Author's Note:

This note is going to be short. I just want to thank you all so much for reviewing! You have no idea how much it means to me! (Actually, you probably do if you've written a story, but that's beside the point.) So naturally, I'm giving you all... virtual hugs! (Shuddup, I'm broke.)

After a week of peace, we weren't expecting an attack.

It happens anyway.

An arrow digs itself on the ground beside Mercury. A scream pierces the afternoon sky. No, not a scream. A battle cry.

It came from above us. Adrenaline already pumping in my blood, my eyes search for the attackers. There were four boys our age. They're wearing white identical suits and they were brandishing cross-bows. Not regular, wooden cross-bows, but a mechanical one, pulsing with lights, buttons and gizmos.

Peacekeepers.

Mercury gasps. He grabs his plain bow and arrows and tries to shoot one of them down. The targeted Peacekeeper deflected the arrow with his crossbow and shoots at me. I duck and it misses. I grab Marlin's shoulder and wrench him deeper into the forests, for once glad to have the cover around me. I realize that Marlin and I are seperated from Mercury and Zee. It's too late to worry about them. I grab a knife and look around, trying to hear for footsteps or disturbances among leaves. I don't hear a thing. It's unnaturally quiet. Even the birds have stopped singing.

"Something isn't right," I mutter.

Then, right behind me, I hear a blood-chilling scream. I whirl around and a flash of white bursts out behind a tree. I stumble back and push Marlin to the other side of the clearing. I run the opposite way.

"Split up!" I yell to him.

If I thought hiking through the forests was bad, running makes it seem like a walk in the park. The branches come at me more fiercely and there seems to be more roots in the ground. I charge blindly through the trees, to just get away. My worn-out shoe connects with a fallen trunk and my momentum sends me several feet away, landing on my face in a pile of dry autumn leaves.

I stay there for a while, sure that the Peacekeeper is about to pounce on me. After a few seconds of lying there, I come to the conclusion that I'm probably safe. I stand on my knees, groping for the knife I dropped when I fell. I feel something cold and metallic under the leaves and lift my knife up.

Once again, I'm thinking that I may be safe but the others might not be.

My eyes widen in horror as I imagine Marlin on a hovercraft, face bruised and arms tied behind his back. I've got to contribute to the fight.

A surge of purpose sends me to my feet. Running. Dodging. Yelling. All this makes me ignore my throbbing toe, my cuts and my fears. When I saw a white uniform, my vision suddenly narrows down, the edges blurring and the uniform getting sharper and sharper.

I'm the predator now.

I grip my knife more tightly as I stalk the uniform, careful not to make any leaves rustle. When I'm within leaping distance of the Peacekeeper, I jump, releasing a string of insults on the way.

Fortunately, the Peacekeeper was caught in surprise. I land on his back and wrap my arms around his shoulders, holding on like a matador. He's the bull. Unfortunately, he has lighting-quick reflexes. He drops his crossbow and backs up. He slams me against a tree. Hard.

I release him in surprise as I gasp for air. He spins around and instead of retrieving the crossbow, he attacks me with his bare hands. He grabs my shoulders and his right hand rears back for a killing punch. I wriggle out of his reach, his fist missing me and hitting the tree. I roll away from his arms and run, glad to still be holding the knife.

Okay, status of current rescue attempt: failing.

I run again, zipping around the trees to lose him. He's still behind me. I turn back and he has reaquired his crossbow. He's shooting.

He's shooting!

I duck behind another tree and actually heard the scream of the arrow passing by. This continues for about a minute until I get to a cliff wall.

I run my hands quickly along the wall to find some kind of a grasp in the rocks. It's too slippery and even if I could find it, the Peacekeeper has a cross-bow and he'll shoot me down. Then, I feel my wrist getting held in place by someone's arm.

"Drop it," he breathes in my ear.

He's holding the hand where I'm holding my knife. Hesistantly, I drop it. It falls without a noise. Then, he viciously twists my arm behind my back, wringing tears out of me.

"Stop it!" I cry pathetically. "You're hurting me!"

"No duh." Though he spins me around and releases the tension in my arm. He pushes my shoulder back and pins me against the rocky surface.

The sun's facing me and I can only make out a sillhouette of the person in front of me. My attacker is only slightly taller than me and has dark skin. His hair is also dark but slightly cropped. He can't be that much older than me. What's he doing as Peacekeeper?

His lips curve upward and his eyes twinkle mischeviously. He has a boyish face and for a second, I thought he was...

"Horus?" I croak.

"Hey Roobie."

My jaw drops open. It's odd seeing Horus wearing the white uniform which I've distinguished as the mark of an enemy.

"Surprised?" he laughs.

I'm speechless. Horus decides to fill in the blanks.

"Turns out, they didn't want to kill me after all," he explains excitedly. "They just stuck some needles in me and gave me this neat new suit. That's not all." His face suddenly becomes serious. "I've changed. I'm... happy."

I finally snap out of my stupor. Happier? What does he mean? "Horus, we all thought that you were dead. You would not believe how Marlin was acting when you were gone. We can all go to New Brooklyn now. Just, let me go?"

Horus frowns at me. "I'm afraid I can't do that. They wouldn't be too excited if I left."

"Who's 'they'?

"The Capitol, of course." He looks shocked.

"Since when do you care what the Capitol says?"

Horus pauses for a while, uncertain. "Since they stuck those needles to me."

Something's terribly with him. Then I remember, what Captain Smilodon told me, all those weeks ago in District 13.

There's a vile poison that the Capitol uses. It's barely humane. Some say it's not humane at all. Apply it to a person, you get someone willing to die for you, or you can twist your memories into something terribly different.

"Horus, I think they gave you tracker jacker poison."

"I don't believe in you," his voice turns a fraction lower and he grabs my shoulders tighter. His eyes gleam with unnatural light. "Why should I, convict? I'm not even supposed to be talking to you."

"No," I say desperately. "I'm Rooba, remember? We're friends, Horus. I-I wouldn't lie to you."

"Stop calling me Horus. I'm Orville. And we're not friends. I'm just here to arrest you." Horus/Orville brings me hands together and out of nowhere, he produces a pair of metal cuffs that look like gloves and fastens them on to my hands.

"No, I don't think so. You're our friend! Remember? We were going to go to New Brooklyn together! We were going to escape District 13! Remember when we fought those lycanthropes? Just try to remember, Horus!" A note of hysteria enters me voice.

For a while, Horus/Orville did a kind of spasm, an odd jerk in his face. His expression us happy, angry and sad at the same time. For a while, he was just plain Horus. When he stops, he says, "Come on." And drags me away back into the forest.

"Horus," I whisper. "What have they done to you?"

He stays silent.

I cuss him out.

He growls, but doesn't say a word.

Then, out of nowhere, someone yells, "Horus?"

Horus/Orville turns, forcing me to do so too. It's Mercury and he's got a completely bewildered look on his face.

Horus/Orville sneers. "Why do you people call me Horus? I'm Orville, for crying out loud." His head turns to his shoulder and mutters, "Bruno? Thistles? Backup, please. Got another Flying Color."

There's those words again. Flying Color. I'm confused and then see a bit of metal poking out of his white suit.

"Mercury! Run! He's got a walkie talkie!" I scream.

Mercury backs away uncertainly until I show him my cuffs. He whirls around and starts stumbling away, getting his foot stuck on a root. Then, another white suit leaps out from behind the trees and tackles Mercury. He hits the ground hard and they wrestle on the floor, Mercury's sword useless. Horus/Orville pulls me along faster.

That's it. I'm sick of playing victim.

I wish I got Zee's steel toed boots but for now, my hiking boots will have to do. I loop my arms around Horus/Orville and drag him down. I wrestle him to the ground and end up on top of his back. I'm pinning Horus/Orville to the ground and hiss in his ears, "Where's the cuffs' keys?"

"You honestly think I'm going to tell you?" he says mockingly.

I growl in frustration. I smack my metal cuffs against his head and stuns him. I quickly get up and run. I don't care if I had hurt him or not. That's not Horus.

I run until I'm breathless. It's hard running with cuffs. I'm completely lost. I crawl under a bush for cover and try to get out me walkie talkie. It's still in my belt and I can't get it out with my cuffed hands. It's too far for me to bite it and pull it out. I look around for a stick and find one. Hoping I won't find bugs, I bite the end of it and use it as a lever to push the walkie talkie out.

It pops out and I lay it in front of me. I use the stick again to push the 'call' button and whisper, "Zee? Marlin? Mercury? You guys listening?"

I wait impatiently for someone to pick up, or to say something. All I hear is static. Despair washes over me until someone says, "Rooba? This is Zee. I hear you. Where are you?"

I scramble to get the stick and press the 'call' button again. "Zee, this is Rooba. Not sure where I am. Under bushes. Peacekeeper got me but I escaped. Still got my cuffs on. Where are you?"

There's a pause. "Rooba, this is Zee. Are you okay? I'm on some cliff walls. I see your knife. Did you drop it? Can you get back here?"

A small flame of hope glows inside of me. "Zee, this is Rooba. I'm okay. I think I can make it there. Do you know where Mercury and Marlin is?"

A small cackle of static. "Rooba, this is Zee. Sorry. Didn't see them."

I sigh but get up and try to retrace my steps. It's harder than it looks because the trees all look the same. Add that to the fear of getting caught and the heavy weight of your backpack and the cuffs and you get paranoia.

In the end, though I find my way back into he rocky cliffs. Zee is waiting there, knives out and under some rocky outcropping.

"Rooba!" she shouts, pulling me into a hug. She looks at my cuffs. "Let's see if I can break this."

Joy. She loves destroying stuff. She pulled me into a relatively straight rock surface and cackles like a mad scientist. "This probably won't hurt!"

She draws her biggest knife and slashes down, grinning. After the clash, Zee only makes a dent. She does this several times and only succeeds in making the dent slightly bigger.

"Okay, this is harder than I thought," she mutters to herself.

She abandons the knife and gets her spear out. She bangs on it when the spear is still in rod form. She makes a few marks but not enough to get it to open. She retracts the spear and backs away, holding the spear over her.

"Are you sure?" I ask timidly.

"No," she confesses.

Before I say anything else, she leaps in the air and brings the spear down hard. It makes a comical cylinder depression on the metal. She does this several more times and my cuffs are flattened to one side.

"Fire!" she shouts. "Eureka! Fire melts metal, right?"

"Yeah, if you can do that without setting me on fire, that would work."

"I know it will!"

She takes me behind the rock outcropping and starts a fire. She puts my damp towel that she soaked with my precious store of water, over my unprotected arm. When the fire reaches a considerable height, she takes a big bundle of sticks and thrusts it on the fire. As it catches fire, she holds it over my cuffed hands.

"Ready?" she whispers.

I gulp. "Ready as I'll ever be."

Author's Note:

Lo! The holiday is near and so are faster updates! Expect more updates soon, and probably a rise in quality (I hope).