Chapter Twenty-Two

When he heard the wailing voice he stopped, so suddenly that he had to catch himself on a tree trunk, scraping his hand painfully. He didn't bother to look down, gasping in air and swallowing to wet his parched throat, the stinging in his hands merely irritating.

He crept forward, his head beginning to pound as the screaming grew louder. The kid was in a clearing up ahead, wandering from tree to tree with a frantic, glazed expression on his face. He was sobbing, stumbling as he tried to find the source of the screaming, his small face pale and flushed. Thomas paused at the edge of the clearing, unsure what he really planned to do.

And then the screaming stopped.

Thomas took a breath of jarring, empty air as his head loosened in relief. He hadn't noticed the clenching in his abdomen until it stopped, his body tired from the edgy, irritating feeling.

"Rachel where are you, answer me!" the boy howled, falling against a tree trunk as he heaved a broken sob.

"You don't believe that was actually her do you?"

The silky, dark voice frightened Thomas with its proximity. The girl stepped from behind a tree barely five feet from his right side and he hadn't even heard her coming, never mind seen her. His blood chilled, an arrow ready against the string as he watched her pace towards the boy like a prowling tiger. Her hair danced like fire in the rising sunlight, and despite the fierce, predatory smirk on her lips and the dangerous glint her her stark blue eyes Thomas was struck by the fact that he found her pretty.

It didn't last. The boy jerked, stumbling backwards and almost falling.

"W-What?"

The girl rolled her eyes at him, pacing past him, turning. Her smirk was almost playful, with a sharp edge glinting underneath.

"She's not here, stupid. They don't actually bring people in here. It's a Jabber-Jay. It mimics her though." she shot him a hungry look. "What she sounds like when she's screaming for you to help her."

All of a sudden there was a knife in her hands and she was toying with the blade, a single fingertip trailing up the flat surface as though caressing it. Thomas fought a shudder. He'd thought Minho's knife play made him uneasy. This was something completely different. It was almost like she was goading the knife to cut her. He felt sick. She was enjoying herself.

The kid's eyes flickered between the blade and her eyes, his face clearly confused. She prowled towards him and he backtracked hurriedly, his empty hands up as though to make her stop. Every trace of playfulness was gone from her eyes as she bared her teeth in a frightening grin. It was like seeing a lion smile at an antelope before it pounced.

"Ava? What are you- No wait, please-"

Without thinking, Thomas loosed the arrow.

The girl was thrown backwards with a gurgled scream, her head striking the tree trunk behind her. Her eyes were wide and already emptying of life, her fingers spasming in the mossy forest floor as her chest heaved. Her voice was gone already, his face paling drastically. Blood gushed down her shoulder in regular, gory waves from where Thomas's arrow had pierced her neck, the tip pushing through the skin on the other side.

It splashed on her hands, a red so vivid it seemed the colour couldn't even be real. It darkened her hair, beaded on her black jumpsuit like round red pearls. Thomas stared, feeling horrified and sick and yet unable to look away, wondering how it could be that one side of her neck bled so heavily and the other barely trickled.

The young boy had jumped so suddenly when Thomas had fired that he had tripped over his feet and scrabbled back a foot or so in the tangle of twigs and leaves. He was looking up at Thomas with wide, terrified eyes. Thomas tore his eyes from the dying girl to look at him, the vivid green of the boy's irises so alive and frightened that he was lost for a moment. He was just a kid, a tiny thing so much smaller close up than he had looked in the Gymnasium on the Training Days. Thomas simply stared at him as he scrambled to his feet, never blinking, his green eyes locked on Thomas and his mouth open as though frozen that way. There war oval droplets of red streaking across his cheek.

Thomas had no idea what he was going to do.

There was a new arrow slotted against the string of his bow already, had been there almost in the same second the arrow had flown towards the red-haired girl. All he had to do was lift it up, let go. The boy would die just like her, like- like Ava. That's what the boy had called her, the dead girl.

Ava.

He had killed her, just like he had killed the girl at the treeline, the boy by their tree.

They both had names, didn't they? The only difference was that he hadn't known the name of the first girl he had killed when he had killed her. He didn't know Forehead's real name, wouldn't until Midnight. Learning hours after the fact was different.

But this one was called Ava. He knew her name as he watched her die.

She'd had a family waiting for her to come back. A district who were probably rooting for her. He'd put an arrow through her neck, drained her body of blood and her eyes of life.

And she had been named Ava.

Thomas was being sick before he had time to prepare. He emptied his stomach onto the forest floor, splashing the toes of his boots. His knees trembled and for one awful moment he thought he was going to pass out. He wiped his mouth as he spat out the sour taste, looking up and expecting to see the boy long gone, bolting while he had the chance.

But still he stood there, his wide eyes focused on Thomas. He had closed his mouth, his expression a little less blindly terrified, but otherwise hadn't moved. He was panting silently, his small chest heaving. Thomas took a breath of his own, cool air that soothed the raw in his throat. A heartbeat went by. Two.

The kid tipped his head every so slightly to one side as he stared and the last of Thomas's willpower drained away. Newt did the same thing when he was listening to Thomas speak, when he was curious to hear what Thomas had to say.

Newt.

He had to get back to him.

A dreadful feeling filled him then. He had run off without thought, chasing after a kid. He'd sent Minho back to Newt by himself.

What if Minho-

There was a crashing sound, sudden and close and the boy's head jerked up at the same time Thomas's did. The sound of voices was unmistakeable. Thomas's blood chilled. He could hear three, maybe four voices.

He couldn't stay.

He'd have to bolt back around, the way Minho and he had raced, he'd have to make sure they couldn't follow him before he went anywhere near Newt's tree. His legs were screaming from the running he'd done already and his throat was dry but he ignored them as best he could.

He had to go now.

He shouldered the bow in a single movement, drawing his knife.

He couldn't help it.

He glanced at the tiny tribute, knowing what he was doing was stupid and yet unable to stop himself. He didn't have the heart - or the lack of conscience - to kill a kid. That was something Thomas wouldn't compromise, something the GameMakers could never force him to unless it was absolutely the only thing he could do to keep Newt safe. The boy met his eyes and Thomas made what would probably turn out to be one of many stupid decisions he'd make in the Arena.

He lunged forward, throwing his hand around the boy's small shoulder and pulling him, thrusting him in the direction they had both come from, his grip dragging him up as he stumbled, the approaching voices louder and closer every heartbeat.

"We gotta go."

Without waiting for a reply he turned into the trees and ran.