Cathing Fire

All I can think of is Joha

Footsteps coming. Two pairs. Heavy, not trying to conceal their whereabouts.

Brutus's voice. “She's good as dead! Come on, Enobaria!” Feet moving into the night.

Am I? I drift in and out of consciousness looking for an answer. Am I as good as dead? I'm in no position to make an argument to the contrary. In fact, rational thinking is a struggle. This much I know. Joha

The alliance is over. Fi

Peeta! My eyes fly open in panic. Peeta is waiting up by the tree, unsuspecting and off guard. Maybe Fi

I don't know. I don't know. I only know that I must get back to Peeta and keep him alive. It takes every ounce of will I have to push up into a sitting position and drag myself up the side of a tree to my feet. It's lucky I have something to hold on to because the jungle's tilting back and forth. Without any warning, I lean forward and vomit up the seafood feast, heaving until there can't possibly be an oyster left in my body. Trembling and slick with sweat, I assess my physical condition.

As I lift up my damaged arm, blood sprays me in the face and the world makes another alarming shift. I squeeze my eyes shut and cling to the tree until things steady a little. Then I take a few careful steps to a neighboring tree, pull off some moss, and without examining the wound further, tightly bandage my arm. Better. Definitely better not to see it. Then I allow my hand to tentatively touch my head wound. There's a huge lump but not too much blood. Obviously I've got some internal damage, but I don't seem in danger of bleeding to death. At least not through my head.

I dry my hands on moss and get a shaky grip on my bow with my damaged left arm. Secure the notch of an arrow to the string. Make my feet move up the slope.

Peeta. My dying wish. My promise. To keep him alive. My heart lifts a bit when I realize he must be alive because no ca

I reach this conclusion only seconds before I hear someone ru

I move as quickly as I can without sending the world into a whirl. My head throbs with the rapid beat of my heart. The insects, possibly excited by the smell of blood, have increased their clicking until it's a continuous roar in my ears. No, wait. Maybe my ears are actually ringing from the hit. Until the insects shut up, it will be impossible to tell. But when the insects go silent, the lightning will start. I have to move faster. I have to get to Peeta.

The boom of a ca

Something snags my feet and I sprawl out on the ground. I feel it wrapping around me, entwining me in sharp fibers. A net! This must be one of Fi

On the good side, I'm on the right path and have not been so disoriented by the head injury as to lose my sense of direction. On the bad side, the wire has reminded me of the oncoming lightning storm. I can still hear the insects, but are they starting to fade?

I keep the loops of wire a few feet to my left as a guide as I run but take great care not to touch them. If those insects are fading and the first bolt is about to strike the tree, then all its power will come surging down that wire and anyone in contact with it will die.

The tree swims into view, its trunk festooned with gold. I slow down, try to move with some stealth, but I'm really just lucky to be upright. I look for a sign of the others. No one. No one is there. “Peeta?” I call softly. “Peeta?”

A soft moan answers me and I whip around to find a figure lying higher up on the ground. “Beetee!” I exclaim. I hurry and kneel beside him. The moan must have been involuntary. He's not conscious, although I can see no wound except a gash below the crook of his elbow. I grab a nearby handful of moss and clumsily wrap it while I try to rouse him. “Beetee! Beetee, what's going on! Who cut you? Beetee!” I shake him in the way you should never shake an injured person, but I don't know what else to do. He moans again and briefly raises a hand to ward me off.

This is when I notice he's holding a knife, one Peeta was carrying earlier, I think, which is wrapped loosely in wire.

Perplexed, I stand and lift the wire, confirming it's attached back at the tree. It takes me a moment to remember the second, much shorter strand that Beetee wound around a branch and left on the ground before he even began his design on the tree. I'd thought it had some electrical significance, had been set aside to be used later. But it never was, because there's probably a good twenty, twenty-five yards here.

I squint hard up the hill and realize we're only a few paces from the force field. There's the telltale square, high up and to my right, just as it was this morning. What did Beetee do? Did he actually try to drive the knife into the force field the way Peeta did by accident? And what's the deal with the wire? Was this his backup plan? If electrifying the water failed, did he mean to send the lightning bolt's energy into the force field? What would that do, anyway? Nothing? A great deal? Fry us all? The force field must mostly be energy, too, I guess. The one in the Training Center was invisible. This one seems to somehow mirror the jungle. But I've seen it falter when Peeta's knife struck it and when my arrows hit. The real world lies right behind it.