PLATINUM • THE HUNGER GAMES ²

| 19. THE PARALLELS OF SUFFERING / RED RAIN

     "Have you seen any shelter?" I pondered, using what little strength I had to avoid my feet toppling over from momentum as well. "You never know what the night has in store in here."

     "We can't," Johanna interrupted, leaning forward into the conversation. "Everyone's moving around. And, I know I usually don't say this, but sleeping is way too of a risk.

     "Then what are we going to do then?" Blight asked.

     Johanna paused momentarily, staring down my unsure expression and the sanity of the two District Three Victors who trudged on behind me. Beetee watched over the three of us, whilst Wiress attempted (and failed) to support his body as we trekked across the area, circling around the behind the crowded layers of deep green and brown foliage. Black rimmed lines from his glasses slid down his nose as we continued, eyeing us all suspiciously as his back slowly drained away from an efficient supply of energy.

     "The probability of the arena becoming endless is near to impossible. If we keep walking, the possibility of a fresh water source — of course, only if there is one — being in the area is greater with the larger distance we travel," said he with a sore voice from the stinging of pain.

     "They have to stop walking, Johanna," I added, forcibly turning her attention over to me in a sharp glance. "Wires will last about three hours, Beetee — two, at most. We need to sleep, otherwise no one is going to survive the night."

     Blight casted me an expression of concern. "Can we take that risk?"

     "We might just have to — because a small chance is far better than no chance at all."

     "You might just be right," he admitted, bowing his head toward Johanna's piercing glare and dropping to his knees in need of rest.

     "Fine," she announced, huffing, "I'll get something for Beetee's back." Johanna's night coloured hair flicked as she turned, sending a passionate dagger of spite my way. "But don't blame me if you never wake up again."

     "I take it means that you'll be on night watch?" Blight pondered, sending me a smirk as he addressed Johanna's insensitivity.

     A mumble escaped her breath, "I hate you."

     Blight chuckled in return, "I know."

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     The eventual curse of night came with heavy hearts. Humid air clouded our thoughts with nightmares and haunting thoughts. My breaths were weighted, slow and struggling through what seemed to be an endless lull of darkness and hatred. Somewhere, I had vowed to continue with the torment of taking turns, of pleading that an unknown figure wouldn't separate my physical form from my soul — instead, I dreamt until darkness became even bleaker black, and the proposal of survival became ever so more endearing.

     Eventually, my body jolted up in an electrifying motion, only to realise that my friends were, in fact, not gone, but already awake. I was greeted with a stern smile from Blight, whereas Johanna seemed to stare down upon me, her eyes as red as her hair from the lack of sleep. Wiress and Beetee were too, awake, wide-eyed and replenished from the rest — just as I had predicted. Their stances were stronger, a little more alert too, and the sense of life was promising for their near future. How near that future was, however, was a puzzle far too difficult to solve.

     "Tick tock," Wiress announced like the wild statement was merely fact, "Tick tock."

     "Yeah — tick tock," Blight repeated, attempting to keep Wiress' mind please. "Do you know when the tick tock stops?"

     I climbed to my feet, collecting my spear as I did so and carefully witnessing the conversation going on around me.

     "Tick tock."

     "Jesus Christ, that helped, didn't it," Johanna complained, urging the group to move on.

     "Tick tock."

     "I was worth trying," I eventually added, trying to get my sentence in between the repetition of the eventual —

     "Tick tock."

     "Beetee, could you hazard a guess as to what the time was?" Blight asked, trying to end the almost never ending conversation of annoyance with a rather out-of-the-blue question.

     Beetee paused before answering, "It's almost definitely after midnight, other than that, I do not know."

     "Tick tock."

     I glanced up at the sky with a rumble in the air. The atmospheric tension was luring me towards the sound, carefully directing my hearing around the trees and weaving my thoughts through the blackness of the leaves in hope of finding something promising. My drive and desire for water paraded me forward and lifted my feet off the ground to walk. Blight followed obediently, not wanting anything to do with the sulking Johanna that lingered in the corner of our eyes.

     Forcing my head upwards, the faintest outline of clouds seeped through the bleak night, taunting us below. I heard murmurs from behind me as I trekked deeper into the dense jungle foliage. Questions circulated my head. Is this rain? Is this water? Is this survival? An answer to those questions would have meant the whole existence to me, but my empty mind had succumbed to a greater instinct of survival — or perhaps savagery — of which I need to be fulfilled.

     As of my prayers couldn't have been answered any sooner, the sky cracked with tears as we scavenged to receive them. I drank the rain as efficiently as I could, not sparing any one drop in exhaustion or stubbornness. In return, the fog and most of the rain clouded my vision, my eyes becoming red at the sight of quenched thirst. Or that was what I thought.

     Coughs splurged around me in a desperate attempt to not die at the hands of a natural occurrence. Wiress was the first to warn us, perilously whispering Tick Tock between lethal breaths. Blight staggered past me, cradling his neck in his arms as if he were trying to force the liquid from his throat. His ashy brown hair was sodden with the colour of death. And that was when I realised what we were drinking wasn't water, but blood.

     Wiress was right, we were running out of time. The Capitol were just waiting, timing how soon our deaths would come knocking; how soon this game would come to an end. This was only one piece on the board, one event that would cause us misery and loss in one roll of the dice. We had trapped ourselves in the most deadly contraption of all. The Capitol were waiting until we suffocated, and the red rain was the first step.

     "We — We need," I screamed through the endless stream of blood, "— Get to the beach!"

     Johanna reached me and Wiress in seconds, holding Beetee with the strength of her other hand in a blazing fury before asking, "Where's Blight?" And a zap electrified our surroundings as he slammed into the force field, his cannon firing unapologetically in the distance as we moved onwards.

     There was no time to morn him, for the game had only just begun.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE
no joke, 'the whole existence to me'
autocorrect to the whole enchilada
I think I might be going insane.