Another call for Johanna echoed from behind Taiya as Finnick eagerly sprinted towards her.

"Taiya! Finnick!" Johanna yelled back in relief. She'd been with Nuts and Bolts for the first 24 hours and she was on the verge of a breakdown.

Taiya went to give Johanna a hug before she immediately pulled back. "Oh my god ew, what's on you?" Taiya turned her nose up at her friend's state.

"Don't even get me started," Johanna sighed as she pulled Taiya in for a quick hug.

"Ew," Taiya muttered to herself as she looked down at her now red-stained wetsuit.

"Well I did it," Johanna started to explain. "I got them out. We were all the way deep into the jungle where I thought it was going to be safe."

"Yeah, it's not," Taiya shook her head.

"No kidding," Johanna scoffed. "That's when the rain started. I thought it was water, you know, because of the lighting, and we were all so thirsty. But when it started coming down, it turned out to be blood. Hot, thick blood! You couldn't see, you couldn't speak without getting a mouthful. It was choking us! We just stumbled around, gagging on it blind. That's when Blight hit the force field."

"I'm sorry Johanna," Finnick muttered.

"He wasn't much, but he was from home," Johanna sighed. There was no love lost between the two. Johanna had spent years complaining about how useless the man was. But she never wanted to see the man dead. "He left me alone with these two," she nudged the barely conscious Beetee with her shoe. "He got a knife in the back at the Cornucopia. And her..." Johanna just scoffed as she looked at Wiress.

"Tick tock. Tick tock," Wiress chanted as she continued walking in circles.

"What's wrong with her?" Katniss asked.

"Tick tock."

"Yeah, yeah, we get it," Johanna snapped at the woman. "Nuts is in shock," she answered Katniss. This seemed to draw Wiress in Johanna's direction and she headed straight towards her.

"We should probably get you all some water," Taiya suggested, trying to find an excuse to pull Johanna away. She could see the girl was close to snapping.

"Tick tock. Tick tock."

"Just… stop!" Johanna yelled as she shook the woman. "Listen. Stop it! Just stay down!" Johanna pushed her to the ground.

"Hey!" Katniss yelled. "Lay off her!" she defended the woman as she ran at Johanna and grabbed at her arms. "HEY!" Johanna yelled in shock as she tried to fend the younger girl off. "What are you doing?"

"Get off her!" Taiya snarled as she jumped onto Katniss's back in an attempt to get her off her friend.

"Hey, hey, hey," Finnick tried to calm them all down as he stepped between Johanna and Katniss and pulled Johanna away.

Peeta in the meantime took care of Taiya, quickly detaching her from Katniss's back as she started to pull the girl's hair.

"Who do you think got them out of that bleeding jungle for you?" Johanna screamed at Katniss.

That snapped Taiya out of her anger against Katniss. "Take her," Taiya immediately instructed Finnick.

"On it," Finnick agreed as he immediately tossed Johanna's body over his shoulder and carried her out to the water and threw her in. Maybe he figured what worked to stem Taiya's rage would also work on Johanna.

Taiya turned to look at Katniss and Peeta, who were both looking at her in confusion before she nervously giggled and sprinted into the water after them, desperate to avoid any questions Johanna's meltdown might have triggered.

As Taiya approached the pair, she looked closer at what Finnick was doing. "Jesus Finn, we're not waterboarding her," Taiya put her hand on his arm. The water hadn't really worked at calming Johanna down, so Finnick had resorted to dunking the girl in and out. Every time she came out, she'd continue screaming insults in Katniss's direction.

"She won't stop," Finnick shrugged.

"Dude," Taiya clasped her hand over Johanna's mouth. "Shut up." Taiya slowly removed her hand when she was sure Johanna wasn't going to continue yelling anymore. "At least you're not covered in blood now."

Johanna didn't even respond, instead, she was frowning at Taiya. "What the hell is on your head?"

"A pirate hat," Taiya smiled proudly. "I made it. You like it?"

"You look ridiculous."

"Dunk her."

"What did you do?" Taiya asked Katniss as surveyed Beetee's back. Katniss had covered his wounds in a moss she found in the jungle.

"I'm hoping it will limit the bleeding," Katniss explained.

"Here," Taiya handed the girl the cream she'd gotten earlier in the morning. "Use that. It'll help him more."

"You're sure?" Katniss confirmed before she took the girl's gift. "Thank you."

"He needs it," Taiya noted as she looked over at the sleeping man. He'd helped her plenty of times in the Capitol. It was the least she could do. "Hey," she greeted Finnick and Johanna as they arrived back at the group, both immediately sitting down on either side of her.

"So? What's your time in the arena been like?" Johanna asked between gulps of water and mouthfuls of shellfish.

The four of them looked at each other, not even knowing where to begin.

"Peeta died," Taiya began. "Finnick saved his life, go Finnick. We got attacked by poisonous fog and Finnick was an idiot and nearly died. Then we got attacked by monkey mutts, a morphling died and a monkey scratched my face."

"You're not a great storyteller," Johanna smirked.

"Yeah well it's not exactly in my top 10 memories watching Finnick run back towards the poisonous fog to help Peeta and Katniss," Taiya retorted as she glared across at Finnick. They had to discuss it, but not in front of everyone. But she was still fuming nonetheless. "Do me a deal?" she asked, looking around at the group. "Whoever gets out of here alive has to kill Plutarch for me ok?"

"Deal," Johanna agreed immediately.

"I mean what the hell is this?" Taiya looked up to the sky. "Lightning, blood rain, fog, monkey and a big wave. It's a little overkill."

"I guess they really want us dead," Johanna muttered.

"Assholes," Taiya grumbled as she rested her head on her knee.

"Would you take that ridiculous hat off?"

"Don't insult the hat, Jo. It's cool."

"It's not."

"Yeah, well look at you with your stupid red hair streaks," Taiya poked out her tongue.

"Stupid red hair streaks!" Johanna gasped.

"I said what I said."

"Taiya! You dyed my hair like this!"

"It's not my fault. I was drunk. You shouldn't have let me do it. Your fault."

"You just… I can't."

"Enough," Finnick interrupted. "I'm ending this now or it'll go on all day," Finnick stood up and forced himself into the spot between the two girls. "You two are too similar," he shook his head in disappointment. "We should probably rest up though. The careers are still out there, we need to be ready."

"We'll watch!" both Peeta and Taiya called out at the same time as they looked at each other in excitement.

"No!" Katniss and Finnick immediately denied them.

"Why?" Taiya sulked as she looked over at Finnick.

"Because you two will be too busy playing pirates to notice the Career's coming," Finnick smirked at her.

"Did you die last time we were on watch?" Taiya questioned and he just sighed as he stared at her. "No, so, shh. Come on Peeta!"

"Nope," Finnnick smiled, wrapping an arm around her waist to keep her near him. "You are staying with me."

"I'm glad you're here," Taiya whispered as she woke up to see Johanna lying next to her.

"Girl on fire been driving you mad? I spoke to her for a bit when you all fell asleep. I don't know how long I'd last alone with her before I'd kill her," Johanna smirked.

"Well after she and Finnick stopped fighting she was ok," Taiya shrugged.

"She and Finnick were fighting?" Johanna queried. "My money would've been on you and her fighting."

"I've been well-behaved," Taiya defended herself. She then looked around before she moved even closer to Johanna, she didn't want to be overheard by any microphones. "We have to watch her. Peeta's cool, but she's on edge. She'll take off with him if we're not careful. She may be tolerating us for now, but at the first sign of trouble, they'll both leave."

"Got it," Johanna nodded. "So we have to be extra nice."

"From what I gather she feels indebted to Finn and I for saving Peeta's ass so many times. But I don't know how long that will last. We need the Career's to stay alive. It gives her incentive to hang around."

"You trying to save your friends?" Johanna rolled her eyes.

"It's not like that," Taiya denied. "If the Career's die it'll basically just be us. She'll turn on us, why wouldn't she? But if it means Cash and Gloss stay alive, well then even better. Win-win."

"Taiya, please don't put hope in that happening. They're not on our side," Johanna said nicely.

"Well, they could have been. But no one spoke to them."

"Get up!" Katniss orders as she ran through the group shaking everyone awake. "Get up, get up. We have to move."

"What's going on?" Johanna sat up alert as she looked around for danger.

"Tick tock!" Katniss gasped.

"Oh for god's sake, not you too," Johanna scowled.

"Tick tock!" she repeated. "Wiress worked it out! It's a clock."

"She's lost it," Johanna whispered to Taiya.

"Mmm," Taiya agreed as she frowned at Katniss.

"What are you talking about?" Finnick asked more diplomatically as he tried to blink the sleep from his eyes.

"Wiress is a genius! This entire arena seems to be laid out like a clock with a new threat every hour. I think they stay only within their wedge but it's best not to risk it." Katniss then turned to point out the big tree in one segment. "It all starts with the lightning at 12:00. At 1:00," she pointed to the next part of the arena which they could currently see was raining blood, "the blood rain starts. At 2:00, the poisonous fog, and at 3:00 the monkeys. That's the first four hours. At 10:00 that big wave hits from over there. The poisonous fog will start soon and I don't know about you but I'm not risking getting near that. So we need to move."

"Wiress you're a genius," Finnick congratulated as he stood up and started packing up their stuff.

Taiya and Johanna exchanged a look. Taiya thought the younger girl was onto something, but Johanna was more sceptical.

"That sounds like rubbish."

"Come on Johanna, play nice," Finnick chided.

"Seriously? A clock? You want us to go off something Nuts has been muttering?" she scoffed.

"Jo, even if she's wrong, it's better safe than sorry right?" Taiya muttered quietly to her.

Johanna let out a loud groan. "Fine. Fine," she threw her hands in the air after she stood up. "Let's all trust Nuts."

"You want some bread Wiress?" Taiya offered as she pulled out the last of her remaining bread.

"Tick-tock!" Wiress gasped excitedly.

"I'm going to take that as a yes," Taiya passed the woman the food. "How you going beetroot?" Taiya asked Beetee.

"The cream has worked well," he nodded at her.

"I have more if you want?" Taiya offered as she held it out for him.

"Not right now," he shook his head. "Once it loses its current effectiveness I'll reapply. Until then I'll endure."

"Ok then," Taiya nodded awkwardly before following Johanna.

"Who declared her leader of the group?" Johanna glared at Katniss who was walking in front.

"She's just trying to help," Taiya shrugged.

"She's the reason we're in this mess," Johanna pointed out. "You said it yourself."

"Ok. And I still think that's true. But she's being helpful now. Let her."

"Wire!" Beetee called out, stopping the group from walking too far.

"She's right here," Peeta reassured the man. "Wiress is fine. She's coming too."

Beetee just shook his head. "Wire."

"Oh, I know what he wants," Johanna impatiently interrupted before she marched back to where they'd been before and grabbed something they'd missed off the ground. It was a cylinder that was still coated in blood rain. "This worthless thing. It's some kind of wire or something. That's how he got cut. Running up to the Cornucopia to get this. I don't know what kind of weapon it's supposed to be. I guess you could pull off a piece and use it as a garrotte or something. But really, can you imagine Beetee garrotting somebody?" Johanna ranted as she tried to decrease the wire's significance. They all knew what Beetee could do with wire, but they were hoping the girl on fire didn't. If she was to abandon the alliance, they couldn't let her take the wire with her, the whole plan would be shot to hell.

The girl on fire may not have said anything straight away, but Peeta did. "He won his Games with wire," the boy pointed out. "Setting up that electrical trap. It's the best weapon he could have."

Well, they definitely knew Beetee's talents then…

And Johanna's dismissal of the wire's importance raised Katniss's suspicions.

"Seems like you'd have figured that out. Since you nicknamed him Volts and all."

Johanna turned her deadly glare to Katniss. "Yeah, that was really stupid of me, wasn't it? I guess I must have been distracted by keeping your little friends alive. While you were… what, again? Trying to get Finnick killed in the name of carrying your lover boy to safety?"

Taiya immediately tensed. It was obvious this was part of a conversation Johanna and Katniss had when the rest of them had been asleep.

And it set Katniss on edge and the girl immediately gripped her knife.

"Go ahead," Johanna challenged. "Try it. I don't care if you are knocked up. I'll rip your throat out."

"No, you won't," Taiya interrupted as she grabbed Johanna's shoulders and gave her a little shove forward. "Walk it off or we'll put you in the water again."

"I think we all had better be careful where we step," Finnick warned everyone as he picked the coil up from the ground where Johanna had thrown it in a fit and handed it to Beetee. "There's your wire, Volts. Watch where you plug it," he awkwardly tried to joke before he took his place at Taiya's side and slipped his hand into hers.

"Where to?" Peeta asked.

"I'd like to go to the Cornucopia and watch," Finnick put forward. "Just to make sure we're right about the clock."

"That seems smart," Taiya agreed. "We can check if they left any weapons there as well."

"It's as good a plan as any," Katniss agreed.

"If this clock thing is true, I definitely want someone to take out Plutarch," Taiya joked. "What a dick move. Yo, psycho!" Taiya yelled out to Johanna who was sulking a little way down from them. "Let's go, we're going to the Cornucopia."

The seven of them start walking down the nearest sand strip, carefully approaching the Cornucopia. There was always a risk that the Careers had worked out the jungle's secrets and were seeking refuge there. Even though they'd been on the beach for hours and hadn't seen anything, there was always a small risk.

But when they got there, they confirmed that the Careers had indeed cleared out.

"Oh man," Taiya complained. "They left us nothing good." There were some weapons left sure, but no knives.

"Do you think the tail points to 12?" Peeta asked when he looked at the edge of the Cornucopia horn.

"That's where the lightning strikes at noon and midnight," Katniss agreed.

"Strikes where?" Beetee asked.

"That big tree," Katniss pointed out.

"Good," Beetee smirked. He had a plan. This must have been what Plutarch was talking about when he said Beetee knew more than anyone else. Because Taiya had no idea what he was thinking. "Clean this would you Wiress?" he asked as he handed the woman the wire. She was pacing back and forward, at least this would give her something to do.

"Hickory dickory dock," Wiress sang to herself as she got to work. "The mouse ran up the clock. The clock struck one, the mouse ran down. Hickory dickory dock."

"Oh, not the song again," Johanna rolled her eyes. "That went on for hours before she started tick-tocking."

Taiya turned to look at her friend with a smirk. "You're a real ray of sunshine aren't you?"

"I've been telling you this for years Tay," Finnick smirked as he flung his arm over her shoulder.

"Two!" Wiress yelled as she stood and pointed to the jungle.

Everyone turned to look where she was pointing and saw a wall of fog beginning to seep onto the beach.

"Wiress is right," Katniss nodded. "It's two o'clock and the fog has started."

"Hmm, the fog," Taiya shoved Finnick's arm off her and crossed her arms. "That means 12 hours ago you ran straight back into that and left me."

"Tay," Finnick sighed.

"It's like clockwork," Peeta interrupted them, not wanting to see them fight right now. "You were very smart to figure that out Wiress," he praised.

The woman smiled proudly before she turned back to her job of cleaning Beetee's coil.

"She's more than smart," Beetee noted. "She's intuitive. She can sense things before anyone else. Like a canary in one of your coal mines."

"Like a what?" Finnick and Taiya both asked together.

"It's a bird that we take down into the mines to warn us if there's bad air," Katniss explained.

"What's it do, die?" Johanna frowned.

"It stops singing first. That's when you should get out. But if the air's too bad, it dies, yes. And so do you," Katniss said sadly.

"Are they axes?" Johanna gasped excitedly as she spotted some axes hidden underneath other weapons. "Oh yes!" she cheered as she ran towards them. It was the happiest she'd been all day.

"Jo!" Taiya called out. "If you hit, this mark," Taiya pointed at a specific spot on the Cornucopia. "I'll let you reverse the names in our song so yours is first," she offered.

"Oh you're on," Johanna smirked. "Step away," she shooed Taiya with her hand. As soon as Taiya was clear Johanna threw the axe with such force that it implanted itself into the metal of the Cornucopia, right in the spot Taiya had marked.

"Dammit," Taiya muttered.

"Haha!" Johanna cheered. "Say goodbye to Taiya and Jo, it now starts Jo and Taiya. I want to hear you sing it."

Taiya groaned in frustration. "Fine! The song now goes Jo and Taiya. Taiya and Jo. And Haymitch is here too…"

"Please not the song," Finnick cried out as he heard them. It was traumatic for him. He usually heard it chanted at the top of their lungs when they'd have one of their sleepovers. The two of them together were a menace.

"He's never supported our singing career," Taiya shook her head.

"Have some faith fish stick," Johanna laughed. "We have talent."

"You sound like seagulls."

"What's that?" Katniss asked. Now it was their turn to educate her on birds.

"Birds that we get at home. They steal all your food."

"And they sound horrible," Finnick winked at her.

"What are you doing?" Katniss asked Peeta, who'd been quietly working on something while they'd all been chatting.

"You're drawing?" Taiya asked as he came to his side.

"Yeah. A map," Peeta stepped to the side so they could all see. "Cornucopia is the centre and you can see the twelve wedges. At least we know what some of the zones do, we just have to figure out the others."

"Did you notice anything unusual in the others?" Katniss asked Johanna and Beetee.

"Nothing but blood," Johanna shook her head.

"It doesn't matter. As long as we steer clear of whichever sector is active, we'll be safe."

"Relatively," Taiya muttered.

"It's a lot more than we knew this morning anyway," he smiled at her.

And that's when they noticed the silence. Their canary had stopped her singing.