Fall Away

Katniss called us all back to the shore, a wild look in her eye that none of us dared to ignore. “A clock! Wiress was right! A clock!”

“What are you talking about?” Johanna sneered. She cast a questioning glance at Finnick, as if gauging his response to Katniss, but he gave her a strangely forceful look that I couldn’t understand. He noticed me watching him and quickly rearranged his expression to a casual smile, giving me a charming wink, but it was too late to play off whatever I had just seen.

“It’s a clock!” Katniss said urgently, pulling Wiress out of the water behind her. “Everyone, get your stuff. We need to get to the Cornucopia, now.”

Beetee clutched the large spool of wire to his chest protectively while the rest of us gathered our packs. Johanna’s jaw tightened as she squeezed the last bit of saltwater out of her hair and she watched Katniss like she was debating whether or not to follow, though she begrudgingly caved in and stormed after her.

Katniss led us back to the arms of rock that sprawled out from the Cornucopia in the centre of the bay, Peeta close behind. Finnick and I stayed at the back, helping Wiress and Beetee, and Johanna trailed along in the middle, looking displeased with the entire situation.

“This entire arena seems to be laid out like a clock. The lines of rock dividing the bay divide up the arena into hours. Every hour has a new threat, but each threat stays only within its own wedge,” she began excitedly.

Just as we made it back to the Cornucopia she spun around and gestured at the northeastern quarter of the arena. “It all starts with the lightning. It strikes at noon, and midnight. Then the blood rain, fog, and monkeys — that’s one, two, and three o’clock. Those are the first 4 hours. At ten, there’s that big wave that hits from over there,” she continued, pointing over to the section we’d seen flooded just this morning.

“Wiress, you’re a genius,” Finnick said with a wolfy grin, giving her a one-armed squeeze before he released her, letting her sit down on the edge of the Cornucopia and dip her feet in the water while the rest of us took in the arena as if for the first time, processing what we knew now.

“So then, the tail points to twelve,” Peeta noted, squinting to confirm that the tip of the Cornucopia aligned perfectly with the tree.

“Where does the lightning strike, exactly?” Beetee asked, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

“That big tree,” Katniss said, pointing it out.

Beetee knelt down and fiddled with the wire coil again, though he didn’t take his eyes off the tree. “Good.”

I wondered if he planned on creating some sort of electric fence with the coil to kill us. He had coil, he had saltwater, and he was from District 3, with a famous aptitude for technology. I didn’t know that it was actually possible, but if it was…Beetee would know how to do it. My stomach churned.

Wiress continued splashing her feet in the water happily, singing “Hickory Hickory Dock” to herself as the rest of us drew a rough outline of the arena in the dirt, marking off the sections we knew and trying to figure out if we had seen or heard anything from the other sections, when suddenly there was a sharp gasp and an eerie silence behind us.

I whirled around, hands twitching for my knife, only to see Wiress fall helplessly to the ground and slide limply into the water. Brutus and Enobaria, the tributes from District 2, snarled at us with their sharp teeth, like wild dogs, and Brutus pulled his blade out of Wiress’s body before turning to face us.

“No!” Beetee cried. He dove towards Wiress’s body reflexively but Peeta held him back; just as Brutus tightened his grip on his blade and took a step towards us, Katniss’s arrow pierced his chest and he faltered, tumbling back into the water and barely missing Wiress’s body.

Enobaria howled with anger. “You—“ she began, but Finnick’s trident had struck her clear through the chest before she got the rest of her words out. He kicked at her torso to pry her body off his trident, and she collapsed onto the rock below, gurgling and choking for a few seconds more before growing still, and 3 cannons fired in the distance.

The eerie silence that followed didn’t last long; it was quickly broken up by a loud burst of gleeful laughter. I didn’t have to look hard for the source; the glint of blonde hair whipping in the wind was unmissable and unmistakable. Cashmere.

Katniss fumbled for another arrow, but was too late; without even a second’s hesitation I was gone. Cashmere turned to run back to the shore, but she made a careful point of giving me a sickening smile over her shoulder. She wanted this; she wanted me to follow her. She had something planned.

I didn’t care.

I hurled a knife at her desperately and watched it whizz past her, just barely missing her head and clipping off a tuft of her hair instead. She laughed loudly, but I saw her hands tighten into fists at her side. Good. I wanted her scared. I threw another knife, aiming for her ankles to slow her down so I could catch her, could see the fear in her eyes up close, but it just barely missed and clipped off the rock instead with a shower of sparks.

“You wanna play, 4?” Cashmere yelled in a sing-song voice. “Don’t run out of toys before the game even starts!”

“Winnie! Winnie, stop!” Finnick screamed, and I didn’t need to look back to know he was chasing me.

“Finnick, what are you doing? Let her go!” Johanna yelled.

“Shut up! Winnie, please, don’t do this!” Finnick’s voice broke in its desperation, still chasing after me. I dared to cast a quick look over my shoulder at him and the look of helpless need in his eyes made my heart swell up into my throat, like it was going to choke me.

“Winnie, baby, come on now! There’s someone who wants to see you,” Cashmere sang, finally reaching the sandy shores of the beach and spinning around to face me. Her eyes were alight with a venomous kind of glee as she walked backwards towards the tree line, and I knew what she was waiting for.

Adri was here.

My stomach dropped and I faltered, my feet hesitating just for a second and sending me sprawling face-first into the sand. I scrambled to get up, my feet finding no purchase in the sand, but before I could stand I had Cashmere’s blade at my throat, pressing just hard enough to break skin. I could feel the rivulet of blood dance down my neck and under the collar of my top.

“Remind me, where exactly did you get stabbed last time?” Cashmere cooed. “I promised I’d let Adri kill you — he made all of us promise, he wanted it so bad — but who knows. Promises are made to be broken.”

I saw a flicker of movement in the trees behind Cashmere, and I felt a choked sob shake through my body as I saw him for the first time in what felt like forever. I felt my love for him crash over me, consume me, and I found myself thinking that, even if he did want to kill me, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing that his face would be the last thing I saw. Maybe it didn’t make sense that I still loved him after everything, but maybe it didn’t have to. Looking at him, I just knew that the love I felt for him couldn’t change, and perhaps dying was less painful than the pain of his abandonment.

It didn’t matter. If I had to die, let me die by the hand of my lover. I understood it now, why Adri wrapped my hand around the knife he’d used to stab himself in the last arena. It was so clear.

“Adri,” I breathed his name one last time as he ran across the sand as hard as his legs could carry him, raising his blade overhead. Cashmere’s smile faltered as she heard the rush of movement behind her and she flinched; I felt her tremble reverberate through the tip of her sword against my neck.

The singing bite of metal swinging through the air. A scream cut short by a heavy, wet thud. A sharp gasp. And then, silence. Not even the sound of Finnick’s steps on the rock chasing after me. I stayed frozen in place, kneeling in the sand, not even daring to breathe. Then, a head full of long blonde curls bounced onto the sand one way while a lean, shapely body toppled down the other. And finally, cannon fire.