Cracks spread through the rocks overhead. Only pebbles fall at first, but as the ground shakes beneath our boots, spires of rock tumble from the ceiling and pierce the ground, shattering into pieces.

I have a vise-like grip on Peeta's hand, but he is having trouble keeping up with me and not tripping over the fallen debris.

Dust gathers in the air. I raise my other hand to cover my nose and mouth.

The night vision glasses help keep the worst of the rocks and dirt from my eyes.

Ahead of us, the tunnel turns sharply.

I can see the end of our narrow tunnel around the bend. We race forward, dodging the sharp edges of the passageway.

Beyond the tunnel is a spacious cavern with multiple other passages converging from it. The cavern is similar to the Cornucopia, but not quite as big, and there is no raised platform or stream. Halfway across the chamber, I see another tribute – the female morphling from District 6 – cowering behind a boulder.

Peeta and I move further into the cavern, giving room for Johanna to push by us.

I look to see if Finnick and Beetee are close behind, but I cannot see them through the falling debris. I lean a shoulder against Peeta to keep my balance as the ground lilts beneath us. Then, as I turn back towards the cavern, a huge stalactite falls from above, crashing into the middle of the chamber.

It sends a huge wave of motion through the ground, and I stumble back, then fall down.

Peeta crashes to the ground as well, losing his grip on my hand as he does so.

Sharp pieces of rock fly through the air and I try my best to shield my face. Thankfully the stalactite was not too close to us, but it had brought down a significant amount of the ceiling with it and where once the female morphling crouched, there was nothing but rock. Moments later, there is a telling cannon shot.

Finnick emerges from the narrow tunnel just in time, carrying Beetee on his back. The tunnel had just collapsed, spilling a cascade of rocks across the ground behind them.

Finnick's arm has a bleeding wound, but it looks mostly superficial.

"Where do we go?" Johanna shouts.

I get back to my feet, using a nearby boulder to hold myself up. We could risk running across the cavern, but if another stalactite falls, we could be crushed. The tunnel we had just escaped has collapsed, but perhaps one of the larger tunnels converging from this room would hold up better.

"Whatever we do, we can't just stand here," Finnick says. He shoulders between Johanna and I. He struggles to carry Beetee with his arm wound and his trident. He points the trident to a tunnel on our left. "That might be big enough to withstand the quakes," he says.

"Then let's move," says Peeta. He takes my hand again and we quickly, but carefully pick our way towards it. The rocks underfoot are slippery and loose. Johanna, without her glasses, trips many times, but Finnick keeps constantly saying her name to keep her moving in the right direction.

Once we step into the tunnel, Peeta stops in shock.

"It's not shaking," he says.

I realize the same thing. "I guess the Gamemakers only wanted a certain part of the tunnels to shake."

Finnick sighs in relief, helping Beetee down from his back. "Whatever the reason, I am glad."

"Let's keep moving, just in case," says Johanna, and no one argues with her.

The further we get from the shaking tunnels the quieter it becomes. Deafeningly silent in comparison to the sound of crashing rock. I grow tense, fearing that it was too easy to escape the quakes.

Since this tunnel is so large, wide enough for all of us to travel abreast, there are also other tunnels that converge off of it. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes. It makes me nervous that there are so many places for predators to hide from sight, able to jump out at us from both behind and in front.

We stop a moment to give Finnick a chance to clean up his arm with the moss. Johanna takes this opportunity to re-wrap her thigh wound. I try to examine it from where I stand. She cannot see it without glasses. The wound looks less inflamed and is no longer bleeding.

I tell her this, but she just sneers at me.

"Worry about yourself," she says.

Peeta stands away from the group, further down the tunnel, and I go to him, annoyed by Johanna's hostility. Peeta has his back to the others and as I get near him, he motions me closer. I glance back to see if the group has noticed us going further ahead, but since Finnick is the only one who can see, and he is busy wrapping his arm, no one does.

Peeta speaks softly. "There's only 9 people left alive."

He pauses, frowning.

"There are more people in our alliance than there are people outside of it," I say.

"There's only Gloss, Enorbaria, and District 11 left," says Peeta.

I had not realized that of the four left that both tributes from District 11 were among them. I hate to say it, too, but I am not sure if I have it in myself to kill either of them. Chaff is one of Haymitch's only friends and to kill him would feel as if a personal slight to my mentor.

Seeder… I could not do it… not after Rue.

I look over my shoulder at the others.

We could run. Finnick would notice fairly quickly, but Peeta and I could escape down a random tunnel and the chances he would be able to figure out which one are slim. But if we did that, the next time we saw any of them there would be no choice but to fight, and fight to kill. There is no use in hoping that Enorbaria and Gloss would kill them all. Even if they managed to kill one or two, having to kill any of those that remained would be painful, and would make my eventual death that much more of a relief.

I turn back to Peeta. He is searching my face.

"Tell me what you're planning," he says. There is a significant pause, then Peeta raises his hand and lays it heavily against my abdomen. "Think of the baby."

That's right. The cameras. The world is watching our every move. Except, that is not Peeta's intention in saying that. He is trying to guilt me. We are back to the same old argument: who will die and who will live. I am not sure how he knew that I was thinking about my eventual sacrifice, but I hate how easily he can read me. Him bringing up the baby makes it much harder for me to voice my intentions to sacrifice myself when I know how the audience will react to this news. They will not like it, and our sponsors could diminish, and our narrative of star-crossed lovers madly in love could be damaged if I stand here and argue with him about how I owe it to him to save him this time…

"Should we run?" I ask him.

Peeta glances over at Finnick. His eyes are troubled. "Maybe that would be too preemptive."

"Why? We could take two Careers on by ourselves if we had to," I say.

Peeta suddenly pulls me in by my waist, lowering his face to kiss me. I am taken off guard, but I manage not to flinch away. After a moment, I am swept up in the kiss, enjoying the warmth of his lips against mine.

Peeta draws back just an inch, his breathless voice barely a whisper. "There may be hope," he says.

His hand moves to grip the mockingjay locket around his neck.

I had not forgotten about the rescue mission, but as far as I could gauge, everyone else had given up on it. I am not sure there is hope, but Peeta seems to have put his faith into it. Why? To what end?

"You can't know that," I tell him.

"I feel it," he says.

"You just want that to be true," I say.

There are no poisonous berries to save us this time, is what I want to say to him.

"I don't want to lose you," he says, with a certain conviction in his voice that I have not heard before. "I don't want to die."

None of us want to die, and I know that in no way has Peeta ever desired death, but regardless I am surprised to hear him say this. Peeta has always been so ready to submit to death, to sacrifice himself for me or for the sake of not allowing himself to kill and become a piece in their games. His passivity has been an integral part of him and how he played the Hunger Games. And while his determination not to play the game as it is intended to be played is in of itself an act of defiance, there is some new type of defiance in his voice as he tells me he does not want to die.

I stare up into his eyes, searching, confused by this change in him.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Neither of us should die," he whispers. "None of us."

I want to tell him so many have already died. There are only 9 of us left, remember?

Instead, I say, "What are you planning?"

Before he can answer, Finnick calls out to us. "Hey, what are you guys talking about?"

I sigh. So much for running.

"Nothing," I say, turning back to the group. As I do so, I catch the sound of something coming from a nearby tunnel. I cock my head to the side, trying to hear it better.

The sound is faint at first, but the longer I listen, the more I realize what it is: it is a very high ringing sound. As I am concentrating on it, trying to figure out what the sound could be or what it could possibly be coming from, a shrill scream echoes from the same tunnel.

The person it belongs to could not be too far away.

It is a woman's scream which could only mean that it is Enorbaria or, more likely, Seeder.

Johanna springs to her feet. "Who is it? Where?"

"Don't know, don't care," says Finnick, grabbing Johanna and Beetee by a wrist. He tugs them along the tunnel. "We move before we find out."

I hesitate at first, caught up with a desire to help Seeder, but Peeta tugs on my own wrist.

We move, quickly, but I can still hear the ringing. It makes my ears ache.

"Do you hear that – that sound?" I ask the group.

"Yes," says Beetee.

"I don't hear it," says Peeta.

"It's getting louder," I say.

"Or closer," say Finnick, picking up his pace.

"Perhaps I have heard something similar, but, well it does not make sense… unless…" says Beetee.

"Well?" I ask him. "Unless what?"

"We have not seen any living things down in these tunnels," says Beetee. "Not a single spider or centipede, or even cave fish, as one would expect. Not a lizard or snake around. I would be tempted to say there should also be bats, a colony perhaps, but this arena seems to be completely artificially made. Which would be conducive of the last-minute –"

He cut off, but I am sure any one of us could guess he meant to say: the last-minute arena change.

"But what about the sound?" I insist.

"Well if they were normal bats, we would not hear their echolocational sounds," he says. "But if it is some type of bat-like creature, as I assume would be the only thing to make such a high-pitched sound, they must be mutts."

"Perfect," says Johanna. "Mutts."

Even though we move quickly, the ringing keeps increasing, until everyone can hear it, and my ear drums are throbbing from the sound.

Everyone has their hands up, pressed against their ears in an attempt to block it out, but it does little.

We must have been slowing down without realizing it, because as the sound grew louder, so did the sound of another's running steps. I glance behind us, and not too far back, I can see Seeder running up the tunnel.

She is in bad shape. Her silver-streaked brown hair is tied messily into a bun on top of her head. There is a deep cut across her forehead, dripping blood into her eyes. One of her ears is bleeding. Her clothes are torn, wet, and covered in dirt.

The moment she sees our alliance, her eyes widen.

"Keep running!" she shouts, and I can barely hear her over the shrill ringing. "Mutts! Bats!"

We are already running, and I am surprised that with her injuries she has managed to catch up to us.

I keep looking behind us even as we flee. I am trying to keep a tab on Seeder, but also I am trying to catch sight of the mutts. I cannot see them yet, but I know they must be there, by the sound.

A black shadow detaches itself from a tunnel that converges from ours. It is in front of us, and swoops down on Beetee. The mutts' squashed, ugly face gnashes out with two pointed fangs.

Finnick stabs it out of the air with his trident.

"This way!" shouts Seeder. She has stopped somewhere behind us and is pointing to a new tunnel that goes a different direction. "They will keep cutting us off in this tunnel," she says.

Sure enough, more mutt bats pour out of the tunnel in front of us, and they are huge. Like no bat I have ever seen. There are small bats that Gale and I would see sometimes on our hunts. Those were forest dwelling bats, that would sometimes make clicking sounds, and they only ate bugs. These mutt bats were large enough to eat birds, and they emitted a constant, awful high-pitched tone.

The group switches directions, heading down the tunnel Seeder has chosen at random. She enters last, bringing up the rear of our group. A few mutts have followed, and one manages to scratch my hand as I try to fend it off and protect my face from its talons.

Finnick tridents most of them down, and I help stab them, using the knife from my pack. Thankfully, due to their size, the mutts are not particularly fast, and in this new tunnel they cannot cut us off, so we make good headway.

The scratch on my hand stings horribly, but it dims in comparison to the awful screeching of the mutts.

I cover my ears with my hands again, and at first I think the blood is just from my hand wound, but after a moment, I realize one of my ears has started to leak blood. I start to grow dizzy. I reach for Peeta, who barely notices at first, but is quick to place a hand against my back, propelling me forward.

Beetee, too, is struggling to run straight. Finnick, ever the babysitter for the blind members of our group, loops an arm through Beetee's, and practically drags the poor man.

I glance back, but Seeder is not there.

She has fallen to her knees, hands over her ears, a hundred paces behind us.

I stop, nearly causing Peeta to fall.

I run to her, and I am sure Peeta calls out my name, but I cannot actually hear that he does.

I can see the mutts not too far behind Seeder, so I try to hurry. I kneel in front of her. I feel as if talking is useless, since I am not sure she can still hear at all, with the amount of blood coming from her ears.

Seeder looks up at me with wide brown eyes. So similar to Rue's, despite the laugh lines around this woman's eyes. I grasp her by the shoulders and shake her, pulling her towards the others.

Seeder shakes her head, tears welling into those big eyes. She pushes me in the chest, hard, so hard I almost fall over. I look at her in shock. She pushes me again. I slap her hands away, then grab her by a wrist and try to pull her to her feet.

She tries to stand, but her legs will not cooperate.

I try again. She refuses.

She takes her night vision glasses off, and places them into my hands.

Just then, Peeta comes sprinting up behind me, and he does not even hesitate before he picks me up around the waist and carries me away. I try to fight him, a little, but mostly, I just watch as Seeder's kneeling figure disappears behind us, around a bend.

A cannon shot, almost not even detectable beyond the ringing, signifies her death.

After we catch up with the others, Peeta puts me down. He is sweating, breathing heavily, and one of his ears is bleeding, too. He gives me look of understanding, but also of reproach. He knows why I went back to Seeder, and I know he was loathed to leave her there, too, but there is nothing we could have done if Seeder did not want to live, if she had already decided she was going to die.

Perhaps she feared what would happen if she allowed us to carry her from that place, whether we would be forced to kill each other, instead of having the mutts do it – assuming she was not suffering some other wound that would eventually kill her. I could not tell from the short interaction between us what was wrong with her legs, whether they had gotten wounded, or if it was a neurological issue. Perhaps there was nothing we could have done. I wrap my bloody fingers more firmly around the night vision glasses she had surrender to me; giving up these is one sure way to embrace death.

I wonder, briefly, if she knew about the rescue mission. Then I assume she must not have, otherwise she may have tried harder to survive, to join our group, to escape. But, to her, perhaps this is the least gruesome death; dying by the Careers would certainly have been worse, and to have to face Chaff, her own district partner, would have been unimaginable.

Our group, panting, bleeding, breathless, reach the end of the passageway. We stop in shock. The tunnel leads straight into the Cornucopia.

Finnick enters first, trident at the ready.

I scan the room, but I see no sign of the Careers, unless they are hiding behind the Cornucopia itself. I find this unlikely.

As we move closer to it, the ringing of the mutts dims, and I begin to hear sounds that are not just agony.

"Johanna," I say, nudging her arm.

She flinches, but then scowls. "Try not to bump into me," she says.

I grab her by the hand, then place Seeder's night vision glasses into her palm.

They have blood on them, but Johanna does not even hesitate to put them on.

She looks around us, noticing the Cornucopia with surprise.

"No one was going to tell me where we are," she mutters. Then, almost reluctantly, she says to me, "Thanks."

"Don't thank me," I tell her.

Johanna frowns. "I'm sorry. About Seeder. I know you had a connection to District 11." She touches the glasses on her face. "I recognized her voice back there, and Finnick told me that the cannon shot was for her."

She looks as if she wants to say more, but then she shrugs and walks away.

Finnick scopes out the opposite side of the Cornucopia, and reemerges, confirming that we are alone. "The Careers must have gone hunting," he says. "Grab some weapons while you can. There's still a bow in the pile."

He does not have to tell me twice. I am up on the raised platform, digging for the bow and some arrows before even Johanna gets there.

Johanna picks out two red axes. They look wickedly sharp, and she walks around dual wielding them.

I feel a touch of unease as I fasten the quiver of arrows to my back. Those axes could be used to kill me or Peeta. Easily. If she is too close, my bow will do little to stop her. As heartfelt as her attempt to console me about Seeder's death seemed, we are still in the Hunger Games, and the rescue mission is as good as non-existent.

Except, if it is non-existent, then why would Finnick be eager to arm us? Or at the very least, me? If Finnick has resolved himself to treating these games like a true Hunger Games, than why would he so willingly allow us to arm ourselves, making us that much harder for him or anyone else, to kill?

Perhaps there is hope.

But how?

I turn away from the Cornucopia to see if Peeta is nearby, but he is not. At first, I do not see him at all. Then, I spot him all the way across the cavern, crouching at the side of the stream.

Finnick is standing above him, and Beetee is seated nearby. The three of them appear to be conversing.

I hurry over, worried about the topic.

Peeta smiles at my approach, and he says, "You should wash off. You're a mess."

He indicates my bloody hand. The scratch is no longer actively bleeding at least.

I give him a look. "So are you."

He shrugs. He is still crouched in front of the stream. He reaches down and uses the water to rinse off his hands. Then he scoops up water to splash on his face and ears, washing away the blood.

I do the same next to him. It feels nice to have the cold water on my face; it's refreshing.

I test my ear a few times, covering and uncovering it, but there seems to be no lasting damage as a result of the mutts' screeching.

Beetee appears to continue their previous conversation.

"This stream must go down and connect to the underground river," he says.

"That's what I thought," Peeta says. "Maybe we should go back there."

"Why?" I ask. "We almost drowned."

"Perhaps we missed something," Beetee says. "Maybe there were fish deeper in the water. A food source."

At the mention of food, my stomach cramps painfully. It has been nearly a whole day without eating. The others would be feeling the pains as well.

"Is that really the only option?" asks Johanna. She walks over to join us and almost immediately begins taking off all of her clothes to rinse off in the stream.

Out the corner of my eye, I watch her rinse Seeder's blood from the night vision glasses before putting them back on. I watch the red streak across the water with a surprising amount of sadness.

Peeta's voice snaps me out of it.

"We need to escape… the Careers," he says. "When they come back. We need a plan on how to get rid of them, for good."

That does not sound like Peeta. The decisive edge is back in his voice.

What he says, is not what he really means.

"I want to," says Finnick, aware of the double meaning, the veiled truth. "But I am out of ideas… on how to get the Careers."

"Beetee might," Peeta says. "I talked about it with him earlier."

"To get the Careers there's two options," Beetee says. "We could track them down, of course, but that's long, exhausting work that could get us lost or cause us to encounter even worse mutts in this maze. The second option is to lure them to a trap." He pauses. "We need to get out in the open."

"But how?" Finnick asks.

"Like… outside?" Johanna whispers.

Beetee shrugs. "There's no way of knowing if this labyrinth even breaks the surface, but if it did..."

"The water," says Peeta. "Could be the key… to our trap."

"I don't understand," I say. "The river… it's further down… so far away."

Peeta gives me a nudge while we are both still crouched at the edge of the stream. He prods me just enough to send me toppling over into the water.

He quickly fumbles forward to help me up, murmuring in my ear, "The water has to get out somehow."

I scowl at him, wringing my braid of water. Then I sit back on the rocks, trying to figure out what he meant. This must be what he proposed to Beetee, and which has given not just Beetee, but all the others hope.

It's true, the underground river seemed the most natural thing in this arena. The edges of those tunnels were not smooth, but appeared dimpled like the stone should be, and the speed in which the water coursed through the tunnels would make it difficult to control.

I tried to figure out why this was something Peeta would know, or guess. Something that had not occurred to any of the others.

To get out of an arena would require, normally, getting past a Capitol forcefield, which is something Peeta has played with many times. If even beyond these tunnels there is forcefield that would mean the Capitol is going to extremely excessive measures to ensure we do not escape. That being said, can water pass through a forcefield?

It has never rained while I have been in the Capitol. I wonder for the first time if that is not true. Perhaps, the forcefield around the Training Center has just prevented me from noticing. If water cannot pass through a forcefield, then there must be a place the river is getting through. Somewhere that goes beyond the arena. With a river that fast, that large, the opening must be at least large enough for someone to pass through it. The problem lies in what that opening looks like, and whether there are further obstacles beyond it.

"It could work," I finally say. "The trap…"

"We lure them back to the underground river, then," says Finnick. "And we fight there."

Almost nothing else could work. The plan is feeble and based on theory. But we are willing to try anything, I think. None of us want to kill each other. As much as Johanna annoys me, I do not want to. I would – I tell myself – I would still do it, if it means saving Peeta, but I am willing to exhaust all options. Even a crazy one like this, about escaping the arena. The problem is…

"What about after?"

"Don't worry about the after," says Finnick. "That part of the plan has not changed."

"How do you know?"

"The bread," he murmurs.

"I wish we had bread right now," says Johanna loudly.

"If we are lucky, maybe my sponsors will send us some," says Finnick, posing provocatively.

Peeta interrupts the diversion. "Who's going to be the bait to the Careers? And how are we going to find the same tunnel as before? That's the only clear way down to the river that we know of."

"We have time yet to figure out the details," says Beetee, rubbing his temple. "I think I need some sleep if there's no dinner. My ears are still aching."

"We can't sleep here," I say. "The Careers could come back at any time, and if the trap isn't ready yet, then we shouldn't let them catch us."

"We can gather what we need, then find a tunnel, but stay near the Cornucopia, so we can retrace our steps back here. We can make our plan tomorrow morning, then enact it that afternoon… but maybe, depending on if we can find them in time, we do it the night after tomorrow," says Finnick.

He looks pointedly at me when he says 'night' and 'after tomorrow'.

I had asked him about what would happen after, and he understood that I was referring to those who had planned on rescuing us, and whether that is still set to happen. Somehow, the bread rolls are a coded message to him. Finnick must suppose since he is still receiving these rolls, than our evacuation upon escaping the tunnels and forcefield is still prepared to do just that.

It is merely a matter of if we can escape.

It is not a hopeless supposition; it makes sense. I have trouble understanding how the bread tells him that the rescue intends to occur not tomorrow, on the third day of these games, but on the fourth day. Specifically at night. Other than the projection of the dead tributes that occurs at night, there is no way to know the time. This will be an impossible escape, even before there was a strict timeline to adhere to.

Even supposing all that, the Gamemakers won't let this game drag. They may hold off now, upon hearing about our complex plan to trap the Careers. Merely because now the audience anticipate it, but if we drag it out too long, or it looks like our plan is a poor one, the Gamemakers won't hesitate to 'create excitement'. At the very least, we must have secured ourselves a calm night and morning. The Gamemakers will likely allow us to rest and theoretically plan out our trap for the Careers.

At least, so I hope.