These woods are lovely, dark and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I sleep
-Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening
"Phox!" I yelled, running forwards, pushing the door open. Phox was lying on the ground, in a pool of blood. "Oh God, oh God, oh God!"
I dropped to my knees, ignoring the sticky pool of cold blood that drenched my trousers. My fingers reached for his neck, trying to find a pulse, but my heart was racing so fast I couldn't tell if the pulse I felt was my own or his. I decided to try a different method.
"Come on, wake up, oh God, please wake up!" I tried not to scream but the panic was too much. I slapped Phox's face, trying to get him to respond. He didn't do anything. "Oh, God, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" I sobbed.
Phox's eyes flickered open. I stopped short and held my breath. "Phox?" I didn't dare get my hopes up. Phox's eye's dilated and focused onto my face. He was half alive- barely.
Phox opened his mouth to speak, but only managed to groan in pain. "I'll be back, OK? I'll be right back!" I assured him, then ran outside to get my bag, parachute and containers with the food.
I ripped open the zip and took out the parachute. Yellow berries for morphling. I didn't know how many to give him, so I took out a bunch and decided to take it one at a time. I put one onto his tongue, trying to talk him into chewing. He just looked at my limply, but I felt better when I realised the berry was dissolving, leaving a fizzy yellow froth on his tongue. I used two fingers to gently close his mouth, hoping he would swallow. Agonizing seconds went by until Phox sighed, and his eyes looked more alive.
"Do you need another one?" I asked. Phox's gave me a small nod and I put another berry on his tongue. He looked relieved after he swallowed the second berry.
"What happened?" I asked him, using my hands to tilt his face up so he was looking at me.
"P-Pe...Peeta." Phox could barely speak.
"Peeta? What do you mean Peeta?" I searched his face for signs of pain, recognition- anything.
"Pe-Peeta said h-he would h-he...help." Phox gasped. The morphling helped, but he was still weak and still uncomfortable and in pain.
"Help? How?" I frowned.
"I d-don't know but h-he he-helped me up," Phox swallowed, "Then he..." He trailed off, but his eyes looked towards his side. I lifted his shirt to see a six-inch long gash stretching from his lower abdomen to his leg. There was too much blood to see how deep the cut was, but judging from the ammount of blood, it had to have been fairly deep.
I startled when thunder rumbled over head. Phox looked upwards towards the ceiling of the shed. "S-storm?" He asked worriedly.
"Wait here." I told him, and poked my head outside.
Even in the darkness, I could see dark black storm clouds overhead, looking ominous especially when the moonlight lit them from behind and gave them an eerie glow. Lightning forked across the sky and I remembered something Katniss told me, and I started counting. One...two...three...four...five...six...seven. And then thunder rumbled.
Katniss told me on the hovercraft- "Count the seconds between a lightning strike and thunder, that'll tell you how many miles away the storm is." So the storm was seven miles away. I turned back to Phox.
"Come on, we need to go." I sprayed Phox's wound four times- though it didn't seal it up completely- and put everything back into my bag, and lifted Phox up, wrapping his arm around my shoulder.
"Where we going?" Phox asked. He sounded better. "Maybe we should stay here- I think the doors keep us safe from the rain?"
"No it's going to be worse than a few inches of rain, we need to go. Come on, I'll explain everything on the way." I turned around, locked the door behind me, and shoved the key into my pocket. "It wasn't Peeta, it was a muttation. Django is making muttations that we think we can trust, but they just stab us in the back. And remember what happens whenever there's a storm in the Capitol?" I urged Phox to remember.
Because the Capitol was tucked away with mountains on all sides, I couldn't count the number of times the weather man - Fulga Flynnigan, an eccentric man with a bald head and wacky ties- had explained the air pressure between the mountains meant that storms were likely to happen. And when storms did happen they caused havoc- so much so that the Capitol built the city on a platform that would rise twelve feet above the ground to prevent flooding.
"The City will rise..." Phox realised. "Leave me, I'm too slow. Hurry or you'll drown."
I stopped short and looked at him. "What are you saying? Are you totally insane? I made a promise to you." I said fiercely. "I said I wouldn't leave you, and I'm not going to go back on my promise now. It's my fault you're in this situation." I started walking quicker now. Lightning struck, and four seconds later thunder rumbled. The storm was getting closer, and it was moving quickly.
I panicked- when the storm got within a mile of the City, the platform would start to rise. It takes three minutes for the platform to rise fully- but what if Django wouldn't let that happen? It was his arena, after all, not the actual Capitol. Maybe he was just trying to get everybody to the City just to watch us drown.
But that wouldn't- couldn't- happen, could it? Because that would be a lousy Game, one that only lasted two days before everybody was wiped out by a storm. Hopefully, Django would care more about the Games than killing everybody.
"Maybe they've forgotten..." Phox murmered.
"What?" I asked.
"The Gamemakers." Phox cleared his throat to speak louder over the noise of the storm. "They haven't shown whose died today, and it's really late."
"You're right, they haven't shown whose died..." I glanced up at the skies. Sure, even if they did, the hologram would be concealed by the clouds, but surely they could move the clouds to make room for the hologram. "Unless... what if they haven't shown them yet because they're expecting more of us to die..."
"That's why the storm's happening. We all know that the City is the only refuge we have, and right now we're all staying away from eachother. So they're going to get us in the same place at the same time. " Phox realised. Lightning struck. One...two. Thunder.
"We need to hurry." I said. We were just reaching the City perimiter.
"Are you sure about this? We could just go back to the shed?" Phox suggested. We were about ten metres away from the City edge when it started rising.
"It's now or never." I told Phox. He glanced towards me, then the City, then back to me.
"Let's go- quickly." He told me, and started to hobble towards the City. The full height of the platform is 12 feet in three minutes- that's four feet a minute. One foot every fifteen seconds. The platform was already 3 feet and rising. "Come on!" I urged, helping Phox onto the platform just as rain started to pour from the sky in bucketfuls. I hoisted myself up, onto the slippery City floor while the ground below me fell away. The city may have been draining the rainwater onto the ground below, but it was still covered in a centimetre thick layer of rainwater. Rainwater that was red with blood. I crouched over Phox- who was barely concious.
"Phox?" I asked nervously. Phox groaned in response. "What is it? What's wrong?"
"Wounds...open." He said in a pained whisper. I looked at him- he was right. With every raindrop his wounds were opening up more and more they were opening up. I don't know how it was possible, but then again, most things that happened in the Game Room would normally seem impossible, but they were made into reality.
"Oh, God, I need to get you out of here." I said through gritted teeth, narrowing my eyes in detirmination. I stood up to get a better grip on him , exposing my legs. When raindrops landed on my thigh, the gash reopened. My legs gave way from the shock of the sudden pain.
It's only going to get worse the more you stay, I told myself, not knowing if I was even telling the truth. I forced myself to get up, leg trembling from the pain. It felt like every step I took was ripping the wound apart more and more. I bit down on my lip so hard I tasted blood.
I wrapped my arms under Phox's armpits and started tugging him away from the edge of the platform and towards a building of apartments. Ottilie and Thistle said they were locked, but I had to try some of them out. The closest building was a museum dedicated to the Hunger Games, from the first one right down to the 75th- the 76th hadn't been added yet. The doors were locked, but the windows had to be breakable. I took off my bag and flung it at the window, over and over. It was no use- the bag was too soft to break the glass.
And Phox was losing too much blood- there was a giant puddle of rainwater around him that was coppery red with blood. I used my numb fingers to unzip the bag and take out the metal parachute. Please, please, please work, I begged silently, running out of hope. The metal of the canister attatched to the parachute should have been unbreakable, but when I smashed it against the window it didn't do anything- in fact, the canister was dented, the window wasn't even scratched.
The cold reached my bones and I was so tired and so cold and numb but in pain at the same time, and I too full of emotion that I couldn't show because if I did I would be weak, and I would die. I guess making rules didn't help at all. I was emotional, and I was weak.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry Phox, but I can't get in. And I can't get you somewhere else." I cried. I couldn't tell if the droplets on my face were raindrops or tears.
"N-not y-yo..your f-f-fault, Wren." Phox said weakly. He then mumbled something that I didn't understand.
"What?" I asked him gently.
"Pain. Make it stop." His voice was unmistakably clear.
"I can't, Phox." I whispered, but as soon as I said the words I realised I was lying. I looked at the canister. When I opened it, I could see there were five morphling berries left. I looked them out, but as the raindrops hit them, they dissolved and washed away. "No! No!" I cried, even though crying wasn't going to bring back the berries.
Phox looked at me, gasping for breath because of the pain. He was looking at me... or, something on me. I followed his line of sight to realise he was looking at the knives on my belt.
"No! I'm sorry, Phox, but I can't! I can't kill you, we've known each other since we were little, please, don't make me!" I sobbed.
Phox looked into my eyes. "Please." I covered my mouth with my hand to stifle sobs, but it didn't work. Phox tried one last attempt to sway me. "I lied. I lied when I said I didn't remember anything about the night of the ball. I remember everything."
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked softly.
"I don't know." Phox admitted. "But you said we would be partners, that we would trust eachother and listen to advice." I didn't remember this, but it sounded familliar. "Now I'm asking you, please make the pain stop." His voice was unwavering. He was certain of what he was saying, but he was begging me.
"Fine." I whispered hoarsely. "I'm sorry." I took his hand, leaned in and kissed him. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The words kept sounding over and over in my head. I have a promise to keep.
I took a knife out of my belt, hand shaking, almost crying when I saw the look of relief on Phox's face. I'm sorry, I don't want to do this. Phox closed his eyes.
I have a promise to keep. I took a deep breath. But the knife that shot forward wasn't mine.