Chapter XIX

Bloodbath

- Games Headquarters -

Claudius Templesmith's voice echoes around the arena: "Ladies and Gentleman, let the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games begin!"

The minute-long countdown begins.

I wipe my palms on my leggings, trying to get rid of some of the sweat. Every other mentor is silent, staring at the television. The male mentor from 9 chews on his thumbail while Finnick toys with a thread on his shirt sleeve, watching the screen stonily. Haymitch is as still as a statue. Luster catches me watching and gives a single, curt nod, devoid of her bubbly demeanor of before, and then turns back to the screen.

My eyes snag on the numbers showing the countdown in the corner of the screen: 55, 54, 53...

I scan the ring of tributes until I find Lauren again. She's is positioned on a podium with the boy from District 10 to her left, and to her right is Peeta from District 12. I bite my lip. Not a bad spot. The boy from 12 definitely isn't a threat. He didn't seem like much of a fighter during the interviews, so he'll surely run for the woods. The boy from 10 - what is his name? - has that injured leg, so he'll be slow to join in the fighting.

My eyes skim over the tributes as the camera pans dramatically around the circle.

45 seconds.

Further away from Lauren, I find Bole in a bad spot. The sneaky-looking girl from 5 is to his left while that vicious boy from 2 is on his right. But still, he's already getting into position to run. My heart squeezes in my chest. Don't end up like Timber. Please. As if he can hear me, Bole clenches his fists at his sides.

30 seconds.

I can't help the numb feeling that comes over me when the camera finds Vis. His eyes are set on the Cornucopia, but ever now and then his gaze flicks to the Career from 4 next to him.

My mouth is dry and I can't manage to make myself swallow. I press my hands against the table, keeping my fingers flat as they start trembling.

15 seconds.

"Axel," I choke out in a whisper before I can stop myself.

He takes a moment to look at me, his face just as ashen I imagine mine is. His gray eyes finally find my eyes and don't look away. I don't have to speak for him to understand what I'm thinking. I'm sure every mentor in the room is thinking the same thing. "There's nothing we can do," he murmurs back. "It's up to them." And then his eyes have gone back to the screen.

The camera has focused on Katniss from 12 now. The Girl on Fire is all I can see as the countdown ticks down from ten, nine, eight, seven... Her eyes, a lighter gray than Axel's, squint in confusion at something off screen. Her dark brows knit in confusion.

And then the gong rings.

An aerial view catches the tributes leaping off their podiums. Some sprint right for the middle, a couple stumble around uncertainly, and others just attempt to grab things on the outskirts. As if I'm back in my own arena, I feel wind blowing across my neck, the smell of the red desert ground, the feeling of blood and adrenaline pumping through my legs...

Stop. I force myself to watch the Bloodbath. I'm not in the arena.

But Lauren is.

I find her blonde hair in the fray as she reaches the Cornucopia pile. The screen cuts to the girl from 3 getting her leg cut off with a sickle by the boy from 10. Lauren nearly trips as the girl from 3 is thrown to the ground in front of her, blood spilling from her leg and soaking the grass in scarlet. The boy slashes open the girl's throat before she can keep screaming. He takes the black bag she'd grabbed from her hands with his own bloody fingers.

Across the room, the male mentor from 6 barely looks like he realizes what's going on. Capala just gulps hard and pushes her glass tablet.

The screen cuts again, but I barely recognize the tributes on the screen. They all look the same now in their black jackets, running around and grabbing weapons and bags. Bole flashes onto the screen, dodging a punch from the boy from 6 who has dropped his bloodied sickle. Lauren ducks behind a crate holding a bow and quiver full of arrows. And then the screen is cutting away again.

Just like a minute before, I barely recognize the tributes on the screen, as if my brain isn't connecting it to the kids on stage last night. But then the Clove girl from 2 tries to throw a knife at Katniss and hits her backpack instead. Katniss sprints into the woods, safe, and Clove gives a disappointed look before turning to the others.

The camera flies, and Bole is there, swinging a knife at the boy from 10, but the larger tribute shoves him roughly to the ground.

Axel's fist tenses beside me, but Bole scrambles away as the boy from 10 runs in a different direction as Clove kills the redheaded girl from 9.

Suddenly there's Lauren, fear painted across her face. My heart drops. I'm still in my chair as if I can't move a single muscle, like the rest of the victors in the room don't exist. All I can see is the blonde girl from 6 slamming a blue backpack into Lauren's face. Bole is there in a flash, spear in hand, tackling the blonde girl from 6. The girl scratches at his face with nails still painted pink from her interview.

The camera switches. The large boy from 10 stabs the Career boy from 4 through the heart. I don't look at Finnick. I can't look away, not even as my ears start ringing, and the camera switches again. Someone's blood splashes against a crate, but I can't be sure who. The girl from 4 rips the boy from 8's throat open with a spear, a snarl twisting her face. Peeta from 12 runs past the girl from 1.

The angle moves to the boy from 11 - Thrash? Thresh? - getting in the way between Bole and the girl from 6, who are both standing, a spear still in Bole's hands. He thrusts it at Thresh, but the larger tribute merely kicks the spear out of his hands and raises his sickle. A blood gash slashes across Bole's face, cutting into throat. He falls to the ground and doesn't move.

Lauren stares at him on the ground, blood seeping into the earth.

Is this real? My vision tunnels on Lauren's face. The ringing in my ears melds with the screaming from the television.

And then Lauren is up, dashing away from Bole, and grabbing a backpack at the same time at the boy from 3. The boy shoves her, but she holds onto the backpack. The boy from 3 looks over his shoulder, eyes widening in fear, and sprints away just as the boy from 1 appears with a spear. Lauren's eyes widen and she crawls back, the bag falling to the ground.

Marvel stabs her through the heart.

The cameras spent half a moment above them, just long enough to catch Lauren's bark-brown eyes. And then it switches to Clove throwing her knives at the girl from 10.

I sit in my seat. Staring. I can't feel. Not real. This isn't real. Is it?

I turn to Axel. He's already standing up, pushing the glass tablet away, his grip in his right hand so hard his knuckles have gone white.

Across the room, my eyes connect with Mags. She watches me, pity painted on her aged face, but I don't understand it. Why is she looking at me like that? What's happened? It isn't real. I'm not in the arena, I'm here in the Games Headquarters, but this can't be real. Lauren can't be-

Dead.

When I look back at the screen, feeling returns to my body in a rush as if my heart has remembered it's needed.

Vis is pushed against a crate as another male tribute strangles him, hands around his throat. But Vis is twisting and slams the head of the other boy on the crate. He stands up, running, arms pumping and eyes alive.

Hope rises in my stomach.

Cato appears, slicing Vis' stomach open. Blood gushes out. Vis leans over and coughs, spraying blood on a metal crate. He falls onto his back, convulsing, hand twisting in the grass while the other is buried within his own body, covered in blood as he if he can stop it from coming out. And then he stops. His corpse marks the end of the bloodbath, and the Careers stalk around the bloodied cornucopia.

I stare at the screen. Bole. Lauren. Vis.

How?

How can they be- boom.

A cannon breaks the sudden silence around the Cornucopia. The camera lifts to show the eleven tributes splayed out and bloody on the ground. Weren't they just alive? And then it shows the boy from 12 who isn't among the bodies but instead is walking to the Careers. Just as I think one of them is going to kill him, they nod to him.

All the mentors in the room turn to look at the Career mentors, and then at Haymitch. Even Finnick, who doesn't look very concerned at his tribute lying there beside the Cornucopia, his body stiffening in death. Haymitch just ignores them and flicks through his tablet. I think his mouth opens and he says something, but I can't hear. Lauren didn't scream before she died.

"Fern."

I jump when the hand comes down on my shoulder.

Lyme gives me a look, one that's truly apologetic. But all I can is the tiny Clove girl from 2 with a bouquet of knives in her hand like they've replaced her fingers, or the large boy from 2 as he slashes open Vis' stomach.

Somehow, I manage to stand. The tablet is left behind as I hurry towards the wooden doors that Axel already walked through. Just before I set foot outside, I hear a voice lazily call back to me.

"Congratulations," Haymitch drawls from his chair, and his gray eyes meet mine. To his credit, he looks sorry. "You're finally a mentor, sweetheart."

I can't even find the words to speak, but Lyme snaps something at him I don't hear because I'm already shutting the door behind me and breaking into a sprint in the hallway. I swing into the glass atrium, breathing so fast my throat is raw, and freeze.

Axel doesn't move. He's leaning against the silver railing, staring out the glass as the yellow morning breaks across the Capitol. But he finally turns to me, bathed in sunlight, his expression unreadable. "I thought I'd wait for you," he finally chokes out.

I swallow, my throat burning. I hope my words burn him too. "Why? What, you wanted to have a nice chat in the elevator on the way down?"

"Because I didn't want to leave you alone," he says, glancing back at me. "You're part of us in Seven now, Fern, I care about you."

"Well it's the first time you've acted like it in a while," I spit.

He at least has the decency to look at the floor.

I turn and rush to the stairs, slamming open the glass door hard enough that I think it might break, I want it to break - I want this whole glass roof to break to break and shatter and shower me in a rain of glass - and then I'm running down them two steps at a time. I don't stop as I pass an Avox carrying a tray, or another who gives me a questioning look. I keep running even as my legs ache until I'm back on the floor for District 7. It's silent. Ilis must still be with the other escorts. They must be watching the replays of all the tribute deaths now, and showing the living ones fanning out into the arena. What is she saying right now? Lamenting that her district is out of the running, probably, that she can't get into the exclusive parties for the escorts with remaining tributes.

The thought makes me want to scream, but no sound comes out. Instead I just stand there in the empty living floor as dust motes drift through shafts of light. I'm glad that this floor isn't exactly like the one in the Training Center. I don't know how I could go back to the same room as last night, back when Lauren was still alive and sleeping in the same bed I did as a tribute.

Thinking of her name makes a sob rise up in my chest but there aren't any tears with it.

How am I supposed to do this for the rest of my life? How did Balsam do this for thirty-four years? How could she do this every year and watch more than sixty kids get murdered in the arena?

The ceiling suddenly feels too close, like I'm back in the Launch Room underneath the arena. Except this time it'll take me into the 74th Hunger Games and I'm going to find Lauren's body at the Cornucopia. And Bole and Vis and-

I need to breathe.

My chest heaves as I spin, my vision blurring with dizziness. I'm half aware of myself slamming my fist into the elevator button hard enough to leave bruises on my knuckles, but the room just feels like it's getting hotter and the walls are getting closer. I keep my eyes open inside the elevator. If I close them, it would just feel like the tube pushing me up into the bloodbath.

The doors open and I stumble out, almost falling to my knees.

The Capitol is warm in July but here on outskirts of it, up on the rooftop of the Games Headquarters, a cool breeze blows by. This rooftop is smooth with some chairs set out but there isn't much beyond the glass barrier surrounding the roof. There aren't any windchimes like there were back at the Training Center but I'm thankful for it. With all the quiet, I can hear the sounds of the trees rustling below. They smell real, like soil and summer, so much different from the tangy cleaner inside the Headquarters.

I sit down next to the glass, leaning my forehead against the smooth surface, staring out at the wilderness. Mountains stretch off into the hazy blue distance. This feels like the one spot here in the Capitol where I can pretend I'm not anywhere inside city limits. The air fills my lungs. In. Out.

The elevator chimes. Footsteps sound and I don't bother turning to look at Axel.

"I don't want to see you," I say, my voice hoarse.

"Wasn't aware," Finnick's voice replies.

I turn my head the slightest bit, keeping my cheek against the glass. "Sorry," I murmur. "I thought you were someone else."

Finnick looks out at the horizon as he walks to one of the glass chairs and sits down. He's still holding the tablet in his hands, blank now, devoid of his dead tribute's face. What was the boy's name? Fisher? Something with an F. I had barely paid attention to him, just another one of the Careers who had volunteered, but less noticeable than the others from 1 and 2. He's dead too.

"I'm sorry about him."

Finnick breathes slowly, his eyes still glued to the horizon before he finally looks over at me. "Riff. That was his name."

I'm quiet for a moment, puzzled. "Oh. I thought it was Fisher."

"It was. But the first one I mentored... His name was Riff. I honestly don't remember what he looked like now, but I remember his name," Finnick replies.

His voice isn't the same seductive one he put on at the Tribute Parade. He isn't smiling like I'm so used to seeing on television. He seem the same way he did a few days ago, back when Finnick found me alone in the Victor's Lounge and told me to go back upstairs. That surviving is all we can do now.

"That was the year Augustus won," he continues. He taps a finger on the blank tablet. "Riff made it pretty far, no thanks to me. I was sixteen at the time and he couldn't see me as more than a kid younger than him. But he cried when he died. And I didn't feel anything." He sighs and looks back over at me. "It'll hit you. You'll get home and you'll cry over her. But you can't stay sad forever. Because there's going to be another one."

I blink, unsure how to respond. Johanna would be blunt like that. But instead Balsam comes to my mind.

"My sister died when I was seven." I close my eyes, focusing on the feeling of the cool glass on my cheek. "I don't remember it very much when it happened. It didn't seem real watching it on the television. One minute she was still alive and the next she was just a cannon. I hardly think about it now. It feels like a lifetime ago. But one of the other victors in Seven, she must've been her mentor. Balsam was the only female victor at the time. And I hadn't realized until now that my sister was just one of the many tributes she had to move on from."

I open my eyes and let the sun burn as they adjust. The green leaves of the trees below flutter. "