It stormed that night.
Rain came down in sheets, and thunder crashed all around. The wind whipped the plastic tarp serving as the door for the shelter from side to side, rendering it useless and causing Maze, Willow, and Sorb to get soaked. The three huddled at the far end of the shelter and used the blanket to shield them from the relentless rain, but it was futile. Maze managed to doze off a couple times, but none of them slept much that night.
Once the storms finally dissipated and the morning sun broke though, the three agreed that they needed a proper door for the shelter and set out to make one. Sorb found and chopped wood with his ax to make the door, while Willow harvested fibers from plants and braided them to make ropes to fasten the wood together. Maze contributed the bungee cords to the cause and guarded the camp, spear in hand, while Willow and Sorb scavenged for material.
It took them the entire morning to make the door. By the time they finally attached it to the shelter, Willow and Sorb were famished. Maze didn't feel hungry at all; the cake from yesterday suppressed her appetite.
Sorb and Maze went out to check the traps for food, leaving Willow at the camp. Both brought their weapons in case they encountered something to hunt.
To their misfortune, the traps didn't survive the storm. Empty wire nooses hung from the trees. One even fell from its branch and laid on the ground, partially covered in mud. Maze wouldn't have found it if not for the glinting of the metal.
Maze was halfway through resetting one of the traps when Willow's distant scream rang out through the trees.
Guttural, like a wounded animal.
Maze's blood turned to ice. The wire slipped from her fingers and fell back to the ground.
She and Sorb made fleeting, terrified eye contact before Sorb started flying through the forest back towards camp.
"WILLOW!"
Maze grabbed her spear and followed suit. Her boots caught fallen branches from the storm and slipped on still-damp pine needles, but she still careened forward.
When the two of them reached camp, they didn't expect to see the boy from District 10 there.
He looked every bit as frightening as Maze remembered. The boxy shape of his brick-red jacket made him look even larger than before as he loomed over Willow, bloody blade in hand.
Willow laid on the ground, gasping. Blood blossomed from her chest, mixing in with the orange shades of her hair.
Sorb and Maze stilled for a second, processing the scene in front of them. The boy, hearing them approach, made eye contact with Sorb. Sorb's face contorted in anger, and he swung his ax at him.
"WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!"
The ax arced through the air, slicing off the boy's ear with a gush of blood. He stumbled, yelping in pain, before swiping the serrated blade at Sorb. Sorb dodged it, before swinging at him again with his ax.
"WHY THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT?!"
Gone was the kind, prince-like boy everyone had gotten to know.
The two boys then locked into a ferocious battle, each one trying to murder the other. Maze turned away from it, focusing her attention on Willow.
She knelt beside Willow. The wound was much worse up close, deep and pulsating and lethal. There was no way Willow could survive it. Maze swallowed hard to keep the nausea down.
"Maze," Willow rasped, reaching out her pale, shaking hand. Maze clasped it, tears starting to well up in her eyes. She didn't even try to blink them away.
"You were a good friend." Willow's voice shook as much as her hand. "I wish I could have known you for longer."
"Willow…." Maze's voice broke. Any words she wanted to say after that stuck in her throat.
In the background, the battle went on. Sorb and the boy's screams of anger and pain intermingled, with the occasional scraping of steel on steel.
Willow spoke again. Her voice was barely audible. "Rowan…Mama…I'm sorry."
She gave one last exhale, before her hand went limp in Maze's. A few seconds later, a cannon sounded.
A strangled cry escaped Maze. "Willow…."
A tear slipped from her face, landing on Willow's pale, snow-white skin cheek. Her glassy green eyes stared up at nothing.
The sound of a ferocious yell reached Maze's ears. She looked up from Willow's body just in time to see the boy from District 10 thrust his blade through Sorb's chest.
The cannon sounded the moment Sorb's body hit the ground.
Maze looked on, horrified, as the boy yanked his weapon from Sorb. Blood dripped from the blade and from wounds on the boy's torso, limbs, and where his ear once was.
He looked at Maze. His lips curled with contempt.
Red, hot anger and cold fear took over Maze. She picked up her spear from the ground and rose, clutching it in front of her in a defensive position. Her entire body trembled.
He staggered over, lifting the blade above his head. As soon as he was close enough, Maze plunged the tip of the spear into his rib cage.
She didn't have to plunge it all the way in there. Just the electricity would have killed him. But she was so angry — so angry that this asshole slaughtered her only two friends, that she plunged it straight into his heart.
It felt exactly like spearing the dummy back during her private session with the Gamemakers. Same resistance of the ribcage, same everything. What the session didn't account for was the sensation of his torso convulsing around the tip of the spear as it flooded with lethal electricity.
The boy screamed in pain for a few moments, before silencing forever. A third cannon sounded.
At that moment, Maze's hand slipped.
Her ring — her wire and metal ring — made contact with the battery terminal.
Every muscle in her middle finger clenched, then her right hand, and then arm. Maze barely had time to scream in pain, before the electricity reached her brain. Her consciousness went white, before fading to black.
Maze came to her senses to a circle of fire around her middle finger. She screamed, her eyes snapping open.
Her ring burned. The electricity from her spear had heated it up.
Using the fingernails of her left hand, she pried it off and flung it into the undergrowth, not bothering to see where it landed. Whimpering, she stuck her singed fingertips into her mouth to soothe them.
The circle of fire persisted.
Maze held her right hand up to examine it. What she saw almost made her pass out again.
The ring had burned deep into the flesh of her right middle finger. The wound was angry and red, tinged with nauseating yellow. Even if she kept her hand perfectly still, the burn stung with the intensity of a hundred suns.
Not to mention, her entire body ached, especially her right arm. Her ears rang, and her brain felt foggy and dazed, almost like it had the days she didn't have food or water.
Cradling her right hand, Maze slowly sat up. The sight of Willow, Sorb, and the boy from District 10's corpses greeted her. Blood still seeped from their wounds into the dirt. Maze's spear was still stuck in the boy's chest, where he still convulsed slightly.
Right. Willow and Sorb were dead. So was the boy from District 10 whose name Maze never learned.
The boy who Maze killed.
She killed someone.
She didn't know she was even capable of such an act.
Her heart hammered in her chest. No — vibrated. Her heart had never beat that fast in her entire life. She vaguely remembered the electrical safety unit from school and how electric shock could cause a rapid heartbeat.
The anxiety from knowing she took a life didn't help.
Between the pain, the deaths of her friends, and the knowledge that she, Maze Donahue, had just killed, it didn't take long for the tears to reappear in her eyes and bubble out, careening down her cheeks.
The pressure of it all built up, like a shaken bottle of pop. Eventually, Maze exploded.
An animalistic shriek burst from her lungs. She screeched and screeched between sobs, rocking herself back and forth in a vain attempt to comfort herself.
"I'm sorry," she repeated over and over. She didn't even know who she was apologizing to or what she was apologizing for. Was she apologizing to Willow and Sorb for them dying? Was she apologizing to the boy from District 10 for killing him? Or was she apologizing to Beetee for losing her head again, or to the universe for existing, or for something else entirely?
Maze didn't know. She didn't know anything anymore.
She cradled her injured hand and continued to rock. The boy's body still convulsed a few feet away, the spear sticking out from his chest. The scent of burnt flesh wafted over to Maze.
Slowly, she stopped rocking, lips trembling. She got up and, using her uninjured hand, yanked the spear out of the boy's chest. His body went limp. In death, he looked so much smaller and less scary.
Maze pushed the wire off the battery terminal with her thumb, de-electrifying it. She'd had enough electricity for the day.
Her gaze slid back to the three corpses, arranged almost in a triangular shape. A lump formed in her throat. She would have to leave them for a while to allow the hovercrafts time to recover them.
She set the spear down and went over to Willow. Her eyes were still open, staring straight into the sky. A drop of blood trickled from the corner of her mouth.
Willow was wrong — love could not conquer death.
Maze gently closed her eyes. She looked much more peaceful now, like that sleeping princess from the story she talked about during her interview.
"I'm sorry," Maze whispered, before rifling through Willow's jacket and pants pockets. She only had a knife on her, which Maze tucked into her own pocket.
She went over and did the same to Sorb. His face was frozen in a permanently terrified expression, but with closed eyes, he looked much more at peace. The only things she found in his pockets were a braided leather charm of some sort — Maze assumed it was his token — and a bunch of flowers, the same ones that made up the crown he and Willow made for her yesterday. She left them there.
Lastly, she closed the eyes of the boy from District 10. It was the least she could do after murdering him in cold blood. This time, she opted to not go through his pockets.
Maze gave the three one last look, before picking her spear back up and making her way towards the meadow. The meadow was uphill from the camp, something she didn't realize when Willow led her to the camp for the first time. Her legs, sore from the electric shock, ached, so she used her spear as a walking stick.
The meadow was unchanged from the last time she saw it. Same pokeweed bushes, same stupid birds feasting on the poisoned berries. Same wildflowers dotted in between that danced in the breeze. She hobbled several yards into the meadow, before turning around and facing the way she just came.
A mockingjay gave a sharp note of warning, and a hovercraft materialized in the sky, generating a sharp wind that Maze felt even in the meadow. She watched silently, holding vigil as the hovercraft extended a giant claw down and retrieved a body. Based on the hair dangling from it, it had Willow caught in its talons.
She disappeared into the hovercraft, and it repeated the process twice more with the boys. From such a distance, Maze couldn't identify who was who. Once the last body was inside, the hovercraft ascended into the heavens, vanishing.
Maze was alone once more.
"Goodbye," she whispered, before making her way back to the camp.
Maze didn't do much the rest of the day. Her body ached too much from the shock, both electrical and emotional. Her heart still fluttered like a caged bird in her chest, and her brain was still foggy from the electric shock.
She cleaned the burn on her finger with the filtered water from her water bottle and wrapped the bandages from her backpack around it. The bandages immobilized her finger, which helped a bit, but nothing could touch the pain it radiated. For the time being, she had to be left-handed.
Once she bandaged her finger, she rested in the shelter for the rest of the day, curling up in the blanket. It still smelled like Willow and Sorb. Her eyes filled with tears at the scents. Other than that, she kept it together for the rest of the day.
Until the portraits of the fallen appeared in the sky that evening.
Willow's portrait appeared first, tinged with blue and smiling. Sorb's was next. Then, the boy from District 10's.
Maze would never see either of her allies' faces ever again.
Her sobs echoed in the silence of the forest.
Maze didn't do much the following day, either. She didn't feel any hunger, so she had no need to go hunting or foraging. Her burn still festered to the point where she didn't have much use of her right hand anyways. When she undid the bandages to check it, the skin looked about the same as it did yesterday.
The most movement she did all day was go down to the river to refill her water bottle. She stood by the bank for a while afterwards, watching the water swirl around the rocks and make its way downstream. It was calming, in a weird way. Watching the ripples and whirlpools meant she didn't have to think. Think about how lonely she was. Think about how two of the only friends she ever had were now dead. How just two days before, they played in this very river, laughing.
A few of Maze's tears joined the rush of water traveling downstream.
No one died that day. The evening sky was devoid of any tribute portraits. Listening to the anthem fade out, Maze realized that there were now only eleven tributes remaining.
The Games were halfway over. Somehow, she had made it halfway.
The night was cold — even colder than normal. The shelter did some to block out the cold, but Maze shivered the entire night, even wrapped in the blanket and with her hood up. She even put the socks back on her hands the way she did the first few nights.
If Willow and Sorb were still alive, she wouldn't be so cold. Their absence chilled Maze more than the air did.
By the next day, Maze was starting to feel a bit peckish, the effects of the cake wearing off. She set off to find some of the blue huckleberries to snack on. She wasn't hungry enough for meat yet, but she wanted to keep her stomach as full as possible. She didn't want to experience that desperation she felt during the first few days ever again. She'd surely end up losing her head again. She wandered off from camp, bringing the small orange pack with her to hold the berries.
She soon found herself at the edge of the meadow, but at a different angle. To her delight, there was a thicket of bushes brimming with the blue huckleberries growing at the meadow's edge. In her initial foray into the meadow, she had completely missed the berries. Perhaps she could have been spared the pokeweed poisoning.
Maze double-checked that the berries were blue huckleberries and weren't in fact more pokeweed berries by putting one in her mouth and chewing but not swallowing. It had the signature sweetness of a huckleberry, so she began plucking them off with her left hand, the pack hooked in her right elbow.
Movement in the meadow caught her eye. Something — no, someone— clad in teal stalked towards her.
The boy from District 4.
It was too late to hide or flee. He had already spotted her, continuing to stalk forward with a menacing grin on his face. A polearm was slung across his shoulders.
"Oh, look. Some prey. Finally."
With a start, Maze realized she left her spear back at camp.
Shit. She had no way to defend herself.
She looked around the meadow wildly, looking for the other Careers. Where one went, the others usually followed.
The boy noticed her frantic head movements. "Don't worry, it's just me. The others didn't want to hunt, fucking cowards, so I left them behind. It's a shame, really. Cassian was looking forward to some revenge for your little stunt with the sleeping bag. But as the old saying goes — finders keepers, losers weepers."
His grin turned sinister, and he lifted the polearm. A wicked-looking blade was attached to it. "Better run, Three."
He didn't have to say it twice.
Maze turned and ran, the berries falling from her pack, which flapped wildly on her elbow. She shook it off, letting it fall to the forest floor.
The boy chased her, his long legs allowing him to gain on Maze. Maze, however, was fast too. She didn't have a weapon to encumber her. She ran as fast as she could down the slope of the forest, not daring to look behind her.
Maze was in uncharted territory. She did not recognize any of the forest she flew by as she fled from the boy. She had no knowledge of anywhere she could possibly hide or try to get away from him. And she knew her stamina wouldn't hold out. The boy was older and stronger than her.
Sooner or later, he'd catch up.
For a few moments, Maze pondered the futility of her mad dash away from the boy. Should she just give up now and not delay her death any more than necessary? There were worse, much more painful ways to die. Willow and Sorb got stabbed with similar blades and their deaths were fairly quick. Not painless, but quick.
Maze didn't have time to answer this question. The ground was sloping into a small valley. At the bottom of the hill were ruins.
Like the other ruins, these ones had an opening in their center. They opened into the hillside on the other side of the valley, which sloped sharply uphill.
Maze was now trapped. If she ran uphill, she would slow down and the boy would catch up to her and she would surely die.
If she ran into the hill, she could still survive.
Maze made her choice.
She ran into the ruins and then, steeling herself, ran right into the opening.
Darkness enveloped her. She could only feel the stone floor beneath her feet and the air against her face.
"You little wench!" The boy bellowed from behind her. So he had followed her in there.
Maze kept running. Her lungs and legs had started burning. She wouldn't last much longer at this speed.
Bursts of sunlight appeared. She couldn't tell where it was coming from, but there was light. She could see that she was still in a stone corridor. What looked like claw marks desecrated the weathered stone walls. And up ahead was a corner. If it weren't for the light, Maze would have rammed right into it.
She turned the corner. The boy followed, his boots slapping against the floor.
"I'm going to get you, Three! You hear me?"
Maze was rapidly weakening. Her legs were starting to feel like jelly and every breath scorched her windpipe. She gritted her teeth and pushed on.
If she could just make it to another corner, or perhaps a junction—
A faint roar echoed through the corridor. The same roar Maze had heard on her second day.
Ice-cold terror coursed through her veins. She ran even faster, legs and lungs threatening to give out.
The creature roared again. It was close enough so that the force of the sound rattled Maze's bones.
The light was sunlight. The ceiling of the corridor was cracked, letting in slivers of sunlight. The light illuminated the corridor just enough so that Maze could see a junction nearby.
When she reached it, she turned to the right and looked back.
The boy turned the corner too, the low light making him visible. He smirked at Maze.
He glanced down the corridor that went straight and his smirk dropped. He just had enough time to look horrified before a large mass of muscle careened into him.
His screams filled the air. There was a series of shredding sounds, and the boy's screams crescendoed. Then, wet, fleshy sounds rang out, like organs hitting stone. The boy's screams abruptly stopped.
Maze barely heard the cannon, so far underground.
The beast moved into the light. There, Maze got a look at it for the first time.
Majority of its body was humanoid, grotesquely humanoid, with two arms and two legs of rippling muscle. Long, menacing claws that now glistened with blood and entrails replaced its fingers. The rest of its body belonged to that of a bull's. Two massive hooves coated in blood supported each leg. The creature had the head of a bull, complete with long horns and a menacing snarl.
A snarl now directed at Maze.
The bull creature bellowed again, the sheer force of its roar blowing Maze's hair and clothes straight back. Its breath reeked of rotting meat and blood.
Maze shrieked.
She was going to die.
But then the creature turned its head and let out a brief roar that almost sounded afraid. It turned and fled the way it came, hooves scrambling on the stone floor.
Firelight danced on the walls. A few moments later, a girl clad in black appeared, carrying a tree branch lit on fire. Her jacket sleeve had a '12' printed on it in charcoal gray.
Maze's jaw dropped as she realized who her savior was.
"It's scared of fire." Camilee Roebuck spoke her first direct words to Maze. The red streak in her hair was vivid as ever.
Maze didn't reply. She couldn't stop staring at Camilee.
"I saw that guy from 4 chasing you, and I followed y'all in here. I wish I could have gotten close enough to get him off your back. Oh well. At least I had the foresight to make the fire."
She waved the burning branch. Maze took a step back. "I figured it out the third day. I was exploring this labyrinth with a burning piece of wood I was using as a torch, and that thing came charging at me, then whimpered and ran away when I shoved the fire at it. Haven't come in here without fire since."
She stepped towards Maze, who took another step back. "How about you? How have you been holding up?"
"What do you want from me?!"
Maze's voice echoed around the stone tunnel.
Camilee opened her mouth to respond, but Maze cut her off. "Don't think I didn't notice you staring at me during the chariot parade, and during training, and during the interview, because I did!"
Anger — the same anger she had felt back at the interview — welled up in Maze. She raised her voice. "What do you want from me?! Do you want to kill me or something?!"
"No, Maze, I—" Camilee took a step back, eyes wide. "I wanted to ally with you. I just — I was shy."
The anger faded from Maze as quick as it had appeared. She looked down at the ground, feeling foolish. "Oh."
"That's not all," Camilee said. "There's something you should know." There was a hint of nervousness in her tone.
Maze looked back up. "What is it?"
"We're family." Camilee took a deep breath. "I'm your cousin, Maze."