's arc with Binah. The finale's pretty much out of Ramona's control, like a lot of events in this story, and she's had to accept that she can't do everything to save Binah. She's also been growing closer and closer to Lumas, which is good for her. He'll keep her grounded if she ever has to mentor again in the future.

The next chapter will be the grand finale, which means that I won't publish it until Halloween because it'll be super dramatic. The arena's a haunted house full of horror tropes, so it feels wasteful not to take that opportunity, even if it leaves you guys waiting a bit. I didn't expect to blaze through these chapters so quickly, since there were more chapters in my first draft (it must just be because a couple of them were really short). I'll keep writing until Halloween and then publish all the chapters I've written between now and then in one go, so you might get the finale and some wrap-up stuff like the victor's recovery or Ramona moving into Victor's Village.