TW/CW: Extreme gore. Fire. You have been warned.

Mare Duster, 18

D10F

North-Northwest of the Cornucopia

11 July 329 AEDD

She began to wonder if this was where insanity began. When the hovercraft came for Fahad, she had watched it. If she pretended hard enough, it looked like a colossal paper airplane. The claw dipped down on a fine silvery rope, like a fishing line, and collected his corpse, retracting into a sleek hatch and disappearing. When it returned for the Eight boy, Mare had chased it. She hoped it would return for her. Surely she would be able to convince the pilot to rescue her if she could only catch up to the hovercraft, to cling onto the appendages clasped around the boy's body. She had taken far too long to admit defeat. There was so much jungle, and so little hope without Fahad next to her. She thought maybe she was being punished for her wrongs. What other explanation was there, if the last person she cared about had been taken from her? She was never going to see Bluebell again, even if someone hadn't already stolen her or killed her for her meat. The world was so wide when you were utterly alone, but she kept walking through the downpour. Her clothes were waterproof, for which she was very grateful. The Gamemakers had their small mercies, even in a thunderstorm. There was a tall white structure she was loosely heading towards. She thought it was a hallucination at first. Such citadels were never designed for people like her, a refugee from the outer districts, looking for shelter from the forces that were. They were always meant for the Careers.

It felt like a deathtrap. Maybe it was. It didn't seem to matter anymore. She still would not risk entering. Instead, she chose a place by a pond a short distance away, soaking her hair in its waters and leaning back to feel its weight suspended from her spine. It felt fragile, like it might snap at any moment. Her body had gone thin and ragged, she observed. There was a time when this would have relaxed her, but now the bank was hard beneath her. Her curves were fading fast as she starved. Somehow, the Capitol devouring her silhouette itself seemed the worst cruelty of all. She was someone's sculpture, being molded unwittingly as someone shaved away ribbons of clay from her breasts, her buttocks, modeling out the hollows of her ribs, shaving her collarbone into a flat plane. Everything was lost.

Then the dart hit her. It was a large, imposing dart, fired from a long distance away. It embedded in her middle. Her muscles radiated with white-hot pain, shooting through her nerves, and then she started to have trouble moving. It was a sedative. That was bad. She hoped the Three boy, the sure owner of the dart, had sniped her from afar on a whim and would leave, that she could die with grace on her own in the pond. Either that, or he had chosen to restrict her movements for alternate reasons, reasons that she had no trouble imagining. There were plenty of vile things that could be done to a person with no control over their own body, and she had seen plenty of them over the years on the television screen. The Hunger Games were not charitable to the helpless.

A slim girl emerged from the wet leaves, wielding a large knife. She carried a rucksack and a pair of binoculars hung on a cord from her neck. It was the blowgun boy's district partner. Had she come to finish her off? No, Mare realized. The blowgun was slotted into her belt on a metal clip. She did not approach with the wary gait typical of a young tribute going in for a mercy kill. She looked resigned but committed. Mare lay supine at her feet. "Hello, Mare." Mare looked at the girl.

"Hey," she croaked. Speaking took more effort than it should. Whatever poison was on the dart, it had been very effective.

"I'm sorry, Mare." There was genuine apology in her voice.

"Please do it fast," Mare asked.

"Not an option, I'm afraid." The girl put down her rucksack. Mare could see there wasn't anything inside it aside from two metal sporks and a plastic lining around the cavity that someone had fashioned out of a rain poncho. This was not looking good. Mare had not been an especially good student during her sparse formal education, but she knew that these were unconventional items to be in a survival pack. That, combined with the presence of the binoculars, indicated that the girl's plan wasn't going anywhere good. She leaned over Mare's torso, grasped her shirt in one hand, and slashed it from hem to collar. Mare panted in her bra. What was happening?

The girl made an incision just below the band, angling into a chevron at the top of her gut. Mare screamed, a hoarse noise that tore from her throat. If there was anyone around to hear, they wouldn't stand a chance, not with rain this heavy. The girl drew a vertical line, turning the welling incision into an arrow pointing towards Mare's vulnerable throat. She gulped air. "What are you doing?!"

"Harvesting your visceral fat," the girl informed her. "Truly, I'm sorry. I promise I'll give your family a proportion of my winnings once this is all over. If I had any morphling, I would let you have it, but there's none in our kit. I checked."

"I have no family."

"I'm sorry." Somehow, Mare was touched by this girl actively dissecting her like a cadaver on an autopsy table.

"Remind me of your name."

"Twyla Behring." Twyla drew a spork from the bag and used it to hold open the left flap of Mare's skin, then used the second spork as a lever to lift a bundle of intestine. "Here, I think I've got it. Hang tight." Mare saw the knife dip past her view, felt its warm tip touch her organs, sensed the minuscule scrape of its blade against the metal of the utensils inside her. Twyla sliced. Mare caterwauled. Twyla's steady hand found hers. Masses of yellow fat traveled from the inside of Mare's body to the inside of the rucksack, spongy and dense. "Don't worry. You won't live very long after this, so it won't hurt for much longer."

"Why not kill me first?"

"Dead people are heavier than living ones, and I'm going to need to get rid of the evidence. We get our water from the pond in the afternoons, and I can't be making my allies suspicious." Mare braced herself for the next round of surgery. There was an awkward pause. "I want to be the Victor. And I will be, but I needed human fat for it to work."

"Why?" Mare was morbidly curious about the fate of her flesh.

"There are Careers hunting my alliance. Beemo and Tom are in my way. But my mother died at work in a factory explosion caused by combustible dust particles in the air, which inspired me to do the same thing with the fort. I asked the Capitol to sponsor me flour, sacks and sacks of it."

"Did they?"

"They did, yes. I think they were interested to know why I wanted it. The obelisk is very tall, you see a ways out. There are three Careers after us generally, but I want them working on my time, so I've prepared a smoke signal to draw them in at dusk tonight. Beemo and Tom know about that part. They think Beemo's going to dart the Careers out the arrow ports. Actually, while they're keeping watch and I'm supposed to be barricading the other floors from entry, I'll have packed the central floor full of flour, which I can ignite easily. But that won't kill my allies when the structure collapses under them, so I'm going to use the fat and a spool of rope to make a wick going around the base of the fort, so it will trap them in the middle of the fire. I'll be plenty far away. One of the Careers is in some type of armor, but I think it's a worthwhile risk. I trust myself to cover my tracks."

Mare was intently impressed. Twyla had clearly prepared thoroughly for a successful execution, and realistically, Mare had nothing to come back to. There was no reason for her to win, but this girl had hope and a good chance of seeing a Victory through. It was gratifying enough for her to know that her sacrifice wasn't in vain, that she would contribute to something bigger than herself. In some ways, it was all she had ever wanted. She looked up at Twyla. "Do you want me to get in the pond now? So you can sink my body before you slit my throat?"

"That'd be nice, if you could help. I know the sedative isn't helping." Twyla smiled. Mare smiled back at her.

"If I meet your mom, I'll tell her you said hi."

"Thank you. I promise I won't ever forget it." Twyla reached her blade around.

There was a cannon, but in the storm, nobody heard it.

Twyla Behring, 13

D3F

North-Northwest of the Cornucopia

11 July 329 AEDD

The sun set was setting over the petrichor surrounding the fort. Twyla was ready to act. Tom squinted through the binoculars again, checking to make sure the Careers were moving in their direction. They were getting close, a few miles away at most. "Are you in position?" he asked her.

"Yes. Ready when you are." The iron cooking pot from downstairs had been lugged up three flights of stairs and sat on the roof. Twyla's hair was down, flowing about her face. Normally, she would have preferred to tie it back, but it was an advantage now. It told her there was a crosswind cutting west to east, so she knew which corner of the observatory the new crucible belonged in. Yes, the wind was still good. It confirmed what she suspected, that the Gamemakers were eager to see her perform for them. She suspected they had led the Careers to her, baiting her trap, since they had traveled in such a straight line, as though drawn forward by a string, or more likely, a wind of their own.

Beemo sat on the trunk his distillation kit came in, spying on the approaching tributes through the arrow port. "I'm ready when you are." The blowgun sat in his lap. A selection of darts featuring the deadliest poisons had been laid out next to him for easy access. There were also fast-acting tranquilizers arrayed before the team. Both racks were organized left to right, smallest to largest. The idea was that if they could dart one or two of the Careers without them realizing, it would give them an enormous advantage. Twyla had been careful to reload the blowgun with the same dart it had held before she lifted it that morning and switched it out for a sedative. Beemo had not noticed the difference. Neither he nor Tom seemed to sense anything amiss, even though they had collected water from the pond Twyla had sunk Mare's body in. She didn't drink it, though. Just to be safe. She'd severed her intestines when extracting the fat, and well, nasty things could come out of those.

The murder had not excited Twyla. She had no wish to kill anyone, especially not Beemo and Tom, who she truly believed were good and gentle people. Unfortunately, gentleness wasn't the type of quality often found in Victors. She just wanted to stay alive, and her allies were proving to be detrimental to her success. She looked over her team. Beemo and Tom were looking to her for leadership, so she swallowed the lump in her throat that resurfaced whenever she thought too much about her betrayal of them.

"I'm ready," she said. "Starting the fire now." She had been feeding the kindling gently for the past few minutes, but now, she treated it to a dry twig. It gobbled the wood eagerly, hungry for fuel. Once it had grown healthy and was enlarging, she added the wet bark. It smoked angrily, hissing and cracking in the heat. The thick plume shot right up, belching from the fire. She mollified it with a large dry branch, which it seemed to savor. The fire bloomed before her eyes. She looked to Tom, face creasing with the mild anxiety of someone whose plan hinged on one crucial step. "Well?"

"Tey're running," he reported."

"Excellent. Beemo, stay ready. Tom, who do you see?"

"Looks like the guys from District One and District Four, and one of the girls."

"Which one?"

"Not sure. Hard to tell."

"You see long-range weapons?"

"No. Swords. Wait! Yeah, Four has a spear."

"Okay. Well, we're high enough." There was a tense wait.

"Time to go down," Tom reported. "Make sure they can't get in."

"Understood." Twyla descended to the floors containing the group's many precautions. Then she brought out the flour from its hiding place under some boards she'd pried up, and began dumping it by the sackful. She'd already found time to lay the wick down and prepare her escape route. Now, she just had a few minutes left to go. There was a cry from above.

"They're coming!"

"Shhh! Don't let them hear you," she ordered.

"Oh, crud."

"What?"

"Nothing."

There was a pounding on the door. Twyla stayed perfectly still. There were voices outside.

"They've blocked us out."

"No matter. We need to make it inside."

"Let's spread out. I bet I could spear them."

"No, did you not see the ports? They could shoot us with something. Or tip their fire on top of us. We're on the safe side right now. The open part is on the opposite."

Oh. That was interesting. The Careers knew to stay out of range of the darts. Twyla had to tie this exactly, exactly right. There was no room for error. All she could hope was that her plan would hold steady.

"Let us in!" snapped a man's voice. A boy, technically. Not that it mattered.

"No!" Tom yelled from the roof.

"That you, Seven? I'll rip your fucking guts out. Little cheat." The lead Career was pissed off. That was doubly bad.

Twyla was glad she'd thought to prepare a backup plan. She tied her rope harness to her belt and carefully stepped out through the window. Roped to a sturdy tree branch high above, with her feet pressed against the slick stone, she fumbled with a pack of matches. She lit one, prayed silently, and threw it inside just as she began rappelling.

There was a moment when she thought it was over. Then the building tore open above her. She hit the ground with knife in hand, slashed herself free, and made for the pond. Behind her, the flour became a spitting fireball. She heard horrible screams.

"Fuck!"

"What's happening?

"Those bastards!"

"Help!"

"Haylia? Haylia!"

A voice, loud, clear, authoritative, split through the night. "Orpheus. Run!" Then Twyla's mouth filled with smoke that smelled of burning flesh, and she felt like there might be no end. She looked behind her. The Career in armor was sprinting back the way he had come. The building had been flattened like a house of cards. There was more fire than she could have imagined. She wondered if her mother had felt that heat, inhaled the smoke of bodies burning, felt herself crushed beneath rubble waiting to be consumed. She was leaving thick footprints in the dust she'd created, but her trail would disappear once she made it to the water.

Even through the noise of her monstrous creation, she could hear the deaths. Four cannons overlaid the chaos.

She'd done good.

:D