Zodiac short stories

Hunger Games: Chapter Six

POVs in this chapter: Libby, Taur, Rico

Libby's POV

What I couldn't figure out was how I was going to kill Virran.

He wasn't worth it. He wasn't turning out to be worth it right now. He'd been useful for killing Liam, but now it was us surviving in the woods, and he needed a lot more food than I did. I was convinced he was going without to give me more, but I was afraid it just wasn't going to be enough.

It was math. We had two packs, each with some small amount of food in them, and it had been maybe 24 hours and half of it was gone. I could have made that food last three days. Virran had to die.

It was a pity, almost, after all the trouble I'd gone to to get him in the first place, but the first thing dad taught me about running the shop was sunk costs. Why you buy something, you buy it, and when it stops working you throw it out. You don't try and throw more money at it to make it "worth it". It's a sunk cost. Virran was a sunk cost, and I wasn't going to throw any more food at him in the hopes that he was going to be useful when fighting the careers.

He would be useful, but not if there was anything more than one of them would he even stand a chance at beating them. He'd be good for a one-time cover-while-I-run, but who knew if that would ever come up and we'd be out of food by tomorrow at this rate. It just wasn't worth it. It was a pity, but it wasn't worth it, and Virran had to die.

Virran walked back into the clearing where we'd stopped last night. He held his sword loosely in his right hand, downward pointing, awkward and heavy. "Hi," he said, panting slightly. "I didn't see any edible plants, I'm sorry."

I nodded and smiled. "It's fine Virran."

He sat down next to me. "So," he said. "How did you sleep?"

I smiled, slightly. "Alright. W-what about you?"

"Pretty well," he said. That was a lie. He'd been lying awake a lot of the night, keeping watch. I'd said not to, but he had. He was so easy to use, it was really a pity I had to kill him.

I nodded. "You stay h-here," I said. "I'll go look for some."

"Right," he nodded, hesitating, but he was tired. "You were much better at edible plants than I was. Do you want the sword?" he offered.

I hesitated. I could take it and kill him now and have done. But even with the sword I wasn't sure I could handle Virran, he was easily twice my size. Besides, the sword was almost too heavy for me to lift. I shook my head. "No, you hold on to it, you might need it."

He still seemed worried. "Come right back if you see anything weird. Yell if you can't."

I smiled. "Alright. Thanks, Virran," and then because I had to get him off his guard somehow, I kissed him on the cheek before walking off.

It still surprised me how people looked at me and immediately went blind. You see me, stuttering, crying, barely able to talk, and you forget about it. No one really watched my interview. No one really watched me in training. They just judged. Even Virran, he wasn't really looking at me. He didn't like me for me. He just had some kind of crush, that I'd noticed, and that I was not afraid to use.

You can use anything if you do it right. When my name was called during the reaping I immediately felt tears welling up, and instead of stopping them or pretending I wasn't crying, I made the split decision to play it up. To get noticed. To get people thinking I was weak, and it worked. It might have worked a little too well on Liam, but he was dead, so nobody cared about him anymore.