Masked Enemies

Chapter 32

Finnick

"Katniss!" I say, throwing Diem off of me, and running towards her. Cabe is still holding the rope that held Katniss between life and death.

"Not dead." He says with a horrible chuckle. "But almost." In a rage, I throw Cabe to the ground, pinning him down so he couldn't move. I plunge my trident into his chest, and he doesn't have the time to scream.

Boom.

I leave him on the ground, and watch as Katniss's body slowly falls to the ground. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Diem staring in horror at Cabe's dead body, her face bruise and her arm and stomach bleeding badly. She runs away, which leaves me to catch Katniss, who is still breathing, still alive. The rope must've just knocked out her air supply for a second or so. She would be back soon. I observe her neck, which is covered in rope burn from the rope that used to be around her neck. The skin the rope touched is red and raw, and my stomach lurches, I had never been good with rope burns, and I nearly threw up throughout the entire rebellion, when I had used the blasted rope so much.

After five minutes or so, Katniss begins to regain consciousness.

"How much did I miss?" She asks, rubbing at her neck and wincing. I remove her hand from her neck, and point to Cabe's dead body. Katniss's eyes widen, her mouth slightly open, probably gaping at the trident sticking out of Cabe's body.

"Where's Diem?" She asks me. I shrug.

"She ran away." I tell her, and help her up. "We never did get to grab what we wanted from the Cornucopia." We start towards the Cornucopia, picking up the occasional dropped supplies along the way. None of them I find useful, though.

"There." says Katniss, pointing to a row of spears and swords, all lined up uniformly along the sidewall of the Cornucopia. "Those will work for you, right?"

I shrug. "They're not tridents, but they'll do." I run into the Cornucopia to grab one, shaking it off of the rack, turning the sword over in my hands and grinning. "Oh, yeah. I could definitely work with this."

"That's good." says Katniss. 'Let's get out of here before Diem comes back."

"Too late." A voice snarls from behind us. I turn around to see Diem, half of her face bleeding, blood trickling down her chin, flowing freely out of her mouth. She throws something into the horn, but I don't know what it is. Diem pulls on something, and I can feel my back heating up. Turning my head, I see the flames starting to build up. The stick had been on fire. But what was the thing she pulled on?

I know the second I ask. The ground around me explodes, and I am thrown backwards by the force of the bomb. I cannot hear or see anything through the smoke. Was Diem still alive, was Katniss still alive? They had been in the way of the bombing.

"Katniss." I say weakly, softly, I think, for I still cannot hear straight. Something calls fro me, but I am too disoriented to understand what the voice was saying. Was it my friends, calling for me to join them? I would take that opportunity.

"Katniss!" I say again, louder this time, so it sounds like my regular voice. My ears are still ringing and my lungs full of smoke. My eyes are wet and sting from the smoke. Something bursts through the smoke, a hand, olive colored and thin. I think it's Diem's so I back away. The hand reaches out for me again, and this time, somehow, I know it is my friend that is reaching out to me. I take the hand and am pulled into the open, free of the smoke. Coughing, I blink my eyes a couple times and can barely make out the form of Katniss, her shape blurry, details not clear.

"Finnick?" She asks, kneeling down next to me. She picks something up from the ground, snow, maybe, and presses it to my face. I laugh in relief, because my eyes have been cleared. I take more of the cold stuff she has gotten from the ground and eat it, not caring that my teeth and brain are frozen. I feel fresher now, after getting a drink of what I am now sure is snow.