Going through the tube is the worst part. I have never liked being in tight spaces – most likely because I trap animals to survive – and after being on a hovercraft where they stunned us with an electrical current that stopped even our breathing in order to place our trackers, the idea doesn't appeal to me at all.
But I have to do it. I have to do it or else they'll stun me again. I close my eyes and chew on the inside of my cheek until I taste blood and feel the arena open up around me.
Everything else has been spectacular so far for the Quarter Quell so it is no surprise that the arena is too. We are surrounded on all sides by a vast forest. One side – the one with the boys in coats – is frozen into an eternal winter. The other – the one with the girls in shorts and tank tops – is a tropical jungle. All the tributes are in order, from 1 to 12, which means I'm in the innermost circle where just a few feet away from me Anna stands on the tropical side and the numbers climb back up to 1.
"Without further ado, let the 25th Annual Hunger Games, the 1st Quarter Quell, begin!"
The numbers start counting down. 60 seconds. It is both an eternity and barely a breath in time.
I crane my head around, desperately trying to get a better view, better information for how this will play out.
A river is circling just behind us, half-frozen, half-evaporating water. And finally in front of us, on a hill, is a metaphorical Cornucopia sliced into three levels, one on top of the other. The bottom containing supplies, the middle containing food and water, and the top containing every sort of weapon imaginable. Three levels, each one harder to get to than the last.
This is going to be so much fun.
I realize I'm shaking and after so long of trying to push it back down, I now embrace it. I let it flow through me, all the bloodlust and fascination and excitement, and all at once, I stop shaking though my mind remains sharp and ready to go.
I notice a lot of the other male tributes shaking, not because of excitement but because of how cold it is over on our side. A wind comes against us and we all brace ourselves, a boy with a 9 stamped on the upper arm of his jacket looks ready to fall but at the last moment rights himself.
"Hey, 12," Flicker calls to me even though we are on opposite ends, "try not to repeat what happened at the Reaping."
I hear a few of the others chuckle at this but I barely even hear. The cold isn't a deterrent to me, it's an awakening.
Whether I like it or not, this is what I was born to do.
The gong sounds.
I push off from the pedestal turning onto the tropical side. I know that no one is going to be able to climb up the ice.
I am right for out of the corner of my eye I see them slip and fall. The rest of us on the warm side dig in our heels and push towards the Cornucopia.
The bottom yawns out towards me. I don't focus on the other tributes or anything else. I focus on a backpack smack in the center that is big yet still easy enough for me to pull onto my shoulders. Hopefully it has something of use though I don't have time to check right now. I clamber up the ladder to the second floor and kick it out from underneath.
Food. Water. But not as much as I thought at first glance. In fact, very little. There's a few canisters of water, which I take two of, and some dried food but nothing sustaining.
I think I must be missing something so I keep searching, looking for more, but there's nothing. No. They can't possibly expect all of us to survive on just this. My mind is so focused on that that I don't see the male tribute with dark hair and eyes until it's too late.
He attacks – I suppose he wants what little food I've taken – tackling me to the ground. I am winded but the sudden adrenaline only makes me react faster. I try to push against his weight, scratching and tearing and when I catch sight of his hand, I bite. He howls in pain and I spring up. It's all instinct when I take off my backpack and slam it against his head. His eyes roll and his body sways and after a moment his tips off the edge of the platform, landing with a crack against the cement bottom.
Everyone stops for a moment, even those now running into the surrounding forest, to stare at the boy who has fallen and snapped his neck and up at the boy who has killed the first tribute of the Games – the boy who nobody remembers, the boy from the lowliest of districts, that left-handed disadvantaged boy.
Me.
And all at once I start to shake again. I just killed someone and found it easy. I killed someone and I can never take it back.
I'm a murderer.
But I can't grieve or even contemplate any of this because this is the Games and we're just getting started. I feel an inrush of air and turn to see the girl from District 1 slash something in my direction. I duck just in time but she clips a part of my ear and blood begins to gush down the side of my face, obscuring my vision.
A sickle. She is holding a sickle. She must have already gone to the top level and come back down. And she clearly thinks me enough of a threat now to do away with sooner than later. She grunts and swings for another attack.
She may have a weapon but I know that I have to be slightly stronger than her, if not by much. I reach up and grab the handle in mid-stride, forcing it to a stop. She twists and turns, the blade slipping into my palm and slicing my skin, she so desperately trying to get away from me but only ending up tighter in my grasp. Not wanting to go the way of the last, she pushes all her weight against me, throwing me back a fair distance. I'm about to go toppling over the edge when I manage to turn against one of the four beams supporting the platforms, the shock booming around the Cornucopia and sending shivers up my spine as another blast of cold comes in from the frozen side of the arena.
And looking up I find my salvation.
I reach up, grabbing one of the long, dagger-like icicles hanging down and twisting it into my bloodied hands until it snaps free. Without another thought, I plunge it into her stomach. She gives a little shriek before slumping to the ground, either unconscious or dead. I shatter the icicle into a million pieces before grabbing the sickle and throwing it as far as my arm can stretch.
I jump onto the ladder to the top floor, kicking it out just as before.
The weapon selection is a little better than the food and water, but not by much. Most of the weapons are simply a variation of a knife.
The Gamemakers definitely want to see blood in this Games. It's just too bad that I agree with them.
A dagger is the first thing I take followed by wire to make snares and some sort of device that looks like a bomb which could be useful in a later confrontation.
But what I'm really looking for, what I want and need, doesn't seem to exist. There are no throwing knifes. None. Was I really so bad in evaluations that they didn't even give me that?
Well, two can play at that Game. When I'm sure they're not anywhere in the pile, I start throwing the remaining weapons off the edge of the platform. Several tributes escaping into the forest grab them as the Cornucopia almost completely empties.
Almost.
"Hold it right there."
I don't, unsheathing my dagger and holding it up from my crouched position to these new intruders.
I am right to be wary. The speaker is Flicker, looking scratched and torn from the battle, and probably seeking revenge after my killing of his district partner, and who holds a spear towards me. Behind him, Shard and Philomena draw nearer followed by Killian and his district partner who have just reached the top of the stairs.
For the first time, I reply back.
"You're the one who should be careful. You saw what I did to your girl and I'll just as easily do it to you."
"You bastard!" he yells. "I should slit you from throat to stomach right now."
"You should but you won't because you know that with my dying breath I'll do the exact same to you." I shove my blade towards their faces. "To all of you."
They look at me with hatred but even so they take a step back at my remark, their eyes filling with fear. All, that is, except Killian. His eyes fill too with some sort of emotion I cannot decipher but it is certainly not fear.
"Stop," Killian says holding his hands between Flicker and I. "This is getting us nowhere. No matter what happens both sides will die and that is not what we want now is it?"
I'm sure it's what the Capitol wants but they're not here. Nobody's here but us.
Flicker still keeps his spear on me but his eyes waver to Killian. "No, we need to kill him right now or else him and the rest of those pathetic districts think they can do whatever they want."
Killian seems unfazed by his remark. "We underestimated you, didn't we?" he says to me, sounding almost saddened, like he knows what this means for him. "Everyone underestimated you and now they're going to pay the price." And only then do I realize the look that captures his eyes.
Respect. He sees me as a worthy opponent.
"Yeah, well," I reply, trying to sound casual because this is a show for the Careers and Capitol alone, "that's what most people think when you're from District 12. But at least my district knew what it was doing when it voted me here."
He nods his head and smiles. "Well it seems to me, 12, that you have two choices right now. The first is to join us in our alliance."
I hear gasps from the other Careers which mirror my own inner astonishment. District 12 has never been a part of the Careers. This would be unprecedented in the Games.
"I refuse to let him into our alliance," says Flicker, now dropping his spear completely, before adding with pain, "He killed Ruby."
A spark of my humanity comes back, reminding me again that I am a murderer but I snuff it out. I can't think about anything right now except life and death. For my parents. For Yondrie. For District 12.
"I know," says Killian, "but the Games are not about justice. They are about winning and I think this boy will help very much in that regard."
I think it over. Joining the Careers would at least mean that I won't be alone or worry over food and supplies. On the other hand, by the looks these Careers are giving me – with the exception of Killian – I highly doubt I would be safe and I would probably be killed at their earliest convenience. Besides, if I have to play this Game, I would rather do so on my own.
I lower the dagger as a sign of goodwill. "And my other option?"
"Your second option is to clear out of here within 20 seconds where we promise not to kill or harm you in any way whatsoever during that time."
"This is so stupid," Philomena says. "We should just kill him now!"
I look up at Killian. "I want 30 seconds."
"Fine."
"And I want a guarantee that you won't kill me."
"And how exactly can we do that?"
"I want you to drop your weapons over the sides."
More gasps from the other Careers and Shard muttering as he fingers his bow, "This is absurd."
"Do it!" I say, raising my dagger once more. "Or we dish it out right now and find out who can survive losing more blood."
Killian never takes his eyes off of me, those eyes like gears that click forward one step ahead of everyone else. "Do as he says," he calls to the Careers.
One by one they drop their weapons over the side, near enough so that they can retrieve them at the bottom of the Cornucopia. Lastly Killian takes off some sort of strange mixture of spare parts salvaged from the Cornucopia which he has clearly already started to disassemble and rearrange into something new, and throws it to the ground.
"30 seconds starts now, 12," he says.
I take off without a second glance.
"That's Jay Tipper to you," I yell back. "Remember it."
I fly back through the floors so quickly I barely see anything. Yet I still see enough. Ravaged supplies. Blood. Bodies. And then the bottom floor where the first to die, and the first I killed, still lies unseeing towards the sky.
Almost as if to cement this, the first of the cannons, his cannon, fires.
One.
With each passing second more of my humanity comes back and more of the realization of what I have done. I killed and didn't even think or feel remorse. Didn't even know their names.
But even now, I cannot think too much on it. I still have to survive.
Two.
The arena stretches out before me, an endless game of hide-and-seek. I choose the frozen side, reminding me so much of the wintry forest beyond District 12.
Three.
The adrenaline begins to taper off. I feel the throb of my hand still bleeding out, and from my ear now biting into the wind. I feel my knees weaken with fear and feet tire from so much crouching and climbing and running.
But more than all that, more than the fighting and hurting and even killing, comes the deep ache for home. I certainly didn't feel it in the Capitol, perhaps I was too numb still to feel it. But here, running towards a forest almost familiar but not quite, in a place where I am trapped, just like the tube but only bigger, until a group of men pretending to play as gods decide to let me go free, the ache comes fierce. Never have I felt more trapped.
Four.
A spark again. This time I let it grow and with it comes the memory of singing the Hanging Tree as the mockingjays wove it back to me for the very first time. It takes me a moment to realize that I'm singing it under my breath right now, whispering it out with each step that I take.
Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run so we'd both be free
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree
Only now do I finally, finally understand its meaning. It's about the rebellion and mockingjays and everything else people said it was but it's also about something far darker.
It's about sacrifice.
It's about giving up everything you are.
It's about trusting that what you're doing is right when you're not even sure yourself.
It's about being free at any cost.
Five.
I reach the river, this side frozen over. I think I can just slide across but once my feet land on the ice they slip from under me. For one terrible moment I think my time is up and the others will come and kill me but then I take out my dagger and jam it into the ice, stopping my tumble. I carefully walk the rest of the way until I reach the forest.
I run.
No more cannons. Five tributes dead. "Only five," they'll say in the Capitol. "How utterly boring."
I don't stop until my legs give out from under me. Until night has not only fallen, but turned into a dark mass surrounding me on all sides. Until the faces of the fallen tributes appear on the sky.
The girl from District 1. Ruby was her name. Followed by the boy from District 5, a boy with dark hair and eyes. The first one dead and the first of my kills. Then both tributes from District 6 before finishing on the female tribute from District 11.
I collapse to the ground, my body heaving in great breaths. My mind only going over and over the boy from District 5 who looks no older than me. Who did look no older than me.
And then, with my bloodlust gone and the Hanging Tree still whistling through my head, I begin to weep.
I find it hard to sleep.
During the countdown and the fighting and the running I don't think I quite realized the horrible nature of this arena. True, one side is warm and the other side is cold but this cold is way worse than I'm used to. A cold that swallows almost everything whole.
After having a bite to eat and cleaning my wounds out with water as best I can, I open my backpack to see what I got.
It's decent. Matches. Rope. A medical kit. Bandages. A few dishes to cook food in. And a sleeping bag. Good.
But even the sleeping bag doesn't keep out the cold. Trying to cover myself with leaves and branches is also useless. Using the matches is obviously out of the question at this time of night unless I want the others to find me.
After several hours I decide that if I'm not going to sleep I might as well put some distance between myself and the others. Maybe then I won't have to kill anymore. It's a foolish thought but at least it keeps me sane.
I walk and walk and walk and everything looks exactly the same as before.
I can't stop thinking.
Today I became a murderer.
Maybe I did really die at the hands of the Careers at the Cornucopia and this is my punishment for killing, my hell, walking and thinking and never getting warm.
What does District 12 think of me now? My parents? Yondrie? Kit? How can I ever look them in the eyes again now?
That is, if I ever get out of here.
Several times my eyes droop shut even as I'm walking and I start tumbling into rocks and trees. But I can't stop, I have to keep walking.
It becomes my mantra.
I have to keep walking.
I have to keep walking.
I have to keep
Walking have to
I have to
I have
I
I collapse to the ground. I'm supposed to get up. I have to get up. It's too cold to stay here.
Wait, no it's not. In fact, it feels warm. Really warm.
Sleep.
This is a bad sign, I know it. It means something really bad. Someone told me this once. Warned me about it. Someone.
Someone…
Sleep…
…