Skyler's arm stung badly. She was also soaking wet and stunned with horror. She'd barely got a look at the scene in the church but it was enough to make her feel sick. She'd seen horrible things back home; starved babies, children horrifically deformed, bodies splattered where they'd fallen out of trees or been brutally assaulted by the Peacekeepers and were now rotten and covered in flies, but the vicious murder of the twins was the worst. They hadn't been hurting anyone or breaking any rules. They'd only been trying to make the most of their lot. Nobody in Panem could blame them for that.
With a dull feeling in her stomach, she realised that this was what the Games were about. Take the innocents and make them suffer. The guilty will think twice.
Oak had a point. Where was he? That cannon hadn't been him, had it? Had the Capitol finally got to him? She hoped it hadn't been painful. Knowing the Capitol, she doubted it.
She had nowhere to go. She wasn't sure she could fend for herself but even if Oak wouldn't dead he would be impossible to track down. She didn't know who else was still alive either. It was just her on her own, with blood trickling down her arm and water down her back, not that she could feel it properly through her soaking wet clothes.
"Are you happy now?" she yelled at the sky, startling herself, "Is this fun?"
As soon as she said it she knew she'd just done something very stupid. She clapped a hand to her mouth in horror but it was too late to take it back. She felt like she was staring down the barrel of a Peacekeeper's gun and had kicked him in the shins. That sort of foolish.
A gentle woosh drifted over her head. Something glittered above her. Expecting a Capitol bomb, she darted out of the way and hid behind a gravestone; how had she ended up in a graveyard? The package didn't explode.
She threw a rock at it.
It just sat there, gazing quizzically at her. A little golden box with a number eleven on the side and a note pinned to the top. A tiny silver parachute vanished with a pop.
The sponsors must have sent it before her little outburst. Quickly, she snatched it up, in case they could change their minds. It rattled teasingly. It also smelt very strongly of alcohol. But why would they send her drink? She was fairly sure she didn't look like a drinker. Unless...
She ripped the packaging off. Inside was a little tub, stuffed with a yellow cream. It had to be a kind of healing lotion. The note ruffled in the breeze and she grabbed at it, wincing as her arm protested.
'Skyler', it read, in neat writing that was so small she could barely read it, 'This is for your arm. Just dab some over the scratch and repeat every hour. Don't use too much; you might need it later.'
It took her a few minutes to get her head around it. She'd been taught to read, like every Eleven child, but as soon as she was old enough she'd been shoved out into the fields and never had the time to continue. She could barely recognise her own name, and one of the sentences had a funny kind of double squiggle in the middle of it for no real reason. The writing didn't help either. It was smudged, like it had been written quickly. Still, it was like a little bubble of hope inflated inside her. She had sponsors. People had liked her.
Not now they wouldn't, she reminded herself, now you're on your own.
On your own. Skyler had never been on her own before. She'd always had her fellow workers, even if she wasn't allowed to talk to them, or Vintage. Now she was miles away from any of them, and without any way to talk to them.
Wait. She could talk to them. She just couldn't guarantee that it would get through and she knew she wouldn't get a reply.
"Ma. Dad. Vintage. I love you, okay?" she whispered. Nobody replied. She could imagine them, curled up around the screen in the middle of their little village, dry eyed but sad, surrounded by the comfort of the other families. Then the Peacekeepers would come around and threaten them with whipping, even carry it out if someone had annoyed them.
Her arm ached. She rubbed the cream into it, wincing as it stung. That was good, it meant it was working, but she didn't like it one bit. She didn't even dare to look at her arm in case it pushed her over the edge. She'd never liked the sight of blood. Her glasses slipped down her nose and she pushed them up, getting some of the grease on the lenses.
The twins.
She rested her head against the cool gravestone and tried hard not to cry.
"Half way," Raylum murmured, grasping the arrow as hard as he could. Court peered up from the small bird she was cooking. The building was perfect for starting a fire; it was stone so it wouldn't spread, and inside so it shouldn't go out. Shadows flickered around the emptiness, making Raylum twitch nervously.
"Half way?" she asked.
"The Games. Half way through the Games." He had to keep repeating it to himself or he wouldn't believe it. He was halfway through. He was getting slowly closer to saying goodbye to Court, one way or another.
The firelight flickered on her bare arms and danced in her eyes. People thought she was savage but Raylum was fairly convinced that he'd never seen anything more beautiful.
"I'd forgotten about that," she whispered. It was true; she had. She'd just been surviving, like normal. Apart from the twins...
They would have had to go sooner or later. "The girl got away, didn't she?"
"I got her in the arm," said Raylum uneasily. There were drips of blood leading up to the door, which he'd pushed closed. He didn't want anyone else getting in. The light outside was starting to get weak. The far reaches of the building were chilly, but he didn't dare to get any closer to Court. He could deal with cold.
"Badly?"
"Don't know. She was quick."
"Twelve of us left." Silence. She knew what that meant. She was eleven deaths away from winning. She wouldn't have cared. She'd expected to turn up and get everything over and done with quickly. Everyone hated her anyway.
No. She knew that was wrong. Raylum didn't. He quite clearly adored her, and if he did then surely there would be others out there who would. So maybe she had something else to live for instead.
She was going to win now.
But Raylum. He was looking at her with big eyes, trusting eyes. He was cute in a strange, lost way. He didn't seem to know where he belonged, which didn't surprise her. He'd been trained like a Career, but he wasn't one. He was too fit for the lower districts, not intelligent enough for the middle districts. The only place she thought he would fit was here with her. He was relying on her. She couldn't kill him. Could she?
She was looking at him, but he didn't look away.
He would do anything to keep her alive, right to the last.
It was getting dark. Sebastian readied his things for another raid on the Career-ground. Nobody had picked up his club from under the bridge but he didn't really need it now. He took a sip of water and munched on a packet of fruit and nut mix, making sure that he kept the wrapper deep in his pockets so he didn't drop them and leave clues.
Which one would he go for this time? Perhaps Klaus. He was the most dangerous. Definitely not Crete. He wondered how he was getting along. He reckoned that in a different situation he might have liked Crete. The boy had intelligence and courage and ambition.
But this was the Games and there was no point in liking people.
He wasn't that surprised when a package floated down into the stream with a number Eight on the side. Sponsors. He knew he'd had to have some; people were more impressed with simple logic and a bit of showing off intelligence than with the giggly and arrogant Careers. It wouldn't surprise him if he had more than the remaining Careers put together. He plucked it out of the water, wiping it dry with the hem of his shirt. Light but breathable. The sort he'd made; quite high-tech clothing. He smirked at the sky.
It was better than he'd expected. He was thinking maybe tiny little darts, but it was a full dart gun, like his but expertly crafted out of wood, even with tiny little stitches carved into the side and his name around the rim. It was more than just a weapon, it was a work of art.
He didn't have time for art. He tested it; it worked. Perfect. They'd even given him some darts too, sharp stuff that should pierce skin better than the cocktail sticks he was using, and a leather pouch to put them in with an elegant eight woven into the side.
He crushed up some more sleeper berries on a leaf, adding some water to make them into a paste and being careful to avoid any skin contact with the sticky purple gloop. Then he dipped the darts into it, blew on them to dry it slightly and tucked them into the pouch.
He disposed of the sleeper mush leaf by digging a little hole with his foot and patting earth over the top, high up so it couldn't contaminate the stream. Then he tucked the new dart gun behind his ear.
Now he was ready to go.
Careers, you have met your match, he thought with a grin. He hoped Eddie was watching. He was only proving himself right.