The Incoming Storm: The Tale of the 325th Hunger Games

Chapter 28

 I stare into Pix's eyes, machete inches from her neck. "You can see the traps?" I say, not even sure what that means.

"This whole place, it's rigged. I can tell where they are," she says. She tries lifting her left arm which is pinned under my knee, she points to a tree, "There," she says, "That knot, it's a launcher." I look at the tree she is pointing to, it looks like a normal tree covered in webs to me, but there is a knot on its side. In the games nothing is as it seems, I think about it. I look at Ross for guidance. He raises his eyebrows and shrugs.

"Prove it," I say.

"I can't," Pix says, "Not unless it goes off. Please don't kill me, we can be stronger as a group, I swear."

I don't want to kill her, I've killed but no one who was fully innocent, I've killed careers who'd easily kill me if they had the chance. Pix, I don't know her. In training, she barely touched the weapons, and she could have killed us if she wanted. She only ran when we discovered her which tells me she didn't think she could take us in a fight.

I sigh, "Fine," I say getting off of her. "Help us and we won't kill you," I say. She slowly rises, I am careful to flash both my machetes as she walks between us. Some part of me is sure this is a grave mistake.

As we walk back to the hideout, Ross catches my eye. We slow down while Pix walks in front of us, she glances back at us nervously. "Do you trust her?" he whispers.

"No," I say, "But if she can do what she says, then she can help us in the arena. Plus there's only us and the careers left."

"And Lex," Pix adds, turning to look at us. Admittedly, I kind of forgot about her.

"Right," I say. As we go, Pix points out several things to us, an irregular-shaped branch, a cluster of rocks, a patch of ground relatively void of dry leaves, all places she suspects traps may be laid. Of course, there's no way of knowing unless they are triggered.

We get back to the hideout and she sits down next to us. A parachute is waiting, it has another plate, cup, and set of silverware. I guess the Capitol or our mentors have already accepted the alliance, which lulls some of my unease. I don't think Quin would let me fall into a trap so easily.

"Remind me your name," Ross says, as he gets her a plate of food.

"Pix," she says, taking a small sip of the sparkling water. We introduce ourselves formally. I try to relax, eating small spoonfuls of stew.

"So how do you know so much about the arena?" I ask.

Pix makes a troubled face, "I work in a factory back in 3, technology, ya'know. I make circuit boards which are used for all sorts of things, but quite a few of them are used in the arenas." I would bet this conversation is being blocked in the rest of the country, it isn't supposed to be broadcast what life is like in the other districts, and I certainly don't think that the Capitol wants the districts to know how the arenas fully function. Sure it's obvious we each play a role in making the very arenas where we die, plants from 11, animals from 10, power from 5, and so on. It only makes sense that 3 would play a major role in the technology.

"We can only make things so tiny," she says, "Probably the size of the rice," she holds up a grain of the brown rice on her fingertip before eating it. "I can see where there are little chips placed, if you spend enough time around them you get used to looking for them," she says. "Plus then you consider the power source, the catacombs underneath us, and so on."

"Is that how you survived?" I ask, "Is that why you volunteered?"

"Partly," Pix says, "But I knew no one else would too." I think back to the two girls who died before Pix finally volunteered, "I knew I had more of a shot than almost anyone else in my district. But yes, that's how I've been surviving, being aware of what could happen at any second.

"It's not perfect though, that's how Sprocket died. We thought the trap we were camped by was projectile, not muttations. It caught us off guard," she says, staring at her half-eaten plate.

"We saw," I say, remembering watching Pix run into the woods after Sprocket yelled for her to flee.

When we finish eating lunch, we decide it is in our best interest to collect more food. Pix shows us her supplies, she obviously has the machete as well as a drawstring bag with a full waterskin, tweezers, a coil of wire, and an old food packet that's been filled with the berries, and a set of matches with four remaining. Between us all, we only have the berries from Pix and a can of mixed fruit.

We spend the day hunting rats, filling up our containers with berries, and avoiding spiders which seem to be highly populous in this section of the arena. As night falls, we return to the hideout and watch the Capitol seal appear in the sky. No deaths today. Hopefully, the audience was entertained by our new alliance, even though most of us getting to know each other was probably censored.

As night falls I take the first watch, and soon after I wake Ross. We decide to not let Pix take a watch at least on night one just to ensure she isn't going to kill us in our sleep. As I lay on the ground I look at her, she is young. I'm not sure how old she is, but it wouldn't surprise me if she was only 14 or 15. I wonder what it is like in that head of hers, full of science and information, keeping an eye on every aspect of this arena I can barely comprehend. What must it be like to know that she helped build the place where she is likely to die?