"What's the stone in your ring?"

They'd been walking in near-silence for around two hours now. Neither of them trusted each other enough for one of them to walk behind, so they were walking side-by-side, their footsteps in sync as they marched through the desert.

"Why do you care?" Agata replied viciously.

"I was just curious," Iris said, shrugging. "I don't know much about gemstones. It'd be nice to learn something new."

Agata sighed, as if Iris was inconveniencing her just by talking. "It's purple agate. My Mom made it for me." She lifted her hand and examined the ring, as if she had forgotten it was there. Her fingers were long and spindly, like a pale spider.

Iris tilted her head. "Agate, as in Agata?"

"Yeah," Agata said, rolling her eyes. "My parents thought they were being clever."

"I like it. It suits you," Iris replied. It did. Agata was a strong name - and Iris thought it was cool how it tied to her district without being stupid and pretentious like a lot of District One names she'd heard like Sparkle or Luxury or Glamour. Agata was a nice alternative, she thought.

Agata frowned at her. "We don't have to do this."

"Do what?"

"Make conversation. Like we're friends. We're allies out of convenience. Nothing more."

Iris rolled her eyes. She had no intention whatsoever of befriending Agata, no matter what the girl might think. She'd learnt her lesson, befriending allies - it only made their deaths more difficult to bear. Iris wasn't prepared to put herself through that again. She'd tried to bury her thoughts of Kasia and Christopher… She imagined that she'd shoved them into a box and buried them somewhere in the sand, that every step she took was a step away from them.

Her intentions with Agata were purely to survive. Nothing more. Agata's intentions seemed to be the same. As little as they liked having to pair up, neither of them were stupid. Without the other Careers, and with so little supplies of her own and no more sponsors, Agata had been as good as dead when Iris had found her. And Iris, alone, with little to no idea what to do with herself, had been just as hopeless. Together, they were strong. Iris had supplies and determination. Agata had direction and ideas. And she might be able to help fill in the days Iris had lost. "Who's left, do you know?"

Agata scoffed. "Of course I know. I can't believe you haven't kept track. And yeah, whatever, I know you were dehydrated, but that's no excuse. Poor little baby hasn't had water, oh no, poor little baby can't cope? Pathetic."

Iris scowled, crossing her arms. "Whatever, princess. Just because your friends in the sky sent you water like clockwork every morning doesn't make you better than me. I at least had to work for mine. You got yours for free."

Agata whirled around, fury in her eyes. "For free? You think this was for free?" she shrieked. Iris took a big step back. "I lost everything! I gave my life to these Games! And now I have nothing! You think they want me to win, looking like this? You think they want me back in the Capitol now? I am NOTHING! Don't you dare tell me I didn't have to work for this!"

Iris sighed, feeling bad. She hadn't meant to offend Agata. Every word she said seemed to rub Agata the wrong way. "I'm sorry. You're right. I can't imagine what you must be going through right now. Of course you worked for this."

"Hmmph," was all Agata said. She exhaled, and looked at Iris with eyes so full of poison she was as good as a scorpion. "Me. Both from Two. Both from Four. You. And the girl from Eight."

The girl from Eight? Iris frowned. She couldn't remember much about the girl, not her name or even what she looked like. How had she survived this long, considering Iris hadn't found anything remarkable about her?

Agata must have seen the confusion on Iris' face. "She is a mystery to us, too. We were trying to track her down when the mutts attacked us."

That was news to Iris. "You weren't after me?"

"We were after everyone. But you, we weren't so worried about. I knew you would be vicious, that you wouldn't hide yourself away. We knew we'd cross paths with you again and that you wouldn't back away from a fight. With six of us, you wouldn't have stood a chance."

"And now it's four on one instead."

"Four on two," Agata frowned. "Did you forget about this alliance you forced me into?"

"Well, no. But I half-expect you to run back to the Careers when we see them again."

Agata scoffed. "They're not going to take me back, even if I wanted them to. I'm no longer a viable winner. My partner is dead, I won't be bringing in any sponsors with my face like this, and worst of all, I allied with a Six," she said, her voice dripping with disgust at the word Six."I'm no more a Career anymore than you are."

"Why does it sound like you're talking about dogshit when you say District Six?"

"You really want me to lay it out for you?" Agata shrugged. "Fine. District Six is full of drugs and slop. You pump yourselves so full of poison that your children can hardly stand when they are reaped. Your tributes are almost always weak, pathetic, and on the verge of death before they even enter the Games. Your district is pitiful."

Iris raised her eyebrows. "You pity us? I always thought that Careers - at least, Districts One and Two - hated everyone because they weren't from there," she said. "I never got the impression that any of you felt sorry for us."

"There's a difference between sorry and pity. The tributes are always like little lambs being sent to an arena full of lions. It makes me disgusted that your district doesn't even give you a chance," said Agata, meeting Iris' eyes. "So yes, we pity you."

"For the record, not all of us are like that," Iris said. She was suddenly, strangely desperate to defend her district, though she had never felt that way before. Maybe it was simply because no one had ever been listening. "More often than not, the addicted kids are from poor families who don't know any better. They were usually born into it. They usually had to take tesserae just to survive because their zombie parents can't hold down jobs, or because they're from the community home where it's three kids to a bed and one meal a day. That's why they're the kids you see in the Games. They're got more entries than the rest of us because the only choice they have is to trade tessera for the drugs they were born addicted to."

Agata was silent. "I always thought it was a choice."

Iris scowled. "It's not a choice," she said, kicking up a cloud of angry sand. "At least, it rarely is. It's circumstance, it's family, it's finance. It's this world that we live in." It's probably time for me to stop talking, she thought. She hadn't meant to go on such a rant. She'd hadn't even known she felt so strongly about her district. It was as if the words had spilled from her mouth of their own accord, as if she was so desperate to change things for the place she grew up that she had forgotten where she was and who was listening.

Agata seemed to realise this too. That she was currently allied with someone who had dangled their contempt for the Capitol right in front of the Capitol's own cameras. "Well, I'm glad I'm not from Six. I'm proud to be from One. I'm proud that we give our kids strength and pride and appreciation for the Capitol. It's hard work and the benevolence of the Capitol that has gotten us where we are - maybe your district should think about that. Change your attitude."

"You're right, of course," Iris said quickly. Agata had given her a reprieve, a way for her to change the way her previous words had sounded. "If we appreciated what we had a bit more, if we could see what the Capitol could offer us, we'd do better. Of course we would. I'm grateful that we are given the opportunity to be here at all." She caught Agata's eye, and the other girl nodded subtly, looking away from Iris. "Should we stop, for a bit? Take stock of our supplies?"

"Yeah, sure," Agata said. She took the bag off her shoulders and sat down with some relief, rubbing her left cheek. The skin on her face looked painfully pink and shiny, as if it was stretched taut across the fine bones of her face. Iris wondered, not for the first time, exactly what the Capitol had done to the venom for it to achieve such a painful result in such a short time.

Iris sat down opposite her ally, and rummaged through the contents of her own bags. The bag she had stuffed with water bottles was worryingly light. There were four litre bottles left, and three that were 750 millilitres. They'd gone through the water concerningly quickly. Iris was terrified at the idea of stumbling through the desert, dehydrated again like she had with Kasia and Christopher, her mouth like sandpaper, her head pounding as if it were about to burst. Agata looked worried, too, but didn't say anything. She only had a waterskin that she hadn't touched in favour of drinking Iris' water. In total, they had roughly eight litres of water left, to last them until whenever they made it to the Cornucopia.

Their food supplies were a lot less grim, but Iris quickly realised that most of what they carried would only dehydrate them faster. They had three bags of jerky - which were high in salt content. There were the packaged solid lumps that became hot meals - after adding water. They each had a loaf of bread and some trail mix, and there were some protein bars.

"Roughly three days worth of food," Iris said. She was furious with herself for not taking the time to mull over her supplies before she had left the first ship - in her haste to leave she hadn't considered the pros and cons of what she stocked her backpack with. Of course, she hadn't expected to have to share it.

Agata grimaced. "And hardly a day of water."

They stared at each other. Worry knitted Agata's mangled face and Iris was sure a similar expression was on hers. "We can't try to stretch the water. That's not going to work. We - I tried doing that, and that's when I almost died." She'd almost referred to Kasia and Christopher. Again.

"Yeah. We're going through about a litre each per hour. The Cornucopia is at least two days' walk."

Iris stared glumly down at the supplies. "What the fuck are we going to do?"

Agata sighed, and rubbed at her eyes, wiping away the sand that had encrusted the corners. She checked her compass and hesitated, as if she were thinking. She sighed, again, and turned back to Iris. "Okay. There's a canyon. Maybe… two hours away. It's shady, mostly out of the sun. We could sleep there the rest of the day, and continue to travel at night."

"But?" Iris prompted, sensing that Agata wasn't done.

"But," Agata continued, "the others know about it. That's how we've been travelling. With any luck, they've made more distance than we have. But it's a risk. There's always a chance that they deviated from the plan when they separated from me. They might be close, and if they're close, the canyon is where they'll be."

"What was the plan?"

"Stick to the canyon and travel mostly at night, walk towards any structures such as ships or oases. Considering they're now without Zircon or I, I've no doubt they would have started to double back almost immediately, rather than push forward in the hopes of tracking another tribute. I think they would rather play it safe now there's only four of them. When there were six of us, it was a different story - we were focused on hunting and killing. Now, they're going to be all about self-preservation."

"If they haven't been safety-focused. If they're still close. What are the chances we'll run into them, do you think?" Iris knew they wouldn't stand a chance, even with two of them. Even with their skill. Against four Careers, they were as good as dead. So running into them unprepared wasn't an option.

"Well," Agata said, thinking. "They left almost immediately after me and Zircon went down. With any luck, they've put almost a day between us and them. Of course, that's assuming they didn't stop for the night, which I think is likely due to their numbers."

"So that's maybe, what. Six hours between us?"

"If that."

"What do you think we should do?"

Agata sighed. "I mean, what other option do we have? Stay out in the sun with little water and no way to get more? I don't think we have much choice, to be honest."

"I agree," Iris said, glad that Agata had been the one to say it. "I think we need to take the chance. We'll play it safe, stay quiet. Someone always has to be on watch - not like how we slept last night. One of us has to be awake and aware while the other sleeps. We can't continue in a fog of distrust and paranoia."

Agata nodded. "You're right, of course." The corner of her mouth turned up in an almost-grin. "Well, I'm a little more confident that you're not going to knife me in my sleep."

"Me too," Iris said. She began to sort the supplies - two large water bottles each. She gave herself two little ones and Agata one, taking the waterskin into consideration. The food was split similarly. "Lead the way, District One."

Agata took the supplies without complaint or negotiation. She pocketed the compass. "Wait," she said. She rummaged through her bag quickly, and brought out the pair of binoculars. "Here. I'll navigate. You make sure to watch the horizon and make sure no one gets the jump on us."

"Deal." Iris stuck out her hand, and after a moment's hesitation, Agata shook it firmly. She did wipe her hand on her pants afterwards, but still, Iris considered it an improvement.

/

The canyon, mostly hidden with the sand dunes towering around it, was formed with walls of orange rock. Finding it hadn't been the issue, but figuring out how to get to the bottom proved to be difficult. Eventually they tied a length of rope around a boulder. Agata went first, with the rope tied around her waist, and untied it when she had gotten down. Iris pulled the rope back up and after staring down at the bottom of the canyon and thinking about pancakes for a bit, followed. They didn't have much choice but to leave the rope behind - it wasn't like they could climb back up to get it.

"I don't think I like rock climbing," Iris said, wiping sweat from her brow. She felt nauseous, and took a slow sip of water, gazing up at the top.

"Well, you didn't die, so you're fine."

"You've done this before?"

"Yeah," Agata said, but didn't elaborate. Iris assumed that meant she did rock climbing at the Career Academy or however it was they trained where she was from. It wasn't like the Careers training at home was under the radar or anything, but Iris guessed they weren't allowed to talk about it on national television, either. "What do you vote we do for the rest of the day? Walk a little bit and get some sleep?"

"Sounds good to me," Iris replied. She wasn't sure she liked being in the canyon - it felt suffocating, even though there was plenty of room. She felt as though the walls of the canyon might suddenly start moving to each other like magnets, and she and Agata would be squashed between them like bugs.

Still. It was beautiful. The canyon was almost a completely different biome. The walls were made of layers of rock, with colours ranging from pale yellow to a deep vermillion. Iris didn't think she'd ever seen so much variety in rock before - it was amazing to look at, to know that each layer represented a different period of time. It was bewildering to her that the earth had been around for so long. It made her feel terrifyingly tiny and insignificant. The passage of time didn't care about the Hunger Games.

The canyon didn't seem to unsettle Agata in the slightest, perhaps because she had been there before. She led Iris through it, sticking close to the left side, and they walked for about half an hour before they decided to stop for a rest. "I'll keep watch first," Iris offered. "Get some rest. I'll wake you in two hours."

Agata accepted the offer silently, seeming glad. Apparently she had decided to trust Iris - at least enough for her to sleep. Iris was glad she hadn't pushed it - the girl was looking increasingly more exhausted with every step. Iris could tell that her face was hurting her, too - she had been rubbing it constantly all day. Perhaps sleep would give her a break from the pain.

Besides, Iris knew she wouldn't be able to sleep, whether she was exhausted or not. She needed to give herself time to get used to the canyon, to the suffocating fortress of rock. It wasn't exactly like they were underground - she could still see the sky, and they hadn't escaped the sun, which was high overhead and gazing down at them. But Iris couldn't help but feel trapped all the same. As if rocks and sand might start tumbling down and bury them alive. She felt as though she was walking through her tomb.

Iris managed to distract herself, finding a chipped piece of red rock. She began tracing orange lines in the dust. She wasn't exactly sure what to draw, or even if she remembered how, but before she knew it she had drawn the sun, over and over again. A simple circle, with wide lines stretching out all the way across the canyon to the next wall. She added a large, unblinking eye to the centre of each sun, its pupil large and dark, with spiky eyelashes like knives.

In two hours, there were suns drawn on the ground, on the walls, on the boulders littering the canyon. It perhaps wasn't the best way to preoccupy herself, as the sketches would be difficult to erase and if anyone were following behind them it would be easy to know that they had been there. But it was better, Iris reasoned, than allowing herself to dissolve into the panic and grief that had slowly been taking over her waking hours.

She shook Agata awake. Her ally's eyes flew open and she sat up, reaching for a knife so quickly that Iris was sure that if she had blinked she wouldn't have seen it appear. "Oh," Agata said, lowering the weapon. "Sorry."

"It's alright," Iris replied. She suddenly, surprisingly, felt sorry for Agata. What had been done to her, for those instincts to be so ingrained in her psyche that she couldn't even wake peacefully for a nap? Iris realised that although she might envy them in some ways, she was glad she wasn't a Career.

Agata noticed the drawings surrounding them, and her eyes widened. "Jesus," she muttered. "You drew these?"

"Yeah."

"Fucking creepy," she said. "Cool, though. You're good at drawing."

Iris was strangely touched by the compliment. "Thanks. I didn't really think it through, though," she said. "It's like waving a red flag around, announcing we were here."

Agata shrugged. "I wouldn't worry about it. If the others are in here, they're almost certainly in front of us. If they're behind us, then we're already dead, so there's not much to stress about, is there?"

"I guess not." It was a grim way to think about it, but it did make Iris feel better.

"Now I have to keep watch with all these fucking eyes staring at me," Agata said. "Well, go on. Sleep. You look like a corpse walking around."

Iris went to the spot Agata had slept, and laid out her stuff. She used her bag as a pillow, of sorts, and had her spiked club directly next to her, so she could grab it immediately if she needed to.

She didn't think she would be able to sleep, with it being the middle of the day, and with a Career keeping watch for her. But soon her eyes drifted closed, and the reds and oranges faded to a pleasant black.