Killing someone really changes a man.

The Careers treat me differently now that I've killed a tribute. That would be fine, except inside I'm dying. Perhaps I don't have to be so afraid for my life anymore, at least for now, but pretending to have enjoyed the kill is difficult. I didn't enjoy it. But, for the Careers' sake, I must pretend.

And for the audience? For them I take a few minutes alone. It's just the audience and I right after I kill the girl in the forest. The Careers decide to go back to their encampment by the lake, but I pause and use my knife to carve a few letters into the tree:

KE + PM

This works twofold. The audience still knows I love her and it serves as a possible warning to Katniss. Hopefully she won't come this way. She'll follow Haymitch's advice and find a source of water far away from the reach of the Careers. There's a stream in the forest—we saw it as we passed it earlier during our hunt—so perhaps she settled in that area. I know the Careers will want to go back to the stream again, though, because we didn't look much around there the first time. I'll have to be careful.

And hope Katniss doesn't get killed before then.

But the cannon for the girl I killed is the last cannon we hear before finding our way back to camp. Everything is still in order. The boy from Three looks nervous, but Cato finds nothing wrong, and so we all settle in to sleep. I don't get much of that. I can still see that poor girl's last moments, bloody, crying, begging for mercy. I squirm on the ground; once I wake up with a start, thinking I feel something wet beneath me. Blood. Blood. It has to be blood, but it's not. I've rolled away in my sleep close to the shore of the lake. I'm a bit muddy, but fine otherwise.

Fine otherwise.

As I come to my senses, I look up at the sun high in the sky, and for a moment in my fatigued bleariness, I think I can see Katniss's face. I panic, but then my eyes settle. I'm imagining things. Hardly more than a day in and I'm already going mad. I stand up and stretch out my body.

I can't let the Games get to me already, as much as the Capitol would like that. Insanity is a crowd-pleaser, provided it's not cannibalistic, but I have make sure Katniss gets out of this alive. I'm not allowed to go mad, not until I'm on the verge of death myself. No. Not even then.

It feels like there's something lodged in my throat for a minute. It's not the first time it has occurred to me that Katniss might have to kill me, but it's an unpleasant and unwelcome thought all the same. To my fortune, the boy from Three approaches me with an apple.

"Hungry?" he asks. I take the apple gratefully. The others are still all asleep, preferring to do their hunting later, at night when presumably the other tributes will be looking for shelter and rest.

Despite the boy's show of companionship by bringing the apple to me, he and I don't speak as we eat. Truth be told, I'm not even that hungry. There's a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that has been there since the day of the reaping. But I know I need to eat something. I need to keep going on. Not for myself, of course. We all know that. I think the boy from Three knows that, too. I can see his eyes darting up at me every once in awhile, but I pretend not to notice. As far as he knows, I'd be just as happy to kill him right now. I'm not like the others, and I didn't choose him as ally.

And really, how long does he honestly think he's going to last? It's a horrible thought, but it's the truth. His survival is dependent on his ability to guard the supplies for the Careers, but pretty soon they won't need that assistance anymore. At least I've been able to prove that I can kill.

Late in the afternoon the others start to wake up, and pretty soon the boy from Three and I find ourselves doling out food to them. They're all restless. It's been hours since the last kill and the day goes on. There's something sick in all their eyes. I didn't notice it before, but now I can see it, and perhaps it's in my own as well.

It's a weird situation all around, because as the Careers wake and eat it almost feels like we're not all in a death match. I watch Glimmer batting her eyelashes at Cato, for example, and wonder what she's thinking. Cato pays little attention to this. Perhaps he's used to that kind of attention. Clove and Marvel are playing a game, each trying to see how far they can throw Clove's knives. In another day or two all of these people will be at each other's throats. Do they even remember that? It's probably best not to.

Night falls. The anthem plays, but no one has died today. I already know this, but it still brings me relief not to see Katniss's face in the sky. The relief is brief, though. No one else has died, either. There are still plenty of tributes in play.

And that's when our night hunt begins once more. But everyone has found a suitable hiding place for the night. We do manage to run across one of Katniss's traps, but she is nowhere to be found. I let out a sigh and lead the Careers away from it. The next one I see I trip on purpose with a stick and quickly hide it before they come around the corner.

I don't know how long we've been in the forest when we hear a strange sound in the distance. A whooshing at first, and then crackling. And then I smell smoke. Oh no. Oh dear God, no.

"This way!" shouts Cato and we all follow. The smoke is pretty far in the distance, but there is a lot of it and so it's easy to smell. Where there's smoke, there's fire, and that is exactly what we find. No tributes. Just walls of fire ahead of us. I begin to cough almost immediately, struggling against the thick smoke. No one pays any attention to me, because they're all coughing, too, and tripping over the rocks and branches around us.

All of a sudden, a ball of fire comes racing toward Glimmer. Without hesitating, I knock her down. She gives a little cry as we land on a rocky area, and then she pushes me off.

"Get off me, lover boy! I don't need your help!" But I see it in her eyes. She owes me her life, and she knows it. I hadn't even intended to save her, really. It was reflex. Really, it would have been better for me if she had died. But that is how it goes. The six of us make a break for it, because now the fire seems to be closing in.

Marvel nearly knocks me over in his attempt to scramble out of the way of the fire. He does the same to Cato, who reacts much more violently than I do, pushing back at Marvel and threatening him with the sword. We're just about out of the fire now, so Marvel argues back. Once again we're at this. The girls all start screaming as the boys start knocking at each other.

"Can we all just stop it and move on?" I yell above the rabble. We're all dirty, and banged up, and a few of us even a little burned. Without waiting for them to stop, I push through the trees. Ahead of us lies a pond. And there's someone in the pond. I squint, trying to figure out who it is.

Shit.