Always

Worst Nightmare

Dedicated to: Everlark10

In the distance, after the lightning storm finishes, I hear the soft sound of rain. An hour passes as I wait for it to reach us, but it never does.

And then a cannon sounds. It startles me, but the others are oblivious to the sound and continue to sleep. I don't bother waking them up to tell them that someone died. I don't even wonder who it was.

In the next few minutes, the rain stops abruptly, never having reached where we are, even though it couldn't have been more than a few hundred yards away. In the next second I see a white cloud moving closer towards us. It resembles a fog, something I've only seen once or twice. At first, I think nothing of it. A natural reaction to cold rain on hot ground.

But something in me recoils at the fog. It's slow steady movements that inch closer towards us. Something is wrong with this. It's not normal. It's not natural. Too uniform. Too even.

Immediately, I'm shaking everyone awake and yelling for them to move. Peeta wakes up the fastest, his senses on high alert to protect me. His eyes scan me over to see if I'm hurt. Finnick immediately hops to his feet, his tridents in his hands, already slinging Mags onto his back.

And in the ten seconds it has taken to get everyone up and ready to flee, a sickeningly sweet odor has invaded my nostrils and my skin has already started to blister.

"Run!" I scream.

I take Peeta's hand and pull him trough the jungle, trying to keep him from tripping.

"What is that?" He screams. "What is that?"

I turn to see it inching closer towards us. "Fog, it's poisonous." I yell back.

And it's painful. Droplets from the ghostly fog seem to leap out to land on our skin, but the pain isn't like being burned. No, it's like acid eating away at our skin, burrowing under all the layers to produce a sharp stab of intense pain. The sheerness of our jumpsuits provides no protection at all. I've lost sight of Finnick, but I steer myself and Peeta in the direction that I think he went.

Now that the initial adrenaline rush has past, it's clear that the aftereffects of Peeta's encounter with the force field are much worse than he was letting on. Our pace slows, and while the vines that litter and snake along the jungle floor merely trip me up occasionally, they cause Peeta to stumble nearly every step.

I grasp his hand tightly in mine. "Try and step where I do!"

It helps. Peeta and I begin to move faster, but not fast enough to allow ourselves a brief rest. The fog continues to crawl after us ominously, its snaking tendrils seeming to pull it along the ground.

So we continue to run.

Finnick appears in front of us, apparently having noticed that we were having problems. He shouts trying to get us to move faster and for a while it helps. But Peeta is so weak and all the adrenaline in the world could not make him move any faster than he already is. Finnick's voice acts as a guide, but that's about all that he can do for us.

And then my arm begins to shake. It's uncontrollable and suddenly I'm filled with a fear that outshines the blisters and the burns. Whatever chemical is in this fog targets our nerves. I glance up at Peeta and see that he's affected too. His eyelid seems to be drooping without his consent and one corner of his mouth is slack, forming an odd grimace.