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HIRO
When I wake up, the sky is still almost dark, shrouded with clouds. My supplies lay in a pile next to me, the weapons reminding me that I need to hunt. I'm starving—which I suppose is why they call it the Hunger Games. A lot of tributes die of hunger, whether it's from starving to death or dying trying to get the food. These people will kill to stay alive, which means they'd kill to keep what little food they have.
I don't have any food. Tadashi told me to try not to kill, but I think he was talking about humans. I do need to eat.
I pick up my bow and arrows and venture outside in search of food. I'm near a water source, so the animals seem to come here often. I shoot a couple of birds and a squirrel, so I hopefully shouldn't have to hunt again for a few days. Some parts of the cave are cold enough to preserve it.
I manage to start a fire with wood from the forest. The smoke fills up the cave and makes me cough, but it's preferable to broadcasting my location with smoke signals.
I find myself extremely glad that I picked up a knife, otherwise I'd have to pluck, skin, and eat these things with my bare hands. EW. Just ew.
I should work on not being squeamish if I want to win this thing.
I risk leaving the cave for a few minutes to scout around the cave. I didn't hear anything in the cave, but there could be tributes or muttations or, well, anything.
A blur of gray flies past my face, nicking my cheek and lodging in the tree behind me. I yelp, thinking there's no point in hiding if someone's already close enough to throw a knife at me.
A girl steps out from behind a tree, another knife tucked in her fingers. Her long dark hair is swept into a braid over her shoulder, and a hood is pulled up over her head, shielding her face. I recognize her, though.
"Megan?"
She reaches up and flips back her hood. "Hiro, right?"
"Yeah. How about instead of trying to kill me, we call a truce and maybe live a little longer?"
She shrugs. "How do I know you won't stab me in the back first chance you get?"
"My family's lost enough people to the Hunger Games. I know what it's like, and I don't want your family to go through that. Or anyone."
Megan stares at me for a moment.
"Good enough for me," she says, sheathing her knife. "As long as you have food, I'll stay with you."
I open my mouth to reply, but an ear-shattering explosion cuts me off, throwing me backwards. I hear Megan scream as she hits the ground beside me. Pain explodes in the back of my head as it collides with something very large and very hard, and I fall to the ground, limp.
I push myself up gingerly, rubbing the back of my head. Sparks, that hurts. I bet I have a concussion—it would at least explain why everything is fuzzy.
Smoke swirls around me, stinging my throat and making me cough. A hand emerges through the smoke, olive-skinned and graceful—Megan's hand. I take it and pull myself to my feet.
"What was that?" I whisper as I stand up, pain shooting through my ankle when I put weight on it.
"Some kind of bomb," Megan replies. "They want these Games over. The Cornucopia got out of control and now there's not enough of us left to be interesting."
Megan helps me limp back to the cave and roasts one of the birds I caught yesterday while I bandage myself. My head is the worst of it, a goose egg already swelling under my mass of hair. Hopefully my hair protected me from a skull fracture.
Megan's not badly hurt—she thinks I absorbed most of the blast. She's a little bruised from being flung backward, but that's all. Or all she'll tell me. She's stubborn enough that I think she might be hiding something, but I can't tell for sure.
When night falls, we go outside to see the faces of dead tributes in the sky. The Capitol anthem plays, and the images appear in order of district. The boys from One, Eight, and Nine, and the girls from Six and Eleven. That makes us the only district pair, along with the boys from Six and Ten and the girl from Four.
The temperature drops alarmingly that night, and Megan and I are forced to huddle together for warmth. I fall asleep, but after a few hours, I wake up with Megan's body pressed so tightly against mine that she's almost smothering me. It's not even that cold anymore.
"Megan?" I mumble, nudging her gently. "Wake up."
Megan slowly sits up, shivering so hard I can see her body shaking. It's getting warmer now. There's definitely something wrong.
"You okay?" I ask.
Before she can answer, two cannon blasts just about burst my eardrums. Two tributes are gone. We're down to the final three—me, Megan, and one other.
Even if we manage to overpower whoever's left, it comes down to Megan and me. I don't want to kill anyone, much less someone from my own district—but I don't want Tadashi to go through the pain of losing me.
The sky darkens with little excitement that day. The boys from Six and Ten appear above us, the tributes whose deaths give us a chance at winning. I'm praying they'll pull a 74th and let a district win with both tributes. But there's nothing special about Megan and me, so not likely.
Megan's forehead is now burning up, but at least she's not shivering anymore. She sleeps on the other side of the cave tonight, far away from me, where it's cooler.
I wake in the night to a strange rushing sound. Something that sounds suspiciously like…water.
I know we're near a stream, but this is much too loud to be that. This is something big. Something dangerous.
"Megan!" I hiss, shaking her awake. "Megan, wake up!"
Megan's eyes flutter open, then widen. "What's that?"
"I think it's a flood. We have to get out of here!"
Megan stands up and quickly gathers her knives and the medical kit. I snatch up my bow and arrows and run, Megan leaning on my shoulder. We need to get to high ground. The problem is, there is no high ground in this arena.
I manage to scale the side of the cave while dragging Megan with me, relieved to see that it leads to another slope. I climb that one too and collapse on the top, breathing hard.
"You okay?" Megan gasps.
"Yeah. You?"
"Fine."
We lay there in silence.
"You can…call me Meg…if you want…" Megan says haltingly. "Lots…of people…do."
"Okay." I sit up gingerly. "Are you sure you're okay? Your breathing seems off."
"I'm fine."
She's not fine.
I open my mouth, but Megan's voice cuts me off. "Hiro!"
She points over my shoulder. I whirl around to see a wall of water descending upon us.
"Meg—" A spray of water hits me in the face before I get the rest of her name out and I collapse to my knees, coughing. "Run!"
Megan grabs my arm and pulls me to my feet, now dragging me behind her. Maybe it's the adrenaline, but she seems incredibly fast for a girl who's been burning up with fever all night.
Megan and I are both fast, but not fast enough to outrun a flood, especially one specifically designed to kill us. Within thirty seconds, the waves catch up to us and a world of water surrounds me.
I thrash against the torrent, searching for the surface, but I can't tell which way is up. I need air. I need to breathe. I will die if I don't breathe. But I can't, and there's nothing I can do about it.
Finally I break the surface of the water and gasp for air, wildly looking around for Megan. I shout her name, but my voice is lost in a roar of cascading water.
I am being swept toward a waterfall.
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