Mike Mothra, District Eight male (16)

Things weren't as bad as they could be. Sure, I got impaled through the leg, but it was only a flesh wound. Isabella said as much, excitedly explaining that if I'd gotten stabbed through a vein, I would have sprayed blood everywhere and died in less than a minute. Honestly I was pretty impressed Charm had dug such a big hole. That was probably why she hadn't attacked in so long. That had to have taken days. Anyway, with all the medical supplies we had at the Cornucopia, it looked like I'd be fine as long as I didn't move around too much and open the wound more. Weird to think if the Bloodbath had turned out any way but how it did, we wouldn't have had these supplies and I would have certainly died of infection.

It was almost morning, so as I sat up on watch, I got some things together for breakfast. Zebulon was with me, since we always did guard in pairs now. Obviously I wouldn't be able to do much fighting in my condition, but I could scream really loud or something. I should have been worried about the whole mystery thing, but I was pretty sure it was Charm who did it. No one else had gotten attacked since then because she was digging that hole.

"You think we're gonna stay together much longer?" Zebulon asked, worried lines on his face. "I mean, there's not too many people left, and eventually we won't have a choice."

"Probably I'll be dead by then, realistically. So I don't have to worry about it," I said.

"You make it sound like a good thing," Zebulon said, smiling a little.

"Hey, no more problems," I shrugged. "It's been a good life but it has to end sometime."

Zebulon looked off, his smile fading. "You think it was like that for Jack? Good times with an alliance and then he was dead before he knew it?"

"I guess he would have died anyway, even though we would try to help," I admitted.

"You really think of of us did it? You think one of us would do that?" Zebulon asked. His eyes were pleading in the dim light, like he didn't want to believe any of us were anything but what we seemed.

"I guess sometimes you don't know someone like you think you do," I said.

"I guess." Zebulon looked down again.

And I barely knew Jack at all, I mused. Jack, the only certainly innocent one in all of this. I only knew him as a few days of friendship and then a morbidly peaceful body. He really had looked like he was just sleeping. There was only that one thin line of blood, almost invisible in the faint light...

It wasn't a revelation. That wasn't what I would call it. It was the slow feeling of my heart breaking. I looked up at Zebulon, who was plucking the tails off shrimp. Jack, killed with a blunt object instead of an axe or a sai. I imagined closed eyes as something swung toward a head in the night- a big enough target they wouldn't need to look. Zebulon, my tenderhearted friend who hated blood. Who glanced up, and saw at once that I knew.

Zebulon paused. He seemed to freeze, like he'd suddenly run up against a tiger. His shoulders dipped a little, and his eyes went soft.

"I shouldn't have done it," he said.

"It was you," I repeated dumbly. "How could you?" I didn't know which of us was going to cry first.

"I didn't want to do it. Oh, but Mike..." his voice cracked and then faded to a whisper by the end. "I didn't want to die." He buried his face in his hands.

"But why?" I still couldn't make myself understand.

Zebulon dropped his hands and revealed his tortured eyes. "There's only one winner. I didn't want to die. There's so many ways to make yourself do something, aren't there? I told myself everyone had to die eventually. I told myself we'd get ourselves killed trying to protect Jack and then he'd die anyway. I told myself the best thing we could hope for was to die in our sleep and not even feel it. So I got up that night and I started with Jack, since he was the one I'd been friends with for the shortest. 'It probably won't work', I told myself. 'I'll chicken out'. I did, right at the last second. Right when it hit. I didn't see the blood. But I heard the impact. Everything seemed to go blurry. I didn't know what to do. I just knew I couldn't ever do it again. I hardly remember lying down and trying to pretend nothing had happened. Am I going to Hell, Mike?"

Zebulon Charles, District Twelve male (17)

"Am I going to Hell, Mike?"

How could it be that I was relieved? I was a murderer. I killed a helpless child. Now the secret was out and everyone knew I was a monster, and I was relieved. I guess I'd been running from judgment so long, looking over my shoulder for what I had coming, that when it finally came, I was ready to face it. It was only what I deserved.

Why couldn't Mike be angry? Why did he have to look sad instead? He should be furious. He should already be sounding the alarm to get everyone up to kill me. Why did he look like he was going to cry? Why did he look like he wanted to hug me? He opened his mouth and I waited for him to damn me.

"You're sorry," he said.

"I'm so sorry." I hoped he could make it out past the blubbering sobs that obscured my words. I put my curled fingers to my mouth and bent with emotion that made my ribs hurt.

"Then I don't think you're going to Hell." I wondered if Mike would ever know he put a piece of my soul back when he said that.

"You have to tell Isabella," I said, just saying aloud what we both knew.

"She deserve to know," Mike said.

"She'll kill me," I said.

"I don't know," Mike said honestly. "Maybe." His eyes flickered down to the knife beside me, the one I'd been using to cut potatoes for our soup. They only flickered for an instant. After one reflexive movement, they were back on me. He seemed to be waiting- waiting to see how very much I wanted to live.

"It's the smartest thing, isn't it?" I said softly. It was clear I couldn't stay. I had to leave anyway, so why shouldn't I double down and eliminate one more person in between me and living? Especially when Mike was already at peace with his own death? I wouldn't kill him before he woke Isabella, but he was going to rouse her as I left anyway. Mike loved me, but he loved them, too. He had to do right by them- the same right I hadn't done. So Mike looked at me, and waited quietly to see if this would be his dying moment, and because of that, I couldn't.

"I'm sorry," I said again. What a pathetic thing to say. What a sorry, sad excuse for any sort of repayment for what I'd done. I picked up the knife and I ran.

"Isabella!" I heard Mike yelling from behind me. I didn't dare look back. Why couldn't she have been the one to find out? She would have just killed me. Not out of hate, but to protect Mike. At first Beth might have let me go, but even before they left, they'd grown colder. She'd seemed to wall herself off, admitting what we all knew: that only one could win. The only difference was they hadn't killed one of their allies. They'd just left. It had to be Mike who discovered me. Mike, the only one I should have died before I hurt.

Isabella was much faster than I was, but in the dim light it was impossible to see far in the forest. That, and she couldn't leave Mike alone. Not when there was a murderer out there. So I fled into the forest and soon they were far behind me.

I leaned against a tree, my chest burning as I tried to catch my breath. The forest stretched around me, all dark and foreboding compared to the little haven I'd broken apart. Everything was wrong, but I had no right to complain. It was all my fault. I was alone in the arena and I was almost certainly going to die anyway- I'd sold my integrity for nothing. The best I could tell myself was that I didn't kill more.

My mind wandered to the soup we'd been making. Such a stupid thing to think about. I thought of that soup, and whether Isabella and Mike would sit around the fire and eat it once they'd given up chasing me. They'd go back to their cozy alliance with more supplies than they could possibly use, and an ally who wasn't just an ally, but a friend. And I'd be out here in the nightmare jungle, trying to claw my way over someone else in order to stay alive while they died. I looked down at my hand and smiled painfully. Wasn't it appropriate? The only thing I had now was a knife.

Short chapter since it would just feel incongruous to add an unrelated POV and extraneous to add Isabella's.

So the secret's out. All those red herrings aside, it was Zebulon. I planned a crazy survivalist arc for him and when I got the murder mystery idea it fit perfectly. Zebulon's not a bad guy, but everyone in the Games wants to stay alive. We can split hairs over respective morality, but the truth is, aside from some sociopathic outliers, the vast majority of Games kills are simply because someone values their own life over someone else's. He chose himself, and his greatest mercy is that Mike is the only one left who would admit that it's easy to call someone a monster when they made the same choice almost everyone would. So ends the Cult of Mothman- split apart in the jungle and broken both in numbers and heart.