Finnick is on watch when the sun begins to creep above the horizon, its luminous rays bathing the arena in soft golden light. If Miles wasn't dying a meter away from him, he might've been able to enjoy it. Instead, he peeks his head around one of the columns he's leaned against to evaluate the tributes of District 2.
After all of Finnick's internal strife the night before, it doesn't seem like his salve made Miles any better. If anything, he seems worse, bleeding from his mouth and nose, gasping for breath, sweat pouring off him in buckets. The wound, swollen bigger than ever, has turned putrid black, the surrounding tissue a mottled reddish brown. Miles's skin is dreadfully pale in the early morning light, his features carved out by harsh shadows.
Bellona looks almost as bad as her district partner. She sits on her heels, hands in her lap, hair hanging in limp chunks around her face. She's holding a knife, Finnick realizes with some consternation. But she doesn't seem to be preparing to use it on anyone else.
"Don't make me do this," she begs instead. "Just wait and see what happens."
"Nothing is good is coming for me, Bellona," Miles replies. "Finnick's ointment didn't work. Please, I'm not strong enough to do this on my own."
A persistent ache burns in Finnick's chest, like he's been holding his breath for a long time. He doesn't move, though. He doesn't dare.
"I feel like I've failed you." Bellona's voice shakes ever so slightly, as tenuous as Finnick has ever heard it.
"You've done more for me than anyone else ever has," Miles replies. "Just do me one more favor, will you?"
"Anything," Bellona says eagerly. Finnick can picture her leaning in, pressing her ear against Miles's cracked lips. Finnick can't make out what Miles says.
"I will," Bellona replies fiercely. "I promise."
"Good. Now let's get this done. You have a Hunger Games to win."
Finnick works out what's going on a moment before it happens. There's some rustling, the wet thud of a blade piercing flesh, then a bout of horrific gurgling. Before he can stop himself, he twists around the column to see Miles slumped in Bellona's embrace, gasping and shuddering. Bellona holds him with both arms, face buried in his shoulder, rivulets of crimson cascading down her back. In one hand, nascent sunlight glinting off the metal, she clutches the bloodstained knife.
Finnick grips his spear in one sweaty hand, prepared to make a beeline for the rainforest if Bellona decides to go on a killing spree in Miles's honor.
"Go in peace, Miles Strand," she murmurs into his skin. "You have brought your district honor."
Boom.
Bellona looks up and spots Finnick.
He lurches to his feet, heart pounding, but Bellona makes no move to grab her knives or her bow. Instead, she tenderly, carefully lays Miles back on the tarpaulin, like he's a baby she just rocked to sleep.
"Do you have a clean cloth?" she asks quietly. "I have blood all over my hands."
Finnick wipes his own sweaty palms on his trousers and shakes his head. "I'll find you one," he says.
"Wake the others, too," Bellona says. "And gather anything of value. We're leaving, and we're not coming back here."
Whether they end up returning to the Cornucopia or not, there's an air of finality to their exodus from it. Loaded up with all the supplies they can carry, the pack stops long enough to watch the hovercraft fly in and pluck Miles up, his body like a fish in the talons of a giant bird of prey.
Bellona stares at the sky until the hovercraft disappears, her face an inscrutable mask of solemn resolve. "I'm so sorry," Finnick says, because he doesn't know what else to say.
"He never had a chance anyway," Bellona mutters. Then she turns on her heel, pushes past Finnick to the lead, and doesn't speak again for a long time.
This time the pack hikes north, exploring a portion of the arena they haven't yet hunted. All of them, Finnick included, choose to suffer under the delusion that Miles's death will make the Gamemakers leave them be, at least for a little while. Once they arrive at the river, Bellona relegates to Finnick the task of extracting food from it. Finnick doesn't mind. He'd rather be alone now anyway.
Ruby keeps trying to catch his eye, her expression alight with curiosity, but Finnick has no answers for her slew of unvoiced questions. Why didn't he kill Alabaster? Maybe Ruby wouldn't have minded. What had she said to him merely two days before? Let's do this thing together. Me and you, baby. Just like it was supposed to be all along. No, it's supposed to be a Career pack, not a Career pair. The relief he had felt upon finding her after the flood has drained away, replaced by a constant wariness simultaneously undercut and amplified by the ghost of her lips pressed against his. Besides, Finnick witnessed with his own two eyes how quickly Ruby seemed to realign herself with her district partner.
Fine, he concedes to himself. He probably should've killed Alabaster when he had the chance and risked Ruby's ire. But if push had come to shove, Finnick wasn't certain he could count on Bellona, newly partnerless, to side with him. While he's confident he could beat Ruby alone, he isn't sure if he could best two of her.
To Finnick's delight, the floodwaters have receded enough he can actually see the bottom of the river where it's shallow. It seems to Finnick that the river has even been drained a bit, which means he can get in without worrying about being attacked by a mutt. He spears half a dozen fish, easy pickings in the shallow water, and digs up mollusks and crabs buried in the muddy banks.
While he works the river, the others manage to scrape together a pile of nuts and even try their hand at harvesting fruit from the trees. None of them are very successful; Alabaster is too heavy, Ruby too timid, Bellona too impatient. And Finnick has to point out the trees with fruit on them, because not one of their mentors was prudent enough to recommend they visit the arena flora station during training. Even though their incompetence means more work for Finnick, he doesn't mind much. Once they're no longer allies, they'll either learn quickly or be forced to survive on a diet of nuts and whatever they can forage on the ground. Not a sustainable lifestyle, but they don't seem to realize it. Or perhaps they just don't care.
Finnick consumes his seafood raw, much to the horror of his fellow Careers. Alabaster and Bellona try eating a bite of fish each and end up spitting it out, gagging and cursing alternately. Ruby doesn't even bother.
"You really want to waste time building a fire right now?" Finnick asks. This shuts them up.
"So what now?" Alabaster asks, wiping a bit of banana from his mouth.
"We hunt," Bellona growls. She shoulders her bow and rises, frenetic energy pulsing from her like a shark trapped in a cage. It's the first time she's talked since they left the Cornucopia. "There are ten other Callows running around in here, and we're going to find them."
So soon after Miles's death, none of them feel up to arguing with her. So they let her take point.
They less hunt down another tribute than they let him stumble into their open arms. He's not very subtle; Finnick is sure every living thing within a mile radius can hear him when he begins shouting at the top of his lungs, shaking foliage and startling birds from their perches in the trees. He comes crashing out of the undergrowth, still hollering at full volume, contorted and convulsing like he's having a seizure. It isn't until Bellona's knife takes him down that they realize why.
"Disgusting!" Ruby exclaims, jumping backward. Dozens of scarlet-colored insects swarm over his body, making odd clicking noises as they crawl into every available orifice and even create some of their own by burrowing under his skin. They're ants, Finnick realizes. Large flesh-eating ants.
"Don't touch him!" Finnick warns Bellona, but it's too late. She's grabbing her knife and jerking it out of the boy's neck, and in the fleeting second her hand makes contact with him the ants congregate, scampering up her wrist to her arm.
Bellona yelps and jumps back, smacking at the encroaching insects and shaking her arm. As she flails, they fly off her like droplets of water. Almost the same moment Finnick comprehends one has landed on his face, it's already stabbing its stinger into his flesh.
Later, when Finnick tries to describe the exact phenomenon of this ant's venom, he can't find the words. It's like getting his fingers slammed in a door intensified one thousand times. It's like someone took a flaming hot nail and jammed it into his face. Finnick yells and claps a hand to his cheek, his eyes watering.
"Run!" someone shouts. They all beat a hasty retreat.
Finnick claws at his skin as he staggers between trees, trying to assess the damage. There's no blood, no huge puncture wound, but it feels like someone is taking a red-hot blade and carving nautical coordinates into his skin. He's never felt such pain in his life, not when he broke his wrist falling from the obstacle course at the academy, not when he stepped on a nail on a school trip to his mother's shipyard, not when he touched a dead jellyfish's stinger on a dare.
He can't see, can't move, can't even breathe. Agony has seized him with fiery, unyielding hands and is consuming him from the inside out, starting with his face, shooting down his neck into his gut and limbs.
Somehow he ends up on the ground curled into a ball, trembling uncontrollably, the muscles in his face so contracted he can feel half his mouth being drawn up in a horrifying grimace. He's going to die. He wishes he would die already, if it means the awful poker digging into his face would no longer be felt. His fingers fumble clumsily for one of the knives strapped to his chest. If he's not going to pass out, he's going to cut the poison out. A more rational Finnick might have realized the ridiculousness of such a notion, but Finnick is out of his mind with pain. He'd rather peel back his skin, layer by layer, than endure one more second of this indescribable agony.
Just as the blade touches his jaw, an unseen force seizes his wrist and jerks it back.
"Give it back," Finnick moans. He gurgles something—sweat, tears, saliva, he cannot tell—and almost aspirates it, but then he's on his side and it slips unhindered from his open mouth. "Just let me die. No, just kill me. Please, kill me."
"Now, Finnick, I thought we had a deal." That voice. Finnick knows that voice. He would recognize its biting sarcasm anywhere.
"Caspia?" he rasps. Exquisite delirium is finally closing in, his vision going all soft and fuzzy around the edges, colors and shapes and noises turned inside out and upside down.
"If it isn't the golden boy of District Four."
Finnick senses rather than sees Caspia's shadow fall over him, blocking out the light. "Deal is off," he tries to say. What comes out is more in the range of inarticulate groaning. "Just put me out of my misery."
"I don't think so. You don't get off the hook that easy, Odair."
Finnick isn't exactly sure what he does after registering Caspia's response. To the shame of Mags, his parents, and the whole of District 4, he's pretty sure he ends up sobbing.
At some point during his breakdown, Caspia grips him under his arms and pulls him into sitting position. Then the ground hurtles toward his face, the blood rushes from his head, and a wave of rapturous darkness slips over his eyes. And Finnick knows no more.
We're going to use the simulator. Six months ago, Finnick stood in the academy gymnasium hours after everyone else has left, limbs trembling, chest heaving, sweat dripping down his face. He'd been training nonstop for the whole day, and exhaustion threatened to topple him where he stood. Mags moved to the simulator control room, unmoved by his obvious fatigue. She'd dismissed Batten hours ago—it was just Finnick and Mags now, the Career prodigy and his renowned mentor.
Finnick plucked up a pair of control cuffs from the charging station and walked into the simulation room, clipping them around his wrists as he went. Thanks to a dreadful lack of funding, the simulation center was woefully out of date and painfully slow at times, but Mags had just rebooted the system. Hopefully it wouldn't crash in the middle of the sim.
"Are you ready?"
Though Finnick couldn't see her, he could feel her gaze piercing through the walls of the room, focused entirely, intently on him. He rolled his shoulders and tried not to wince as the movement revealed a host of sore muscles. "I'm sure."
The control cuff fired up, and Finnick quickly picked spears as his primary weapon. The device barely had time to process his choice before the walls of the sim room disappeared, and an arena popped into existence around him.
Noise, behind him. Finnick whirled and shifted to the side, fluid as water, as an arrow whistled through the empty space his body had just occupied. Finnick didn't hesitate. He drew back his arm and hurled his simulated spear directly into the chest of his opponent. The sim fell back with a choking gasp, then dissolved into pixels.
Finnick darted behind a simulated tree. He could hear someone coming, tromping through the woods like a bear. Before his opponent could draw any closer, he whirled out from behind the tree, arm poised to throw his spear.
One of his classmates stared back at him, face twisted with fury.
"What—"
The control cuff buzzed, and a buzzing noise sounded from above.
Finnick glanced around, bewildered. "Mags, why—"
A hoarse yell cut him off. Another classmate burst out of nowhere, rushing at Finnick with an axe. Finnick dodged the first swipe, tried to step out of range. The control cuff buzzed again.
"Finnick!" He recognized that voice. It was Billie Camber. They had the same lunch hour. He turned and saw her standing barely fifteen paces away. She was unarmed, but she wore the same tribute uniform as the others had been.
Finnick raised his spear, preparing to throw.
Billie raised her hands, expression crestfallen. "Please, don't kill me."
Finnick paused just long enough for Billie to throw her knife. A blur of movement, a buzz from overhead speakers, and Finnick was back in the simulation room, alone.
He exited the room wearier than ever, plopping the cuffs back on the table without bothering to make sure they nested properly on their chargers.
Mags waited for him at the control station. Finnick couldn't even look at her as he approached.
"Look at me."
He didn't have to look up far to meet her gaze, but it took a lot of willpower.
"You are too smart for this." There was no disappointment in Mags' gaze, just understanding. Finnick didn't know which was worse. "You know better, Finnick. Twenty-four tributes go in, only one comes out. You asked for this. You wanted a chance to save your district."
"I did!" Finnick blurted out. "I do."
"Then prove it."
And prove it he will.