Chapter 12 - Days 4-6

For the rest of that day, there was no commotion that I knew of. Everything was quiet and still, and when the anthem of the rebels played at the end of the day, there were no faces in the sky. The day after was much the same. Atlas and I spent the day sitting inside our new shelter, knowing that the tentative peace wouldn't last. I mourned Leto and so did Atlas, although he hadn't been as close to her as I was. When the anthem played again that night with no faces in the sky, Atlas and I both knew without saying anything that tomorrow would bring something horrible, if not for us, then for the other tributes.

I thought back to my years of watching the Games, safe in the Capitol, and wandering away from the television, bored, when it had been a while since the last tribute had died or the last interesting thing had happened. I knew that all around the Capitol, people would be doing the same, and so when I started to get bored, my grandfather would reassure me that something exciting would be happening soon. Exciting for me then, of course, but not to me now. Everything seemed so different from inside the Games than watching them - while I had laughed at tributes who had cried or shown fear and dismissed them as being weak, watching the Games on a screen had never quite conveyed the feeling of absolute dread and terror that I got whenever I met another one of my fellow tributes or how it had felt to see my best friend impaled by a sword and die in my arms. I felt myself beginning to sympathize with the tributes who had come before me in seventy-five consecutive Hunger Games, and then I just as quickly told myself that any of the victors who had been through this themselves and then voted to send the Capitol's children into the arena again deserved no sympathy. And then I reminded myself that the Games were intended as a way to punish the rebels for their uprising during the Dark Days.

None of them deserved any sympathy. Although I did spare some for the children who had had nothing to do with the rebellion and had simply been picked by chance. A fair number of the tributes had been chosen this way, but I also knew that a large number of the tributes had been picked because they had rebels in their family. By sending their children to death, we had hoped that they would be too scared to rebel. And of course, some of the tributes themselves had been rebels and the reaping their names for the Hunger Games was an easy way to have them eliminated.

"Are you okay?" Atlas asked me, jolting me out of my reverie and back to reality. I slowly nodded. "I'll take the first watch. You go to sleep," he continued, and I gratefully closed my eyes, drifting off to sleep in his arms.

Atlas woke me up about halfway through the night, and I jumped to my feet, picking up my knife from where I had left it on the ground.

"It's nothing!" Atlas quickly said. "I just needed to go to sleep, so I woke you up so you could stand guard as well. Since we know that some of the tributes could attack at night."

"Okay." I sat down slowly, setting my knife back down. The danger would be greater now since I was sure that everyone was aware that if they didn't do something now, tomorrow would bring some kind of Gamemaker-made horror.

"Thank you." Atlas put his head on my shoulder and was asleep within a few seconds, leaving me to wait for dawn and watch the surrounding area in case anyone tried to attack us. I didn't think any of the tributes would except for Zeus or Ares, and just recalling their size and ferocity made any tiredness remaining within me disappear and had me scanning the delipidated street outside even more carefully than before. But it became clear after a while that no one was near, so I began to relax a bit, although I was careful that anytime I felt myself beginning to slip into the stupor that preceded sleep, I snapped myself out of it and reminded myself of all of the tributes that could find us. I would have stood and walked around or peered around the corner of the building to look out onto the street, but Atlas was still sleeping with his head on my shoulder and I didn't want to disturb him. So instead I looked down at him. He sighed gently in his sleep and I marveled at how peaceful he looked. When he was awake, he had to be always on guard and looking for any threats, but in sleep that all went away. Looking down at him, I was struck by how much of a problem he was becoming.

Of course, he wouldn't have been a problem if this wasn't the Hunger Games. If this wasn't the Hunger Games, I would be incredibly happy to have him with me, especially since I had liked him for so long during my time at the Academy. But this was the Hunger Games, and we both knew that only one of us was going to be able to make it out - if the rebels allowed there to be a victor at all. They might kill whoever won these Games just to make a point and show that their power over the Capitol was absolute. But that didn't stop me from trying as hard as I could to win.

But if I won, that would mean that Atlas was dead, and I knew in my heart that I wouldn't sacrifice myself to save him. I wasn't that noble, and I just wanted to survive. I had a feeling that Atlas was the same way and that this wouldn't be able to last. But that didn't stop us both from pretending that there would be a way for the two of us to both get out of here alive and be happy together. Our alliance -though at this point, it was much more than that for me- would last until the final stages of the Games. Odds were, at least one of us would be dead by the time it got to the final two, and hopefully we wouldn't have to worry about what would happen if it got to be the final two tributes and only Atlas and I were left. I tried not to picture the situation, but I could imagine us both sorrowful, both trying to kill each other. And then me succeeding.

And as the number of tributes dwindled -unless I had counted wrong, there were now seven of us left- it became apparent to me that I needed to bring out what was perhaps the one advantage that I had: my knowledge of poisonous plants. I still had the oleander and the nightlock in my pack, but I hadn't really been able to find a way to use them. Even though I trusted Atlas, I still didn't want to reveal my abilities to him, so I had refrained from poisoning anyone.

Before the Games had begun, I had pictured myself slowly poisoning all of the members of our alliance except for Leto, but then Atlas and I had become whatever we were now, and the rest of the members of our alliance had been killed right away, so that was out. And we weren't near any of the other tributes, so I wouldn't be able to slip any poison into the food or water of any other other tributes - that is, other than Atlas, and I wasn't going to do that to him. Hopefully an opportunity would present itself after a while.

If there was a way, I could maybe coat my knives in poison so that even if I didn't fatally wound someone they would still die, but I wasn't sure if I would be able to do that without Atlas noticing. I would do it now, but of course, that would wake Atlas, and I didn't want to do both because I wouldn't want him to see the poison that I had, but also because I knew he was exhausted and I didn't want to disturb him. I would figure out how I would use my poison at a later time. It wouldn't matter at all if I didn't survive past tomorrow, so I wouldn't spend my time worrying over it now.

No, I would survive tomorrow. No matter what, I was determined to survive.

But that would be hard to do, I realized, as the sun cleared the horizon and Atlas woke up, and the ground beneath us began to shake. An earthquake. An earthquake in the middle of a ruined city.