"Let's keep moving," Brutus said at last and I shook of my reverie.
"With what purpose?" I held my hands out. "We need a plan that results in the death of at least three people back there," I said, waving a hand over my shoulder.
Brutus sighed. "I've been wondering if you'd realize that killing her won't bring your sister back."
His words were like a slap, spoken so plainly. I glanced around, wary of cameras, before striding up to him and getting in his face. I jabbed him in the chest. "We kill her because she's disgusting, got it? We kill her because she's the enemy. We kill her because that's what we do. We're killers."
He held up his hands in mild surrender. "Hey no argument here. I just want to make sure my last ally is fighting for the right reasons. You're no use to me if you get yourself killed the second Fire Girl is dead."
I bit my lip. So he knew my plan, he knew that I didn't care about making it out of here alive at all. If the positions had been reversed I would have felt the same. I wouldn't have tolerated an ally that didn't have their head in the game. But I wasn't going to change my plan now. Fire Girl would die and then whatever happened would happen.
"All you need to know is I won't turn on you until my enemies are dead," I snapped at him, jabbing his chest again. I hated the way he looked down at me with mild amusement, like he didn't consider me a threat at all, like I was the kitten he named me, batting uselessly at a ball of string.
It was my anger and pride that sent my knife tip deep into his shoulder before I'd thought about what I was doing. He bellowed angrily and shoved me backwards easily with one hand. I stumbled on a vine and fell, slamming back to the ground again and hurting everything already aching all over again. Brutus wrenched my knife from his shoulder without even flinching and loomed above me, brandishing it. I watched his every move warily, ready to roll out of the way of his attack.
He growled at me like some enormous dog and then tossed the blade down in the dirt next to me. "Some ally," he spat. "You tell me you won't turn on me and then stab me. What's your definition of allegiance, Reyes?"
He held a hand to his shoulder, inspecting the wound with a thunderous expression. I rolled out of the dirt, scooping up my knife, and coming to stand a few feet away, still watching him warily.
We were both distracted from our anger by the arrival of a silver parachute, drifting down to rest on the ground between us. The parachute billowed and collapsed with a silky sigh. I looked at Brutus.
"Well go on, find out what they sent us," he said angrily, nodding at the parachute. Scowling at him I stalked forward and slashed at the silver silk. I could have just moved it aside but this felt much more satisfying. With a snap I opened the container. Inside was a roll of cloth bandage, a tube of ointment and a scroll of paper. I tipped the contents into my lap then tossed the bandage and the ointment to Brutus.
"For you," I said shortly. He caught them with his free hand.
"Ta, Lyme," he muttered to nothing in particular.
"How do you know it wasn't Domitius?" I demanded, eying the note in my hands.
Brutus snorted. "I don't think Domitius hopes for my survival, not at the cost of yours."
I glared at him but he was concentrating on the wound in his shoulder. I unrolled the piece of paper.
It only had one sentence written on it.
Allegiance: loyalty to country, cause or self.
I recognised Domitius' scrawl from the days of the Training Centre. It was the first parachute that we had received in the Arena and we'd only needed it because I'd wounded my own district partner. I felt his anger even through the walls of the Arena and radiating from the paper in my hands.
He was telling me that if I wanted to survive, I had to stop attacking the only ally I had left. Trouble was, he was assuming I wanted to survive.
"What does it say?" Brutus asked, struggling to tie the bandage around his own shoulder. I scrunched up the paper and tossed it aside.
"Nothing useful," I replied and stood up. "Here." I took the end of the bandage and finished wrapping it around his muscular shoulder and tied it in a rough not. Not pretty but it would do and it had stopped the bleeding.
"Ta," he said gruffly, rolling his shoulder experimentally and wincing. He stood up. "Alright. Let's get this show on the road. The sun is setting already.
We stuck within the first hundred feet of the jungle, always with the water in sight through the trees. Neither of us wanted to venture much deeper into the jungle in case we'd stumbled into a section that was alive with a worse evil than we'd already found.
A couple of times I snuck to the edge of the beach and crouched among the shadows. I could see the dark, moving shapes of the others a few beaches across from us. Far enough away for safety- for both of us- but close enough that I could keep an eye on them. They received a parachute too and I wondered if one of them was injured.
"You want to put your inner wild woman to use and hunt us something to eat?" Brutus asked me when I returned, picking my way carefully in the moonlight shadows. I dropped to the ground next to him. He was cleaning his sword blade.
"Why don't you do it?" I snapped in reply, reaching for our canister of water which was, thankfully, full thanks to a recently hacked tree.
He pointed the sword tip at me. "Because I'm injured...and because you're the survivalist here. I remember when you brought that deer carcass into the Training Centre. You were a midget of a thing, what, twelve, thirteen?"
I hid a smug smile at the memory. "Twelve," I replied happily.
"Did you ever think you'd end up here?" he asked me conversationally, returning to his sword.
I looked at the shadows around us. I did think I'd end up here, or at least in an Arena. What if I had known back then what it would cost me? What if I had known what I'd lose?
I would have done things differently.
But I wasn't a person who lived in the past. There was no purpose in that. Things were the way they were and revenge was the only thing left to change.
"I'll go get some food," I said by way of answer and got up. I grabbed a knife and, after a moment's musing, a spear as well.
Stalking through the darkness allowed my thoughts to wander. I found myself envisioning the moment when this would be over, when I would reach my goal and kill the girl from District 12. I wondered what the watching audiences would think and feel when I did it. Would they hate me for killing their darling? Not that that mattered to me in the slightest.
Part of me hoped that Peeta wasn't dead when I killed her, so that he'd have to watch her die. Whatever she felt for him, his words about her were genuine, I knew that much. I'd like to make him watch her die. And I'd like to make her sister at home, sitting there powerless and helpless, watch me kill her sister in front of the whole nation.
I was breathless with delight at the thought, but I hadn't been paying attention to the landscape around me. I stopped, only a feel of uneasiness guiding me. Looking around there wasn't anything immediately obvious in the jungle. It looked just like the rest. Even so I slipped my blade into one hand and held the spear up in the other.
Only a sudden screeching was the indication I had that I was under attack. My first thought was that somehow I'd wandered into the section with the beast but it was orange not grey that I saw flying at me through the trees. They descended from the treetops, seemingly hundreds of the mutts swarming down upon me. I thrust with the spear and slashed out with the blade, unable to aim for specific animals; there were too many of them. I spun and slashed and stabbed, ignoring searing pain as claws and teeth ripped through my suit and into the skin of my neck and arms. I ducked under a swinging mutt and struck at it, slashing it down. They screeched and howled, becoming angrier with every animal that I killed. They just kept coming, endless waves of rabid monkeys as I now realized they were.
A burning pain flashed across my back and I cried out, more in anger than in pain, as I turned and stabbed the monkey with the spear. It dropped, taking the spear with it.
As though it was a signal, the others dropped from screeches to murmurs and began to fade back into the jungle. I danced wearily in case it was a trap but they were soon gone from sight, fading seamlessly into the shadows of the jungle.
I was breathing hard, ignoring the pain that was burning all over my body. The bodies of half a dozen monkeys lay at my feet. Well, at least we'd have something to eat, I thought as I kicked one with my foot.
I crouched beside one and yanked the spear from its body, swinging it over my back. Then, using my knife, I roughly hacked off the useless limbs, head and tail of the monkey. I weighed it; there'd be a little bit of meat in them. I sliced up two more and roped the carcasses together with a vine I ripped from the ground.
Loaded down with spear, knife and dead animals I began to trudge back in the direction I had come. I'd like to pretend that I hadn't just fought for my life because of my own lack of concentration, but Brutus would see the slashes all over me. Pride would have to take a back seat for a moment.
Happy, Domitius? I murmured under my breath, thinking of all the times he'd warned me of my pride.
Labouring for breath in the still sticky air and beginning to feel the weariness from my injuries I was struggling when someone crashed to a stop ahead of me. Brutus appeared, looking half mad.
"What?!" I called, dropping the weight of the monkeys and reaching for my knife again. I was on edge just from the tension in his body, the wide terror in his eyes as he stared at me. He was breathing as hard as I had been when I finished fighting the monkeys.
He held up a hand, catching his breath for a moment before answering me. The fact that he thought he had a moment to catch his breath calmed me. He'd still be running and not giving me a second glance if there was something very wrong.
"What is it?" I asked when he'd recovered enough to straighten up again. He just shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line. There were deep lines etched on his face too that I was sure hadn't been there when I'd left.
"There's…birds or…" he shook his head again and said no more. "We're not going back that way."
I pointed at the monkeys at my feet. "Well I think I just met the residents of this bit of jungle. They seem to have gone now, so we should be safe for a while. And we have food. Say thank you," I said teasingly but he wasn't in the mood. He was distracted, looking over his shoulder and shuddering. Whatever he had run from, whatever monster had taken over tormenting from the monkeys, I had no desire to find out what it was if it could make Brutus Castillo shudder and look over his shoulder.
"You look worse for wear," he commented when he pulled his concentration back to me and the monkeys. For the first time I looked down at my state. My suit was ripped to shreds on one shoulder, a mess of blood underneath. I could feel a sharp stab of pain on my back every time I moved.
"I'll live," I replied, careful to keep the bitterness out of my voice. I picked up the monkeys again. "Let's find somewhere to build a fire and cook these mutts," I said.
The dark sky lit up an eerie blue and we both glanced up to see the Capitol seal. The anthem began to play across the Arena. Gloss and Cashmere were the first faces up there and Brutus and I stared stonily at their images till they disappeared, our last little sign of respect to our allies.
I couldn't believe how long the last day had been. It seemed to have been forever since we last saw the Capitol seal. Things were definitely moving like wildfire in this Arena.
After Gloss and Cashmere it was Wiress' image in the sky, followed by Mags from District 4. It was only when her picture appeared that I realized we hadn't seen her with Finnick and the others. Hydra was there and Brutus clucked like a proud chicken at her image. The final few were one of the Morphlings, Blight from District 7 and Herde from District 10.
I did the quick calculations in my head. That left us with Beetee, Finnick, Johanna, Chaff, Fire Girl and Lover Boy. The second night and there were only 7 of us left, 2 Careers. Just like last year, 2 and 12 were the last pairs in the Arena. I swallowed my bitterness ad suppressed the memory.
The monkey meat wasn't pleasant but I had certainly eaten worse things in my time. We forced it down with generous amounts of water to fill our stomachs. We'd cooked it over a fading cluster of embers that occasionally flickered into flames. The meat was charred on the outside and some of the chunks were raw in the centre but we avoided those bits.
Using the cover of darkness and a long while watching on the edge of the jungle, I risked running across the narrow strip of sand to the edge of the water. Splashing my wounds with the salty water stung so much I had to bite my lip to keep from making a noise, but I remembered hearing somewhere that salt water healed and cleansed better than fresh, so I figured it was worth the added pain.
"I'll take first watch," Brutus said once we had finished. I eyed him suspiciously, unsure if I could trust him. Down to these numbers, who was to say our alliance would last, especially given my earlier behavior. Brutus noticed my suspicion of course and gave a cynical chuckle. "Don't worry, kitten. I've got more control than you. If you don't make it through the night it won't be because of my hand."
Even so, when I settled down I sat with my back to a wide tree trunk and kept both hands wrapped around the handle of two blades. I didn't expect to sleep but it had been an exhausting two days and suddenly it caught up with me. More than the physical toll of the humidity and fighting, there was the emotional exhaustion of the ghosts and the constant hate and anger that was slowly eating me from the inside out.