Cage me like an animal • F Odair¹ •

VIII

"Do I look dead to you?"

•∘♛∘•

Athena wasn't sure how long they walked for, but it must have been for hours since the sun was beginning to hang low in the sky. The sun would set soon and darkness would fall. She, Kai, and Paige were discussing where they should take shelter for the night when Paige stopped before one of the mounds of sand.

"What?" Kai demanded. Athena could tell Kai contemplated killing Paige more with each hour that passed. Her slowing them down did not help matters.

"What are these things?" Paige said, nodding at the mound. "Why is the sand so uneven in some places?"

"I don't think it's anything good," Athena said. "This place looks like an old war zone, I think it might be where they hid traps they had set for enemies. Some of them might still be working. Or they were placed there by the Gamemakers. Either way, we should steer clear."

Paige, however, picked up a rock and took a few steps back, evidently about to throw it. "Well, we should at least know what we're facing."

"Look, I think the farther away from it we are, the safer we are," Athena insisted, shaking her head.

"We don't even have time for this," Kai added. "It'll be night soon, we need some sort of shelter for the night. Unless you want to be out in the open in the dark."

Paige just shook her head. "It's not like this'll take hours. And then we'll know something new."

She took a few more steps back for good measure. Realizing there was no talking her out of it, Athena and Kai backed far away from Paige and the mound of sand. Paige took a deep breath, as though gathering her courage, before throwing the rock at the mound of sand, landing directly on top. For nearly a minute, nothing happened. Paige was just turning to speak to them when something finally did.

Two long metal, robotic arms burst out from the sand, with large hands that flexed its fingers experimentally. The hands darted out to grab at the person nearest, which was Paige. She let out a shriek as the hands lifted her as though she weighed nothing and roughly threw her closer to it. An extra arm appeared from the mound to hold her down. The robotic arms lifted in the air, and suddenly, spinning blades appeared in its hands, poised directly over Paige's body.

"HELP!" Paige screamed. "HELP ME! PLEASE!"

Athena ran forward to help her, though she didn't quite know how she would. Kai, however, held her back.

"What are you doing?" she said angrily, shoving herself out of his grip, but he just grabbed onto her again.

"Look!"

Athena looked back at Paige just as the blades descended on her, cutting through fabric and flesh alike. Paige shrieked in pain, writhing helplessly, but the extra hand held her down firmly. The spinning blades in each hand ripped through her, blood spurting out wildly. Athena watched in horror as even bits of muscle and organ flew out from the many wounds being created, as the canon sounded just as Paige stopped screaming and went limp. Still, the blades did not stop slicing at every part of Paige's body.

"Athena, come on," Kai said urgently. "We're not safe here, come on!"

Athena tore her eyes away from Paige's destroyed body to see that he was right. Setting off that one trap seemed to set off a chain reaction, and now all the nearby mounds were going off, revealing the secret, deadly traps they hid. They were all different. Some exploded, some burst into flames, and some threw knives in all directions. But they would all kill them if they didn't move now.