I am so, so, so sorry I didn't update last Friday! There was this Funfair thing going on, and right after that, I had like, a gazillion tests and quizzes. This will be a short chapter, because I didn't have time to make it any longer.


Katniss P.O.V

"Peeta! 2 o'clock!" I screamed. He turned to that direction to shoot the incoming mutt dead, but underestimated the mutt's speed. Before the both of us knew it, the mutt had sunk its canine fangs to his ankle. Peeta howled in pain while I frantically fired my rifle. Five shots to the heart later, the mutt lay dead at Peeta's feet, in a pool of its own blood.

Rushing over to Peeta's side, I noted the conditions of my other teammates. Johanna had a long cut on her cheek where a mutt had slashed its claws across it. Nick and Reya, two of the elite guards assigned to accompany us, lay face-down a few feet away from where Peeta was. It was clear from the stillness of the bodies, the paleness of their faces and the ever-growing puddle of blood that they were gone.

"Stay still," I ordered. Peeta obliged willingly. I tore open the fabric to assess how severe the wound was, and blanched. Deep holes punctured the flesh, and blood was oozing out uncontrollably. The surrounding skin had turned a sickish purplish-blue, and the ankle itself had swollen to twice its normal size.

"Yikes," Peeta commented, turning a sickly shade of green. "I won't be walking for a while."

I worked furiously, bandaging the ankle tightly. "Alright now, we have to go," said, offering my hand. Peeta took it gladly, and used me as a support to help him stand up. I grunted at his weight, but didn't complain. He seemed to have heard it though, and tried his best to lessen the load he was placing on me.

Johanna jogged towards us, her cut no longer bleeding. "2 deaths and about 8 injured." She glanced over at Peeta's ankle. "Make that 9."

"We have to leave now. More might be coming." I looked around nervously, worried that another attack might come soon.

It had only been moments after I stalked away from the group when I heard a distant howl and the pounding footsteps of something big. Immediately I knew something was amiss. I didn't dare go any further, and took shelter in a tree where I hid and waited for the others to come.

They never did.

I heard rifles being shot and strangled screams of the wounded then, and knew the group must have been attacked. By what, I didn't know. Peeta was in trouble, and that was all I cared about.

It was chaos when I got there. Humans fighting against mutts. These mutts were different in a way. They moved with increased agility, speed and deadly grace. They had the body of an albino tiger and what looked like 9 bushy fox tails. Their teeth were too big for their jaws, and that resulted in them having a permanent gruesome sneer. I stood there, rooted to the ground as my instincts screamed for me to put as much distance from this place as possible, but the sound of Peeta's astonished yelp snapped me back to reality.

A mutt had sprang up on him and the both of them were now rolling on the floor, wrestling with each other. The mutt's talons were inches away from his face. i thought of shooting the mutt dead but decided against it; Peeta was too close, I might accidentally injure him. I sprinted towards them and kicked the mutt hard, sending it flying a few feet away. It lay sprawled on the ground, dazed, as if it couldn't make sense of what had just happened. Not wasting a single moment, I immediately aimed and fired my rifle more than ten times, until I was positive it was dead.

I turned around then, about to make sure Peeta was alright, when the mutt which had bitten Peeta's ankle came along.

"Earth to the Mockingjay!" Johanna snapped her fingers in front of my face, clearly annoyed. "Have you been listening to anything I've been saying for the past 5 minutes."

I looked down sheepishly.

She sighed exasperatedly. "I said, we're getting closer to Hazard's hideout, so it's best for us to stick together as a group."

"How far?"

She looked at a small device with grids and blinking red dots on the screen and replied, "100 metres."

Peeta looked around anxiously and lowered his voice down to a whisper. "Those mutts, I have a strong suspicion that they act as alarms to Hazard. To warn him of intruders."

I tensed up. Peeta's got a point. Looking over at Johanna's tense face, I knew she was thinking the same thing.

"Gather the others. Treat the wounded. We have to move as fast and as carefully as possible. There's no knowing what other traps await us."

Third Person P.O.V, Org XII

"sir, they passed through the mutts," Athena reported.

"Stronger than I expected, I see," Hazard mused. It had only taken Athena a few hours to find out that three of the remaining Victors and a bunch of Panem's most elite government soldiers were in a top secret mission to ambush their hideout. Hazard had laughed non-stop when he heard the plan. "Ambush us?! Ridiculous! Amusing bunch of fools!" he had chuckled.

"should I set up any more traps, sir?"

"No, no!" Hazard dismissed that thought with a wave of his hand. "Let them come. They will serve as entertainments for us all.

"Especially helpless, little Mockingjay." He clucked his tongue. "Tell me Athena. Which do you think she'll choose? Saving her husband, or these children?"


Cliffhanger endings. Don't you just love 'em?