𝐆𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐆𝐎𝐑𝐄 ▸ HUNGER GAMES [ 1 ]

NINETEEN

NINETEEN - 

Marvel and Peeta bring me wood from a clearing nearby and we stack it into a neat pile. We light the branches and begin to arrange our temporary camp around the flames. Meanwhile Cato is leant up against a tree a couple of metres away, one knee pulled up to his chest and scowling at the dirt. Leaving him alone is probably the best thing we can do for him at the moment, so I make a point to stop Glimmer in her tracks when she goes to try and speak with him.

Eventually he seems to calm down and re-joins the rest of us around the fire. Sunset slips into dusk as we struggle to amuse ourselves so far away from camp. Glimmer is rolling her eyes at Cato as he heats the tip of his blade until it burns, glowing luminous orange in the darkness. Marvel sharpens the same spear he has been sharpening for the last three days. I'm surprised there's anything left of the needle-like tip. A tiny lizard keeps scampering across the brush past my feet, and I make a game of trying to catch it out with my smallest knife. After a couple of throws, it pierces the creatures slender body, legs flailing in its last moments of life. As I smile smugly down at it, I notice Zafira is watching me.

"What?" I hiss, shooting the girl a death glare.

She shrugs, but the telltale curve of her lip makes me instantly uneasy. When she turns away, I scoot closer to Marvel on the other side of me. Everything about Zafira screams that she can't be trusted. The only thing stopping my next knife from finding a home in her chest is the fact that killing an ally would destroy any illusion we may be operating under that this Career pack is stable.

In our hearts we all know it, that at some point we will all turn on each other in order to win that crown. However nice both of my District 1 allies appear to be, they have been trained just the same as Cato and me. They may not have the same innate desire for glory, but you should never underestimate the lengths people will go to survive. But until that point comes, our purpose is to hunt and kill. To give the Capitol a good show as we pick off the weaklings in increasingly barbaric ways. And our next target is the girl on fire, trapped in the tree above us.

Cato agrees to take first watch as the rest of us settle down to sleep. He will exchange with Glimmer after a couple of hours. The thought of Katniss Everdeen, dead at our hands by sunrise, sends me off into a dreamless sleep. 

° ° ° ° °

I am woken by Glimmer. Screaming.

My eyes jolt open as a cloud of violently buzzing insects engulfs the camp. My first and only instinct is to grab my jacket and run. I bat as many of them as I can away with the fabric, taking off after the only person I can see in front of me, merely a blur through my half-closed eyes. The screams are still there. It takes a couple of minutes for me to realise that some of them are coming from my own throat.

"To the lake! To the lake!" The figure ahead of me roars, and I'm vaguely aware of someone thrashing beside me, flailing their arms as they hit the ground with a thud. I'm about to stop, to see what's happened when an agonisingly sharp pain rips through my thigh. After that it takes all the effort I have left just to put one foot in front of the other, my leg throbbing with every step. 

A cannon fires just as we reach the lake, still swatting away the remaining wasps who have managed to follow us. That's what they were, wasps, or at least they look like them. Knowing the arena, they're likely to be something far more sinister. Capital muttations. They called them Tracker Jackers, genetically engineered wasps designed to hunt down and kill anybody who disturbs their nest. The Capitol created them back during the war, to help fight the Districts, but now they're commonly used as an extra feature in the Games. And 12's girl on fire just dumped an entire swarm of them on top of our camp.