Cathing Fire

tells about the fog and the monkeys in a detached, almost clinical voice, avoiding the most important detail of the story.

Everybody offers to guard while the others rest, but in the end, it's Johanna and I who stay up. Me because I'm really rested, she because she simply refuses to lie down. The two of us sit in silence on the beach until the others have gone to sleep.

Johanna glances over at Finnick, to be sure, then turns to me. “How'd you lose Mags?”

“In the fog. Finnick had Peeta. I had Mags for a while. Then I couldn't lift her. Finnick said he couldn't take them both. She kissed him and walked right into the poison,” I say.

“She was Finnick's mentor, you know,” Johanna says accusingly.

“No, I didn't,” I say.

“She was half his family,” she says a few moments later, but there's less venom behind it.

We watch the water lap up over the undergarments. “So what were you doing with Nuts and Volts?” I ask.

“I told you — I got them for you. Haymitch said if we were to be allies I had to bring them to you,” says Johanna. “That's what you told him, right?”

No, I think. But I nod my head in assent. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“I hope so.” She gives me a look filled with loathing, like I'm the biggest drag possible on her life. I wonder if this is what it's like to have an older sister who really hates you.

“Tick, tock,” I hear behind me. I turn and see Wiress has crawled over. Her eyes are focused on the jungle.

“Oh, goody, she's back. Okay, I'm going to sleep. You and Nuts can guard together,” Johanna says. She goes over and flings herself down beside Finnick.

“Tick, tock,” whispers Wiress. I guide her in front of me and get her to lie down, stroking her arm to soothe her. She drifts off, stirring restlessly, occasionally sighing out her phrase. “Tick, tock.”

“Tick, tock,” I agree softly. “It's time for bed. Tick, tock. Go to sleep.”

The sun rises in the sky until it's directly over us. It must be noon, I think absently. Not that it matters. Across the water, off to the right, I see the enormous flash as the lightning bolt hits the tree and the electrical storm begins again. Right in the same area it did last night. Someone must have moved into its range, triggered the attack. I sit for a while watching the lightning, keeping Wiress calm, lulled into a sort of peacefulness by the lapping of the water. I think of last night, how the lightning began just after the bell tolled. Twelve bongs.

“Tick, tock,” Wiress says, surfacing to consciousness for a moment and then going back under.

Twelve bongs last night. Like it was midnight. Then lightning. The sun overhead now. Like it's noon. And lightning.

Slowly I rise up and survey the arena. The lightning there. In the next pie wedge over came the blood rain, where Johanna, Wiress, and Beetee were caught. We would have been in the third section, right next to that, when the fog appeared. And as soon as it was sucked away, the monkeys began to gather in the fourth. Tick, tock. My head snaps to the other side. A couple of hours ago, at around ten, that wave came out of the second section to the left of where the lightning strikes now. At noon. At midnight. At noon.

“Tick, tock,” Wiress says in her sleep. As the lightning ceases and the blood rain begins just to the right of it, her words suddenly make sense.

“Oh,” I say under my breath. “Tick, tock.” My eyes sweep around the full circle of the arena and I know she's right. “Tick, tock. This is a clock.”

23

A clock. I can almost see the hands ticking around the twelve-sectioned face of the arena. Each hour begins a new horror, a new Gamemaker weapon, and ends the previous. Lightning, blood rain, fog, monkeys — those are the first four hours on the clock. And at ten, the wave. I don't know what happens in the other seven, but I know Wiress is right.

At present, the blood rain's falling and we're on the beach below the monkey segment, far too close to the fog for my liking. Do the various attacks stay within the confines of the jungle? Not necessarily. The wave didn't. If that fog leaches out of the jungle, or the monkeys return…

“Get up,” I order, shaking Peeta and Finnick and Johanna awake. “Get up—we have to move.” There's enough time, though, to explain the clock theory to them. About Wiress's tick-tocking and how the movements of the invisible hands trigger a deadly force in each section.

I think I've convinced everyone who's conscious except Johanna, who's naturally opposed to liking anything I suggest. But even she agrees it's better to be safe than sorry.

While the others collect our few possessions and get Beetee back into his jumpsuit, I rouse Wiress. She awakes with a panicked “tick, tock!”

“Yes, tick, tock, the arena's a clock. It's a clock, Wiress, you were right,” I say. “You were right.”

Relief floods her face — I guess because somebody has finally understood what she's known probably from the first tolling of the bells. “Midnight.”

“It starts at midnight,” I confirm.

A memory struggles to surface in my brain. I see a clock. No, it's a watch, resting in Plutarch Heavensbee's palm. “It starts at midnight,” Plutarch said. And then my mockingjay lit up briefly and vanished. In retrospect, it's like he was giving me a clue about the arena. But why would he? At the time, I was no more a tribute in these Games than he was. Maybe he thought it would help me as a mentor. Or maybe this had been the plan all along.

Wiress nods at the blood rain. “One-thirty,” she says.

“Exactly. One-thirty. And at two, a terrible poisonous fog begins there,” I say, pointing at the nearby jungle. “So we have to move somewhere safe now.” She smiles and stands up obediently. “Are you thirsty?” I hand her the woven bowl and she gulps down about a quart. Finnick gives her the last bit of bread and she gnaws on it. With the inability to communicate overcome, she's functioning again.

I check my weapons. Tie up the spile and the tube of medicine in the parachute and fix it to my belt with vine.

Beetee's still pretty out of it, but when Peeta tries to lift him, he objects. “Wire,” he says.

“She's right here,” Peeta tells him. “Wiress is fine. She's coming, too.”

But still Beetee struggles. “Wire,” he insists.

“Oh, I know what he wants,” says Johanna impatiently. She crosses the beach and picks up the cylinder we took from his belt when we were bathing him. It's coated in a thick layer of congealed blood. “This worthless thing. It's some kind of wire or something. That's how he got cut. Running up to the Cornucopia to get this. I don't know what kind of weapon it's supposed to be. I guess you could pull off a piece and use it as a garrote or something. But really, can you imagine Beetee garroting somebody?”

“He won his Games with wire. Setting up that electrical trap,” says Peeta. “It's the best weapon he could have.”

There's something odd about Johanna not putting this together. Something that doesn't quite ring true. Suspicious. “Seems like you'd have figured that out,” I say. “Since you nicknamed him Volts and all.”

Johanna's eyes narrow at me dangerously. “Yeah, that was really stupid of me, wasn't it?” she says. “I guess I must have been distracted by keeping your little friends alive. While you were… what, again? Getting Mags killed off?”

My fingers tighten on the knife handle at my belt.

“Go ahead. Try it. I don't care if you are knocked up, I'll rip your throat out,” says Johanna.

I know I can't kill her right now. But it's just a matter of time with Johanna and me. Before one of us offs the other.

“Maybe we all had better be careful where we step,” says Finnick, shooting me a look. He takes the coil and sets it on Beetee's chest. “There's your wire, Volts. Watch where you plug it.”