Meh. Let me know what you think!
Zeph's P.O.V
The Gamemakers have put us at opposite sides. There's no way I'll reach her now, as she hurtles towards the forest with a survival kit in her hands. She's done the right thing, no doubt; with supplies and a head start from the Careers. But I can't help feeling a bit hurt that she didn't even consider waiting for me.
You told her to run. I think, as I sprint around the empty podiums and towards the forest. Besides, you're just allies, and she trusts that you'll find her.
I'll admit now, that maybe this wasn't the best of my plans. If her hiding place is really good, I won't be able to find her, even if we do have the minds of inventors.
I look towards the Cornucopia as I run around the circle of podiums, avoiding the thick marsh that would slow me and hoping nobody notices me. I see the two District Ones, with their District Number stamped onto their jackets in white, meeting at the golden horn and picking weapons, as the District Four and Two girls flank them. I see tributes everywhere, running. Some towards the mountains, checking behind them with terrified expressions, and some towards the forest, scrambling to pick up supplies as they go.
A girl with '6' on her back runs towards the Cornucopia with a knife in her hand. She has a fierce expression as she flings it towards the Careers. My eyes widen, not expecting a member of Six to be so... Brutal. The weapon embeds itself into the girl from Four's leg, and I hear her scream in pain. But I'm looking away now. I need to get out of here.
Out of nowhere, the District Two boy tackles me to the ground, knocking the air out of my body. My head hits the muddy floor and my glasses are nearly knocked off my face. I try to kick him away, but he has a firm grip on both my arms and a smug grin on his face.
"What's up, nerd?" He asks, his voice thick with malice. "I noticed you got a nine in training. How'd you manage that?" He practically shouts.
It's true, I got a nine. But it's not like I earned it, in fact, I'm pretty sure I got it because my interview was so dreadful and, as I'm from a higher District, I need to look like I'm good at something. All I'd done in training was pick up a mace, as it was the closest thing I could find to a sledgehammer, and swung it around a bit.
"Literally no idea," I reply, trying not to make my voice sound as terrified as I feel. I'm going to die here. He's going to kill me. "I-I used a mace." Was I even supposed to say that? Isn't it against the rules?
"Come with me, nerd." He hoists me up roughly, making me lose my balance. I'm still winded from his attack, and that combined with the fear of a Career turning on me is making me a little unstable.
I follow him to the Cornucopia, trying not to lose my shoes in the marshes. Nobody comes to attack us, but of course; I'm with the guy who everyone is scared of. I see the District Four male leaping from tribute to tribute in the clearing, his face elated, throwing and stabbing a trident at each one. I see three people die.
I do not want to be here, I panic. Why am I becoming a Career?
When we reach the Cornucopia, I notice the circle of ground around it is normal and grassy, which is a relief as I am beginning to struggle in the mud. The District Ones approach me just as warily as I would to them. The girl spits,
"Why is a District Three here?" Her eyes narrow as she glares into my eyes. I try to stare her off, but her ridiculously long, perfectly straight, platinum blonde hair puts me off. It's like a mirror reflecting the sunlight and it hurts my eyes a bit.
"Nerd got a nine in training," the District Two boy replies. I hope the name 'Nerd' doesn't stick. I've been called that quite a lot in my life and it's rather tedious. He just misses me rolling my eyes, as he turns to face me with a grin on his face. "So, Brains, pick your weapon." He points to the Cornucopia and I oblige, walking into the golden horn and keeping my body tense in case of an attack.
There is so much stuff packed into the Cornucopia. On one side, there are supplies like tents, containers of food and medical kits. I grab a box with a green cross on it and check what is inside; bandages, antibiotics and painkillers. I find a large backpack with food and water inside it, and stuff the medic kit inside. The Careers are all stood outside the horn now, as the District Four boy has joined the team to attend to his female counterpart, who is sat on the floor with a knife deep in her left thigh, trying not to cry. The girl from Six who caused the injury is nowhere to be seen. They are all chattering away as if it's just another day for them. Bodies are strewn all over the clearing. I look back towards the inside of the horn.
The weapons look like what are usually in the Games; swords, spears, and maces. I pick up a sword and slip it through my belt; for Xyris. If she wants a weapon, I'm guessing the one she picked in training would be the best option. I look for some knives for practical use, but all I can find are throwing knives that are purely designed to be aerodynamic. I take one, as I might need to cut myself out of a trap or something later on.
That's when I notice it. A hammer. At first I think that I've gone mad, there were no hammers in training, so I scurry over to its place on the wall, picking it up out and feeling the weight of it in my hands. Not too heavier than the ones I use in the factories back home. It has a longer handle though, and the head is a lot larger, and made out of steel, but it's real. I loop my arms through both handles of my backpack, and saunter out to the Careers, feeling rather deadly. District Two laughs at me.
"You look proud." The District Two girl laughs. She walks over to me and extends her arm in greeting. I take it warily, expecting her to pull me into some kind of wrestling move. But she just shakes it firmly, with a lot of strength that nearly makes my arm yank out of its socket. "I'm Kellie," She says, pulling her hand back. "This is Warrick," She points at District Two, and he raises an eyebrow, flexing his arm muscles again for some reason. He's trying to intimidate me, but it's not working now because I have my weapon of choice and I'm feeling awfully lucky.
"I'm Zeph." Is all I reply. I don't want to stay with these people long, and my mind is already trying to formulate a plan to escape. As the rest of the Careers tell me their insignificant names, I debate just trying to kill them all right here. But I'm outnumbered, and they all look stronger than me, especially Warrick and Kellie.
I could just try running, but I'm weighted down by my supplies and weapons so I'd be too slow. I guess I'll just have to bide my time until the coast is clear and I can make a run for it.
"Okay, let's move!" The boy from One shouts, pointing towards the mountains. Oh crap, I think. I'm not going to be able to find Xyris at this rate. "The cannons haven't fired yet."
"Sol is right." Kellie adds, collecting her belongings, "We should get out of here."
And within a couple of minutes, the Careers are off, walking towards the ominous mountains that cast shadows over the land below. I begin to follow, but hear a commotion from behind me.
"I-I can't Kai... My leg..." The District Four girl pleads with her fellow tribute from Four. I turn around, and see him leant over her, looking at the blood that is seeping from the knife that is still stuck in her leg.
"I don't know what to do Brooke, I'm sorry. I have to go." He turns to walk away, but Brooke grabs his arm, trying to pull herself up, and begins to sob, desperation in her eyes.
"N-no, Kai, d-don't leave me..." She can barely speak through her tears. I stay frozen to the spot I am stood on, trying not to gawk at the scene unfurling before me.
"Brooke, your leg. It's not going to heal. Pull it out and try to keep bandaged." Kai replies, with no emotion in his voice. He points half-heartedly at the knife in her thigh and turns, muttering a swift "Goodbye" and picking up his trident as he walks away. He storms past me and spits "You coming, Brains?" To which I reply, a little too bitterly,
"I'll catch up." I brush him aside and walk towards Brooke, who has crumpled into a heap on the floor in tears. When she notices me coming, she tries to wipe her tears away, putting on a Career bravado. But her expression, and the way she is curled around the wound on her leg, gives her pain away. I kneel down beside her and look at the wound, being careful not to touch it.
"It hurts." Is all Brooke can say. I look up at her face and try to judge her age; she looks about fourteen. The idea of leaving her behind, even with a Career status, would spell the end for her. And even though she's the enemy, and would no doubt be aiming that trident placed next to her at my chest under normal circumstances, I don't want to leave her behind. Maybe I'm just not cut out for all this killing business.
"Can you move your toes?" I ask, assessing how bad the damage is. Luckily, she can, so no nerve damage has been done. The knife isn't submerged in her leg all the way to the handle, so hopefully the wound isn't as deep to have cut an artery. I reach forward to pull the knife out, and I hear the girl squeal.
"No! It'll hurt." She cries, a fresh stream of tears rolling down her cheeks. I open up my bag and search for the medical kit. I dig out the packet of painkillers and a bandage, and pass her a capsule of the drug.
"Take this, it'll make it hurt less."
"I know what painkillers do. I'm not stupid!" She practically shouts, her voice choking with sobs. I look around at the clearing in panic, expecting tributes to swarm out at us with weapons raised.
"Sssh!" I hiss at her. If she wants to talk to me like dirt, then I'll do the same. "I'm trying to help you. Do you want me to help your leg, or do you want me to leave like Kai did?" I nod my head to the mountains, where the Careers have disappeared. Brooke shakes her head slowly, and swallows the painkiller. I lift up her leg slowly, to prepare the bandage, and her face contorts in pain. "I'm going to pull the knife out slowly, Brooke, so that I don't add too much to the damage. Then I'll wrap the bandage around tightly so that the bleeding stops." I'm not telling her this for her own benefit; I'm reciting First Aid pamphlets and booklets I had to study before taking my Safety in the Factory exam at school. Since there have been multiple accidents at the engineering factories involving large, sharp sheets of metal, the kids are now taught how to deal with it.
Pulling the knife out is dangerous, I know. There's a risk of severing an artery, but since the knife doesn't look too deep, I have a shot at pulling it out. After all, Brooke won't be able to walk with a knife sticking out of her and if all else fails, I'll tourniquet it.
The knife makes a sickening noise as it pulls out of the wound, and I have to try not to retch at the blood that oozes from the cut. I toss the knife aside and focus on bandaging as soon as possible, applying pressure as I go. Once the long bandage has been fully wound up, I look back up at Brooke's face. She's been crying more, the tears are literally pouring from her eyes. But she smiles for some reason.
"T-Thank you." She stutters, looking down at the bandage. "We should go." She tries to stand, but can't put weight on her injured leg. I put her arm around my shoulder and hoist her up, pushing my glasses from its place on the edge of my nose, where it slips to when I am inspecting something closely. Brooke is light, and it is easy to carry her weight, and yet when I turn to the mountains she manages to stop me from moving her.
"No." Is all she says.
"But the Careers went that way." I reply unblinkingly. My plan was that I'd take Brooke to her Careers and work on escaping from there. But the defiance in her voice confuses me.
"I don't want to camp with a bunch of people who wanted to leave me here to die." She leers at the mountain area and hobbles towards the forest.
"Very well." I tell her. "I was hoping you'd say that."
"I knew it!" She suddenly grins, her change in emotion shocking me slightly. "I knew you weren't going to stay with us!" She laughs and I have to hush her again, for fear of being discovered.
"I'm going to look for the girl from Three," I inform Brooke, pointing towards the forest with my hammer. "We're supposed to be allies."
"So... you're going to leave me too?" We're walking again now, slowly trudging through the marshes. She's not crying again, but I sense the hurt in her voice.
"No, you're a valuable asset," I tell her, smiling slightly at my luck so far. "Not only are you a Career, you're probably very handy with that trident." I nod down at the steel weapon she holds so confidently in her free hand. She grins again, slightly cockily, and chirps,
"My father was a fisherman, and he taught the kids how to use tridents as weapons." Ah, of course. District Four are trained for the Games. It's supposedly illegal, but somehow the Career districts get away with it.
"I see. Well, it's nice to have you on the team." We stop, and look up at the thick, green trees that loom above us. Brooke snorts and points past the evergreens with her trident.
"The trees are thin beyond these trees," she observes, and I crane my neck to get a look myself. And she's right; the forest is a lot thinner beyond the initial tall trees that we stand before.
"Okay. So this is good and bad." I assess, my mind ticking over with the possibilities. "Good, in that we can see tributes that are trying to attack. Bad, in that tributes can see us."
"Okay, Brains, whatever." Brooke laughs, urging us onwards with a stubborn hobble towards the forest.
And so, we walk for a while, using a compass that Brooke picked up from the Cornucopia to keep us on a straight line West. "That way, we'll be able to find our way back to the clearing." She tells me as she whips it out from her coat pocket, running her thumb over the shiny face.
A few metres in, the firing of the cannons begin. It'd make me jump if I hadn't have been anticipating it for the past how-many-minutes. I halt, to count the dead.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Brooke raises her eyebrows. "What?" She asks, looking around and raising her eyebrows.
"Ten?" I ask her, shaking my head. Ten people were already dead. Some probably killed by her.
"Ten? Oh, right, cannons. Yeah, Kai and Warrick got most of them. Me and Kellie just kept the backs of the District Ones safe. Their orders, of course. They think they're the king and queen of the Careers." She snorts again and I look away, slightly horrified at how she can be so casual about killing people. I guess, if it comes to it, in order to survive, I'll kill someone. But not just willy-nilly like the Careers do. They kill like it's some kind of sport. "You okay, Brains?" Brooke asks, staring at me with some form of mild care in her eyes. I look down at her leg, and notice the blood beginning to seep through the bandages. I look back up at the girl, and the paleness of her once-tanned face confirms it.
"We need to stop and rest your leg." I walk Brooke over to a log and seat her on it, much to her distaste.
"My leg is just fine." She stubbornly protests. But I notice the slight wince as she sits down.
"You're in pain. I can tell." I reply curtly, looking around for somewhere to pitch the tent that Brooke has on her back. "We should set up a camp until the morning."
"Don't you want to go look for water or food?" Brooke asks, and I mull over it for a second before shaking my head.
"No, we have plenty of food and drink each, which we can ration." I find a nice little spot of land that doesn't look too out-in-the-open, and begin to set up the camouflaged tent. I stand back once the task, which by the way was a lot harder than it appeared to be, was done, and nodded in approval.
I never thought I'd see the day when a tribute from Three, especially one as rubbish as me, would have resources from the Cornucopia at hand, and a District Four, albeit an injured one, as an ally.
We inspect our kits and eat a few crackers, Brooke a considerable amount more than me. I tell her that we should eat as little as possible, so that the food lasts longer, and she does her little snorty-laugh of disapproval. Oh well, I think to myself, at least she can hit a target with a deadly weapon. But then I stop thinking tactically about a fourteen-year-old girl and her prowess with a trident, as it unnerves me that I am beginning to think of humans, well, children, as pawns. I shake my head and clamber into the sleeping bag that was so neatly folded into one corner of my backpack that I'd almost overlooked it. It's really thin, and doesn't do much to stop cold getting in, but at least I have something. I think of all the tributes out here tonight that don't have much to survive with, and how they will cope. The thought shouldn't sadden me as much as it does.
As if on cue, the loud jingle of Panem plays across the arena. I hear Brooke, who is sat outside keeping guard, squeal in shock, and I laugh quietly as I join her outside to see who has lost their lives today.
Just the ten dead from the Bloodbath tonight. I hold my breath, dreading to see Xyris up in the sky. But the first face is the girl from District 5, and I almost sigh, before realising how cruel that would make me. The boy from 5 appears too, and I think of their District back at their home, how they'll be reacting. The only time I can remember both the tributes from Three dying in the Bloodbath is from two years ago, and those who were gathered around the gargantuan screen in the city square just emitted a united sigh, and looked solemnly at the families who wept at the side of the stage. The District Three escort, Gabriel Tweet, just shrugged in an overly-enthusiastic fashion and chirped 'Oh well, better luck next time I guess!' I swear, one of the mothers that year nearly went for his jugular, and if it weren't for the Peacekeepers I guarantee she would have killed him.
Both the tributes from Seven are dead too. I'm not surprised the Bloodbath skipped Six this year. The boy from Eight, with bright red hair, and the girl from Nine are also gone, and I wonder which of the Careers killed them. Maybe they don't even know themselves, as they were just so caught up in the fun of it that they didn't even notice. A little boy from Ten makes the seventh dead tribute, and judging from his picture he looks very young, maybe even twelve. Both tributes from Eleven are dead, which surprises me as they look about seventeen, maybe even eighteen in their photographs. The girl from Twelve makes the last of the dead. I'm surprised the boy is still alive, from what I saw he is very scrawny, and probably from the poorest of the poor. I once saw him eating at lunch time. He wolfed down food.
Brooke speaks first after the seal of Panem in finished flashing across the sky.
"Do you want me to keep guard tonight?" Her hand holds up her weapon and it glints in the now-strong moonlight.
"No." I reply. "You need rest. Your leg and all. Go to sleep." I wave towards the inside of the tent and huddle into my sleeping bag some more.
"You sure, Brains?" Brooke replies, grinning. "No offense, but you couldn't kill a duck, even if it walked into that hammer of yours."
"And you wouldn't be able to walk back to here from the Cornucopia if I took you there and left you. Goodnight." And with that, I zip up the tent before she can retort.
Tempted to do a P.O.V of the Capitol audience watching the Games. Good idea or bad?