Victor by Night | Finnick Odair

Vellichor Luthium : 26

Chapter Twenty Six

It takes me a moment. Katniss just sacrificed herself for me. She just killed herself so that I could go home. So that I might have a fighting chance.

Everything seems to erupt at once. The earth explodes into showers of dirt and plant matter. Trees burst into flames. Even the sky fills with brightly colored blossoms of light. I can't think why the sky's being bombed until I realize the Gamemakers are shooting off fireworks up there, while the real destruction occurs on the ground. Just in case it's not enough fun watching the obliteration of the arena and the remaining tributes. Or perhaps to illuminate our gory ends.

Will they let anyone survive? Will there be a victor of the Seventy-fifth Hunger Games? Maybe not. After all, what is this Quarter Quell but ... what was it President Snow read from the card?

"... a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol..."

Not even the strongest of the strong will triumph. Perhaps they never intended to have a victor in these Games at all. Or perhaps my final act of rebellion forced their hand.

I'm sorry, Peeta, I think. I'm sorry I couldn't save you. Save him? More likely Katniss and I stole his last chance at life, condemned him, by destroying the force field. Maybe, if we had all played by the rules, they might have let him live.

The hovercraft materializes above me without warning. If it was quiet, and a beautiful bird perched close at hand, I would have heard the jungle go silent and then the bird's call that precedes the appearance of the Capitol's aircraft. But my ears could never make out anything so delicate in this bombardment.

The claw drops from the underside until it's directly overhead. The metal talons slide under me. I want to scream, run, smash my way out of it but I'm frozen, helpless to do anything but fervently hope I'll die before I reach the shadowy figures awaiting me above. They have not spared my life to crown me victor but to make my death as slow and public as possible.

But my silent pleads are answered, and I black out. I hear fighting: probably the tributes attempting to exclude themselves, because it eventually stops. Everything is silent. And I'm back on the claw dragging me back into a hovercraft.

My worst fears are confirmed when the face that greets me inside the hovercraft belongs to Plutarch Heavensbee, Head Gamemaker. What a mess I have made of his beautiful Games with the clever ticking clock and the field of victors. He will suffer for his failure, probably lose his life, but not before he sees me punished. His hand reaches for me, I think to strike me, but he does something worse.

With his thumb and his forefinger, he slides my eyelids shut, sentencing me to the vulnerability of darkness. They can do anything to me now and I will not even see it coming.

My heart pounds so hard the blood begins to stream from beneath my soaked moss bandage. My thoughts grow foggy. Possibly I can bleed to death before they can revive me after all.

In my mind, I whisper a thank-you to Johanna Mason for the excellent wound she inflicted as I black out again.

When I swim back into semi-consciousness, I can feel I'm lying on a padded table. There's the pinching sensation of tubes in my left arm. They are trying to keep me alive because, if I slide quietly, privately into death, it will be a victory.

I'm still largely unable to move, open my eyelids, raise my head. But my right arm has regained a little motion. It flops across my body, feeling like a flipper, no, something less animated, like a club.

I have no real motor coordination, no proof that I even still have fingers. Yet I manage to swing my arm around until I rip the tubes out. A beeping goes off but I can't stay awake to find out who it will summon.