Author's Note:

I do not own the Hunger Games.


They followed the footprints along the streambed. Even now Hyperion was aware of the darkness, the evil, that was still lurking somewhere behind them, following them behind the trees. Luciente would have known, but Luciente wasn't here. His one goal at the bloodbath had been to not get separated from her, and he had failed. She was out there somewhere alone, capable of caring for herself yes, but alone all the same.

She had promised them freedom, once, when they were younger, more naïve, still children with dreams in their minds and hope in their hearts.

"We'll be free," she had said, and looked at him with those big pale eyes of hers. "We'll be free, and safe, and wild."

"I don't think anyone's ever free," he said, passing her a chunk of rat from the fire. She had torn into it like an animal, all hands and teeth.

"Wait. When the rain falls warm, and the earth moves, and the coyotes howl loudest, we'll be free."

Hyperion had heard her say many things before and after that, but he'd never heard anything else from her mouth that sounded similar. There was a cold certainty to it, an airy confidence mixed with her natural wild divinity.

"We know there's a world out there. We just can't get to it."

The coyotes could get in and out of the District after all. People didn't teleport between Districts or the arenas. There was land, a world, behind the towering stone wall that held them prisoner.

"We'll get there."

We'll get there, she had said. We'll be free, we'll be safe, we'll be wild.

It seemed like such a faraway dream these days.

Perhaps, he thought, perhaps they would have to die before they could be free. Sometimes he thought Luciente was never made for this world anyway. Having her here, now, would have helped. She would have known better about the darkness, known better about what to do.

That was her thing.

His was hunting, tracking, killing.

The footprints continued up the streambed. He could no longer feel Luciente by the water, not like he had earlier, but he knew they would find each other. They always could, always would.

Up ahead, there was movement around the streambend, noise, footsteps. He held an arm up for Ilenia, lifting his spear.

She shifted her grip on her own weapon, though she didn't look much like the Careers shown on TV, strong and polished and confident. She didn't even really look much like the girl from the parade. She looked unsure, nervous and shaky. Could he really kill her, Hyperion wondered, when the time came, and then discarded that thought. Of course he could. She was in his way, and more importantly, she was in Luciente's way. She was younger than him, younger than her, and she was a tentative ally for now, but once she was no longer that, once he had Luciente, she would be dead and gone.

He moved slowly, quietly, but she was clumsier, noisier, her footsteps sounding like they lasted an eternity. They slipped into the trees to round the bend and then out again as they passed it to see what they faced.

Ilenia raised her spear as though to throw it. The girl turned to run. Hyperion caught the shaft of Ilenia's spear. "Arielle."

Ilenia frowned. "So this is your friend Ten."

Arielle looked between them, nervous and hesitant, her gaze flickering here and there.

"You- You're allying with the Careers now?"

"We're not allies," said Ilenia.

"And there's no one else with us."

Arielle looked up to him and then back to Ilenia. Luciente said she would be Victor, but what did that mean for the pair of them? If he ended her, here and now, would that change their fate? Did she have to die for them to live, or was there something else here he didn't understand, like the vague sense of danger from ahead or the darkness in the trees behind them?

Arielle was looking at him again now.

No.

She was looking through him, past him. Hyperion turned, keeping his fingers wrapped around Ilenia's spear, somehow insanely trusting her to watch Six.

Something was… oozing from the trees.

Like liquid darkness, shadows with a gloopy form, tendrils rising from it and then collapsing back in one themselves, crawling over the ground, basking the trees in a strange black light. Some kind of ghost, as Luciente had always called them, or a fairy, or a mutt?

"What the actual fuck?" said Arielle, and then Hyperion reacted.

He spun, releasing Ilenia's spear to seize her arm and yank hard on it, dragging her towards Arielle. "Run!"

"Oh not again!"

Arielle turned and bolted, scrambling over the ground on clumsy legs.

"What are we running from?" Ilenia screamed as he dragged her.

"Good question!" Arielle shouted back.

Hyperion didn't dare look back to check whether the darkness was following, and, quite frankly, he didn't want to. He was pretty sure that thing was going to join the images of bloody meat and crimson hands, warmth on his face and his name echoing across the District in his nightmares. They kept moving, stumbling across the mud and stone as the thing crept across the ground behind them. He could sense it, cold and dark and evil, hungering, angry.

Once, when he was very little, Hyperion had wondered why he didn't see things the same way Luciente did.

"I'm your brother. I should be like you."

"You are like me."

"But I'm not like you. I don't see the way you do."

He didn't think the same way she did either, he had come to know, didn't process or hear things the way she did.

"I just wish I could see the fairies."

"You could. You just don't want to."

She had been right, of course, because she was always fucking right. If he never saw anything like that thing again for as long as he lived – which could be a painfully short amount of time – he would still have seen more than he ever wanted to see.

They fell from the trees, gasping for air, panting, gasping, Arielle half screaming, half sobbing, shaking, wielding a fallen tree branch as though she might be able to take on a monster made of shadows with it.

"Keep going!" Hyperion roared, nearly ramming into her shoulder.

"Again Ten, what the fuck are we running from?" shouted Ilenia.

"Come on come on come on!" shouted Arielle.

And still Hyperion could feel that thing behind them, lurking, slithering, black and cold in the dry trees.

Then there was a flash of heat, red across his skin, breathtaking, dazzling, and the blackness receded again, slinking further back into the trees. The red followed, and for a moment he could feel it, charring the edges of the dark, until they were both gone.

"Again," said Ilenia, "what the fuck?"

Arielle jabbed a frantic hand at the trees, her mouth opening and closing. "The the the the- he he he he- dead- smile- he he he he-"

Ilenia blinked. "Is she broken?"