When I woke to daylight, Brutus was nowhere to be seen. I hadn't thought I'd sleep the rest of the night away, but unless the Game Makers had decided to bring the third day early, I'd done just that.
I stood up warily and spotted one of Brutus' knives, stuck blade first into the ground a few feet away. I wrenched it from the ground and made my way down to the edge of the jungle where, sure enough, Brutus was crouched in the foliage, watching the movements of the group across the Arena. I dropped down next to him and handed him back his knife.
"Thanks for being on guard," I said sarcastically.
He shrugged, slipping the knife back into his belt. "Everyone is over there, what's going to happen?"
"Chaff is still alive isn't he? He could be anywhere in the jungle."
Brutus snorted contemptuously. "He's got one arm, Reyes. I think you could have handled him even in your sleep." I grumbled in reply but he ignored me and pointed across the Arena. "They're up to something. There's a lot of movement and huddling happening. I don't like it."
"Plotting our demise?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.
"They know we know we're out numbered," he mused, ignoring my comment. "What would they expect us to do?"
I thought for a moment, trying to put myself in their position, with two Careers out somewhere in the jungle. "I'd expect us to be doing exactly what we're doing," I said after a moment. "Watching them from a safe distance. And then wait till they are forced to separate or chose to, and take down the smallest groups. Just like a lion does, split the herd and go after the weakest."
"We can't go back to the Cornucopia," he continued the thought process. "Too exposed when we're outnumbered. And we can't go too deep into the jungle because we still don't know everything that's in there."
"So we stay where we are?" I asked dubiously. I didn't like sitting still, especially if staying on the edge of the jungle was exactly what they expected us to do.
"No. Let's do what they won't expect. They think we won't go near then till they're smaller, because we're out numbered. So let's go near them. We're both good stalkers- we can move silently. We can be just out of sight of them and they'll never know."
It sounded like a good plan to me. It meant that I could hide in the shadows and wait for Fire Girl to take one wrong step, to wander just a little too far from her little friends and then…
"I think they've worked out the Arena," I said suddenly, watching Finnick pointing at a far section of the jungle and then at another. "I think they know more than we do about what's out there. So they probably will know where it's safe to be." As if to prove what I said, they group suddenly began to move, hiking together in a tight pack along the beach towards us. Brutus and I watched them carefully but they stopped after only a short walk. They stared at the jungle for a while and then disappeared into it. Brutus and I looked at each other.
"Let's hijack their shadow, Brutus said with satisfaction. It was something they used to tell us in the Training Centre. Hijacking someone's shadow meant sneaking up on them literally using their own shadow to hide in. But it was also a strategic move, using the safety someone had created to protect yourself. Like a fish using the leader of the school's slipstream to make their journey easier.
The decision made we packed up our weapons, collected and drank some fresh water and set off of along the edge of the jungle towards where the other group's footprints were still on the sand. We'd only been walking for a short while when the roaring sound of the wave rose in the Arena. We paused, watching as the wall of water crashed down over the trees and flooded the beach at the very place the other group had been. Yes, I thought to myself, they've definitely worked out the Arena. They knew they had to move.
As we came closer to where they'd disappeared we slowed and stopped every few feet, listening and watching carefully. They were a large group and some of them weren't very good at being quiet. I felt it should have been easy to find them, even in the dense jungle.
Sure enough, we found them all packed together, sitting near a large tree that I recognised from some of the other sections of jungle. They were eating and talking amongst themselves as if they didn't have a care, as if two Careers weren't stalking them at that very moment.
We stopped, concealed by thick foliage. I held my breath, wishing that one of them would wander away from the group- preferably Fire Girl. If it was anyone else, killing them would alert the others and, still outnumbered, Brutus and I would have a fight on our hands. But I didn't care about that as long as the one I killed was Fire Girl.
Without asking Brutus, I pulled myself into the nearest tree with dense leaf cover. As nimbly as when I had been seventeen, despite the tension and pain in my arms and back from my recent injuries, I scaled the tree to about the middle and inched along a branch, peering through the leaves. From there I could see the group better than on the ground. They had some animal that they'd butchered and were eating. To my annoyance they looked like they were in decent shape. I was amazed that they still had that loony from District 3 with them, and amazed that he had lived this long. They had plenty of food and with something I couldn't see from that distance, they poured water from one of the trees.
So just like us they'd worked out how to get water. I was just about to climb back down the tree when Fire Girl did what I'd wanted her to do for the entire Games- she wandered away. I watched her, holding my breath, as she walked to a tree on the other side of the group and scaled it with ease, pulling herself from branch to branch till she was high in the canopy.
What was she doing? Out of curiosity I pulled myself higher too, thankful that I was still light. I couldn't get as high as she did because my tree petered out of leaves at the top, but I sat a few branches below her, watching, wondering what she was doing. Glancing down I saw Brutus' face staring up at me with a questioning look.
I shook my head to tell him I didn't know either and that was when the lightning hit. My head shot up straight away and I looked towards the ear splitting sound and brilliant light. It was just one bolt but the same brilliant, sizzling light that we'd first seen in the Arena. The hot air seemed to crackle even after the blinding stars had faded from my vision.
As Fire Girl dropped down her tree I dropped down mine, landing beside Brutus with a soft thump on the jungle floor. I sunk several inches into the moss.
"Lightning?" he asked and I nodded.
"They're watching it too. Fire Girl climbed a tree to see it better."
He glowered at nothing in particular. "They're definitely up to something."
"And they're on the move again," I commented as, through the trees, the group packed up their things and began to pick their way through the jungle towards us. We receded into the leafy shadows and watched them pass us. I grinned at the knowledge they had no idea we were less than twenty feet from them, watching their every move.
We were too slow to follow them. Neither of us felt any great urgency, mostly because the group didn't seem to feel any urgency. We let them get out of our sight as I spotted an animal scuffling in the leaves. I held up my hand to signal Brutus and he stopped straight away, watching me. The animal didn't notice me as I slid a knife into my palm and put my feet down slowly and carefully towards it.
It didn't make a noise as the knife flew deep into its neck, slicing its arteries instantly. It dropped.
"Good job." Brutus slapped me on the back as he passed, picking up the animal. He held it up. "Ugly looking thing."
I fetched my knife from its neck, deciding to let Brutus slice it up for food.
In the distance there was a gentle rumble that I didn't pay any attention to. It was just like the sigh the sky gave on a hot summer day before it released heavy droplets of rain. Liquid splashed against my shoulder and instinctively I ducked my head.
"Let's get moving," I said to Brutus, frowning. "It's raining, we can slice that up when we've made camp."
Brutus looked up at me from the animal and I felt my blood freeze at the look of alarm that crossed his face as his eyes flicked over my. I followed his gaze as more droplets began to fall. I held my hands out in front of me as great droplets of thick red blood fell on my skin. The sky opened and the drops began to pour down, splattering blood, hot and sticky, across my bare skin, running into my eyes.
"Run!" I didn't need Brutus to shout that, I was already wiping the hot liquid from my eyes and forcing my legs into movement, ignoring the searing burning. Within two seconds I couldn't see; the blood was in my eyes and left a haze over my vision. I tripped over a root and fell hard on the ground, pushing myself up before I could be pummeled down by the pounding rain.
Somehow we stumbled and fell our way out of the horrible rain. I lost Brutus in the red blur and the panic. My skin was burning underneath the liquid and swiping at it with my hands just spread it further. It was like sap- burning sap.
It took me a while to realize that where I ran the rain no longer fell. I stopped and fell to my knees, gasping to stop from crying out at the pain. Blindly I groped on the ground for something to help. My fingers met the damp springiness of moss and I ripped great handfuls of it from the jungle floor, wiping frantically at my exposed skin with it.
To my relief it actually worked. Where my hands had just burned and spread the sap, the moss absorbed it and scraped it away, leaving tender, blistering skin underneath. I scrubbed myself raw with the moss until I felt free of the horrible red sap.
Only then did I look around me, assessing the jungle. If I had stumbled upon the other group while I was blinded, they could have killed me without a fight. The thought left a block of ice in my stomach. More than the fear of death was the fear of shame.
I rose to my feet but too quickly. The residual effects of the sap combined with hunger and exhaustion made my head spin sickeningly and I was falling back to the ground before I knew it.
"On your feet, kitten." Brutus caught me before I hit the ground, hauling me back to my feet and forcing me to stay there. He'd materialized out of the jungle with his surprising stealth, or maybe I'd just been too distracted to notice, which was bad.
He held me up for a few minutes as I leaned against the welcome solidness of a tree trunk, willing my head to stop spinning. When it did I focused on his face. He didn't look much better than I felt. He'd been a head of me so he hadn't suffered from the red rain as bad, but he still had some of it stuck to his neck and shoulders. When he saw I could stand on my own he handed me the silver canister of water.
"Pour this on, it helps the pain."
Without question I did as he said, holding out my hands and sluicing the raw skin with the wonderfully cool in comparison water. It was bliss as it slipped across my skin. I drank half the canister as well, letting the liquid sooth my throat. When I had I felt better, stronger, enough to be ashamed of my moment of weakness.
"What was that?" I asked, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and handing him back the water. He took a deep drink as well.
"Just another little delight of the Arena," he said bitterly, the first time I'd heard him risk it.
"We need to find the group," I said, feeling determination to be moving and hunting seep back into me along with strength. "I need to kill."
Brutus studies me with an expression I couldn't quite decipher. Then he turned away. "I stumbled onto the beach before. They're back where the wave floods. They're lounging on the beach, swimming and catching seafood."
"Having a nice little holiday?" I spat furiously. "So much for their plan." But I knew it wouldn't be that easy. They wouldn't have given up like that. If they're relaxing it's either a trap or they're waiting for something, something that won't mean good news for us.
"Let's go," I said, pushing myself away from the tree. I was ready to hunt them, figure out what they were up to and then destroy them all. Brutus pulled me back with a hand on my elbow.
"Whatever they're up to they're not going anywhere in a hurry. We need to eat first. And rest. Or it won't be any fight."
He knew that would get me, the temptation that I'd lose a fight against one of them, possibly fail to kill Fire Girl. I turned back to him grudgingly and he grinned, holding up the monkey carcass. "Guess what I kept hold of."
"If we're not fighting, we're at least going to the edge of the jungle so I can keep an eye on them," I said and turned away, marching off through the trees and assuming he would follow me. Which he did.