Twenty Four Shades of Blood [A Hunger Games Fanfic]

Bloodbath - 24

Sixty.

The Careers all lock eyes, Ruby nodding towards the golden horn and the weapons surrounding it. The twins grin at each other, already sorted on their plan, and ready themselves to sprint, knowing full well that they’re both going to reach the horn at the same time.

Fifty.

Connor looks around, numb with fear, at the odd scramble of jungle and city that surrounds the twilight of the Cornucopia. His knees could be jelly, and he’s terrified that he might fall off the podium.

Forty.

Tyrion can feel his heart trying to escape, hammering unevenly at his ribs, so loud that he can’t concentrate on anything else and he can barely even see the people next to him or register anything about the arena apart from that it’s dark and none of it looks familiar at all.

Thirty.

Thom stares straight ahead, muttering something to himself over and over again, his hand clutched around the scars on his wrist that look black in the gloomy and oppressive half light. Images of home, not all of them pleasant, dash across his mind.

Twenty five.

Benji bobs up and down on the spot, both wanting the clock to speed up and wanting it to stop completely. He doesn’t like the dark and he doesn’t like not knowing and the long shadows could be concealing any number of horrors and the thick, glossy vines look like they could suffocate him just by looking.

Twenty.

Carmen is chewing on the inside of her cheek, her eyes fixed on the clock atop the Cornucopia.  Her hair blows across her face in the slight breeze and she flicks it away unconsciously.  She doesn’t want to have to do this.  She wants her family, her old life.  She shakes the thoughts away; there is no place for them here, not now.  

Fifteen.

Star glances around for the comfort blanket of the Careers. She’s fiddling with a strand of hair, a piece where the blue dye from the tribute parade still lingers, without really realising it. This still doesn’t feel real. But it’s better than Petra, surely...

Ten.

Byron runs over every swear word he’s ever heard out in the cattle fields, but there’s no relief in them. He could be dead in fifteen seconds; not enough time to go over every memory. He cracks his knuckles and is surprised by the snapping noise in the otherwise frozen silence.

Five.

Jolie has spotted an axe, her speciality, not far from her podium, and her eyes are fixed on it determinedly, so she doesn’t see much of what happens next, other than a flicker from Austin, something shiny spinning through the air and landing right by Sokka’s podium...

Boom!

The shockwave ripples across the tributes; somebody screams and another swears, the yellow and red column of flame ripping a straight line upwards and vanishing as suddenly as it appeared, plunging the Cornucopia back into gloom. Maybe the cannon goes off, but it’s hard to tell through the noise from the explosion.

All that is left of Sokka is a few shreds of bloodstained fabric floating lazily onto the chewed-up turf.

One!

And all of a sudden, everything is movement. For a few seconds, nobody has any sense of what is going on; back in the Capitol the camera struggles to make out anything in the dim light and the view wobbles, trying to look at everything at once. By the time that it adjusts, the screaming has already started.