"Katniss."
My eyes snapped open and swept the dim room, landing on a figure crouched next to my bed.
"Katniss, you need to see this."
"Peeta? What's going on? What time is it?"
"Just before dawn," he whispered, backing toward the door. "Come with me."
I slowly eased my arm from under Rue's neck and tucked her securely into the blankets. Giving her hair a soft stroke, I stumbled after Peeta down the staircase. Cato, Glimmer, Marvel, and Clove were gathered around the television. I vaguely registered that Glimmer was clutching Cato's arm tightly.
"What is this?" I asked wearily, still groggy from having unexpectedly dozed off.
"It's the kids who went into the Maze yesterday," Marvel replied, never taking his eyes off the screen. "At the stroke of midnight, the ground started shaking again and then the television turned itself on. 9 of their faces showed up, one after the other. They've been showing on repeat ever since. I didn't wake you guys earlier; I figured you could use all the rest you could get."
I stared in horror at the faces flashing across the screen, along with their corresponding numbers. 9 boys and girls that had been alive 12 hours earlier. They had died as part of a Game. My hatred for the audience of the Games increased. What kind of people found the murder of children entertaining?
The boy from 5, Edgar, was the only one of the group of 10 whose face hadn't shown up. He was the lone survivor, still trapped somewhere outside of safety. I shivered at the thought of the loneliness and sheer terror that he must have experienced as he watched each and every one of his friends die horribly.
"We have to go looking for him," I murmured. "We can't leave him out there alone. He's still alive as far as we know and might be injured."
"Agreed," Cato murmured. "It looks like we still have an hour before the sun rises. Peeta, Katniss, get started on breakfast and make extra for us to take into the Mazes. We'll go as far as we can today but we need to be back before sunset. Glimmer and Marvel, you've been up all night. Go get some rest and I'll wake one of you up before we leave. I'll take Clove and Katniss into the Maze with me again."
"I want to come too," Peeta said, clenching his jaw.
"Honestly, Peeta, I could use your help here," Marvel said sheepishly. "You're better with the younger kids than I am and I have a feeling once they realize fully what's going on here, they'll want to help in the search party for Edgar."
"I'll go then," a quiet, deep voice announced.
I turned and spotted Thresh glaring at us from the stairway. I was surprised to see him as he was one of the only ones that had kept to himself most of this time. The only person I ever saw him speak to was Rue.
"You guys will need some muscle if you get caught in a fight with whatever's out there," he continued despite our surprised stares.
"Welcome aboard," Cato replied, striding foward and shaking Thresh's hand.
Just as I scraped the last of my eggs off my plate with a slice of buttered toast, the increasingly familiar rumblings began again just as the sun peaked over the Wall. Cato immediately shot out of his seat, ran to the front door, and stuck his head outside.
"Gates have been opened," he shouted back to us. "Let's go."
I pushed back my chair and made to follow him.
"Wait," Peeta said, grabbing my elbow.
He handed me a black pack.
"There's enough food and water in there for the 4 of you for today," he said. "Be careful out there, Katniss."
Smiling reassuringly, I felt very touched by his concern and pulled him in for a quick hug.
"See you when we get back," I whispered. Turning quickly to jog to the door, I missed the light blush that colored his cheeks when I let go.
Cato was waiting impatiently by the Maze entrance that the 10 boys had disappeared into the day before.
"Thresh, I brought out some of the weapons from the shed in the back," he said, nodding toward a shiny pile of steel. "Ideally you'd be able to choose the weapon you want to take but I don't want to waste any time."
Thresh nodded at Cato before frowning his way to the weapons. He quickly glanced over the stash before picking up a curved sword, tempered into a semicircle. He slashed the air a few times before giving a satisfied grunt.
"Ready."
Cato led the way into the maze, hacking down some ivy so we could mark our progress.
"Wouldn't we make better time if we split up, Cato?" Clove asked.
"We'd cover more maze but I don't want to take any risks of losing someone else out here," he replied, squeezing the hilt of his sword. "Keep your eyes and ears open."
We wandered the maze for almost an hour and a half before we came across a disturbed section of wall. The ground was littered with leaves and it seemed some sort of struggle had occurred.
"You think they were here?" I asked, staring down at the gouges in the grass.
"Who else could it be?" Clove snorted.
"Why didn't we pick up their trail earlier?" I questioned. "There should have been signs that a herd of children passed through this area but this is the first sign that something had happened here we've seen all day."
"Well let's not waste an opportunity," Cato said, jogging after the trail of scarred grass.
With each turn of the Maze, the grass became more disturbed until we were simply stumbling over chunks of grass and overturned clumps of dirt.
"Stop."
I froze at Cato's whispered order, halfway through a step. Concentrating on keeping my balance over the rough terrain, I failed to notice that the grass and dirt had somehow managed to spray up onto the ivy covering the walls. Following Cato's tense gaze down the corridor of the Maze, my anger froze into shock.
The ground ahead was muddied by blood. That was where the 9 boys were killed by whatever roamed the Maze halls. Scraps of fabric could be seen poking through the gory mess. Cato slowly walked forward and picked one up.
"Seven," he muttered before angrily tossing the wet material back to the ground. "Let's keep moving. It's clear they came this way and there could be another kid still alive out here."
I tried to make my way as gingerly around the gore as I could but by the time we made it past, our shoes were covered in a combination of grass, mud, and blood. I tried to ignore this fact as I followed Cato's back, biting back the sudden nausea. I definitely wasn't built for this.
At noon, I stopped everyone and distributed sandwiches and replenished water. We ate quickly and soon was back on the trail. Feeling slightly sleepy from my full stomach and lack of real sleep, I hypnotically marched after the others, falling back slightly.
"Keep up, Katniss," Clove shouted back to me, annoyed. "We don't-"
She was cut off by familiar, bone-chilling shrieks from directly behind us. I turned and came face to face with what appeared to be a giant, brown slug. It was translucent and left a trail of slime behind it as it moved. But unlike any slug I had ever seen, it was covered in metal arms tipped by pincers, sharp points, and rotating saw blades that grotesquely protruded from every angle on its body.
"Run!" I shouted, sprinting as fast as I could away from it.
"How the hell did it sneak up on us?" Cato bellowed. He took up the rear, pushing everyone forward in front of him.
The ground rumbled as the giant slug came after us, squealing the entire way and brandishing its assortment of weapons.
"Katniss, try to take it down with an arrow!" Clove screamed.
Steeling my nerves, I pulled an arrow out of its quiver and strung it on the bow clumsily, still running full tilt. I slowed down just slightly enough to allow Cato to run past me and skidded to a halt.
Aiming quickly and hastily, I launched an arrow and paused just long enough to watch it hit the slug squarely in the front of its "face," get sucked into its body with a mild squelch, and disappear entirely.
"No good!" I informed the others. "It's squishy on the inside. I doubt any of our weapons will do much against it."
Cursing, Cato again fell to the rear.
"I'll slow it down and you guys try to find a way around it and back to our trail. Head back to the house and keep everyone inside."
"No way, Cato," Clove replied. "Nobody gets left behind."
Grunting, Cato nodded and told us to run faster. We managed to put a few yards between us and the slug when we came up on an opening in the Wall that led to a brilliant light source.
I paused in front of it, hypnotized. It was completely open and blue. Outside of the Maze was…nothing. It appeared to be floating high above the Earth in the sky. I could see signs of mountains and trees through a light veil of haze. A cold wind blew through the opening and I was astounded to see a little pink songbird flit past me, entirely unaware of our predicament.
What is this place?
"Katniss!"
I heard Cato's shouted warning shortly before I registered the shriek of the slug just a few feet away from me. I spun toward it and quickly strung an arrow onto my bow, immediately realizing that nothing I did could save me. I looked behind me at the open sky, contemplating simply leaping to my death rather than being trampled by a giant mound of brown pudding.
Just as the slug's mechanical arms reached for my head, it jerked backward, letting out a loud screech.
"Katniss, go!" Thresh's voice thundered from behind the slug.
I ran around to his voice and found him and Cato hacking away at the tail. The slug was too large to be able to turn around in the narrow corridors of the Maze so it reversed, trying to run over the two boys instead.
"This is getting us nowhere," Cato grunted as he sunk the entire length of his sword into the slug's body, only to watch it completely sink into the gelatinous goop. "Shit, we need another idea."
"Lure it to the opening in the Maze and let it drop," I shouted, shooting an arrow pointlessly at a metal saw that grazed over Thresh's head.
"How the hell-" Cato started before we heard "Come this way you giant pile of turd!" from Clove. She had somehow maneuvered her way in front of the slug and was drawing it away from us.
"Clove, you have to-" I shouted.
"I know what I have to do, just shut up and let me concentrate."
The slug was only a few yards away from her but we watched, astonished, as it seemed to shrink into itself until it formed a ball. It retracted all of its arms into its body and, at an alarming speed, rolled directly toward Clove.
We heard Clove's startled scream as it approached her and, for a brief second, she was framed in the bright light outside of the Maze before she and the slug disappeared down the door.
"Clove!" Cato screamed, bolting toward the opening, the rest of us hot on his heels.
My stomach sank and hot tears threatened to spill across my cheeks. Another gone. Another one of us taken by the sadistic Games.
"Cato, get me the hell up!" Clove's faint voice rang out from under our feet.
I saw Cato bend down to grasp something and then pulled up an unharmed, but slightly disheveled, Clove. He pulled her into a tight hug before shoving her roughly against the ivy covered walls of the Maze behind him.
"Don't ever do that again," he growled inches from her face.
"Would you rather have died?" she sneered.
"Stop this now," Thresh hissed, his face pointed to the sky. "We only have a couple of hours before the gates close again. If we don't hurry now, we'll never make it."
"It's a good thing that the slug left us a good trail, then," Cato replied. "Let's go. We don't stop. We'll run 5 minutes, walk 10 minutes. Stick together."
He took off at a brisk job, the rest of us following. Clove pulled up beside me.
"There was something odd about the sky under the Maze," she announced, eyes boring into Cato's head.
"Odd how?" I asked. "Did the fall kill the slug?"
"That's the odd thing. It didn't reach the ground. It disappeared. I was concentrating on keeping my grip on the ledge of the Maze when the slug fell but I did see a black hole closing where it should have landed."
"That is strange," Cato replied. "Keep your concentration on running but keep that memory fresh in your mind. I suspect the others will want details when we get back."
Alternating between jogging and a fast walk, we managed to return to our ivy trail in less than 30 minutes. We took a couple of minutes to catch our breaths and sip at what remained of our water. I had dropped the pack Peeta had given me while being chased by the slug and we had found its tattered and flattened remains along the way.
The light was fading quickly and I was exhausted after hours of fast paced movement. Cato always stayed behind us, his shouted words of encouragement eventually turning into panted curses. I stumbled so many times that eventually Thresh just kept my left arm in his strong hand, simultaneously keeping me upright and pulling me forward.
Just as the sun was disappearing behind the Wall, we stumbled up to the entrance of to our home in the Maze.
"Holy crap, I thought we'd never make it pant," panted Clove. She led the way into the clearing, collapsing into the grass just inside of our homestead.
"You're back!" Peeta greeted us from the front door of the house. "There's something that needs your immediate attention."
"Can't it wait," Cato grumbled, hands heavy on his knees and chest heaving. He fell onto the ground next to Clove, his head cushioned on her stomach. "We've had almost no rest for the entire day."
"I think it's best if you guys came now," he insisted.
Thresh kicked at Cato's shins until he finally got up, halfheartedly throwing a punch Thresh's way. Peeta gave me a hand from my prone position along the edge of the Wall and led us upstairs to the boys' floor into the room marked 5/6. As he opened the door, I gasped.
Edgar, the lone survivor of the group of 10, lay limply in his bed, his veins bulging and tinged with green against his pale, sweaty skin.
Author's Note: Thanks for reading and happy summer adventures!