Coal and I dash through the trees. We're both following it: instinct. Somehow, I know where they are. The Careers are in that building. They are on the top of the cliff. No. They're not there yet. But they will be. They're going there, just like we're going there. I don't know how I know this, but I do. There are things that the wolf in me knows that the human part of me can never understand.
In our morph forms, Coal and I travel quickly together through the dark. We rush towards the rugged cliffs, running with all of our might. We are there in practically no time at all.
Coal morphs back while I sniff around. I know that there is an entrance to…something. I can't put my finger on what it is, but I know that it will get us to the top of that cliff. In my search, I pick up whiffs of Neptune and Loyla. Every wolf-mutt has a distinct scent. Humans do too, for that matter, but they're not nearly as strong. I pick up the scents of some human males, but I haven't been around D.C., Sapphire or Reggie enough to tell if these scents are theirs. My human half uses logic and deduces that they must be. Who else could it be? Everyone else is dead. The smells tell me this: my instinct was right. The Careers are here.
I continue sniffing, deciding to follow the scents of the Careers. We are here to find them. We are here to end this. Coal walks behind me. And then, I find it. It is a cave. I put my head inside and sniff around. The Careers came through here. "Come on," I tell Coal. We head inside together.
Coal mutters a District Twelve swear word and morphs again. "It's dark," he says in the gravelly voice of a purebred in morph. My own wolf ears twitch at the sound. There is something about us wolf-mutts. We don't like to talk while in morph, especially purebreds. But there is something about this place that is so unusual that even this idiosyncrasy of Coal's speaking seems appropriate.
We walk along in this cave. Ever so slowly, the cave floor slopes upward. The path takes us in a not quite perfect circle, ever rising to the top. There is always a floor, always a ceiling. Sometimes the path is only wide enough for one of us to fit through. Sometimes it is large enough to fit four people walking side by side. We continue to walk up and up and up. And then, things begin to shake.
The earthquake rocks and rattles the entire cave. The walls begin to crack, and pieces of them fall down. Coal yelps when a stone hits him on the back. We begin to run, as the very ceiling is cracking into bits. It collapses after us as we run, and in the midst of all of the rumbling I think that I hear the sound of a cannon. Then, as suddenly as it began, the shaking stops. Coal and I glance at one another. "Someone died," he mumbles gruffly. I nod at him.
We climb higher. Sometimes, we reach places where the floor has crumbled away in the earthquake, and we have to jump over the gaps. Sometimes, we reach places where the ceiling has caved in. At these places, we climb on top of the piles of stone and lift our bodies up through the holes, more quickly rising to the top of this cliff.
We reach one point where the stone has caved in, and out from beneath the pile juts a hand. Coal begins to move the stones away. When he is finished, I can tell that the body belongs to D.C. The District Two boy's face is unrecognizable, smashed in by the fallen rocks. But there is one thing that identifies him even still: he is wearing a sash of knives. With a shrug, I remove this sash from his corpse and put it on myself. I can use this. I'll probably need it soon, too.
The walk through the cave drags on. We've been in here for hours. Finally, we reach the top, and the exit. We are inside the great building.
The domed ceiling arcs above us and the windows are as huge as I had guessed, but there is no time for admiring the scenery. I hear another cannon. A light from outside one of the windows catches my eye: a fire. Coal morphs back into his human form and looks at me. I nod at him. We know it: the Careers want to finish this tonight too.
Coal and I climb out of a window and onto the flat roof of the building. Down on the grass beneath the building, the Careers have built a fire. Reggie sleeps while leaning against a tree. Neptune is lying on the ground near the fire. He is also asleep. Sapphire lies not far away from Neptune, but Sapphire's chest isn't moving. Sapphire's chest has an arrow protruding from it.
Loyla suddenly runs out of some nearby trees. When she notices Sapphire's dead body, she seems distressed. She growls and morphs. She rummages around in one their backpacks and pulls out several canteens. Morphing back, she opens them and dumps them on the fire. The fire goes out.
Then, in a sudden rage, she grabs Neptune by the collar and shakes him awake. "You!" she growls. Coal and I both wince, able to tell that she is barely controlling her wolf half. "You did this! First Dream, and now Sapphire!" she roars.
Neptune looks surprised. "What the shell are you talking about?" He frowns. "Sapphire, what the shell is she…" he stops when he glances at Sapphire's body. "Oh cod! Sapphire's dead!"
"Yes," Loyla growls impatiently, "and you killed him. You waited until I left to pee, and then you killed him!"
"No, I didn't," Neptune snaps back.
"Well then who did?" Loyla responds angrily. "The half-wit?" she gestures to the male tribute from District Ten.
"Maybe those other two showed up. Six and Twelve. It could have been them, right?" Neptune replies.
Loyla shakes her head. "If it were them, do you think that you would still be alive?"
Neptune frowns at her. "Why would I kill him? He's on our side! He could have helped us defeat those other two, and if he didn't die doing that, then I would kill him. I wouldn't end him before using him for everything he was worth. Do you think I'm insane?"
Loyla merely growls at Neptune's words.
Coal taps me on the arm and points. Over by the tree, Reggie has awoken and begun to dig through the backpacks. Now, he pulls out several weapons and carefully advances toward Loyla and Neptune. The thing that is most surprising about his actions is that he no longer appears to be a half-wit. He looks cunning and triumphant as he throws a small axe and watches it embed into Neptune's back. The cannon sounds, and Loyla yelps in surprise and drops Neptune's dead body.
"It was awfully foolish of you all to let me carry all of the weapons," Reggie says sinisterly. "You all thought that I was an idiot. But no, the idiots were you! You underestimated me. Everyone underestimated me! I did it on purpose. I pretended to be a half-wit so that everyone would underestimate me. I'm only surprised that my ruse lasted this long." He chuckles. "Now come, Loyla. You are the only one left. Prove to everyone what you Career tributes can really do."
I flinch. We call them Careers, but it is a derogatory term that no one in their right mind would say to one of their faces.
Loyla responds as expected. She growls, morphs, and lunges at Reggie. They struggle for a while. The whole time, Reggie is laughing. The two of them roll on the ground. Loyla growls and snaps at Reggie's face. Reggie cackles and stabs at Loyla's stomach with a sword. They continue to roll until they have almost rolled off of the cliff. Finally Loyla stands.
"You are finished," she growls in the guttural, feral tongue of a morphed wolf-mutt. Reggie laughs as she goes to push him from the cliff. He thrusts the sword right through her gut at the same exact moment that she shoves him off of the edge. BOOM! Loyla collapses face down on the ground, dead. I can hear Reggie's laughing up until the moment his cannon also sounds.
I look at Coal. We both know what this means. I blink before pointing my spear at myself. "I made you a promise," I say stoically.
Coal nods. "Yes, you did. And you told me at the lake that if I decided that my death would be the best thing for Karina, then you would do me the favor of bringing it about."
I shake my head. "No, Coal. I'm not going to do it. Your mate needs you. She loves you, and you love her. I'm not going to let you die tonight. Out of the two of us, you're the one with the better reason to continue living."
Coal shakes his head and his face twists into a painful frown. "I think that's for me to decide, Wolfgang," he mutters. He lifts his pick axe in his hands and turns it around so that the sharp point faces him. "She'll be able to move on in ways that I never will. This is for the best."
I drop my spear and shout, "Coal, don't!"
He murmurs, "Good-bye, Wolfgang." Then he falls on his axe, and the final cannon sounds in the Seventh Quarter Quell.
The tears are falling before I can stop them. I can hear the sound of the helicopter that is coming to take me away. I can hear the announcement of congratulations on my becoming the victor of the one-hundred seventy-fifth Hunger Games. I raise my head to the sky as the sun begins to peek over the horizon. And then, I hear my own mournful howl, echoing off of the stone of the building and throughout the rest of the arena. It is the very last sound in the Seventh Quarter Quell.
Author: And so, the Games have come to an end. Keep reading. I still have another chapter up my sleeve.