Escape the Arena (100th Hunger Games)

Chapter Thirteen: Day Three

(Finbar Metz (District Four)'s P.O.V)

It must be past midnight by now. I'm growing tired, but Slate is still intent on the kill. He seems more pissed than me that Jace is dead. He wanted all three of us in the Final Games. I'm not that phased, to be honest. Jace was going to have to die anyway if I'm to win. It'd be handy if everyone in the Final Games bar me were from one of the poorer districts. There's already going to be at least two.

Slate, who is leading in front of me, suddenly stops dead in his tracks. He holds his arm out, and I stop behind him. He points ahead, and by the stream, we can see a group of tributes. Two unidentifiable people asleep on the ground, and a small boy sitting up barely awake, on watch. If I can see quickly, that boy is the kid from District Five - the one who hogged all the sponsors up between him and his girlfriend. Slate starts to creep forward, making as little sound as possible. I follow afterwards, and immediately fuck it up by tripping and landing hard on the old leaves with a loud crunch.

Isaac hears this, and immediately wakes up his companions. Slate curses, and runs at them while I trail behind, trident at the ready. I can see that the other two is the boy from Ten and the little boy from Three. Slate catches up to Three fast, and stabs him in the chest with his sword. The boy yells out, but then Slate slits his throat, shutting him up as the cannon goes off. I reach Slate just as he starts running again, at the other two tributes. 

Isaac has managed to pull out a blowgun, and turns around for a split second to fire a dart at Slate, who is right next to me. Slate ducks, and the dart goes directly over his head. All four of us continue to run, almost blindly in the dark. Isaac turns again and shoots another dart, but it falls short. Instead, the dart pierces the padding of my sneaker and skewers my foot. The pain hurts like a bitch, and I trip over once again, this time knocking into Slate, who also trips over. We watch in annoyance as the other two boys disappear off into the distance.

"Okay, that's it." Slate huffs as he hoists himself up. "We need to split up."
"Why?" I query. "We can work together and win these games together!"
"You're slowing me down." Slate replied. So he's pissed at me, that's great. "I'm more likely to kill the other tributes without you there to ruin it."

I don't get a say in this apparently, so we depart, in different directions. I'm not going to try to kill him. Slate is stronger than me, and I want every chance I can get to stay in the Final Games. Hopefully one of the other tributes will finish him off.

(Isaac Scales (District Five)'s P.O.V)

The sun has begun to rise by the time Nick and I finally stop running. We can see the open field, so we must be at the edge of the forest. We decide to set up camp here. If any threat comes, we'll be able to run away faster and more effectively.

It takes us forever to calm down. We had abandoned Plugga, and now he's dead. Plugga, who lied through his teeth in the hopes that he'd save both Nick and I, was now just left for dead by his closest allies. I feel like a horrible friend.
Nick seems to sense my anguish. "It's not our fault," he encourages me. "If we had stayed, all three of us would have died, not just Plugga."
I nod, and see how this could be true.

The day passes, and not much seems to happen. Nick notices two figures far, far in the distance of the field, but they're too far away for us to care about. If they start getting closer, we'd hot-tail it out of there. We had to abandon most of our supplies as we ran from the careers, and now we only have a pack that I snatched, my blowgun, and one of Nick's axes. There's been no food in the forest, so we'd need to find a solution for that soon.

Midday comes and passes, and there's nothing we can do except sit, and hope no one finds us. The sun has begun to set when Nick notes that he's thirsty. I decide that I will run to the nearby stream, and fill up the empty water bottle in my backpack. I leave Nick, and head to the stream, taking the pack with me but leaving Nick his axe in case anything happens.