Day 6: Inferno

"You're surrounded, 5," Cassia says waspishly, tilting her head. "Does the situation remind you of anything?"

Trying my best to stay calm, I shrug, even though everything in my head is screaming. I can feel my face turning red, because soon I'm going to run out of air. I wonder how long the gases alone will take to kill someone. Briefly, I consider executing my plan earlier. No, the way out of the Cornucopia into the desert is too long. The others would block my way and I would be trapped myself. To set my plan in motion, I would have to get closer to the exit.

"She's speechless, Saylor," Angel chuckles.

"Should we make her scream?"

"It's a shame, really, that we can't cut a child out of her, too," Saylor says gruffly. "I would have liked the symbolism behind that."

"An homage!" corrects Saffyr, and they all giggle.

My heart stops for a moment. As I swallow, I almost gasp. Instead, I try to focus on my options. I don't have a plan B, how could I be so stupid? So I go back to my hand-to-hand combat training. An unforeseen kick could break Saylor's jaw, a blow to Saffyr's ear would leave him disoriented. Cassia is already wounded, Angel is standing too far away from me to do anything to her before she can react herself. And with my injured ankle, I can't run away fast enough anyway and would still have two opponents. My mind is racing, all my thoughts are working against one another, and within no time I'm focused on so many things at once that I can't think of a reliable way to save myself.

"We could cut out her organs," Cassia suggests. She has her hand pressed to her shoulder, holding my dagger in the wound with it, stuck despite the broken tip. Blood trickles through her fingers and her gaze is even more hateful than usual as she speaks more words than she did during her entire interview. "I'll take the uterus."

"That would kill her too quickly," Saylor objects. "You've already wasted the last one. No ..." He takes a step forward and grabs my chin. I let him, hoping the gas will slowly fog their brains. But nothing happens, except the other's fingers dig into my skin. "This one," Saylor continues, "I'll skin for her snootiness. She'll win and she's never wrong, she said! Ha! How do you like that, 5?"

With that, he gives me a shove so hard to the chest that I stumble backwards. A kick after that and I'm on the floor gasping and holding my sides. By now I am sure that this will be the end. The end of my Hunger Games. What a glorious finale.

I try to fight off the four career tributes, but my motions are more rough-and-ready than they have any actual impact. A few moments later I'm lying on my back. The two from 1 are holding my hands, Cassia is sitting on my legs looking at me like she's going to break my bones at any moment. Saylor has drawn his knife and is settling down wide-legged on my pelvis. With the surge of one last desperate hope, I hold my breath again and resolve not to scream, no matter what they do to me. Maybe that way they'll get bored. Maybe they'll kill me faster.

Saylor unzips my jacket, taking his time to mess with my head, then he rips the jumpsuit apart and pulls up the top to expose my stomach. Underneath me, the fabric and the blanket that was in my belt also slide up and my bare back presses against the hot metal of the Cornucopia. A snort escapes me and I resist the urge to squirm only with the greatest effort. He just grins. "Right or left, 5?"

I remain silent.

Saylor squints his eyes, then takes his knife and dances the tip around on my stomach. There's a crazed look on his face as he finally moves to make a cut on my lower belly, just below my belly button on its left side. It twinges, but the cut isn't deep. It doesn't have to be for what he's about to do. My body begins to shake as if on its own, but the four other tributes hold me in place.

Saylor slides the blade of his weapon under the cut he just made. Then he begins to cut and tear, and I feel like I'm on fire. Saylor quickly separates my skin from my flesh and there goes my resolution. I let out a shrieking scream, tears streaming down my face, and to the laughter of career tributes, I squirm in their grip.

That's what you get now, it shoots through my head. How had I ever thought it would be easy to win these Games?

When the blood starts to run, I can hardly feel it under all the pain of the peeled off strip of skin. However, I can't manage to take my eyes off it. I see my raw flesh, watch the blood slowly run down my side, wetting the floor and my pants. Even more so, my lower back and the backs of my hands burn, the places where the career tributes press my skin against the broiling surface of the Cornucopia.

"It was worth staying together a while longer for that," Angel chuckles. "How about a second round?" She grips my left arm tightly, but the same hatred blazes in her eyes as in those of the boy still holding the bloody knife close across my belly.

"She may even be begging for her life," grins Angel's district partner Saffyr to my right.

"WIll you do that for us, 5?" Saylor leans over me and looks me straight in the eye. The zipper of his jacket dangles down, brushing across the open wound as he approaches me. I yell in pain right into his face and receive a slap in response. I whimper, however, determined not to give my tormentors the satisfaction of a plea. If I'm going to die, I'm going to die like my grandmother used to say: with my head held high.

"Dram on!", I gasp.

Saylor laughs mirthlessly, then lowers the knife and now sets it on the other side of my belly button. Again he makes a cut and then pushes the blade underneath. Whimpering in pain, I hear the scraping sound again, then feel my flesh rip open. Like before I begin to scream and wriggle around, pulling with all my strength on all my limbs. By now my head has begun to hurt as well. At first I'm unsure if I just banged my skull too hard against the floor or if the pain is literally going to my head. Then, however, I see Cassia put her hand to her forehead and Saylor, too, briefly screw up his face more than once.

The gaseous coolant. It must be working.

I stare at the ceiling and as I see the large lamp there, illuminating the Cornucopia, I know that all is not lost. Lost matches or not.

With the last of my strength, I pull my arm out of Angel's grip. Also plagued by a headache, she has become inattentive. Before the career tributes can react, I grab Saylor's knife. I hurl it upward and hit the lamp, the bulb breaking, a spark jumping out. But that's all it takes to set off the trap. One spark.

The gas-filled air ignites faster than I can react. Coughing and with shaky fingers, I pull out the thick blanket – heat-resistant and hopefully fireproof – but still some flames lick at my bare hands. At least the career tributes jump up immediately, making my task easier. As I pull the blanket over my body, bend my arms and close my eyes as tightly as I can, I hear the laughter of the others fade away. I can't see what is happening, but as the screams begin I know that an inferno is raging around me.

As I roll across the floor to smother possible flames on my body, I perceive footsteps running to my right, toward the trap door. I hear the shaking as the prepared flap fails to open, screams, sobs. Then the sound of the cannon.

Someone runs in the opposite direction, past my barrier out of the Cornucopia into the desert, I hear the jump down into the sand. The person can't have gotten far, because another cannon bang follows shortly after.

Then another.

Three out of four.

I dare to breathe, but the headache only gets worse. Slowly it has become unbearably hot under my blanket, but at least it keeps the fire away as I had hoped. Wherever the fourth of the career tributes is, they can't live much longer, or the poison in my lungs will wear me out. Alternatively the blood loss. Or, in the end, I'll have set myself on fire after all.

I feel a grip around my shoulder and a tug on my blanket.

"You fucking bitch!" says the voice of the girl with the shaved skull from District 2. At first my fogged brain won't think of her name, but then the syllables are like an echo, throbbing, loud, dangerous. Cassia. Cassia. Cassia. With gasping sounds, she tears at my blanket. Whatever the situation around me by now, it must have taken some doing to her, because even in my state I manage to keep my life-saving cover clutched.

"You think you're all smart, right, 5?" she sneers brittly, letting go of me. "It's just you and me now. Good job. But I'll stab you, I'll stab y-"

My kick hits her unexpectedly.

I react before I can even think. Instinctively, just like my grandparents taught me. With a scream, as I had intended to avoid. But I hit her before she can drill my own knife into my flesh. I hear a thud, she must have tripped, then a crack and a scream, and for the first time since the light bulb broke, I dare to pull the blanket down a little.

The glaring light, the soot in the air, and the blast of the last cannon make me wince.

Four out of four.

Flames still blaze around me, but they must have diminished considerably since the first explosion. The whole floor is covered with blue-violet flames and I am sitting in the middle of it, protected only by the blanket. Tears are streaming down my face. Right next to me is the body of the blond boy from District 1, except that by now he is neither blond nor really a boy. Saffyr's body is cramped and charred, his face contorted into a cruel grimace. Parts of his skin seem to have melted away, the flesh glistening red, and I turn away before I retch. The hulking Saylor lies next to the trapdoor I had closed, out in the desert I see another burned corpse. Angel. The last death I explain to myself by a mixture of fire and the fall from the Cornucopia that I have brought forth, which must have broken Cassia's neck. Meanwhile, I'm not so sure where the water in my eyes came from.

Just before I finally pass out from the toxic fumes and smoke, Claudius Templesmith's voice sounds above me: "Congratulations! The winner of the 69th Hunger Games is Alys Brunel from District 5."