The 130th Hunger Games

Chapter Fifteen

The second I wake up, a thousand questions pop into my mind.

What happened after I went unconscious?

Did Damian survive?

Did he have to use his knives?

Did the Careers kill anyone else?

Were they discouraged by me getting knocked out instead of killing Damian?

I ignore all my questions for now and sit up and stretch. The camp is strangely quiet, even though everyone's here. Wait, I'm wrong. Paige is missing. There's another question that just popped into my head.

I look at the Careers. They all have grim looks on their faces, even Sidney, who was never with us to witness what happened, as far as I know. And Daniel looks very upset. His cheeks are smudged red, and so are his hands. I see dry blood on his knuckles. More questions.

Xavier's looking at me, and he can probably see my confused expression. He glances at Daniel and then gets up and walks over to me. "Come with me," he murmurs so quietly the others can't hear. I get up and follow him curiously.

Once we're outside the camp, Xavier's expression gets even more serious. "While you were unconscious, a lot of things happened," he begins grimly.

I nod for him to go on.

"After that kid you were trying to kill knocked you out, he ran off. Daniel and Paige went after him, and Axel and I carried you. Mackenzie decided to come along with us to keep us company.

"Later, we heard the sound of a cannon. We were guessing that kid we were trying to kill had died. But then we heard angry shouts. We had no idea what was going on, so we followed Daniel and Paige's footsteps.

"Well, we were just in time to witness her before the hovercraft came to take her. Paige was..." He swallows. "Paige had a knife in her chest. She was dead."

I clamp my hand over my mouth and act like I was just hit by the most tragic thing in the world.

Xavier obviously believes me, so he nods sadly in an I-know-how-you-feel kind of way. "Anyway," he continues, "as you can see, it turned out the kid had knives and had killed Paige before she could kill him. So we followed Daniel's footsteps until we finally found him. The kid that we were all trying to kill was up in a tree, and Daniel was hacking his sword at it, trying to cut it down. Well, we all knew he was in his so-angry-that-he's-going-crazy kind of mood, so we tried to get him to stop, but he just threw his sword down and started punching the tree."

That explains Daniel's bloody knuckles.

"After a while he calmed down, and he came back with us to the camp. Ever since then we've been grieving for Paige. It's especially hard for Daniel, since he... you know...loved her." Xavier gives me a shrug. "I just thought you wanted to know what happened. We walk together back into the camp.

"What about our plan to finish everyone off today?" I ask.

Xavier looks at me, his dark brown eyes now sad and tired, and says, "That's not happening. We might do it tomorrow if Daniel's recovered, but I doubt he will be. It will probably be a few days before it can finally be just us Careers."

"Oh, that sucks," I say, but really, joy is pouncing through me like a tiger. Jane, Damian, and Sabrina will have more time to prepare themselves for when the Careers try to hunt them. They can survive!

Once I'm back in the camp, I plop down onto my usual sleeping spot. I sit and spin my sword around and around on the grass, playing with it absentmindedly like all the other Careers except Daniel, who is just staring at the grass.