Breathe in, Breathe out • F Odair² •

XVIII

"Hope Katniss and Peeta are popular enough for the four of us."

•∘♔∘•

Athena couldn't have been asleep for much longer than an hour when she was woken up by the sounds of shouting.

"Run!" screamed Katniss' voice. "Run!"

Instantly awake and alert, Athena jumped to her feet, her spear at the ready, at the same time that Finnick did the same with his trident. They were ready to counter an enemy, but an enemy was not what they found. A fog was approaching them, with tendrils reaching forward and curling like fingers. At first, it simply looked like the fog that followed heavy rain, but it looked much too thick, a sickeningly sweet odour to it. Athena looked over and saw that Katniss had blisters, painful-looking pustules forming on her hand, the place where she must have reached to touch the fog. Whatever the fog was, whatever gas it was made out of, it was poisonous. It was dangerous. And it certainly wasn't natural, something the Gamemakers had set off.

Finnick seemed to come to this conclusion at the same time as her, because he grabbed onto her hand and yanked her along with him as they took off through the jungle. Athena took a few moments to regain her balance so that she could run alongside him on her own, sprinting as fast as she could away from whatever that fog was. After the initial shock and bewilderment faded, she looked around and stopped dead at the realization that Katniss and Peeta were nowhere to be found.

"Katniss and Peeta," she said, when Finnick stared at her in confusion at her sudden stop. "Peeta's still weak, Katniss must be staying behind with him. He's probably slowing them down."

He understood at once. They looked behind them and found that, sure enough, some distance away, Katniss and Peeta were struggling along through the trees. It was clear that, as much as he denied it during the day, the after effects of hitting the force field were significant. He was slower, much slower than he had been before. Katniss had one of Peeta's arms wrapped around her shoulders and was supporting him along, the two of them tripping at nearly every step as they walked ahead as carefully as they could. The fog was moving ahead slowly, but so were Katniss and Peeta, and the gas was right at their heels.

"I'll go help," Athena said, and before Finnick could protest, added, "if I help support Peeta, they can move faster. You stay ahead of us and guide us."

Knowing that this was not the time for arguments, she freed herself from Finnick's grasp and sprinted to meet Katniss and Peeta. She went to Peeta's other side, wrapping his free arm around her shoulders and shifting half of his weight from Katniss to herself. Katniss shot her a grateful look over Peeta's shoulder. As Athena moved into position, droplets sprung free of the body of vapour and landed on her. She cried out immediately at the searing pain. It felt like tiny stabs, burning, but not in the way that fire did. Less of a sense of heat and more of intense pain as the chemicals found her flesh, clung to it, and burrowed down through the layers of skin to blister. Her jumpsuit was no help at all; she might as well have been wearing her net costume, for all the protection it provided. The pain was so intense that she nearly stopped dead in her tracks, and only barely managed to push through it and keep moving.

As she expected, now that Katniss wasn't bearing all of Peeta's weight on her own, they could move a little faster. Not fast enough to be out of range of the fog, but enough that they weren't threatened to be overtaken by it. Finnick remained ahead of them, trying to move them along, shouting encouragements, and the sound of his voice acted as a good enough guide to keep them moving.

Peeta's artificial leg got caught in a knot of creepers and he sprawled forward, and Athena and Katniss just barely managed to catch him before he planted face first onto the earth. As they straightened him up again, they noticed something much more frightening than blisters, more debilitating than the burns. The left side of his face had sagged, as if every muscle in it was dead. The lid drooped, almost concealing his eye. His mouth twisted at an odd angle towards the ground. Athena and Katniss exchanged terrified looks.