DAY 06 { 6:30 AM }
Transylvania
10 / 24
Cheyanne wakes as someone shakes her shoulder. For a panicked second, she thinks there is something wrong, but then Iris shoves a granola bar in her face and says to eat the gourmet breakfast she cooked.
"Thanks," Cheyanne groans as she pushes herself onto her bottom. Her back aches from sleeping in a weird position. She had allowed herself to sleep on the pile of sweatshirts, but not before taking Iris' tarp and laying it on the mound of nasty fabric first.
She rubs her shoulder as she tries to work out the tension within her body, but she knows it's futile. It's more than just sore muscles that clench her limbs and joints and keeps her from breathing fully.
The feast begins in a couple hours. Ten tributes in a feast. She's never seen anything of the sort, at least not that she can remember. She draws in as deep of a breath as she can manage and lets it out slowly.
They don't bother trying to hide the fact that they were here because it no longer matters. Dread pools in Cheyanne's stomach, and she's certain that the others must feel it, too.
It's funny. . . . When she thought about going to the Hunger Games, she never thought that she'd feel like this. . . . The apprehension and fear rise higher and higher within her abdomen. Her throat aches. Her heart pumps quickly, pushing burning blood throughout her system. When she watched the Hunger Games on television, she recognized fear and pain in the faces of the tributes, but she had somehow thought. . . .
It was stupid. She somehow thought that it wouldn't be her. That somehow she wouldn't be the tribute who was shaking visibly, but here she is taking extra time to zip her backpack closed because her fingers just aren't working as they should.
She has to get ahold of herself. She digs her fingers into the rough canvas and feels the zipper against her skin, reminders that she has to get her shit together and not let go.
"I need some more water," Lind says to himself as he digs through his backpack. He pulls out two empty bottles and tosses them towards the heap of cardboard where he slept and, without waiting for either of the others to acknowledge his statement, he stands and limps into the main room with a sort of finality not often associated with grabbing water from the 20 feet away.
Cheyanne adjusts her sweatshirt even though she's done it a dozen times already. She smooths out wrinkles that can never be pressed out of the soft cotton. She considers taking off the sweatshirt entirely because it's so hot, but she doesn't. She smells so rank that she clings to the sweatshirt as a barrier between herself and that dirty, grimy part of her that she had left District 12 to put behind her.
Lind doesn't come back right away and Iris peeks out of the door for a second before coming back to Cheyanne. She kneels next to her and begins to rifle through her own bag as though she has something important to do, but she's already zipped and unzipped and zipped her bag again a dozen times. The repeated motion doesn't scare away the fear that clenches her, and Cheyanne can't help but notice the way the girl's entire body trembles. She fidgets to hide the way her hands and feet shake, but she can't remove the quiver from her lips.
Cheyanne looks away and stares at her backpack. She draws in a deep breath, this time deeper than the ones she's been able to take before.
"When we are at the feast, I want you to get out of there if things look dicey," Cheyanne says quietly.
Iris doesn't respond as though the soft words spoken were too low for her to hear. But Cheyanne can see by the distant look that has overtaken the girl's expression that she heard loud and clear.
Cheyanne continues, "Don't think about me or Lind. I want you to start running and don't stop until you know you're not being followed. If Lind or I . . . if we don't make it. . . . You just keep going, okay?"
The girl now nods, and Cheyanne holds onto her own bag.
When Lind returns a few minutes later, she can't tell if he's been crying or not, but his eyes are wet and his gaze almost dream-like. Perhaps it's the injury that's slowly poisoning him, but she can't concern herself about that. She knows, deep within her, that Lind isn't making it away from this feast. She will, of course, and she finds herself hoping—knowing—that Iris will, too.
.※.
DAY 06 { 8:49 AM }
Cornucopia
10 / 24
Cheyanne wishes they had a plan, but they don't. Lind had been their planner, but she can't fault him for not coming up with something clever given that he can barely move, and each step causes pain to rush across his pallid face. Although she spent time last night staring at the map, she could only think of exits and escape. She isn't the sort of person made for daring feats of bravery, and running in to grab whatever goods the gamemakers offer while avoiding threats isn't something that comes naturally to her.
Algae and plant debris cover the surface of the lake surrounding the Cornucopia island, and Cheyanne can only imagine what creepy things lurk in the waters. She shudders and continues walking, Iris on one side and Lind leaning against her.
They move slowly but deliberately. They see no one else, which doesn't surprise her. As they cross the northeastern bridge into the Cornucopia island, she hears nothing but the sound of their own feet clunking against stone.
But they aren't the first there. The District 7 pair wait on the far side across the golden horn. The girl, a sixteen year old with black hair and dark, sweaty skin, clasps onto a fire ax, something she no doubt picked up in the back of one of the attractions. The boy, eighteen with dusty blond hair and pale, mud-encrusted features, stares at them with a vacant desperation as though he's physically present but has mentally checked out in this hour of violence. He carries a long knife, nearly as big as a machete.
"Let go of me," Lind whispers to Cheyanne, his words warm on her ear. She's more than happy to shed the extra weight, and she peels her sweaty arm off of his equally sweaty shoulders. He shifts his weight onto his good leg and adjusts his grip on the heavy flashlight he's chosen as his weapon.
Footsteps behind them cause the trio to jerk around. Heart pounding, Cheyanne watches as the three remaining Careers saunter by them. She half expects them to attack in passing, but they only smirk at her and keep walking. They take their place about halfway between Cheyanne's group and the District 7 pair.
That leaves two more: the girl from District 3 and the girl from District 9. Cheyanne remembers their strange behavior from yesterday and how they were removing something from the "King's Castle" ride. As the minutes slowly tick by, Cheyanne wonders—hopes—that the others didn't make it. But movement off to the right tells her otherwise as the District 9 girl crosses the bridge.
Another minute, and District 3 arrives from another direction. She has something in her hand, but it's not a weapon. Cheyanne tries to squint to see better, but the sound of the national anthem blasting from loudspeakers jerks her attention back to the Cornucopia. After the first few bars of the music fade, a voice cuts through the air:
"Welcome, tributes, to our feast! Please enjoy our generous gifts!"
The ground opens up in front of the Cornucopia as a slab of cobblestones dips down and slides away. Slowly a table laden with food and packages rises up through the opening, and the aroma of delicious cooked meats in sauces and freshly baked breads and rich, creamy side dishes rush into Cheyanne's nose. Saliva fills her mouth and she quickly swallows it back.
On the table, between the roasted turkeys and spare ribs and potato salad, are big packages with district numbers on them. Two are for D7 and two are for D4, but she locates the ones with D5, D6, and D12 written clearly on the front of the bags. No doubt the one for D6 has plenty of bandages and supplies to help Lind, but she wonders what she and Iris have been given.
Seconds tick by, and Cheyanne watches the others scattered around the circle. Their eyes dart back and forth as they, too, wait for someone to make the first move.
The District 9 girl darts forward, her legs moving quickly. Whatever ailed her the very first day of the Hunger Games has vanished as she reaches out a bandaged arm and snags her bag off the table.
The District 4 tributes bound after her, but District 9 is fast. She grabs the bag labeled D3, and starts to run towards her companion, a bag in each hand.
With the two from District 4 distracted, Cheyanne sees her chance. She doesn't think, she just runs. Blood rushes through her and her body feels as though it's on fire as her shoes slap against the cobblestones so fast she barely feels each step beneath her.
Her fingers dig into the D12 bag. She snatches it up and tucks it beneath her arm. She reaches for the D6 bag—
The ground rolls beneath her feet, and a sudden blast of hot, fiery air throws her against the table as an overwhelming BOOM! fills her head. The wind escapes from her lungs as her waist digs into the table's edge. Heat blooms across her back.
Cheyanne gasps and grabs onto the table with both hands, her knife pinned in place beneath her fingers. Her body trembles and she half expects to feel the fire overtake her, but it doesn't. She's okay. She's fine. The explosion was far enough away that it didn't burn her.
Brandishing the butcher knife, she spins around to face the threat when a blast of fire and air and pure pressure throws her off her feet. She falls backwards onto the cobblestones, her elbows painfully smacking the rock, and the knife clattering from her fingers. Her ears ring and her head spins.
She tries to climb to her feet, but her body won't obey her. She manages to roll onto her stomach and push herself to her knees. Her head swims, and she nearly topples back over.
The trees are on fire.
Streaks of red and yellow and green burst around her, and then—
A noise so deafening that she can't even begin to understand what's happening before chunks of meat and table and bits of tree rain down on her. She covers her face as she tries to twist away.
Then she's flying.
She doesn't hear the explosion until the sensation of moving through the air has engulfed her. Pain smacks her in the head.
Everything goes blissfully dark.
.※.
?
Cheyanne opens her eyes as pain radiates across her head and she quickly snaps her eyelids shut. She presses her palm onto the ground and feels a squelchy, mucky material underneath her hand.
Slowly she opens her eyes again and realizes that she's at the edge of the lake. Half sunk into the revolting waters, she feels cool liquid lap against her cheek. She blinks against harsh sunlight and looks around.
The trees that ring the Cornucopia burn, leaving naked, scarred remains of trunks and seared branches. On the other side, the horn, once gleaming and majestic, is nothing but a twisted and torn heap of metal.
Cheyanne takes a breath, and her head aches so much that she squeezes her eyes shut and prays for the pain to pass.
But it doesn't, and she forces herself to open her eyes and look around her.
The explosions threw her over the trees, or maybe through the trees, she doesn't know. But she landed at the edge of the water where it meets the island, her head against moist soil. She looks around her and sees a figure lying in the muck not a dozen feet away.
Iris—
Cheyanne forces herself to move. She tries to say the girl's name, but no words come out of her throat. She rolls onto her hands and knees, and she crawls through the lake muck towards Iris' still form. She shoves aside a chunk of metal that had been ripped free from the Cornucopia and barely registers what it's from, and then she reaches out for the girl's—
Holy shit. Iris—
She doesn't want to look but she can't turn away. Tears fill her eyes as she realizes—she can't look away—holy fuck. Iris is—she's—
"Dead" doesn't even cover it.
Cheyanne turns and vomits her meager breakfast and all of her water into the edge of the lake. Tears stream from her eyes, and she blinks and blinks but they never go away. They can't go away. The smoke, the fire, the death, the—
She was twelve.
Terrified that she might come across the girl's hand or legs or whatever else wasn't there, Cheyanne squeezes her eyes shut once more as she turns around and crawls away from the girl.
She comes across another piece of Cornucopia (or maybe it's the same), and she thrusts it aside as anger seizes her.
This wasn't supposed to happen. They were supposed to escape! Cheyanne had—she'd done something brave! She'd run into the Cornucopia to grab their bags, and then they were going to get out of there! She didn't want to sacrifice herself, but this hadn't been a—it wasn't—she can't explain—
She grits her teeth together and tells herself to get a grip. She forces herself to open her eyes and look around her.
In the muck, something shiny catches her attention. She moves forward and swipes away the mud and wood splinters to reveal her knife. Her butcher's knife. She takes it in her hand.
She stands. Her weakened legs threaten to buckle, and she sways as she tries to keep her footing. Her head spins and the world shifts in a blur of light and color. She moves her free hand up and shields her eyes as though the sun is the reason for the ache in her head. But she feels the blood on her skin and how it slides easily down her temple, and she knows that she may be alive, but she didn't escape unscathed.
All of her planning, all of her exit routes, they meant nothing. Still, she has to leave this nightmare, and to do so, she must go back to the Cornucopia to use a bridge unless she plans on swimming across the lake. She glances at the water now littered with debris of various sorts and shivers.
So she turns to the center of the island and finds a spot where the wrought iron has been blasted apart, and she climbs through.
The moment her feet find their place on the cobblestones, she regrets her decision not to swim across the lake.
The scene is one of violence. Of torn and shredded metal and equally torn and shredded bodies. She hears a rasping breath and she staggers forward not even sure who she's looking for. She thinks of Lind, but it's an afterthought in her rattled brain, and she doesn't fully connect that she's looking for him until she stares down at the District 7 girl. The glassy eyes gaze up above their heads, and the girl takes her last ragged breath and expires.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
Six. She counts six. And then an echoing silence spreads upon them all.
She can't identify anyone else. She doesn't want to identify them. She wants to leave.
She staggers away towards a bridge. She trips and looks down. An arm.
Is that his arm? Did he have that scar on his skin?
She closes her eyes again, reaches out her free hand, and begins to walk ever-so-carefully. Each step is calculated. A few inches here, a half a foot there. Sometimes her sneakers step on things, and she shuffles her stance so when she sets her foot down again, it's on solid ground with only the crunch of wood splinters beneath the rubber sole.
She bumps into the fence, and she uses it to guide her. Carefully, cautiously, she inches along as though this piece of iron keeps her alive, a line thrown to her in an overwhelming sea of waves and terror. When it curves away, she opens her eyes enough to see the bridge in front of her. But she only opens them so she can focus on the stone beneath her sneakers and not on the something splattered on the railing.
When her feet hit solid ground again, she runs. And she runs and runs and runs until she throws herself into bed and pulls the musty covers over her head.
.※.
DAY 06 { 1:46 PM }
Transylvania
4 / 24
It had been a trap. The gamemakers had trapped them. They had lured them in—lured them all in—and then blown the place to smithereens. They weren't fast enough, hadn't killed enough, so the gamemakers took it into their own hands and—
She stares soullessly into the sheets and tells herself to breathe.
.※.
DAY 06 { 4:03 PM }
Transylvania
4 / 24
Her stomach aches with hunger and pain and the overwhelming urge to pee, and Cheyanne at last sits up. Her head swims and she reaches up to touch the now-clotted mess of blood and hair. She winces as her fingers press on the wound, and she glances down at the sickly reddish-brown stain on the aged cotton where her head had lay for hours.
She wipes her nose on her sweatshirt sleeve and looks around the quiet room.
She's back in the "Haunted Residence" where she had fled, in a bedroom with a track that goes from one side of the room to the other, but she hadn't been thinking about it as a ride. It had been a house, a home, a place of comfort and respite.
But it won't be forever, so she pushes the blankets off her and stands up. She grasps the bedpost and waits for the nausea and dizziness to pass.
As she does so, she catches sight of herself in a mirror. At first she thinks it must be a trick mirror that only shows ghoulish versions of those who look inside, but she releases the bedpost and creeps closer only to realize that there is no hidden trick within the glass.
She's ghoulish on her own, no games or deceptive magic needed. Her blond hair, now filthy with muck, has all but unraveled from the braid that pinned it behind her neck. Wispy strands halo her head like she's a damned angel with hollow cheeks and tired, haunted eyes. Dried blood covers half her face where the wound on her head had bled and smeared across her reddened, lacerated skin. Her sweatshirt, too, is covered in blood, and black burn marks reveal the shirt underneath in some places and bare, red skin in others. Any exposed skin bears cuts and abrasions, red and weeping and angry. A cut on her side has bled more than others; the bleeding has stopped but it left behind a dark red patch that soaked into half her sweatshirt. Dirt cakes every crease on her body, from her neck to her ears to her fingers. The pungent, swampy water through which she crawled now dried to a foul-smelling mud that cracks on the denim when she moves.
Cheyanne rubs her palms together as though she can clean her hands, but it's no good. Nor is it any good trying to swipe the muck from her jeans. The only thing she's able to do is to pull her hair back off her face and tie it into a ragged ponytail with the hair band that was a fraction of an inch away from falling from her braid.
She's gross. She no longer shines like she wanted to. She's not beautiful, not to the Capitol, not to anyone. She's as wretched and pathetic as those who crawl through the mines, content to enjoy their dismal little lives with their $5 an hour pay raise and "better working conditions" that the government promised them.
She rips herself away from the mirror and finds the chamber pot under the bed. A decoration, sure, but useful in her time of need. When she finishes, she retrieves her bag. Then she goes into the dining room, sits down at the table with a headless plastic corpse on one side and a skeleton on the other, and she digs out her food and eats. She eats until she's full, and she drinks until she can't drink anymore. It's only as she's finishing up that she wonders where her bag had come from because she didn't remember picking it up after the blast.
She then paces. Up and down the wide hallways with their tracks. Through rooms around in circles. Up and down the stairs over and over again. Finally she finds herself in a storage room where she discovers bottled water and an MRE. She takes the food and as much water as she can carry, and she resumes pacing.
.※.
DAY 06 { 7:15 PM }
Transylvania
4 / 24
Was her life worse than this? Was being in District 12 really worse than everything she's going through now?
Yes, she tells herself. This is temporary. This she'll get through. She'll be victor, and she'll put all of this behind her. She'll forget it, just as she will forget what it's like to be a butcher's daughter, or how she used to dream of a world far grander than what she had been given. She'll live a new life, one with gold and technology and clothing and all the things she'd ever wanted. More than the material, though; she'll be with people who realize that life holds so much that cannot be attained within the confines of a single, desolate district.
(What if it isn't like that?)
She clears her throat and runs a hand through her hair, giving up prematurely because it's so matted that she can't work her fingers through it.
She eats bits of the MRE. First the main course, which she doesn't bother to heat up. It's some meat mashed up into little more than a paste and mixed with rice and vegetables. But it doesn't taste as terrible as it looks, and she's given up on judging things by how they smell because if she inhales too deeply through her nose, she'll just smell her own body odor. When she finishes, she shoves the wrapper into the chest cavity of the headless diner through its neck hole, and then she nibbles on the candy bar that came in the pack. Her stomach starts to hurt, so she wraps the remainder up and places it into her bag for later.
And then she resumes pacing even though shadows have settled over the house. But she knows it well enough by now that looking where she steps is no longer important.
.※.
DAY 06 { 9:00 PM }
Transylvania
4 / 24
The national anthem sends chills through her feverish body, and she throws herself across the room towards the window that looks out on the courtyard below. Her eyes turn up to the sky where the seal shines.
There are no fireworks, and she can't be more grateful.
District 3 female. District 4 male. District 4 female.
Iris. (She clamps her lips shut to keep the pain from escaping her mouth.)
Lind. (She wants to close her eyes, but she doesn't. She just blinks and allows the tears to roll down her cheeks.)
District 7 male.
Six dead today. That leaves her, the District 1 male, District 7 female, and District 9 female.
She's so close to the end.
But Iris, Lind. . . .
Her chest seizes up and the icy cold within her clenches her throat shut. Her fingernails go into the windowsill as she gasps for breath.
She lowers herself to the ground and feels her knees press against the floorboards, and only as she stares down at the ratty rug a few feet away does she finally start to breathe again.
Why does this hurt?
They were bound to die, both of them.
Iris wasn't her sister. She was just a girl who was quite fond of Cheyanne and—and Cheyanne was fond of her in return. But she wasn't her sister. Just some stranger she barely knew and—
Why are you trying to rationalize your way out of this?
She chews her bottom lip between her teeth, hoping that the bit of pain will jolt her brain right.
Is it so hard for her to accept that she liked someone, and that someone liked her back? That someone she'd abandoned right from the start had forgiven her?
Cheyanne never really had any friends. At least none that liked her for her. They always liked her for the persona she gave them. But Iris had liked her. And Lind. . . . He straight-up told her that he still liked her even when she had left him behind. And she liked him.
She hadn't abandoned them this time, and yet she was so alone. So, so cold and alone.
She wraps her arms around her chest and tries to tell herself that it always had to be this way, and it's better that she wasn't required to end them.
But when she closes her eyes, the vivid images that appear on the inside of her eyelids send a lurch of nausea through her whole body. She swallows back the heat and the sickness and she tells herself that it'll fade. It has to because she can't live like this. No victor can.
She doesn't return to the blood-stained mattress for the night but instead curls up inside a wardrobe. Here she can close the doors around her and pretend that she's safe.
.※..※..※.
DAY 07 { 4:44 AM }
Transylvania
4 / 24
Cheyanne doesn't get much sleep, but she gets more than she thought she would. Every time she wakes, her entire body flinches and jerks as the rush of dreams culminates in blood and death. Upon opening her eyes, the screams and explosions overlap the darkness of the real world as they slowly fade away. She shifts in the confines of the wardrobe and closes her eyes, but her brain quickly makes it known that she won't be falling asleep again.
Now fully awake, she slowly pushes open the wardrobe door. She steps out, each muscle in her body protesting as she moves. She pulls the knife from its sheath and shoulders her backpack as she slowly creeps through the house towards the dining room.
She stops in the doorway, immediately aware that something has changed. Her body tenses, and the aching muscles vanish as she scans the room. The headless plastic person no longer sits in his chair, though the lump in the corner of the room may very well show where he had been moved.
But by whom?
Cheyanne steps forward and pauses, waiting for the floorboards to announce her presence. But they don't, and she takes another step closer to the table.
Movement in the corner snaps her attention away from the table. For a flickering, horrifying moment, she thinks it may be the plastic person come to life, but instead it's only the District 7 girl. She untangles herself from the blankets and rubs her eyes as she stands up.
"Hey," the girl says simply.
Cheyanne bristles.
"What do you want?" she snaps.
The girl lowers her hand from her face and sighs. "I want to ally."
To ally.
Cheyanne's stomach sinks.
She turns away from the girl and glances around the room as though it can somehow, magically, tell her how to proceed. But all she sees—all her eyes will focus on—is the headless plastic person now taken apart into pieces. Limbs removed from trunk, torso no longer attached to abdomen. Cheyanne's skin rolls and her stomach churns as she stares at the pieces of what had once been whole.
"Oh, I found something inside the neck," the District 7 girl says. "Thought it was important and that there might be more, so I took it apart to look. But it was only trash."
Cheyanne's jaw clenches.
An arm.
A leg.
A torso.
Wet with blood. So much blood. More blood than the body can hold. It's flesh covered in sopping, red liquid that coats every square inch.
She blinks and there is no blood.
"Are you okay?" comes District 7's voice, and Cheyanne looks over to see the genuine concern in the girl's furrowed brow.
"Yeah," Cheyanne answers huskily. She clears her throat. "Just woke up, so I'm kind of tired." She lies.
"Right, well, after yesterday's explosion, I found myself without an ally," District 7 continues. "Name's Anderson. You're Cheyanne, right?"
Cheyanne nods. "Yeah, that's me."
"Great," says the girl, and at first Cheyanne's repulsed by how upbeat she sounds until she looks at her and really sees how much her little facade cracks at the edges. A twitchy eye, fingers that she doesn't seem to know what to do with, a tap in her toes. "Listen, the only other people remaining are Astral and Mercy. Astral is injured but not too badly, but Mercy's pretty screwed up. I could take on Mercy easily enough, but not Astral. He's so much stronger than both of us, so I thought—"
"You ripped it apart," Cheyanne says. Her eyes are back on the body.
Plastic body.
In pieces.
The finger twitches.
"Sorry, I didn't realize you were going to be bothered by it."
Cheyanne doesn't answer. Every time she blinks, she sees it. Every time she doesn't blink, she sees it. Pain wells up in her chest in a brilliant explosion of its own right full of sharp points and torn metal that lodge into her brain and body.
She lunges forward, and her butcher's knife gleams in the air before it hits its target.
.※.
DAY 07 { 8:15 AM }
Transylvania
3 / 24
Water drips down the wall from the ceiling. A dark water with a putrid stench that immediately sears Cheyanne's nostrils. She watches as it trickles like blood down tightly-stretched skin, and pools on the ground. The trickle turns to a stream, and then it's no longer a handful of single rivulets dribbling down faded floral wallpaper but now something more akin to a sheet of sickly liquid.
When it reaches the baseboard, it flows across the wooden floor towards Cheyanne. She stares at it, daring it to reach her where she sits on the billiard table, and she watches as it laps against the bottom of the table legs where the wood curls into a fanciful design. She tosses a billiard ball into the water and watches as the liquid maneuvers around the new obstacle.
The water continues to flow down from the spot where the wall and ceiling meet, and then it begins to trickle down the adjacent wall. As the water slides down, the room begins to fill an inch at a time.
At last Cheyanne admits that this is no longer safe and she needs to leave. Hell, she should have left when it first started, but her bored curiosity got the better of her. She swings a leg off the table and touches her toe into the water, but it doesn't eat away at her shoe so she trusts it enough to put her whole foot into it. The water comes up to her ankles, and she feels the tug of a weak current. She sets her other foot in the water, ensures her backpack is firmly on her shoulders, and carries her butcher knife in her hand.
The hallway, too, fills with water. She reaches out and touches the blackish liquid. It cools her fingers, but she draws them away and wipes them on her sweatshirt as she continues to walk down the hall.
She grasps the rail firmly as she descends the stairs, and once she's at the bottom, she hops over a gap on the ground where rails had once been but now is filled entirely with water like a little moat running straight through the mansion.
When she reaches the front door, she opens it easily enough, but it closes firmly behind her and clicks locked. As she watches through the window, the water continues to fill the building.
She supposes the gamemakers have had enough of that place and want her out.
But where?
She begins walking, and she doesn't care where she ends up.
.※.
DAY 07 { 11:03 AM }
[in her head]
3 / 24
Why did Lind like her? He knew what she was and how disingenuous she presented herself both to him and to all of Panem, and yet he didn't care. He liked her. He wanted to be around her.
Perhaps to an outsider, it wouldn't come as a surprise. The people at home undoubtedly knew that the three of them belonged together. Sweet, caring Cheyanne, always reaching out to help others. Now she takes on a charming little girl and a boy whose face got too close to flames (no, acid).
But they didn't know her. If they did, they wouldn't like what they saw. The girl who yearns for greater things, the girl who believes herself better than her friends and neighbors, the girl who prefers amphibians to dogs and cats and even humans.
If Lind had liked her "outside self," she would have believed it hands-down. But he liked her "inside self," and that was far more troubling.
Not that either self really exists anymore.
Cheyanne passes rusted metal structures and beams reaching high into the sky. She walks near squat, contained tracks that are half-hidden by overgrown bushes and trees. Ivy snakes around rails and climbs across abandoned cars, claiming the rusted tracks and carriages as its own.
She barely notices where she goes, though her eyes scan for movement and her ears listen for the smallest hints of danger. She finds no one and nothing.
Perhaps the others are nursing their wounds.
Perhaps they lie in wait.
.※.
DAY 07 { 4:28 PM }
Animal Safari
3 / 24
Something scuttles into the shadow of a hedge well expanding over the wrought-iron fences that had once contained it.
Cheyanne pauses and listens. The air dampens the noises but it doesn't eliminate them completely, and she hears the bushes rustling. The leaves bob up and down and shiver and shake, interspersed with motionless moments as though whatever hides behind the barricade of foliage tries to hold the branches steady.
"Come out," Cheyanne commands.
She isn't surprised when no one does.
Part of her wants to go in after them, but she knows a trap when she can see it, so she picks up a piece of wood and chucks it towards the bush. It skitters across the ground and lands harmlessly off to the side, so she grabs a rock and throws it with all her might.
"Ow!"
The leaves part, and slowly the District 1 boy pulls himself from the makeshift shelter.
His presence surprises Cheyanne; she had not expected to find a Career cowering in the bushes. But she keeps her chin high and her shoulders back as she watches him half-crawl, half-drag himself from his hiding place.
He's also more injured than she thought he would be based on the District 7 girl's reports. Either she was lying or she was dumb because he clearly has something wrong with his side, and his ankle is undoubtedly broken. He clenches at his waist and grits his teeth as he uses his other hand to grab onto a bench and haul himself into the seat. His sheathed sword hangs off his hip.
"Not what you expected?" he asks with a grin that holds so much false confidence that it's almost laughable.
"Not at all," she replies as her eyes scan him over. He's as grubby and grimy as she is, but his wound clearly hurts him, and there's no way he's faking an injured leg with his foot twisted at that angle.
He lets her scan him up and down before he says, "Did you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Rig the explosives at the Cornucopia?"
She frowns. "That was the gamemakers."
He shakes his head. "No, that was definitely not," he answers, and now his grin is quite real as he is no doubt delighted to have thrown her off. "That was an amateur job. A good one, I'll admit, in it's efficiency. But definitely not something done by professionals."
Cheyanne has never thought much about explosions. Those belonged in the mines where people dragged in their dynamite and whatever else to blow another hole deeper into the center of the earth to find things no one really cared about. Susanne would know better, and with this thought, she's immediately aware of her desire not to let on just how clueless she is if it's that obvious to eleven year olds.
"Too chaotic," she says knowingly.
District 1 nods. "Too many singular explosions coming from different locations. Some doing not much damage and others much, much bigger."
Cheyanne doesn't want to think about it, but the image reel pops into her head anyway. How she was blown back by one explosion and her skin burned but not severely damaged. How a second one took her off her feet, and a third one—she doesn't remember that one. But the colors and how bright they were and—
"Fireworks," she says. "All those reds and greens and yellows."
District 1 nods thoughtfully. "I bet you're right."
If it had been the gamemakers, she realizes now, they'd all be dead. Every single one of them would have been dismembered and flung about the Cornucopia. Or at very least, she would be since she had been right there at the table.
But where the hell had any of the tributes picked up fireworks?
She shivers despite the warm, thick air and the ragged sweatshirt on her body.
"Did you come here to kill me?" he asks suddenly, and Cheyanne looks up. A gleam in his eyes sparkles and she sees his hand shift to the sword still hooked up on his waist.
"Yes," she answers.
The grin he wears now curves into a malicious smile as he pushes himself to his feet. Or to his foot, since he doesn't bother trying to put weight on his broken ankle. It sickens her to look at.
"Come get me," he taunts.
The way he says it chills her, and she doesn't react at first. Then her brain kicks into gear and she half remembers that he is far better prepared to fight than she is, injured or not. It's only half her brain, though, because the next thing she knows, she launches at him, weapon drawn.
He swings his sword, but she throws herself at him and plunges the butcher knife into his chest. His body shudders as a cry tears from his mouth.
She wrenches the butcher knife free and draws back the weapon. One knee digs into District 1's stomach, and the other feels the hard concrete beneath it as she maintains her balance.
And then, suddenly, she feels the bite of metal on her arm, and now the scream is her own as pain rockets through her body. The wave disorients her and for a second she fumbles, but she sees the glimmer of metal out of the corner of her eye and swings her weapon again.
The knife bites into his forearm, and his attack falters.
Kill. Kill him. Kill.
The butcher knife cuts into his chest again and again. She doesn't stop when something sharp sinks into her leg, nor when she feels the sharpness in her side. Blood sprays across her and across him and splatters on the ground. He gags and chokes, but she doesn't stop, not until the echoing BOOM! fills the sky and rattles her head.
She falls backwards onto the stamped concrete, blood filling her vision as she tries to desperately blink away the corpse in front of her.
But she created that corpse, and for several long seconds, there's nothing she can do but lay there and stare at it as her bleeding body forces her to admire her handiwork.
She screams. The sound bubbles up in her throat and rips out of her mouth into a howl of rage and anger and pain. It pours out of her chest and into the world to let everyone know how much she hates them all. Not just District 12 but everybody. All the districts. The entire Capitol. Every single one of them, she hates. But she cannot say that, even if she could get her lips to work and her tongue to move, so instead she lay there bleeding and crying as the anger tears through her throat in one scream after the next.
.※.
DAY 07 { 9:00 PM }
The Tundra
2 / 24
There are no fireworks. Only a single face in the sky.
She sees the face, but its eyes are missing as though burned out of its head by the very same fireworks that aren't there.
.※..※..※.
DAY 08 { 3:13 AM }
The Tundra
2 / 24
She's patched up the wounds the best she can but she knows she won't last forever. They hurt so badly, and she doesn't know what's worse: the puncture on her leg from a knife she didn't know District 1 had or the laceration on her arm from the sword. She doesn't even know what to think about the stab in her side except she's fairly certain it didn't hit anything important since she's still alive. But even that she doesn't know. What she does know is that they'll slow her down and, if they spend too much more time in here, they'll get infected. She's taken pain medication tablets, but they do little against this level of agony.
Neither Iris with her stabbed hand nor Lind with his lacerated leg ever made it seem like their wounds hurt this badly, but they sure as hell must have been putting on a brave face.
But now they're dead, so it doesn't matter.
Even thinking about them in this brief moment makes her eyes water, so she resolves to try to go back to sleep and get a little more rest before she calls it quits.
.※.
DAY 08 { 4:18 AM }
The Tundra
2 / 24
What if she died? Right here and right now, what if she died?
The thought hits her with an impact she didn't know possible, and she clutches her hand to her stomach as though that could alleviate the pain. But the pain is a ghost, a thought about times past, and it can hurt her but it cannot be hurt itself.
She's tired of placing second. Of being the one who has to prove that she is deserving of taking over a butcher shop she doesn't want so her younger sister doesn't usurp her position. Of coming second to the intellect of a child who has dreams and aspirations that overshadow the dreams and aspirations of her eldest sister.
Until now, she couldn't put it into words. Couldn't sort out why she wore two heads. But she stares up through the hole in the roof towards the night sky, and she understands.
Never as popular as her peers. Never her parents' favorite. Never good enough to get what she wanted, and always told that her dreams were too big for their humble district.
She doesn't want to fight for her birthright. She doesn't want to be upstaged by a literal child. She just wants to. . . .
Would it be strange if she said that she just wanted to be herself?
To be loved and appreciated for who she is, even if that is less than ideal? Even if her flaws are gaping and obvious and sometimes terrible?
She leans her head back against the wall and stares up at the stars through the fragmented ceiling. There aren't many little pinpricks of light in the dusty sky, but there's enough to remind her that she's alive.
She won't be second place; she won't die.
So there is no other alternative but to live.
.※.
DAY 08 { 7:17 AM }
The Tundra
2 / 24
Dawn breaks over the park, and Cheyanne no longer pretends to sleep. Her body quivers with either fever or exhaustion, and she doesn't want to think about either of those. She stands with effort and a few small curses, and then she leans against the solid support beam of the inside of "Oceans!"
She staggers outside, and only once in the bright light does she remember that she left her bag behind. Part of her wants to ignore it and finish her task, but a more reasonable thought pops into her mind: she can't fight if she's too dehydrated. So she forces herself to not just go back for the bag but to take time to eat and drink, and only then does she leave the dark ride to hunt her prey.
Although she doesn't want to admit it to herself, she feels better after eating.
She tries to leave The Tundra through Kid Zone but trees now block her exit. She stares at the solid trunks that weren't there yesterday but now grow out of the concrete and block her path. They stand so closely together that only the smallest of children could fit through the gap between them, and their knotted branches are so tightly bound to each other that climbing would be near impossible. Even Iris would have no hope of getting past them.
(She doesn't want to think about Iris.)
The exit through Storybook Kingdom is clear, however, and so she takes that route. As she walks, the world is quiet and serene, but energy hums through the air, nearly as thick and heavy as the humidity itself. She passes the carousel and glances at the worn, sun-beaten horses, and she wonders if she gets to choose the location of the final battle.
More tightly bound trees block the exit towards the auditorium, and as she continues walking, she sees that the way to Land of Adventure is open. But curiosity gets the better of her and she makes the effort to check on Transylvania, but that, unsurprisingly, is also blocked off. She isn't disappointed; that section has had its use and now she needs it no more.
She follows the gamemaker's wishes and enters into Land of Adventure.
Ahead of her, she sees a ride whose faded sign reads "The Cobra." The small roller coaster only ascends three stories, and she figures it must be made for children or people who don't desire the thrill of real roller coasters. She half-heartedly wonders if that includes her.
At the top of the coaster, a "snake" made out of several cars, each a piece of its reptilian body, sits motionless. In the third car is a person.
Cheyanne locks her eyes on the girl.
"You blew everyone up," she calls to the District 9 girl. "That's what you were doing in the castle with the crates."
There's a moment of hesitation, and then the girl shifts and peers down at Cheyanne. Her hand grips the car to steady herself.
"Yeah," she answers, the echo missing from her voice in the humid air. "Not my idea, so I don't want to take credit for it, but it was pretty good, huh?"
Cheyanne walks closer, feigning that she isn't in nearly as much pain as she is. She now cranes her neck as she looks up at the girl. From here, she can see the cuts on her face and that she wasn't able to escape the fury of the blast, either.
"Come down here," Cheyanne orders. "Let's fight."
The girl grips the side of the car and leans over enough to see her. "No thanks."
Cheyanne rolls her eyes. This damned bitch.
With a sigh, she climbs up the platform to the loading area and clambers to the other side of the tracks. Here she finds a little walkway that leads up along the rails, running parallel in case the ride stopped and the occupants needed to get back to the ground.
It would be quite easy for her to reach the top and stab the girl.
But she pauses, hand on the small gate that blocks her route.
If she, Cheyanne, were a younger girl who knew she'd be fighting against an older teenager who had volunteered for this event, would she allow herself to be so easy to pick off? Certainly not. So what sort of trick does she have up her sleeve?
Cheyanne turns on her heel and walks across the metal platform towards the kiosk where the attendant once stood. She opens the door with effort—a fight against rusted hinges—and slips into the small, boxy room.
Unlike Lind, she has no idea how rides work. She presses buttons, but it does nothing. It's likely that they're so old they won't work at all, even if she knew exactly which ones to press in which order, but she still thumps her fingers against every one she can.
Maybe the car really is rusted to the rails.
But if that were the case, wouldn't the wheels and gears on the tracks start whirring, at least? Like an engine somewhere would turn on, but the car wouldn't move?
She crouches down despite the pain from various parts of her body and starts to open the metal cupboard below for a guide or instruction manual when she sees a key lying on the ground. Picking it up, she turns it over in her hand, stands, and scans the control panel. Sure enough, she finds a keyhole near the big green button.
The key slides in and turns easily, almost like it wanted to be found and used. The control panel lights up, and Cheyanne pushes a lever next to the key. Machines whir to life, and the mechanisms of the ride begin to chug and clank together.
She glances towards the car, twisting her body slightly to get a good view of it. The District 9 girl is on her feet and about to swing her leg out of the car to escape when Cheyanne brings her hand down on the big green button.
The "cobra" lurches forward, and the girl tumbles back into the car, one leg still slung over the side. She manages to draw her limb back in as the car chugs down the small hill. It turns a corner and picks up speed across a flat, open stretch of tracks before ascending another hill.
Cheyanne only wanted to bring the car back to where she was, but when the snake gets to the loading platform, she fumbles for the "stop" button. She doesn't reach it in time, so the ride continues for another loop around its course, starting first with the big hill where the cars had originally been parked. So she lets it go, and she watches as it loops around its track again and again and again.
At last as it comes towards the loading platform for the fifth or sixth time, Cheyanne presses the stop button. The breaks hiss and grunt, but the vehicle slows and squeaks to a stop at the platform.
Cheyanne pushes herself out of the narrow gap in the doorway of the control room and bounds across the platform, knife in hand.
District 9 stands, disoriented and unsteady. One of her hands is bandaged in a way that makes it look like she has no fingers. Cheyanne realizes that it's because the girl doesn't actually have any fingers there. And her arm is clearly broken, and her face damaged with shrapnel, and her leg has been injured and thickly bandaged.
She starts to climb out, but Cheyanne doesn't wait. She attacks, and the girl falls onto the metal platform with a thunk and a spray of blood. Cheyanne pounces.
But District 9 didn't get this far out of luck. She grabs a wrench out of the waistband of her jeans and swings it, connecting with Cheyanne's cheek.
Cheyanne screams out and brings her knife down again.
District 9 howls but throws Cheyanne off her. The knife rips from her shoulder, but District 9 doesn't acknowledge the blood as she scrambles to her feet and tries to run.
Cheyanne, still on the ground but propped on her elbows now, looks up at the fleeting figure tripping over her own two feet and stagging across the tracks, and she laughs.
The hysterical cackle is lost to the humidity, but she still sees the shudder that goes through the District 9 girl as she flees.
Cheyanne doesn't waste any more time as she gets to her feet and starts to run. Adrenaline pumps through her, and her shoes fly across the platform before landing on solid concrete. She thinks of this girl who killed her allies, and she thinks how she's almost done with this nightmare. She doesn't feel her own pain as she runs, and the gap between the tributes closes.
She tackles District 9 to the ground, her own shoulder smashing hard into the concrete and her forehead smacking into the back of District 9's head. She fights through the dizziness and stabs the girl in the back once, twice, three times.
District 9 screams and thrashes, but Cheyanne pins her down beneath her own body and keeps digging her knife into her ribs.
BOOM!
.※.
"I'm proud to present the victor of the 77th Hunger Games, Cheyanne Hart of District 12!"