Chapter Fifty-Six: Surprises Come in Many Forms

Still Day Four

Sotia Vance, District Three Female

The Hunger Games isn't a place where you can afford to waste time. Thus, once I saw the area in front of me was clear, I packed as much as I could carry into wherever I could fit it and got the fuck out of there. I'm more than willing to admit I'm a slow runner, but considering I could hear what had to be the girl from One swearing like someone was stabbing her with a red-hot poker less than ten minutes after I fled, that means I have to either lose her or run faster.

As much shit as I poked at her, facing down an angry Career without any allies is probably the worst possible thing to do in the games. No, wait, third-worst. I'm sure cannibalism and sexual assault both place higher, just because if you even hint at trying either the Gamemakers kill you instantly. Sure, almost every living victor is a murderer, but I guess the Capitolites must have some standards.

Fortunately, the screaming starts fading, meaning the girl from One decided against following me, which works just fine for me. Not that I stop moving, but I switch from a sprint to a brisk walk. Now I just need to find a nice place to rest for a bit, preferably somewhere hard to see, and then I can get moving again.

Five minutes or so later, I settle for climbing up a sturdy-looking tree. There aren't a ton of those in District Three, but the branches are close enough together that I don't need too much strength to pull myself high up. After about forty feet or so, I come to a stop. I could probably go a bit higher, but I also need a place to hang all my supplies in easy reach and the branches only get less likely to support that much weight the higher I go up. I don't want to have to go all the way back down, or worse, lose half my supplies in a branch-breaking incident.

First things first. Make sure I'm reasonably secure, then make sure the supplies are reasonably secure. Everything after that is extra.

Following that, though, I decide now's probably a good time to eat something. Breakfast kind of got disrupted by the fight going on outside my door and that means I'm starving now. Time to fucking eat something before I inevitably have to start running again.

Right as I'm about to start eating, though, I hear something beeping. Nervous the tree's going to attack me or something equally insane, I prepare to scramble down the tree until I notice the silver parachute.

Attached to it is a vial of… something, alongside a note, which makes sense. I'm semi-hopeful they somehow got serum sent to me but what the heck, I'll take anything. In an instant, I manage to grab both, taking a look at the vial while I scan the note.

Poison - use carefully. Look closely at supplies. You're doing great.

-Gear, Wendy

Well, that settles that. It isn't the same color as the serum or even close, so I can't use it as bait or anything like that, but I guess I could get it inside someone and let the dark magic do its thing. The second sentence in that note makes me a bit confused: is there something hidden inside the cans I took? I honestly just grabbed them at complete random, I didn't have time to do any searching for the best stuff to take.

There's no real place to put the supplies after I check them, so once I look at a can, I have to shove it back in the back and hope I'm not getting too many repeats. Dried vegetables, dried fruit, dried beef, dried fruit again…

Then I see a flash of light blue.

Without any hesitation, I pull its source out of the bag, making sure the other supplies stay inside it. A momentary pang of disappointment hits me as I realize it's just another can, but one look at the label picks me right back up.

Alongside what appears to be a picture of one of the vials shown to us at the start of the games, the label screams the words, EXPERIMENTAL SERUM. Right below it are the words, ONLY EIGHT IN STOCK, GET YOURS TODAY!

Can opener. Have to get the can opener. Find it, open the damn can, keep the lid because it can still be used to slice things, and…

"Yes," I say under my breath, gazing at the tiny vial that by all rights, I shouldn't have had in the first place. Thankfully, a different color from the poison, so it's impossible to get those two mixed up. I'm not stupid, but knowing me, I'd take the wrong one out of pure bad luck or something the instant the pressure came on. Now, I know there won't be any confusion regarding the two vials.

"Thanks, Gear and Wendy," I say as loud as I dare. I don't want to be heard, but I sure as hell want to thank them as much as I can for doing this for me.

Poison and serum, all in one fell swoop? Hard to beat that.

Sienna Starboard, District Four Female

The two of us are wrapping up a quick (and small) breakfast when the rustling starts and gets us on edge.

Could it be Clara and Galadia, back for round two? Perhaps the anti-Careers decided to try their luck and raid the Cornucopia. Maybe the Gamemakers decided now would be the perfect time to send us another mutt?

Then the source emerges, and it doesn't take long to figure out the cause meets none of those criteria.

This guy's big, which unnerves me a bit, but at the very least his skin's too light to be the boy from Eleven, who's the largest non-Career threat. That means he's probably the boy from Five since that's the only other large male tribute left besides Godric, who scored much lower. He doesn't quite seem to have all his marbles, because his gaze looks quite unfocused, and even though both of us are looking right at him (and we're pretty sure he's in our sight line) he hasn't zeroed in on us yet. His gait is little more than a stagger and he appears to have absolutely nothing to his name, his face somehow an expression that conveys nothing at all.

"He's making me nervous," I whisper to Godric. Fortunately, he responds with a nod, meaning we're not taking him on right away. Suicide-bombing and the likes aren't common attacks, but considering just a few years ago the girl from Three took out both tributes from Four by doing that, I don't want to risk it.

Then, after what feels like an eternity, he notices us. Without any prompting, he proceeds to charge us while singing at the top of his lungs what the actual fuck.

"Give him space," Godric yells, and I'm more than happy to comply. I wait until he gets close enough that he can't course-correct, then leap out of the way. He barrels right past the two of us, but after a few more seconds, everything he's doing cuts off, including speech, motion, and possibly all bodily functions on top of that. Then, he turns in place, spots us, and charges us again.

We let this process repeat a few more times, just in case he's disguising some kind of horrible trick we don't know about. However, by this point, if he's bluffing, he's really good at it.

"Let's just take him out," Godric says. I can't help but agree there.

At least it's quick. He sprints toward us one more time, and this time, instead of leaping out of the way, both of us produce our weapons and intercept the charge head-on, the sword slashing into his stomach while the trident spears through his rib cage.

He comes to a full stop once more, his off-key notes dying in his throat. For a few seconds, he remains standing, staring at us with his arms by his sides, acting like there's nothing weird about being stabbed to death.

Then, he produces a single sound. "Oh."

Fortunately, that's all he manages to say before the cannon fires and ends his suffering. The body that used to be another tribute collapses in front of us, their clothes beginning to become sticky with blood.

Godric walks over to the body and wrenches out his sword, grimacing as he does since that just makes the corpse's bleeding all the fiercer. Somehow, I manage to stagger over and do the same for my trident, but as soon as I finish, I almost regret it. Clearly, I hit some internal organs, because alongside the to-be-expected blood mixed with dead flesh, there's a lot of off-color liquid and chunks of something and now my breakfast wants to make a reappearance.

Fortunately, it gets all the way out before I can get too far. I can't afford to be wasting calories here.

Godric gives me a sympathetic look. "You need a minute before we get moving?"

"That'd be great, thanks," I reply.

The two of us move to the other side of the Cornucopia, watching as the hovercraft comes by to pick up the body. Then, once that's out of the way, we both agree that we need to get moving.

Trying to get the image of what I… no, what we just did out of my head, we start our march to nowhere, looking for our next potential victims.

Thomiah Marshall, District Eleven Male

Even by District Eleven standards, today's becoming a scorcher.

We're trying to ration our drinks as best we can, since I don't know where the nearest alternative source of water is, but we've already soaked through our shirts and I can feel a vicious headache coming on. Despite the oppressive heat, both of us know better than to take our clothes off. Not that skin cancer's something we need to worry about, since that'll take longer to set in than the Games will run, but sunburns can get really painful really fast and the last thing we need is another thing to deal with at the moment.

In the open fields, the sun is torture, while in the woods, the sun slacks off a bit but the heat doesn't change. Everything feels sticky and miserable, and that's for someone used to the sun and heat. This must be torture for tributes who lived in cooler places.

Then, one step causes my shoe to get stuck in something. On instinct, I leap backward since it wouldn't be the first time the Gamemakers used quicksand as a trap, and Odysea does the same. Just as a test, Odysea grabs a nearby rock and throws it in front of her, since the one thing you can count on with environmental hazards in the Games is that all things get treated the same when encountering them. When the rock stays above ground, we breathe a sigh of relief.

"Probably just mud," I say.

"Well, if there's mud, either it rained recently here or there's water nearby," Odysea says. I can't disagree with that logic, so we start marching through the mud, looking for whatever source of water it came from. Before long, we stumble onto its source, and it's definitely going to be more than useful.

The lake in front of us is pretty big and quite clear compared to the ones I know of back home, which are full of mud, especially in the summer. It's shaped roughly like a circle, most of it surrounded by trees. Somewhere close to the other side, I can see another cleared area similar to the one we're standing on, and there's one roughly 90 degrees to the left as well.

Then Odysea points at something I'm embarrassed I didn't see before: several small boats resting on raised platforms, all of them vibrant colors: red, purple, green, blue. Some kind of container/holding mechanism/unidentifiable structure holds what I'm guessing are means of propelling the boats forward. A hand-painted sign sticks up from the ground near the boats, muddy and faded but still legible, reading, "Canoe Station A."

"Well, if there's an A, I'm guessing there's a B somewhere," Odysea says. "You know how to use these? Because I have no clue."

"Unfortunately, not really," I say. "I can swim just fine, what about you?"

"Not very well, but I'm aware of the concept," Odysea says. "Unless there's something nasty hiding in the water, I think we should be fine."

"Don't jinx it," I say, just in case. I'm guessing there probably aren't any mutts in the lake that are too threatening, and even if there were, considering we're probably the only tributes left with a sincere chance at taking down the Careers in a fair fight and we've already lost half our members, they'll at least wait a while before siccing anything on us. That's not much confidence, but it's enough for now. "Let's look for Station B."

We spend the next few minutes getting set up for our trip across the lake. The purple canoe seems to be made for two people, so we pick that one. The things we use to move, we wind up eyeballing for a bit because we've never done this or seen it done before, but we end up taking two each and hold one in each hand for now. Fortunately, having limited our supplies to what we can carry with us means both hands are free to help get us across.

That, unfortunately, is a far more arduous task than I anticipated. Trying to get in the canoe unscathed is enough of a challenge on its own: Odysea gets in just fine but I nearly tip the thing over trying to follow her. Fortunately, the water's pretty shallow here, so she manages to keep us from getting soaked by pressing one of her— oh screw it, I'm just calling them sticks— against the ground until we're back upright. Once we're upright, we take turns trying to figure out how to paddle until we manage to get in a reasonably steady rhythm. I doubt anyone would mistake us for residents of District Four, but we're at least moving forward.

Finally, a feeling of peace and quiet comes over me.

I wonder what's going to shatter it this time.

Rhaemyr North, District Three Male

The good news is, even with the hit job from the girl from Nine, I still have at least a few days' worth of supplies, as long as I ration them carefully.

The bad news is, I'm still virtually unarmed.

I didn't take any weapons from the Cornucopia, because the only ones they had out were the weirdly-specific ones that required a ton of training to even use. I couldn't imagine fighting with one of those and all of them promised to become dead weight doing nothing but taking up space in my bag, so I left them alone.

When I got my stuff, that wasn't a big deal. Now, as it becomes more and more likely I'm going to be forced into encounters with other people, it certainly is.

Weapons are my second largest priority at the moment, overtaken only by my need to sleep. I've been up for close to twenty-four hours straight, and it's going to catch up with me eventually whether I want it to or not. Unfortunately, alongside my lack of supplies brought in today, there's been a lack of decent places to hide as well: the only way I'd stay unnoticed is climbing a tree and I don't have anything that would tie me down. All I'd do is fall out and break my head open.

The lack of sleep can take the blame for why I nearly step into what appears to be a puddle of blood on the ground while in the shadow of a massive cliff. I'd take that as a sign to stay away from here, but a few steps further in, I notice the cave.

It's not much of one: I'm not very tall and I still need to duck to fit inside. That might be a good thing, though, since any mutts that might live inside have to follow similar rules. Just in case someone (or something) else is already residing there, I take off my shoes to try and muffle my steps before slipping inside.

I look behind me to make sure I didn't leave any footprints, because the last thing I want is to lead anyone who's interested directly to where I'm sleeping. Seeing none whatsoever, I carry my shoes along with me as I keep walking deeper and deeper in. For all I know, I'm not the only one hiding here, and if any mutts chose to make this their home, I'd rather find out before I get torn to shreds, not after.

The cave's not very deep, so I find out pretty quickly that it's empty. It does have a nice hard right turn about halfway in, though: a good method of obscuring me from anyone who isn't actively looking. And if they are, the floor's hard enough I'd probably hear them before they saw me.

Now fully hidden and with nothing else on my mind, I can finally get some badly-needed sleep. Sure, there's a chance someone finds me while I'm asleep, but that chance exists no matter where I stay. I'm comfortable with my chances.

With that pleasant thought on the brain, I hit the ground. Sleep overcomes me in seconds.

Eulogies:

-Spark Emmersen, District 5 Male, 13th Place (Killed by Godric and Sienna): I must admit, Spark's descent into outright insanity was an absolute joy for me to write, if only because it meant I got to experiment a bit with semi-stream-of-consciousness writing and I could just ramble for a while. Before that, he had an interesting dynamic with Catarina and a lot of potential to have turned into something either great or horrible. Unfortunately, little of that matters in death. Thanks for sending him in, jupiter101.

Kills:

-Other: 2 unassisted (Aryion [suicide], Catarina [mosquito muttations]), 1 assisted (Artesia [bear muttation])

-Galadia: 2 unassisted (Fox, Vick), 1 assisted (Alexa)

-Clara: 1 unassisted (Remi), 2 assisted (Faolan, Alexa)

-Godric: 3 assisted (Faolan, Marius, Spark)

-Lacey: 1 unassisted (Galadia)

-Odysea: 2 assisted (Nascar, Artesia)

-Sienna: 2 assisted (Marius, Spark)

-Artesia, Thomiah: 1 assisted (Nascar)

Author's Notes:

-Put another chapter in the books. This one comes with a gruesome death scene, absolutely free!

-And yet another serum has been located. Three non-Cornucopia serums have been found, three remain hidden.

-With Spark dead, our tribute count has officially been halved. Twelve tributes remain, meaning we're four away from the Final Eight. I wouldn't expect to get there in the next few chapters, though.

-I start my summer job at an actual summer camp in a week, so that means I'll have less time to write. It honestly might increase my chapter output, solely because I'll need something to keep me from going nuts (which will hopefully be easier than last summer), but I wouldn't count on it.

-That's all I've got for you this time. See you next chapter!