Nothing Personal

Night - 17

The anthem blared out over the arena. Instantly, everyone turned to the twinkling sky.

Grace pulled Meridan to the window, pointing up at the seal and crossing her fingers. Then she uncrossed them. It wouldn't do any good, not for the dead tributes, and besides nobody would do the same for her. She was expecting the first face to be one of the pair from District Three.

Dark, grinning triumphantly at the camera, leered down at her. It was bigger than she'd expected, like he was looking down at them all from somewhere up there, literally larger than life. She let out a small cry, surprised.

Nobody from Two or Three.

Misty faded onto the sky. Meridan had half expected it but inside he'd hoped that she'd escaped or killed the boy. Misty was dead, with her bright orange hair and infectious grin, and her way of always getting the signals just wrong so that she said something completely different. Now nobody would understand him.

Nobody from District Five. Grace let out a small sigh of relief that Crete was okay.

Fiona. Tears streaking down her little cheeks, her eyes red rimmed. Meridan grabbed Grace's arm. Then Rufus, smiling genially but obviously scared. Grace but her lip, imagining the plain girl he'd proposed to at his reaping sobbing desperately over the ring.

It suddenly struck her that the people in the sky no longer existed. They were just bodies, just empty shells, assuming there were bodies left. Just pictures, and the pictures told her that District Six had lost both their tributes on the first day.

Pataya, doing her little shy smile. Grace remembered her speech at the reaping, about thinking she might be able to win it. How many tributes came in thinking they would win and never came back out again? Like Dark. How had that happened?

Cherry, unrecognisable from the girl at her interview. On the picture she looked comfortable, her hair pulled back from her head with a hotch-potch bandana, her features broad and curious. A hard worker, probably, who benefited the Capitol. Now she was dead.

Neither of the twins.

Lizz, glowering at the camera. Grace had to be surprised; she'd thought the gruff girl from District Ten would have done well. If there was such a thing as doing well. You lived or you died.

That was it.

Meridan was crouched on the floor with his hands over his eyes again.

Sebastian sat with his back to the cool stone bridge, plotting. He'd known what he was going to do at night; go Career hunting. They never moved around much, and they probably wouldn't have gone far from the Cornucopia anyway, so they should be easy to find. With Dark gone, they would probably have to take shifts one at a time while the others slept. He could just pick off the one who was awake and if he was quiet, he wouldn't wake up the others. Then he could melt away and repeat it tomorrow night.

He just needed a weapon. His club was too heavy to kill quietly.

He went over the supplies again. Well, he wasn't going to kill them with fruit and nut mix. Perhaps the cocktail sticks he'd left behind might have been useful. They were sharp. But he'd need some way to fire them.

The banks of the stream were thick with weeds and other kinds of plants. He'd read a book or something on water plants not long ago and he could only remember a few bits about them. But he didn't need them, apart from the poisonous ones. There were a couple of different kinds here, obviously the Gamemakers' trap. There were probably more than he thought, but since he wasn't planning on eating any of the other reeds or berries dangling into the water he was fairly certain he wouldn't need to know them. Very carefully, he picked a couple of sleeper berries - he didn't know their proper name but people called them sleeper berries because they put you to sleep, as long as you used them in miniscule doses - and wrapped them in a few leaves that were floating down the stream. They had sleepers at home; you had to be careful if you went berry picking because they were everywhere. Then he dunked his hands in the water to wash them free from any traces of the possibly lethal berry.