Chapter Thirty-Three

"What are we doing?" Thomas spat out, clutching at his knees as he tried to catch his breath. The water lapped up his elbows but he didn't take his eyes from Minho and his oddly cheerful grin.

"Hello Thomas, nice to see you too Thomas, saved your shuck ass? Nah, it was nothing Thomas."

Despite the dire nature of their predicament, Thomas fought the urge to snort in amusement. He shot Minho a half-hearted glare instead.

"Why are we in the water in plain sight when there's monsters and tributes everywhere? Shouldn't we hide?"

He shot an anxious look over to the Arena centre, seeing the tributes that were running about there, seeing the horrid dragging blubber-and-metal monsters that were hunting them. There were several figures far into the sand, so far Thomas could only see faint dark dots against the paler sandy backdrop.

"They won't come in the water. They've cleared us out the forest and looks like they hang about the Maze. Dunno about sand. Maybe they'll follow them there, maybe they won't. Hard to tell."

Minho looked so matter of fact that Thomas wondered how he could possibly know. He wanted to question it and yet at the same time he just didn't have the energy for it. Hot days and so much running was tiring. He threw Minho a smirk.

"You better hope they don't or we'll let them have you."

Not true, of course. The boy just shot Thomas a skeptical look and shrugged Newt from his shoulder.

"Who, you and the kid and scrawny's unconscious ass? Good luck with that."

Thomas was by his side instantly, all thoughts of mirth gone. He helped Minho right Newt, ducking under the blonde's arm on his uninjured side. He slipped a gentle arm around his waist, avoiding the sore area as Newt groaned and rolled his head back.

"Newt? Newt it's Thomas. You gotta wake up man. Come on."

Newt's feet settled on the lake floor obediently and he moaned but it was pretty much only Thomas that was keeping him upright. Aris crowded round too, helping Thomas lift the boy's shirt to get a good look at the wound in the dim grey light.

It was a dark and terrifying mark on his pale skin, and the water was just below the ragged edge, lapping up whenever anyone moved. It didn't seem to be hurting him and Thomas wondered if the water might help. Whether to calm the burning feeling or cleanse he didn't know.

What he really needed was to lie Newt down and somehow treat the wound. Even if all he could do was clean it out and bandage it with something. Newt was mumbling, barely conscious.

"It hurrrts." Newt whined when Minho probed the wound.

Thomas shot the asian boy a warning look and Minho rolled his eyes. But he was being gentle, at least he looked like he was. Newt flinched and drew away from his hands, closer to Thomas. Thomas's heart swelled painfully with worry.

"It's okay, Newt. Minho's helping. We have to check it out."

Newt whimpered tiredly, turning his face into Thomas's neck. His face was cold against Thomas's pulse.

"Tommy it hurrrtss."

Thomas pressed a kiss to his forehead automatically, nosing Newt's fringe out of the way. He brought his free hand up to rub comforting circles on Newt's neck with his thumb.

"I know." he whispered as soothingly as he could. "I know."

The arm Thomas had thrown over his shoulders jerked as Newt gave a pained cry, and his long fingers clenched hard in Thomas's jacket. Thomas hurt to hear Newt in pain but he was at a loss as to what to do about it. Despite how much he tried not to think about it there was a dreaded anticipation taking up residence in his head. He'd seen the effects of TrackerJack venom in several different Hunger Games, and it wasn't pleasant. The poison ate through a tribute like burning pain once it had kicked in, and it would drive him mad.

Thomas had seen tributes claw their own eyes out under the influence of several doses of the venom, and if a tribute came across the wrong end of a nest of the waspy creatures they were as good as dead. The poison flared through the bloodstream, leaving a wound that leaked and bruised and travelling as a boiling heat through their veins.

Without a dose of the very pricey antidote and plenty of rest and water the tribute would suffer through the different phases in constant pain. The wound would continue to bleed, their skin and blood would burn and they would quickly become dehydrated. And seeing them writhe around in agony wasn't even the worst of it.

The last phase was sickening to watch happen, and the whole of Panem had to anyway.

The tribute would go mad, screaming and hallucinating, attacking things that weren't there, attacking themselves. The last kick of the venom saw them with temporary amnesia. They would forget who they were and in the past Thomas had seen a Hunger Games where a tribute under the venom's hold had brutally attacked her district's other tribute who had been her ally and her brother no less, killing him grotesquely with her own hands, tearing at skin and screaming like she was possessed.

The loss of lucid thought and all the screaming got a stung tribute killed pretty quickly.

Thomas looked at Newt's scrunched up pale face, at the horrific purple-black wound on his side. He was dreading the process more than he'd ever dreaded anything, and he had tears in his eyes as Newt continued to whimper and whine, crying out in pain when nobody was even touching him. He looked to Minho helplessly. Minho just looked back at him with unreadable dark eyes and shrugged.

"He's been stung." he told him simply, something Thomas already knew. "You better hope his shank ass got good sponsors or he's got a nasty couple days ahead of him instead."

Thomas could feel the familiar grasp of fear as it wound its way up his spine. He could feel the cold kicking in properly as the dimness darkened into true night. He could only barely see the edge of the water anymore, the structure in the Arena centre. The screaming was dying too, but the bone-chilling snapping-clicking-whirring screeches were still filling the air like bad omens.

"You sure they won't come near the water?" he asked instead.

He could feel the water chilling. It had been warmer than the air earlier as though it had held onto the heat of the day, but now it was cooling too. They couldn't stand in freezing water all night. He tried not to think about it because it just made him feel colder. Minho shrugged a little, his eyes focused in the direction of the centre. He'd abandoned his checking of Newt's side, and Thomas knew it was because he couldn't do anything to help him. He swallowed.

"They won't." Minho answered without looking at him.

"How do you know?"

Aris had been quiet but now he piped up cautiously. Thomas could hear he was still wary of Minho, and he didn't blame him. Thomas was still wary of Minho. He pressed a kiss to Newt's forehead when the boy cried into his shoulder again, the pain-filled sleepy sounds of a sick person. His skin was warm under Thomas's lips. The venom had started heating him already.

"I don't know, shuck face. But it's metal, and it's like a big shucking slug or something. I can't see its crank ass swimming, can you?"

Aris just shook his head uncertainly, meekly moving closer to Thomas and Newt in the shuffling-splash movement of someone trying to walk in high water. Thomas had to resist the urge to reach out and draw the kid in close, afraid that it'd give Minho the impression that it was a them and him situation. He didn't fancy their chances if the boy decided that killing them now would save him doing it later.

"D'you think they'll stay out there all night?"

Minho looked at him then, and Thomas was sure he could see something behind the walls the boy had erected in his eyes. Something that could be fear.

"I think they were sent for a reason. It's too early on for them to be getting bored of nobody dying. Something must have happened out there, something they don't like. They've been told to send something in as a warning, or punishment."

Thomas watched his dark eyes flitting around as he spoke, his brain working in a way Thomas's frantic thoughts wouldn't allow him to.

"I'd bet my knives some shank tribute managed to do something that pissed them off. Or something they weren't supposed to manage."

Something the Capitol didn't want to happen had happened. His best friend was semi-unconscious by his side, in pain and about to be subjected to days of screaming in agony and burning as the venom ate him from the inside out. A vicious sort of pleasure at the thought of President Snow being given a fuck you from one of the other tributes worked its way through him.

"Huh." he said out loud, careful to keep his true feelings hidden. The last thing he needed was to get his district in trouble. But it was difficult to hide the terrible pleasure he felt. "Wonder what happened."

Minho just shrugged, stretching out his arms and rolling his shoulders before shaking out his hands.

"Don't see that it matters. Knowing won't change the shuck mess you're in right now."

Thomas looked again at Newt, seeing even in the dark the sheen of sweat gathering on the boy's pale brow and rolling down his neck. The fever had already started, and soon he'd be screaming. His stomach wanted to empty itself at the thought.

There was absolutely nothing he could do about what his best and only friend in all the world was about to go through.