Kombat Games

by KingKhrystopher

Oh yes. But so much more different. Takeda and Kylin.

2. Chapter 2

PART II

"THE GAMES"

Chapter Ten

For a moment, the cameras hold on Kylin's downcast eyes as what he says sinks in. Then I can see my face, mouth half open in a mix of surprise and protest, magnified on every screen as I realize, Me! He means me! I press my lips together and stare at the floor, hoping this will conceal the emotions starting to boil up inside of me.

"Oh, that is a piece of bad luck," says Johnny, and there's a real edge of pain in his voice. The crowd is murmuring in agreement, a few have even given agonized cries.

"It's not good," agrees Kylin.

"Well, I don't think any of us can blame you. It'd be hard not to fall for that young man," says Johnny. "She didn't know?"

Kylin shakes his head. "Not until now." I allow my eyes to flicker up to the screen long enough to see that the blush on my cheeks is unmistakable.

"Wouldn't you love to pull her back out here and get a response?" Johnny asks the audience. The crowd screams assent."Sadly, rules are rules, and Takeda Takahashi's time has been spent. Well, best of luck to you, Kylin Jameson, and I think I speak for all of Panem when I say our hearts go with yours." The roar of the crowdis deafening. Kylin has absolutely wiped the rest of us off the map with his declaration of love for me. When the audience finally settles down, he chokes out a quiet "Thank you" and returns to his seat. We stand for the anthem. I have to raise my head out of the required respect and cannot avoid seeing that every screen is now dominated by a shot of Kylin and me, separated by a few feet that in the viewers' heads can never be breached. Poor tragic us.

But I know better.

After the anthem, the tributes file back into the Training Center lobby and onto the elevators. I make sure to veer into a car that does not contain Kylin.

The crowd slows our entourages of stylists and mentors and chaperones, so we have only each other for company. No one speaks. My elevator stops to deposit four tributes before I am alone and then find the doors opening on the twelfth floor. Kylin has only just stepped from his car when I slam my fist into his face, hooking his haw. He loses his balance and crashes into an ugly urn filled with fake flowers. The urn tips and shatters into hundreds of tiny pieces. Kylin lands in the shards, and blood immediately flows from his hands.

"What was that for?" he says, aghast.

"You had no right! No right to go saying those things about me!" I shout at him.

Now the elevators open and the whole crew is there, Mileena, Kano, Cinna, and Portia.

"What's going on?" says Mileena, a note of hysteria in her voice. "Did you fall?"

"After she shoved me," says Kylin as Mileena and Cinna help him up.

Kano turns on me. "Shoved him?"

"This was your idea, wasn't it? Turning me into some kind of fool in front of the entire country?" I answer.

"It was my idea," says Kylin, wincing as he pulls spikes of pottery from his palms. "Kano just helped me with it."

"Yes, Kano is very helpful. To you!" I say.

"You are a fool," Kano says in disgust. "Do you think he hurt you? That boy just gave you something you could never achieve on your own."

"He made me look weak!" I say.

"He made you look desirable! And let's face it, you can use all the help you can get in that department. You were about as romantic as dirt until he said he wanted you. Now they all do. You're all they're talking about. The star-crossed gay lovers from District Two!" says Kano.

"But we're not star-crossed lovers! And I don't like guys," I say.

Kano grabs my shoulders and pins me against the wall. "Who cares? It's all a big show. It's all how you're perceived. The most I could say about you after your interview was that you were nice enough, although that in itself was a small miracle. Now I can say you're a heartbreaker. Oh, oh, oh, how the girls back home fall longingly at your feet. Even the boys check you out. Which do you think will get you more sponsors?"

The smell of wine on his breath makes me sick. I shove his hands off my shoulders and step away, trying to clear my head.

Cinna comes over and puts his arm around me. "He's right, Takeda."

I don't know what to think. "I should have been told, so I didn't look so stupid."

"No, your reaction was perfect. If you'd known, it wouldn't have read as real," says Portia.

"He's just worried about his boyfriend," says Kylin gruffly, tossing away a bloody piece of the urn. "But he doesn't like guys."

My cheeks burn again at the thought of Jin. "I don't have a boyfriend."

"Whatever," says Kylin. "But I bet he's smart enough to know a bluff when he sees it. Besides you didn't say you loved me. So what does it matter?" The words are sinking in. My anger fading. I'm torn now between thinking I've been used and thinking I've been given an edge. Kano is right. I survived my interview, but what was I really? A silly girl spinning in a sparkling, dress. Giggling. The only moment of any substance I hail was when I talked about Khal.

Compare that with Reiko, his silent, deadly power, and I'm forgettable. Silly and sparkly and forgettable.

No, not entirely forgettable, I have my 21 in training.

But now Kylin has made me an object of love. Not just his. To hear him tell it I have many admirers.

And if the audience really thinks we're in love... as gay lovers ... I remember how strongly they responded to his confession. Star-crossed lovers. Kano is right, they eat that stuff up in the Capitol. Suddenly I'm worried that I didn't react properly.

"After he said he loved me, did you think I could be in love with him, too?" I ask.

"I did," says Portia. "The way you avoided looking at the cameras, the blush."

They others me in, agreeing.

"You're golden, sweetheart. You're going to have sponsors lined up around the block," says Kano.

I'm embarrassed about my reaction. I force myself to acknowledge Kylin. "I'm sorry I shoved you."

"Doesn't matter," he shrugs. "Although it's technically illegal."

"Are your hands okay?" I ask.

"They'll be all right," he says.

In the silence that follows, delicious smells of our dinner waft in from the dining room. "Come on, let's eat," says Kano. We all follow him to the table and take our places. But then Kylin is bleeding too heavily, and Portia leads him off for medical treatment. We start the cream and rose-petal soup without them. By the time we've finished, they're back. Kylin's hands are wrapped in bandages. I can't help feeling guilty. Tomorrow we will be in the arena.

He has done me a favor and I have answered with an injury. Will I never stop owing him?

After dinner, we watch the replay in the sitting room.

I seem frilly and shallow, twirling and giggling in my dress, although the others assure me I am charming.

Kylin actually is charming and then utterly winning as the boy in love. And there I am, blushing and confused, made beautiful by Cinna's hands, desirable by Kylin's confession, tragic by circumstance, and by all accounts, unforgettable.

When the anthem finishes and the screen goes dark, a hush falls on the room. Tomorrow at dawn, we will be roused and prepared for the arena. The actual Games don't start until ten because so many of the Capitol residents rise late. But Kylin and I must make an early start. There is no telling how far we will travel to the arena that has been prepared for this year's Games.

I know Kano and Mileena will not be going with us.

As soon as they leave here, they'll be at the Games Headquarters, hopefully madly signing up our sponsors, working out a strategy on how and when to deliver the gifts to us. Cinna and Portia will travel with us to the very spot from which we will be launched into the arena. Still final good-byes must be said here.

Mileena takes both of us by the hand and, with actual tears in her eyes, wishes us well. Thanks us for being the best tributes it has ever been her privilege to sponsor. And then, because it's Mileena and she's apparently required by law to say something awful, she adds, "I wouldn't be at all surprised if I finally get promoted to a decent district next year!" Then she kisses us each on the cheek and hurries out, overcome with either the emotional parting or the possible improvement of her fortunes.

Kano crosses his arms and looks us both over.

"Any final words of advice?" asks Kylin.

"When the gong sounds, get the hell out of there. Neither of you is up to the blood bath at the Cornucopia. Just clear out, put as much distance as you can between yourselves and the others, and find a source of water," he says. "Got it?"

"And after that?" I ask.

"Stay alive," says Kano. It's the same advice he gave us on the train, but he's not drunk and laughing this time. And we only nod. What else is there to say?

When I head to my room, Kylin lingers to talk to Portia. I'm glad. Whatever strange words of parting we exchange can wait until tomorrow. My covers are drawn back, but there is no sign of the redheaded Avox girl. I wish I knew her name. I should have asked it. She could write it down maybe. Or act it out.

But perhaps that would only result in punishment for her.

I take a shower and scrub the gold paint, the up, the scent of beauty from my body. All that remains of the design-team's efforts are the flames on my nails. I decide to keep them as reminder of who I am to the audience. Takeda, the man on fire.

Perhaps it will give me something to hold on to in the days to come.

I just stay comepletely nude and climb into bed.

It takes me about five seconds to realize I'll never fall asleep. And I need sleep desperately because in the arena every moment I give in to fatigue will be an invitation to death.

It's no good. One hour, two, three pass, and my eyelids refuse to get heavy. I can't stop trying to imagine exactly what terrain I'll be thrown into.

Desert? Swamp? A frigid wasteland? Above all I am hoping for trees, which may afford me some means of concealment and food and shelter, Often there are trees because barren landscapes are dull and the Games resolve too quickly without them. But what will the climate be like? What traps have the Gamemakers hidden to liven up the slower moments? And then there are my fellow tributes ...

The more anxious I am to find sleep, the more it eludes me. Finally, I am too restless to even stay in bed. I pace the floor, heart beating too fast, breathing too short. My room feels like a prison cell. If I don't get air soon, I'm going to start to throw things again. I run down the hall to the door to the roof. It's not only unlocked but ajar. Perhaps someone forgot to close it, but it doesn't matter. The energy field enclosing the roof prevents any desperate form of escape. And I'm not looking to escape, only to fill my lungs with air. I want to see the sky and the moon on the last night that no one will be hunting me.

The roof is not lit at night, but as soon as my bare feel reach its tiled surface I see his silhouette, black against the lights that shine endlessly in the Capitol.

There's quite a commotion going on down in the streets, music and singing and car horns, none of which I could hear through the thick glass window panels in my room. I look over the force field, completely naked, feeling oh so free. Except I'm caged. I'm stuck competing in this hell hole of a Capitol, but Kano tells me tomorrow I will have a surprise as I start to leave for the Games. I stumble back to my room, going to sleep easily.

...

I don't see Kylin in the morning. Cinna comes to me before dawn, gives me a simple shift to wear, and guides me to the roof. My final dressing and preparations will be alone in the catacombs under the arena itself. A hovercraft appears out of thin air, just like the one did in the woods the day I saw the redheaded Avox girl captured, and a ladder drops down. I place my hands and feet on the lower rungs and instantly it's as if I'm frozen. Some sort of current glues me to the ladder while I'm lifted safely inside.

I expect the ladder to release me then, but I'm still stuck when a woman in a white coat approaches me carrying a syringe. "This is just your tracker, Takeda. The stiller you are, the more efficiently I can place it," she says.

Still? I'm a statue. But that doesn't prevent me from feeling the sharp stab of pain as the needle inserts the metal tracking device deep under the skin on the inside of my forearm. Now the Gamemakers will always be able to trace my whereabouts in the arena. Wouldn't want to lose a tribute.

As soon as the tracker's in place, the ladder releases me. The woman disappears and Cinna is retrieved from the roof, An Avox boy comes in and directs us to a room where breakfast has been laid out. Despite the tension in my stomach, I eat as much as I can, although none of the delectable food makes any impression on me. I'm so nervous, I could be eating coal dust. The one thing that distracts me at all is the view from the windows as we sail over the city and then to the wilderness beyond. This is what birds see.

Only they're free and safe. The very opposite of me.

The ride lasts about half an hour before the windows black out, suggesting that we're nearing the arena.

The hovercraft lands and Cinna and I go back to the ladder, only this time it leads down into a tube underground, into the catacombs that lie beneath the arena. We follow instructions to my destination, a chamber for my preparation. In the Capitol, they call it the Launch Room. In the districts, it's referred to as the Stockyard. The place animals go before slaughter.

Everything is brand-new, I will be the first and only tribute to use this Launch Room. The arenas are historic sites, preserved after the Games. Popular destinations for Capitol residents to visit, to vacation.

Go for a month, rewatch the Games, tour the catacombs, visit the sites where the deaths took place. You can even take part in reenactments. They say the food is excellent.

I struggle to keep my breakfast down as I shower and clean my teeth. Cinna does my hair. Then the clothes arrive, and I love it. It is a suit if armor, with special wraps and straps and the like. But the best part? My whips are on it. They are coiled around a big wheel on my back, and flow through the suit of armor, more than twenty feet of whips. (Default). nearly Cinna has had no say in my outfit, but says that he and Kano had it ordered from a sponsor.

The boots, worn over skintight socks, are better than I could have hoped for. Soft leather is on the insides of this armor, making it formfit to my body. The shoes have a narrow flexible rubber sole with treads though. Good for running.

I think I'm finished when Cinna pulls the gold dragon pin from his pocket. I had completely forgotten about it.

"Where did you get that?" I ask.

"Off the outfit you wore on the train," he says. I remember now taking it off my mother's suit, pinning it to the shirt. "It's your district token, right?" I nod and he fastens it on my shirt. "There, you're all set. Move around. Make sure everything feels comfortable." I walk, run in a circle, swing my arms about. "Yes, it's fine. Fits perfectly."

"Then there's nothing to do but wait for the call," says Cinna. "Unless you think you could eat any more?" I turn down food but accept a glass of water that I take tiny sips of as we wait on a couch.

Nervousness seeps into terror as I anticipate what is to come. I could be dead, flat-out dead, in an hour.

Not even. My fingers obsessively trace the hard little lump on my forearm where the woman injected the tracking device. I press on it, even though it hurts, I press on it so hard a small bruise begins to form.

"Do you want to talk, Takeda?" Cinna asks.

I shake my head but after a moment hold out my hand to him. Cinna encloses it in both of his. And this is how we sit until a pleasant female voice announces it's time to prepare for launch.

Still clenching one of Cinna's hands, I walk over and stand on the circular metal plate. "Remember what Kano said. Run, find water. The rest will follow," he says. I nod. "And remember this. I'm not allowed to bet, but if I could, my money would be on you."

"Truly?" I whisper.

"Truly," says Cinna. He leans down and kisses me on the forehead, stirring feelings inside me. "Good luck, man on fire." And then a glass cylinder is lowering around me, breaking our handhold, cutting him off from me. He taps his fingers under his chin. Head high.

I lift my chin and stand as straight as I can. The cylinder begins to rise. For maybe fifteen seconds, I'm in darkness and then I can feel the metal plate pushing me out of the cylinder, into the open air. For a moment, my eyes are dazzled by the bright sunlight and I'm conscious only of a strong wind with the hopeful smell of pine trees.

Then I hear the legendary announcer, Kotal Kahn, as his voice booms all around me.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games begin!"

Chapter Eleven

Sixty seconds. That's how long we're required to stand on our metal circles before the sound of a gong releases us. Step off before the minute is up, and land mines blow your legs off. Sixty seconds to take in the ring of tributes all equidistant from the Cornucopia, a giant golden horn shaped like a cone with a curved tail, the mouth of which is at least twenty feet high, spilling over with the things that will give us life and death here in the arena. Food, containers of water, weapons, medicine, garments, fire starters. Strewn around the Cornucopia are other supplies, their value decreasing the farther they are from the horn. For instance, only a few steps from my feet lays a three-foot square of plastic. Certainly it could be of some use in a downpour. But there in the mouth, I can see a tent pack that would protect from almost any sort of weather. If I had the guts to go in and fight for it against the other twenty-three tributes. Which I have been instructed not to do.

We're on a flat, open stretch of ground. A plain of hard-packed dirt. Behind the tributes across from me, I can see nothing, indicating either a steep downward slope or even cliff. To my right lies a lake. To my left and back, spars piney woods. This is where Kano would want me to go. Immediately.

I hear his instructions in my head. "Just clear out, put as much distance as you can between yourselves and the others, and find a source of water." But it's tempting, so tempting, when I see the bounty waiting there before me. And I know that if I don't get it, someone else will. That the Career Tributes who survive the bloodbath will divide up most of these life-sustaining spoils. Something catches my eye. There, resting on a mound of blanket rolls, is a silver sheath of arrows and a bow, already strung, just waiting to be engaged. That's mine, I think. It's meant for me.

I'm fast. I can sprint faster than any of the girls in our school although a couple can beat me in distance races. But this forty-yard length, this is what I am built for. I know I can get it, I know I can reach it first, but then the question is how quickly can I get out of there? By the time I've scrambled up the packs and grabbed the weapons, others will have reached the horn, and one or two I might be able to pick off, but say there's a dozen, at that close range, they could take me down with the spears and the clubs. Or their own powerful fists.

Still, I won't be the only target. I'm betting many of the other tributes would pass up a smaller boy, even one who scored a 21 in training, to take out their more fierce adversaries, like the twenty built guys.

Kano has never seen me run. Maybe if he had he'd tell me to go for it. Get the weapon. Since that's the very weapon that might be my salvation. And I only see one bow in that whole pile. I know the minute must be almost up and will have to decide what my strategy will be and I find myself positioning my feet to run, not away into the stir rounding forests but toward the pile, toward the bow. When suddenly I notice Kylin, he's about five tributes to my right, quite a fair distance, still I can tell he's looking at me and I think he might be shaking his head. But the sun's in my eyes, and while I'm puzzling over it the gong rings out.

And I've missed it! I've missed my chance! Because those extra couple of seconds I've lost by not being ready are enough to change my mind about going in. I lost my bow and arrow! But then again, I have my whips.

My feet shuffle for a moment, confused at the direction my brain wants to take and then I lunge forward, scoop up the sheet of plastic and a loaf of bread. The pickings are so small and I'm so angry with Kylin for distracting me that I sprint in twenty yards to retrieve a bright orange backpack that could hold anything because I can't stand leaving with virtually nothing.

A boy, I think from District 9, reaches the pack at the same time I do and for a brief time we grapple for it and then he coughs, splattering my face with blood. I stagger back, repulsed by the warm, sticky spray.

Then the boy slips to the ground. That's when I see the knife in his back. Already other tributes have reached the Cornucopia and are spreading out to attack. Yes, the green girl from District 1, ten yards away, running toward me, one hand clutching a glaive. I've seen her throw in training. She never misses. And I'm her next target.

All the general fear I've been feeling condenses into at immediate fear of this girl, this predator who might kill me in seconds. Adrenaline shoots through me and I sling the pack over one shoulder and run full-speed for the woods. I can hear the blade whistling toward me and reflexively hike the pack up to protect my head. The blade lodges in the pack. Both straps on my shoulders now, I make for the trees. Somehow I know the girl will not pursue me. That she'll be drawn back into the Cornucopia before all the good stuff is gone. A grin crosses my face. Thanks for the knife, I think.

At the edge of the woods I turn for one instant to survey the field. About a dozen or so tributes are hacking away at one another at the horn. Several lie dead already on the ground. Those who have taken flight are disappearing into the trees or into the void opposite me. I continue running until the woods have hidden me from the other tributes then slow into a steady jog that I think I can maintain for a while. For the next few hours, I alternate between jogging and walking, putting as much distance as I can between myself and my competitors. I free the knife — it's a fine one with a long sharp blade, serrated near the handle, which will make it handy for sawing through things — and slide it into my belt. I don't dare stop to examine the contents of the pack yet. I just keep moving, pausing only to check for pursuers.

I can go a long time. I know that from my days in the woods. But I will need water. That was Kano's second instruction, and since I sort of botched the first, I keep a sharp eye out for any sign of it. No luck.

The woods begin to evolve, and the pines are intermixed with a variety of trees, some I recognize, some completely foreign to me. At one point, I hear a noise and pull my knife, thinking I may have to defend myself, but I've only startled a rabbit. "Good to see you," I whisper. If there's one rabbit, there could be hundreds just waiting to be snared.

The ground slopes down. I don't particularly like this. Valleys make me feel trapped. I want to be high, like in the hills around DistriKylin, where I can see my enemies approaching. But I have no choice but to keep going.

Funny though, I don't feel too bad. The days of gorging myself have paid off. I've got staying power even though I'm short on sleep. Being in the woods is rejuvenating. I'm glad for the solitude, even though it's an illusion, because I'm probably on-screen right now. Not consistently, but off and on. There are so many deaths to show the first day that a tribute trekking through the woods isn't much to look at. But they'll show me enough to let people know I'm alive, uninjured and on the move. One of the heaviest days of betting is the opening, when the initial casualties come in. But that can't compare to what happens as the field shrinks to a handful of players.

It's late afternoon when I begin to hear the cannons.

Each shot represents a dead tribute. The fighting must have finally stopped at the Cornucopia. And seeing as there were no "Fatalities," to be heard, no one had had to die that way. Fatalities are only performed after a long period of combat, which was civilized fighting. After winning, the winner would have the choice to "Finish" their opponent, which everyone did, I mean, one of the times someone didn't, just as the final four were getting together to leave, the person that wasn't finished came out and killed the person that saved him from death.

They never collect the bloodbath bodies until the killers have dispersed. On the opening day, they don't even fire the cannons until the initial fighting's over because it's too hard to keep track of the fatalities. I allow myself to pause, panting, as I count the shots.

One ... two ... three ... on and on until they reach eleven. Eleven dead in all. Thirteen left to play. My fingernails scrape at the dried blood the boy from District 9 coughed into my face. He's gone, certainly. I wonder about Kylin. Has he lasted through the day?

I'll know in a few hours. When they project the dead's images into the sky for the rest of us to see.

All of a sudden, I'm overwhelmed by the thought that Kylin may be already lost, bled white, collected, and in the process of being transported back to the Capitol to be cleaned up, redressed, and shipped in a simple wooden box back to District 2. No longer here. Heading home. I try hard to remember if I saw him once the action started. But the last image I can conjure up is Kylin shaking his head as the gong rang out.

Maybe it's better, if he's gone already. He had no confidence he could win. And I will not end up with the unpleasant task of killing him. Maybe it's better if he's out of this for good.

I slump down next to my pack, exhausted. I need to go through it anyway before night falls. See what I have to work with. As I unhook the straps, I can feel it's sturdily made although a rather unfortunate color. This orange will practically glow in the dark. I make a mental note to camouflage it first thing tomorrow.

I flip open the flap. What I want most, right at this moment, is water. Kano's directive to immediately find water was not arbitrary. I won't last long without it. For a few days, I'll be able to function with unpleasant symptoms of dehydration, but after that I'll deteriorate into helplessness and be dead in a week, tops. I carefully lay out the provisions. One thin black sleeping bag that reflects body heat. A pack of crackers. A pack of dried beef strips. A bottle of iodine. A box of wooden matches. A small coil of wire. A pair of sunglasses. And a half-gallon plastic bottle with a cap for carrying water that's bone water. How hard would it have been for them to fill up the bottle? I do this at home, but there are always streams to drink from, or snow to melt if it should come to it.

As I refill my pack I have an awful thought. The lake.

The one I saw while I was waiting for the gong to sound. What if that's the only water source in the arena? That way they'll guarantee drawing us in to fight. The lake is a full day's journey from where I sit now, a much harder journey with nothing to drink.

And then, even if I reach it, it's sure to be heavily guarded by some of the Career Tributes. I'm about to panic when I remember the rabbit I startled earlier today. It has to drink, too. I just have to find out where.

Twilight is closing in and I am ill at ease. The trees are too thin to offer much concealment. The layer of pine needles that muffles my footsteps also makes tracking animals harder when I need their trails to find water. And I'm still heading downhill, deeper and deeper into a valley that seems endless.

I'm hungry, too, but I don't dare break into my precious store of crackers and beef yet. Instead, I take my knife and go to work on a pine tree, cutting away the outer bark and scraping off a large handful of the softer inner bark. I slowly chew the stuff as I walk along. After a week of the finest food in the world, it's a little hard to choke down. But I've eaten plenty of pine in my life. I'll adjust quickly.

In another hour, it's clear I've got to find a place to camp. Night creatures are coming out. I can hear the occasional hoot or howl, my first clue that I'll be competing with natural predators for the rabbits. As to whether I'll be viewed as a source of food, it's too soon to tell. There could be any number of animals stalking me at this moment.

But right now, I decide to make my fellow tributes a priority. I'm sure many will continue hunting through the night. Those who fought it out at the Cornucopia will have food, an abundance of water from the lake, torches or flashlights, and weapons they're itching to use. I can only hope I've traveled far and fast enough to be out of range.

Before settling down, I take my wire and set two twitch-up snares in the brush. I know it's risky to be setting traps, but food will go so fast out here. And I can't set snares on the run. Still, I walk another five minutes before making camp.

I pick my tree carefully. A willow, not terribly tall but set in a clump of other willows, offering concealment in those long, flowing tresses. I climb up, sticking to the stronger branches close to the trunk, and find a sturdy fork for my bed. It takes some doing, but I arrange the sleeping bag in a relatively comfortable manner. I place my backpack in the foot of the bag, then slide in after it. As a precaution, I remove my belt, loop it all the way around the branch and my sleeping bag, and refasten it at my waist. Now if I roll over in my sleep, I won't go crashing to the ground.

I'm small enough to tuck the top of the bag over my head, but I put on my hood as well. As night falls, the air is cooling quickly. Despite the risk I took in getting the backpack, I know now it was the right choice.

This sleeping bag, radiating back and preserving my body heat, will be invaluable. I'm sure there are several other tributes whose biggest concern right now is how to stay warm whereas I may actually be able to get a few hours of sleep. If only I wasn't so thirsty ...

Night has just come when I hear the anthem that proceeds the death recap. Through the branches I can see the seal of the Capitol, which appears to be floating in the sky. I'm actually viewing another screen, an enormous one that's transported by of one of their disappearing hovercraft. The anthem fades out and the sky goes dark for a moment. At home, we would be watching full coverage of each and every killing, but that's thought to give an unfair advantage to the living tributes. For instance, if I got my hands on the bow and shot someone, my secret would be revealed to all. No, here in the arena, all we see are the same photographs they showed when they televised our training scores. Simple head shots. But now instead of scores they post only district numbers.

I take a deep breath as the face of the eleven dead tributes begin and tick them off one by one on my fingers.

The first to appear is the girl from District 3. That means that the Career Tributes from 1 have survived, but it also means Kylin has too. No surprise there. Then the second girl from 4, so that means Cassie has survived. I didn't expect that one, usually all the Careers make it through the first day. The girl from District 5 ... I guess the girl couldn't make . Boy tributes from 6 and 7. D'Vorah and Kung Lao are alive, but Liu Kang and Ash'Ram died. And to think, Liu Kang got the number one rank. Both from 8. Boy from 9. Yes, there's the boy who I fought for the backpack. There's the boy from District 10. An elderly man from 11, Shang Tsung, and a man from 12, Fujin. That's it.

The Capitol seal is back with a final musical flourish.

Then darkness and the sounds of the forest resume.

I'm relieved Kylin's alive. I tell myself again that if I get killed, his winning will benefit my mother and Khal the most. This is what I tell myself to explain the conflicting emotions that arise when I think of Kylin.

The gratitude that he gave me an edge by professing his love for me in the interview. The anger at his superiority on the roof. The dread that we may come face-to-face at any moment in this arena.

Eleven dead, but none from District 2. I try to work out who is left. Four Career Tributes to face. Reiko and Tanya. That makes ten of us. The other three I'll figure out tomorrow. Now when it is dark, and I have traveled far, and I am nestled high in this tree, now I must try and rest.

I haven't really slept in two days, and then there's been the long day's journey into the arena. Slowly, I allow my muscles to relax. My eyes to close. The last thing I think is it's lucky I don't snore... .

Snap! The sound of a breaking branch wakes me.

How long have I been asleep? Four hours? Five? The tip of my nose is icy cold. Snap! Snap! What's going on? This is not the sound of a branch under someone's foot, but the sharp crack of one coming from a tree. Snap! Snap! I judge it to be several hundred yards to my right. Slowly, noiselessly, I turn myself in that direction. For a few minutes, there's nothing but blackness and some scuffling. Then I see a spark and a small fire begins to bloom. A pair of hands warms over flames, but I can't make out more than that.

I have to bite my lip not to scream every foul name I know at the fire starter. What are they thinking? A fire at just at nightfall would have been one thing.

Those who battled at the Cornucopia, with their superior strength and surplus of supplies, they couldn't possibly have been near enough to spot the flames then. But now, when they've probably been looking in the woods for hours looking for victims. You might as well be waving a flag and shouting, "Come and get me!"

And here I am a stone's throw from the biggest idiot in the Games. Strapped in a tree. Not daring to flee since my general location has just been broadcast to any killer who cares. I mean, I know it's cold out here and not everybody has a sleeping bag. But then you grit your teeth and stick it out until dawn!

I lay smoldering in my bag for the next couple of hours really thinking that if I can get out of this tree, I won't have the least problem taking out my new neighbor. My instinct has been to flee, not fight. But obviously this person's a hazard. Stupid people are dangerous. And this one probably doesn't have much in the way of weapons while I've got this excellent knife.

The sky is still dark, but I can feel the first signs of dawn approaching. I'm beginning to think we — meaning the person whose death I'm now devising and me — we might actually have gone unnoticed.

Then I hear it. Several pairs of feet breaking into a run. The fire starter must have dozed off. They're on her before she can escape. I know it's a girl now, I can tell by the pleading, the agonized scream that follows.

Then there's laughter and congratulations from several voices. Someone cries out, "Twelve down and eight to go!" which gets a round of appreciative hoots.

So they're fighting in a pack. I'm not really surprised.

Often alliances are formed in the early stages of the Games. The strong band together to hunt down the weak then, when the tension becomes too great, begin to turn on one another. I don't have to wonder too hard who has made this alliance. It'll be the remaining Career Tributes from Districts 1, 4, and 6.

One boy and three girls. The ones who lunched together.

For a moment, I hear them checking the girl for supplies. I can tell by their comments they've found nothing good. I wonder if the victim is Tanya but quickly dismiss the thought. She's much too bright to be building a fire like that.

"Better clear out so they can get the body before it starts stinking." I'm almost certain that's the brutish boy from District 6. There are murmurs of assent and then, to my horror, I hear the pack heading toward me. They do not know I'm here. How could they? And I'm well concealed in the clump of trees. At least while the sun stays down. Then my black sleeping bag will turn from camouflage to trouble. If they just keep moving, they will pass me and be gone in a minute.

But the Careers stop in the clearing about ten yards from my tree. They have flashlights, torches. I can see an arm here, a boot there, through the breaks in the branches. I turn to stone, not even daring to breathe.

Have they spotted me? No, not yet. I can tell from their words their minds are elsewhere.

"Shouldn't we have heard a cannon by now?"

"I'd say yes. Nothing to prevent them from going in immediately."

"Unless she isn't dead."

"She's dead. I stuck her myself."

"Then where's the cannon?"

"Someone should go back. Make sure the job's done."

"Yeah, we don't want to have to track her down twice."

"I said she's dead!"

An argument breaks out until one tribute silences the others. "We're wasting time! I'll go finish her and let's move on!"

I almost fall out of the tree. The voice belongs to Kylin.

Okay, I can stomach that. Seeing all those supplies was tempting. But this ... this other thing. This teaming up with the Career wolf pack to hunt down the rest of us. No one from District 2 would think of doing such a thing! Career tributes are overly vicious, arrogant, better fed, but only because they're the Capitol's lapdogs.

Universally, solidly hated by all but those from their own districts. I can imagine the things they're saying about him back home now. And Kylin had the gall to talk to me about disgrace?

Obviously, the noble boy on the rooftop was playing just one more game with me. But this will be his last.

I will eagerly watch the night skies for signs of his death, if I don't kill him first myself.

The Career tributes are silent until he gets out of ear shot, then use hushed voices.

"Why don't we just kill him now and get it over with?"

"Let him tag along. What's the harm? And he's handy with that knife."

Is he? That's news. What a lot of interesting things I'm learning about my friend Kylin today.

"Besides, he's our best chance of finding him." It takes me a moment to register that the "him" they're referring to is me.

"Why? You think he bought into that sappy romance stuff?"

"He might have. Seemed pretty simpleminded to me.

Every time I think about him spinning around in that gay ass suit, I want to puke."

"Wish we knew how he got that eleven."

"Bet you Lover Boy knows."

The sound of Kylin returning silences them.

"Was she dead?" asks the girl from District 1.

"No. But she is now," says Kylin. Just then, the cannon fires. "Ready to move on?"

The Career pack sets off at a run just as dawn begins to break, and birdsong fills the air. I remain in my awkward position, muscles trembling with exertion for a while longer, then hoist myself back onto my branch. I need to get down, to get going, but for a moment I lie there, digesting what I've heard. Not only is Kylin with the Careers, he's helping them find me.

The simpleminded boy who has to be taken seriously because of his twenty one. Because he can use a bow and arrow. Which Kylin knows better than anyone.

But he hasn't told them yet. Is he saving that information because he knows it's all that keeps him alive? Is he still pretending to love me for the audience? What is going on in his head?

Suddenly, the birds fall silent. Then one gives a high-pitched warning call. A single note. Just like the one Jin and I heard when the redheaded Avox girl was caught. High above the dying campfire a hovercraft materializes. A set of huge metal teeth drops down.

Slowly, gently, the dead tribute girl is lifted into the hovercraft. Then it vanishes. The birds resume their song.

"Move," I whisper to myself. I wriggle out of my sleeping bag, roll it up, and place it in the pack. I take a deep breath. While I've been concealed by darkness and the sleeping bag and the willow branches, it has probably been difficult for the cameras to get a good shot of me. I know they must be tracking me now though. The minute I hit the ground, I'm guaranteed a close-up.

The audience will have been beside themselves, knowing I was in the tree, that I overheard the Careers talking, that I discovered Kylin was with them. Until I work out exactly how I want to play that, I'd better at least act on top of things. Not perplexed.

Certainly not confused or frightened.

No, I need to look one step ahead of the game.

So as I slide out of the foliage and into the dawn light, I pause a second, giving the cameras time to lock on me. Then I cock my head slightly to the side and give a knowing smile. There! Let them figure out what that means!

I'm about to take off when I think of my snares.

Maybe it's imprudent to check them with the others so close. But have to. Too many years of hunting, I guess. And the lure of possible meat. I'm rewarded with one fine rabbit. In no time, I've cleaned and gutted the animal, leaving the head, feet, tail, skin, and innards, under a pile of leaves. I'm wishing for a fire — eating raw rabbit can give you rabbit fever, a lesson I learned the hard way — when I think of the dead tribute. I hurry back to her camp. Sure enough, the coals of her dying fire are still hot. I cut up the rabbit, fashion a spit out of branches, and set it over the coals.

I'm glad for the cameras now. I want sponsors to see I can hunt, that I'm a good bet because I won't be lured into traps as easily as the others will by hunger.

While the rabbit cooks, I grind up part of a charred branch and set about camouflaging my orange pack.

The black tones it down, but I feel a layer of mud would definitely help. Of course, to have mud, I'd need water ...

I pull on my gear, grab my spit, kick some dirt over the coals, and take off in the opposite direction the Careers went. I eat half the rabbit as I go, then wrap up the leftovers in my plastic for later. The meat stops the grumbling in my stomach but does little to quench my thirst. Water is my top priority now.

As I hike along, I feel certain I'm still holding the screen in the Capitol, so I'm careful to continue to hide my emotions. But what a good time Claudius Templesmith must be having with his guest commentators, dissecting Kylin's behavior, my reaction. What to make of it all? Has Kylin revealed his true colors? How does this affect the betting odds Will we lose sponsors? Do we even have sponsors?

Yes, I feel certain we do, or at least did.

Certainly Kylin has thrown a wrench into our gay star-crossed lover dynamic. Or has he? Maybe, since he hasn't spoken much about me, we can still get some mileage out of it. Maybe people will think it's something we plotted together if I seem like it amuses me now.

The sun rises in the sky and even through the canopy it seems overly bright. I coat my lips in some grease from the rabbit and try to keep from panting, but it's no use. It's only been a day and I'm dehydrating fast.

I try and think of everything I know about finding water. It runs downhill, so, in fact, continuing down into this valley isn't a bad thing. If I could just locate a game trail or spot a particularly green patch of vegetation, these might help me along, but nothing seems to change. There's just the slight gradual slope, the birds, the sameness to the trees.

As the day wears on, I know I'm headed for trouble.

What little urine I've been able to pass is a dark brown, my head is aching, and there's a dry patch on my tongue that refuses to moisten. The sun hurts my eyes so I dig out my sunglasses, but when I put them on they do something funny to my vision, so I just stuff them back in my pack.

It's late afternoon when I think I've found help. I spot a cluster of berry bushes and hurry to strip the fruit, to suck the sweet juices from the skins. But just as I'm holding them to my lips, I get a hard look at them.

What I thought were blueberries have a slightly different shape, and when I break one open the insides are bloodred. I don't recognize these berries, perhaps they are edible, but I'm guessing this is some evil trick on the part of the Gamemakers. Even the plant instructor in the Training Center made a point of telling us to avoid berries unless you were 100 percent sure they weren't toxic. Something I already knew, but I'm so thirsty it takes her reminder to give me the strength to fling them away.

Fatigue is beginning to settle on me, but it's not the usual tiredness that follows a long hike. I have to stop and rest frequently, although I know the only cure for what ails me requires continued searching. I try a new tactic — climbing a tree as high as I dare in my shaky state — to look for any signs of water. But as far as I can see in any direction, there's the same unrelenting stretch of forest.

Determined to go on until nightfall, I walk until I'm stumbling over my own feet.

Exhausted, I haul myself up into a tree and belt myself in. I've no appetite, but I suck on a rabbit bone just to give my mouth something to do. Night falls, the anthem plays, and high in the sky I see the picture of the girl, who was apparently from District 10. The one Kylin went back to finish off.

My fear of the Career pack is minor compared to my burning thirst. Besides, they were heading away from me and by now they, too, will have to rest. With the scarcity of water, they may even have had to return to the lake for refills.

Maybe, that is the only course for me as well.

Morning brings distress. My heads throbs with every beat of my heart. Simple movements send stabs of pain through my joints. I fall, rather than jump from the tree. It takes several minutes for me to assemble my gear. Somewhere inside me, I know this is wrong.

I should be acting with more caution, moving with more urgency. But my mind seems foggy and forming a plan is hard. I lean back against the trunk of my tree, one finger gingerly stroking the sandpaper surface of my tongue, as I assess my options. How can I get water?

Return to the lake. No good. I'd never make it.

Hope for rain. There's not a cloud in the sky.

Keep looking. Yes, this is my only chance. But then, another thought hits me, and the surge of anger that follows brings me to me senses.

Kano! He could send me water! Press a button and have it delivered to me in a silver parachute in minutes. I know I must have sponsors, at least one or two who could afford a pint of liquid for me. Yes, it's pricey, but these people, they're made of money. And they'll be betting on me as well. Perhaps Kano doesn't realize how deep my need is.

I say in a voice as loud as I dare. "Water." I wait, hopefully, for a parachute to descend from the sky.

But nothing is forthcoming.

Something is wrong. Am I deluded about having sponsors? Or has Kylin's behavior made them all hang back? No, I don't believe it. There's someone out there who wants to buy me water only Kano is refusing to let it go through. As my mentor, he gets to control the flow of gifts from the sponsors. I know he hates me. He's made that clear enough. But enough to let me die? From this? He can't do that, can he? If a mentor mistreats his tributes, he'll be held accountable by the viewers, by the people back in DistriKylin. Even Kano wouldn't risk that, would he? Say what you will about my fellow traders in the Hob, but I don't think they'd welcome him back there if he let me die this way. And then where would he get his liquor? So ... what? Is he trying to make me suffer for defying him? Is he directing all the sponsors toward Kylin? Is he just too drunk to even notice what's going on at the moment? Somehow I don't believe that and I don't believe he's trying to kill me off by neglect, either. He has, in fact, in his own unpleasant way, genuinely been trying to prepare me for this. Then what is going on?

I bury my face in my hands. There's no danger of tears now, I couldn't produce one to save my life.

What is Kano doing? Despite my anger, hatred, and suspicions, a small voice in the back of my head whispers an answer.

Maybe he's sending you a message, it says. A message. Saying what? Then I know. There's only one good reason Kano could be withholding water from me. Because he knows I've almost found it.

I grit my teeth and pull myself to my feet. My backpack seems to have tripled in weight. I find a broken branch that will do for a walking stick and I start off. The sun's beating down, even more searing than the first two days. I feel like an old piece of leather, drying and cracking in the heat. every step is an effort, but I refuse to stop. I refuse to sit down. If I sit, there's a good chance I won't be able to get up again, that I won't even remember my task.

What easy prey I am! Any tribute, even tiny Tanya, could take me right now, merely shove me over and kill me with my own knife, and I'd have little strength to resist. But if anyone is in my part of the woods, they ignore me. The truth is, I feel a million miles from another living soul.

Not alone though. No, they've surely got a camera tracking me now. I think back to the years of watching tributes starve, freeze, bleed, and dehydrate to death. Unless there's a really good fight going on somewhere, I'm being featured.

My thoughts turn to Khal. It's likely she won't be watching me live, but they'll show updates at the school during lunch. For her sake, I try to look as least desperate as I can.

But by afternoon, I know the end is coming. My legs are shaking and my heart too quick. I keep forgetting, exactly what I'm doing. I've stumbled repeatedly and managed to regain my feet, but when the stick slides out from under me, I finally tumble to the ground unable to get up. I let my eyes close.

I have misjudged Kano. He has no intention of helping me at all.

This is all right, I is not so bad here. The air is less hot, signifying evening's approach. There's a slight, sweet scent that reminds me of lilies. My fingers stroke the smooth ground, sliding easily across the top. This is an okay place to die, I think.

My fingertips make small swirling patterns in the cool, slippery earth. I love mud, I think. How many times I've tracked game with the help of its soft, readable surface. Good for bee stings, too. Mud. Mud.

Mud! My eyes fly open and I dig my fingers into the earth. It is mud! My nose lifts in the air. And those are lilies! Pond lilies!

I crawl now, through the mud, dragging myself toward the scent. Five yards from where I fell, I crawl through a tangle of plants into a pond. Floating on the top, yellow flowers in bloom, are my beautiful lilies.

It's all I can do not to plunge my face into the water and gulp down as much as I can hold. But I have jus enough sense left to abstain. With trembling hands, I get out my flask and fill it with water. I add what I remember to be the right number of drops of iodine for purifying it. The half an hour of waiting is agony, but I do it. At least, I think it's a half an hour, but it's certainly as long as I can stand.

Slowly, easy now, I tell myself. I take one swallow and make myself wait. Then another. Over the next couple of hours, I drink the entire half gallon. Then a second. I prepare another before I retire to a tree where I continue sipping, eating rabbit, and even indulge in one of my precious crackers. By the time the anthem plays, I feel remarkably better. There are no faces tonight, no tributes died today. Tomorrow I'll stay here, resting, camouflaging my backpack with mud, catching some of those little fish I saw as I sipped, digging up the roots of the pond lilies to make a nice meal. I snuggle down in my sleeping bag, hanging on to my water bottle for dear life, which, of course, it is.

A few hours later, the stampede of feet shakes me from slumber. I look around in bewilderment. It's not yet dawn, but my stinging eyes can see it.

It would be hard to miss the wall of fire descending on me.

Chapter Thirteen

My first impulse is to scramble from the tree, but I'm belted in. Somehow my fumbling fingers release the buckle and I fall to the ground in a heap, still snarled in my sleeping bag. There's no time for any kind of packing. Fortunately, everything is already in the bag. I shove in the belt, hoist the bag over my shoulder, and flee.

The world has transformed to flame and smoke.

Burning branches crack from trees and fall in showers of sparks at my feet. All I can do is follow the others, the rabbits and deer and I even spot a wild dog pack shooting through the woods. I trust their sense of direction because their instincts are sharper than mine. But they are much faster, flying through the underbrush so gracefully as my boots catch on roots and fallen tree limbs, that there's no way I can keep apace with them. So I decide to reveal my weapons. I throw my arms in the direction of a tree branch, heard it click, and swung forward. Like Tarzan, but with my own whips, I move fast, from tree to tree.

The heat is horrible, but worse than the heat is the smoke, which threatens to suffocate me at any moment. And I swing, choking, my bag banging against my back, my face cut with branches that materialize from the gray haze without warning, because I know I am supposed to run, not swing easily.

This was no tribute's campfire gone out of control, no accidental occurrence. The flames that bear down on me have an unnatural height, a uniformity that marks them as human-made, machine-made, Gamemaker-made. Things have been too quiet today.

No deaths, perhaps no fights at all. The audience in the Capitol will be getting bored, claiming that these Games are verging on dullness. This is the one thing the Games must not do.

It's not hard to follow the Gamemakers' motivation.

There is the Career pack and then there are the rest of us, probably spread far and thin across the arena.

This fire is designed to flush us out, to drive us together. It may not be the most original device I've seen, but it's very, very effective.

I swing over a burning log. Not high enough. In a matter of minutes, my throat and nose are burning. The coughing begins soon after and my lungs begin to feel as if they are actually being cooked. Discomfort turns to distress until each breath sends a searing pain through my chest. I drop from the sky and I manage to take cover under a stone outcropping just as the vomiting begins, and I lose my meager supper and whatever water has remained in my stomach.

Crouching on my hands and knees, I retch until there's nothing left to come up.

I know I need to keep moving, but I'm trembling and light-headed now, gasping for air. I allow myself about a spoonful of water to rinse my mouth and spit then take a few swallows from my bottle. You get one minute, I tell myself. One minute to rest. I take the time to reorder my supplies, wad up the sleeping bag, and messily stuff everything into the backpack. My minute's up. I know it's time to move on, but the smoke has clouded my thoughts. The swift-footed animals that were my pass have left me behind. I know I haven't been in this part of the woods before, there were no sizable rocks like the one I'm sheltering against on my earlier travels. Where are the Gamemakers driving me? Back to the lake? To a whole new terrain filled with new dangers? I had just found a few hours of peace at the pond when this attack began. Would there be any way I could travel parallel to the fire and work my way back there, to a source of water at least? The wall of fire must have an end and it won't burn indefinitely. Not because the Gamemakers couldn't keep it fueled but because, again, that would invite accusations of boredom from the audience. If I could get back behind the fire line, I could avoid meeting up with the Careers. I've just decided to try and loop back around, although it will require miles of travel away from the inferno and then a very circuitous route back, when the first fireball blasts into the rock about two feet from my head. I spring out from under my ledge, energized by renewed fear.

The game has taken a twist. The fire was just to get us moving, now the audience will get to see some real fun. When I hear the next hiss, I flatten on the ground, not taking time to look. The fireball hits a tree off to my left, engulfing it in flames. To remain still is death. I'm barely on my feet before the third ball hits the ground where I was lying, sending a pillar of fire up behind me. Time loses meaning now as I frantically try to dodge the attacks. I can't see where they're being launched from, but it's not a hovercraft. The angles are not extreme enough. I try to throw my whips, but it hurts to move my other arm. So I simply use it as a proppeller, swing with right arm, then hit the ground running, and do forth.

Probably this whole segment of the woods has been armed with precision launchers that are concealed in trees or rocks. Somewhere, in a cool and spotless room, a Gamemaker sits at a set of controls, fingers on the triggers that could end my life in a second. All that is needed is a direct hit.

Whatever vague plan I had conceived regarding returning to my pond is wiped from my mind as I zigzag and dive and leap to avoid the fireballs. Each one is only the size of an apple, but packs tremendous power on contact. Every sense I have goes into drive as the need to survive takes over.

There's no time to judge if a move is the correct one.

When there's a hiss, I act or die.

Something keeps me moving forward, though. A lifetime of watching the Hunger Games lets me know that certain areas of the arena are rigged for certain attacks. And that if I can just get away from this section, I might be able to move out of reach of the launchers. I might also then fall straight into a pit of vipers, but I can't worry about that now.

How long I scramble along dodging the fireballs I can't say, but the attacks finally begin to abate. Which is good, because I'm retching again. This time it's an acidic substance that scalds my throat and makes its way into my nose as well. I'm forced to stop as my body convulses, trying desperately to rid itself of the poisons I've been sucking in during the attack. I wait for the next hiss, the next signal to bolt. It doesn't come. The force of the retching has squeezed tears out of my stinging eyes. My clothes are drenched in sweat. Somehow, through the smoke and vomit, I pick up the scent of singed hair. My hand fumbles to my hair and finds a fireball has seared off a small bit of it, and taken some of my headband too. Strands of blackened hair crumble in my fingers. I stare at them, fascinated by the transformation, when the hissing registers.

My muscles react, only not fast enough this time. The fireball crashes into the ground at my side, but not before it skids across my right calf. Seeing my leg on fire sends me over the edge. I twist and scuttle backward on my hands and feet, shrieking, trying to remove myself from the horror. When I finally regain enough sense, I roll the leg back and forth on the ground, which stifles the worst of it. But then, without thinking, I take off the leg of my armor to see the damage.

I sit on the ground, a few yards from the blaze set off by the fireball. My calf is screaming, my hands covered in red welts. I'm shaking too hard to move. If the Gamemakers want to finish me off, now is the time.

I hear Cinna's voice, carrying images of rich fabric and sparkling gems. "Takeda, the man on fire." What a good laugh the Gamemakers must be having over that one. Perhaps, Cinna's beautiful costumes have even brought on this particular torture for me. I know he couldn't have foreseen this, must be hurting for me because, in fact, I believe he cares about me. But all in all, maybe showing up stark naked in that chariot would have been safer for me.

The attack is now over. The Gamemakers don't want me dead. Not yet anyway. Everyone knows they could destroy us all within seconds of the opening gong. The real sport of the Hunger Games is watching the tributes kill one another. Every so often, they do kill a tribute just to remind the players they can. But mostly, they manipulate us into confronting one another face-to-face. Which means, if I am no longer being fired at, there is at least one other tribute close at hand. I put my leg back on, after cooling it down with a few drops of the water gallon.

I would drag myself into a tree and take cover now if I could, but the smoke is still thick enough to kill me. I make myself stand and begin to limp away from the wall of flames that lights up the sky. It does not seem to be pursuing me any longer, except with its stinking black clouds.

Another light, daylight, begins to softly emerge. Swirls of smoke catch the sunbeams. My visibility is poor. I can see maybe fifteen yards in any direction. A tribute could easily be concealed from me here. I should draw my knife as a precaution, but I doubt my ability to hold it for long. The pain in my hands can in no way compete with that in my calf. I hate burns, have always hated them, even a small one gotten from pulling a pan of bread from the oven. It is the worst kind of pain to me, but I have never experienced anything like this.

I'm so weary I don't even notice I'm in the pool until I'm ankle-deep. It's spring-fed, bubbling up out of a crevice in some rocks, and blissfully cool. I plunge my hands into the shallow water and feel instant relief.

Isn't that what my mother always says? The first treatment for a burn is cold water? That it draws out the heat? But she means minor burns. Probably she'd recommend it for my hands. But what of my calf?

Although I have not yet had the courage to examine it, I'm guessing that it's an injury in a whole different class.

I lie on my stomach at edge of the pool for a while, dangling my hands in the water, examining the little flames on my fingernails that are beginning to chip off. Good. I've had enough fire for a lifetime. I take off my leg, and relax in the pool.

I bathe the blood and ash from my face. I try to recall all I know about burns. They are common injuries in the Seam where we cook and heat our homes with coal. Then there are the mine accidents... . A family once brought in an unconscious young man pleading with my mother to help him. The district doctor who's responsible for treating the miners had written him off, told the family to take him home to die. But they wouldn't accept this. He lay on our kitchen table, senseless to the world. I got a glimpse of the wound on his thigh, gaping, charred flesh, burned clear down to the bone, before I ran from the house. I went to the woods and hunted the entire day, haunted by the gruesome leg, memories of my father's death.

What's funny was, Khal, who's scared of her own shadow, stayed and helped. My mother says healers are born, not made. They did their best, but the man died, just like the doctor said he would.

My leg is in need of attention, but I still can't look at it. What if it's as bad as the man's and I can see my bone? Then I remember my mother saying that if a burn's severe, the victim might not even feel pain because the nerves would be destroyed. Encouraged by this, I sit up and swing my leg in front of me.

I almost faint at the sight of my calf. The flesh is a brilliant red covered with blisters. I force myself to take deep, slow breaths, feeling quite certain the cameras are on my face. I can't show weakness at this injury. Not if I want help. Pity does not get you aid.

Admiration at your refusal to give in does. I examine the injury more closely. The burned area is about the size of my hand. None of the skin is blackened. I think it's not too bad to soak. Gingerly I stretch out my leg back into the pool, taking my shoes off and putting them on a rock so the leather doesn't get sodden, and sigh, because this does offer some relief. I know there are herbs, if I could find them, that would speed the healing, but I can't quite call them to mind. Water and time will probably be all I have to work with.

Should I be moving on? The smoke is slowly clearing but still too heavy to be healthy. If I do continue away from the fire, won't I be walking straight into the weapons of the Careers? Besides, every time I lift my leg from the water, the pain rebounds so intensely I have to slide it back in. My hands are slightly less demanding. They can handle small breaks from the pool. So I slowly put my gear back in order. First I fill my bottle with the pool water, treat it, and when enough time has passed, begin to rehydrate my body.

After a time, I force myself to nibble on a cracker, which helps settle my stomach. I roll up my sleeping bag. Except for a few black marks, it's relatively unscathed.

Despite the pain, drowsiness begins to take over. I'd take to a tree and try to rest, except I'd be too easy to spot. Besides, abandoning my pool seems impossible.

I neatly arrange my supplies, even settle my pack on my shoulders, but I can't seem to leave. I spot some water plants with edible roots and make a small meal with my last piece of rabbit. Sip water. Watch the sun make its slow arc across the sky. Where would I go anyway that is any safer than here? I lean back on my pack, overcome by drowsiness. If the Careers want me, let them find me, I think before drifting into a stupor. Let them find me.

And find me, they do. It's lucky I'm ready to move on because when I hear the feet, I have less than a minute head start. Evening has begun to fall. The moment I awake, I'm up and running, splashing across the pool, flying into the underbrush. My leg slows me down, but I sense my pursuers are not as speedy as they were before the fire, either. I hear their coughs, their raspy voices calling to one another.

Still, they are closing in, just like a pack of wild dogs, and so I do what I have done my whole life in such circumstances. I pick a high tree and begin to climb.

If running hurt, climbing is agonizing, however, using my whips I don't have to even touch the bark itself. I'm fast, though, and by the time they've reached the base of my trunk, I'm twenty feet up. For a moment, we stop and survey one another. I hope they can't hear the pounding of my heart.

This could be it, I think. What chance do I have against them? All five are there, the four Careers and Kylin, and my only consolation is they're pretty beat-up, too. Even so, look at their weapons. Look at their faces, grinning and snarling at me, a sure kill above them. It seems pretty hopeless. But then something else registers. They're bigger and stronger than I am, no doubt, but they're also heavier. There's a reason it's me and not Jin who ventures up to pluck the highest fruit, or rob the most remote bird nests. I must weigh at least fifty or sixty pounds less than the smallest Career.

Now I smile. "How's everything with you?" I call down cheerfully.

This takes them aback, but I know the crowd will love it.

"Well enough," says the boy from District 6."Yourself?"

"It's been a bit warm for my taste," I say. I can almost hear the laughter from the Capitol. "The air's better up here. Why don't you come on up?"

"Think I will," says the same boy.

"Here, take this, Kung Lao," says the girl from District 1, and she offers him the silver bow and sheath of arrows. My bow! My arrows! Just the sight of them makes me so angry I want to scream, at myself, at that traitor Kylin for distracting me from having them. I try to make eye contact with him now, but he seems to be intentionally avoiding my gaze as he polishes his knife with the edge of his shirt.

"No," says Kung Lao, pushing away the bow. "I'll do better with my sword." I can see the weapon, a short, heavy blade at his belt.

I give Kung Lao time to hoist himself into the tree before I begin to climb again. Jin always says I remind him of a squirrel the way I can scurry up even the slenderest limb. Part of it's my weight, but part of it's practice. You have to know where to place your hands and feet. It just sucks that I can't use my whips, but to do so would be to betray them to the Careers. I'm another thirty feet in the air when I hear the crack and look down to see Kung Lao flailing as he and a branch go down. He hits the ground hard and I'm hoping he possibly broke his neck when he gets back to his feet, swearing like a fiend. His hat fell off, and he swears at me.

The girl with the arrows, Jade, I hear someone call her, Jade scales the tree until the branches begin to crack under her feet and then has the good sense to stop.

I'm at least eighty feet high now. She tries to shoot me and it's immediately evident that she's incompetent with a bow. One of the arrows gets lodged in the tree near me though and I'm able to seize it. I wave it teasingly above her head, as if this was the sole purpose of retrieving it, when actually I mean to use it if I ever get the chance. I could kill them, every one of them, if those silver weapons were in my hands.

The Careers regroup on the ground and I can hear them growling conspiratorially among themselves, furious I have made them look foolish. But twilight has arrived and their window of attack on me is closing. Finally, I hear Kylin say harshly, "Oh, let him stay up there. It's not like he's going anywhere. We'll deal with him in the morning."

Well, he's right about one thing. I'm going nowhere.

All the relief from the pool water has gone, leaving me to feel the full potency of my burns. I scoot down to a fork in the tree and clumsily prepare for bed. Put on my jacket. Lay out my sleeping bed. Belt myself in and try to keep from moaning. The heat of the bag's too much for my leg. I cut a slash in the fabric and hang my calf out in the open air. I drizzle water on the wound, my hands.

All my bravado is gone. I'm weak from pain and hunger but can't bring myself to eat. Even if I can last the night, what will the morning bring? I stare into the foliage trying to will myself to rest, but the burns forbid it. Birds are settling down for the night, singing lullabies to their young. Night creatures emerge. An owl hoots. The faint scent of a skunk cuts through the smoke. The eyes of some animal peer at me from the neighboring tree— a possum maybe — catching the firelight from the Careers' torches. Suddenly, I'm up on one elbow. Those are no possum's eyes, I know their glassy reflection too well. In fact, those are not animal eyes at all. In the last dim rays of light, I make her out, watching me silently from between the branches. D'Vorah.

How long has she been here? The whole time probably. Still and unobserved as the action unfolded beneath her. Perhaps she headed up her tree shortly before I did, hearing the pack was so close.

For a while we hold each other's gaze. Then, without even rustling a leaf, her hand slides into the open and points to something above my head.

Chapter Fourteen

My eyes follow the line of her finger up into the foliage above me. At first, I have no idea what she's pointing to, but then, about fifteen feet up, I make out the vague shape in the dimming light. But of ... of what?

Some sort of animal? It looks about the size of a raccoon, but it hangs from the bottom of a branch, swaying ever so slightly. There's something else.

Among the familiar evening sounds of the woods, my ears register a low hum. Then I know. It's a wasp nest.

Fear shoots through me, but I have enough sense to keep still. After all, I don't know what kind of wasp lives there. It could be the ordinary leave-us-alone-and-we'll-leave-you-alone type. But these are the Hunger Games, and ordinary isn't the norm. More likely they will be one of the Capitol's muttations, tracker jackers. Like the jabberjays, these killer wasps were spawned in a lab and strategically placed, like land mines, around the districts during the war, and of course D'Vorah would be telling me to do it, she knew exactly what they were.

Larger than regular wasps, they have a distinctive solid gold body and a sting that raises a lump the size of a plum on contact. Most people can't tolerate more than a few stings. Some die at once. If you live, the hallucinations brought on by the venom have actually driven people to madness. And there's another thing, these wasps will hunt down anyone who disturbs their nest and attempt to kill them. That's where the tracker part of the name comes from.

After the war, the Capitol destroyed all the nests surrounding their city, but the ones near the districts were left untouched. Another reminder of our weakness, I suppose, just like the Hunger Games.

Another reason to keep inside the fence of District 2.

When Jin and I come across a tracker jacker nest, we immediately head in the opposite direction.

So is that what hangs above me? I look back to D'Vorah for help, but she's moved into her tree, moving closer to me. She's got her eyes... ooh. She's gonna take them, she was telling me to move...

Given my circumstances, I guess it doesn't matter what type of wasp nest it is. I'm wounded and trapped. Darkness has given me a brief reprieve, but by the time the sun rises, the Careers will have formulated a plan to kill me. There's no way they could do otherwise after I've made them look so stupid. That nest may be the sole option I have left. If I can drop it down on them, I may be able to escape.

But I'll risk my life in the process.

Of course, I'll never be able to get in close enough to the actual nest to cut it free. I'll have to saw off the branch at the trunk and send the whole thing down.

The serrated portion of my knife should be able to manage that. But can my hands? And will the vibration from the sawing raise the swarm? And what if the Careers figure out what I'm doing and move their camp? That would defeat the whole purpose.

I realize that the best chance I'll have to do the sawing without drawing notice will be during the anthem. But what uf D'Vorah makes it first and they come for me?

That could begin any time. I drag myself out of my bag, make sure my knife is secured in my belt, and begin to make my way up the tree. This in itself is dangerous since the branches are becoming precariously thin even for me, but I persevere. When I reach the limb that supports the nest, the humming becomes more distinctive. But it's still oddly subdued if these are tracker jackers. It's the smoke, I think. It's sedated them. This was the one defense the rebels found to battle the wasps.

The seal of the Capitol shines above me and the anthem blares out. It's now or never, I think, and begin to saw. Blisters burst on my right hand as I awkwardly drag the knife back and forth. Once I've got a groove, the work requires less effort but is almost more than I can handle. I notice D'Vorah has flown over to me, and has started to spit on the bark I was cutting the groove. It's much easier now, but I still grit my teeth and saw away occasionally glancing at the sky to register that there were no deaths today. That's all right. The audience will be sated seeing me injured and treed and the pack below me. But the anthem's running out and I'm only three quarters of the way through the wood when the music ends, the sky goes dark, and I'm forced to stop.

Now what? I could probably finish off the job by sense of feel but that may not be the smartest plan. If the wasps are too groggy, if the nest catches on its way down, if I try to escape, this could all be a deadly waste of time. Better, I think, to sneak up here at dawn and send the nest into my enemies. D'Vorah looks at me, as if to ask why I've stopped, and she decided to do it herself. She motions for me to move out of the way.

In the faint light of the Careers' torches, I inch back down to my fork to find the best surprise I've ever had. Sitting on my sleeping bag is a small plastic pot attached to a silver parachute. My first gift from a sponsor! Kano must have had it sent in during the anthem. The pot easily fits in the palm of my hand. What can it be? Not food surely. I unscrew the lid and I know by the scent that it's medicine.

Cautiously, I probe the surface of the ointment. The throbbing in my fingertip vanishes.

"Oh, Kano," I whisper. "Thank you." He has not abandoned me. Not left me to fend entirely for myself.

The cost of this medicine must be astronomical.

Probably not one but many sponsors have contributed to buy this one tiny pot. To me, it is priceless.

I dip two fingers in the jar and gently spread the balm over my calf. The effect is almost magical, erasing the pain on contact, leaving a pleasant cooling sensation behind. This is no herbal concoction that my mother grinds up out of woodland plants, it's high-tech medicine brewed up in the Capitol's labs. When my calf is treated, I rub a thin layer into my hands. After wrapping the pot in the parachute, I nestle it safely away in my pack. Now that the pain has eased, it's all I can do to reposition myself in my bag before I plunge into sleep.

A bird perched just a few feet from me alerts me that a new day is dawning. In the gray morning light, I examine my hands. The medicine has transformed all the angry red patches to a soft baby-skin pink. My leg still feels inflamed, but that burn was far deeper. I apply another coat of medicine and quietly pack up my gear. Whatever happens, I'm going to have to move and move fast. I also make myself eat a cracker and a strip of beef and drink a few cups of water.

Almost nothing stayed in my stomach yesterday, and I'm already starting to feel the effects of hunger.

Below me, I can see the Career pack and Kylin asleep on the ground. By her position, leaning up against the trunk of the tree, I'd guess Tanya was supposed to be on guard, but fatigue overcame her.

My eyes squint as they try to penetrate the tree next to me, but I can't make out D'Vorah. Since she tipped me off, it only seems fair to warn her. Besides, if I'm going to die today, it's D'Vorah. I want to win. Even if it means a little extra food for my family, the idea of Kylin being crowned victor is unbearable.

I call D'Vorah's name in a hushed whisper and the eyes appear, wide and alert, at once. She points up to the nest again. I hold up my knife and make a sawing motion. She nods and disappears.

Rosy streaks are breaking through in the east. I can't afford to wait any longer. Compared to the agony of last night's climb, this one is a cinch. At the tree limb that holds the nest, I position the knife in the groove and I'm about to draw the teeth across the wood when I see something moving. There, on the nest. The bright gold gleam of a tracker jacker lazily making its way across the papery gray surface. No question, it's acting a little subdued, but the wasp is up and moving and that means the others will be out soon as well. Sweat breaks out on the palms of my hands, beading up through the ointment, and I do my best to pat them dry on my shirt. If I don't get through this branch in a matter of seconds, the entire swarm could emerge and attack me.

There's no sense in putting it off. I take a deep breath, grip the knife handle and bear down as hard as I can.

Back, forth, back, forth! The tracker jackers begin to buzz and I hear them coming out. Back, forth, back, forth! A stabbing pain shoots through my hand and I know one has found me and the others will be honing in. Back, forth, back, forth. And just as the knife cuts through, I shove the end of the branch as far away from me as I can. It crashes down through the lower branches, snagging temporarily on a few but then twisting free until it smashes with a thud on the ground. The nest bursts open like an egg, and a furious swarm of tracker jackers takes to the air.

Their venom almost immediately makes me woozy. I cling to the tree with one arm while I rip the barbed stinger out of my flesh. Fortunately, only one tracker jacker had identified me before the nest went down. The rest of the insects have targeted their enemies on the ground.

It's mayhem. The Careers have woken to a full-scale tracker jacker attack. Kylin, Kung Lao and Jade have the sense to drop everything and bolt. I can hear cries of "To the lake! To the lake!" and know they hope to evade the wasps by taking to the water. It must be close if they think they can outdistance the furious insects. Tanya appears to go completely mad, shrieking and trying to bat the wasps off with her bow, which is pointless.

She calls to the others for help but, of course, no one returns. The man from District 11 staggers out of sight, although I wouldn't bet on him making it to the lake. I watch Tanya fall, twitch hysterically around on the ground for a few minutes, and then go still.

The nest is nothing but an empty shell. The wasps have vanished in pursuit of the others. I don't think they'll return, but I don't want to risk it. I scamper down the tree and hit the ground running in the opposite direction of the lake. The poison from the stingers makes me wobbly, but I find my way back to my own little pool and submerge myself in the water, just in case any wasps are still on my trail. After about five minutes, I drag myself onto the rocks.

People have not exaggerated the effects of the tracker jacker stings. The swelling. The pain. The ooze. Watching Tanya twitching to death on the ground. It's a lot to handle before the sun has even cleared the horizon. I don't want to think about what Tanya must look like now. Her body disfigured. Her swollen fingers stiffening around the bow ...

The bow! Somewhere in my befuddled mind one thought connects to another and I'm on my feet, teetering through the trees back to Tanya. The bow. The arrows. I must get them. I haven't heard the cannons fire yet, so perhaps Tanya is in some sort of coma, her heart still struggling against the wasp venom. But once it stops and the cannon signals her death, a hovercraft will move in and retrieve her body, taking the only bow and sheath of arrows I've seen out of the Games for good. And I refuse to let them slip through my fingers again!

I reach Tanya just as the cannon fires. The tracker jackers have vanished. This girl, so breathtakingly beautiful in her golden dress the night of the interviews, is unrecognizable. Her features eradicated, her limbs three times their normal size. The stinger lumps have begun to explode, spewing putrid green liquid around her. I have to break several of what used to be her fingers with a stone to free the bow.

The sheath of arrows is pinned under her back. I try to roll over her body by pulling on one arm, but the flesh disintegrates in my hands and I fall back on the ground.

Is this real? Or have the hallucinations begun? I squeeze my eyes tight and try to breathe through my mouth, ordering myself not to become sick. Breakfast must stay down, it might be days before I can hunt again. A second cannon fires and I'm guessing the man from District 11 has just died. I hear the birds fall silent and then one give the warning call, which means a hovercraft is about to appear. Confused, I think it's for Tanya, although this doesn't quite make sense because I'm still in the picture, still fighting for the arrows. I lurch back onto my knees and the trees around me begin to spin in circles. In the middle of the sky, I spot the hovercraft. I throw myself over Tanya's body as if to protect it but then I see the man from District 11 being lifted into the air and vanishing.

"Do this!" I command myself. Clenching my jaw, I dig my hands under Tanya's body, get a hold on what must be her rib cage, and force her onto her stomach.

I can't help it, I'm hyperventilating now, the whole thing is so nightmarish and I'm losing my grasp on what's real. I tug on the silver sheath of arrows, but it's caught on something, her shoulder blade, something, and finally yank it free. I've just encircled the sheath with my arms when I hear the footsteps, several pairs, coming through the underbrush, and I realize the Careers have come back. They've come back to kill me or get their weapons or both.

But it's too late to run. I pull a slimy arrow from the sheath and try to position it on the bowstring but instead of one string I see three and the stench from the stings is so repulsive I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it.

I'm helpless as the first hunter crashes through the trees, spear lifted, poised to throw. The shock on Kylin's face makes no sense to me. I wait for the blow.

Instead his arm drops to his side.

"What are you still doing here?" he hisses at me. I stare uncomprehendingly as a trickle of water drips off a sting under his ear. His whole body starts sparkling as if he's been dipped in dew. "Are you mad?" He's prodding me with the shaft of the spear now. "Get up! Get up!" I rise, but he's still pushing at me. What? What is going on? He shoves me away from him hard. "Run!"he screams. "Run!" Behind him, Kung Lao slashes his way through the brush.

He's sparkling wet, too, and badly stung under one eye. I catch the gleam of sunlight on his sword and do as Kylin says. I let my arrow fly, seeing as it hits... something, and somebody goes down.

Holding tightly to my bow and arrows, banging into trees that appear out of nowhere, tripping and falling as I try to keep my balance. Back past my pool and into unfamiliar woods. The world begins to bend in alarming ways. A butterfly balloons to the size of a house then shatters into a million stars. Trees transform to blood and splash down over my boots. Ants begin to crawl out of the blisters on my hands and I can't shake them free. They're climbing up my arms, my neck. Someone's screaming, a long high pitched scream that never breaks for breath. I have a vague idea it might be me.

I trip and fall into a small pit lined with tiny orange bubbles that hum like the tracker jacker nest.

Tucking my knees up to my chin, I wait for death.

Sick and disoriented, I'm able to form only one thought: Kylin Jameson just saved my life. And I might have killed him.

Then the ants bore into my eyes and I black out.

Chapter Fifteen

When I finally do come to my senses, I lie still, waiting for the next onslaught of imagery. But eventually I accept that the poison must have finally worked its way out of my system, leaving my body wracked and feeble. I'm still lying on my side, locked in the fetal position. I lift a hand to my eyes to find them sound, untouched by ants that never existed. Simply stretching out my limbs requires an enormous effort.

So many parts of me hurt, it doesn't seem worthwhile taking inventory of them. Very, very slowly I manage to sit up. I'm in a shallow hole, not filled with the humming orange bubbles of my hallucination but with old, dead leaves. My clothing's damp, but I don't know whether pond water, dew, rain, or sweat is the cause. For a long time, all I can do is take tiny sips from my bottle and watch a beetle crawl up the side of a honeysuckle bush.

How long have I been out? It was morning when I lost reason. Now it's afternoon. But the stiffness in my joints suggests more than a day has passed, even two possibly. If so, I'll have no way of knowing which tributes survived that tracker jacker attack. Not Tanya or the man from District 11. But there was the boy from District 6, Jade from District 1, and Kylin. Did they die from the stings? Certainly if they lived, their last days must have been as horrid as my own. And what about D'Vorah? She's a Kytinn, so she survived. She's probably sent them out now.

A foul, rotten taste pervades my mouth, and the water has little effect on it. I drag myself over to the honeysuckle bush and pluck a flower. I gently pull the stamen through the blossom and set the drop of nectar on my tongue. The sweetness spreads through my mouth, down my throat, warming my veins with memories of summer, and my home woods and Jin's presence beside me. For some reason, our discussion from that last morning comes back to me.

"We could do it, you know."

"What?"

"Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it."

And suddenly, I'm not thinking of Jin but of Kylin and ... Kylin! He saved my life! I think. Because by the time we met up, I couldn't tell what was real and what the tracker jacker venom had caused me to imagine. But if he did, and my instincts tell me he did, what for? Is he simply working the Lover Boy angle he initiated at the interview? Or was he actually trying to protect me? And if he was, what was he doing with those Careers in the first place? None of it makes sense.

But that was only if he was alive. If the arrow I shot had hit Lao. Or if I shot the arrow at all.

I wonder what Jin made of the incident for a moment and then I push the whole thing out of my mind because for some reason Jin and Kylin do not coexist well together in my thoughts.

So I focus on the one really good thing that's happened since I landed in the arena. I have a bow and arrows! A full dozen arrows if you count the one I retrieved in the tree. They bear no trace of the noxious green slime that me from Tanya's body

—which leads me to believe that might not have been wholly real —but they have a fair amount of dried blood on them. I can clean them later, but I do take a minute to shoot a few into a nearby tree. They are more like the weapons in the Training Center than my ones at home, but who cares? That I can work with.

The weapons give me an entirely new perspective on the Games. I know I have tough opponents left to face. But I am no longer merely prey that runs and hides or takes desperate measures. If Kung Lao broke through the trees right now, I wouldn't flee, I'd shoot.

I find I'm actually anticipating the moment with pleasure.

But first, I have to get some strength back in my body. I'm very dehydrated again and my water supply is dangerously low. The little padding I was able to put on by gorging myself during prep time in the Capitol is gone, plus several more pounds as well. My hip bones and ribs are more prominent than I remember them being since those awful months after my father's death. And then there are my wounds to contend with — burns, cuts, and bruises from smashing into the trees, and three tracker jacker stings, which are as sore and swollen as ever. I treat my burns with the ointment and try dabbing a bit on my stings as well, but it has no effect on them. My mother knew a treatment for them, some type of leaf that could draw out the poison, but she seldom had cause to use it, and I don't even remember its name let alone its appearance.

Water first, I can hunt along the way now.

It's easy to see the direction I came from by the path of destruction my crazed body made through the foliage. So I walk off in the other direction, hoping my enemies still lie locked in the surreal world of tracker jacker venom.

I can't move too quickly, my joints reject any abrupt motions. But I establish the slow hunter's tread I use when tracking game. Within a few minutes, I spot a rabbit and make my first kill with the bow and arrow.

It's not my usual clean shot through the eye, but I'll take it. After about an hour, I find a stream, shallow but wide, and more than sufficient for my needs. The sun's hot and severe, so while I wait for my water to purify I strip down to my underclothes and wade into the mild current. I'm filthy from head to toe, I try splashing myself but eventually just lay down in the water for a few minutes, letting it wash off the soot and blood and skin that has started to peel off my burns. After rinsing out my armor and laying them on bushes to dry, I sit on the bank in the sun for a bit, untangling my hair with my fingers. My appetite returns and I eat a cracker and a strip of beef. With a handful of moss, I polish the blood from my silver weapons.

Refreshed, I treat my burns again and dress in the damp clothes, knowing the sun will dry them soon enough. Following the stream against its current seems the smartest course of action. I'm traveling uphill now, which I prefer, with a source of fresh water not only for myself but possible game. I easily take out a strange bird that must be some form of wild turkey. Anyway, it looks plenty edible to me. By late afternoon, I decide to build a small fire to cook the meat, betting that dusk will help conceal the smoke and I can quench the fire by nightfall. I clean the game, taking extra care with the bird, but there's nothing alarming about it. Once the feathers are plucked, it's no bigger than a chicken, but it's plump and firm. I've just placed the first lot over the coals when I hear the twig snap.

In one motion, I turn to the sound, bringing the bow and arrow to my shoulder. There's no one there. No one I can see anyway. Then I spot the tip of a boot just peeking out from behind the trunk of a tree.

I cringe as I see the man walk out from behind the tree. He is big and tall, and I remember him as the man from District 5. Erron Black.

He stares at my predicament, his mask covering his face, but he could easily be smiling. "Well, if it isn't Takahashi Takeda, the Boy who set the World to Sparkle." He scratches his forehead, covered with a ten gallon hat. "Or is it the Boy on Fire? Or it that Kylin?"

I stare at him, and say, "I'm the only boy on fire, now."

His eyebrow cocks forward. "So he's dead. You killed your husband."

I grow angry and stand up. Before I can even move, his guns are on me. "Watch yourself, kid. It's Kombat time now."

I stare at him, looking confused, but I agree, and I can hear Kotal Kahn's orchestrated voice. "Round One. Fight!"

During this tound, I unleash my whips on him, showing him he was a fool to challenge me, and during the round, I jump up, and lash my whip into his throat, run around him and kick furiously into his back, which knocks him on the ground, and do an axe kick into his face. As Erron stays down, I hear a, "Takeda Wins." To celebrate this round win, I unleash my whips and gratify myself by spinning them around in a circular motion around me very fast. Then I sheath them. Erron gets up and rotates his revolvers and stares at me.

During Round Two, Erron starts to throw these weird sand balls that explode when they get close to me, covering me with the stuff, and launching me into the air. He also grabs me, and sits on top on me, hitting me repeatedly with his guns in the face. To celebrate his victory and to put space between us, he takes his guns and swirls them around expertly through his fingers, then puts them back in his pockets. "Erron Black Wins!"

The final round, I am dizzy and disoriented, so he quickly and subtley beats me. He also shoots me quite a few times with a gun he has strapped to his back. And to end it, he swiped the gun at me, doing a sort of an uppercut, knocking me into the air. I land on the ground, and get up, trying to fight, but I'm too dizzy. I see Erron Black stare at me, and he says, "You enjoy being Finished?"

I get my ass up and follow him.

...

Once I reach the stream, I have only to follow it downhill to the place I initially picked it up after the tracker jacker attack. I have to be cautious as I move along the water though, because I find my thoughts preoccupied with unanswered questions, most of which concern Kylin. The cannon that fired early this morning, did that signify his death? If so, how did he die? At the hand of a Career? At my arrow? And was that in revenge for letting me live, if the Career killed him? I struggle again to remember that moment over Tanya's body, when he burst through the trees. But just the fact that he was sparkling leads me to doubt everything that happened.

I must have been moving very slowly yesterday because I reach the shallow stretch where I took my bath in just a few hours. I stop to replenish my water and add a layer of mud to my backpack. It seems bent on reverting to orange no matter how many times I cover it.

My proximity to the Careers' camp sharpens my senses, and the closer I get to them, the more guarded I am, pausing frequently to listen for unnatural sounds, an arrow already fitted into the string of my bow. I don't see any other tributes, but I do notice some of the things Erron has mentioned.

Patches of the sweet berries. A bush with the leaves that healed my stings. Clusters of tracker jacker nests in the vicinity of the tree I was trapped in. And here and there, the black-and-white flash of a mockingjay wing in the branches high over my head.

When I reach the tree with the abandoned nest at the foot, I pause a moment, to gather my courage. Erron Black has given specific instructions on how to reach the best spying place near the lake from this point.

Remember, I tell myself. You're the hunter now, not them. I get a firmer grasp on my bow and go on. I make it to the copse Erron has told me about and again have to admire his cleverness. It's right at the edge of the wood, but the bushy foliage is so thick down low I can easily observe the Career camp without being spotted. Between us lies the flat expanse where the Games began.

There are three tributes. Jade, Kung Lao, and a big, ashen-skinned boy who must be from District 8. He is Tempest, master of wind, and is an excellent fighter.

All three tributes seem to still be recovering from the tracker jacker attack. Even from here, I can see the large swollen lumps on their bodies. They must not have had the sense to remove the stingers, or if they did, not known about the leaves that healed them.

Apparently, whatever medicines they found in the Cornucopia have been ineffective.

The Cornucopia sits in its original position, but its insides have been picked clean. Most of the supplies, held in crates, burlap sacks, and plastic bins, are piled neatly in a pyramid in what seems a questionable distance from the camp. Others are sprinkled around the perimeter of the pyramid, almost mimicking the layout of supplies around the Cornucopia at the onset of the Games. A canopy of netting that, aside from discouraging birds, seems to be useless shelters the pyramid itself.

The whole setup is completely perplexing. The distance, the netting, and the presence of the boy from District 8. One thing's for sure, destroying those supplies is not going to be as simple as it looks. Some other factor is at play here, and I'd better stay put until I figure out what it is. My guess is the pyramid is booby-trapped in some manner. I think of concealed pits, descending nets, a thread that when broken sends a poisonous dart into your heart.

Really, the possibilities are endless.

While I am mulling over my options, I hear Kung Lao shout out. He's pointing up to the woods, far beyond me, and without turning I know that Erron must have set the first campfire. We'd made sure to gather enough green wood to make the smoke noticeable. The Careers begin to arm themselves at once.

An argument breaks out. It's loud enough for me to hear that it concerns whether or not the boy from District 8 should stay or accompany them.

"He's coming. We need him in the woods, and his job's done here anyway. No one can touch those supplies," says Kung Lao.

"What about Lover Boy?" says Jade.

"I keep telling you, forget about him. I know where I cut him. You heard the cannon, Takeda shot him, I finished him," says Kung Lao.

So Kylin is out there in the woods, dead. I killed him.

"Come on," says Kung Lao. He thrusts a spear into the hands of Tempest, which he smacks him in the head with, making a solid Thwack! sound.

"What did you do that for?" he asked.

"Don'treat me like I'm less that. Never forget I have a higher score." But he relents to stay.

Kung Lao shakes his head, and they head off in the direction of the fire. The last thing I hear as they enter the woods is Kung Lao saying, "When we find him, I kill him in my own way, and you don't interfere." Somehow I don't think he's talking about Erron. He didn't drop a nest of tracker jackers on him.

I stay put for a half an hour or so, trying to figure out what to do about the supplies. The one advantage I have with the bow and arrow is distance. I could send a flaming arrow into the pyramid easily enough — I'm a good enough shot to get it through those openings in the net — but there's no guarantee it would catch.

More likely it'd just burn itself out and then what? I'd have achieved nothing and given them far too much information about myself. That I was here, that I have an accomplice, that I can use the bow and arrow with accuracy.

There's no alternative. I'm going to have to get in closer and see if I can't discover what exactly protects the supplies. In fact, I'm just about to reveal myself when a movement catches my eye. Several hundred yards to my right, I see someone emerge from the woods. For a second, I think it's Erron, but then I recognize — she's the one we couldn't remember this morning, Skarlet — creeping out onto the plain.

When she decides it's safe, she runs for the pyramid, with quick, small steps. Just before she reaches the circle of supplies that have been littered around the pyramid, she stops, searches the ground, and carefully places her feet on a spot. Then she begins to approach the pyramid with strange little hops, sometimes landing on one foot, teetering slightly, sometimes risking a few steps. At one point, she launches up in the air, over a small barrel and lands poised on her tiptoes. But she overshot slightly, and her momentum throws her forward. I hear her give a sharp squeal as her hands hit the ground, but nothing happens. In a moment, she's regained her feet and continues until she has reached the bulk of the supplies.

So, I'm right about the booby trap, but it's clearly more complex than I had imagined. I was right about the girl, too. How wily is she to have discovered this path into the food and to be able to replicate it so neatly? She fills her pack, taking a few items from a variety of containers, crackers from a crate, a handful of apples from a burlap sack that hangs suspended from a rope off the side of a bin. But only a handful from each, not enough to tip off that the food is missing. Not enough to cause suspicion. And then she's doing her odd little dance back out of the circle and scampering into the woods again, safe and sound.

I realize I'm grinding my teeth in frustration. Skarlet has confirmed what I'd already guessed. But what sort of trap have they laid that requires such dexterity? Has so many trigger points? Why did she squeal so as her hands made contact with the earth?

You'd have thought ... and slowly it begins to dawn on me ... you'd have thought the very ground was going to explode.

"It's mined," I whisper. That explains everything. The Careers' willingness to leave their supplies, Skarlet's reaction, the involvement of the boy from District 8, where they have the factories, where they make televisions and automobiles and explosives. But where did he get them? In the supplies? That's not the sort of weapon the Gamemakers usually provide, given that they like to see the tributes draw blood personally. I slip out of the bushes and cross to one of the round metal plates that lifted the tributes into the arena. The ground around it has been dug up and patted back down. The land mines were disabled after the sixty seconds we stood on the plates, but the boy from District 8 must have managed to reactivate them. I've never seen anyone in the Games do that. I bet it me as a shock even to the Gamemakers.

Well, hurray for the boy from District 8 for putting one over on them, but what am I supposed to do now? Obviously, I can't go strolling into that mess without blowing myself sky-high. As for sending in a burning arrow, that's more laughable than ever. The mines are set off by pressure. It doesn't have to be a lot, either. One year, a girl dropped her token, a small wooden ball, while she was at her plate, and they literally had to scrape bits of her off the ground.

My arm's pretty good, I might be able to chuck some rocks in there and set off what? Maybe one mine?

That could start a chain reaction. Or could it? Would the boy from District 8 have placed the mines in such a way that a single mine would not disturb the others? Thereby protecting the supplies but ensuring the death of the invader. Even if I only blew up one mine, I'd draw the Careers back down on me for sure.

And anyway, what am I thinking? There's that net, clearly strung to deflect any such attack. Besides, what I'd really need is to throw about thirty rocks in there at once, setting off a big chain reaction, demolishing the whole lot.

I glance back up at the woods. The smoke from Erron's second fire is wafting toward the sky. By now, the Careers have probably begun to suspect some sort of trick. Time is running out.

There is a solution to this, I know there is, if I can only focus hard enough. I stare at the pyramid, the bins, the crates, too heavy to topple over with an arrow. Maybe one contains cooking oil, and the burning arrow idea is reviving when I realize I could end up losing all twelve of my arrows and not get a direct hit on an oill bin, since I'd just be guessing. I'm genuinely thinking of trying to re-create Scar's trip up to the pyramid in hopes of finding a new means of destruction when my eyes light on the burlap bag of apples. I could sever the rope in one shot, didn't I do as much in the Training Center? It's a big bag, but it still might only be good for one explosion. If only I could free the apples themselves ...

I know what to do. I move into range and give myself three arrows to get the job done. I place my feet carefully, block out the rest of the world as I take meticulous aim, The first arrow tears through the side of the bag near the top, leaving a split in the burlap.

The second widens it to a gaping hole. I can see the first apple teetering when I let the third arrow go, catching the torn flap of burlap and ripping it from the bag.

For a moment, everything seems frozen in time. Then the apples spill to the ground and I'm blown backward into the air.

Chapter Seventeen

The impact with the hard-packed earth of the plain knocks the wind out of me. My backpack does little to soften the blow. Fortunately my quiver has caught in the crook of my elbow, sparing both itself and my shoulder, and my bow is locked in my grasp. The ground still shakes with explosions. I can't hear them.

I can't hear anything at the moment. But the apples must have set off enough mines, causing debris to activate the others. I manage to shield my face with my arms as shattered bits of matter, some of it burning, rain down around me. An acrid smoke fills the air, which is not the best remedy for someone trying to regain the ability to breathe.

After about a minute, the ground stops vibrating. I roll on my side and allow myself a moment of satisfaction the sight of the smoldering wreckage that was recently the pyramid. The Careers aren't likely to salvage anything out of that.

I'd better get out of here, I think. They'll be making a beeline for the place. But once I'm on my feet, I realize escape may not be so simple. I'm dizzy. Not the slightly wobbly kind, but the kind that sends the trees swooping around you and uses the earth to move in waves under your feet.

I take a few steps and somehow wind up on my hands and knees. I wait a few minutes to let it pass, but it doesn't.

Panic begins to set in. I can't stay here. Flight is essential. But I can neither walk nor hear. Have I gone deaf from the explosion? The idea frightens me. I rely as much on my ears as my eyes as a hunter, maybe more at times. But I can't let my fear show.

Absolutely, positively, I am live on every screen in Panem. I can't walk, but can I crawl? I move forward tentatively. Yes, if I go very slowly, I can crawl. Most of the woods will offer insufficient cover.

My only hope is to make it back to Tanya's copse and conceal myself in greenery. I can't get caught out here on my hands and knees in the open. Not only will I face death, it's sure to be a long and painful one at Kung Lao's hand. The thought of Khal having to watch that keeps me doggedly inching my way toward the hideout.

Another blast knocks me flat on my face. A stray mine, set off by some collapsing crate. This happens twice more. I'm reminded of those last few kernels that burst when Khal and I pop corn over the fire at home.

To say I make it in the nick of time is an understatement. I have literally just dragged myself into the tangle of hushes at the base of the trees when there's Kung Lao, barreling onto the plain, soon followed by his companion. His rage is so extreme it might be comical — so people really do tear out their hair and beat the ground with their fists — if I didn't know that it was aimed at me, at what I have done to him. Add to that my proximity, my inability to run or defend myself, and in fact, the whole thing has me terrified. I'm glad my hiding place makes it impossible for the cameras to get a close shot of me because I'm biting my nails like there's no tomorrow. Gnawing off the last bits of nail polish, trying to keep my teeth from chattering.

The boy from District 8 throws stones into the ruins and must have declared all the mines activated because the Careers are approaching the wreckage.

Kung Lao has finished the first phase of his tantrum and takes out his anger on the smoking remains by kicking open various containers. The other tributes are poking around in the mess, looking for anything to salvage, but there's nothing. The boy from District 8 has done his job too well. This idea must occur to Kung Lao, too, because he turns on the boy and appears to be shouting at him. The boy stands his ground, and before you know it, Lao has flown across the ground and slammed straight into the nearest tree.

It's that quick. The death of Kung Lao.

Jade seems to be crying over Lao. Tempest steps to her and asks her a question, and Jade looks up at him, her eyes staring deeply into his, and... a smile? She smiles and then... Tempest smiles too? I'm confused.

Jade kisses him, and they begin to speak. Tempest starts gesturing towards the gorest, and I can tell he wants to return to the woods, but they keep pointing at the sky, which puzzles me until I realize, Of course. They think whoever set off the explosions is dead.

They don't know about the arrows and the apples.

They assume the booby trap was faulty, but that the tribute who blew up the supplies was killed doing it. If there was a cannon shot, it could have been easily lost in the subsequent explosions. The shattered remains of the thief removed by hovercraft. They retire to the far side of the lake to allow the Gamemakers to retrieve the body of Kung Lao. And they wait.

A cannon goes off. A hovercraft appears and takes the dead boy. The sun dips below the horizon.

I hear rustling behind me, and as I turn, its Erron. He looks at me, presumably smiling or grimacing down, holding... three rabbits?

We begin to split the rabbits, chewing on their goodness. Erron cooked it good, none of it is uncooked. It fills me up to keep me energized.

Night falls. Up in the sky, we see the seal and hear the anthem begin. A moment of darkness.

They show Kung Lao. They show the man from District 12, Raiden, who must have died this morning.

Then the seal reappears. So, now they know. The bomber survived. In the seal's light, I can see Tempest and Jade put on their night-vision glasses. Jade ignites a tree branch for a torch, illuminating the grim determination on all their faces. They stride back into the woods to hunt.

"Good job, Takeda," Erron says. "When I heard the bombs, I knew you came through, just didn't know who that was that died." He looks me in the eye. "I thought you were that cannon."

I nod. "To be honest, I did too."

Erron lets out a chuckle, and he says, "Thank goodness it wasn't. Then the Games would be boring. I have a feeling this Games is gonna be interesting."

I stare at him and debate wether or not to ask, but plunge straight in, "Where are you from?"

He stares at me, then says, "District 5. I used to run a major farm. I had three boys working for me. They were like sons to me. Worst thing that ever happened to me when Jerrod was called." His eyes turn sad. "I volunteered to stop this from happening to them. It simply couldn't. Even now, they're watching over the farm. I'm pretty much certain I'm gonna die out here, so it'll be permanent."

I stare at him, saying, "But Erron, you've made it so far! Only two more have to die before we're all free!"

Erron looks at me. "Who do you think is gonna bite the dust? Skarlet? She's practically immune to attacks. The Careers? So lost in their love for each other, both loving every second, exploring each other. D'Vorah, a bug that practically disappeared, what chance do I have? You, you could make it out. Kill the Careers, make yourself one of the Victors, but not with me around."

Is he counting himself out? He will make it, I promise myself. I will make sure his workers see him again, no matter what.

Jade, me, Skarlet, D'Vorah, Erron, and Reiko. Just 6 of us. The betting must be getting really hot in the Capitol. They'll be doing special features on each of us now. Probably interviewing our friends and families. It's been a long time since a tribute from District 2 even made it into the top eight.

A cold breeze has sprung up. I reach for my sleeping bag before I remember I left it. I was supposed to pick up another one, but what with the mines and all, I forgot. I begin to shiver. Erron notices, and scoops out a hollow under the bushes. He then covers me with leaves and pine needles. I'm still freezing. Erron heads for a tree.

"Erron," I ask. He grunts at me, turning around.

"Yeah?" he asks.

I climb up out of the hollow and begin digging out more of the ground. Soon, there's space for both of us to fit. I let Erron climb in first, then lower myself in. We're squished together, but the heat from his body is against mine. He puts his arms around my waist, pulling me closer.

I lay my sheet of plastic over us, and position my backpack to block the wind. It's a little better. I begin to have more sympathy for the girl that lit the fire that first night. But now it's us who needs to grit our teeth and tough it out until morning. More leaves, more pine needles. I pull my arms inside myself, and tuck my knees up to my chest, so that Erron is facing me, but me facing the outside. Somehow, I drift off to sleep.

When I open my eyes, I am shivering in the cold. The warm body that had its strong hard around me has disappeared. As I sit up, I hear a laugh somewhere near the lake and freeze. The laugh's distorted, but the fact that it registered at all means I must be regaining my hearing. Yes, my left ear can hear.

I peer through the bushes, afraid the Careers have returned, trapping me here for an indefinite time. No, it's Scar, standing in the rubble of the pyramid and laughing. She's smarter than the Careers, actually finding a few useful items in the ashes. A metal pot. A knife blade. I'm perplexed by her amusement until I realize that with the Careers' stores eliminated, she might actually stand a chance.

Just like the rest of us. It crosses my mind to reveal myself and enlist her as a second ally against that pack. But I rule it out. There's something about that sly grin that makes me sure that befriending her would ultimately get me a knife in the back. With that in mind, this might be an excellent time to shoot her.

But she's heard something, not me, because her head turns away, toward the drop-off, and she sprints for the woods. I wait. No one, nothing shows up. Still, if face thought it was dangerous, maybe it's time for me to get out of here, too.

Since I've no idea where the Careers are, the route back by the stream seems as good as any. I hurry, bow in one hand, a hunk of cold groosling in the other, because I'm famished now, and not just for leaves and berries but for the fat and protein in the meat. The trip to the stream is uneventful. Once there, I refill my water and wash, taking particular care with my injured ear. Then I travel uphill using the stream as a guide. At one point, I find boot prints in the mud along the bank. The Careers have been here, but not for a while. The prints are deep because they were made in soft mud, but now they're nearly dry in the hot sun. I haven't been careful enough about my own tracks, counting on a light tread and the pine needles to conceal my prints. Now I strip off my boots and socks and go barefoot up the bed of the stream.

The cool water has an invigorating effect on my body, my spirits. I shoot two fish, easy pickings in this slow-moving stream, and go ahead and eat one raw even though I've just had the groosling. The second I'll save for Erron.

Gradually, subtly, the ringing in my ear diminishes until it's gone entirely. I find myself pawing at my left ear periodically, trying to clean away whatever deadens its ability to collect sounds. If there's improvement, it's undetectable. I can't adjust to deafness in the ear. It makes me feel off-balanced and defenseless to my left. Blind even. My head keeps turning to the injured side, as my right ear tries to compensate for the wall of nothingness where yesterday there was a constant flow of information.

The more time that passes, the less hopeful I am that this is an injury that will heal.

When I reach the site of our first meeting, I feel certain it's been undisturbed. There's no sign of Erron, not on the ground or in the trees. This is odd. By now he should have returned, as it's midday. I wonder where he went.

He's probably just being cautious about making his way back. I wish he'd hurry, because I don't want to hang around here too long. I want to spend the afternoon traveling to higher ground, hunting as we go. But there's nothing really for me to do but wait.

I wash the blood out of my hair and clean my ever-growing list of wounds. The burns are much better but I use a bit of medicine on them anyway.

Then I hear a scream.

But the scream was Erron's

I freak out, looking around, screaming for Erron. Where was he? Was that him? No!

"Erron! Erron!" I scream, trying to block out the sound of the cannon. I am practically crying tears, sobbing. Was it Erron?

The main thing to worry about now is keeping out infection. I go ahead and eat the second fish. It isn't going to last long in this hot sun, but it should be easy enough to spear a few more for Erron. If she would just show up.

Feeling too vulnerable on the ground with my lopsided hearing, I scale a tree to wait. If the Careers show up, this will be a fine place to shoot them from.

Erron Black clears his throat, just like the first time we met, and I'm glad to see him. The birds fall silent. I rush into his arms, and he kisses my forehead. I'm sobbing, telling him I heard the scream. He says he fell out of a tree, but he was fine. He sits me down and begins stroking my hair. We sit like that for a while, as he just stares at me, watching me calm down. When I'm settled down, we again begin trekking through the woods. He's holding a lot of stuff, stuff like my sleeping bag, a cooked squirrel, and one of those orange backpacks.

I obediently consolidate the supplies I want into my pack. He has knives, food, and a few arrows I left behind. We keep trekking, trying to find the others. Who knows where the Careers are now? Either too far to reach me or too sure this is a trick or ... is it possible? Too scared of me? They know I have the bow and arrows, of course, Kung Lao saw me take them from Tanya's body, but have they put two and two together yet? Figured out I blew up the supplies and killed their fellow Career? Possibly they think Reiko did this?

And what about Scar? Did she hang around to watch me blow up the supplies? No. When I caught her laughing in the ashes the next morning, it was as if someone had given her a lovely surprise.

I really think we stand a chance of doing it now.

We hike through the forest, making our way towards... something.

Erron and I reach

It turns into nightfall. It's been an uneventful day according to the sky. No deaths. I wonder how long we'll get until the next catastrophe drives us back together. If it's going to be tonight, I want to get some sleep first. I cover my good ear to block out the strains of the anthem, but then I hear the trumpets and sit straight up in anticipation.

For the most part, the only communication the tributes get from outside the arena is the nightly death toll. But occasionally, there will be trumpets followed by an announcement. Usually, this will be a call to a feast. When food is scarce, the Gamemakers will invite the players to a banquet, somewhere known to all like the Cornucopia, as an inducement to gather and fight. Sometimes there is a feast and sometimes there's nothing but a loaf of stale bread for the tributes to compete for. I wouldn't go in for the food, but this could be an ideal time to take out a few competitors.

Claudius Templesmith's voice booms down from overhead, congratulating the six of us who remain.

But he is not inviting us to a feast. He's saying something very confusing. There's been a rule change in the Games. A rule change! That in itself is mind bending since we don't really have any rules to speak of except don't step off your circle for sixty seconds and the unspoken rule about not eating one another.

Under the new rule, only two tributes will be declared winners if they are the last two alive and do not originate from the same district. Claudius muses, as if he knows we're not getting it, and repeats the change again.

The news sinks in. Only two tributes can win this year. Six into two.

PART III

"THE VICTOR"

Chapter Nineteen

A sound! Just in front of us! Erron hears it too, and looks at me. We both run in that direction, sensing that the person is running too. I wonder who it is. Reiko, D'Vorah, the Careers? Whoever, we would make quick work of them.

We run quickly, and stop as we see both of the Careers with their backs turned to us. They turn around, and look at us both.

"Well. The Boy on Fire, and the Cowboy," Jade says. "Hear the new rule? This'll be fun, taking you two."

Tempest lunges for me, but before he can get there, I jump out of the way, stuffing his attack with a kick. He falls, dropping to the ground. Jade throws her glaive, but Erron moves out of the way. Jade watches and smiles as the glaive comes back, slucing him in the leg. She then drop kicks him off the cliff we'd been standing on.

He falls, clutching his leg. Blood seeps out of the wound. I throw my whip out at Jade, catching her off guard. It sticks in her stomach, and I throw her into Tempest.

She gets up. "You think you got me?" she asks. "I'll have you begging for mercy in five minutes."

"You will be dead by then," I say.

...

I stand before her as Kotal Kahn speaks. "Finish Her!"

I take my whip, and slice both of her arms off by turning on the blades. Then I stick the last in her mouth, and grin as I activate the blades. They grab her throat, and I pull out, ripping it out. She coughs up chunks of body parts, and falls, choking on her own blood.

"Fatality!" the voice screams. Tempest is nowhere to be found, and I must find Erron. I look at the cliff, seeing that there are trails of blood where he moved. He's still alive. I climb down and start moving towards the ground. I get down, and go on.

Hugging the rocks, I move slowly in the direction of the blood, searching for him. I find a few more bloodstains, but no sign of life. I break down and say his name in a hushed voice. "Erron! Erron!" Then a mockingjay lands on a scruffy tree and begins to mimic my tones so I stop. I give up and climb back down to the stream thinking, He must have moved on. Somewhere farther down.

My foot has just broken the surface of the water when I hear a voice.

"You here to finish me off, kid?" I whip around. It's come from the left, so I can't pick it up very well. And the voice was hoarse and weak.

Still, it must have been Erron. Who else in the arena would call me kid? My eyes peruse the bank, but there's nothing. Just mud, the plants, the base of the rocks.

"Erron?" I whisper. "Where are you?" There's no answer. Could I just have imagined it?

No, I'm certain it was real and very close at hand, too. "Erron?"

"I'm right here, kid," he says. I turn around, and he's on the ground, his leg propped up. I rush over to him, and look at the cut. It's bloody, really bloody. He tried to put some water on it, because there's not as much as there should be. "Wanted me to enjoy my final moments?"

"You're not going to die," I tell him firmly.

"Says who?" His voice is so ragged. His eyes stare into mine, and he seems tired.

"Says me. We're on the same team, you know," I tell him.

His eyes open. "So I see. Nice of you to find what's left of me."

I pull out my water bottle and give him a drink. "How bad did she cut you?" I ask.

"No doctor, but I can feel its pretty bad.," he answers.

"Let's get you in the stream, wash you off so I can see what kind of wounds you've got," I say.

When I start to help him to the stream, all the levity disappears. It's only two feet away, how hard can it be? Its hard when I realize he's barely able to move an inch on his own. He's so weak that the best he can do is not to resist. I try to drag him, but despite the fact that I know he's doing all he can to keep quiet, sharp cries of pain escape him. "Look, Erron, I'm going to roll you into the stream. It's very shallow here, okay?" I say.

"Excellent, kid," he says.

I crouch down beside him. No matter what happens, I tell myself, don't stop until he's in the water. "On three," I say."One, two, three!" I can only manage one full roll before I have to stop because of the horrible sound he's making. Now he's on the edge of the stream. Maybe this is better anyway.

"Okay, change of plans. I'm not going to put you all the way in," I tell him. Besides, if I get him in, who knows if I'd ever be able to get him out?

"No more rolling?" he asks.

"That's all done. Let's get you cleaned up. Keep an eye on the woods for me, okay?" I say. I've got two water bottles. I prop them against rocks in the stream so that two are always filling while I pour my hand water over Erron's body.

I gently remove his red over shirts and bandoleers, cut into his shirt and ease them off him. His undershirt is so plastered into his wounds I have to cut it away with my knife too and drench him again to work it loose. The only thing bad is the cut on his leg and the knot in his other one. His hand was scratched. This much I can fix. I decide to take care of his upper body first, to alleviate some pain, before I tackle whatever damage Jade did to his leg.

Since treating his wounds seems pointless when he's lying in what's become a mud puddle, I manage to prop him up against a boulder. He sits there, uncomplaining, while I wash away all the traces of dirt from his hair and skin. His flesh is very pale in the sunlight and he no longer looks strong and stocky. While he dries in the sun, I wash his filthy clothes and spread them over boulders. Then I apply the cream to his hand. This is when I notice how hot his skin is becoming. The layer of mud and the bottles of water have disguised the fact that he's burning with fever. I dig through the first-aid kit I got from him and find pills that reduce your temperature. My mother actually breaks down and buys these on occasion when her home remedies fail.

"Swallow these," I tell him, and he obediently takes the medicine.

"Thanks. Can I sleep now, kid?" he asks.

"Soon," I promise. "I need to look at your leg first." Trying to be as gentle as I can, I remove his boots, his socks, and then very slowly inch his pants off of him. I can see the tear Jade's glaive made in the fabric over his thigh. It's disgusting, its bleeding, and there's mud over it, but I have to clean it.

"Pretty awful, huh?" says Erron. He's watching me closely.

"So-so." I shrug like it's no big deal. "You should see some of the people they bring my mother from the mines." I refrain from saying how I usually clear out of the house whenever she's treating anything worse than a cold. Come to think of it, I don't even much like to be around coughing. "First thing is to clean it well."

I've left on Erron's undershorts because they're not in bad shape and I don't want to pull them over the swollen thigh and, all right, maybe the idea of him being naked makes me uncomfortable. That's another thing about my mother and Khal. Nakedness has no effect on them, gives them no cause for embarrassment. Ironically, at this point in the Games, my little sister would be of far more use to Erron than I am. I scoot my square of plastic under him so I can wash down the rest of him. With each bottle I pour over him, the better the wound looks.

The rest of his lower body has fared pretty well. But the gash on his leg ... what on earth can I do for that?

"Why don't we give it some air and then ..." I trail off.

"And then you'll patch it up?" says Erron. He looks almost sorry for me, as if he knows how lost I am.

"That's right," I say. "In the meantime, you eat these." I put a few dried pear halves in his hand and go back in the stream to wash the rest of his clothes.

When they're flattened out and drying, I examine the contents of the first-aid kit. It's pretty basic stuff.

Bandages, fever pills, medicine to calm stomachs.

Nothing of the caliber I'll need to treat Erron.

"We're going to have to experiment some," I admit. I know the tracker jacker leaves draw out infection, so I start with those. Within minutes of pressing the handful of chewed-up green stuff into the wound, pus begins running down the side of his leg. I tell myself this is a good thing and bite the inside of my cheek hard because my breakfast is threatening to make a reappearance.

"Takeda?" Erron says. I meet his eyes, knowing my face must be some shade of green. He mouths the words. "How about that kiss?"

I burst out laughing because the whole thing is so revolting I can't stand it. "I don't roll that way, Erron."

"Something wrong?" he asks a little too innocently.

"I ... I'm not very good at this. I'm not my mother," I say. "Euh!" I allow myself to let out a groan as I rinse away the first round of leaves and apply the second. "Euuuh!"

"How do you hunt?" he asks.

"Trust me. Killing things is much easier than this," I say. "Although for all I know, I am killing you."

"Can you speed it up a little?" he asks.

"No. Shut up and eat your pears," I say.

After three applications and what seems like a bucket of pus, the wound does look better. Now that the swelling has gone down, I can see how deep Cato's sword cut. Right down to the bone.

"What next, kid?" he asks.

"Maybe I'll put some of the burn ointment on it. I think it helps with infection anyway. And wrap it up?"

I say. I do and the whole thing seems a lot more manageable, covered in clean white cotton. Although, against the sterile bandage, the hem of his undershorts looks filthy and teeming with contagion. I pull out Rue's backpack. "Here, cover yourself with this and I'll wash your shorts."

"Oh, I don't care. I'm sort of a nudist," says Erron. I just know he's grinning.

"You're just like the rest of my family," I say. "I care, all right?" I turn my back and look at the stream until the undershorts splash into the current. He must be feeling a bit better if he can throw.

"You're kind of sad for such a lethal person," says Erron as I beat the shorts clean between two rocks.

I let Erron doze off while his clothes dry out, but by late afternoon, I don't dare wait any longer. I gently shake his shoulder. "Erron, we've got to go now."

"Go?" He seems confused. "Go where?"

"Away from here. Downstream maybe. Somewhere we can hide you until you're stronger," I say. I help him dress, leaving his feet bare so we can walk in the water, and pull him upright. His face drains of color the moment he puts weight on his leg. "Come on. You can do this."

But he can't. Not for long anyway. We make it about fifty yards down the stream, with him propped up by my shoulder, and I can tell he's going to black out. I sit him on the bank, push his head between his knees, and pat his back awkwardly as I survey the area. Of course, I'd love to get him up in a tree, but that's not going to happen. It could be worse though. Some of the rocks form small cavelike structures. I set my sights on one about twenty yards above the stream.

When Erron's able to stand, I half-guide, half-carry him up to the cave. Really, I'd like to look around for a better place, but this one will have to do because my ally is bloodshot, paper white, panting, and, even though it's only just cooling off, he's shivering.

I cover the floor of the cave with a layer of pine needles, unroll my sleeping bag, and tuck him into it.

I get a couple of pills and some water into him when he's not noticing, but he refuses to eat even the fruit.

Then he just lies there, his eyes trained on my face as I build a sort of blind out of vines to conceal the mouth of the cave. The result is unsatisfactory. An animal might not question it, but a human would see hands had manufactured it quickly enough. I tear it down in frustration.

"Takeda," he says. I go over to him and brush the hair back from his eyes. "Thanks for finding me."

"You would have found me if you could," I say. His forehead's burning up. Like the medicine's having no effect at all. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I'm scared he's going to die.

"Yes. Look, if I don't make it back —" he begins.

"Don't talk like that. I didn't drain all that pus for nothing," I say.

"I know. But just in case I don't —" he tries to continue.

"No, Erron, I don't even want to discuss it," I say.

"But I —" he insists.

Impulsively, I lean forward and kiss his forehead, stopping his words. This is probably overdue anyway. It's the first time I've ever kissed a boy, which should make some sort of impression I guess, but all I can register is how unnaturally hot his head are from the fever. I break away and pull the edge of the sleeping bag up around him."You're not going to die. I forbid it. All right?"

"All right," he whispers.

I step out in the cool evening air just as the parachute floats down from the sky. My fingers quickly undo the tie, hoping for some real medicine to treat Erron's leg.

Instead I find a pot of hot broth.

Kano couldn't be sending me a clearer message.

One kiss equals one pot of broth. I can almost hear his snarl. "You're supposed to be in love with Kylin, but since that can't happen, romance it up with him, eh? The man's dying. Give me somethin' I can work with!" And he's right. If I want to keep Erron alive, I've got to give the audience something more to care about. Lovers desperate to get home together. Two hearts beating as one. Romance.

Never having been in love, this is going to be a real trick. I think of my parents. The way my father never failed to bring her gifts from the woods. The way my mother's face would light up at the sound of his boots at the door. The way she almost stopped living when he died.

"Erron!" I say, trying for the special tone that my mother used only with my father. He's dozed off again, but I kiss him awake, which seems to startle him. Then he smiles as if he'd be happy to lie there gazing at me forever. He's great at this stuff.

I hold up the pot. "Erron, look what Kano has sent you."

Chapter Twenty

Getting the broth into Erron takes an while of coaxing, begging, and threatening, but finally, I just pulled the bottom of his mask up, and sip by sip, he empties the pot. I let him drift off to sleep then and attend to my own needs, wolfing down a supper of groosling and roots while I watch the daily report in the sky. One casualty, that's it. Still, Erron and I have given the audience a fairly interesting day.

Hopefully, the Gamemakers will allow us a peaceful night.

I automatically look around for a good tree to nest in before I realize that's over. At least for a while. I can't very well leave Erron unguarded on the ground. I left the scene of his last hiding place on the bank of the stream untouched — how could I conceal it? — and we're a scant fifty yards stream. I put on my glasses, place my weapons in readiness, and settle down to keep watch.

The temperature drops rapidly and soon I'm chilled to the bone. Eventually, I give in and slide into the sleeping bag with Erron. It's toasty warm and I snuggle down gratefully until I realize it's more than warm, it's overly hot because the bag is reflecting back his fever. I check his forehead and find it burning and dry. I don't know what to do. Leave him in the bag and hope the excessive heat breaks the fever? Take him out and hope the night air cools him off? I end up just dampening a strip of bandage and placing it on his forehead. It seems weak, but I'm afraid to do anything too drastic.

I spend the night half-sitting, half-lying next to Erron, refreshing the bandage, and trying not to dwell on the fact that by teaming up with him, I've made myself far more vulnerable than when I was alone. Tethered to the ground, on guard, with a very injured person to take care of. But I knew he was injured. And still I came after him. I'm just going to have to trust that whatever instinct sent me to find him was a good one.

When the sky turns rosy, I notice the sheen of sweat on Erron's lip and discover the fever has broken. He's not back to normal, but it's come down a few degrees.

Last night, when I was gathering vines, I came upon a bush of Rue's berries. I strip off the fruit and mash it up in the broth pot with cold water.

Erron's struggling to get up when I reach the cave. "I woke up and you were gone," he says. "I was worried about you."

I have to laugh as I ease him back down. "You were worried about me? Have you taken a look at yourself lately?"

"I thought Tempest or Reiko might have found you. They like to hunt at night," he says, still serious.

"Yes, there's just them and us and D'Vorah and Scar," I say.

"Better than yesterday. This is an enormous improvement over the mud," he says. "Clean clothes and medicine and a sleeping bag ... and you." Oh, right, the whole romance thing. I reach out to touch his cheek and he catches my hand and presses it against his cheek. I remember my father doing this very thing to my mother and I wonder where Erron picked it up. Surely not from his father and the witch.

"No more kisses for you until you've eaten," I say. "Hand, cheek, anywhere."

We get him propped up against the wall and he obediently swallows the spoonfuls of the berry mush I feed him. He refuses the groosling again, though.

"You didn't sleep," Erron says.

"I'm all right," I say. But the truth is, I'm exhausted.

"Sleep now. I'll keep watch. I'll wake you if anything happens," he says. I hesitate. "You can't stay up forever, kid."

He's got a point there. I'll have to sleep eventually.

And probably better to do it now when he seems relatively alert and we have daylight on our side. "All right," I say. "But just for a few hours. Then you wake me."

It's too warm for the sleeping bag now. I smooth it out on the cave floor and lie down, one hand on my loaded bow in case I have to shoot at a moment's notice. Erron sits beside me, leaning against the wall, his bad leg stretched out before him, his eyes trained on the world outside. "Go to sleep," he says softly. His hand brushes the loose strands of my hair off my forehead. Unlike the staged kisses and caresses so far, this gesture seems natural and comforting. I don't want him to stop and he doesn't. He's still stroking my hair when I fall asleep.

Too long. I sleep too long. I know from the moment I open my eyes that we're into the afternoon. Erron's right beside me, his position unchanged. I sit up, feeling somehow defensive but better rested than I've been in days.

"Erron, you were supposed to wake me after a couple of hours," I say.

"Why, kid? Nothing's going on here," he says. "Besides I like watching you sleep. You don't scowl. Improves your looks a lot."

This, of course, brings on a scowl that I'm sure makes him grin. I tend to his minor wounds, the burns, the stings, which are showing improvement. I steel myself and unwrap the leg.

My heart drops into my stomach. It's worse, much worse. There's no more pus in evidence, but the swelling has increased and the tight shiny skin is inflamed. Then I see the red streaks starting to crawl up his leg. Blood poisoning. Unchecked, it will kill him for sure. My chewed-up leaves and ointment won't make a dent in it. We'll need strong anti-infection drugs from the Capitol. I can't imagine the cost of such potent medicine. If Kano pooled every donation from every sponsor, would he have enough? I doubt it. Gifts go up in price the longer the Games continue. What buys a full meal on day one buys a cracker on day twelve. And the kind of medicine Erron needs would have been at a premium from the beginning.

"Well, there's more swelling, but the pus is gone," I say in an unsteady voice.

"I know what blood poisoning is, Takeda," says Erron. "Even if my mother isn't a healer."

"You're just going to have to outlast the others, Erron. They'll cure it back at the Capitol when we win," I say.

"Yes, that's a good plan, kid." he says. But I feel this is mostly for my benefit.

"You have to eat. Keep your strength up. I'm going to make you soup," I say.

"Don't light a fire," he says. "It's not worth it."

"We'll see," I say. As I take the pot down to the stream, I'm struck by how brutally hot it is. I swear the Gamemakers are progressively ratcheting up the temperature in the daytime and sending it plummeting at night. The heat of the sun-baked stones by the stream gives me an idea though. Maybe I won't need to light a fire.

I settle down on a big flat rock halfway between the stream and the cave. After purifying half a pot of water, I place it in direct sunlight and add several egg-size hot stones to the water. I'm the first to admit I'm not much of a cook. But since soup mainly involves tossing everything in a pot and waiting, it's one of my better dishes. I mince groosling until it's practically mush and mash some of Rue's roots.

Fortunately, they've both been roasted already so they mostly need to be heated up. Already, between the sunlight and the rocks, the water's warm. I put in the meat and roots, swap in fresh rocks, and go find something green to spice it up a little. Before long, I discover a tuft of chives growing at the base of some rocks. Perfect. I chop them very fine and add them to the pot, switch out the rocks again, put on the lid, and let the whole thing stew.

I've seen very few signs of game around, but I don't feel comfortable leaving Erron alone while I hunt, so I rig half a dozen snares and hope I get lucky. I wonder about the other tributes, how they're managing now that their main source of food has been blown up. At least three of them, Tempest, Jade, and Skarlet, had been relying on it, but Jade's dead. Probably not Reiko though. Are they fighting each other? Looking for us? Maybe one of them has located us and is just waiting for the right moment to attack. The idea sends me back to the cave.

Erron's stretched out on top of the sleeping bag in the shade of the rocks. Although he brightens a bit when I come in, it's clear he feels miserable. I put cool cloths on his head, but they warm up almost as soon as they touch his skin.

"Do you want anything?" I ask.

"No," he says. "Thank you. Wait, yes. Tell me a story."

"No," I say. "I'm not a good one, and there's nothing to tell." I feel his fever.

The fever's going nowhere but up. "You're a little cooler though."

The sound of the trumpets startles me. I'm on my feet and at the mouth of the cave in a flash, not wanting to miss a syllable. It's my new best friend, Claudius Templesmith, and as I expected, he's inviting us to a feast. Well, we're not that hungry and I actually wave his offer away in indifference when he says, "Now hold on. Some of you may already be declining my invitation. But this is no ordinary feast. Each of you needs something desperately."

I do need something desperately. Something to heal Erron's leg.

"Each of you will find that something in a backpack, marked with your district number, at the Cornucopia at dawn. Think hard about refusing to show up. For some of you, this will be your last chance," says Claudius.

There's nothing else, just his words hanging in the air. I jump as Erron grips my shoulder from behind.

"No," he says."You're not risking your life for me."

"Who said I was?" I say.

"So, you're not going?" he asks.

"Of course, I'm not going. Give me some credit. Do you think I'm running straight into some free-for-all against Tempest and Skarlet and Reiko? Don't be stupid," I say, helping him back to bed."I'll let them fight it out, we'll see who's in the sky tomorrow night and work out a plan from there."

"You're such a bad liar, Takeda. I don't know how you've survived this long." He begins to mimic me."You're a little cooler though. Of course, I'm not going. He shakes his head. "Never gamble at cards. You'll lose your last coin," he says.

Anger flushes my face. "All right, I am going, and you can't stop me!"

"I can follow you. At least partway. I may not make it to the Cornucopia, but if I'm yelling your name, I bet someone can find me. And then I'll be dead for sure," he says.

"You won't get a hundred yards from here on that leg," I say.

"Then I'll drag myself," says Erron. "You go and I'm going, too, kid."

He's just stubborn enough and maybe just strong enough to do it. Come howling after me in the woods.

Even if a tribute doesn't find him, something else might. He can't defend himself. I'd probably have to wall him up in the cave just to go myself. And who knows what the exertion will do to him?

"What am I supposed to do? Sit here and watch you die?" I say. He must know that's not an option. That the audience would hate me. And frankly, I would hate myself, too, if I didn't even try.

"I won't die. I promise. If you promise not to go," he says.

We're at something of a stalemate. I know I can't argue him out of this one, so I don't try. I pretend, reluctantly, to go along. "Then you have to do what I say. Drink your water, wake me when I tell you, and eat every bite of the soup no matter how disgusting it is!" I snap at him.

"Agreed. Is it ready?" he asks.

"Wait here," I say. The air's gone cold even though the sun's still up. I'm right about the Gamemakers messing with the temperature. I wonder if the thing someone needs desperately is a good blanket. The soup is still nice and warm in its iron pot. And actually doesn't taste too bad.

Erron eats without complaint, lifting up his mask, even scraping out the pot to show his enthusiasm. He rambles on about how delicious it is, which should be encouraging if you don't know what fever does to people. He's like listening to Kano before the alcohol has soaked him into incoherence. I give him another dose of fever medicine before he goes off his head completely.

As I go down to the stream to wash up, all I can think is that he's going to die if I don't get to that feast. I'll keep him going for a day or two, and then the infection will reach his heart or his brain or his lungs and he'll be gone. And I'll be here all alone. Again.

Waiting for the others.

I'm so lost in thought that I almost miss the parachute, even though it floats right by me. Then I spring after it, yanking it from the water, tearing off the silver fabric to retrieve the vial. Kano has done it! He's gotten the medicine — I don't know how, persuaded some gaggle of romantic fools to sell their jewels —and I can save Erron! It's such a tiny vial though. It must be very strong to cure someone as ill as Erron. A ripple of doubt runs through me. I uncork the vial and take a deep sniff. My spirits fall at the sickly sweet scent. Just to be sure, I place a drop on the tip of my tongue. There's no question, it's sleep syrup. It's a common medicine in District 12, everyone can export it and make quick cash from parents with nagging kids. Cheap, as medicine goes, but very addictive. Almost everyone's had a dose at one time or another. We have some in a bottle at home. My mother gives it to hysterical patients to knock them out to stitch up a bad wound or quiet their minds or just to help someone in pain get through the night. It only takes a little. A vial this size could knock Erron out for a full day, but what good is that? I'm so furious I'm about to throw Kano's last offering into the stream when it hits me. A full day? That's more than I need.

I mash up a handful of berries so the taste won't be as noticeable and add some mint leaves for good measure. Then I head back up to the cave. "I've brought you a treat. I found a new patch of berries a little farther stream."

Erron opens his mouth for the first bite without hesitation. He swallows then frowns slightly. "They're very sweet."

"Yes, they're sugar berries. My mother makes jam from them. Haven't you ever had them before?" I say, poking the next spoonful in his mouth.

"No," he says, almost puzzled. "But they taste familiar. Sugar berries?"

"Well, you can't get them in the market much, they only grow wild," I say. Another mouthful goes down.

Just one more to go.

"They're sweet as syrup," he says, taking the last spoonful. "Syrup." His eyes widen as he realizes the truth. I clamp my hand over his mouth and nose hard, forcing him to swallow instead of spit. He tries to make himself vomit the stuff up, but it's too late, he's already losing consciousness. Even as he fades away, I can see in his eyes what I've done is unforgivable.

I sit back on my heels and look at him with a mixture of sadness and satisfaction. A stray berry stains his chin and I wipe it away. "Who can't lie, Erron?" I say, even though he can't hear me.

It doesn't matter. The rest of Panem can.

Chapter Twenty-one

In the remaining hours before nightfall, I gather rocks and do my best to camouflage the opening of the cave.

It's a slow and arduous process, but after a lot of sweating and shifting things around, I'm pretty pleased with my work, The cave now appears to be part of a larger pile of rocks, like so many in the vicinity. I can still crawl in to Peeta through a small opening, but it's undetectable from the out? side.

That's good, because I'll need to share that sleeping bag again tonight. Also, if I don't make it back from the feast, Peeta will be hidden but not entirely imprisoned. Although I doubt he can hang on much longer without medicine. If I die at the feast, District 12 isn't likely to have a victor.

I make a meal out of the smaller, bonier fish that inhabit the stream down here, fill every water container and purify it, and clean my weapons. I've nine arrows left in all. I debate leaving the knife with Peeta so he'll have some protection while I'm gone, but there's really no point. He was right about camouflage being his final defense. But I still might have use for the knife. Who knows what I'll encounter?

Here are some things I'm fairly certain of. That at least Cato, Clove, and Thresh will be on hand when the feast starts. I'm not sure about face since direct confrontation isn't her style or her forte. She's even smaller than I am and unarmed, unless she's picked up some weapons recently. She'll probably be hanging somewhere nearby, seeing what she can scavenge. But the other three ... I'm going to have my hands full. My ability to kill at a distance is my greatest asset, but I know I'll have to go right into the thick of things to get that backpack, the one with the number 12 on it that Claudius Templesmith mentioned.

I watch the sky, hoping for one less opponent at dawn, but nobody appears tonight. Tomorrow there will be faces up there. Feasts always result in fatalities.

I crawl into the cave, secure my glasses, and curl up next to Peeta. Luckily I had that good long sleep today. I have to stay awake. I don't really think anyone will attack our cave tonight, but I can't risk missing the dawn.

So cold, so bitterly cold tonight. As if the Gamemakers have sent an infusion of frozen air across the arena, which may be exactly what they've done. I lay next to Peeta in the bag, trying to absorb every bit of his fever heat. It's strange to be so physically close to someone who's so distant. Peeta might as well be back in the Capitol, or in District 12, or on the moon right now, he'd be no harder to reach.

I've never felt lonelier since the Games began.

Just accept it will be a bad night,I tell myself. I try not to, but I can't help thinking of my mother and Prim, wondering if they'll sleep a wink tonight. At this late stage in the Games, with an important event like the feast, school will probably be canceled. My family can either watch on that static-filled old clunker of a television at home or join the crowds in the square to watch on the big, clear screens, They'll have privacy at home but support in the square. People will give them a kind word, a bit of food if they can spare it. I wonder if the baker has sought them out, especially now that Peeta and I are a team, and made good on his promise to keep my sister's belly full.

Spirits must be running high in District 12. We so rarely have anyone to root for at this point in the Games. Surely, people are excited about Peeta and me, especially now that we're together. If I close my eyes, I can imagine their shouts at the screens, urging us on. I see their faces — Greasy Sac and Madge and even the Peacekeepers who buy my meat cheering for us.

And Gale. I know him. He won't be shouting and cheering. But he'll be watching, every moment, every twist and turn, and willing me to come home. I wonder if he's hoping that Peeta makes it as well.

Gale's not my boyfriend, but would he be, if I opened that door? He talked about us running away together.

Was that just a practical calculation of our chances of survival away from the district? Or something more?

I wonder what he makes of all this kissing.

Through a crack in the rocks, I watch the moon cross the sky. At what I judge to be about three hours before dawn, I begin final preparations. I'm careful to leave Peeta with water and the medical kit right beside him. Nothing else will be of much use if I don't return, and even these would only prolong his life a short time. After some debate, I strip him of his jacket and zip it on over my own. He doesn't need it. Not now in the sleeping bag with his fever, and during the day, if I'm not there to remove it, he'll be roasting in it. My hands are already stiff from cold, so I take Rue's spare pair of socks, cut holes for my fingers and thumbs, and pull them on. It helps anyway. I fill her small pack with some food, a water bottle, and bandages, tuck the knife in my belt, get my bow and arrows. I'm about to leave when I remember the importance of sustaining the star-crossed lover routine and I lean over and give Peeta a long, lingering kiss. I imagine the teary sighs emanating from the Capitol and pretend to brush away a tear of my own. Then I squeeze through the opening in the rocks out into the night.

My breath makes small white clouds as it hits the air.

It's as cold as a November night at home. One where I've slipped into the woods, lantern in hand, to join Gale at some prearranged place where we'll sit bundled together, sipping herb tea from metal flasks wrapped in quilting, hoping game will pass our way as the morning comes on. Oh, Gale,I think. If only you had my back now ...

I move as fast as I dare. The glasses are quite remarkable, but I still sorely miss having the use of my left ear. I don't know what the explosion did, but it damaged something deep and irreparable. Never mind. If I get home, I'll be so stinking rich, I'll be able to pay someone to do my hearing.

The woods always look different at night. Even with the glasses, everything has an unfamiliar slant to it.

As if the daytime trees and flowers and stones had gone to bed and sent slightly more ominous versions of themselves to take their places. I don't try anything tricky, like taking a new route. I make my way back up the stream and follow the same path back to Rue's hiding place near the lake. Along the way, I see no sign of another tribute, not a puff of breath, not a quiver of a branch. Either I'm the first to arrive or the others positioned themselves last night. There's still more than an hour, maybe two, when I wriggle into the underbrush and wait for the blood to begin to flow.

I chew a few mint leaves, my stomach isn't up for much more. Thank goodness, I have Peeta's jacket as well as my own. If not, I'd be forced to move around to stay warm. The sky turns a misty morning gray and still there's no sign of the other tributes. It's not surprising really. Everyone has distinguished themselves either by strength or deadliness or cunning. Do they suppose, I wonder, that I have Peeta with me? I doubt face and Thresh even know he was wounded. All the better if they think he's covering me when I go in for the backpack.

But where is it? The arena has lightened enough for me to remove my glasses. I can hear the morning birds singing. Isn't it time? For a second, I'm panicked that I'm at the wrong location. But no, I'm certain I remember Claudius Templesmith specifying the Cornucopia. And there it is. And here I am. So where's my feast?

Just as the first ray of sun glints off the gold Cornucopia, there's a disturbance on the plain. The ground before the mouth of the horn splits in two and a round table with a snowy white cloth rises into the arena. On the table sit four backpacks, two large black ones with the numbers 2 and 11, a medium-size green one with the number 5, and a tiny orange one

— really I could carry it around my wrist — that must be marked with a 12.

The table has just clicked into place when a figure darts out of the Cornucopia, snags the green backpack, and speeds off. face! Leave it to her to come up with such a clever and risky idea! The rest of us are still poised around the plain, sizing up the situation, and she's got hers. She's got us trapped, too, because no one wants to chase her down, not while their own pack sits so vulnerable on the table.

face must have purposefully left the other packs alone, knowing that to steal one without her number would definitely bring on a pursuer. That should have been my strategy! By the lime I've worked through the emotions of surprise, admiration, anger, jealousy, and frustration, I'm watching that dish mane of hair disappear into the trees well out of shooting range.

Huh. I'm always dreading the others, but maybe face is the real opponent here.

She's cost me time, too, because by now it's clear that I must get to the table next. Anyone who beats me to it will easily scoop up my pack and be gone. Without hesitation, I sprint for the table. I can sense the emergence of danger before I see it. Fortunately, the first knife comes whizzing in on my right side so I can hear it and I'm able to deflect it with my bow. I turn, drawing back the bowstring and send an arrow straight at Clove's heart. She turns just enough to avoid a fatal hit, but the point punctures her upper left arm. Unfortunately, she throws with her right, but it's enough to slow her down a few moments, having to pull the arrow from her arm, take in the severity of the wound. I keep moving, positioning the next arrow automatically, as only someone who has hunted for years can do.

I'm at the table now, my fingers closing over the tiny orange backpack. My hand slips between the straps and I yank it up on my arm, it's really too small to fit on any other part of my anatomy, and I'm turning to fire again when the second knife catches me in the forehead. It slices above my right eyebrow, opening a gash that sends a gush running down my face, blinding my eye, filling my mouth with the sharp, metallic taste of my own blood. I stagger backward but still manage to send my readied arrow in the general direction of my assailant. I know as it leaves my hands it will miss. And then Clove slams into me, knocking me flat on my back, pinning my shoulders to the ground, with her knees.

This is it, I think, and hope for Prim's sake it will be fast. But Clove means to savor the moment. Even feels she has time. No doubt Cato is somewhere nearby, guarding her, waiting for Thresh and possibly Peeta.

"Where's your boyfriend, District Twelve? Still hanging on?" she asks.

Well, as long as we're talking I'm alive. "He's out there now. Hunting Cato," I snarl at her. Then I scream at the top of my lungs. "Peeta!"

Clove jams her fist into my windpipe, very effectively cutting off my voice. But her head's whipping from side to side, and I know for a moment she's at least considering I'm telling the truth. Since no Peeta appears to save me, she turns back to me.

"Liar," she says with a grin. "He's nearly dead. Cato knows where he cut him. You've probably got him strapped up in some tree while you try to keep his heart going. What's in the pretty little backpack? That medicine for Lover Boy? Too bad he'll never get it." Clove opens her jacket. It's lined with an impressive array of knives. She carefully selects an almost dainty-looking number with a cruel, curved blade. "I promised Cato if he let me have you, I'd give the audience a good show."

I'm struggling now in an effort to unseat her, but it's no use. She's too heavy and her lock on me too tight.

"Forget it, District Twelve. We're going to kill you.

Just like we did your pathetic little ally ... what was her name? The one who hopped around in the trees?

Rue? Well, first Rue, then you, and then I think we'll just let nature take care of Lover Boy. How does that sound?" Clove asks. "Now, where to start?"

She carelessly wipes away the blood from my wound with her jacket sleeve. For a moment, she surveys my face, tilting it from side to side as if it's a block of wood and she's deciding exactly what pattern to carve on it. I attempt to bite her hand, but she grabs the hair on the top of my head, forcing me back to the ground. "I think ..." she almost purrs. "I think we'll start with your mouth." I clamp my teeth together as she teasingly traces the outline of my lips with the tip of the blade.

I won't close my eyes. The comment about Rue has filled me with fury, enough fury I think to die with some dignity. As my last act of defiance, I will stare her down as long as I can see, which will probably not be an extended period of time, but I will stare her down, I will not cry out. I will die, in my own small way, undefeated.

"Yes, I don't think you'll have much use for your lips anymore. Want to blow Lover Boy one last kiss?" she asks, I work up a mouthful of blood and saliva and spit it in her face. She flushes with rage. "All right then. Let's get started."

I brace myself for the agony that's sure to follow. But as I feel the tip open the first cut at my lip, some great form yanks Clove from my body and then she's screaming. I'm too stunned at first, too unable to process what has happened. Has Peeta somehow come to my rescue? Have the Gamemakers sent in some wild animal to add to the fun? Has a hovercraft inexplicably plucked her into the air?

But when I push myself up on my numb arms, I see it's none of the above. Clove is dangling a foot off the ground, imprisoned in Thresh's arms. I let out a gasp, seeing him like that, towering over me, holding Clove like a rag doll. I remember him as big, but he seems more massive, more powerful than I even recall. If anything, he seems to have gained weight in the arena. He flips Clove around and flings her onto the ground.

When he shouts, I jump, never having heard him speak above a mutter. "What'd you do to that little girl? You kill her?"

Clove is scrambling backward on all fours, like a frantic insect, too shocked to even call for Cato. "No!

No, it wasn't me!"

"You said her name. I heard you. You kill her?" Another thought brings a fresh wave of rage to his features. "You cut her up like you were going to cut up this girl here?"

"No! No, I —" Clove sees the stone, about the size of a small loaf of bread in Thresh's hand and loses it.

"Cato!" she screeches. "Cato!"

"Clove!" I hear Cato's answer, but he's too far away, I can tell that much, to do her any good. What was he doing? Trying to get face or Peeta? Or had he been lying in wait for Thresh and just badly misjudged his location?

Thresh brings the rock down hard against Clove's temple. It's not bleeding, but I can see the dent in her skull and I know that she's a goner. There's still life in her now though, in the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the low moan escaping her lips.

When Thresh whirls around on me, the rock raised, I know it's no good to run. And my bow is empty, the last loaded arrow having gone in Clove's direction. I'm trapped in the glare of his strange golden brown eyes.

"What'd she mean? About Rue being your ally?"

"I — I — we teamed up. Blew up the supplies. I tried to save her, I did. But he got there first. District One," I say. Maybe if he knows I helped Rue, he won't choose some slow, sadistic end for me.

"And you killed him?" he demands.

"Yes. I killed him. And buried her in flowers," I say."And I sang her to sleep."

Tears spring in my eyes. The tension, the fight goes out of me at the memory. And I'm overwhelmed by Rue, and the pain in my head, and my fear of Thresh, and the moaning of the dying girl a few feet away.

"To sleep?" Thresh says gruffly.

"To death. I sang until she died," I say. "Your district... they sent me bread." My hand reaches up but not for an arrow that I know I'll never reach. Just to wipe my nose. "Do it fast, okay, Thresh?" Conflicting emotions cross Thresh's face. He lowers the rock and points at me, almost accusingly. "Just this one time, I let you go. For the little girl. You and me, we're even then. No more owed. You understand?"

I nod because I do understand. About owing. About hating it. I understand that if Thresh wins, he'll have to go back and face a district that has already broken all the rules to thank me, and he is breaking the rules to thank me, too. And I understand that, for the moment, Thresh is not going to smash in my skull.

"Clove!" Cato's voice is much nearer now. I can tell by the pain in it that he sees her on the ground.

"You better run now, Fire Girl," says Thresh.

I don't need to be told twice. I flip over and my feet dip into the hard-packed earth as I run away from Thresh and Clove and the sound of Cato's voice. Only when I reach the woods do I turn back for an instant. Thresh and both large backpacks are vanishing over the edge of the plain into the area I've never seen. Cato kneels beside Clove, spear in hand, begging her to stay with him. In a moment, he will realize it's futile, she can't be saved. I crash into the trees, repeatedly swiping away the blood that's pouring into my eye, fleeing like the wild, wounded creature I am. After a few minutes, I hear the cannon and I know that Clove has died, that Cato will be on one of our trails. Either Thresh's or mine. I'm seized with terror, weak from my head wound, shaking. I load an arrow, but Cato can throw that spear almost as far as I can shoot.

Only one thing calms me down. Thresh has Cato's backpack containing the thing he needs desperately.

If I had to bet, Cato headed out after Thresh, not me.

Still I don't slow down when I reach the water. I plunge right in, boots still on, and flounder stream. I pull off Rue's socks that I've been using for gloves and press them into my forehead, trying to staunch the flow of blood, but they're soaked in minutes.

Somehow I make it back to the cave. I squeeze through the rocks. In the dappled light, I pull the little orange backpack from my arm, cut open the clasp, and dump the contents on the ground. One slim box containing one hypodermic needle. Without hesitating, I jam the needle into Peeta's arm and slowly press down on the plunger.

My hands go to my head and then drop to my lap, slick with blood.

The last thing I remember is an exquisitely beautiful green-and-silver moth landing on the curve of my wrist.