Chapter 9

I felt the ground underneath me shift and a crack appeared between my feet. I looked down as it spread further and further. I ran. Looking over my shoulder I saw the careers running in the opposite direction, which was good news, but as I saw the water starting to hiss through the cracks in what I now saw was a large dam, I knew that there was much more bad news.

The water started pooling down the bottom of the dam, it was going to flood. I briefly wondered how many of the tributes could swim and silently thanked my father for forcing me to learn from him when I was younger and had just wanted to play with dolls.

One of the cracks down the bottom, opposite where I was standing, widened and water started to gush in with force. I heard a scream and saw a girl from the lesser districts being pushed out by a jet of water. There was a canon. I had to stay at the top.

After a minute the bowl was halfway full and some of the tributes were already swimming, trying to avoid the huge jets that would force them down to the bottom. The cornucopia was buried underwater. There was another canon. This was going to be a short games.

I unslung my pack and quickly sifted through it, I was going to have to pack a little lighter. Keeping calm as the water poured in proved to be difficult. I discarded the pack as it would limit my arms too much. I found some sort of nutrient bars and shoved them down the front of my clothes, which I now recognised as a wetsuit. I discarded the bow too; it would be useless once it was wet. I had several knives but I only kept the lightest ones.

The water continued to rise.

I tried to think desperately about all I had been taught about survival. I found the water bottle and noticed that it had a strap on it that I tied around my wrist.

The water was only a metre from the top. There was another canon.

I threw on a jacket, I remember the cold being a problem when you are in water. I felt the wall beneath me crumble and I jumped into the ice cold water just as another canon went off in the distance.

The breath was almost knocked out of me and as I saw the top of the bowl disappear and wash away my pack and bow and remaining supplies. It only occurred to me then that the waterproof material I had found in it only an hour ago might have been a boat. I could have kicked myself.

Everything looked different on the water level. I could barely see anything in front of me. As I looked around in the dark, I saw Acacia and my heart stopped. After a moment I noticed that she was thrashing and struggling. She could clearly swim, her technique was good, but still she was sinking. She started to scream and struggle and I saw the problem. On her back was a huge heavy axe and a sword crossed. They were pulling her under.

It momentarily crossed my mind to swim at her, pull the stupid things off, save her from herself. But then I remembered where we were. This was the Hunger Games; you didn't save people, especially careers, in the Hunger Games.

I watched as she tired quickly. Her head went under once and popped back up as she struggled. She tried to get the weapons off her back, but she couldn't lift them high enough.

She went under again, for longer this time. And then came back up, gasping and screaming. She went under a third time. And she didn't come back up again. A canon fired.

I felt like screaming myself, but I refused to let everyone know where I was. Instead I tried to think. I looked around; there was definitely no land. If only the cornucopia had floated then there might have been hope, but there was just a vast expanse of water. I wondered if they had meant to flood the arena, it would surely be a pretty quick games if they did. But then again, maybe that was what they wanted.

I pulled myself up out of the water as much as I could. I could see Jasper about fifty metres to my left. In the water he no longer felt threatening. The rest just looked like floating heads. There were six in total. Six plus me so there was only seven tributes left. This Hunger Games was going to be so short.

I looked down below me. The water was remarkably clear and I could see the bowl with the cornucopia sitting happily down in it. There were several dark shapes down in the water and I hoped that there were no awful sea monsters placed there to make the games even shorter.

One brushed past my leg and I held back another scream, it felt strange, almost slippery. It could have been a large fish. I looked down, making sure that my night glasses didn't slip off my face and I breathed a deep sigh of relief. It was a bag. It was some sort of supply bag that was softly floating in the water.

I reached down and pulled it up. My lungs were already beginning to hurt with the effort of staying full to keep me floating. How much longer could any of us last?

I opened the pack and felt around inside. There was some waterproof fabric. My heart leapt. If the capitol had always intended on us being flooded, they would surely have provided some sort of water survival things. I opened the fabric, hoping desperately that it would be a raft.

It wasn't.

But it was something useful anyway. I found an opening and blew inside it. It blew up slightly. Sighing, I kept on blowing it up, checking over my shoulder every two blows for any signs of an enemy. Everyone seemed concerned with keeping themselves afloat, however, and I remained undisturbed.

After a while, I had a blown up….thing.

I had no idea what it was, but it was floating. It wasn't large enough to hold my entire body, but it was enough to lie on with my legs dangling a bit over the edge. It was also awkwardly shaped so I had to be careful to keep in a certain position to stay on it. It was better than nothing, though, and I was thankful.

From my now, higher position in the water, I could see that everyone else was doing similar things; trying to find something to keep them afloat and keeping as far away from each other as possible.

In the bowl, on the concrete, the careers were easily superior. Even up in the climbing wall part of the bowl, the careers had it. But in the water…this was a completely different game. No human is comfortable in water for a long time, not even careers.

I lay my head down onto the floating thing, my new best friend, and I felt myself drift off into a light sleep. No one was going to attack until they were sure that they had themselves sorted out first. Looking around at the remaining six other tributes I could tell that that would be a while.

I fell asleep thinking that our games must have broken some sort of record. Seventeen dead on the first day of the games, surely that was unprecedented. But I realised I didn't care; it was good that these games were going quickly. The sooner they were over, the sooner I could win and get back to my family in District One.