Liberosis - The Hunger Games

07

I stand up and make my way over to him, placing a hand on his cheek, his face is cold, him clearly washing it in attempts to wake himself up. "You didn't sleep last night?" I ask him, my hand still on his cheek.

He inches away from me tentatively, "Don't worry about me Rory," he responds softly.

"It's my job to worry about you Finn, you know you can always stay with me if you can't sleep," I give him a short hug before turning back to the dining table where avoxes serve several platters of breakfast food. I pile different fruits into the plate in front of me and begin to dig in.

Sylvia and Thorn join us halfway through the meal, Sylvia's hair askew and Thorn disgruntled about the fact he had to wake up before midday. He sits beside me as Sylvia runs through our itinerary for the day. Thorn also looks tired, his eyes were bloodshot and he looked pale, I guessed he was just nervous for the day ahead. Mags and Finnick begin to go through strategies as we eat our food, "Don't show the rest of the tributes what you can do, you'll give them an advantage towards your strengths and weaknesses," Mags explained.

"Save your special skills for the individual assessments, that means no trident for you," Finnick points his finger in my direction. I grumble in acknowledgement, knowing he's right, "Go around, find some allies, people that go it alone usually get picked off pretty quickly." He continues, I grumble again, everything he's saying makes sense but I desperately wish to disregard it, allies make it harder to kill- harder than it already is.

After we eat, Thorn and I are sent straight down to the training centre. We are placed in a line in order of our District and the Game makers begin to mark us off one by one, they call out my name, directing me to the front of the training centre with the rest of the tributes. Clovis, Opal and the District Two tributes stand huddled in a small group whispering about the other tributes and possible allies they could have in the arena. I think nothing of it until I notice Thorn move over in their direction and begin to speak with them.

My jaw smacks to the floor, I couldn't think of a reason he would want to be allied with them, it must be some form of strategy. He has to know that he'll be picked off first, as far as careers go, Thorn's pretty scrawny, they'll eat him alive. A woman named Atala welcomes us to the Capitol in which almost every tribute responds with an unamused expression, she lays down several rules that must be obliged, strictly mentioning the 'No fighting with the other tributes' rule. After running over the stations and advising us to pay special attention to the basic survival tables, she dismisses us, leaving us to our own devices.

I'm lost in terms of where to go, there are so many stations to choose from, but I snap back to reality and realise that if I keep standing around all of the openings will be gone. I wander over to the rope tying class, something I was actually good at, sitting cross-legged I begin to tie knots to my heart's contempt.

"You know the purpose of these training days are for you to work on skills you don't know, right?" The girl across from me points out, I remember her reaping, she looked as though she was ready to kill someone right then and there. She was from District Eight; her fiery hair colour reflected her personality, she had a deep scar running down the left side of her face, slashing through her eye and stopping just below her jaw.

I don't want to say anything, I'm not to reveal anything about myself, instead, I shrug my shoulders and blatantly lie to the girl in front of me, "I know everything," I say cockily, I hate the amount of confidence I said it with, it made me seem like a jerk, but it seemed to work. The girl shrugged and turned back to tying her knots, "You've got an admirer over there," I point out, nodding my head over in the direction of Tiberius, District Seven's male tribute. He sits by the axe station without a shirt, his back is covered in large scars running in long thin strips, they were clearly from a whipping.