District 3: Pixel Watt (12) Pov-

The forest foliage crunches underneath my foot as I step down onto the ground. I dangle from the branch for a few moments, held on only by my hands, before dropping. Sharp pain bolts through my legs, and my knees bend from the pain of hitting the forest floor.

I check myself quickly for injury. With the exception of a few mud smears I'm clear of harm.

Holding a hand over my eyes like a visor to keep out the first rays of the rising sun, I grab up my only weapon; a rock I sharpened for hours last night. Its point is incredibly fine; admittedly maybe not enough to be lethal, but whatever, it'll still be enough to make a person disoriented.

That's when the sour-smelling wind hits me. Strange and cruel and foreign. It's not actually that cold, but I'm chilled the bone nonetheless.

"Get away from me!"

I whip around at the sound of a human voice. Through a remarkably clear stretch of forest, I make out the form of a thrashing girl. Her uniform tells me she's from 11. We spent a bit of time at the fire-starting station together, so I know her well. An invisible hand tugs on my heart, and I freeze in place. Do I run to help her? Do I flee and save my own life?

But the decision is made for me. Her cannon shot is loud.

Before I know it, I'm racing over the earth, speeding away from the dead girl and the centaur mutts that surround her. My breathing accelerates tenfold at every slight crunch and snap of the forest. The purple mountains are my focal point, the thing I look at when I don't have anything else; something about their picturesque slopes draws me like a fly to a sugar bowl.

My heart leaps into my throat and my blood turns to ice as I bump into something soft and hard at the same time. Another tribute. I fall to the ground, hitting the forest floor, and the other tribute falls on top of me. The wind is knocked out of my lungs for a second, but I manage to start breathing normally after a few moments.

The other tribute is a girl. She has stunningly clear dark skin and black hair in a ponytail down her back. It's like three ropes are tugging at me from all sides. Should I let her go without hurting her? Propose an alliance? Kill her?

I get to my feet. "A surprise seeing you here," I mutter. "How's life?"

"Bad," she responds. I can't help but notice that her voice sounds a little funny. In explanation, she holds a finger up to her ear, then crosses her two hands to form an "X". That's right. It's the girl from 10 and she's deaf. But she's reading my lips extraordinarily well.

"Can't say many words," the 10 girl says. "Want to ally?"

I'm uttering the word yes before I can stop myself. Even with her disability she's another human to keep me company in the games. Even now my body feels a little warmer. I won't be completely alone in the harsh games to come.

Then again, this might be a terrible idea. She might have joined the careers and she might be some kind of puppet to draw me into a trap. This could be the start of something ugly. Like the snowball rolling down the hill of "fuck you" and eventually leading to my death.

She nods and smiles, sitting down on the ground. I follow her example.

"Name?"

"Mavvi Levist."

"Any supplies on you?"

Mavvi shakes her head. "You and I are the only people who ran from the horn."

"At least I have this," I say with a slight smirk, lifting up my sharpened stone.

To my surprise, Mavvi reaches into her pocket and pulls out a rock of her own. It's not as sharp as mine, but it looks like she's been toiling at it for hours if not days.

"No use messing around," I say. "Let's start on a shelter. You gather the branches. I'll clear an area. We can get it done before noon if we work quickly."

District 10: Orford Shaw (18) Pov-

The other Orford's been keeping me awake all night. His snoring is much too loud for my liking and he moves his limbs too much when he sleeps. When I think about it that's saying a thing or two about myself. If he's truly an exact replica of me then that must be how I sleep. Cruel how ironic the games can be, eh?

When I finally deduce I'm not getting any more sleep, I crawl out of the small cave, being careful as to not wake the other Orford. Judging by the moon it's about three in the morning, and even though he gets on my nerves there's no way I'm committing the deadly sin of waking somebody up at three A.M.

I reach a hand into my pack and feel around for the peanut butter and jelly-sandwich kit. I pull out the smooth plastic box and pop it open. I make myself a sandwich and take sporadic bites from it as I take a short walk. It's not the most productive thing I could be doing, not by a long shot, but I feel it's a good way to start my day. You know, get my limbs stretching a bit. If that even makes scientific sense.

My travels take me to a bush populated by small brown nuts. I'm full from the sandwich and don't need to eat them right now, but I don't want to let them go to waste in case I can't find them again. I pick off all of the nuts and stuff them into my shirt pockets.

A hiss tumbles from my lips as a chorus of sharp claws wraps itself around my ankle.

I turn down, expecting to see some horrific mutt—but it's just a weasel. And a small weasel at that. Barely larger than my hand. Once again, I don't need to eat at the moment, but there's no way I'm passing down good food. And besides, he was the one who made himself seen. He'll get what he deserves.

I kill the weasel with one of my knives before traipsing back to camp. By the time I arrive, the other Orford is awake. He sits cross-legged in the cave entrance, fidgeting with our pack.

"Hungry?" I ask, setting down my pocketful of nuts and the dead weasel.

The other Orford shakes his head. "I'm not hungry."

"But you haven't eaten anything in a whole day," I insist.

He pushes the food away. "I told you, all I know is I'm here to help you. I can't take your food. I don't think my throat even works. Eat it all yourself."

The other Orford continues to grow more and more peculiar by the hour. Accepting defeat, I drop the nuts and the small animal into my pack for later.

"Who are you?" I ask. "What are you? Why are you here? And don't just say 'I don't know'. I have to know." I'm surprised at how angry the words sound as they burst out of my mouth.

"Sorry I can't give you anything else, pal," he responds. "I don't know who I am any more than you do. Now let's find something that can cover the cave entrance. It gets super cold at night."

I just nod, not exactly comforted.

District 7: Cerise Yew (15) Pov-

I sit in silence beside the lake, the lapping of the water making me shiver despite the heat of the day. Everything here is just so creepy. If I didn't have Erik with me I can't say I wouldn't have gone crazy already.

Every attempt to get onto my feet is quelled by a kind of overwhelming terror that forces my limbs back to the ground. Is this was an anxiety attack is like? I hope I don't sound too high-and-mighty when I say I've never had one before, so I can't be sure.

Actually, that's a lie. The memory of my gleaning hatchet blade as it punctured Joule's neck...

"How long have you been up?" calls Erik's sleep-added voice from behind me.

I turn around slowly, making sure the sand doesn't smear on my clothes. "An hour maybe."

Erik raises his eyebrows. "And you've just been sitting there?"

An invisible hand squeezes my chest, and before I know it tears are pouring down my face in torrents. My breaths are more like sporadic throbs of my abdomen. He's right. All I've been doing is sitting here. I'm the most useless girl in the world.

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" he says, scuttling toward me. "It's alright. Take a deep breath."

I do what he says and instantly feel better. As we pack up our supplies, I can't help but feel a little brighter inside—the brightness that comes with the presence of a good friend.

"What's the deal?" I ask, tying back my chocolate-brown curls with a hair-tie I find in our admittedly shabby supply stock. "Are we going to move or what?"

Erik forms his lips into a solid line as if lost in thought. "We should probably move. The sand is too uneven to build shelter here."

A laugh escapes my lips. "I was thinking… WHAT THE?"

Erik turns around, and his smile quickly fades. He doesn't have time to scream before the bright-blue cord wraps itself around his torso. By the looks of things it's slippery from a coating of ugly purple slime.

A finger of ice runs down my spine, and for an instant I can't move. Another blue cord shoots out of the water, reaching for my ankle, and I miss it by about a millisecond. The whole world seems to dissolve around me, reduced to a kind of haze that occasionally rocks back and forth as more and more cords rise out of the lake.

Erik looks as though it's agony to choke out each word. "Cerise… Help…"

"I'm coming!" I shout, my voice quivering. "I'm coming! Just… just hold on… one second…"

Mind racing so fast I can hardly think straight, I reach for the two hatchets. The problem is that the cords look to have splashed some of their slime onto the handles. I lift the hatchets and they fly out of my hands like pumpkin seeds.

"Hurry!"

"I'm coming…. I'm going to help you… just… hold on!"

A deafening roar makes the hairs on my neck stand on end. The mass of spaghetti radiating from the lake surface is drawing itself closer and closer together, untangling, unwinding. The torso of an enormous blue kraken emerges from the water. With the roar comes an onslaught of the purple slime, drenching me from head to toe.

My feet are moving ten seconds before my brain has time to catch up. I cling onto one of the tentacles and make a desperate attempt to climb it, but the coating of slime is too thick for me to reach Erik.

"Erik!"

No response.

"Erik?" I repeat, voice cracking despite my best attempt to remain calm. "Can you hear me?"

He just groans, wrapped as tightly as ever in the monster's tentacle.

I suppose I don't have any choice but to take that as a yes.

"I'm going to toss one of our hatchets to you and you've got to cut yourself off!"

Another groan.

The plan is crazy, impossible really, but it's better than no plan at all. Dodging the dozens of tentacles struggling to wrap themselves around me, I hurl a hatchet upward. Its blade glistens in the sun briefly before landing in the kraken's tentacle.

With a roar and another avalanche of sticky purple slime, the kraken mutt drops Erik. My first instinct is to rush to his side, but I quickly stop myself. Killing off the monster if my priority at the moment.

By the time I turn to face the kraken mutt, it's already gone, its last few stray tentacles sinking below the lake surface.

"Ce… rise... help…"

I rush to my ally's side and a scream catches in my throat. His entire shirt, from the waist to the neck, is stained with dark blood. The streams issuing from all over his body are a sure sign he's losing blood quickly. I'm no medical expert, but by the looks of things he'll be dead in minutes unless some miracle happens.

I pull up Erik's shirt as though expecting the whole thing just to be a prank, as though expecting the blood to be fake. His chest is the color of raw meat, and whole strips of flesh have been torn away.

"Erik… can you hear me… are you alive…?"

He doesn't respond.

"Please… just respond… please… please… don't be dead."

No response. The lack of a cannon shot means he isn't dead yet, but he could be seconds away for all I know.

"Say something! Anything!"

Still no response.

The tears come harder than ever before. Erik's been my one companion through the chariot rides, training, the bloodbath. I've been through so much because he was at my side. He can't die right here, right now. He just can't. The thought is simply unconceivable.

At first I think the groan is just my imagination. My eyes and mouth wide open, I watch as his arm begins twitching slightly. His slightly moving chest tells me he must be breathing.

"C… c… r… s." It takes me by more surprise than it should when I realize he's trying to say my name.

"I don't know!" I scream, having given up about the fact that other tributes could hear me. "I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do!"

The thought drifts toward me of the citizens of 7 watching me on their holographic television screens with the wide, tired eyes I've so often seen them wearing. Watching Cerise Yew, the poor girl who never had much of a chance anyway, cry next to her dying district partner. Shaking their heads at the screens with looks filled with pity. Pity for the broken girl whose second half is being severed from her with each drop of blood her ally loses.

Dun dun duuuuun! Cliffhanger!

The tributes you can sponsor this chapter are Cerise, Pixel, and Orford. How will Pixel's alliance with Mavvi turn out? What's the deal with Orford's creepy twin who appeared out of nowhere? Will Cerise be able to heal Erik? Find out next time on Broken! (Sorry if that was the most cliché ending line ever. I couldn't think of anything else 0_0)

Alliances:

Careers: Declan, Nero, Jaehaera

Ooh, more allies: Pixel, Mavvi

Jack and Jill: Cerise, Erik

Loners (For Now): Dory, Adelaide, Lincoln, Luc, Orford, Jaro

Question: Do you think it was right for Katniss to shoot Alma Coin and why?