Twenty Four Shades Darker: The Hunt

(1) Someone Else's Conspiracy

“Hello?”

Marisa kept her eyes tightly closed and tried to work out what was going on. Her head hurt. The shaking and splitting had stopped and she was lying on something soft. There were voices not too far away. She couldn’t make out what they were saying but the general tone seemed to be that they weren’t very happy. One of them was Lincoln. Another had a slightly reedy tone that she placed as Alix-from-Two.

She was definitely keeping her eyes closed. Just her luck, to be captured by the Careers. Dimly, she wondered if there was any way she was going to make it out of here – wherever ‘here’ was – alive.

“I can see you moving,” the voice that had woken her up said peevishly. “Just open your eyes, come on.”

It was a young female voice, edged with the rough accent of the Agri districts. Not a Career. With effort, Marisa opened her eyes.

The face in front of her split into a grin. A cheerful, slightly ruddy face, with sparkling brown eyes and freckles and a fuzz of reddish hair just visible around a bandana. The word ‘Nine’ floated into her head.

“Hi!” said the face. “I’m Avery.”

“I’ll go tell Jute she’s awake,” said another voice, and Marisa caught sight of a murky blonde plait vanishing out of sight.

“Wha-?”

Avery smiled again. There were a few blobs of blood on her cheeks and when she shrugged Marisa noticed a bandage wound inexpertly around her forearm. “It's insane, whatever's happening. We’re in one of the houses. Something happened with the arena and…I should probably let the others explain.”

Mind spinning, Marisa hauled herself up onto her elbows. She was in a small, slightly damp room that had probably been a bedroom once, judging by the shelves on the walls. Instead of a bed there was just a mattress on the floor, which was what she was lying on, and the window had been shattered and speckles of glass were dotted around the floor. The unfamiliar landscape wasn't helping the feeling that she was starting to drown in bemusement. “The others?”

“The other tributes,” Avery explained. “The arena’s been…I don’t know, shattered or something. And Jute says we’ve got to get out of here so we’ve all gathered here. I found you,” she added proudly. “You were knocked out under the wall and the others thought you were dead but I could see you moving so Satine and Alix carried you here.”

None of this was making any kind of sense. Marisa decided that she’d been knocked out by the falling wall and was dreaming. She pinched herself. It hurt.

Okay, so it was a very realistic dream.

The girl with the ponytail bobbed back into view. District Ten. Even if she hadn’t known it already, she would have been able to tell by the tan and the broad features. The girl gave her a brief wave. District Ten...she was fairly sure the Ten girl was called Blaire. Blaire Oaklee, or something like that anyway.

“Jute says if you can walk you’re to go through," she said, rolling her eyes. "Apparently we’re in some sort of hurry. Something to do with the jammer running out.”

Avery tugged her to her feet. Marisa wobbled. Her legs felt like jellyfish, slimy and wobbly, and her head was spinning. She checked her watch. It had been one hour and twenty minutes since the bloodbath that wasn’t a bloodbath. The last thing she remembered was checking and seeing that forty three seconds had passed. Then there'd been a painful shrieking noise and a loud thump and a wave of heat and...then nothing. And then she'd woken up here. Feeling dazed, she found herself following Avery and Blaire through the door and into the room where the others were talking.