FAILURE TO COMPLY ┃ f. odair

1.14 the hunger games

Moving seemed pointless now. Only four people remained alive: Grove, Calypso, Lola and Harrison. If the two lovebird careers wanted to find them, they would, but for the time being she was not going to give the Capitol the satisfaction of taking Payton's body from the arena and sending him home.

Grove had grumbled his grievances but sat down silently beside her while they waited. A whole day passed by, the dead boy's blood drying under the hot sun. They grew hungrier and thirstier, but no parachutes carrying necessary supplies came for them. After what she'd done, Calypso wouldn't be surprised if they left them to rot. If they left her to rot. Grove was free to go, as far as she was concerned, but he'd stayed by her side through their shared grief.

But that hunger was eating them alive. Their strength was waning, and they were mere days or even hours from wasting away beyond the point of no return.

When night came, two faces flashed across the sky in vibrant blue. First, Maisie, pure and beautiful Maisie. Calypso drank her in like she was the very water she needed to stay alive, but she was gone again in a matter of seconds, replaced with her killer that now laid slowly decaying in the same room his killer sat. It was a violent cycle, one she was sure they'd never escape, even outside of an arena.

Something was different tonight, however. The sky darkened once more, and then a powerful disembodied voice echoed throughout the city. It was familiar in a terrifying way, because she simply couldn't place it. That was, until she realised what he was speaking of. This was a gamemaker, the head gamemaker.

"Attention, tributes, attention," Seneca Crane spoke. "Commencing at sunrise, there will be a feast tomorrow at the cornucopia. Each of you is hungry, and we understand your need to satiate this hunger. As such, we will provide you with the necessary food and water to survive long enough to see one of you crowned the Victor."

Calypso scoffed. Her grip on Maisie's spear tightened, and she wished she could push it through Seneca Crane's gut like she had done with Payton. Grove watched the girl with a curious expression, his own hands spinning his unused and unbloodied wooden club against the floor.

"We're going, right?" he questioned.

"Obviously not," she replied. "Lola and Harrison will be there waiting to kill us. And it's a ploy to get us out so they can take Payton's body."

"So let them take it," he told her. "Calypso, we have no other source of food right now."

"It's not our only source of food," she said, voice barely a whisper in the cold air. Grove followed her line of sight, all the way to the body laid across the room. Bile rose up in his throat.

"No," he muttered. "No, Calypso. We're better than this."

Were they? Perhaps she'd lost her mind a little. Somewhere along the way, between losing Poet and brutally killing Payton, something had snapped several times over and left her as a hollow shell of who she was before. The Calypso before the games began had happily made promises to die for another, but the one that headed for the corpse now had made a new promise: she was going to survive and win by any means necessary. She would be the Victor, even if she were a hollow and soulless one.

"Calyps-" Grove called out, but the sound of flesh being cut had him covering his mouth and nose, as if it would block out the thought and the sight of it too. "Oh-"

Calypso cut into the meaty flesh of Payton's arm with the same knife she'd used to be rid of his face. She cut by the elbow, close enough to the joint that she could snap the bone with ease at its ligament. Blood squelched and sprayed, some hitting her in the face like a hard slap. Even in death, he was fighting her.