² MANIA ─ catching fire

[ 012 ] strange maze, what is this place?

THIS IS NOT A DREAM.

All around Alecto, the water glittered under the sun bearing down on them, a blinding, undulating mirage springing tears to her eyes. After all that time in the dark, the sudden exposure to the sun felt like a flaying, stripping her of her skin and her vision, leaving her vulnerable and naked, a raw nerve flinching from the intense brightness.

Inside her head, the tempest raged on against the deafening roar of the waves. Water lapped at the edges of her platform, vicious and ravenous, as if tempted to catch a taste of her flesh, drag her under, the salt spray cooling against the back of her calves. Alecto blinked the tears from her eyes until her vision adjusted, and cupped a hand against the sun to shield her face. Still, none of it felt real to her.

Overhead, the sky was a strip of vibrant blue, a blue she only saw when she went up the Rockies with her father, a blue that signified open space, a blue that signified freedom from the lifeless quarries and the drag of life back in their colourless District. Waves rolled against the shore, the air filled with a mist that stung the inside of her nose each time she inhaled. When was the last time she'd taken a swim? Behind her childhood home in Victor's Village spanned a clear lake, its waters undisturbed and rippling with a calm each time a breath of cool wind blew in from the mountains. In the summer, her father would take her swimming in the shallow parts, and they would watch for the dolphins and the killer whales from the pebbled bank.

But Alecto had never seen the ocean in person until her Victory Tour last year, where she'd been taken on a guided walk down the sandy beach of District 4. When she looked over at the ocean that day, the unbroken horizon so different from the view from the mountains, this vast expanse of blue and sky and a line that blurred between the two mediums, Alecto felt, for the first time, like weeping.

Under the surface of its beauty, though, the current sought to devour.

This is not a dream.

A coppery tang flooded her senses, and the inside of her cheek blazed with a searing pain, blood welling in the valley of her gums. She'd bitten down on the soft skin, tearing open a wound that would be sure to nag her for days. But the pain plunged her back into reality. Back into the arena. With less than a minute to gather her bearings, to piece together a plan, Alecto shoved the disorientation down, fought through the veil plastered to her eyes. In all this light, there would be no March Hare. There was no Nikolai. There were no shadows to taunt her. Only a stark clarity, a moment cleaved down to pure instinct.

Heart pounding, Alecto squinted against the light and searched for her father, but couldn't see anything but water and silhouettes in the salt spray misting the air, the sun beating down upon them a blind pulled over her eyes. The Cornucopia gleamed in the sun, its golden sheen glaring, and from the flat island of rock it sat upon, twelve spokes protruded toward the tributes, slicked with saltwater but undeniably the only pathways to the Cornucopia on the surface of the water. Quickly, Alecto found Cashmere two spokes away, though she hadn't seen Gloss anywhere. To her left, on the other side of the spoke attached to her launch plate, one of the morphlings from Six stood, swaying, her skin sagging against her skeletal face, gaunt and hollowed from years of the insidious drug. Alecto prayed, for a moment, that the female tribute would fall off her plate, get blasted to pieces in the water, to cull the competition—not that either tributes from Six were any threat to her.

Panic threatened to collapse the steel she'd fortified her focus with, but she smoothed it away with a steadying inhale. Sweat plastered her blonde hair to her temples and the nape of her neck, the ponytail her stylist had slicked her fair hair back into suddenly pulling tight on her scalp. Alecto searched once more, just to be sure. Just to know. Two years now she hadn't left her father's side, and now she couldn't stand to have him out of her sight for this long. Since she couldn't find him, she assumed he must be on the other side of the Cornucopia.