Chapter Text
Sunlight blinds Addy’s eyes for the first few seconds she’s elevatored into the arena. Precious time she would’ve liked to not be wasted. Confined to her plate for the first sixty seconds of the Games, she observes her surroundings and the other tributes.
“Ladies and gentlemen, let the 72nd Hunger Games begin,” the disembodied voice of Claudius Templesmith says. “And may the odds be ever in your favor.”
They’re on top of a stony hill, the shining golden Cornucopia obscuring her sight on the tributes directly opposite of her, and all around them are the ruins of what must’ve been a city once. Broken columns and dilapidated buildings, all whites and yellows. Rich flora everywhere—plants she recognizes and plants she’s never seen before. And, along the edge of the city, woods.
Her heart does a little jump. If she wants to survive, that’s where she will have to go.
She blinks against the bright reflection of the Cornucopia, forcing herself to look at the weapons and other gear the Gamemakers left them with this year. Even from where she’s standing, a good forty meters from the mouth of the Cornucopia, she can see a wide array of weapons. Spears, swords, bows and arrows, javelins, and even slings. Next to them are about ten shields, a rare find in the Games. The Gamemakers don’t like tributes being too capable of defending themselves. There must be a reason for including them. There are other items, too. Backpacks that could any number of items, pieces of rope and plastic scattered all over the circle formed by the tribute plates.
Addy eyes the weapons. She knows what Colette wants her to do.
“Grab whatever you can and get the hell out of there. You won’t survive the bloodbath, but you won’t survive without a weapon, either. You’re fit. You stand a chance.” The words echo in Addy’s mind, as they have the past since Colette had said them. It’s terrifying advice. Addy has seen enough Games to know that the most lives are lost during the opening fight at the Cornucopia, but she also has to have faith that Colette knows what she’s talking about. She fought her way through the Games, and she wants Addy to do the same. It’s the only way she’ll stand a real chance. Addy knows this—but still.
She looks at the tributes on either side of her. Some of them, like Tess from 5 and Emily from 10, look like they’re about to throw up. Others, like Cori from 8 and Brianna from 10, seem more determined. Ready to fight. And then there are the Careers, like Beth Cassidy from 2, who have been training for this their whole lives. Even right now, they can’t seem to wait for the first blood to be spilled. And they want to be the ones who spill it.
Beth Cassidy is two plates to Addy’s left, and her eyes are trained on the weapons in the Cornucopia. Her lips seem to move. Is she counting down the seconds?
Shit. Addy should’ve done that, too. There can’t be more than ten left.
Ten seconds until the Games start.
Addy’s mouth goes dry. She bends her knees slightly and tries to tear her gaze away from Beth. But then Beth turns her head and stares straight into Addy’s eyes. A smirk forms on her lips.
The gong sounds.
But whatever Beth tried to do, it didn’t work. Addy throws herself forward, towards the Cornucopia. She forgets about Beth Cassidy and focuses on one thing only: getting her hands on a weapon. Any weapon.
From the corner of her eyes she sees the boy from 10 running next to her, but he seems to be focused on a green backpack. In a split second decision, Addy veers off course the slightest bit, just enough to shove him aside and grab the backpack for herself.
No time to think. This is the Hunger Games. It’s everyone for themselves now.
She doesn’t stop running to sling the backpack over her shoulders. Doesn’t stop when she sees the male Career from 1 get his hands on the first sword and instantly hacking away at the unfortunate tribute in his way. Addy doesn’t stop to see the blood spurting from her neck.
She keeps running. Almost there.
With just two meters left, her path is blocked by a boy whose name or district she doesn’t remember, his eyes glistening with the unquenchable thirst for blood. She dives forward, tackling him to the ground.
In the back of her head, she hears Colette’s voice again. “Always go for the kill. It might be the difference between coming home and dying in the arena.”
But Colette didn’t tell her that wrestling a guy who’s also fighting for his life is a lot harder than sparring with the trainers at the Training Center.
One second Addy has the upper hand, pressing her hands down on the boy’s throat, not thinking about the way his eyes bulge from his head as his face turns red, and the next he knees in the stomach so hard she sees actual stars. And then he’s on top of her, choking her, and she wants to cough but she can’t fucking breathe. She can’t reach for his face and she can’t see. She can’t do anything.
For a split second she thinks that this is how it will end for her and she hopes that Slocum is doing a lot better because District 7 could really use another victor. But then the boy coughs up blood and his fingers go slack around her throat.
Addy wants to take a breath of relief, but there’s no time. Because Beth Cassidy is towering over her, holding a knife that’s covered in the boy’s blood. She’s breathing hard and bleeding from a cut just above her eyebrow, her blue eyes trained on Addy’s face.
She’s gonna kill me, Addy thinks. Beth didn’t save Addy’s life. She just made another kill. And now she’s gonna kill Addy.
But Beth doesn’t move. She grips the handle of the knife, but she doesn’t lunge forward to stab Addy with it. She just stands there. Like this isn’t the Hunger Games. Like there aren’t children dying right outside the Cornucopia.
For a moment, the world is frozen.
Then someone, another Career, calls Beth’s name. Beth unfreezes. She spins around and runs back to where the rest of the fight is happening.
What the fuck?
But Addy can’t afford to be surprised right now. She has to move. There’ll be time to assess what just happened later. First she needs to get her hands on a weapon. Almost dying cost her precious minutes that she really couldn’t afford to lose.
She scrambles to her feet and looks around at what the Cornucopia has to offer. Mostly weapons. It looks like everything else was outside in the field, and probably gone by now. Another mistake that could be fatal.
Colette must be shaking her head at Addy’s incompetence right now.
But Addy’s still alive. She still stands a chance. She grabs two knives, shoving one of them into her belt and gripping the other one tight. Then she takes a spear, which is surprisingly lightweight, and decides she can’t carry any more.
One backpack and three weapons. If she makes it out of here alive, Colette will be proud of her.
Most of the fighting moved to the side of the Cornucopia. Already the hill is littered with bodies, and the sand is no longer brown—it’s red.
Beth and the other Careers are fighting the last of the tributes that decided to stay for the bloodbath, but even to Addy’s untrained eyes it’s easy to see that it’s an unfair fight. And even though Colette told her to fight, Addy wants to put as much distance between herself and the Career pack, which seems to still be complete. No Career tribute will die today.
Beth, already covered in blood, drives her knife through a girl’s throat. She’s not smirking anymore.
Addy starts running down the steep hill, her sights set on the woods. No one can climb trees better than her, not even Slocum, and thus her best chance of survival lies within those woods.
Up close, the ruins of the city are, admittedly, pretty cool. Addy doesn’t know much of ancient architecture because almost all the topics they covered at school were about lumber, but the landscape vaguely reminds her of somewhere, even though she can’t put her finger on what.
Ivy crawls up the few walls that are left standing, and there are even a couple buildings that seem to be rather intact. A perfect hiding spot for tributes who don’t know how to survive in the woods or don’t belong to the Career pack.
Addy’s halfway through the city when the first cannon goes off, signaling the end of the bloodbath at the Cornucopia. She doesn’t stop to listen, but she counts every shot.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine.
Silence.
Nine dead. Fifteen tributes left, six of which are working together in a lethal alliance. Despite making it out and being armed, the odds aren’t exactly in Addy’s favor.
Addy estimates about two hours have passed since she ran from the Cornucopia when she finally reaches the edge of the woods, and all that time the sun was beating down on her. A layer of sweat has formed on every square inch of Addy’s skin, and the clothes she was made to wear don’t seem to be much help at all.
Her outfit consisted of three parts: a thin T-shirt, some type of cloak that’s fastened with clasps around her waist, and a pair of lightweight pants. All light colors—to reflect sunlight? It’s not doing a great job. She’s also wearing white leather boots that are heavy but comfortable. Already, her outfit is covered in mud and blood from the boy Beth killed. For all the Capitol’s obsessions with fashion and makeup, they clearly didn’t think this one through.
The woods are a welcome break of green after all that brown, but they are nothing like the ones back home. There, the trees are planted in neat rows and given growth accelerator to continuously be able to provide all of Panem of lumber. Here, however, the woods are more natural. Addy knows the arenas are build, but whoever built them did a good job at pretending like everything is grown naturally.
The sound of the woods, however, is exactly like home. Birds are chirping, small animals are running around rustling the land, and the wind is blowing through the trees. There’s a large variety of them here—pine, maple, oak… and there seems to be no end to them.
Addy wanders around in the tree line for a while, before deciding that it’s probably smarter to go deeper into the woods for safety reasons. When nightfall comes she doesn’t want to be anywhere she can be easily spotted by other tributes, not until she can assess the situation and make a plan for the next couple of days.
And she needs water. Her throat and mouth are completely dry from running around in the blazing sun all day, and even though the trees provide shadow and a slight breeze, she needs water to quench her thirst.
Come to think of it, she hasn’t seen any water at all today, not even from the hill with the Cornucopia.
Shit.
Now that the issue of water has crossed her mind, she becomes hyper-aware of the dehydration that’s setting in quick. Suddenly the dryness in her throat is all she can focus on. She tries to lick her lips, but her tongue feels like sandpaper rather than the relief she seeks.
Maybe there’s a bottle of water in her backpack.
She tucks both her knives into her belt and, holding the javelin in one hand, swiftly climbs up a high, sturdy looking tree. She doesn’t go too high, just high enough to be out of reach for most tributes, and stations herself at the base of a branch. Taking her backpack off her shoulders, she leans her sweat-covered back against the cool bark of the tree.
The contents of the backpack turn out to be a massive disappointment: a tarp, a small, empty bottle, and a flashlight which is the epitome of useless. No one in their right mind is going to use a flashlight in the Hunger Games.
For some reason, the useless backpack hits harder than the fact that Addy almost died today, and she wants to fling it out of the tree in a fit of rage. But she doesn’t. Nothing is useless in the Games, she just has to find the right purpose for it.
She shoves everything back into the backpack and slings it back over her shoulders, climbing higher up the tree in hopes of finding a source of water. Instead she finds herself in a fairly good position to overlook a large part of the arena.
In the distance, the Cornucopia shimmers in the sunset, sitting firmly on top of its hill. It’s impossible to see if anyone’s still there, but Addy wouldn’t be surprised if the Career pack made their camp somewhere close to it. Unless there’s no water at the Cornucopia either, it’s the single best vantage point in the arena—it’s definitely the highest.
The city seems to be build around the Cornucopia hill, in turn surrounded by the woods. No water in sight anywhere. Not even a vague shimmer.
Now that the sun is setting, the temperature is dropping rapidly, and Addy suddenly realizes she can use the tarp as some sort of sleeping bag for lack of an actual sleeping bag. It’s still not cold, but it’s significantly colder than before, and with the wind blowing through Addy’s clothes against her sweaty skin, Addy can’t help but shiver.
But it’s peaceful up here. She doesn’t want to go down yet. Up here, she can almost trick herself into believing that this isn’t her reality.
As the sun sinks away behind the trees, the anthem sounds, followed by the seal of the Capitol. Addy has a premium seat to the show, but the death recap is just photos and a district number.
Both tributes from 3. The boy from 5—Tess survived. The girl from 6. The boy from 8. Slocum survived! Addy hasn’t forgotten about him, but they agreed they wouldn’t form an alliance. Addy didn’t want to take the chance of it coming down to the two of them. Still, she’s glad he survived the first day. Tania, the girl from 9. She smiled at Addy once, during their three days of training together. It’s how she knows some of their names, like Beth and Cori and Brianna. Both Cori’s and Brianna’s district partners didn’t make it. Neither did both tributes from District 11. Then the boy from 12.
The sky goes dark, and Addy’s left to her own thoughts. Realization is setting in. Fourteen more will have to die, and the chance of her being one of them are extremely high. There’s no point in lying to herself. If she makes it into the final eight it’ll be a miracle. She won’t be surprised if Beth will be crowned this year’s victor.
No. She can’t think like this. She has to keep fighting until the last second. Her mom is waiting for her. She promised Colette she would do everything to come back. She can do this.
Addy Hanlon can become the 72nd victor. And she will.
But for all her newfound resolve to survive, the lack of water quickly becomes an issue again. It drives Addy out of the safety of her tree and onward. There has to be water somewhere. It’s no fun to watch twenty-four kids lose their mind due to dehydration.
Addy walks until it’s pitch black and the only way to continue her journey would be by using the flashlight. No water today.
Addy climbs up another tree, finding a branch to sleep. She uses her tarp and belt to make a makeshift bed that will assure she’s not gonna fall to her death in the middle of the night, and clasps both her hands around her knives.
It’s almost impossible to fall asleep, with thousands of thoughts racing through her mind and her body begging for even a single drop of water, but after a while the exhaustion takes over.
She awakens to the sound of chirping birds and the warmth of the sun’s first rays on her face.
Did she really sleep through the entire night undisturbed? That’s an unexpected but welcome surprise.
She doesn’t waste time undoing her bed, shoving the tarp back into her backpack and the belt back around her waist. Her mouth is still dry, and on top of that her stomach has now realized it hadn’t been fed in nearly a day. She has to find food and water.
Just as she’s about to drop down from the tree and continue her search, she suddenly hears voices.
Careers?
No.
Two girls.
Addy readjusts her grip on the javelin.
Cori and Brianna walk into sight, both looking significantly worse than Addy remembers them. Brianna’s limping, her arm slung over Cori’s shoulders, and Cori’s clothes are all but torn to shreds, a large gash running down her arm. What the hell happened to them? Did another tribute do this? Or the Gamemakers?
It would be easy to take them out, even if Addy’s dehydrated state. The both of them are wounded, and Addy is not. She doubts they have any weapons.
But these are the girls she ate lunch with at the Training Center, against better judgment. And now it comes back to bite her in the ass. She can’t kill them. She can’t have their blood on their hands. It’s different now than during the bloodbath, although she doesn’t why.
“Let’s go back,” Cori says. “They’re probably long gone by now, and we haven’t seen any other source of water anywhere else.”
Water!
“Which is precisely why they’re probably still there,” Brianna says, but there’s no resolve in her voice. It’s not quite defeat, but it’s close.
They stop walking, right underneath Addy. If either of them bothered to look up… but they don’t. Neither of them are from districts where people just sit in trees all day. It doesn’t cross their minds.
“Why? There’s water in the city.”
Shit.
Brianna lets go of Cori, limping to a tree and resting her hand against it. “Because we’re easy to finish off. They’re probably waiting for us to come back. And they have our stuff, too. We’d be stupid to go back.”
Go back, Addy thinks. They found water. They can lead her to it. Maybe she can kill one of them and force the other one to show her where it is.
“We left hours ago. I doubt they’re still in the area. They have something better to do, like hunt down the others.”
Brianna looks at Cori. For a second it looks like she’s gonna fight her on it some more, but she must be exhausted, because then she sighs. “Okay, fine.”
They start hobbling back in the same direction they came from. Addy soundlessly drops out of the tree behind them, still holding her javelin tight, and follows them at a distance. It’s a slow process, neither Cori nor Brianna able to move fast, and it crosses Addy’s mind that killing them would possibly be a mercy.
It’s agonizing, knowing that she’s walking towards a source of water but having to be patient. Addy doesn’t know how long they’ve been on the move or what time of day it is when Cori and Brianna slow down even more. Addy shoots up a tree again, watching as Cori and Brianna let go of each other and have a silent conversation with their eyes.
Then Brianna sits down against the side of a tree and Cori continues on her own. From where she’s sitting, Addy has a better view of the area around them than Cori does from the ground.
It’s empty, save for them.
And then she sees it. A vague shimmering between the trees. It’s not just a small pool of water, it’s a whole stream.
Again, Addy’s hand tightens around the javelin. Good thing, too, because less than a second later a boy with curly hair steps from behind a tree with a knife in his hand.
Cori screams.
Addy’s brain goes blank as she drops from the tree, scaring the shit out of Brianna, who also starts screaming—Cori’s name.
But Addy doesn’t want to hurt either of them. They gave her water. She just doesn’t want to give it up for this pale boy.
Her vision clouds over as she sprints towards the stream, where the boy is forcing Cori’s head underwater.
Why doesn’t he just slit her throat? This is worse on everyone involved. Except Addy.
Despite the last time she did this going horribly wrong, she tackles the boy head off of Cori. But she learned, too. Instead of trying to strangle him she just runs her javelin through his neck. Blood bubbles up from the wound and his mouth as he staggers backwards, before collapsing against a tree.
Somewhere in the back of her head she hears Colette’s voice saying, “Like that.”
Then the canon goes off and Addy’s entire body feels like she was just dumped into an ice bath.
Her first kill.
She just killed someone.
For water.
Water.
Time to think later. First it’s time to rehydrate.
She turns around to where Brianna has dragged Cori out of the water and is sobbing quietly, both their terrified eyes glued to Addy.
“Is this water drinkable?” Addy asks.
“Please don’t kill us,” Brianna cries.
Addy stares at her.
“It’s drinkable,” Cori says, voice still hoarse from almost drowning.
Addy doesn’t waste time making a snarky remark at Brianna, dropping to her knees and gulping up the water straight from the stream. She tries to drink slowly, but it’s hard to restrain herself. Still, after a few ounces, she forces herself to pull back. She digs through her backpack for the bottle, dunking it into the stream to fill it.
As it’s filling up, she becomes aware of the fact that Cori and Brianna are still staring at her.
“What?” she asks.
Brianna’s arms are protectively thrown over Cori. “Are you gonna kill us?”
Addy considers this, but she already knows the answer. Despite knowing that every screen in Panem is currently displaying her face—what else could be going on that’s more interesting?—she shakes her head. “No. But you do need to get out of here.” She jerks her thumb over her shoulder at the dead boy. “They can’t collect the body if we’re still here.”
It’s sad, but true. Trying not to show too much emotions about killing a person, Addy goes to retrieve the javelin from where it’s still stuck in the boy’s neck. Not the best move to leave it in, perhaps, but she was otherwise occupied and Cori and Brianna aren’t in any state to make use of the opportunity to get a weapon on their hands.
Just before turning around, Addy spots a backpack sitting behind the tree where the boy jumped from. Inside, she finds a couple of dried strips of meat and half a pack of crackers. A smile tugs at her lips. The remorse of killing the boy ebbs away in an instant, and she repacks her own backpack with the food.
She doesn’t look at the body as she walks away, following the stream back into the woods. It might be a dangerous tactic to stick this close to one of the only sources of water, but she doesn’t really have another choice. She doesn’t want a repeat of yesterday.
Addy munches on the food from the boy’s backpack as she travels deeper into the woods, but after her limbs don’t feel like jelly anymore she decides to ration the rest. As much as she tries to deny it to herself, she’s still a little shaken from making her first kill, even if it brought her food and one step closer to home.
She walked for, maybe, a couple of hours, when she decides to take a break and make a plan. She, once again, climbs a tree and checks her surroundings. The Cornucopia hill is still pretty far away and the fierce sunlight instantly has her breaking out into a sweat. She lowers herself to a branch in the shade, drinks some water, and sits.
So far ten tributes have died—nine in the bloodbath and the boy whose blood still stains her clothes. They must’ve been in the arena for about twenty-four hours now, and despite all the excitement from this morning, that means the Games have been slow. Addy wouldn’t be surprised if the Gamemakers are currently looking for a way to spice things up a little. She can only hope that the spicing won’t involve her, since she provided the Capitol with some A+ entertainment earlier. With some luck, though, the spice will get at least two more tributes killed today. And then there’ll be eleven left.
Should she start hunting them down? It certainly beats waiting for them to find her. She doubts that Beth will spare her life another time, if that’s even what really happened. Maybe she misinterpreted it all…
But no. Addy knows that that’s what happened. After all, Beth stood up for her before, at the Training Center.
From where she’s sitting up in her tree, Addy sees two figures coming down the stream, and she groans when she realizes who it is.
She doesn’t bother jumping down from the tree, instead making sure that they really are the only ones in the area before leaning down and whisper-yelling, “Why the fuck are you following me?”
Cori, who maybe looks a slightly bit better but not by much, shrugs. “You seem capable and we are decidedly not.”
“I don’t want you near me,” Addy says, twirling her javelin to seem more threatening. But Cori and Brianna don’t seem threatened. They just seem exhausted and in need of help and protection.
Addy climbs down the tree.
“Thank you,” Cori says. “For saving me earlier.”
Addy shrugs. “It had nothing to do with you.”
“Still.”
Addy looks at them, for real this time. It’s not a pretty sight. She remembers them from the Training Center, an unlikely pair. They didn’t know each other before coming to the Capitol, but during the three days of training they rarely left each other’s sides. If Addy squints a little she can still see the cowgirl outfits Brianna’s stylists had put her in during the Tribute Parade and the interview. District 10. Livestock. Right now, though, she’s pale, drenched in sweat despite the temperature being pretty nice, and she’s not making use of her left leg at all.
Cori doesn’t seem to be much better. What’s left of her clothes is covered in blood, and her skin is ashen. She had the sense of tying a piece of cloth around the cut on her arm, but that bandage is already starting to seep through. There’s nothing left of the smiles and jokes Addy remembers from her during training, replaced by a hollowness in her eyes that doesn’t seem like it’ll ever fill back up again.
Addy really doesn’t want allies, and she doesn’t need them either. She’s a decent fighter, has weapons and enough resources to last her at least a couple of days, and having allies—weak ones at that—will only decrease her chances of her own survival. She wants to tell them no, even wants to drive her javelin into their bodies and help them out of their misery, but she can’t.
A cannon goes off.
All three of them startle. Addy is the first to recover.
“I don’t have time to form an alliance,” she says. “I have to keep moving and figure out a way to end the Careers. They’re the biggest threat in the arena. And, no offense, but the two of you will only slow me down.”
“The Careers are in the city,” Cori says, surprising both Addy and Brianna. “What? She’s right. We don’t stand a chance against them, but she might. Look at her. She’s armed to the teeth.”
Addy squares her shoulders.
“There’s water in the city. Springs, like the source of this stream,” Cori continues. “All the Careers are working together in teams of two, but their camp is at one of these springs. Two of them are left behind to stand guard, and the other four are running around looking for victims.” She looks at Addy. “You helped me, I helped you. We’re even now.”
Addy nods. Her eyes fall on the wound on Cori’s arm, the tight red skin peeking out underneath the makeshift bandage. Her expression must be easy to read, because Cori follows her gaze and sighs.
“I know it’s infected, but we have nothing to treat it with.”
“Neither do I,” Addy says.
Cori doesn’t reply.
How long is Addy supposed to wait before turning her back on them again? Should she just kill them? Colette would want her to. But she knows their names. How is she supposed to kill them if she knows their names? The boy was easy. She barely remembered him at all. But these girls… They’re not doing anything wrong. They’re just victims of the Capitol, just like herself.
“Get out of my face,” she says instead, nodding her head towards where they came from. “If I see you again, I won’t hesitate to kill you.”
There. She warned them.
Not that it matters, but she tells herself it does, because she doesn’t know how else she’s gonna make it through.
It works, though. They turn around and, with one last look over their shoulders, disappear between the trees.
Addy watches them go, knowing she just sent them off to die. But their lives aren’t her responsibility. She didn’t come here to make friends. She has more important things to do, like ensuring her own victory. Like putting a knife to Beth Cassidy’s throat and slicing it open.