A Game Called Revenge ✭ Cato Hadley

Nineteen - My Apologies

"ɪ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ɴᴏ ᴀᴘᴏʟᴏɢʏ ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴏꜰ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴇᴛɪᴛɪᴏɴ."

The anthem of Panem sounding over the arena startles Clio awake. She rolls over onto her back and shakes a still dozing Cashmere before shuffling slightly out of the cover and squinting at the sky where the bright white light of the Capitol seal appears in the sky above them. The first face that appears is the man from District Five. Mags actually made it through the night. So did Wiress and Beetee. She recognises his face as the man who lunged at her with the boning knife. The one who's intestines left his body attached to Cashmere's knife. Then the male morphling from Six whose corpse became their training dummy, the outlet for their anger. The faces jump to both of the tributes from Eight - the woman had been taken out by Gloss, whilst the man wasn't killed at any of their hands. The woman from Nine is next, followed by the man who died at Finnick's hand if the three holes in his chest were any indication. Clio badly stifles a laugh as the face of the woman from Ten flicks onto the sky, but her romeo's face doesn't appear. Damn, he's still out there, she thinks, we'll get him in the morning. The last face to show in the sky is the woman from Eleven, leaving sixteen tributes alive. Four career tributes, five if they are including Finnick. The other alliance, which also includes Finnick, and some other random tributes scattered about. They doze for probably another hour or two before pushing themselves to their feet, and walking slowly to the edge of the rocky island, Cashmere following close behind Clio as they go to switch places with Cato and Gloss, letting them get some sleep. Their heads snap round as they hear footsteps, removing their hands from their weapons when they see the faces of the two women in the dim light of the full moon. The crack of lightning together with the rumble of thunder makes the four of them jump slightly, their heads drawn to the sound, in time to watch a thick bolt strike a large tree deep in the jungle. The tree lights up in a flash of bright white when the lightning hits the branches, briefly illuminating the canopy layer before it falls pitch black once more and twelve booms ring out across the arena.

As the two guys shrug dismissively and go further inside the cornucopia, Clio and Cashmere lean their backs against the cold, metal wall and slide to a seat.

"Do you think that lightning was supposed to signal something?" Cashmere asks her carefully.

"It's probably just something to do with the number of Districts. They're obsessed with it, and there's no other reason it would ring out twelve times." Clio laughs quietly. "It can't be the number of Districts still involved because both from Eight and Nine are dead."

"Maybe it's telling us who has the best odds?"

"Then it would've rang out twice. My odds were three to one after the interviews, I checked." Clio shuts down any semblance of praise directed at Katniss - because it's obviously not going to be talking about Peeta.

"You checked?" Cashmere asks, "What were mine?"

"Seven to one."

"And Gloss?"

"Five to one."

"What about Cato's?"

"Bloody hell Cash, if you wanted to know everyone's odds you could've just said that." Clio jokes, "Cato's were four to one. So were Finnick's, Johanna's and Katniss'. The others were all too low to even worry about."

"Why the hell were mine so low?" Cashmere whines, obviously upset at having lower odds than she did in her first games.

"Maybe because District One hasn't had a victor in the past five years, you know as well as I do how that drops your odds but hey, it could be worse, you could be from District Ten."