hunted • haymitch abernathy

seventeen

seventeen; WHEN THE CANARY GOES SILENT, IT'S TIME TO RUN

"Oh!"

"This is a clock," Katniss repeated when Ember rose to her feet and stared at the water surrounding the Cornucopia and the twelve rocky divides spaced out evenly.

Twelve divides.

Blood rain, acid fog. Mutts.

Katniss watched the woman drinking the information in with furrowed brows, lips moving, but she made no sound as her eyes fluttered around the arena. Her face became ashen as she finally stopped moving and stared at the wedge where the blood rain was currently falling, that she'd been in twelve hours before.

Ember raised her hands to her head, fingers tangling in the slowly matting curls, and she groaned lowly, "Fuck."

"Get up!"

Ember snapped back into her reality and turned in the sand, mind still hiring with information while she watched Katniss startle the others awake.

"Get up. We have to move."

"Urgh." Johanna groaned as she rolled onto her side, still only on the edge of sleep. Her fingers inched toward the knife she'd left beside her, and Ember knew she was itching to get her hands on an axe, "S'happening?"

"Katniss worked out Wiress' riddle," Ember responded when the others were up and alert, blinking sleep from their eyes. Once Katniss is satisfied they have their attention, she begins to explain her theory and how it ties into the only two words Wiress had spoken. As she explained, she gestured around them, lingering on the wedge where the blood was still pouring.

While Katniss woke Wiress, who woke with a startled shout of 'tick tock', Ember picked her garotte up from where she'd left it and brushed the sand from it. She wandered over to where Beetee was half-standing, a pained grimace on his face. She was quick in her efforts to help him back into his jumpsuit, whispering gentle apologies when the still-damp material caught on his wounds.

"Yes, tick, tock, the arena's a clock." Katniss agreed, and Wiress' expression crumpled into a sagging relief, "It's a clock, Wiress."

Ember nodded, "You were right."

"Midnight." She rasped out, finally speaking something other than the two words which had sent Johanna into a near-rage-induced spiral.

"It starts at midnight," Katniss confirmed, a soft look on her face when she nodded.

Wiress nodded quickly. She raised a shaking hand to point at the wedge she had run through the night before, the blood rain, "One-thirty."

"It started at one." Ember realised, still eyeing the spot in the trees with a cautious expression.

"Exactly." Katniss exclaimed, "And at two, a terrible poisonous fog begins there."

"Where you were," Ember murmured, and Johanna bristled beside her.

"So we have to move somewhere safe now." Wiress got to her feet at Katniss' words, and the teenager reached for the woven bowl they'd kept fresh water in, "Are you thirsty?"

Ember glanced to her left at Johanna, who was already staring at her. They exchanged a glance with Finnick before he handed the last piece of bread to Wiress. She began to munch on his happily, finally content that they understood her.

"Wire."

"She's right here." Peeta told Beetee when he objected to being lifted, "Wiress is fine. She's coming, too."

While Ember loosely coiled her garrotte up her arm, she watched Beetee shake his head, insisting, "Wire."

Johanna huffed.