Jeopardy: The Fourth Quarter Quell

Afters - Cleo

Cleo

Ginger sprints on ahead of me, the box tucked against his side. Compared to me he looks like he could almost be dancing, and he doesn't seem at all tired. My legs are drained and I'm hardly running anymore, just stumbling along with a stitch tearing into my side and tears streaming down my face. They can't be sad because I'm not feeling sad. I'm not feeling anything except the need to run and the fact that I can't, physically can't.

Someone told me once, and perhaps it was Mark in one of his more mystic moods, that where humans and machines differ is all in the brain. We're all made up of pieces that work together. We all have limits. But you can push a machine and not know when its nearing its breaking point. Humans, they have signs. Perhaps that's what these are. A sign that I'm going to have to stop or I'll break.

"Ginger!" I splutter, "I can't..." The rest doesn't make it out of my mouth, fading away instead into a hoarse croak. My mouth could be on fire. Scratch that; my whole body could be. I don't even hear him approach through the sound of my lungs desperately trying to draw in air.

"Steady. Slow breaths," he advises. I try, but I need oxygen and I need it now. My legs are useless; I slump to the floor, leaning back against the cool night ground. The shadows of the trees wave across the stars.

Ginger waits while I get my breath back. As well as the tears, I feel like I must be drenched in sweat. Aside from a few beads on his nose, he's fine. His eyes dart from one side to the other, still keeping watch even though everybody is certainly still at the feast by now.

The feast.

I survived. I can hardly remember it, just Volt running and falling, fleeing, grabbing the box...

Volt is dead by now. I'd been expecting it. He looked like he was too. He kept looking around for Cyrus as we approached, then looking down at his own hands and holding onto his wrists as though he couldn't believe they were still attached. Ginger offered him a strip of meat and he wouldn't take it.

"Keep your strength up," I'd said. And he'd just shaken his head. His hair flopped over his eyes; I remember that because it hadn't been exactly tidy at the start. In the parade he'd had it slicked back, him the sun and his partner, the one who died in the bloodbath all that time ago, the moon. He'd been laughing then, cagey but still amused, whipping his cape around while the girl just glared at him. I'd noticed because my eyes were fixed ahead, not daring to look at the people everywhere.

Maybe it's wrong of me to think it, but it had to be for the best. He was a mess. Even winning wouldn't have helped.

Massey is dead too. It feels like so long since I saw his picture in the sky that I can almost start to believe it. Massey and Tyra, both dead. Volt, dead. The pairs from Three, Seven, Eight, Nine, Eleven, Twelve, dead.

Ginger and I, still alive.

Ginger pulls me to my feet and we carry on walking in silence. Not quite silence. Everything moves around us and I can still hear my heart. I can't get used to it, the trees moving. It's so unlike home. Surely the Seven tributes had an advantage?

Except they're dead now, both of them. They died on the same day. The boy...I don't like to think about that. It was painless and it was merciful and Ginger doesn't seem to have been affected, but I can't help but imagine his family watching, helpless. Like mine.

I don't know what happened to the girl.

You feed us lies. We will not eat. Ever since the memory surfaced, those words have been going around and around in my head. Like a chant, a mantra, a slogan that just won't go away. The words of a woman long dead are keeping me going. I wonder what she'd think of that.