While Johanna collects water and mine and Katniss's arrows, Beetee fiddles with his wire, and Finnick takes to the water. Katniss stays in Peeta's arms, still too shaken to move. I sit with my back against a tree staring into the water a few yards away.
"Who did they use against Finnick?" I hear Peeta ask.
"Somebody named Annie," Katniss tells him.
"Must be Annie Cresta," he says.
"Who?" Katniss asks.
"Annie Cresta. She was the girl Mags volunteered for. She won about five years ago," I say, looking over at them.
Katniss looks to be lost in thought before she speaks. "I don't remember those Games much," she says. "Was that the earthquake year?"
"Yeah. Annie's the one that went mad when her district partner got beheaded. Ran off by herself and hid. But an earthquake broke the dam and most of the arena got flooded. She won because she was the best swimmer," says Peeta.
"Did she get better after?" Katniss asks. "I mean, her mind?"
"Yes, but I mean, she still has nightmares like we all do, but Finnick has helped her. The two of them are close friends and she's my friend too." I say.
I stand up and leave after that. I head towards the water where Finnick is, not wanting to talk about how crazy Annie is anymore. "Hey, are you okay?" I ask as I approach him.
He is sitting in the water, staring off into the distance. "Yeah,"
I take a seat down beside him, I wanted to reassure him that Annie was fine, that they wouldn't use her to get to him but I knew that might not be true. "Do you want to talk?"
He looks down at me, "I'm fine. Are you okay? After... I know he was your family."
"I'm not okay, but I got to be, so I'll be fine. Eventually. What about you?"
"I'm definitely far from okay." He responds.
I let out a forced laugh, "Look at us, both broken beyond repair. I mean, that's how we met, we bonded over our... misfortune." I say and then look around as if I will see someone from the Capitol listening in on our conversation.
Before Finnick can reply to that a cannon blast brings us all together on the beach. A hovercraft appears in what we estimate to be the six-to-seven o'clock zone. We watch as the claw dips down five different times to retrieve the pieces of one body, torn apart. It's impossible to tell who it was. Whatever happens at six o'clock, I never want to know.
Peeta draw a new map on a leaf, adding JJ for jabberjays in the four-to-five o'clock section and simply writing beast in the one where we saw the tribute collected in pieces. We now have a good idea of what seven of the hours will bring. And if there's any positive to the jabberjay attack, it's that it lets us know where we are on the clock face again.
Finnick weaves yet another water basket and a net for fishing. I take a quick swim and put more ointment on my skin. Then I sit at the edge of the water, cleaning the fish Finnick catches and watching the sun drop below the horizon. The bright moon is already on the rise, filling the arena with that strange twilight. We are about to settle down to our meal of raw fish when the anthem begins. And then the faces...
Cashmere. Gloss. Wiress. Mag. The woman from 5. The morphling who gave her life for Peeta. Blight. Nolan. The man from 10.
Nine dead. Plus eight from the first night. Two-thrids of us gone in a day and a half. That must be some kind of record.
"They're really burning through us," says Johanna.
"Who's left? Besides us six and District two?" asks Finnick.
"Chaff," Peeta says, without needing to think about it.
A parachute comes down with a pile of bite-sized square-shaped rolls. "These are from your district, right, Beetee?"
"Yes, from District Three," he says. "How many are there?"
Finnick counts them, turning each one over in his hands before he sets it in a neat configuration. "Twenty-four," he says.
"An even two dozen then?" says Beetee.
"Twenty-four on the nose," says Finnick. "How should we divide them?"
"Let's each have three, and whoever is still alive at daybreak can take a vote on the rest," says Johanna. I glance over at Finnick, knowing what the rolls mean. They are from District Three so that means on the third day, tomorrow, and there are twenty-four rolls, so on the twenty-fourth hour is when it starts. Willow hadn't told me what the arena consist of, I'm sure she didn't know but she did say that a hovercraft would come and break us out of the arena.
We wait until the giant wave has flooded out of the ten-to-eleven-o'clock section, wait for the water to recede, and then go to that beach to make camp. Theoretically, we should have a full twelve hours of safety from the jungle. There's an unpleasant chorus of clicking, probably some evil type of insect, coming from the eleven-to-twelve-o'clock wedge. But whatever is making the sound stays within the confines of the jungle and we keep off that part of the beach in case they're just waiting for a carelessly placed footfall to swarm out.
I don't know how Johanna is still on her feet. She's only had about an hour of sleep since the Games started. Peeta and Katniss volunteer for the first watch. I lay down in the sand and stare up at the stars beside Finnick. "I know you probably don't want to talk about it, but I'm sorry about Mags. She was Willow's best friend."
Finnick turns to look at me, "Yeah, I know, and I'm sorry about Nolan. He was a good person." He leans over towards me and wipes off a tear that escapes from my eyes. "At least we have each other." He says.
"I don't think I will survive if you don't make it out of this arena, I've already lost so much and I'm scared to lose you too," I admit.
He shakes his head, "Don't think like that. And you won't lose me." He pauses for a minute, seeming to be in thought. "I know this probably isn't how you pictured it, but I don't want to die in this arena without asking you."
I sit up and stare at him. "What?" I ask a little unsure.
"Will you, Ember Graves, be my girlfriend?" Finnick asked.
A huge smile spread across my face as I put a hand over my heart, "Yes!" I say. "For a second there I thought you were going to propose."
"Well, you know me, always full of surprises." He says with a smile before leaning down and giving me a kiss. "Well, I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted."
I nod my head, we have had a rough day. "Good night then," I tell him as I lay back down beside him. To my left, Katniss and Peeta are sitting up talking, but I am too tired to try to stay up with them.
I fall into a restless sleep. The first crack of the lightning storm — the bolt hitting the tree at midnight — that wakes both me and Finnick. I sit up with a sharp cry as I dig my fingers in the sand trying to reassure myself that the nightmare I had wasn't real.
"I can't sleep anymore," Finnick says. "One of you should rest." Only then do he and I notice Katniss and Peeta's expressions, the way they're wrapped around each other. "Or both of you. I can watch alone."
Peeta won't let him, though. "It's too dangerous," he says. "I'm not tired. You lie down, Katniss." She doesn't object.
"I can keep watch with you," I say.
Finnick looks over at me, "You barely slept an hour, get some rest."
Peeta walks back over to us from walking Katniss to where the others are. "Finnick is right, Ember, me and him can keep watch. You need to get some sleep."
I let out a defeated sigh before going back to the others and laying down in the sand. I see Finnick and Peeta talking in the distance, but I can't make out what they are saying. I am shocked to find how easy sleep arrives. Within a few minutes, I fall back asleep.
As I drift off, I try to imagine a world, somewhere in the future, with no Games, no Capitol. A place like a meadow of flowers. A place where Finnick is safe.
When I wake, I have a brief, delicious feeling of happiness that is somehow connected to Finnick. Happiness, of course, is a complete absurdity at this point, since at the rate things are going, I could be dead in a day.
Everyone's already up and watching the descent of a parachute on the beach. I join them for another delivery of bread. It's identical to the one we received the night before. Twenty-four rolls from District 3. That gives us thirty-three is all. We each take four, leaving nine in reserve.
I sit next to Finnick on the sand to eat my rolls. For some reason I find myself wanting to be near him more than before. Maybe it's because he makes the pain go away, even for just a moment. Or maybe it's because of how I feel about him.
After we eat, I sit there silently as Katniss takes Peeta's hand and leads him into the water. After a minute I hear Katniss calling for us. "Hey, Finnick, Ember, come on in! We figured out how to make you pretty again!"
The four of us scour all the scabs from our bodies, helping with the others' backs, and come out of the same pink as the sky. We apply another round of medicine because the skin seems too delicate for the sunlight, but it doesn't look half as bad on smooth skin and will be good camouflage in the jungle.
Beetee calls us over, and it turns out that during all those hours fiddling with the wire, he has indeed come up with a plan. "I think we'll all agree our job is to kill Brutus and Enobaria," he says mildly. "I doubt they'll attack us openly again, now that they're so outnumbered. We could track them down, I suppose, but it's dangerous, exhausting work."
"Do you think they've figured out about the clock?" I ask.
"If they haven't, they'll figure it out soon enough. Perhaps not as specifically as we have. But they must know that at least some of the zomes are wired for attacks and that they're recurring in a circular fashion. Also, the fact that our last fight was cut off by Gamemaker intervention will not have gone unnoticed by them. We know it was an attempt to disorient us, but they must be asking themselves why it was done, and this, too, may lead them to the realization that the arena's a clock," says Beetee. "So I think our best bet will be setting our own trap."
"Wait, let me get Johanna up," says Finnick, "She'll be rabid if she thinks she missed something this important."
I nod my head, agreeing with him on that. When she joins us, Beetee shoos us all a bit so he can have room to work in the sand. He swiftly draws a circle and divides it into twelve wedges. It's the arena, not rendered in Peeta's precise strokes but in the rough lines of a man whose mind is occupied by other, far more complex things. "If you were Brutus and Enobaria, knowing what you do now about the jungle, where would you feel safest?" Beetee asks. There's nothing patronizing in his voice, and yet I can't help thinking he reminds me of a school teacher about to ease children into a lesson. Perhaps it's the age difference, or simply that Beetee is probably about a million times smarter than the rest of us.
"Where we are now. On the beach," says Peeta. "It's the safest place."
"So why aren't they on the beach?" says Beetee.
"Because we're here," says Johanna impatiently.
"Exactly. We're here, claiming the beach. Now where would you go?" says Beetee.
I think about the deadly jungle, the occupied beach. "I'd hide just at the edge of the jungle. So I could escape if an attack came. And so I could spy on us."
"Also to eat," Finnick says. "The jungle's full of strange creatures and plants. But by watching us, I'd know the seafood is safe."
Beetee smiles at us as if we've exceeded his expectations. "Yes, good. You do see. Now here's what I propose: a twelve o'clock strike. What happens exactly at noon and at midnight?"
"The lightning bolt hits the tree," Katniss says.
"Yes. So what I'm suggesting is that after the bolt hits at noon, but before it hits at midnight, we run my wire from that tree all the way down into the saltwater, which is, of course, highly conductive. When the bolt strikes, the electricity will travel down the wire and into not only the water but also the surrounding beach, which will still be damp from the ten o'clock wave. Anyone in contact with those surfaces at that moment will be electrocuted," says Beetee.
There's a long pause while we all digest Beetee's plan. It seems a bit fantastical to me, impossible even. But why? Could it work?
Peeta takes a stab at it. "Will that wire really be able to conduct that much power, Beetee? It looks so fragile like it would just burn up."
"Oh, it will. But not until the current has passed through it. It will act something like a fuse, in fact. Except the electricity will travel along it," says Beetee.
"How do you know?" asks Johanna, clearly not convinced,
"Because I invented it," says Beetee, as if slightly surprised. "It's not actually wire in the usual sense. Nor is the lightning natural lightning, nor the tree a real tree. You know trees better than any of us, Johanna. It would be destroyed by now, wouldn't it?"
"Yes," she says glumly.
"Don't worry about the wire — it will do just what I say," Beetee assures us.
"And where will we be when this happens?" asks Finnick.
"Far enough up in the jungle to be safe," Beetee replies.
"The Careers will be safe, too, then, unless they're in the vicinity of the water," Katniss points out.
"That's right," says Beetee.
"But all the seafood will be cooked," says Peeta.
"Probably more than cooked," says Beetee. "We will most likely be eliminating that as a food source for food. But you found other editable things in the jungle, right, Katniss?"
"Yes. Nuts and rats," she says. "And we have sponsors."
"Well, then. I don't see the problem," says Beetee. "But as we are allies and this will require all our efforts, the decision of whether or not to attempt it is up to you five."
We are like schoolchildren. Completely unable to dispute his theory with anything but the most elementary concerns. Most of which don't even have anything to do with his actual plan. I look at the others' disconcerted faces. "Why not?" I say. "If it fails, there's no harm done. If it works, there's a decent chance we'll kill them. And even if we don't and just kill the seafood, Brutus and Enobaria lose it as a food source, too."
"I say we try it," says Peeta. "Ember is right."
Finnick looks at Johanna and raises his eyebrows. "All right," she says finally. "It's better than hunting them down in the jungle, anyway. And I doubt they'll figure out our plan, since we can barely understand it ourselves."