Chapter Fourteen

Dyson removed the rabbit from the snare, feeling its beating heart as he did so, a beating heart which was quickly stilled as he gripped the animal's head and twisted sharply to one side, snapping its neck. Just like that, he had killed it in order to survive. Soon, if he could remember what he had been taught about dressing game at the Training Centre, it would be skinned and roasting over a campfire, providing him with the means of staving off hunger for another night.

As he looked down at the lifeless animal in his hands, he found himself thinking about how this was the fourth life he had taken since arriving in the arena ten days ago. First Pleat, then Linus, then Astra, now this rabbit. Three humans and one animal were dead because of him . . . No, that wasn't quite true. It was the Gamemakers who had killed Linus and Astra, with that bird mutt and with that lightning storm; he'd just spared them the lingering deaths they would have suffered otherwise. Pleat had been trying to kill him and, as for the rabbit, the simple fact was that he needed to eat. So he'd set a snare using the twine from his pack, the rabbit had hopped right into it and he'd finished the job.

Finished the job. That was rather a cold way of putting it, as if he'd finished repairing one of the generators in District 5's many power plants. The difference was, finishing that job meant the generator would continue to supply electricity, whereas the rabbit would never do anything again. Except become a meal for himself. Himself. He was alone in the arena now; Astra, the slightly built thirteen-year-old who'd been his district partner and ally, was dead, burnt to crisp by a lightning bolt, her end hastened by the machete tucked into his belt. He'd done what he'd never wanted to do, killed a girl not much older than Tia. His kid sister . . .

He shook his head. He had to stop dwelling on what he'd done to Astra, had to concentrate on keeping himself alive. There was still an unknown number of other tributes out there, any one of whom could end up killing him - unless he killed them first. Everyone in the arena wanted to survive, but only one could; the rest had to die. Kill or be killed.

He stashed the rabbit in his pack and dismantled the snare, before moving on.


Sunset found Dyson roasting the rabbit on a spit over a small campfire made using wood he'd gathered from a nearby stand of trees. While he was waiting for the meat to cook, the anthem began to play and the seal appeared in the sky, but no faces followed, not that he had been expecting to see any since he hadn't heard the cannon all day. Which meant the number of opponents he had to outlast was unchanged since yesterday.

Yesterday. That was when Astra had died, struck by a lightning bolt that he felt sure had been generated by the Gamemakers, when he'd had to put her out of her misery. He couldn't be sure, but he suspected Garnet, Monica and Xylon had also been fatalities of the electrical storm, not that he cared about any of them. Nor did he care about Astra, even though she had been his ally. They were his opponents in a game where all but one of the players were doomed to die; their deaths simply meant there were four fewer tributes he had to outlast. But how many tributes were left?

He counted off those whose faces he had seen in the sky. Axle, Lara, Pleat, Mallow, Husk, Stoke and Cormac had died in the bloodbath on the opening day, followed by Digit and Linus on day two. There had been a cannon on the third day, but he and Astra had encountered that swarm of mosquito mutts on the same day and he'd been too out of it to watch the death recap. The antidote Astra had given him had revived him just in time to see Salacia's face in the sky. Next to go was Randall, knifed in the neck by Astra while he was trying to strangle Dyson; that was when Dyson had begun to suspect his district partner had ulterior motives, that she had saved him in order to kill him later. Not that it would come to that; she had died yesterday, along with Garnet, Monica and Xylon.

That made sixteen dead tributes, as far as he knew. He still didn't know if anyone had died while he was knocked out by the venom the mosquito mutts had injected into him, but he'd made it at least as far as the final eight, the first District 5 tribute to do so for more than a decade. He was in no mood to celebrate, though; things would only get harder from here on, especially since there could be as many as four of the Careers still in the running. Garnet and Salacia had been eliminated, but the remaining tributes from Districts 1, 2 and 4 were still the biggest threat in the arena; if they attacked him in their pack, he wouldn't stand a chance.

But if he only had to face one Career, he might be in with at least a slight chance, even if that Career was Lupus. District 2 tributes were known for being the best fighters in the arena - that was why their district had produced more victors than any of the other eleven - but they were not unbeatable. And, Dyson told himself, he was going to find a way to beat Lupus and send him back to District 2 in a wooden box. But not while Lupus had any of his fellow Careers to back him up; Dyson wasn't going to risk taking on the whole pack by himself and even two Careers might be too much of a challenge. In a one-on-one fight, however . . .

It suddenly dawned on him that he was doing something he hadn't done until now, plotting the death of a fellow tribute. Of the three tributes he had already taken out, Pleat had been killed because she was trying to kill him and Linus and Astra had been mercy kills. This, however, would be pre-meditated murder, a line he had yet to cross. But cross it he must if he was to have any chance of getting out of here alive, which meant he would have to forget that his fellow tributes were human beings. From now on, their lives were no more important than the life of the rabbit he was currently spit-roasting for his supper.

Kill or be killed.


Glean was literally running for his life.

The sun had risen on the eleventh day in the arena nearly three hours ago and he'd decided to go down to the nearest pond to refill his water bottle, hoping he would be able to do so and get back undercover before too many of the other tributes were up and about. By now, with only eight left in the arena, the Games were coming down to the wire and that meant he couldn't trust anyone, not even his district partner, Valerie. He knew she was still alive, having not seen her in the sky when the faces of those (including their ally, Xylon) who had died in the lightning storm were projected over the arena, but he was not going to go looking for her. He was not going to risk her having to kill him, or him having to kill her. Their alliance was over.

So he was alone when he walked down to the pond, his sickle tucked into his belt, and filled his water bottle. He was alone when he added the iodine to purify the water. He was alone when, the water now safe to drink, he got up to head back to the cave he had chosen as his hiding place. And he was alone when he had the misfortune to run into Bellona and Lupus from District 2.

The expressions on both their faces had told him he could expect no mercy. And their weapons! Bellona was armed with some kind of axe-spear combo, Lupus with a spiked mace, both of which looked like they could do serious damage. His sickle, by contrast, suddenly looked and felt like the farming implement it was, a tool for cutting stalks of grain, not a weapon for fighting his fellow tributes. Add to that the fact that they were both bigger than him and he was pretty much screwed. So he took the only course of action open to him.

He turned and high-tailed it out of there.

He could hear Bellona and Lupus's footsteps pounding after him, pursuing him relentlessly as he ran, not daring to look back, hoping against hope that he would somehow be able to outrun the two highly trained Careers. Had he been in the boys' race at school, he would have nothing to worry about; he'd won the race last year, after all. But he was not racing against his friends from District 9; he was racing against a pair of tributes who had spent their lives training for the Hunger Games. And that training had obviously included running long distances, which meant he was struggling to shake them off. No matter which direction he ran, they were right behind him - and they wouldn't give up until they caught him and . . .

He stumbled on the uneven ground, went sprawling. As he fell, he felt a sharp pain in his ankle as it twisted sharply. "Oh, crap!" he said out loud, knowing any injury now was serious. He was alone in the middle of a Hunger Games arena, with the two strongest tributes bearing down on him. "Get up!" he told himself, struggling to his feet, hoping against hope that he would somehow be able to run on his injured ankle. Seconds later, however, he fell down again, his ankle unable to support his weight. He was helpless to do anything except watch as Bellona and Lupus jogged over to him, both of them looking at him as a predator looks at cornered prey.

Desperate, he tried to get to his sickle, hoping he might be able to inflict a few wounds on the District 2 tributes; at least then no-one would be able to accuse him of going down without a fight. But Bellona was too quick for him. She pinned him to the ground and held him there, restraining his arms and making it impossible for him to fight back. "You're dead, District 9!" she hissed in his ear as he struggled to break free. "You, and that bitch you call a district partner, and those kids from 3 and 5!"

"W - what about 1 and 4?" Glean stammered, desperately trying to stall for time. "They're your allies, aren't they?"

"Not any more," Bellona told him matter-of-factly. "In case you didn't know, there's only eight of us left, so if we find them, we'll kill them too. Just like we're going to kill you," she added, nodding towards Lupus, who raised his mace over Glean's head.

Glean closed his eyes tight so that the last thing he saw wouldn't be the girl who was taking a sadistic delight in the fact that the boy he could see hovering over him out of the corner of his eye was about to kill him. He thought of his friends and family back in District 9, of the endless fields of grain, of the medal he had won in the boys' race and which he had brought with him into this arena. It was round his neck right now, tucked under his shirt. He'd chosen it as his token because he thought it might bring him luck and maybe it had; he'd made it as far as the final eight. But his luck had just run out.

Lupus brought his mace smashing down on Glean's skull, caving it in. He repeated the action a few more times, reducing the District 9 boy's head to a bloody mess, only stopping when the cannon boomed out across the arena, at which point he threw back his head and let out his trademark wolf howl.


"And so eight become seven!" Claudius Templesmith announced as the camera which had captured the grisly scene lingered on a close-up of Glean's bloody and misshapen head. In the studio which had been set up at the Games Headquarters, Glean's image faded from the backdrop which showed the faces of this year's tributes. "Who will be next to fall? Will it come down to a showdown between Glean's killers, Bellona and Lupus from District 2? Stay tuned to the Sixty-eighth Hunger Games to find out!" Not that the people of Panem had much choice. Everyone was required by law to watch at least the highlights of each day in the arena and, now that only a handful of tributes remained, the time when the entire population would be expected to tune in live was growing closer.

In the meantime, a young man in his mid twenties was hauled in front of the cameras. "So, Consus," Caesar Flickerman said, standing face-to-face with District 9's only living male victor, "your tribute is out of the running and that means you'll be returning to District 9. Do you have any final words to say before you leave us?" Ever since the mentoring system was introduced at the Tenth Games, it had become a Hunger Games tradition to, whenever a tribute was killed, have their mentor give a testimonial. Fifteen mentors, Haymitch Abernathy having given a somewhat slurred speech about Stoke and Cormac on the opening day, had done so already this year. Now it was Consus's turn to become the sixteenth.

Consus looked visibly saddened by Glean's death, but he quickly pulled himself together and spoke into the microphone Caesar was holding. "I'd just like to say that it was an honour to work with Glean," he said, trying to control the shaking in his voice. "He was the first tribute I've gotten to this stage and, while I would have liked him to go further, I think I can say he's done District 9 proud."

"Well, he's certainly done that," said Caesar, smiling encouragingly.

Consus responded with a weak smile of his own, but there was no hiding the grief which lay behind it. Since becoming a victor, he'd mentored eleven District 9 boys through the Hunger Games, only to see all of them die. Of those eleven boys, only Glean had lasted more than a few days; the rest had either been killed in the bloodbath or had fallen in the first week. When Glean made it into the final eight, Consus had hoped he might somehow manage to outlast all the other tributes who were still alive and become District 9's fifth victor. But it was not to be; Bellona and Lupus had seen to that. Sitting in his booth, Consus had been unable to do anything except watch helplessly as Lupus bludgeoned his tribute to death while Bellona restrained him and kept him from fighting back. He had . . .

He had let Glean down, just as he had let ten other boys down. He tried to act as though he was unaffected by their deaths, but their faces haunted him constantly, as did the faces of the tributes from his own Games. No doubt Glean would be joining them and so would most of the boys he would have to mentor in subsequent years. Only one thing shut them out. He'd been taking morphling for the past ten years and, while he wasn't as far gone as Delta and Marius, two District 6 victors who practically lived on the stuff, he knew he was becoming dangerously dependent. But what other choice did he have?

None, apart from enduring the constant nightmares he had suffered ever since he left the arena at the end of the Fifty-seventh Games and which grew worse with each tribute he failed to save. It was only with the aid of morphling that he was able to sleep undisturbed, especially after he lost a tribute. And that meant he would be paying a visit to one of the Capitol's backstreet clinics before returning to District 9. And he would be taking his wallet with him.

Morphling was expensive, especially when bought on the black market, but money was no object for a Hunger Games victor.


Two days had passed since Glean became the seventeenth tribute to fall in the Sixty-eighth Hunger Games. There had been no fatalities since, but Dyson knew there were other tributes still out there, scattered all over the arena. He also knew from previous Games that the Gamemakers would not allow that situation to continue indefinitely, that the Capitol didn't like it if too much time passed without any deaths. Which meant the Gamemakers must be planning to do something to drive the remaining tributes together. But what? A "natural" disaster? The lightning storm had been bad enough.

At the end of the thirteenth day since the Games began, he received his answer.

The Capitol seal had just faded from the sky and darkness was descending over the arena when the sound of trumpets suddenly blared out, jolting Dyson out of a light doze. There were only two reasons for the trumpets to sound: to herald an announcement to the tributes and to declare the last surviving tribute the victor. Since there had been no cannons for the past two days, Dyson knew it couldn't be the latter, much as he would like to think he had somehow outlasted all his opponents. Which meant it could only be an announcement.

Seconds later, the voice of Claudius Templesmith was projected over the arena, as it had been on the opening day when he announced the start of the Games. "Greetings to the remaining tributes in the Sixty-eighth Hunger Games. As of this moment, seven of you are still alive. From District 1, Dazzle Bernstein. Then we have Bellona Maynard and Lupus Hendrix from District 2, Synthia Gates from District 3, Fathom Osborne from District 4, Dyson Kinsella from District 5 and, last but not least, Valerie Marsden from District 9. My congratulations to all of you for making it this far. And, as a reward for your efforts, a feast will be held at the Cornucopia at noon tomorrow. I look forward to seeing you there."

With that, the announcement ended and Dyson was left pondering what his next move should be. "Feasts" were a regular feature of the latter stages of the Games; the Gamemakers would invite the tributes to come to a specific part of the arena, usually the Cornucopia, by promising them extra food. But these "feasts" were really an excuse to lure the tributes together in the hope that conflict, and therefore deaths, would result. Which, since "feasts" were always held at a point in the Games where most, if not all, of the surviving tributes would be ready to attack on sight, was what invariably happened. On a few occasions, the Games had even been resolved at a "feast", as had happened at the "feast" which had taken place at the Fifty-third Games, where a District 2 girl named Drusilla had taken out all the other four tributes, including her district partner.

Now Dyson, who had been born in the same year Drusilla became a victor, had to decide how he would respond to the invitation to this year's "feast". Attendance was not mandatory, but not being at the Cornucopia by the appointed time meant you risked missing out on what could be your last chance to restock your supplies, since gifts from sponsors were by now becoming prohibitively expensive for most of the mentors. The food in Dyson's pack currently consisted of a handful of berries and the remains of the rabbit he had snared two days ago, hardly enough to keep him going much longer. But should he ignore the invitation and hope the other six tributes wiped each other out at the "feast"? Or should he take his chances, report to the Cornucopia as instructed and hope that he would still be alive this time tomorrow?


Elsewhere in the arena, the other tributes had also heard the announcement about the "feast" and were also considering what their response should be.

Dazzle and Fathom agreed without hesitation that they would be at the Cornucopia tomorrow, as did Bellona and Lupus. The former members of the Career pack did not need any extra food, but the "feast" would be an ideal opportunity to take out a few more tributes. And it should also give the Capitol a little action, something which had been decidedly lacking this year as far as the Careers were concerned; since the bloodbath, the tributes from Districts 1, 2 and 4 had made only two direct kills. But the "feast" should change all that, especially with the pack now divided into two pairs of tributes to whom the members of the other pair were no longer their allies, but their enemies.

Synthia knew attending the "feast" would be risky. She would almost certainly have to face the Careers and, with Monica having died in the lightning storm, she no longer had an ally to watch her back. As a District 3 tribute, she was lucky to have made it this far; it had been more than ten years since a kid from the technology district was still alive at this stage in the Games. Nonetheless, she decided that she would be at the Cornucopia tomorrow. She needed to restock her pack and, with the chances of her receiving any more sponsor gifts from her mentor, Wiress, looking increasingly unlikely, the "feast" might be her last chance to do so. Provided she made sure to get clear before any of the other tributes came after her, she should be all right, at least for a while. And, if she had to defend herself, she had a slingshot she'd found in the pack she'd grabbed at the Cornucopia on the opening day; it wasn't much, but it was better than being completely unarmed.

Valerie, the last surviving member of the alliance between the tributes from Districts 7 and 9, decided she would not be attending the "feast". She still had a decent amount of food in her pack and, if she could eke it out, it should last her a few more days, hopefully long enough for her to outlast the other tributes. No sense in risking her life for the sake of a little extra food, especially when she had no way of knowing what would be available at the "feast". Some years the "feast" lived up to its name, but the Gamemakers had been known to provided nothing but stale bread for the desperate tributes to fight over. No, she would stay where she was, watch the sky tomorrow night to see who had been killed at the "feast" and decide what to do from there.


Seven teenagers, all that remained out of the twenty-four tributes who had entered the arena nearly two weeks earlier, prepared to bed down for the night. For some, it was the last night they would ever see.