Midnight.
That precarious hour when victors teeter between life and death. With each tick of the arena, fate draws nearer. It's calm - too calm - for such a brewing storm. There's been no blood. The sky shows no faces. The victors on the beach have fared well, gorging on the seafood as they did. As the hands on the clock slowly creep forward, they take even swipes at the serenity. The only reason the Gamemakers haven't interfered is the building sense of anticipation surrounding tonight. The trap. The inevitable break of the strongest alliance. One way or another, tonight will end in canons.
My legs feels shaky as we file into the square. Between the spookily undisturbed atmosphere, the race against time, and the the hordes of Peacekeepers escorting us into the square, I feel a strange sense of foreboding.
Last year, the finale brought excitement, as well as terror. Katniss and Peeta outnumbered Cato, they had their seemingly unbreakable bond, and we had a strange little fluttery thing called hope. How things have changed. Tonight, our victors will turn on their alliance - or the alliance will turn on them.
"Do you think this will be it?" I ask my wife under my breath. "The finale?" I don't know why I'm whispering. Sure, the Peacekeepers are on all sides, but they can hear every word I say anyway. It's not anything that could get us in trouble… I hope.
"If the trap works, Katniss and Peeta will turn. Probably Johanna and Finnick, too," she whispers back. "That could get bloody."
I nod, my throat too tight to speak.
"I told the boys we'd meet them near the front," my wife says in a louder voice. Probably to cover up the fear in our exchange.
But when we try to move to the front to find our sons, the Peacekeepers won't let us. They want everyone accounted for, apparently, and that means we have to stay in neat rows.
"You're here to watch, not socialize," one of them growls. "Take your place."
I spot think I see the boys up front, but I can't be sure. I don't like being separated from them like this, against my will. We've already lost Peeta, I can't handle them, too.
The large screen flickers to life and my heart drops into my shoes. Here we go.
"This is a pivotal, pivotal night," Caesar says, pausing for emphasis. His voice is low and composed; a purr that invites anticipation and excitement. "The fate of the victors from District Two and the crowd's favorite alliance rests on tonight's shoulders."
And now we see them, our victors.
"Stop," my wife hisses, dragging me to the surface of my thoughts.
"What?"
"You're bouncing your leg," she mutters. "It's making me anxious."
"Sorry." I didn't even realize I was doing it. Now that I'm looking for it, I notice my nervous movements. Drumming fingers, jittery limbs. I'm tired of being in the dark, of not knowing. Just get this over with already.
"Why do they have to drag it out?" I whisper.
"You know why. The entire country is watching this right now."
The beach, which is now glowing softly under the last insistent beams of day, harbors our alliance. Beetee is in his head, working out some final calculations, I suppose. Johanna keeps letting her ax blade slam into the sand, as if practicing for the real thing... when its lethal metal will find flesh and bone instead of yellow grains. Peeta is standing on the beach, still as a statue, and staring out at the shape of the golden horn with an unhappy expression. Is he pondering what to do with Katniss? How to protect her tonight? She's with Finnick, kicking some empty oyster shells, waiting. They're all waiting, as are we.
I notice that the cameras have yet to show the Careers. In a situation such as this, the Gamemakers often decide to pick of point of view. They can't make it too omniscient or the anticipation would ebb away. Tonight, they've chosen the predator. The patient hunters waiting for a careless prey to wander past.
Slowly, the darkness smothers the fragile life force of the daylight. The arena is wreathed in unearthly shadows, elongating the trees and turning the ocean from blue, to grey, to black. A seething, writhing mass of waves. Katniss and Finnick glance up first at the sky, then at each other.
"Looks like it's about nine," he says. His voice is steady, collected, yet it can't be how he's really feeling. Unless he and Johanna are so confident that he doesn't feel the need to be concerned.
"Yeah, let's go," Katniss answers with a shrug.
They round up the others and begin the trek to the lightning tree. No one says much, just wiping away sweat and grunting with effort occasionally. Walking is better than staying on the beach, though, at least for those of us watching. The silent biding of time, wasting perhaps their last hours of sunlight, was excruciating. I know I'll eat my words when the fighting breaks out, but for now, it's better to feel like they're being productive.
They reach the lightning tree - its trunk looking much more imposing in the night.
"I'll need Finnick to assists me," Beetee says. "The rest of you need to be on guard."
Finnick and Beetee unravel the thin, golden wire for many yards - piling the springy stuff on the ground. They wrap the end around a severed branch and put it aside. Now the real work will begin. The gold wire slowly encases the tree like a spider's web. The delicate, complicated cross-crossing of wires rises, devouring the bark and overcoming the initial expanse of the trunk. Is this somehow going to strengthen the charge the lightning delivers? Does it matter that much how the wire is wrapped? Up and up it weaves, trapping the tree as our alliance hopes to trap the Careers.
I wonder where they are right now, the Careers, I mean. The last we saw of them… it was yesterday. They were in the tree line, I think, poised to spy on Katniss, Peeta and the others. Could they have picked up some clues, however vague, about the trap? They must know they are being hunted. How could they not?
The ten o'clock sector's wave crashes down on the Cornucopia, giving us a rough estimate of the time. Ten-thirty or so. An hour and a half until midnight.
And then, Beetee explains the rest of his plan. "Since you girls move fastest through the trees, you'll take the coil and unwind," he says. "Make sure to go across the beach, particularly in the twelve o'clock section, then run for the jungle. If you go now, you should make it to safety."
"I want to go with them as a guard," my son demands at once.
"You're too slow," Beetee says matter-of-factly. "Besides, I'll need you on this end. Katniss will guard. I'm sorry. If the girls are to get out of there alive, they need to move now." He hands the coil to Johanna and the moonlight sparks off the golden threads.
"It's okay," Katniss says to Peeta, who still seems very distressed at this arrangement. "We'll just drop the coil and come straight back up."
"Not into the lightning zone," Beetee reminds her, sounding like a chiding schoolteacher. "Head for the tree in the one-to-two-o'clock sector. If you find you're running out of time, move over one more. Don't even think about going back on the beach, though, until I can assess the damage."
Very tenderly, Katniss reaches up and takes Peeta's face in her hands. "Don't worry," she assures him softly. "I'll see you at midnight." The kiss that follows is short, but so sweet. It effectively stops Peeta from protesting and seems to bolster Katniss's confidence just a little. She starts off with Johanna, glancing back to give my son a final nod.
No matter how much it pains Peeta stay behind, Beetee is right. There's no way he could move at the pace the girls are going with that leg of his. Johanna takes the job of unwinding and laying the wire while Katniss watches the woods for any sign of movement. There's not much talk, probably because it's crucial they get out of there undetected and quickly.
"Come on," I find myself whispering. They just don't seem to be moving fast enough. I want them to get a safe distance away.
In the neighboring sector, a dreadful chorus of clicks starts up, indicating another thirty minutes have passed. Eleven o'clock. One hour until midnight.
"Better hurry up," Johanna notes. "I want to put a lot of distance between me and that water before the lightning hits. Just in case Volts miscalculated."
"I'll take the wire for a while," Katniss offers.
Johanna happily relinquished the coil. It must be tiring to unwind it all that way. Back up the slope, the camera follows the slight trail of gold. It pans up a little ways, traveling through the trees. And there we see them. The Careers. Much too close to Katniss and Johanna who're completely unsuspecting. Maybe they're just passing by, perhaps even heading for the beach now that our alliance has vacated it. Of course, that's too much to hope.
"They know," my wife whispers. A string of swearing follows, earning us a few dirty looks from those surrounding us.
"Who does?" I ask urgently. "The Careers? What do they know?"
As if in reply, Enobaria leaps forward with her knife drawn and inspects the golden wire. The trap. They know about the trap! In one quick slice, she uses her knife to sunder the thin thread. By the time the action registers in my mind, Katniss and Johanna have already figured it out.
Johanna draws her knife and Katniss reaches for an arrow until -
The entire square sucks in a mouthful of air. A few people even cry out, shocked out of their silence. Because Johanna Mason has just clouted Katniss with the metal cylinder. She lets out a strangled cry and falls to the ground, unable to stop Johanna from sitting on her chest. The Seven victor's face is set into hard lines as she digs her knife into the flesh on Katniss's inner forearm.
I wince as the blood bursts forth, the dark sticky stuff staining her arm. In the silvery moonlight, against the dark blood, her skin appears very pale. The point of Johanna's knife stays in her flesh for quite a while, digging around as if looking for something. There's so much blood I can't tell what's dismembered flesh and what's not.
The Careers appear at the top of the hill. Like a cat, Johanna stealthily coats Katniss's face and neck in blood before darting away.
All hell has broken loose. It was bound to happen, just not like this! Hadn't I just said we were the hunters now? How ironic that the Careers surprised them.
The Gamemakers have taken us back to the lightning tree. There's no more organized planning. The wire has gone slack, leaving them panicked.
"The girls!" Peeta's saying. "Something's happened, Finnick!"
"Stay here with Beetee! I'll go find them!" Finnick wields his trident and plunged down the slope, his agile body giving him an edge.
"Peeta, stay here!" Beetee instructs. In one hand, he's holding a knife wrapping in wire. He's close to the force field, his arm carelessly near the dangerous boundary.
But my son's not listening. He's headed for the slope, too - a very bad idea with his artificial leg.
"Peeta!" Beetee orders again.
My son crashes noisily through the vegetation, leaving Beetee alone and vulnerable. His hands are shaking as he lifts the knife again. I'm not quite sure what happens next. There's a sizzling, a blinding burst of light, a low cry. All I know is that it ends with Beetee on the ground, unconscious, but breathing.
Too far away, Katniss is trying to haul herself to her feet. She's disoriented, stumbling and pitching forward, unable to raise herself at all without the help of a tree. The blow Johanna delivered must have done a great deal of damage. And then there's her arm, which is still as nasty as before - more so because by laying on the ground, she invited tiny gnats and other debris to mix with the red flow.
I look away from the screen because she's leaning forward now, heaving up her seafood dinner. Her face is covered in blood and sweat, so when she rises, the green color of her face mixes in an awful combination of seasickness and pallor.
"I knew it! Johanna's been planning this all along!" my wife shrieks. The Peacekeepers turn toe adds us, moving in closer. With a glare in their direction, she goes back to her obscenities. Everyone has their way of coping, I guess.
For Claudius and Caesar, this seems like just the excitement the Capitol was looking for. The way they describe it, so intense, so graphic, but without any true emotion, I begin to see how they view the Games. Take away the human qualities of sympathy and pain and you get the Hunger Games they watch.
Unfortunately for us, we don't get the luxury of detachment. My body feels oddly heavy, tingling like someone's holding a match to it.
Katniss has managed to nock an arrow, but I doubt she'll be able to get a very steady shot in the state she's in. She staggers tipsily forward, inching her way towards the tree. Her feet don't seem to be obeying her brain, her ankles rolling frequently. And what's this journey for? She won't find Peeta where she's going. He's still crashing through the jungle in search of her, heading in the direction of their rendezvous spot.
Finnick's nearby, though. Maybe he'll get to her before the Careers do. If he finds her, hopefully he'll take her to Peeta for some cleaning up. But maybe not, I realize. If Johanna's separated herself from the alliance, he probably has, too. I think about their conversation.
"Are you ready?"
"Yeah. It's getting close."
So they planned on doing this all along? Maybe they never meant to go through with the trap.
Chaff, who's been trailing the Careers for a couple of days, is the first victor to die. My own heart is racing so quickly and everything seems to be happening so fast that I don't know quite how it happens. One second he's on his feet, the next Brutus is barreling towards him, sticking his knife right into the man's guts.
At the sound of the canon, everyone becomes twice as agitated.
Peeta's face goes pale. Katniss stops walking all together. Johanna and Finnick both search the sky, hoping for a picture.
Weapons. Blood. The jungle becomes a kill zone. I don't think people are even stopping to identify the person. Stab. Slice. Thud.
I may as well be asleep. Everything flies over my head, twisting my mind and warping my thoughts. I can't process everything at the lightning fast speed it's happening.
Lighting! Katniss has made it to the tree, now, tripping up the hill.
"Peeta?" she calls hoarsely. "Peeta?"
But the only person there to hear is Beetee. Through her confusion and panic, recognition lights up in her eyes. "Beetee!" She's trying to wrap his wound, but the moss she's using to wipe the blood is way too far down. I wonder if she's seeing double. "Beetee! Beetee, what's going on! Who cut you? Beetee!"
What's going on? That's the question I want to know, too. What the hell is going on?
The camera has split into three, now - trying to show all the Capitol-glorious moments of this night. But I can only focus on one ideally, and even that's become a struggle. I force my brain to absorb what's happening.
Katniss is noticing the knife Beetee is clutching now. She's holding it up, perplexed. Beetee didn't explain this part, or if he did we didn't understand it. From the look on Katniss's face I think it's a good guess she has no clue why it's there either.
Only when the clicking begins to die down do I realize how loud it was. No wonder I couldn't concentrate. But that's bad. That means lightning is coming. The trap has completely backfired because at this rate, it'll kill Katniss and Beetee - maybe none of the Careers.
"Katniss!" Peeta's pushing through the hanging vines, trying to find some trace of her. "Katniss!" I don't think he even cares about bringing attackers - just so long as she's safe.
"Peeta!" she screams back. "Peeta! I'm here! Peeta! I'm here! I'm here!"
At the sound of her voice, my son's pain becomes visibly more crippling. He's so far away, so unable to help her. He's fighting his way towards her, though, not giving up until there's no hope left. Until Brutus finds him. It wasn't that hard - he was yelling at the top of his lungs. Peeta draws a knife, hesitating just slightly before stabbing. Brutus punches Peeta in the jaw, his own knife clashing against my son's blade.
What's happening?
The question asks itself as I watch my son struggle against this man. Peeta and his brothers have always been good wrestlers, but this man is gigantic and angry.
Schlick
A stab aimed at Brutus' heart accidentally impales his neck. It's a death blow, nonetheless. Peeta swallows hard before stumbling forward. "Katniss!" he howls. He knows he must get to her before the lightning does.
She answers him, but the slightest possibly they may reach each other died with Brutus. The odds aren't in their favor. She's sinking to her knees, her eyes unfocused and glassy. Her shrieks have brought Finnick and Enobaria, but not him. Not the one person she can trust in this arena.
In one final heroic attempt to take out the enemy, she raises her bow, aiming for the Two victor.
The alliance is in shards, broken never to be repaired. I can see Katniss doesn't care if she kills Finnick or Enobaria, as long as her arrow finds flesh. Finnick Odair, who brought Peeta back to life, who carried him through the fog, who laughed with Katniss, who survived the jabberjay attack with her, who taught them all to fish - gone in the blink of an eye.
But no, she's lowering the bow and taking Beetee's knife in her hands. They shake as they slide the golden wire off his weapon and onto the shaft of hers.
The world seems slightly titled, running at an irregular speed. Midnight. Twenty seconds away. Katniss pulls the string of the bow back with great effort, her legs shaking madly. Fifteen seconds. She aims it the best she can at… nothing it seems. Why the wire? What will it do.
"Get away from the tree!" people here are hollering.
"KATNISS GO!"
"DAMN HER, SHE'LL DIE IF SHE STAYS THERE!"
"Run Katniss!"
All thoughtfully shouted remarks, coming from a place of good intent, but it's much too late. Five seconds. Four seconds. Three seconds. Two seconds. One seconds. Midnight.
Katniss lets the arrow fly as the screen is lit up with a dazzling blue-white light. For a few seconds, it remains, illuminating our terrified faces.
And then everything goes dark.