Nothing Personal

Thinking - 8

Crete knew berundius fatalis when he saw it. The deadly plants lined the stream, the little purplish berries hanging heavily from their branches, occasionally dipping in the water and causing small ripples. There was something always suspiciously glossy about fatalis plants. No matter what conditions they were kept in, their leaves always glistened dark green and the berries always had a gleaming tinge to them.

Sebastian had been here. Probably. Well, he hadn't seen any fatalis plants anywhere else in the arena, and he doubted anyone kept them in their back gardens, so it was more than likely that he had been around here.

Crete pressed further into the undergrowth and carried on walking.

He wasn't used to so much green stuff. The forests he'd told the Careers about were really little more than pockets of trees intersected by power lines, sparse and never very thick. Here it was hard to move without scratching yourself or treading on a stick. Often both. His arms were covered in cuts already, most of which stopped bleeding quickly. Whenever he got a serious cut he stopped to wash it in the water, just in case. It was slow going and he hated it. He also couldn't shake the feeling that Sebastian or Klaus was about to come bursting out of the undergrowth and chop his head off. Actually, he wasn't so worried about Klaus. He reckoned he was so large he'd make a lot of noise and give him plenty of warning, and then he could just crouch down and hide; the Careers weren't known for being observant. Sebastian, however, seemed to be able to move silently and didn't need to get close to you to kill. At every thorn-prick he expected a dart, tipped with fatalis, to be embedded into his arms.

He tried not to imagine that horrible feeling of knowing that you were going to die, feeling the poison slowly start to take over.

Poor Tile. She must have known it was coming; she'd been ditzy but not stupid.

The air around here smelt suspiciously like smoke. But there was no sign of any kind of fire or anything burning. He couldn't even be sure that it wasn't his imagination making it up because he was hungry. There was something carved into a tree close by; a scratchy number three. District Three? Probably. But he doubted either of them were stupid enough to carve their location into a tree - like you've done, his brain reminded him - so they'd either moved on or it was someone else, marking the place to come back to.

The back door to the nearest house was open, flung out wide like someone had been desperate to get in or get out. He suspected that the smell of smoke was something to do with it, but what? 

He settled down in the leaves to wait.

Klaus was still alive the next morning. He wasn't exactly surprised by this, but it did make him feel a bit better. He hadn't realised that he'd dreaded Sebastian striking in the night, silently, like a ghost. Though he didn't believe in ghosts. Apart from Rian, but he looked so solid he couldn't be a ghost.

He checked. No darts. No wounds. Nobody had got to him while he was sleeping on the hill, in plain view.

He missed the comforting presence of other people. With other people there was less of a chance of an attacker going for you. There was also somebody to go on watch, although that hadn't worked out well this year. But he'd killed them all, well, two of them. Both the District One tributes. They'd be proud back home; another year that Two had outlasted One.

And it was going to be another year when Two won.

It was a nice morning. The sky was pale blue, the sun warm against his skin. He splashed his face in the pond, then rubbed some water into his hair and slicked it back off his face; he may as well look good. He could see his reflection in the ripples and nearly didn't recognise himself. His cheeks looked hollow and he had dark circles under his eyes and his eyes themselves had a slightly wild look to them. There was blood splattered around his collar, part Dark, part Amber. He looked a mess.