JACK SCHNAPPS- Kade MacNamara

He'd made it this long. I guess that meant there were still good people in the world. By this time, someone must have seen Jack. They'd chosen to pretend they hadn't. He was dead now, but I'd remember that for five days, people chose to be good.

Romeo Auto, District Six male (18)

This was just great. With Anjou gone, I couldn't afford to lose any more allies. Sure, Dahlia was a whining drama queen, but she was my only ally left. She and I needed each other because we both needed to sleep sometime. Now we were stuck in an awkward balance of more or less hating each other while at the same time needing to play nice.

"I suppose you want to go find Valencia," Dahlia huffed.

"No shit," I said.

"And then what? You have everything you need from me and you stab me in the back?" she asked, her voice going up in pitch.

"That's been the pretty obvious endgame for both of us from the start, hasn't it?" I asked. I didn't even care to bother pretending. There had never been any love lost between this alliance. I was just kicking myself we hadn't turned on Anjou when he left and gotten rid of one loose end.

"You just better watch your back," Dahlia said with what she intended to be a threatening tone.

I tried not to let my amusement show on my face and picked a safer subject. "What, is there someone you especially want to kill? Perhaps we could get them first?"

"Charm and Laken come to mind," she said.

I cursed to myself. She was right. We should focus on those two and then we wouldn't even need someone to watch our backs. Sure, there would still be Isabella and her allies, but the two of us didn't have much chance against them anyway until they lost a few more members.

"It's a big arena out there," I said, looking out into the endless trees swallowing up the light.

"Laken could be anywhere, but Charm will be near water," Dahlia said. I wondered if she noticed she had a giant smear of dirt on her forehead. It half-covered one eyebrow and gave her a ridiculous angry-teacher sort of expression. "She'll probably be sick, too."

"It's been four days. She might be on death's door by now," I said. She could live a long time by not moving and drinking more than she put out, but in such a state she'd be easy to fight.

"If we get lucky, Laken will find her first and she'll injure him before she dies," Dahlia said.

If I was lucky I wouldn't have met you, I kept to myself. People like Dahlia disgusted me. If someone crossed me, I broke their nose or shot them right to their face. I didn't hide behind wailing defenses and underhanded jibes designed to tear down someone's self-esteem. It was a coward's way to fight and nothing disgusted me more than a two-faced dog.

In all of this, she'd never mentioned Laken. Strange she wouldn't want to go after our biggest single threat. Unless... It certainly wasn't beneath her. In fact, it was right up her alley. Any idiot could see Dahlia was itching for a chance to betray me. She'd had Timber wrapped around her finger and one man was never enough for someone like her. Funny how Laken had been the farthest away when we started attacking the Careers. He was the only one who'd gotten away without any difficulty, and even with his weapon. Almost like someone had warned him...

Dahlia's plan, if that was what it was, was already one step ahead of me. She wanted to eliminate Charm to increase her own chances. Now that I suspected she was allied with Laken, I couldn't suggest we go after him. They'd both turn on me if they did. If Dahlia had been a little smarter she'd have suggested that in the first place, but it seemed she was gambling that she could lead me to Charm and be sure of that kill before she found out how long she could fool Laken.

Disgust washed over me again. Dahlia was content to grab someone's coattails and watch them do her dirty work, sure to the very end that she was smarter and her schemes were better than everyone else's. As for me, when I got to Valencia, I'd slit her throat myself. I hadn't forgotten about her- no, not at all. It was looking like our date might get moved up a few days, since there was less reason now for me to stay with Dahlia. I'd see her again, and I'd kiss her one more time, as her blood stained my lips.

Charm Sterlingshire, District One female (18)

The girl wasn't quite dead yet. I could tell because when a bug landed on her leg, she twitched a little, being unable to see it coming from her face-down position on the edge of the river. She looked for all the world like a beached corpse, but no, she was just a very weak girl.

I could have gone up and killed her, but it was better that I didn't. She was dying, that much was obvious. She didn't need me to get there. Leaving her, however, came with its own rewards. If one of the more bleeding-heart Tributes came by, I could take them instead. The moth boy, most likely, or else the Four girl. It was clear the only chance I had was to snipe them one at a time. If they thought they'd won, they were wrong. I wasn't done yet. I clawed my way to the volunteer slot and I'd claw my way through them. I was covered in mud and I'd eaten a raw frog just hours ago. I wasn't the same person who entered this place. If I wanted to win, I needed to let the jungle in. I wanted to win.

Despite myself, I leaned forward when a figure approached, It wasn't one of Isabella's alliance, to my disappointment, but Elias was almost as good. He was one of those people who thought he was tough. He'd have grabbed supplies at the Cornucopia. He'd have food- something other than the frogs I'd skewered on my throwing knives or the bananas I'd had to make a complete fool of myself to climb a tree and get. If nothing else, he'd be a notch on my belt that would earn me more sponsors.

Elias crested the riverbank and saw the girl. I expected him to perhaps suspect she was alive, given the lack of cannon, and go finish the job. I didn't expect him to scream, almost drop his knife, and fall on his butt, scuttling backwards away from the girl. The girl, meanwhile, jumped up and gave a banshee wail. She spread out her arms and shuffled after him for a few steps in a weird lurching gait, then watched him go. She laughed once as she settled back into her position.

It's Amaranth, then. She was the only one who would find herself in the arena and still want to pull a prank. But why on earth had Elias fallen for it? I held myself back from going to kill Amaranth just because the mystery was so interesting. Perhaps Elias was especially afraid of monsters that disguised themselves as girls? Preposterous. But not entirely...

I hadn't been moving much from where I initially made camp. I was trying to stay close to Isabella's alliance until I figured out how to snipe them. The others had been moving around more. They would have seen the arena. They would have seen its fauna. Mutts, perhaps? A certain mutt widespread in the arena but that I hadn't encountered? Mutts that looked like dead bodies? It was then I remembered the scratches on Elias' face. They'd looked like fingernail marks.

My lips curled as I watched Amaranth from my hidden perch. Clever girl.

Amaranth Harvey, District Nine female (12)

Elias fled into the forest, screaming and sprinting wildly. I snickered at his receding back as I slunk back to the edge of the water. I was playing with fire, really. Eventually one of those corpse mutts was going to get mad at me and come get me for real. But it seemed like they couldn't swim under the water- they could only float. Of course, I'd only seen two- the one that got Jurrien and the one that floated behind Valencia as she waded around a log blocking her path. She hadn't even noticed it coming up behind her, twigs and mud matting its hair. I like to think I would have warned her if it had gotten too close, but I didn't have to find out. She'd stepped free of the water when it was still a body's-length away.

There was something about being prey that gave you special senses. A split second before I heard something, I knew with instant clarity that I wasn't alone. Then the sound came. The sound of air whistling past my ear before the nunchuck hit the side of my head. It had to be Charm. I had to admit she got me good.

Charm Sterlingshire, District One female (18)

A few minutes passed before Amaranth's eyes fluttered. I sat back from where I'd been refilling my water filter and waited.

Amaranth's hand went to the side of her head as she muttered and sat up. She opened her eyes and looked with confusion at her own body. Still dazed, she looked up at me.

"Why didn't you kill me?" she asked.

"I didn't want to," I said.

"Then why'd you hit me?" she asked, slurring at first but starting to regain her energy.

"So I could cut your Achilles tendon," I said.

Amaranth's leg had already been flexed a little with the pain she felt but couldn't yet localize. At my words she sat up sharply and looked down at the bandages wound around her left leg.

"I'm a nice person. I knocked you out before I did it. And I even washed it out for you. Compliments of whoever sent me this water filter." I smiled and help up my straw.

"What are you doing?" Amaranth asked. She tried to get up and slid limply to the ground when her leg refused to straighten.

"Kidnapping you," I said. I sat down in front of her. "I'm stuck out here alone and my only way out is to pick off the huge alliance hunting for me- an alliance that includes two people with as much training as me and several people who know way more about survival. I don't know much about this cesspool but I've read enough to know that the last time there was war here, it was guerrilla warfare that won it. Sneaking around, tricks... traps. You have traps. And now you're with me."

"Or what, you'll kill me?" I had to admire her. There was fear in Amaranth's face, but there was also defiance.

"Eventually. But first I'll break your other leg. Then I'll rip your fingernails off, then some other stuff. All the screaming will probably attract Mike or some other nice idiot, so at least I'll get one kill out of you. I'll leave your face alone for your mother at your funeral, though. I'm a nice person," I said, looking at Amaranth like I was just asking her what she wanted for dinner.

"I was already gonna do it," Amaranth muttered, scowling downward. "I know you got me."

"Good," I said. "Then it's settled. We're best friends."