Ricochet

Chapter 26: The chink in the armor

Author: Carla, aka cali-chan
Rating: Most likely PG-13. Nothing worse than what's in the books.
Genre: Adventure/suspense/drama/romance... again, pretty much what's in the books.
Pairings: Peeta/Katniss, Rory/Prim... and probably others. You'll see soon.
Canon/timeline: Same-context AU— this fic still happens in the same world as THG, but the actual events in the books never happened. I'm adding about five years to the characters from the age they were at the beginning of The Hunger Games. Katniss is 21.
Disclaimer: Yeah, just let me go get my transfer laser and switch bodies with Suzanne Collins. Until I find it in the mess that is my room, anything you can recognize belongs to her.

Note: I've never really tried this before (and I'm sure it will eventually come back and bite me in the behind), but each chapter will be from the PoV of a different character. You should be able to tell whose PoV it is fairly easily, though.

Summary: "Primrose Everdeen." This can't be happening, Katniss thought. She desperately pushed through the crowd. I volunteer!, she wanted to scream. I volunteer as tribute! But she couldn't, because she wasn't eligible for the reaping anymore. There was nothing she could do.

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"The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers." —Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

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Prim's fourth day in the arena was going much as her second day did: uneventfully. That's why she probably should've known something was going to happen soon. But as it was, she didn't, and she'd been innocently walking around, looking for a syrup tree, when the entire arena started to shake.

Her first instinct was to duck down and try to hold herself steady by grabbing onto any cranny she could reach. She wasn't sure what one was supposed to do during an earthquake— the ground didn't shake too often in District Twelve, and when it did it was nothing more than residual tremors from a cave-in or an explosion in the mines— but there was no time for her to strap herself up to anything. The moment she realized it wasn't just the tree she was standing on that was shaking, she crouched down close to the trunk and held on for dear life.

It took a while for the shaking to subside, and an even longer while for her to be able to stand steadily on her feet. But even so, she thought it was strangely short for a Gamemaker device; usually if they wanted to introduce an earthquake, they'd go all out with it. Some years back they had orchestrated a quake so massive, it broke a dam and the entire arena was flooded. She had been too young back then to remember it clearly, but she had heard Katniss and Gale talking about it— apparently all the tributes drowned except the girl from Four, who was the best swimmer.

She wondered what they had intended with the shake this time. Did they just mean to catch the tributes off their guard and cause a few of them to tumble off the tree branches and to their deaths in the caustic liquid down below? Could be, but she couldn't be sure. She'd have to wait until the anthem played and she could see how many of them remained.

She continued searching for sustenance, though by then she wasn't really sure if she should even bother. In her head she knew the arena had to end somewhere, but she'd been walking for four days straight and she had yet to see even the slightest change in terrain. She was beginning to think it did go on forever.

She had found trees with different substances than those found closer to the Cornucopia, particularly one she had found a few hours earlier which supplied a sticky, whitish substance that, from the smell, she could only guess was some kind of glue. She didn't need glue at the moment, and she couldn't think what anybody could need it for, but she mentally made note of the tree anyway. It wasn't until later that the thought crossed her mind that she could use it as an emergency treatment. If the adhesive congealed into a solid clot, it could temporarily stop a wound from bleeding.

The thought gave her pause. She hated how the arena was altering the way she felt about medicine. Back home she would've been excited about learning something new, and exploring all the different ways she could use it to save people and make their lives better; now the first thing that crossed her mind was "how can this keep me on my feet long enough that I won't get killed," and the burden of knowing that any adverse effects could make her wind up dead in the long run, anyway.

She sighed as she moved from one branch to another. Haymitch's idea had been good, the strategy of portraying her knowledge of medicine not only as a tool for her defense, but also as a threat to the other tributes. It made her seem more dangerous than she actually was. But she didn't want to become that grim, negative person; it wasn't her. But maybe it was too late— maybe she was already changed.

She couldn't have been walking for more than twenty minutes when it happened again. She knew because dusk had settled as she walked. She noticed the night was a little less dark than the previous ones had been, and she wondered if the moon was shining bright above the treetops. She was just contemplating this when everything started shaking again.

It was worse than the first time it happened; the tremors were more intense, the tree she was standing on felt less stable, and there was an infernal noise booming out through the arena, like metal grinding on metal— it reminded her of a chain getting stuck in an engine, or the screeching of the train against the rails when the brakes were hit abruptly.

The noise was so pervasive, it was making her teeth hurt. She desperately wanted to cover her ears, but she couldn't because she was holding onto the tree so hard. Every few seconds the sound boomed up, like someone had thrown those pieces of metal that were grinding together hard against the ground. It was rhythmical, almost like heavy footsteps, but really, really loud. She was afraid it could be some sort of giant muttation the Gamemakers had released into the arena, and terrified that it might be coming her way.

She wasn't risking any movement, no matter how slight, in the middle of an earthquake, and the way she was holding onto the huge tree trunk meant she could only get a good look in the direction she came from. Since the first day she had walked miles upon miles away from the central clearing, and she knew she was really far from it because when she looked back, she couldn't see it: it was so far away from her by now that it was beyond the horizon. All she could usually see when she looked back was trees obscuring her view.

But now that had changed, and it surprised her. If she turned to look between the tree trunks, she could just barely catch a peek of the edge of the forest line. That's where the extra light was coming from, she concluded. She didn't know if the liquid level below her had risen, but there seemed to be less trees in that direction, for some reason.

The noise boomed again and she realized exactly what that reason was as the tree she was just looking at, right at the edge of the clearing, got swallowed down into the liquid at the bottom.

Her breath caught, and her grasp on the tree trunk faltered. The cattle prod almost fell but she managed to hold it between her body and the tree. The shaking and the horrible screeching made sense now: they were caused by some sort of machinery below the arena that the Gamemakers had activated, and the booming every few seconds meant a tree had gotten pulled straight down. She could see them disappearing into the water-like substance, dragged down so forcefully that the liquid splashed when the branches and leaves hit the surface.

She realized with a start that even without the trees in the way, she could see nothing beyond the tree line but the liquid. She couldn't see the Cornucopia or the little island it sat on, but she didn't know if it was simply out of her range of view, or if it really wasn't there anymore. Could the Cornucopia really be gone? And what happened to the tributes who were surely using it as their camp? An image of the girl from Four being melted alive invaded her mind and she almost lost her hold on the tree trunk again.

The shaking and the sound had been going for several minutes, and they weren't showing signs of stopping anytime soon. All she could do was try to stave off the nausea and watch helplessly as trees disappeared one by one, several hundred yards away.

It was then that she realized the Gamemakers weren't doing this just to kill tributes for fun; they were cornering them. They were probably trying to get all the tributes together in the same place, provoking violence that was sure to entertain their Capitol audience. They wanted her to go with it, and she had to go with it, because the receding tree line was getting closer and if she didn't move, she'd be pulled down along with the tree she was holding onto.

She had to run.

She took a deep breath and then pushed herself to her feet and away from the tree trunk, hoping the horizontal momentum would keep her moving forward instead of succumbing to the tremors. It didn't work. It was hard to keep her balance and she kept tripping over herself every two steps. Luckily the branches were wide enough that even when she fell, she still had plenty of surface to regain her footing on. It was especially hard to jump from branch to branch, so she was moving slower than she would've wanted to.

Even her instincts were conflicted. On one hand, she found herself involuntarily slowing down, trying to find stability, every few meters. On the other, her brain was screaming at her to move— if the living Careers hadn't been swallowed up by the rising level of liquid at the Cornucopia, then they were surely running just as she was, maybe even coming her way. Her fight or flight impulse was useless if both options were equally deadly.

It felt like an eternity had passed until the shaking finally stopped. It happened abruptly, though, and as she fell to her knees, she felt like she was tumbling off the branch. Panic seized her for a moment but as the sweeping sensation in her stomach subsided, she realized she was still up in the tree, holding onto the branch on all fours. Coriolis effect. She still felt disoriented as she looked around, motion sickness clouding her vision and making her feel like the arena was still shaking when at the same time her sense of touch told her it wasn't.

How long had the shaking gone on for? Fifteen, twenty minutes? It felt much longer than that. She sat on her haunches as best as she could, gingerly because her knees and lower legs were all cut up from constantly falling. She was just beginning to get her bearings back, when she saw something small and roundish whizz straight past her, hitting a nearby tree.

Startled, she looked behind her and sure enough, some three hundred-odd yards away from her, a figure was running in her direction. Immediately she recognized him as the boy tribute from Four. Clearly he had seen her, as he was running straight at her. A couple more rocks flew right past her as she got to her feet and took off on a sprint all over again. She knew it was no use— she might be lighter than him but he was a trained Career tribute, and she was already tired from all the running she'd done before— but she wasn't going to make things easy for him.

He was yelling something at her, but she couldn't really piece it together as her ears were still buzzing from before. It did help her gauge his distance, however. Several more stones came her way as she ran. One of them grazed her right shoulder; it would bleed for sure, but it was a minor scrape at worst. The rest just whizzed past her. Guess all that training wasn't enough to make him adept with a slingshot, huh?

She tried to zigzag, jump down to lower branches to try and get him off her trail, but she couldn't lose him. Maybe if she tried going up instead, she thought hurriedly, but he was gaining up on her fast and she knew she couldn't climb fast enough that he wouldn't catch up to her.

"GIVE ME THE PROD!" He was finally close enough that she could decipher his screaming over the beating of her heart in her ears. Which meant he was too close. She briefly entertained the thought of throwing the cattle prod at him, just letting him have it, but she knew he wouldn't simply let her go if she did, and she wasn't about to hand him the weapon he would use to kill her.

She could just drop the prod down into the caustic water; that way he wouldn't get it and use it against her, but that wasn't practical. He could still kill her without it, and in her case it was her only defense. No, he was going to catch her either way, so her best bet was to let him and then use the prod on him. She had to fight him. It was her only choice.

She stood her ground and turned to face him, her finger lingering over the weapon's trigger. Electricity came to life as she pulled it, and she waited, blood pounding in her ears as he ran closer and closer. When he was upon her, he stretched his arms, reaching out to grab the prod from her, and that's when she swung, trying to get him just below the ribs, hit a vital organ.

He dodged her easily and lunged at her again. She just barely managed to duck without falling over the edge, and in her imbalance she grabbed onto the closest body— his— to stabilize herself. She desperately caught a grip of his jersey, but he was faster than her pulling her by the neck of her own shirt and while she was under his arm, he struck down with his elbow, sending her tumbling down onto the flat surface of the branch.

The jerky movement caused the slingshot to swing off the holder in his belt, sending it flying past her to bounce against... nothing.

There was nothing there for the rock to hit, just the air occupying the empty space between two trees, yet there was a small zapping sound and the pebble ricocheted back in the direction it had come from. It spooked her so bad she stumbled over her own feet again, and she almost ran face-first into the trunk of the tree.

"There it is!" she heard the boy from Four exclaim, and she would've been more curious about what this "it" could be— some sort of invisible mesh? Force field? But why would there be a force field there? Was that it, the border of the arena? And if it was, why was the boy from Four looking for it?— had he not turned to grab her the moment he finished speaking.

Next thing she knew, she was being pulled roughly from behind by the first body part he could reach: her elbows. In that position her arm strength was compromised so she had a difficult time holding onto the cattle prod, which he took advantage of as he grabbed at it with his hand. She just barely managed to hold onto it. She couldn't hold it for much longer, but the longer she kept her grip, the more off-guard he'd be when she finally let go, maybe giving her the opening she needed to get away. "Let go! Twelve, I need that damn prod, don't make me hurt—!"

His threat got interrupted when the arena started shaking again, complete with all the mechanical racket that accompanied it before. It caught them both off balance, but he recovered faster than she did, stilling his feet quickly. He didn't waste a second to take advantage of her unsteadiness, and kicked her behind the knees, causing her halfway-to-standing position to collapse. She hit the tree trunk so hard, it knocked the air out of her lungs. He had no trouble wrestling the cattle prod away from her hands.

Gasping for breath, she curled up into a ball, covering her face against the trunk as she grabbed at it with her hands to keep herself on the branch. She was putting herself in a vulnerable position (it only took one hit to her head, the back of her neck, her spinal cord, her ribs, her kidneys— she could think of so many options, all painful and all lethal...), but if he was going to kill her anyway, she'd rather not watch. She could only hope it happened fast.

However, the blow she was expecting never came. She risked a peek behind her and saw that Four wasn't even standing there anymore; he had jumped down to a lower branch and seemed to be carefully making his way toward the invisible wall, still carrying the cattle prod.

Why hadn't he killed her? Why was that force field (or whatever it was) so important to him that he would take that over the chance for an easy kill? Either way, she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She stood and started going back in the direction she had come from; she didn't know where she could go, as the tree line was still receding, but the more distance she could put between her and the Career tribute, the better. With everything shaking, running without falling would be as difficult for the others as it was for her.

She'd barely switched trees twice when she caught sight of the male Tribute from Two coming toward her. He kept falling down as he ran, much like she had before, particularly because he kept bumping his knee against the sword he had clipped to his belt. He was really pale and seemed terrified, and immediately she saw why: the trees were getting pulled down almost at his heels.

She started backpedaling before she even had a conscious thought of doing so. Which was the lesser of the two evils: the trees, or being caught by a Career Tribute who was just as susceptible to the lack of a solid surface to stand on as she was? The situation was different than the one she'd just gone through with the boy from Four; Two hadn't spotted her yet. On the other hand, the trees kept on being pulled down, she didn't know when or ifit would stop. They couldn't just take all the trees out from under them, could they?

No, they couldn't do that. They had to have their Victor.

Making a split-second decision, she jumped down to a branch below her. It wasn't too big a jump, and she managed to land on her feet, but then her balance was shot by the shaking, and she fell. In the nick of time she was able to hold onto the branch with all her appendages save for one leg. She was sure people in the Capitol had to be laughing at her right then, considering her very undignified current position— flailing like an actual duck, with one leg hanging off the branch— but she considered it a small victory; jumping from tree to tree was hard enough when the trees in question weren't rattling like tin cans.

Channeling Atala's voice in her head, the advice the older woman gave her when she had struggled with the climbing webs back in training, she slowly pulled herself back up onto the branch. It was a struggle, but she made it. And then she jumped again, to another branch even further down, repeating the same process. She wanted to make sure she was out of sight when Two ran by above her.

When she got to a level she thought was safe, she started going back out. She didn't run; she walked carefully, because she was not sure where exactly the invisible wall was, and she didn't think running smack into it would be a particularly fun experience. Between her close calls with Four and Two, she wasn't even worrying about the trees anymore. Not much she could do to save herself from those anyway.

As she moved a few trees ahead, she noticed that if she looked between the trees at a certain angle, she could see the boy from District Four again. They were at the same level, but he was too busy with whatever it was he was doing with the cattle prod to notice her in the background. She decided to watch him for a while; if the force field was that important to him, maybe it could be useful for her. She didn't think he was too eager to kill her, given that he'd already let her get away once, but even then she tried her best to keep mostly hidden behind a tree trunk. No need to tempt fate.

He had recovered his slingshot and re-attached to his belt, she noticed. The simple weapon was a far cry from the sword the boy from Two carried with him, but apart from it, he also carried a bag full of small rocks. Those were the ammunition he'd been shooting at her, or at least in her direction; she was pretty sure he'd been aiming toward the force field, instead.

And that was precisely what he was doing at the moment: throwing a few stones one by one ahead of him, and watching them bounce against the force field. He was measuring his relative position to it, she guessed; if she extended the circumference as revealed by the rocks to where she was standing, she would guess she was about ten feet away from the wall.

She saw him close the bag of rocks, secure it in his belt again, and look up, directly in front of him. It was like he was actually seeing the invisible wall, or looking for something on it. What is he doing? she wondered, for the thousandth time. Was he planning on using the wall as a weapon of some kind? But then what did he need the cattle prod for?

That was right about the moment the shaking stopped again. She looked around and saw that the tree line stopped about twenty feet away from her position. She couldn't see anything but caustic solution beyond that. Her heartbeat immediately rose: she knew she couldn't just stand there watching for much longer. It was likely that all the remaining tributes were somewhere in this small patch of salvation, caught between the deadly water and the force field. They'd be on the prowl, and she had no way to defend herself if she was found.

She moved closer to the spot where Four was standing. As long as he was more concerned with the force field than he was with killing other tributes, he was the least threatening option. Maybe if she approached him carefully, he might be amenable to forming an alliance. At the moment he seemed to be testing the cattle prod, like she had when she first found it.

He hadn't noticed her yet, even when she was standing two trees away from him. But someone else did notice him.

The loop of rope wound itself around his neck and Prim just barely swallowed the scream that threatened to escape her mouth. It was the girl from Ten, it had to be, though she couldn't see her— the long stretch of rope disappeared between the trees, keeping the person wielding it out of her line of sight.

Her first instinct was to run, hide... but where? The area the Gamemakers left for them was far too small and everywhere she went she was likely to come across another tribute; if Ten didn't kill her, someone else would. Meanwhile Four struggled against the hold, trying to pull the rope from his neck. As the cattle prod clattered to the flat surface of the branch he was standing on, Prim realized she could help him; he didn't have a knife but maybe she could reach out and pull the rope off him, or burn it with the prod.

He fell to his knees, his face beginning to turn purple from lack of air. Prim rushed to him. When he saw her approach his eyes widened even more, and when she reached the branch he was on, he grabbed desperately at her pants with one hand, as if begging her to save him. She nodded at him. "I'll help you," she assured him, and moved to pick up the cattle prod, which was a few feet away.

Just as she was turning back around to touch the electrodes to the rope at the back of his neck, the rope was yanked violently backward, flinging him off the branch. He was just out of reach. His hands instinctively left his neck and extended toward the edge of the branch, trying to keep himself up, but he was far too weak and shaky from lack of oxygen to get a good hold. He fell, the rest of the rope bending over an adjacent branch and leaving him hanging like a rudimentary gallows.

She didn't even want to look down. But when she looked to her right she finally saw the girl from Ten, emerging from the shadows between the trees. Prim saw her pull a knife from her belt and cut the rope about a foot from where she was holding it. Without her grip on it, there was no tension to hold Four's weight and both him and the limp rope went down. There was no splash; they were up far too high for the sound to carry all the way up to their ears. She hoped he was already dead when he hit the caustic water.

She backed up a few branches, but it was clear the larger girl had already seen her, was making her way over. Prim desperately looked around. Running was no use; she had seen the girl sprint during training and knew she wouldn't be able to get away. She had cut her own rope, so she couldn't lasso her, not from a large distance at least. Maybe she could climb? She might run into another tribute up there, but once again: lesser evil.

Her eyes darted anxiously around, looking for the best escape route, and that's when she saw it: a small square, maybe a little larger than an inch in both dimensions, that seemed to be shimmering, or vibrating just a couple feet away from her. At first, she thought she might've imagined it, or that maybe it was a trick of the light, but as she backed up away from the other girl, there it was again.

She knew she shouldn't be looking at little squares of light when the tribute who was possibly the biggest threat in these Games was just a few steps away from her, but unfortunately for her, the fact that she was close enough to notice the little squares meant she was literally backed up against the wall.

Ten was brandishing the hunting knife in her direction. Her only defense was the cattle prod, which she clutched tightly to her chest, her finger twitching nervously against the trigger— she wasn't sure if she meant to use it as a weapon or as a shield. She could run, but she would run out of trees almost straight away. She could climb, but if that girl could lasso a target from enough distance that she could remain unseen while doing so, Prim had no doubt her aim was good enough that she could lodge the knife in her back before she even got halfway to the nearest branch above.

Prim kept her eyes on the girl as she walked backward. Ten trees. Just nine trees away. The other girl's eyes were on her too, just as focused, like a predator stalking its prey. She almost stepped off the branch because she wasn't looking where she was going. As she stabilized herself the butt of the prod— the battery case, the heaviest part— came in contact with something behind her, and there was again a zapping sound. She was too close to the force field.

She looked above her head and she could see dozens, maybe even hundreds of the little iridescent squares, peppering the entirety of the no-longer invisible wall, all the way up to beyond the top of the trees. She didn't know what it meant, or why it was happening. It just reminded her of static, like on a malfunctioning television set.

Was that it? Could the force field be malfunctioning? It seemed almost impossible; she couldn't remember there ever being any kind of weakness in the Hunger Games logistics.

Seven trees. Six.

Weakness. A weak point. Suddenly the thought made her remember something someone had told her recently. She could almost hear Haymitch say the words all over again. Everyone, everything has a weak point. A chink in the armor, he'd called it. She remembered him nodding at her as he said it, as if punctuating the idea. When it jumps out at you, you hit it with everything you've got.

Five. Now just four trees away.

She wondered if this, the little squares, were what the boy from Four had been looking for. She didn't think that's what Haymitch meant when he said look for a weak point, but if this wasn't something "jumping out at her," then she didn't know what jumping out was.

She thought she understood now, what Four had been intending to do. Ten was almost on her, the serrated knife at the ready. She was stronger, and much like it happened with Four, it wouldn't take much to knock the weapon out of her hands. Prim was going to get stabbed before she could even point the prod at her attacker. Her fingers tightened around the trigger. She had run out of options. There was only one action to take if she wanted to save herself.

She pulled the trigger. Immediately a tendril of energy arced between the two electrodes. Ten, now close enough to take a slash at her, quickly took notice of the live weapon, but as she raised the knife over her head, Prim spun on her heels and slammed the electrified end of the prod as hard as she could against the force field, right at the nearest visible square.

The last thing she knew before her entire world exploded was a sharp, stinging pain on her right shoulder.

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Author's notes!—

Primmy blew out the force field! Who would've thought she had it in her? xD I tried to put some fight in her, though of course in the end I had to be realistic (come on, she wouldn't be able to beat a Career tribute in close-range combat). But I hope at least it felt like she wasn't about to go easy. Also I tried to pack as much action into this chapter as I could, but in the end it's still a lot of running up and down through the arena. I hope it wasn't too draggy.

The Coriolis effect, which Prim mentions in this chapter— or more accurately the Coriolis perception— happens, in very broad strokes, when you're moving in a frame of reference that is moving in a different direction than you are, usually in a circular motion. For example, the perception that flying objects, such as airplanes, are moving in a curved path even though they're not— it's you who are rotating with the Earth. This effect can make you feel like you're still moving even after you've stopped, because of inertia, and can produce momentary or even severe motion sickness depending on the person's sensitivity. It happens often to pilots, and it's been known to happen in cases without circular motion, such as when someone moving straight at a slow speed is affected by harsh jostling (like Prim).

And oh, I should warn you: things are starting to happen really fast right now, so the next few chapters are most likely all going to end on this type of cliffhangers. Sorree. :P Feel free to tell me how evil I am in a review. -hinthint- Next time we're going back to Twelve, check out how Madge and the Hawthornes are faring. Should be interesting. ;)

As usual, remember you can follow me on twitter or tumblr (links are in my profile) for hints, snippets of future chapters, and general fangirling over THG and other fandoms. See y'all next time! :)