There were only twelve of us left. I was halfway there. Eight had died the day before, and four tributes had died this morning. One of them was a Career too. And now each of the alliances was down to three members.

I sat in my safe pine tree contemplating my next move. There were only twelve of us left, so I could probably drop my act soon. Not like it had helped much, nobody even knew where I was. The alliance I had joined hadn't been of much use either. I hadn't seen either Clay or Mara since I got into the arena. Our alliance was actually as big as the other two now. Hungry, I pulled the remaining berries out of my and devoured them. Guess my next move was to find more food.

I pulled myself up and climbed down out of the tree. There was still some blood stained on the ground from the carnage last night. And the Careers hadn't taken all of the leftover supplies too. There was a backpack sitting next to the tree and I scoured it, there were a few small packs of food and some rope. I took the rope and put it in my backpack. I took the food out and started eating it. It was some kind of meat, not sure what kind, but it was good. I tucked the rest into my backpack and searched the rest of the site. There were a few other backpacks, but they were all empty. I saw something silver off in the distance, it was a spilled water bottle. I picked it up and realized it was half full. Checking to make sure it wasn't contaminated; I dripped a bit of it on to a leaf. The water looked clear and the leaf didn't burn, so I figured the water was safe to drink. I took a small swig of the water. Since I didn't feel myself dying, I gulped down the rest of the water.

The sound of someone running toward me drew my attention. I turned to see a girl standing about twenty feet away. She looked scared and was sweaty, like she'd been running for awhile. "She ran up the hill, get her!" I heard someone behind her scream, "Look, there's someone else up there too!" The girl dashed off and I started running too. I turned my head and saw the Careers chasing both of us. I took a quick look at the other girl, she had long light brown hair, and dark skin. An arrow whizzed past my ear and struck a tree in front of me. Shit! They were catching up. I could hear one of the girls laughing as they chase us. I wasn't even sure where I was anymore, all I knew was that I had to get away. The other girl was pulling away, she was faster than me. If I didn't think of something soon, I was going to die. I heard another arrow coming and ducked in fright. The arrow sailed by, just narrowly missing me. I needed to think of something! I thought of some options and decided what I was going to do as the girl in front of me pulled further ahead. Abruptly, I turned to the right and sprinted towards to the swamp. "One of them's going the other way! What do we do?" I heard one of the girls yell. "That's just the girl from District Seven. Don't worry about her, she'll be easy enough to kill of later. Let's focus on the other girl." replied Jett. And eventually, as I continued running, the sound of footsteps behind me disappeared.

I got to the swamp and stopped, catching my breath. There was a scream off in the distance, followed by the sound of a cannon. So my act had come in handy after all. And now there were only ten other tributes. I trekked through the swamp aimlessly, no particular destination in mind. I decided I'd go to the center hill. I recalled the rough sides of the hill, and was hoping there'd be some sort of cave. The Gamemakers seemed to love caves. I remembered from the last few years that there was always some sort of cave, so I was hoping to find it by going to the center.

"Shit!" I heard someone say nearby, "Ahhh! Ow, that hurts!"

I heard some splashing and pulled my knife out of my belt. I gripped it the way I remembered the instructor showing me and walked towards the noise. I stepped into a clearing and saw someone sloshing around in the mud, seething in pain. It was Mara.