[ 020 ] in the dark and out of harm

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NOBODY COULD TELL WHAT TIME it was, or how long they'd been sitting, waiting in the sweltering freezer for a single sign that the coast was all-clear. It felt like an eternity that they'd been holed up in here. After she'd guzzled down an entire water bottle and shakily ate her rations to replenish a fraction of her strength, Iko shut her eyes and went so still to conserve whatever energy she had left in the bank that Alex had to nudge her uninjured side to make sure she wasn't actually dead. Elias hadn't tried to radio them to ask their whereabouts, or why they were stuck out there for so long, so they presumed he was fine. Iko's shoulder screamed with a livid pain that pulsed in seismic waves in tandem with her heartbeat.

As much as she tried to tell herself that it wasn't fear that grounded them in this darkness, pressed them into the shelves like children hiding in the closet from a heavy-handed mother, each time the mutts let out bellowing cries, growing only more and more furious with each thud of their massive bodies against the barricaded door, Iko found herself squeezing Alex's hand like she used to when they were kids, and she had been too reluctant to go home out of fear of her mother's bitter tirades about her performance in the Academy. He squeezed back, and Iko couldn't tell if it was because he was afraid or if he was trying to reassure her.

It was dark, so the cameras wouldn't be able to see, so Iko allowed this small sliver of weakness to slither out of the floorboards of her perfectly walled-up fortress inside. Weakness that dredged up the embers of resentment at the base of her gut. Career tributes did not fear. Most of all, Iko had carved herself into the shape of the perfect monster. Years of hard work would not go to waste because she died in a freezer from a shoulder wound on the second day of the Games.

"Guys," Opal whispered, the deafening sound slicing through the silence. "Listen."

But there was nothing to listen to. Silence pounded against the walls of the room like a pulse.

"I don't hear anything," Titus murmured.

"Exactly!" Opal said, and then there was the sound of a hand hitting flesh, and Titus yelping in surprise. "I think the mutts left."

"Or they're waiting for us," Sage muttered. "The moment we're out in the open, they'll get us. They're just biding their time. What if they've figured us out?"

"I doubt they're that smart," Titus said, and if it weren't for the feverish layer of pain eating at her shoulder like a forest fire, Iko would've laughed.

"We need to get back to camp," Alex said, already standing to peek out of the shattered glass window in the door. "They aren't in the kitchen. I doubt they got through the barricade. We'll just have to find another exit. Maybe through the vents, if we can fit."

They scrambled to their feet as Alex unlocked the door and heaved it open, at first, just a crack, and after a beat passed with no sign of imminent danger, pushed it open enough to let the others out. True enough, the mutts were gone. The barricade still stood. They found an emergency exit that spat them back onto a dirt path on the other side of the building. The last dregs of daylight fell upon them, golden rays gilding the ferns.

Tension gripped Iko's muscles as she let Alex carry her rifle, since her shoulder was still ravaged in a searing agony. Her knives were still dangling from her belt, sheathed and at her disposal. Two of the slots were empty; one of them with Alex, and the other lost to the aviary, which Iko wasn't too certain about returning to just yet. At least, not until her shoulder was less of an inconvenience. Back in training, Enobaria had told her to stay a left-handed thrower until the time was right. But now that she couldn't lift her arm higher than a centimetre without sending bolts of painstaking through her shoulder wounds, Iko realised she was in trouble. It seemed Opal was aware of this, too.

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