Chapter Forty-Seven: Liabilities

Day Two

Sienna Starboard, District Four Female

I wake to Godric cursing.

Blinking the sleep out of my eyes, I stumble outside to see what the heck happened that was so bad Godric is using words I've never heard before. After a few seconds of blissful ignorance, the implications of what I'm looking at hit me with the force of a tsunami.

He's alone. No Galadia or Clara this time. On top of that, the area behind the Cornucopia, once loaded with all the supplies any tribute could ever need, looks sad and empty, only a pitiful pile of mostly-worthless objects slumped in a pile like they're afraid to show themselves. I don't blame them: if I was the subject of an angry Career, I'd try to hide too.

Godric turns to face me. "I think you can put together what happened, right?"

"Unfortunately, yes," I say. "They ditched us."

"Ding ding ding," he says. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to figure out what in Panem's name I did to deserve this."

He slinks away, probably to do just that. I decide it's in my best interest to leave him alone for now. I don't think he's the kind that will fly into a violent rage at the slightest provocation (trust me, I knew a few of those at the Academy), but I also don't want to take chances. Hopefully it doesn't take long for him to get whatever misery he's just been saddled with out of his system now so it doesn't come back at an inopportune time later.

Now don't get me wrong, I am a bit angry that we just got shafted by the people we were supposed to be helping, but I'm a bit less concerned. The arena looks like one where we can replace most of our edible supplies rather easily, and plus, don't forget about sponsors. I wouldn't even be surprised if some of Clara and Galadia's sponsors jump ship and start sponsoring us after what's happened, especially now that we seem like underdogs (at least, by comparison).

As if to solidify that notion, in an instant Godric's rushing over to collect something connected to a silver parachute with something that kind of reminds me of dental floss. He's looking at the pair of elongated objects with obvious confusion, but as someone who used them every day, I know exactly where this came from.

"They're fishing rods," I say. "I know you probably didn't get much fishing in where you came from, but are you at least aware of the concept?"

I get a simple nod in response.

"Well, this is what you're supposed to do it with. On top of that, that means there's almost certainly somewhere in the Arena where doing that is practical. Thus, there's going to be some kind of stream or lake where we can do that and hopefully refill our water supply at the same time."

Then, I notice the index card attached to mine, a sharp contrast to the muted gray of the fishing rod's handle. Peeling it off as gently as possible, I read its contents, nothing more than two sentences in Sirena's neat handwriting.

Don't panic, you'll be fine. Cheering you on.

—Sirena

Godric doesn't ask me what the note says, and since there's not really any advice on it besides the obvious, I don't tell him, but I keep the note anyway. At best, it's a memory of home, and at absolute worst, it might make decent tinder if we need to start a fire.

Shortly after we find a way to carry our fishing gear without too much headache, Godric and I sift through the pile of crap that's left, trying to figure out if Clara and Galadia overlooked anything useful. We find a few somewhat helpful objects in the process: a small plastic canteen so we can store a little water, three dinky knives that were probably meant to be used as cutlery but are better than chancing it unarmed, and a small pot.

There's nothing edible here, meaning breakfast is canceled, much to the chagrin of my stomach, but I'll make do. No point in complaining when everyone around me has to go through the same thing.

Unfortunately, now that everything we have is so limited that we could have it on our backs at any time, that raises another unpleasant question, albeit one that needed to be asked. "Hey, Sienna, do we even need to guard whatever's left, or are we just going as a duo?"

As much as I'd like to stay back, I really don't have the option anymore. There's two of us. We have no reason to stay back now that there's nothing to stay back for. Plus, while Godric might have gotten a ten, I don't like his chances roughing it out there alone, and if he gets killed because I was being a coward, I know for a fact I would never be able to live with myself. I'm a Career, I need to start acting like one.

"We'll stick together," I say. "Let's give the Capitol a damn good show."

And thus, we march off in an arbitrary direction, Godric whistling a tune far too merry for the Arena while I try to follow him, although I keep slipping out of tune despite my best efforts. He doesn't care, and I really don't either, just because it gives me something else to focus on other than what I've signed myself up for.

My mood has remained somewhat level throughout this morning, but once the Cornucopia fades out of sight, my stomach starts its incessant churning once more.

Lacey Loveless, District Eight Female

Zari's asleep, but still thrashing wildly, seeming to kick and claw at nothing as strangled moans escape her mouth.

I don't get it. I wish I did.

I got up with the sun, and since then have been keeping my eyes peeled and my ears open, making sure nothing and no one comes close enough to attack. Maybe I could have set up some kind of sleep schedule with Zari before we both passed out, but she seemed very unstable yesterday and it didn't feel like the best time to bring that to her attention. Even asleep, she seems unnerved and panicky, as if she's ready to take off running any second.

Once I've been awake for what I've gauged as about an hour and a half, I finally decide to just cut my losses and get her moving. I don't think she's that heavy a sleeper, but I also don't want anyone to find us while she can't fight back. I start by poking her, then shaking her, until finally her eyes jerk open and she releases a half-hearted screech I have to force down with my hand.

"Look, I get you're scared," I say, "but if anyone else finds us it'll get a hell of a lot worse. Let's figure out what we need to handle and then get a move on."

She doesn't say anything, just nods. After some tepid water and a handful of extremely thin apple slices (courtesy of one of the knives attached to my belt), she seems a lot quieter, although no less fearful.

It's become clear really quickly that Zari was never built for something like this. It's been less than twenty-four hours in here and the girl I met back in the training room is more or less gone, replaced with a shaking, nervous wreck that's probably going to get both of us killed if she sticks around for too long. The easiest option would probably be to kill her, but I shove that idea aside for now. Not yet. Too many people still left, and I don't want public opinion to turn against me this early. At the very least, I need my first kill to be someone else before I can turn on her.

Besides, she may be seventeen, but she's one of the softer tributes, for lack of a better word. She could win some hearts over if we play our cards right.

"Hey," Zari says as she stands up, eyes locked on mine. "What… what are we going to do today?"

In all honesty, I have no clue. Actively hunting for tributes with her feels like a recipe for disaster, but besides maybe starting a supply cache we'll be able to tap into later there's not much else to do. Thus, that sounds like our best option for now, but if we happen to find someone else all by their lonesome, one fewer competitor certainly can't hurt.

"Let's get some food," I say. "Pick a direction if you want, otherwise I'm just picking one at random. We'll look for whatever we can find and deal with that issue."

Zari points in a direction that seems to lead to a strip of relatively smooth ground, so that's where we end up going. A few minutes pass in silence until we figure out why the ground is so smooth there: it's meant to denote a path of some kind. Hard asphalt, so nothing we can use to make a fire. On top of that, it's so open that we're visible from just about every direction when I hike a quick circle to take a look. It might be the easiest method of traveling here, but since when have I been known for making things easy? We'll stay off the paths if we value our lives.

Thus, I motion towards the woods. "Bad idea. We take the path, something will happen. Gamemaker trap, or other tributes, or something. There's no good outcomes there. Keep moving."

Zari doesn't seem happy about this but she does agree, so we keep moving through the thick brush, both of us keeping an eye out for anything that could be construed as edible. She's at least six inches taller than I am, but she keeps hunching down, as if she'd be able to hide behind me if she tried hard enough. That's never happening, but that's besides the point, now, isn't it?

At the very least, she appears to trust me. Maybe she has no other choice or maybe she just believes in me, but either way is a win for me.

Unfortunately, that gets shoved aside by the rumble of my stomach. Maybe it got used to Capitol meals during the week I spent there, because I've never been this hungry this fast before. As if I'd given it a cue, Zari's stomach replies with its own rumbling, the sound of which causes Zari to release a nervous chuckle.

"Huh. I guess we'll need more food than what we got," she says. "I really don't want to starve out here."

"Don't worry, you'll die of thirst way before that happens," I say. However, judging by the expression she makes, that didn't solve her problem.

Okay. I'm not sure what's the best course of action from here, with anything. I don't know what to do with Zari, I don't know what to do about supplies, I don't even know what I'm supposed to do right now to make my life easier.

Nevertheless, I should get back to work. Set a good example for Zari, maybe get some sponsor money to come our way.

Hopefully, I can figure this out. I should, anyway.

I've been through worse.

Catarina Lynn, District Five Female

I'm not sure anymore if Spark is a human being or just some malfunctioning machine, but either way he's starting to become unsettling.

I got some sleep last night and woke up feeling at least somewhat refreshed, but judging by how red his eyes look, he got little sleep if any. In spite of his bloodshot stare, he still seems energetic and perky, quietly humming a tune I don't know. Even as I hurry down to the river and get water, he follows me with no difficulty.

We both drink, and then I point in a random direction and we start moving. I stay low as I do, Spark tries to do the same but just falls over from bending too far, laughing at some private joke as he does. At the very least, he can walk in a straight line, but given that the little noises he keeps making are ticking time bombs, the least I can do is try to engage him in conversation so I don't get driven insane by whatever the heck is affecting him. Probably just stress, but the threat level's not getting lower, so either he'll have to deal with it or eventually it'll claim his mind and he'll join the woodland creatures.

Wanting to try and keep him on task, I start that conversation. "Is there something you want to try and accomplish today?"

"Well, I mean, we could go looking for more food, although I'm guessing we have enough. Oh! Maybe we could go find other tributes and see if they'll want to join us! Sure, we didn't have great scores or anything, but maybe there's something we can do or say to convince them to rethink whatever their previous strategy was. It's worked before, I've seen that happen when the kids at school decided to play chess or dominoes or whatever with each other, and considering there's a lot of strategy involved in those games…" Spark goes on and on and on, never pausing for breath as his attempted monologue jumps from topic to topic in an erratic frenzy, each waypoint less and less connected to the one before. I let him go on for a few minutes, hoping he can get whatever's happening out of his system and then just bounce back to normal like yesterday didn't happen, but when it becomes clear he isn't stopping unless I force him to, I manage to cut him off.

"Look, I get you've got a lot to tell me, but keep it down. We're sitting ducks out here, at least until we find weapons of some kind, and last time I checked, both of us valued our lives."

He doesn't stop completely, but he does ease off enough that whatever he's whispering to himself is nothing short of unintelligible on my end. Fine by me, although he's still scaring me a little.

It's barely mid-morning out right now, but it's already uncomfortably hot. While summers back home were also brutal, at the very least our living room had working air conditioning, even if it did short out every now and again. On top of that, we had a lot of dry heat in the summer, meaning it got hot but not the sticky kind of hot you'd hear about in a place like District Eleven.

Right now, it feels just like how I'd imagine a District Eleven summer day would. I never got a chance to ask either of their tributes what the weather was like down there, but I think that can safely be placed near the bottom of my increasingly-long list of regrets.

Somewhere close to (if not at) the very top would be not trying to get help for Spark earlier. I'm pretty confident he's just moved on to singing under his breath, which is the sign of someone who doesn't have all their marbles if I've ever seen one. I don't think leaving him behind yet is a good idea, since I don't even know what kind of crazy Spark gets in situations like this (the aggressive kind? The scared-of-his-own-shadow kind? The hallucinating kind?), and at the very worst, he's still pretty big. If it had to come to that, he'd be an acceptable shield, although the idea of that is more than a bit repulsive.

It's still practical. Throwing in my lot with a crazy person is the bad idea to end all bad ideas, in my opinion.

Spark decides he needs to address me about something again. "When we get to the end of this, what do you want to do?"

Well, that was a question I'd never expected. Doubly so if you take Spark's current mental state into account.

"Can you give me some time on that one? I don't have an answer right now," I say.

"It'll come to you soon. I take forever to answer a lot of questions too, it's really a problem. I remember one time where…" And Spark has started up again. I decide to just let him keep talking. Chances are, if someone's hunting us, they'd have heard us before he started jabbering again.

I guess I haven't been thinking about winning all that much. Forgive me for being a cynic, but chances are, winning isn't on my plate. I'm a fifteen-year-old with little to no useful skills unless you count babysitting, and I'm going up against a bunch of kids who might as well have cut their way out of the womb for extra preparation for the Games.

Maybe I'll get a miracle. But unless that happens, I'm not leaving this arena alive.

That's all there is to it.

Aryion Hylus, District Seven Male

The woods actually have precious few trees that are suitable for climbing. Who knew?

Either way, though, it's morning, and I probably need to get a move on. I'm high enough up that camouflage isn't really a problem, but it's all too easy to be waited out up here, and I only have one ax to my name. Miss my throw and I'm screwed.

I'm not too high up, I can still see the ground from here, but it's still too far to just jump down. I knew a few kids back home who'd do it for fun, and a common dare kids tossed around before they were old enough to know better was to climb the highest tree they could and jump down. Thankfully, most of those kids couldn't climb that far, so the number of fatalities from that dare were small, but any number other than zero was an uncomfortable one to talk about, especially when the cause was something that could have easily been prevented. Climbing down is safer, so let's do that today.

"Time to climb down," I say to no one in particular.

However, as I move to slip down the tree and start the day's grind, I hear something that I really hope I'm just imagining.

Voices.

Nope, nope, nope, not time to climb down yet! Stay in the tree until I can figure out who they belong to and where they're coming from.

Okay, time to consider my options here. If it's just one, I might be able to hit them with something from up here and knock them out, if not kill them. More than one, all I can do is stay up here and pray to whoever's listening that they keep looking straight ahead and don't think about the tributes who can climb things.

Then they get close enough that I can start making out conversation beats, and the odds of me surviving this encounter proceed to leap off a cliff.

"You need to be quieter. You're scaring tributes away!"

"And how many have we seen today, exactly?"

"Fewer than we should have. We've been hiking for hours, we need to find someone. The audience is probably getting bored!"

Careers. Definitely. Oh, shit.

And unless they have a split personality, there are definitely more than one of them nearby right now. No chance to take them out when they're looking the other way. Just have to stay up here and hope for the best. It's worked for other tributes, it has to work here, right?

Right?

I can see them from here. Two girls, both wielding freaky weapons I barely know the names of, let alone how to use. Chances are there's at least one more trailing behind them that I can't see from here. Have to keep quiet. Have to stay still. Don't panic. There's nothing to see here, keep moving, please…

"Uhh, Clara? I think you might want to look at this."

A pause, my fists clenching in the process, then Clara replies with, "Why?"

"There's a ton of fallen leaves over here…"

Shit! I must have knocked those down climbing up here last night when it was too dark to see anything. And now it's going to get me killed!

"And why is that noteworthy?"

"Because it means either the biggest squirrel in existence decided to take up residence here, or…"

Then the other Career points up.

Straight at me.

Or at least, straight at where I used to be, because that's when I take my chances and leap off the branch.

It hurts like hell when I land and I can't pull off the tuck and roll some of the more experienced climbers back home could have, but since I can keep running afterward, either adrenaline is either a stronger force than pain or I'm just not that badly hurt. And I don't care if screaming is probably a bad idea, I'm doing it anyway.

I hear a grunt of effort from behind me, then manage to duck just in time for some kind of thrown object to fly over my head before embedding itself in the dirt right in front of me. I manage to sidestep it, but judging by the Careers' footfall noises, they're not that far behind. I have a bit of an advantage there, though: they've got supplies weighing them down and all I have to my name is an ax. Plus, based on how vigorously one of them is cursing right now, they probably threw their weapon already and now have nothing to attack with.

Still, though, my only hope of survival right now is outrunning them.

And thus, the screams dying in my chest as my breath runs short, my hopeless sprint continues.

Author's Notes:

-I'm back! Hope you're happy to see me again. If not, I'm not sure how you got through forty-eight chapters of this, but that's fine too.

-Updates might be a bit slow for a while. Ironically enough, I got a job working for an actual summer camp, so that means I'm without access to the Internet for most of the day five days a week, so I have less time to write. Hopefully, I'll be able to get out content anyway, though.

-See you next chapter!