Pyromania | The 60th Hunger Games

TWELVE

We were woken early, before the sun had risen, in order to prepare for the games. The tributes were required to be in their prep rooms at midday, half an hour before the games were to begin.

Martial trudged to the breakfast table with a loud yawn and downcast eyes. For once, the silence was deafening. Lys seemed to be itching to speak, offer some advice, but she would glance at me and look back at her plate. Trix and Gia had yet to show and I could only assume they were elsewhere on mentor business but it did leave the table feeling empty and awkward.

An hour passed and they finally returned, Lys and Martial had moved over to the couch where she could impart advice onto his willing ears.

"How are you feeling?" Gia asked to the room, looking between me and Martial.

He shrugged. I shrugged. Trix sighed.

"Yeah, I feel that." She sat down next to me, peeling a blueberry muffin, "I suggest letting it all out now, you'll want to think clearly once that first canon goes off."

"I think," I mumbled, tapping the edge of my plate and trying to count through my growing frustration, "I'll save it." A wry smile tugs at the edge of my mouth and I glance over at her. "It could be useful."

The next few hours passed by in a blur. The stylists came in with our uniforms, lightweight trousers that zip off at the knees and a skin-tight vest with a loose rain jacket over the top.

As he laid the jacket onto my bed, Nero pinched the material between his fingers and looked up to watch me check myself in the mirror. I scraped my hair out of my face and puffed out my cheeks, holding it up then dropping it around my shoulders again. He came over and tied it with the band around his wrist.

"These clothes are breezy," I observe as a chill comes through my open bedroom door.

"How do you do in the heat? If that jacket was any thinner it wouldn't be waterproof anymore," his hands warmed my arms and his tone was joking but his mouth was pressed into a grim line. Shrugging, I turn away from the mirror and pick up the jacket.

"I cope better than Martial."

He hums, glancing over to the door when Lys knocks faintly on the doorframe. She asks if we're ready and my heart drops into my gut. Heavily, I drag myself over to the door and wonder if this is the last room I will sleep in or will this building be my home for a few weeks each year at the end of all this.

"Terra?"

My eyes come into focus and I settle my gaze on Lys, who I had halted next to in the doorway. Unspeaking, barely feeling, I tentatively wrap my arms around Lys and rest my head against her chest.

She holds me back tighter than my own mother did.

In the departure rooms, I stand before the transportation capsule rubbing at the red welt on my arm where the tracker had been carelessly injected into my forearm. Lys had stayed back at the tribute centre but Trix and Nero followed me to the last moment while Gia and Martial's stylist went with him.

The next time I see my best friend will be when the games begin.

A voice over the intercom announces five minutes until the tributes have to be ready in their capsules, a platform concealed in a clear glass tube.

I'm sitting on the bench, knees bouncing uncontrollably, as I watch Trix pace back and forth in the room. She's mumbling about the careers, how our best survival tactic is staying together, and how I need to survive. She sits next to me suddenly.

"If you get ambushed, try and stay together. You're stronger together, even if the numbers overpower you. And, if you run, don't run alone- got it? Before the final seven, you have to stay together." Her eyes are wild and she hazards a look at the capsule. I am forced to recall the collapse of the pack in her games and I feel a lump rise in my throat. She doesn't mean to worry me, but the warnings are enough, how could they not be? For a moment I wonder if I'm looking at myself in a mirror as she descends into an anxious state transcending anything I have ever experienced before.