Author's Note
I do not own the Hunger Games.
Finally, at long last, the trees broke, giving way to a narrow strip of land. Bunny tumbled from the trees onto it with a gasp of relief. "I think I've developed claustrophobia."
Nathaniel laughed and Luciente gave her a slight smile.
On the other side of the strip of land was a rocky slope riddled with cracks and caves. At the top, the forcefield was humming away, heavy and blue. She clutched her stone tight and gave it a flick. For a moment there was land on the other side, trees, plants, animals, fresh air, and then the forcefield was there again and she could feel nothing again.
Nathaniel picked up a small sized branch and hurled it, hard, at the forcefield. It bounced off with a crack and an echoing boom. Bunny raised an eyebrow. "Impressive."
Luciente fingered her warm stone. Bethany and the boy from Four had floated up to put themselves level with the forcefield, while Heaven was kind of lurking behind Bunny. She knew what she wanted it to feel like; she knew what the world beyond felt like.
Now she just had to get them there.
"Can you feel it?" she asked Nathaniel.
He fingered his own stone. "Yeah."
She smiled.
They were halfway there.
But when she reached out across the arena to feel for Hyperion, the darkness was closer to him then ever, crawling across the ground, hounding his footsteps. It couldn't be allowed to take him, it couldn't, it couldn't.
And yet Luciente didn't know how to stop it.
Even now Hyperion was beginning doubt what he had seen.
It must have been a trick of the light, he reasoned, a shadow, an animal.
(but what animal looked or moved like that)
But Arielle had seen it too.
Or, as he found out once she could say anything at all, not quite.
"The boy from Twelve," she whispered, "all covered in blood, and his mouth not right. I saw his face in the sky; how could he-"
And then she only cried more.
"It has to be a mutt," Ilenia reasoned, pacing a circle around their small, feeble campfire. They had weighed their chances lighting it and decided the benefits outweighed the risks. The only Career remaining was the boy from Two, and they outnumbered him three to one.
"It wasn't a mutt," said Hyperion. He knew that much. Even mutts mostly moved like animals, but that thing had moved likeā¦
Well.
(he needed luciente luciente would have known)
"Then what was it?" Arielle wailed.
"A ghost."
"The dead can't hurt us."
"They can if you step on one of their landmines."
"Hyperion!"
"What?"
Luciente rolled her pale eyes. "They're echoes, remnants. They know things, but they're not really very intelligent. They can't bury landmines."
"There's no such thing as ghosts. That's superstitious rubbish," Ilenia announced, waving her hand. "You two are being irrational."
The anthem echoed around them, and Azrayk's face appeared in the sky. Hyperion wondered whether he should feel something, whether he wanted to. It was one less person to kill he supposed, one less person in their path, one less person they had spoken to and laughed with and killed in cold blood.
Arielle pressed her hands to her mouth. Her shoulders shook. She said nothing.
They sat and watched the sky until Azrayk's face faded away.
They camped at the edge of the beach that night, all three of them together even if they weren't quite sure why. Safety in numbers, perhaps, against other tributes and mutts and whatever else might be out there.
All the same, there was only eight of them left. A group of three couldn't stay together long.
The beach, however, was unnerving.
He had to admit it.
He didn't know how, or why, or how to put it into words, but it held a strange energy, a hum, a buzz that thrummed under his skin. The sand crunched with his every move, and every time it did he envisioned bones crunching. The waves crashing onto shore sounded deafeningly loud, booming, echoing. Beyond it, the sea stretched out, a flat, grey mirror in the darkness.
Ilenia folded her arms and stared out over the water. "It doesn't look like home."
Hyperion grunted. "Doesn't look much like Ten either."
She sighed heavily. "According to my geography teachers, the sea stretches out across the entire world. Panem is the only land."
Hyperion shifted his grip on his spear. They could be the only people in the world, he thought, and they were tiny against the might of the sea.
"There's land outside Panem," he said with an odd, unsure certainty.
"Careful Ten," Ilenia said. "You don't want to commit treason live on broadcast."
"Careful Four," he growled back. "I'm still holding this very sharp spear."
She eyed him, and then a slight smile touched her lips. "Was that a joke?"
"I don't like it here. We shouldn't stay here long."
"We can't keep moving in this darkness."
He grunted a reply. Luciente was out there, somewhere, in this darkness.
Alone.
"This is a bad place."
"No shit." Ilenia shifted her weight and wet her lip. "It's not what I expected either."
Hyperion stood and kept watch over the beach for a long while after she had turned and returned to the campfire.
