Breaking Down Bridges ▸ Hunger Games

Chapter Twenty-One: Cato Demeir

Chapter Twenty-One:

Cato's POV

Life's a game but it's not fair

I break the rules

So? I don't care

So I keep doing my own thing

Walking tall against the rain

Victory's within the mile

Almost there don't give up now

Only thing that's on my mind is

Who's gonna run this town tonight

—Rihanna, "Run This Town"

I couldn't believe the arena was nothing but a giant iceberg. I thought the Gamemakers would be more creative than that, but I guess with President Frost in charge... anything goes.

Alia had dozed off almost instantly in my arms after she finally stopped asking me if I was okay. Of course I wasn't; I was already freezing, not to mention that I'd given her my jacket to help keep her warm... not that I'd tell her any of that, though. If I did, she'd never fall asleep. And that was exactly what she needed.

So I continued trudging through the arctic, the snow blowing back on my face only making it worse, until I finally came across a few pieces of grass growing up from the ground.

What the hell?  Before I knew it, ice was overtaken by the damp grass, which led directly to a beach of some sort.

Relieved by the warm sun beating against my skin, I pulled out a sleeping bag out of my backpack, set it down on the ground, and carefully laid Alia down on top of it. She mumbled something unintelligible and turned on her side, pulling the cover of the sleeping bag over her.

I then sat down next to her to catch my breath and dug my hand inside my backpack, hoping I would be able to eat something. But all I found was a bunch of soggy fruit squished underneath all the weapons and other supplies. I groaned.

Great.

I huffed. Things just kept getting better and better. Now I was tired, nearly falling asleep every time I blinked. But I wasn't going to allow that to happen. I had to keep look out.

I grabbed a sword and a large knife out of the backpack, sharpening them to try to fight the drowsiness falling over me.

But after about thirty minutes of aimlessly sharpening weapons, it was no use. I fell asleep right in the middle of it, collapsing on the foot of Alia's sleeping bag.

~

The next two days in the arena weren't anything special. We ran into no other tributes, except for Shawn, Cyra, and Damian, who all became a part of our alliance. The most exciting thing that happened was killing Zephyr by driving my sword all the way through his head and getting to torture Alexis before slaughtering her.

By the third day, we had grown tired of hunting in the jungle for our food. Shawn still refused to help and just sat in our campsite, claiming he would guard it. But his idea of guarding was taking a two hour nap. If Alia hadn't made me promise to not kill him, he would've been long dead.

"This jungle is useless!" Cyra shouted, throwing one of her knives in a nearby canopy tree, "There's nothing here but birds capable of escaping everything! Hey, sponsors, if you're not too busy laughing at our starvation, do you think you could... oh, I don't know... HELP OUT?!"