Hadley Kinneth, District Six (15)

Emma ran behind me as I sprinted into the sports store. She thought I was using up the last of my adrenaline after she shot me in the back. She couldn't see the weighted vest underneath my shirt. It made it harder to run but it also made it harder for arrows to penetrate my skin.

Skyler threw the baseball as soon as I was through the door. Before Emma even knew she was there she was grunting and staggering sideways as the ball bounced off her head. Skyler couldn't throw like the professionals but it still hurt to get hit by a baseball. Skyler ducked down and ran between two rows of shelves as Emma took aim and fired an arrow at her. Probably because she'd just sustained a head injury, her arrow went wide.

I knocked against the shelf I was running by to make a slight noise to draw Emma without it being obvious. I leaped over the fishing line we'd strung at ankle height and stopped after a few intersections, leaning with my arm against a shelf and pretending to be struggling to breathe around the "wound" in my back. My shirt was dark enough that the slobber I'd drooled into my hand and smeared onto my back looked sort of like blood, especially from a distance.

Emma appeared far down the lane and started after me. I looked behind and started limping forward. Emma lined up another arrow as she ran after me. Then her leg hit the fishline. The dangerously thin line knifed into her flesh as she cried out and fell forward. She landed ten feet behind me and I darted forward to kick her in the head. I felt her face give a little and reached back to kick her again.

She grabbed my foot and yanked. I fell hard on my back and my head smacked the ground painfully. Emma reeled my foot in and jumped on me to either beat me to death or strangle me. Then Skyler joined the fight. She ran out around the corner of the aisle and darted in behind Emma, hefting both her arms behind her head. She swung the kettlebell she held and it thumped into Emma's exposed stomach. The gagging sound of her surprised breath as she let go of me and curled up made me actually feel sorry for her.

Skyler took a sporting knife from her pocket and slammed it down at Emma's chest. Emma grabbed her hand and twisted. Skyler yelped and dropped the knife. Emma snatched it up and stabbed her in the arm, dragging the knife down her flesh as she pulled it free. It all happened before I could even untangle myself from Emma and reorient myself to join the fight.

I grabbed Emma's arm with both hands and curled around it in an amateur approximation of a wrestling hold. I swung all my weight at an awkward angle, twisting Emma's arm all around. She dropped the knife so she could more easily shove me off before I broke her arm. As she yanked her arm free I brought my knee to my chest and kicked out, hitting her full in the face again. She went limp as her head snapped back. Unable to believe it was really true, I kicked her three more times. I reared up on my knees over her head and fell forward with the knife pointed under me. I felt the skull crack like a crushed egg before her cannon went off.

"Hadley," Skyler coughed. I looked over to see her lying on her back. She was turning pale as the blood flowed. There was a tear in her arm that showed white bone.

I crawled over to her and took off my shirt, wadding it up and pressing it to the wound. "Am I going to be okay?" she asked.

"You'll be fine," I said. I'd meant it until that moment. It was only then I realized we were the final two. Truths I couldn't deny flashed through my head. If Skyler didn't die now we would have to fight again anyway.

"Just hold still," I said.

Skyler already wasn't listening to me. Her eyes were glazed as she looked up at the ceiling. The shirt was keeping a lot of blood in but it didn't stop her from going quiet and passing out. I looked down at my ally- the girl who had come to be my friend in the Games. When I knew she was unconscious, I removed the shirt.

Since Tillo and Calvary both won eventually, this marks another story completed!