Cathing Fire

There's a stab in my left forearm. I try to jerk away but I'm still too incapacitated. Johanna's digging something, I guess the point of her knife, into my flesh, twisting it around. There's an excruciating ripping sensation and warmth runs down my wrist, filling my palm. She swipes down my arm and coats half my face with my blood.

“Stay down!” she hisses. Her weight leaves my body and I'm alone.

Stay down? I think. What? What is happening? My eyes shut, blocking out the inconsistent world, as I try to make sense of my situation.

All I can think of is Johanna shoving Wiress to the beach. “Just stay down, will you?” But she didn't attack Wiress. Not like this. I'm not Wiress, anyway. I'm not Nuts. “Just stay down, will you?” echoes around inside my brain.

Footsteps coming. Two pairs. Heavy, not trying to conceal their whereabouts.

Brutus's voice. “She's good as dead! Come on, Enobaria!” Feet moving into the night.

Am I? I drift in and out of consciousness looking for an answer. Am I as good as dead? I'm in no position to make an argument to the contrary. In fact, rational thinking is a struggle. This much I know. Johanna attacked me. Smashed that cylinder into my head. Cut my arm, probably doing irreparable damage to veins and arteries, and then Brutus and Enobaria showed up before she had time to finish me off.

The alliance is over. Finnick and Johanna must have had an agreement to turn on us tonight. I knew we should have left this morning. I don't know where Beetee stands. But I'm fair game, and so is Peeta.

Peeta! My eyes fly open in panic. Peeta is waiting up by the tree, unsuspecting and off guard. Maybe Finnick has even killed him already. “No,” I whisper. That wire was cut from a short distance away by the Careers. Finnick and Beetee and Peeta—they can't know what's going on down here. They can only be wondering what has happened, why the wire has gone slack or maybe even sprung back to the tree. This, in itself, can't be a signal to kill, can it? Surely this was just Johanna deciding the time had come to break with us. Kill me. Escape from the Careers. Then bring Finnick into the fight as soon as possible.

I don't know. I don't know. I only know that I must get back to Peeta and keep him alive. It takes every ounce of will I have to push up into a sitting position and drag myself up the side of a tree to my feet. It's lucky I have something to hold on to because the jungle's tilting back and forth. Without any warning, I lean forward and vomit up the seafood feast, heaving until there can't possibly be an oyster left in my body. Trembling and slick with sweat, I assess my physical condition.

As I lift up my damaged arm, blood sprays me in the face and the world makes another alarming shift. I squeeze my eyes shut and cling to the tree until things steady a little. Then I take a few careful steps to a neighboring tree, pull off some moss, and without examining the wound further, tightly bandage my arm. Better. Definitely better not to see it. Then I allow my hand to tentatively touch my head wound. There's a huge lump but not too much blood. Obviously I've got some internal damage, but I don't seem in danger of bleeding to death. At least not through my head.

I dry my hands on moss and get a shaky grip on my bow with my damaged left arm. Secure the notch of an arrow to the string. Make my feet move up the slope.

Peeta. My dying wish. My promise. To keep him alive. My heart lifts a bit when I realize he must be alive because no cannon has fired. Maybe Johanna was acting alone, knowing Finnick would side with her once her intentions were clear. Although it's hard to guess what goes on between those two. I think of how he looked to her for confirmation before he'd agree to help set Beetee's trap. There's a much deeper alliance based on years of friendship and who knows what else. Therefore, if Johanna has turned on me, I should no longer trust Finnick.

I reach this conclusion only seconds before I hear someone running down the slope toward me. Neither Peeta nor Beetee could move at this pace. I duck behind a curtain of vines, concealing myself just in time. Finnick flies by me, his skin shadowy with medicine, leaping through the undergrowth like a deer. He soon reaches the sight of my attack, must see the blood. “Johanna! Katniss!” he calls. I stay put until he goes in the direction Johanna and the Careers took.

I move as quickly as I can without sending the world into a whirl. My head throbs with the rapid beat of my heart. The insects, possibly excited by the smell of blood, have increased their clicking until it's a continuous roar in my ears. No, wait. Maybe my ears are actually ringing from the hit. Until the insects shut up, it will be impossible to tell. But when the insects go silent, the lightning will start. I have to move faster. I have to get to Peeta.

The boom of a cannon pulls me up short. Someone has died. I know that with everyone running around armed and scared right now, it could be anybody. But whoever it is, I believe the death will trigger a kind of free- for-all out here in the night. People will kill first and wonder about their motives later. I force my legs into a run.

Something snags my feet and I sprawl out on the ground. I feel it wrapping around me, entwining me in sharp fibers. A net! This must be one of Finnick's fancy nets, positioned to trap me, and he must be nearby, trident in hand. I flail around for a moment, only working the web more tightly around me, and then I catch a glimpse of it in the moonlight. Confused, I lift my arm and see it's entangled in shimmering golden threads. It's not one of Finnick's nets at all, but Beetee's wire. I carefully rise to my feet and find I'm in a patch of the stuff that caught on a trunk on its way back to the lightning tree. Slowly I disengage myself from the wire, step out of its reach, and continue uphill.

On the good side, I'm on the right path and have not been so disoriented by the head injury as to lose my sense of direction. On the bad side, the wire has reminded me of the oncoming lightning storm. I can still hear the insects, but are they starting to fade?

I keep the loops of wire a few feet to my left as a guide as I run but take great care not to touch them. If those insects are fading and the first bolt is about to strike the tree, then all its power will come surging down that wire and anyone in contact with it will die.

The tree swims into view, its trunk festooned with gold. I slow down, try to move with some stealth, but I'm really just lucky to be upright. I look for a sign of the others. No one. No one is there. “Peeta?” I call softly. “Peeta?”

A soft moan answers me and I whip around to find a figure lying higher up on the ground. “Beetee!” I exclaim. I hurry and kneel beside him. The moan must have been involuntary. He's not conscious, although I can see no wound except a gash below the crook of his elbow. I grab a nearby handful of moss and clumsily wrap it while I try to rouse him. “Beetee! Beetee, what's going on! Who cut you? Beetee!” I shake him in the way you should never shake an injured person, but I don't know what else to do. He moans again and briefly raises a hand to ward me off.

This is when I notice he's holding a knife, one Peeta was carrying earlier, I think, which is wrapped loosely in wire.

Perplexed, I stand and lift the wire, confirming it's attached back at the tree. It takes me a moment to remember the second, much shorter strand that Beetee wound around a branch and left on the ground before he even began his design on the tree. I'd thought it had some electrical significance, had been set aside to be used later. But it never was, because there's probably a good twenty, twenty-five yards here.

I squint hard up the hill and realize we're only a few paces from the force field. There's the telltale square, high up and to my right, just as it was this morning. What did Beetee do? Did he actually try to drive the knife into the force field the way Peeta did by accident? And what's the deal with the wire? Was this his backup plan? If electrifying the water failed, did he mean to send the lightning bolt's energy into the force field? What would that do, anyway? Nothing? A great deal? Fry us all? The force field must mostly be energy, too, I guess. The one in the Training Center was invisible. This one seems to somehow mirror the jungle. But I've seen it falter when Peeta's knife struck it and when my arrows hit. The real world lies right behind it.

My ears are not ringing. It was the insects after all. I know that now because they are dying out quickly and I hear nothing but the jungle sounds. Beetee is useless. I can't rouse him. I can't save him. I don't know what he was trying to do with the knife and the wire and he's incapable of explaining. The moss bandage on my arm is soaked and there's no use fooling myself. I'm so light-headed I'll black out in a matter of minutes. I've got to get away from this tree and—

“Katniss!” I hear his voice though he's a far distance away. But what is he doing? Peeta must have figured out that everyone is hunting us by now. “Katniss!”

I can't protect him. I can't move fast or far and my shooting abilities are questionable at best. I do the one