Chapter Sixty-One: What We Want and What We Need
Still Day Five
Sotia Vance, District Three Female
Fortunately for me, neither of these kids are great runners, so I don't have to push myself that hard.
At this point, I'm not even trying to outrun them or distance myself from them. I just need to maintain their pace for a while, make them think they have a chance, and then turn it back on them when they're exhausted. Yes, it's a morbid line of thinking, but they're also the only logical targets I have at this point. If I want to have any chance of long-term survival, I need to start getting interesting.
The panting I'm hearing behind me is getting louder, meaning I need to end this quickly. I start looking for a tree I could climb up quickly; a cliched method of escape but one I'm sure will work for as long as I need it to. It doesn't take me too long to find one, fortunately: the Gamemakers must have really wanted tributes to use them. Without even slowing down, I launch myself at the tree and just manage to pull myself onto the dangling branch, climbing out of reach of my pursuers right as they reach the trunk.
For a little while, there's no conversation whatsoever, just a lot of deep, raggedy breathing as the two of them try to recover from the ordeal I just put them through. I use the opportunity to scale a little higher and inch out onto a branch that extends off the trunk just for good measure. I'd like to be able to see them if possible, and the tree's branches are thick enough that right next to the trunk severely restricts my vision.
"We have to get her," the shorter boy chokes out, voice scratchy like his lungs got replaced with sand. "She's our best bet."
"I can't do much climbing," the taller boy says, displaying his hands to reveal mangled fingers. Well, that cements him as the boy from Eight if nothing else, more information I file away to use later if I need it.
"I've done a little," the shorter boy says. "I could try, I guess."
And he does just that, throwing himself at the tree to start climbing. He's not an expert at it by any means, but he's making scary progress, and if he somehow manages to get up here it's not like I have much in the means of weapons besides maybe my can opener, and I think knife beats can opener…
Wait, the poison! I wish I could have used it more subtly, but the guy has a knife and I don't have time to strategize right now. Brute force is my best option at the moment.
My plan's as simple as a rock, but even rocks can be good weapons sometimes if you know how to use them. I wait until he gets close enough that I can reach him, I pull the vial of poison out of my bag, and I pour.
Some of it misses him, a shock considering how imprecise my aim needed to be to get him with all of it, but most of it gets into his hair, and some of it promptly runs down into his eyes. With an unpleasant screeching sound, he lets go of the tree with one hand to claw at his eyes, a bad idea considering he's hanging a solid twenty feet into the air. This gets proven all of maybe three seconds later, when he lets go of the tree altogether and then tumbles to its base, looking banged-up, but based on the screaming and the lack of a cannon shot, very much alive.
The boy from Eight points an accusing finger at me like he thinks he can stab me with it. "You fucking poisoned my friend!"
I know better than to respond to that. I mean, what can I even say to that? Yes?
Before any more words can be exchanged, he throws himself at the tree and begins to climb, right as his friend falls silent. Fortunately enough for me, he's unbelievably slow, he must have told his friend the truth about how terrible his climbing abilities were. That also gives me time to ascend even higher, getting as far up as I'm comfortable with given how thin some of the branches are getting.
Based on what I've seen of this kid, he's light enough that the branches won't start breaking by the time he reaches me, but I have the high ground and I have at least one hand free if not both, while both of his are dedicated to making sure he doesn't plummet to his doom. I'm not sure if he realizes it at the moment, but he's probably lost this fight before it even started unless I do something unfathomably stupid.
Still, I can see the hate brewing in his eyes, likely driven by the fact that he thinks he's lost his one and only friend in this place, although his cannon hasn't even fired yet. If he reaches me, he'll at least try to kill me, even if I don't think he'll be much good at it. That's enough justification for me. If Sailey and Tarin are watching (which I hope they're fucking not at the moment, because things are about to get messy either way), I'm sure they'll understand why I did what I did when they get a little older.
I have to wait until he gets close; my range is quite limited at the moment. Then, right when his hands are on my branch and he's making his move to pull himself up, I smash his fingers with the can of food I'm clutching in my free hand.
He yowls in pain but holds on, prompting me to do it again. A full scream resonates through the woods this time, and several fingers lose their grip. Another slam leaves him dangling by one hand, a fourth by two fingers, both of them desperately straining to keep him aloft.
His eyes choose then to bore into mine, the anger in his face draining away and fear taking its place. "You wouldn't."
I would.
I swing the can one last time.
It strikes home one last time.
The last two fingers keeping him on the tree unclasp, and his descent begins with a scream as he slams into another branch, turning his vertical fall into a flipping, twisting disaster.
I hear the boy falling just as much as I see it. As he tumbles toward the ground, I hear him yelling. "Shit, shit, SHIT—"
The boy's head makes a sickening noise when it hits the ground, I think he slammed it into a rock. On top of that, his neck's bent in a direction that shouldn't be possible, and now he's thrashing around like Tarin trying to sleep off a sugar high and…
Okay, I'll admit I have to look away there. There's only so much horror I can handle in one day.
And apparently, the Gamemakers agree with me: the cannon fires a few seconds later, and I've just become a murderer. Lovely.
Lacey Loveless, District Eight Female
It's been too long, and there's still no sign of Zari, and I haven't even gotten a cryptic hint about her location yet. I just heard a cannon as well, and I'm hoping against hope it didn't belong to her.
Maybe notes that'll help me there are specifically being held back or something, because this arena doesn't appear that big. It's got a radius of maybe ten miles or so, which by arena standards is smaller than average if I remember correctly. There's only so much area to search before you simply run out of possible places. It's not like Zari's a camouflage expert or anything like that.
Whether this is fortunate or unfortunate remains anyone's guess, but if Zari's not here I might as well worry about myself for a bit. Food and water are going to become issues soon: I'm sure the Gamemakers will eventually cut off natural ways to obtain either so the tributes have to hunt each other down. We're already past the halfway mark, meaning that time has to be soon. Maybe not today, maybe not even tomorrow, but I should stock up now while I still know I can.
The Games are only going to run so long, so every hour in here is another hour closer to whatever the endgame is, if there even is one. Every year in recent memory has had something happen at the end to force all the tributes into one place: one year most of the Arena got set on fire, another year the water level was raised to the point where only one patch of solid ground remained, yet another year all the structures in the Arena collapsed except for the Cornucopia. Even if the Gamemakers aren't feeling poetic or creative, they can always use mutts, especially since it's easy enough to make ones that are large enough and damage-resistant enough that the only option is to run.
I'm guessing it's going to rain again, but I still need food. I've been putting off eating the few cans I do have because I want to save them for a real emergency, but every passing second gets me closer and closer to such a thing. I'd like to avoid that if I can.
A bit of rustling sends my attention back to the present. The cause isn't anything to worry about, though.
There's a rabbit. It's standing nice and still, staring at me with big, wide eyes. In any other circumstance, I'd almost call it cute.
Two knives later, I have dinner taken care of, and possibly breakfast too if I can find something else to go with it. I just need to hope I can eat it before a mutt comes to clean me out or something equally stupid.
The loss of Zari still hurts my chances, but I'm sure I'll be fine alone. I've done it for most of my life, and I can do it again. There's only so many tributes left, and in a one-on-one match I could probably take most of them. Just ask the girl from Two.
I, Lacey Loveless, can win this Games. I just need to stay alive long enough to prove it.
Thomiah Marshall, District Eleven Male
Besides some foraging to look for edible plants, we stuck fairly close to home today.
Upon further exploration, we learned that our current location is more or less an island, cut off from the rest of the Arena by the lake on one end and by the force field on the other. We scoured the place just in case we weren't alone here, but apart from occasional wildlife, it's deserted. Seeing as we still have plenty of food, we left the animals alone for today, content to eat some plants. Better to save them for when we're really hungry.
Right now, I'm checking the lake to see if anyone else decides to sail towards our hiding place, and Odysea's trying to beat the high score on the shooting range. She's gotten close a few times, but so far, no dice.
With the air as hot and sticky as it is, I'm tempted to start drinking the lake water, but with the Gamemakers chances are it's poisoned, or at the very least not safe to drink without some kind of decontamination process. Plus, it's not like water's that much a concern. It feels like it's going to rain again soon, so I might as well drink something now so we can collect more for later.
Stopping my current mission to go take a drink, I check on how Odysea's doing to find her firing arrows, as I expected. I'd try and help her, but the few times I tried to shoot a bow my aim was so unbelievably awful I was worried I'd shoot Odysea or something equally stupid. Odysea might not be a master with the bow, but she at least can hit a stationary target consistently, meaning she's far better for the job than I am.
A glance at Odysea reveals that she must be close to finally clearing this high score. All of her arrows are clustered near the center of the target, and based on what little body language of hers I can interpret, she clearly thinks she's about to win but is trying not to celebrate too early.
One more arrow gets shot towards the target and then…
"Yes!"
Well, that must mean she beat the high score. A loud creak echoes through the area, and sure enough, the small structure we couldn't access before is now open, meaning that whatever our reward is for doing that, the time has come for us to claim it.
The bounty isn't as large as I might have expected: a few cans of food, a small baggie of tablets that I'm guessing are meant to purify the lake water, a rock about the size of my head, and a single sheet of paper that has a lot of what look like rudimentary drawings on it.
Odysea's more than willing to fill me in, thankfully. "It's a map, Thomiah."
Okay, that clears it up. "Of the Arena?"
She chuckles. "What else would it be of? Here, it's super useful, you should look at it."
I oblige, scanning the sheet of paper the best I can. The map is very simple, displaying only a few things: I guess the Gamemakers didn't want it to overshadow the serum. Speaking of which, the initial locations of each vial are some of the only things it marks, which is somewhat expected. What's not expected, on the other hand, is that one of those locations is apparently right where we're standing.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out where to check first. "Odysea, can you check if that rock in the back is hollow?"
"On it," she says. Marching over to where the rock is, she lifts it with surprising ease, which more or less confirms my theory. Some shaking proves that yes, there is something inside that damn rock. It takes an embarrassing amount of time to figure out the top part screws off, but when it does, we have everything we need and then some.
Two vials of serum out of eight. With that under our belt and a guide to the rest in our hand, the odds may actually be in our favor.
Rhaemyr North, District Three Male
I huddled in the cave until the thunder eased off, only emerging when the rain faded to a drizzle. Now, it's merely cloudy, the skies promising more rain but holding off on fulfilling it for now.
The rain means water is going to be less of a problem for a while, since the few bottles I had got filled during the tail end of the storm, but food is starting to become a concern. The girl from Nine getting stuff from me put a nice dent in my supplies, and even with me rationing everything the best I can, I have maybe two days' worth of food left. Eventually, I'm either going to have to find a reliable source of food inside the Arena, something that may or may not even exist, or I'm going to have to raid someone else's campsite. I got insanely lucky with the Careers the first time, I know better than to even chance that again, especially this late in the Games.
Right now, my goals remain simple. Stay alive, stay under the radar, find food, remember where my shelter is. Anything past that point is extra.
Maybe I'll try and look for somewhere else to sleep tonight, though. The odds of there eventually being something else living in that cave that I'll have to duke it out with are uncomfortably high. I wouldn't try to break into an occupied house back home, and I think it's more than wise to follow the same logic here.
It doesn't take long before it starts to get dark. Looks like I'll have to hurry the hell up if I want to find anywhere new to stay. I don't want to be fumbling around half-blind in a place that's full of things that can kill me.
Distant thunder snatches my attention once again. Nope, nope, nope. Back to the cave. Whatever I planned for can wait until whenever this clears out. Barrelling at top speed back to where I remember my shelter from last night to be, I make it there just as the first flash of lightning breaks up the clouds, burrowing back as far as I can until I can barely hear anything anymore.
Well, sleep probably isn't happening tonight, but nothing's going to stop me from trying, I guess. Mind overflowing with distressing thoughts, I lie down on the ground, knowing nothing I do or say will get my eyes to close.
Eulogies:
-Romeo Brady, District 8 Male, 12th Place (Killed by Sotia): Romeo felt like one of the plainer tributes to write for me, although I did have quite a bit of fun with his backstory. Him and Maxxer working together was also a dynamic I found quite interesting. Unfortunately, the kid with the missing fingers is probably not going to be very good at climbing trees, and here it spelled his doom. Thanks for sending him, Lilah32.
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)
-Sotia: 1 unassisted (Romeo)
-Odysea: 2 assisted (Nascar, Artesia)
-Sienna: 2 assisted (Marius, Spark)
-Artesia, Thomiah: 1 assisted (Nascar)
Author's Notes:
-And that's Day Five done. This chapter took a bit longer than usual, but I guess that's what I get when I keep missing the Sprintathons. (They're honestly the only reason I can even write at this pace.)
-After Night Five, I'm thinking of trimming things down to three or even two chapters for each day/night cycle, just because a lot of the POVs from tributes who don't have allies are starting to feel samey, especially when most of them don't have much of a goal other than survival. I'll have to see how the upcoming night turns out.
-That's all, at least for now. See you next chapter!