A Knife in the Dark | ✓

Forty Eight

Nine o'clock came far too soon.

I had seated myself on the end of the couch opposite of Maximus, and after Vitellia came down from putting Flora to bed, there was roughly a foot of space between myself and them, perhaps a little more.

When we turned on the television, a relatively large group of tributes was busy around a tree. Finnick Odiar was guarding Beetee, who was examining a tree, while Johanna Mason was retrieving water from a different tree. Peeta Mellark was gathering something--whatever it was, it was too small to make it out--and Katniss was hunting.

"It's a replay from earlier," Maximus was telling Vitellia. "This all happened at noon. They're reminding us that something important is going to happen."

The camera cut to the group standing where they had been in the replay, though it was darker than it had been. Beetee asked Finnick to assist him, and then the rest turned to stand guard around them. I watched as Beetee unrolled shimmering wire.

He had Finnick tie it off on a broken branch and then they stood on either side of the tree, tossing it back and forth. The camera caught a brief shot of a pattern on Beetee's side.

Once it was sufficiently wrapped, Beetee explained his plan: Johanna and Katniss were to run down to the water, unraveling the spool as it went, and then would take what was left and toss it into the water, making sure that it sank. Then they would run to the jungle.

Peeta protested to this, wanting to go with them, but Beetee said that he was too slow, and that if the two girls didn't leave at that moment, it might not have been possible for them to get back alive.

So they went. For a little while, it was boring. Then something happened.

I must've blinked, because I missed what happened. A flurry of movement, and Katniss was on the ground, half-conscious, her head already swelling. Johanna was seated on top of her, a knife clutched in her hand. I thought that Johanna would kill her, but she plunged the knife into Katniss's arm instead, digging around with it while Katniss barely struggled.

I had gotten up to get some water, and when I returned, the side of Katniss's face was smeared with blood and she was standing, trying to bandage the gaping wound in her arm with moss. She unsteadily nocked an arrow and set off.

A cannon. It sends a shock through my system to hear the sound, and while I'm watching Katniss make her way slowly through the trees, most of me is trapped in the past, first watching Clove fall, dead before she hit the ground, then sitting on a couch, alone, waiting for hours for the sound that would end his suffering and the worst of mine.

By the time I came back to myself, Katniss had found a barely-conscious Beetee and was kneeling beside him, trying to rouse him while wrapping his arm, mangled like hers, in moss. There was a knife in his hand, wrapped in wire. And not far from him was the branch.

"They're trying to electrocute everyone." I said before thinking. "They were going to use the wet sand on the beach and use it as a conductor for the electricity because the other tributes would have thought the wet beach safe after the wave."

Both Maximus and Vitellia looked impressed and surprised. "How do you know?" Vitellia asked.

I shrugged. "I don't. It's a guess. Beetee is from District 3, where he works constantly with wires and technology. The rest is just basic logic."

Katniss was still looking between the branch, the knife, the forcefield, and Beetee. That wouldn't work, I thought. It wouldn't. It can't. That's not possible.

Peeta was shouting for Katniss, and then she was screaming for him. There was the sound of two sets of footsteps crashing through the trees, and then Enobaria and Finnick, unable to see Katniss, step into the clearing. Katniss aimed her bow at Enobaria's throat, and I wanted to shout a warning, but there was nothing I could do. Once again, I was helpless.

There was another cannon. Peeta shouted again. Katniss stayed silent.

Suddenly, she dropped her bow. Her eyes fell on Beetee's knife, and she grabbed it. Her fingers trembled, though just barely, as she slipped the wire from the hilt and wound it instead around one of her arrows. She secured it with a strong knot, and uncaring, stepped into the open. Her eyes scanned the invisible barrier before her, and then her eyes lifted. She raised her bow and aimed at a part of it that the cameras didn't show. For a second, there was nothing. And then she let the arrow fly.

The lightening struck the tree, and Katniss and Enobaria and Finnick were thrown to the ground, clearly paralyzed. For a second, nothing happened.

And then the world exploded.