A little less than an hour after Kasia's death, Iris left the ship. She couldn't bear being there a moment longer. Not by herself. Not without Christopher's loud breaths, or Kasia's sarcasm. Not without the company of the people she hadn't realised were her friends. Iris was used to being alone, but not in the arena, and now that she was she wanted to scream.

So she filled a bag with supplies and another with water. She slung a sword across her shoulders, filled a belt with knives, and made a harness for a club. She drank more than her fill of water, found a hat and some sunglasses, and left the ship before the sun got too high. She decided that continuing east was the best plan of action, and it made her feel as though her allies were still with her, that they hadn't stopped in the ship, that they'd found water somewhere else.

By late afternoon, the landscape had changed completely. There were more dunes, though not as impossible to climb which was thankful - with all her heavy new supplies, Iris knew she would have struggled to reach the top - and, more strangely, a strange looking structure that, once she was up close, Iris realised was a dried-up coral reef. The desert wasn't a desert at all, rather an ocean that had been drained of water.

The idea that they'd had the arena all wrong the whole time was so ridiculous to Iris that she began to laugh, and laugh. She laughed until she was hiccupping and her eyes were streaming and her head hurt. She blinked the dryness out of her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath.

She couldn't continue like this. Yes, she was sad about her allies, but she'd known that they would have to die if she wanted to go home. And she did want to go home. It was probably good they had died when and how they did - Iris had played no part in their deaths and had kept her hands clean, and they were gone before they became a problem to her.

A part of her felt sick for thinking of them in that way, but Iris pushed that part down. If she was going to win, she couldn't be emotional. She was home, working for Boris; she made no friends, needed no allies. She was there to do her job and go home to Jordie. She hadn't let emotions cloud her judgement before and she wasn't about to start now.

"Okay," she said to herself. "Shelter." The coral reef would do. She would have to check it, first, of course, but it would do for the night. It would also make a good landmark - she was determined not to wander, lost and dehydrated, like she had a few days ago with -

No. No thinking about Kasia and Christopher, Iris, she told herself. They don't matter to you and they're dead which is good.

Leaving her supplies hidden under a groove in the reef, Iris began to climb. It was far easier to climb than the sand dunes were, with many built in bumps and hollows she could use to pull herself up. Once she was at the top, she gave herself a moment to breathe before putting her sunglasses back on.

The desert seemed to flatten out considerably again the further east she looked. There was something in the distance she couldn't quite make out - rocks maybe? A change from the sand would be nice. Iris made a plan - she would continue east for as far as she could walk, and maybe she would find a more permanent shelter. Her main concern was water - she knew she needed to find a source. The backpack she had filled with bottled water was already feeling lighter, and if she was to continue to survive she needed more.

Climbing back down, Iris decided that she would sleep at the top of the reef for the night. Trying to climb it with all her stuff was a stupid idea and would probably result in her falling to her death, so Iris hid her backpack of water and her sword under her sand, wrapped up in a sheet of tarp. The backpack of food was far lighter so she slung that over her shoulders and made her way back up.

She made a dinner of some sort of freeze-dried meal - it was wrapped in plastic and the instructions on the back instructed her to add a splash of water, reseal and shake. Iris, although doubtful anything would happen, did as instructed, and when she opened the plastic again was shocked to discover that the dried lump of 'food' had transformed into some kind of steaming beef stew with rice. She shovelled the whole thing down before stopping to wonder what sort of chemicals the Capitol must have added for a dry, powdery lump to transform into a hot meal.

The sun began to set, and a cannon rang out. Iris frowned, realising that she had lost count of how many of them were left. There had been ten in the Bloodbath… and the boy from Seven… including her allies, there had to be at least fourteen dead. She swallowed the lump in her throat that sprung when she thought of her poor allies. Don't think about them, don't think about them, don't think about them, she chanted in her head. The day or two they had spent in a dehydrated daze was foggy, and she couldn't remember if there had been any cannons.

Mentally, Iris cursed herself. For all she knew, they could be at the final eight. If at least fourteen people had died, they were certainly close to it. Iris wondered who they would interview. Jordie, certainly. Aunt Emily, maybe. Nobody would want to see her father on TV, not that he'd have anything to say.

That night, the girl from Five stared down at her, and then Kasia. Iris looked away. If she looked away from her friend's face in the sky, she could almost imagine that Kasia was still sitting with her, about to make some cutting remark about how useless the Careers were this year. "We haven't even seen them since the Bloodbath - poor, rich babies don't know how to deal in a place like this." Iris could almost hear Kasia's voice, dripping with contempt. Oh, god, she was going crazy. First she'd been talking to herself, and now she was hearing the voices of dead people in her head.

/

Iris managed to get a few fitful hours of sleep, but decided that she might as well make use of the remaining night to get a few hours of walking done. She decided to walk towards what had looked like rocks from the top of the dried-up reef - maybe there was water there. And she wasn't about to make the mistake of wandering into the desert without more water again. Maybe this new place would be somewhere she could stay.

As she got closer, though, Iris realised, with a sinking stomach, that she had been walking towards a shipyard. Another ruined ship was the last place she wanted to be - especially one that was no doubt full of scorpions. "I need water, though…" Iris muttered to herself under her breath, weighing up her options. It was late morning by now, and the temperature was going up - maybe she could stay in the shelter of a ship until nightfall, maybe stock up on water, if these ships were also miniature Cornucopias like the last one. Realising it was her best - no, only - option, Iris set her jaw and headed for the shipyard.

Only seconds after choosing a ship to search for water, Iris realised that she wasn't alone. There were footprints in the sand - at least four or five pairs - and a long, deep line in the sand as if someone had been dragging a sword behind them. Her stomach sank - the Careers were here.

As if confirming the conclusion she had just drawn, a scream echoed across the sand. The scream was followed by several shouts of alarm and surprise, and Iris decided, probably against her better judgement, to get a closer look. Keeping herself hidden behind a jagged wall of splintered wood, Iris crept closer. She peeked through a small hole in the wall.

The Careers - all six of them - were fighting off the same scorpions that had killed her allies. Like when the scorpions had crept up on herself and her allies, there seemed to be one scorpion for each Career. Only these scorpions were attacking faster and more viciously than the three Iris had gone up against. Bizarrely, the mutts seemed to be communicating with each other - they clicked their pincers together and synchronised movements, almost as if they shared a brain.

Iris watched, holding her breath, as the Careers figured out how to fight the mutts. The girl from Two seemed to realise first, shouting "Their stomachs! Their stomachs!" before rolling underneath a scorpion and slashing open its belly. The dead scorpion fell on top of her, and Iris could see it shifting as the girl tried to push its weight off her. Her allies didn't stop to help her up, however her shouts had seemed to warn them, and they too began slashing at the mutts' underbellies.

Iris recognised Zircon, who had fallen to his knees, howling and looking down at the pincer that had torn through his stomach. Agata rushed to his side, and while she was distracted, the boy's scorpion spat acid directly into her face. She let out a horrible, piercing scream. Zircon's cannon went off, and Agata crawled away from the fight, wiping acid away from her eyes as she went.. She dragged herself through the sand, holding onto the strap of a backpack, and soon enough she was out of sight. Iris would worry about that later - she didn't dare move, not with both the Careers and the scorpions so close.

The boy from Two and both the kids from Four slaughtered the remaining two scorpions. The boy from Two dragged the scorpion carcass off his district partner, who emerged, furious, covered head to toe in scorpion blood. "Stupid fucking pissing scorpions!" She shrieked, kicking at the dead mutt.

"Minerva, calm down, it's done," the boy from Two said. "We've got bigger problems."

"Like what?" she spat.

The boy from Four gestured at Zircon's broken, bleeding body. "We're down two allies."

"I don't see Agata."

"She ran, like a fucking coward," the boy from Two said. He hacked up a loogie and spat it into the sand forcefully. "Got sprayed in the face with acid and left when she saw Zircon was dead."

"What should we do about her?" The girl from Four asked. "Should we try to find her?"

Minerva shook her head. "She's useless to us now. She's not the leader anymore. Besides, if she was sprayed, she's not going to be pretty any more. She won't bring in any sponsors. She's as good as dead without Zircon now, anyway - no-one to follow her blindly."

"And who says you are?" said the boy from Four, arms crossed defensively over his chest.

"Your fucking mom, River," Minerva snapped. "We can argue, and I can stab you in the neck with this pretty sword of mine, or you can do what I say." River tried and failed to hide his flinch.

"Okay, Minerva. There's no trouble here," said the girl from Four. She placed a hand on her district partner's back, evidently wanting him to calm down. "You're the best one to lead anyway."

"You're fucking right about that," Minerva said. "At least now we don't have to kill Agata - she's done our job for us, running like the rat she is." Wrong, Iris thought to herself. Agata is a cat, not a rat.

"We should go. There's obviously no-one else here, and I don't want to run into any more of those ugly bugs," the boy from Two said.

Iris watched and waited from where she was hidden as the Careers collected their scattered belongings, and made their way out of the shipyard. She stayed frozen behind the wall until she was certain the Careers had left.

She might be able to use the situation with the Careers to her advantage. Agata was no doubt injured and unable to fight, and the remaining Careers were weakened with almost half their firepower gone in one day. Maybe she could work something out with Agata - surely she would want her revenge, considering they had abandoned her without thought - or maybe she would see what Iris did, that if they teamed up they could take the Careers out together. Of course, there was always the possibility that Agata would kill her on sight, but if the acid that killed Kasia worked the same on Agata, Iris was the one with the advantage.

Now all Iris had to do was find her.