"YOU'RE HURT," Atlas said, frowning at his daughter, his gaze latched onto something on her left side.
Alecto followed his stare. Only when she found the torn fabric of her jumpsuit at the blood seeping into the grey material and the wound slashed into her side from the top of her hip to the middle of her ribs did she remember that she was. Like a call and response, the wound, which hadn't scabbed over but was no longer weeping blood, began to sear and sting. Alecto shrugged, despite the discomfort. It wasn't deep, just an unfortunate scratch. You should've seen the other guy, she wanted to tell her father, but the words never came.
"Let me see—"
Alecto shook her head. She lifted her arm anyway, just to reassure her father that it wasn't anything to worry about. There wasn't much she could do about it, and they were already looking for a source of water. Chances of infection weren't low, by any means, but as long as she kept the wound relatively clean, she would be fine. Besides, she'd survived three days in her previous Games with multiple infected wounds—no thanks to Nikolai—driven half-mad with delirium by a ravaging fever and the hallucinogens in the arena and lived anyway. This, compared to everything she'd been through, was minuscule in consequence.
Atlas opened his mouth to protest, but was cut off by Katniss' warning cry and a sharp noise.
One moment they were slashing through the jungle, their monotonous hunt for water still yet to come to fruition, Peeta taking the lead as the others brought up the rear, the next, Peeta's blade connected with something invisible and his body was violently flung back against them. Pain slammed into Alecto's chest as Peeta's body crashed into Finnick and Mags, sending them careening into Alecto. She hit the ground hard, Mags' elbow jamming into her jawbone. Atlas was the first to react, lifting a mumbling and shaken Mags off Alecto as Katniss checked for a pulse. Thankfully, a tangle of thick green vines had cushioned their fall, and Alecto shook off the impact easily.
"Peeta!" Katniss screamed, fear slashed across her pale face as she fell to her knees at Peeta's side, shaking and slapping him hard enough to wake him. Still, Peeta lay limp in her arms, and in that instant, Alecto knew what had just happened. Desperation clawed at the raw edges of Katniss' ravaged cry, her shoulders shaking with panic as she clung to Peeta like a lifeline, like she could drag his soul, screaming, back from wherever it'd gone. "Peeta!"
Finnick was the first to react, pushing Katniss out of the way and touching his fingers to Peeta's neck. As he searched for a heartbeat, each point coming up empty, Alecto could see Katniss' confusion cutting through the wild mania of panic in her expression. Then Finnick pinched Peeta's nose shut. In that instant, Katniss lunged forward with a furious shriek. Before she could touch Finnick, Atlas had her around the waist, dragging her backward to give Finnick space to work.
"He's killing him!" Katniss shrieked, until Atlas put a hand over her mouth to muffle her protests.
"He's saving him," Atlas said, his voice gruff as Katniss thrashed and writhed in his grip, eager to wrest herself free and rush back to Peeta's side, a wild animal caught in a net. "It's CPR. Watch."
Despite the reassurance, Katniss didn't stop, elbows and fists flying as she resisted Atlas at every second, until Alecto grew tired of the commotion, and pressed a knife to Katniss' right side. One wrong move, and it was Katniss' liver that would require medical attention. Katniss went rigid, stilling against the warning tap. Clearly, either Katniss truly doubted Finnick's intelligence—to kill Peeta right in front of her would've been a suicide mission, anyone here knew—or she was too blinded by her panic to recognise the resuscitation attempt. They watched as Finnick breathed into Peeta's mouth, inflating his lungs.
Back home, Alecto spent a summer before her Games at the healer's clinic two blocks from Victor's Village, just shadowing the healer. Her father had thought it was something she might've wanted to pursue as a career after graduating from school, and so, when she'd brought her intention for the summer up to him, Atlas had pulled some strings and called on favours from friends around the district. But Alecto didn't want a career in medicine. What she wanted was far less noble, veering toward a scientific curiosity about the human body. In the training academy, Alecto had come to think of the body as a machine, how it ran, how best to disable it, which points controlled what parts, and how quickly a knife could cut through flesh and tendon. What she wanted, out of the summer shadowing the healer at her clinic, was to learn about the human heart, and how to stop it.
From time to time, a person would come into the clinic with heart failure, and Alecto would watch as the healer performed the resuscitation, the furious compressions, the ribcage butterflying under her hands, its individual bones cracking and giving, pumping and pumping and pumping until the person jerked back to life, gasping for breath. The relief afterward was secondary only to the satisfaction of witnessing someone on the cusp of death, as close as Alecto would get to feeling death in the same room. Until her Games.
"Alecto," Atlas said, sternly, as he shot her a disapproving glare. "Go help Finnick."
Alecto pursed her lips. Everything she'd learnt that summer, she'd carried with her into the Games. She knew best where to hit, which points to strike for quick death, and how much time it took to cut through flesh and bone to get to the heart. As Finnick started pumping away at Peeta's chest, Alecto felt her legs beneath her, propelling her forward toward Peeta. She knelt on Peeta's other side, tapped Finnick's wrists to get his attention. Finnick's brows were furrowed, and he'd begun to work up a sweat. Alecto tapped a finger to Peeta's nose and mouth. It took a moment for Finnick to understand. As he finished up his set of compressions, he bent over to keep Peeta's oxygen flowing. Two breaths.
"You tag in," Finnick panted, nodding, "I'll keep time."
Alecto nodded. She pressed the heels of her palms against Peeta's chest, right over the heart. It was a strange feeling, pushing so hard and not feeling something fluttering back against the cavity's membrane, and it sent an eerie tingle up her arms. The moment Finnick bent down to keep Peeta's oxygen flow going, Alecto begun the compressions. One, two, one, two, one, two, one, two. Thirty compressions. Two breaths. Again and again until Peeta gave a strangled cough.
Sweating and exhausted, Alecto sat back on her haunches, and shook out her arms. When she lifted her head, she saw spots dancing in her vision, and her throat felt raw, scratchy, thick with heat. Finnick sent her an approving nod, and held out his fist for her to bump her knuckles against. Alecto sent him a wry grin, but did it anyway. He could've done it all by himself, but Alecto was starting to see what her father was trying to get her to do. Katniss couldn't be won through words, and since Alecto had nothing to give, what she had was something much more effective. Save Peeta, gain an inch with Katniss.
Relieved, Katniss flung herself at Peeta then, crushing him against her chest. Alecto got up, numb, now, from head to toe, and found herself by her father's side once more. Staring at her scarred hands, Alecto flexed her fingers. These were the same hands that'd once tore her district partner's heart right out of his chest. The same hands that'd killed Diane by accident, smashed a rock against her skull and rolled her body off the ledge into the dark pit of the quarry for the Peacekeepers to find. The same hands that'd only known how to savage someone to death, adapt for violence and survival. This would be the first time she'd given a life back instead of taken it. The world around her felt upside down, shaken at the root.
In her mind's eye, she found Nikolai, his silhouette, his silken voice rasping against her ear. You'd rip my heart out without a second thought, but you would jumpstart the heart of another you barely even knew? Who're you really fooling here?
A flick to her forehead drew her back to the ground. Back into the cage. Back into the lighthouse beam of her father's stony gaze. Steeling herself, Alecto sucked in a steadying breath, taking in the lush pungency of the dirt around her, the smothering humidity a hand clasped over her mouth, and the smell of a wound putrefying between them. Atlas picked up their fallen weapons. He returned Finnick's trident, and helped Mags to her feet, a corner of his lips tugging upward when the old and greying woman muttered something unintelligible and waved him off, trying to rise to her own feet by herself. Finnick rolled his eyes playfully and went to help her anyway.
They let Katniss lead them the rest of the way.
✷
Well into nightfall, the faces of the dead lit the sky.
Alecto didn't know much about Cecelia, except for the fact that she was mother of three, something her father had mentioned once, absently, when they'd been reviewing tapes a few nights back. In the heat of the fight, Alecto had no time to consider the implications of what she'd just done. Alecto wondered if Cecelia's children were watching. Wondered if they ever thought they'd see their mother struck down just like this. Here one moment, gone the next.
Immediately, Alecto shut down the thought.
Katniss hammered the spile—a contraption that'd taken them too long to figure out—into the base of the tree. When the sun sank below the tree line, they'd decided to make camp. There was no point continuing their hunt for water when there was nothing to guide them with. Katniss had hunted and shot two tree rats to roast using the force field—what had decidedly stopped Peeta's heart and nearly killed him—by bouncing the skinned and staked rats against its electric face. Alecto had spent minutes squinting and inspecting the seemingly harmless empty space, but it wasn't until Katniss had pointed out the shimmering sheen, like heatwaves glittering over the open road in the summer, where the air wasn't quite right, that Alecto could finally see it. Not long after they'd made camp did the parachute carrying their supposed saving grace arrive.
Half-delirious with thirst, she sagged against a tree and watched with baited breath, along with the rest of them, waiting for a sign that the gift worked. Alecto wondered if anybody in the Capitol would show up for her the way they all seemed to do so for Katniss, if all the terror she'd spun in her own image, her legacy of blood and brutality would inspire the same amount of favour. Probably not. Probably much less. After her Games, she'd felt herself fading, more shadow than girl in the passing days after her Victory Tour, her prep team and escort fighting to save her faltering image, to preserve her memory, all while she'd felt herself retreating into some unreachable place, into obscurity, the stone lid sliding over the tomb. Alecto looked for her father in periphery. He knelt beside Mags, who was presently teaching him how to weave a basket out of strips of a broad leaf, conversation flowing between them with an ease Alecto couldn't quite fathom, all while Atlas' basket fell apart again and again until Mags begun to correct him, fingers eclipsing his, guiding them to the right places. How was it so easy for some people to reach another?
Finally, finally, water began to trickle out through the spout, until a steady stream started, splashing against the ground, and the relieved cries from the rest of the group echoed with holy reprieve. Katniss went first, then she ushered Peeta forward. Finnick took desperate gulps from the stream until he gestured for Atlas to go next. Alecto felt herself shuffled to the front of the line by her father. The first splash of water against her aching jaw sent a jolt through her spine and Alecto drank from the gushing tap with ravenous intent. At some point, Atlas pulled her away and began to wash out the cut in her side. One by one, they took turns, hardly wasting a single drop. Finnick collected water in a leaf for Mags, who drank graciously. Atlas washed the grime and dirt off his face, while Mags wet her tremorous hands and cleaned the blood off Alecto's face, mumbling, barely audibly, "sweet girl."
They fashioned a hut out of sticks and leaves in the vicinity, hopefully concealing them in the underbrush well enough to be written off by any passing predators. Or Cashmere. Finnick offered to take the first watch. Alecto laid down a couple feet away from the others, wary of the bow in Katniss' hands, the awl in Mags'. There was a knife somewhere between the six of them, and no way of knowing what would happen in the dark. At first, her father settled down beside her, too, bringing with him a sheet of woven leaves—courtesy of Mags—but got up after tossing and turning a couple times. Through the fog of her exhaustion, Alecto felt her father brush her hair away from her face and get up to go sit down beside Finnick. Neither men spoke throughout the watch.
Minutes later, Alecto jerked awake to the sound of a gong resonating around the arena—no, not a gong, a bell.
Twelve tolls.
Katniss, too, had sat up, her head attuned to the sky, searching the arena for a clue as to what that meant.
"I counted twelve," Finnick said.
"Mean anything, you think?" Katniss frowned.
Finnick shrugged. "No idea."
While they waited, frozen in place, for a message to accompany the bells, Alecto wandered off behind a bush to take a piss. Although, she knew it was futile, that she'd signed away her right to privacy the moment she'd volunteered for the Quarter Quell. By the time she returned, her father had disappeared into the makeshift hut and was curled up on his side.
In the distance, a bright bolt of lightning descended from the sky, a furious finger reaching for the tallest tree in the thicket. Twelve strikes. All in quick succession. Then came the patter of rain against the foliage, a mounting static that built into the raging hush of a storm. Alecto waited for the rain to blow through their part of the forest, but it never came. By the time it was Katniss' turn to take watch, Alecto had found herself unable to fall back asleep. Instead, she lay on her back, watching Katniss from the corner of her eye.
A cannon went off, and Katniss looked up. None of the others stirred. Someone had died in the night. They'd find out who it was by tomorrow. Alecto found herself wondering what Johanna was doing. Wondering if that cannon was hers. Wondering where her body lay in the midst of the foliage—
No, it couldn't be. Johanna was a survivor. She wasn't a Morphling, or too old to keep up with the rest of the monsters in this cage. Johanna was still sharp as the shine on her axe, power and precision suffused into the rippling muscles of her back, steel rooted in the base of her spine holding her up toward the sky. There was no world in which Johanna Mason would let herself be felled. There was no world in which Johanna wasn't the woodcutter.
Then she heard it. Or, rather, the lack of it. Somewhere between her thoughts the jungle had fallen eerily silent. Alecto's gut prickled. Something was wrong. She sat up, then.
At the same time, Katniss burst into the hut, ripping the door of woven leaves and branches off, startling the rest of them awake. Behind her, a wall of fog descended upon them, and though Alecto wasn't sure what it meant, she could hear it in Katniss' horrified warning cry.
"Run!"
Blood turning to slush, Alecto was on her feet in seconds, snatching their weapons off the ground and dragging her father to his feet. Atlas' eyes were wide open, alert. Alecto didn't stay long enough to scrutinise the fog, nor did she help the others up. Without wasting a second, Alecto bolted in the opposite direction, her heart jackhammering against her ribs. Panic clawed up her chest, icing her veins as she darted between the trees, the footfalls of her allies three paces behind her. In her mind, she weighed the odds of them making it out alive as a whole unit. Mags was as good as dead. Finnick had a chance, but she'd caught sight of him hauling Mags onto his back before taking off. Katniss would surely outrun the fog, but Peeta's bad leg was deadweight, and Katniss would rather die than leave her district partner to die. And as for her father...
Alecto could only hope he hadn't given into his bleeding heart to save any of them. On his own, Atlas might be able to catch up with her, clocking a decent mile as they raced away from the fog. But the others were as good as dead. There was nothing she could do to save them.
On her right, the fog crawled down through the trees, its milky tendrils probing outward, searching for its next victim. Alecto banked a hard left, kicking up dirt and dried leaves as she flew through the underbrush. Behind her, the cries of the others were muffled by her heartbeat pounding in the hollow of her ears. Her breaths came up short, and her legs were numb with adrenaline, fear coursing through her bloodstream, propelling her forward. At some point, Alecto heard her father cry out for her, his voice cut off by an unmistakable scream of agony. Dread shot through her gut.
He'd stayed behind.
Damn his saviour complex, Alecto thought, snarling. Whoever he'd helped, she hoped they'd made it through this so she could kill them herself.
Though she didn't dare slow, didn't dare stop, she risked a glance over her shoulder. Illuminated by the moonlight, the cataract-white fog towered over them, surging through the forest and gaining speed as it swallowed the trees and the underbrush, silent, drifting over the ground like a ghost. The rest of the group were only just a hair's breadth away from it, their silhouettes stark against the glowing white fog. When she blinked, she saw it. At first, it was just the shadow of Katniss' bow against the fog, its curved tip flicked upward like a rabbit's ear. Then Katniss stumbled, and behind her, the shadow remained.
The world sagged in periphery. Here she was, surrounded on all sides, the labyrinth rising around her, the sickly sweet miasma of the white roses splattered with blood flooding her senses. As she looked back into the fog, she found a hulking silhouette, standing tall as a grown man, growing closer and closer as the fog clawed its way toward them. Here she was, back in the cursed labyrinth of her worst nightmares, stalked and hunted like a goddamn rabbit. Horror drenched her innards in tar, flooding her from the ankles-up. All the breath in her lungs rushed out of her, and Alecto staggered, her foot catching on a protruding root. She caught herself against a tree, but felt her fingers close around something softer than bark. A shoulder, a wicked smirk.
There he was—Nikolai—his face inches from hers, his dark eyes swirling with malice, the wound in his chest dripping as he pressed a finger to his lips. Then he reached for her, memory fingers fisted in her hair, and with a painful jerk, yanked her back into the present.
"What're you doing? Come on!" Finnick shouted, much closer now, his voice strained with desperation, Mags still bouncing on his back as he passed her. Around them, the fog had closed off all exits but one, and its chemical pungency stung her nostrils, jerking her back into action. She kept pace with Finnick, gaining momentum and leaping over extended roots and bushes, tearing toward the only window where the fog hadn't yet closed off to them.
Alecto took off, shaking off the cobwebs of dread. When she looked back a second time, she could swear the silhouette had grown elongated ears. As she ran, she saw flashes of the March Hare stalking around the corner, its rotting pelt flecked with viscera. there was nowhere she could hide. Nowhere to run except forward. And if she met a dead end, she would have to turn around and fight. But the March Hare had the noxious fog on its side, and what did Alecto have except her fragile, trembling mortality and the fissures of her broken mind cracking further and further apart?
Behind them, Katniss let out a cry, attempting, with shaky arms, to drag Peeta away from the fog as he scrambled to stand upright. Until Atlas hoisted Peeta over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, and was lunging, with gritted teeth, toward them, trying to put as much distance between them and the fog despite the additional baggage.
"Alecto! Help Katniss!" Atlas grunted, straining, his voice strangely hoarse. Pain laced her father's expression as the fog caught up with him, Peeta's weight an anchor slowing him down to a dangerous rate. At any moment now, the fog might catch up, already, Alecto could see its effects on her father, and on Katniss, whose movements had become sluggish from the fog. "Help her! Hurry!"
Baring her teeth, Alecto shut out the fog, shut out the visions of the March Hare, the primal instinct screaming in the canned hollo wow her skull, and went back for Katniss. Hooking her arm under Katniss', Alecto shouldered half her weight and with all her might, pulled Katniss, who seemed half-delirious, eyes so wide Alecto could see all its whites, and writhing with fear, through the trees. Silently, the fog crept on, tumbling through the foliage, a quiet ravaging.
"Peeta," Katniss slurred, and Alecto could see the blisters pockmarking the nape of her neck, white boils puckering her jaw and cheeks, could see now half her mouth sagging at the corner, "Peeta?"
Peeta is a deadweight killing my father, you little bitch, Alecto wanted to scream as they tore through the underbrush, but the words never came. The further they ran, the more Katniss had begun to sag against Alecto, all of her weight throwing off Alecto's gait. Still, Alecto didn't let her go. Both girls were about the same size, with Alecto just coming up a couple inches taller, and though she was a little more muscular, what strength Alecto surpassed Katniss in failed to make up for the fact that Katniss' legs were failing her.
It wasn't until Katniss' leg buckled beneath her that Alecto finally felt the sting of the fog. A searing heat exploded in the nap of her neck, a violent blaze of agony rippling down her back as the tendrils of fog stroked against her. Alecto let out a hiss. This wasn't anything worse than what Nikolai had done to her before. For all of the scars amassed on her body, majority had been from his hand, his knife, his malicious intent. Pushing down the pain, Alecto dragged herself to her feet once more. Ahead, a downhill drop
Finnick began to lag behind, and his strangled cry of pain barely registered in Alecto's ears as the fog caught up to him. A loud crash resounded behind them as Finnick tripped and toppled over, sending Mags sprawling to the ground. Finnick straightened to his feet, but something was horribly wrong. Each time he reached for Mags, his arms shook, jerking unnaturally, much like the way Katniss had begin to twitch in Alecto's hold. Mags had tried her best to be a good passenger, but a good passenger meant nothing if the carrier was broken.
"Finnick!" Atlas shouted, "Finnick, just a bit more!"
"You can't carry Mags, can you?" Finnick said, desperation and despair tearing through his tone as he glanced back, as if there was something to battle, as if he could raise his trident against the threat.
Steeling herself, Alecto shook her head. This wasn't the sort of threat you faced head-on, but something to evade, something you could only run from. Alecto knew first-hand how that sort of predation drove one mad. With Atlas carrying Peeta and Alecto dragging a half-paralytic and seizing Katniss forward like a clubbed foot, there was nothing either of them could do for Finnick or Mags. Alecto could see the end as it begun, the cogs turning in Mags' head. While Finnick could still run, could still move quicker than the fog, Mags was nothing but deadweight.
In a blink, Mags seized Finnick's face in her hands, planted a kiss on his lips, and with shimmering eyes, pulled away, a poignant smile curving her lips. A dead-man's smile. Then she turned, and walked straight into the fog.
Alecto turned away, but the others watched, solemn and devastated, as Mags disappeared into the wall of white death. In under a minute, the cannon went off, and Alecto heard all the air rush out of Finnick's body. But there was no time to mourn. Without a single glance back, Alecto dragged Katniss away, the first to react. The others followed suit, stunned into silence. More blisters bubbled to the surface of her skin as the fog closed in, but Alecto gritted her teeth against the pain and kept going. Eventually, the ground dropped out into a steep decline, and Alecto tossed herself and Katniss unceremoniously into the slope, banking on the momentum to carry them away from the fog. They went crashing through the underbrush, kicking up clusters of leaves and dirt, until they hit flat ground. It only occurred to her, then, that she should've probably been more careful with Katniss, for the sake of the baby—or the pretence of one—and for public favour. But that didn't matter now.
In the midst of the noise, the blaring pain of her blistered skin, the raging panic, the quiet roar of the ocean in the distance, as Alecto lay on her back, catching her breath, she could hear the others tumbling down the hill. As much as she willed herself to move, to crawl away from the eminent fog coming down the hill after them, Alecto couldn't find it in herself to do anything but lie there, watching, captivated. A rough hand clamped around her arm and shook vehemently, but Alecto felt herself trapped in the trance, a voyeur of herself floating out of her own head and watching as Finnick dragged both Katniss and herself further and further away as the fog slipped down the hill, smokey fingers reaching for them.
Papa, Alecto mouthed, but her voice never projected. What came out instead was a wheezing breath as she watched her father crawling on his front, one hand fisted in Peeta's collar, his face strained as he dragged himself away on one elbow.
Then the fog slammed against something, some invisible barrier just inches away, packing against it, climbing up and up and up, and for a moment, Alecto thought there must be some limit to the invisible barrier, that the fog might eventually overflow from containment.
"It's stopped," Katniss rasps, disbelief lacing her tone. They watch as the fog lifts, the air clearing, as if it were being vacuumed up into the sky, until there wasn't a single trace left.
Alecto blinked, and felt herself jolted back into her own body. Beside her, Finnick lay twitching, convulsing with pain, his arms packed tight against his chest. Katniss turned, and began to crawl sluggishly and laboriously toward the edge of the tree-line. Somehow, someway, the fog had chased them closer toward the Cornucopia. Slowly, Alecto got to her feet. Compared to the others, the fog hadn't affected her as much. She'd been much faster than the rest of them. Only the upper portion of her back and the back of her calves seemed to have born the brunt of the chemical burn, but nowhere else. Her father was in a much worse state, and though he couldn't stand, he was still lucid, still able to engage his limbs and keep moving. Alecto grabbed Peeta by the arm, and helped her father drag him toward the edge of the beach, where the water surrounding the Cornucopia met the shore, and left him in the shallows. Beneath her feet, the sand was soft, sinking as the water pulled away, rushing back into a swell.
Katniss was the first one there. Tentatively, she dipped her blistered hand into it, and bit back a scream. A moment later, she brought her hand up, stunned, and showed Alecto. Gone were the angry blisters, the boils swirling with poison and pus. The water had washed it all away, leaving only scars, which was nothing new to them. One-by-one, they dipped their limbs into the water. Alecto wandered deeper into the water, dragging her father along. At the first contact between the blistered calves and the water, Alecto nearly buckled and fell in, but after a moment, her muscles trembling, her body tingling with numbing adrenaline, she felt herself begin to stabilise. When she'd deemed herself ready, Alecto plunged head-first into the water, the pain rippling up her back a temporary fury flaying her skin, until she felt nothing but a calm, cooling sensation as the water smoothed over her wounds, made her new again. Then she resurfaced, gathering a mouthful of water and swishing it around to the back of her throat. The others were doing the same, cleaning themselves off, Katniss helping Peeta clean his face, Atlas pulling Finnick feet-first into the water. Alecto wondered how they could all act so communal in a death match where they were meant to be competitors.
Floating on her back, Alecto lifted her head to the sky, still dark, the starless night still casting shadows over the arena. The wound in her side stung from the saltwater, but Alecto kept ignoring it, and it'd faded to a dull ache in the back of her subconscious. The waves tossed, restless, but not disturbed. Surely by now, Cashmere would've disappeared into the jungle, somewhere, lying in wait for them. Still, even though the biggest threats among the tributes had been culled, they were too vulnerable out here in the open. Even now, Alecto was wary of what could be lurking in the depths. Each time the waves pushed her further away from shore, she paddled back, kicking with all her might. Somewhere to her right, she heard Finnick splashing through the depths, diving and springing up like a fish, completely at home, at ease, in the water.
When Peeta left them to tap a tree, Alecto felt someone float up beside her.
"We should get back into cover," her father said, grimly. "How're your blisters? Did you get hit bad?"
Alecto lifted a hand, laid it level, and made a so-so gesture. She glanced at her father, assessing the damage done to him. The water had washed away most of the blisters, but Alecto didn't like the look of the scars left behind, pockmarking the sides of his face, marring the skin around his neck. There must've been more, hidden beneath his jumpsuit, which was already worn down by the acidic chemicals in the fog. Atlas must've registered the worry in his daughter's unshifting countenance because the smile he gave her was not quite forced, but not quite natural either.
"I'm fine." Atlas cast her an impish smirk. "How drunk do you think Iko's getting after watching us almost die?"
Alecto regarded her father with a toothy grin. The thought of Iko watching them stumble through the jungle blindly to evade an excruciating death and downing a shot to cope with the stress shouldn't have sent a jolt of delirious joy through her, but, oh, how she missed her friend. How she missed Iko's permanently scathing scowls, her cutting remarks, her dry humour and her vicious cursing, how she'd pat the top of Alecto's head with the awkward affection of someone who hadn't learnt how to be tender and was forced to improvise. What Alecto would give just to hear Iko's voice once more, even if it were a piece of criticism or a scolding.
Almost immediately, the quiet beeping of a parachute felt like a silent retort. Until Alecto fished the bobbing container out of the water and opened it to find a silver canister containing a silver device Alecto identified as a stapler after sifting through her memories dating back to her work experience back at the clinic, some sort of minty salve, and some fresh bandages in a plastic slip.
Focus on yourself, asshole.
- Iko
Atlas let out a breathy laugh as he leant over Alecto's shoulder to squint at the note stuck to the plastic slip. Alecto smiled, hearing the sting of Iko's sardonic tone in her mind's eye.
"Hey, guys," Finnick called from the water's edge, "we gotta go!"
Alecto shut the container securely. Flicking her eyes skyward, she tapped two fingers to her temple in a mock salute, knowing Iko was watching, and trudged up the sandy shore with her father in tow. They joined Katniss and Finnick onshore, and trudged up to the jungle. Almost immediately the jovial mood dissipated, and the sudden shift in the air sent a shower of ice through Alecto's gut, her skin prickling as the hairs not he back of her neck stood. Alecto hadn't thought much of the monkeys before, had spotted maybe one or two when they came crashing through the underbrush to get away from the fog and assumed they were simply part of the jungle's animal life, but she'd never been more aware of them now.
As she craned her neck upward, a slender, calloused hand encircled her wrist, a warning squeeze. Alecto glanced sideways at Katniss, who gave a subtle shake of her head, and though her fingers were a ghost against Alecto's pulse-point she felt Katniss' urgent plea seep into her veins, quickening her heart.
In the corner of her eye, a flicker of motion drew her notice, but she suppressed the instinct to look. They moved with a silent fluidity, slipping over the branches of the trees above them, surrounding them on all sides, a council of death staring down at the pickings. The tributes were only five strong, but Alecto counted over eleven sets of paws, not including the ones behind her. Unease plucked at her chest, and Alecto had to clench her hands into fists at her side, her fingers itching for the security of her swords, still in their sheaths strapped to her back. For now, she only had the parachute and its silver steel container, but that alone was barely a weapon, even if Alecto could think of at least three ways to use it for defense.
Not five inches to her left, the branch beside her dipped, leaves rustling. Alecto felt the monkey's presence as it settled on its perch, its putrid breath hissing into her ear, long tail flicking. Behind her, Alecto felt her father stiffen, and Alecto could only hope he was smart enough not to act on his protective instincts. Around them, the air thickened with a tension so palpable Alecto felt it against her throat, invisible noose tightening, drawing her spine stiff. Just a few paces in front of them, Peeta bent over the spile, water flowing into a makeshift container he'd made out of leaves, unaware of the threat looming overhead.
"Peeta?" Katniss said, her voice startlingly level, despite her pale expression. "I need your help with something."
"Okay, just a minute. I think I've just about got it," said Peeta, entirely oblivious, focused on the tree.
Alecto counted the weapons between them, and felt, in her bones, a vicious curse building in her throat. Katniss' depleted reserve of arrows didn't hold much promise. None of them had any other long-range weapons to spare.
"Move toward us quietly, so you don't startle it."
Peeta straightened, and did as he was told, and though Alecto knew he hadn't spotted the monkeys yet, the irregularity in Katniss' tone was enough of an indication that something was wrong. Forcing herself to breathe, to keep the wariness off her expression, Alecto could only hope Peeta remained calm as he moved through the jungle toward them, closing the gap between himself and the group. Above, the monkeys watched, still, statues hovering, breathing down their necks. Carefully, slowly, Alecto wound the parachute around one of her wrists, the solid metal container swinging from its strings like a mace.
Five steps to relative safety, Peeta's eyes flicked upward.
In an instant, the world exploded into motion.
Alecto swung the container to her left and it cracked down hard against the jaw of the monkey closest to her mid-launch. It let out a furious roar, paws flying to its face, its sudden attack crippled, and tumbled blindly to Alecto's feet, shaking off its disorientation.
She unsheathed her sword and, in the same breath, slashed its blade across its throat as it launched itself at her once more, its fangs bared, jaws wide and prepared to sink its teeth into her head. Warm blood sprayed across Alecto's face, trickling into her mouth. Its guttural cry was cut short by the gaping wound in its throat, as its beady eyes went wide, its massive body toppling sideways, dead. Alecto watched, horrified, as the other monkeys slid down the hanging vines, leaping from branch to branch, a cascade of beastly fury descending upon them.
"Mutts!" Katniss shouted.
Adrenaline ripped through Alecto's body as she darted toward the first opening she could find, the others crashing through the greenery a couple paces behind her. The monkeys followed, tracking them from the canopy, an army of hundreds, their claws extended, their war-cries echoing through the jungle after them. Alecto heard the dull thunk of Katniss' arrows finding their targets, but it wasn't until Finnick ran each monkey Katniss had struck through with his trident did they stay down. Alecto glanced over her shoulder for a moment, searching for her father, as she raced through the shrubbery. That split second's worth of distraction almost cost her. One of the monkeys directly above leapt toward her, razor-sharp claws out and teeth bared.
The quiet whistle of a spear sluiced through the air overhead, and struck the monkey through its chest. Alecto rolled clear as it dropped to the ground like a sack of rocks, and lay still. Another flung itself toward her, but Alecto was ready this time. She swung her sword in an upward arc, slashing through the monkey's torso, its steaming intestines spilling from the gaping wound. More blood, hot and slick, splashed over her head, painting her flaxen hair crimson. Alecto wiped the blood from her eyes and spun round to cut down the next monkey as it launched itself at Finnick's exposed back.
The five of them had converged at the epicentre of the fight, backs only to each other, watching from all sides. Each time Katniss shot a monkey off its post, Finnick skewered it with his trident. Each time Peeta drew a monkey in with his knife, Atlas attacked from its flank, his own broad sword raised. At one point, Alecto felt her back connect with Katniss', and, instantly, she found herself orienting her movements around Katniss'. Like a violent shadow, Alecto fell into step with the younger girl. Where Katniss went, Alecto followed, making up for where she fell short. In the same vein, Katniss drew in the targets for Alecto to finish off. When Katniss shot her arrow at a monkey that leapt and bounded overhead, knocking it off its branch, Alecto's sword found a home in its heart as it fell.
To her right, Alecto felt Finnick falter. He was still trying to dislodge his trident from a dead monkey's chest, when another charged at him. In a blink, a sword materialised, burying itself to the hilt in its skull. The monkey dropped to the ground, dead.
When she turned, she found her father, weaponless. Over his shoulder, two monkeys let out a blood-curdling cry, white fangs flashing in the dark, their eyes manic, locked on her father.
Alecto's body went cold with instinct.
The monkeys launched themselves at him.
What tore from her throat was half a primal scream.
"Papa! Behind you!"
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
to make up for the suffering in Throne i will reward you all with more suffering!
anyway. johanna lives rent free in alecto's head!!!! ALWAYS! however, alecto rn is too regressed to handle a relationship so the romance will be extremely slow-burnt until the next book. fair warning. however it will be delicious!
ANYWAY. thoughts!!!