Chapter Four: The Arena
My earpiece crackles, as if the connection is spotty but recalibrating after the trip through time and space.
"—atniss…? Katniss, are you there?" Beetee's voice pushes through the static, in pieces at first but then it starts to clear up. "Do you read, do you copy? Katniss?"
"I'm here," I answer, adjusting my microphone. "I'll turn on the camera in a minute. Let's just say I need to put on my coat first."
I set down my pack and game bag, digging the compressed coat out of one bag and watching with faint amusement as Buttercup wriggles in the other. The sensation of the travel must've stunned him temporarily but now it's clear the effects have worn off. Bringing the coat to full size, I engulf myself in its warmth, zipping it up to my neck and reattaching the camera. Then I free Buttercup from his prison before I turn it on. I want Beetee to see this world without a noisy cat whining in the background.
Beetee's breath hitches in my ear, and then he gives a little chuckle. Maybe in awe of the world, or maybe his viewing is enhanced by Buttercup bounding across the snow before stuttering to a stop as he distastefully shakes his paw.
"Wow," he says. "Good thing you packed it, huh?"
"Yeah, good thing," I say, getting out my quiver. "All Buttercup would be good for is a pair of gloves."
Beetee laughs as I sling the quiver around my shoulder, thinking I'm joking. I guess I am, but I will probably need to hunt for more food and furs. Exposure will be brutal here.
"Wow," he says again. "This is – Katniss, this is incredible."
"Watch me still be in this world, just a colder part of it," I quip, definitely joking this time. Some of the trees look strange, and… I don't know. The world just feels different.
"I wouldn't be too sure of that," Beetee responds good-naturedly. "I pulled up a worldwide GPS to pinpoint your location before you left. You were here, in Panem, in District 3. And then you were gone. I zoomed out and there's no trace of you. The map's recalculating as we speak."
This information gives me pause. Teleportation in itself would be something huge, but I am truly gone. I'm not in Panem anymore. I'm not even in the same world. Unless that map isn't accounting for timing. I could be in Panem from thousands of years ago. Even a hundred thousand.
Which means there might still be plenty to eat.
Picking up my bags, I adjust some things and then take a few cautious steps, the snow crunching beneath my boots.
"Now what?" I ask, and I'm not sure if I'm asking myself or Beetee.
"Take a look around," Beetee suggests. "Explore. See if you can find shelter, or a way to build one. It looks brisk now, but at nightfall…"
He doesn't need to finish his sentence. In my first Games, I experienced firsthand the Gamemakers' tendency to crank the arena's temperature down to freezing at night. The air here is already pure winter underneath a pale blue sky, enough to turn a girl on fire into pure ice. What happens when this world goes dark?
"Ladies and gentlemen," I say, as Buttercup looks over at me, "…let the 77th Hunger Games begin."
As always, my first instinct is to head for the woods. My bow is in hand, and though I am not in full hunting mode, I keep an eye out for wildlife that could make for a more ideal meal than my packed rations (which I prefer to keep as precautions). Buttercup quickly finds himself a rodent to snack on, and I don't get enough time to see it before he tears into the squeaking creature, but I'm sure it's a kind of mouse.
Admittedly, I'm as curious as Beetee when it comes to what's the same here and what's different. He briefly leaves his post for lunch, but when he returns, he and I discuss at length the flora – and occasionally fauna – of my surroundings. We try to draw upon my memory of the Everdeen plant book as a comparison point, deciding together what looks safe, edible, or useful. Some roots and greens we even recognize from the time that the Games had a frozen tundra for an arena. It was the only compelling thing about that year's Games, seeing as most of the tributes essentially became ice sculptures.
Chestnuts, herbs, the inner bark of pine trees. I gather what I can as I pass through the forest, Buttercup trotting along beside me. I tried to put him back in the game bag once, but apparently he decided this would be a much crueler fate than dealing with a little snow. The trees are starting to thin out, so Beetee and I have digressed to talking about that tundra arena.
"—so cold, so numb that they were practically dead on their feet," he recalls, his voice carrying on in my ear with that passionately grave way of his.
"I still remember the frostbite," I tell him, and an involuntary shiver runs up my spine.
"The frostbite was horrific," he agrees. "Watching their skin deteriorate, watching them lose pieces—"
"If they had just stopped crying… if that one girl hadn't fallen asleep with her cheek on her shoulder—" I shudder again, remembering the way it peeled. "I had nightmares for weeks. Not to mention how that Career killed her."
"Yes, that was… an unfortunate use of an icicle," Beetee murmurs sympathetically.
"Both eyes, though, why both eyes?" I know the answer, I've always known – they were Careers and they liked to give the audience a show – but it was one of the year's few "exciting" kills so the footage got overplayed and I always hated it. It seems I'd blocked it out until now. "And then that snowstorm hit and they couldn't find the body…"
"I highly doubt that was the case," Beetee counters, and I slow my pace. Not at his words, but an echo in my footsteps. "They could've located her through her tracker, snow-covered or not."
I hear Buttercup emit a growl that turns into a hiss. He hasn't hissed at me so furiously in a long time, so I strain to listen around Beetee's words pouring in my ear.
"The Gamemakers knew what they were doing, waiting until her body had decomposed enough for the camera," he mutters, his voice in one ear clashing with the outside noise I hear with my other. A shuffle, a crack, like twigs or old joints. "You don't forget a face that looks like that—"
I arm my bow and pivot fast, but a stuttered scream ricochets from my throat when I see the decayed flesh of a dead person bearing down on me.