We decided that Cristoff would stay awake for three hours and then wake me up. It would be safer that way. However, I found that I could hardly stay awake during my shift and Cristoff ended up doing my last hour for me so I could get more rest. Once I woke up we decided we had to figure out a way to get to Bates, Rosetta and Lyla.

"We could leave a little mark somewhere that would let them know we were there, and so that they could follow our little 'trail' until one of us finds the other?" I suggested.

Cristoff nodded. "That would be smart. But we would need to make it look inconspicuous so that any other passing tributes don't realize what we're doing and follow us."

"But it has to be something that only they would recognize."

He nodded, looking deep in thought. "That's the hard part."

I had to stop what I was doing (which was trying to put all of our stuff back in our backpack) so I could think about something that only Bates would know about. I looked along the walls that surrounded us to see if they would offer any inspiration. I jumped up. "Primrose!" Cristoff angrily shushed me. I forgot how if I was loud like that and other tributes were nearby we could die. I quieted down. "Oops. Sorry. But the primrose flower! Bates was with me the night before the Games, so I guess two days ago, when he saw me accidentally burn a primrose flower to a crisp!" Cristoff looked incredibly confused. "Experiment. Don't ask. But do you think it would work?"

"I honestly don't know. But that's the best thing we have to work with."

"Well what did you think of? It honestly can't be that bad."

He looked a bit embarrassed. "I was going to write our initials on the ground by the wall."

Well that would be dumb. Even I knew that. Other tributes could follow our trail and then kill us. "Oh... it's not too bad of an idea."

He shrugged me off. "Let's go with yours."

We ended up gathering as much primrose as possible, so that we could scatter them whenever we needed to. We would place them in an 'X' at any corner that we go to. Hopefully the group would be smart enough to figure it out, or that we would find them first.

We set off soon after that, with Cristoff leading the way. We had no exact means of which way to go, so thankfully, there were a lot of straightaways and not as many fork in the roads that we had to choose. We still hadn't found any source of water, and I was definitely starting to feel the effects of not drinking any. However, I still dragged myself along, no matter how thirsty I was. We also hadn't encountered any other tributes yet, which was both good and bad. How is it bad, some people might think? But I've watched the Games for as long as I remember, and whenever a tribute doesn't encounter another person within a certain amount of time, the Gamemakers use any means to drive them towards another in the hopes of a bloody encounter. Most of the time they are, and few end in new alliances.

We continued along, my energy failing even more as the morning went by. At one point I asked Cristoff if we could take a break for a moment and he let us stop. We were quietly eating a little bit of our jerky when we heard a voice for the first time. And it wasn't any of our allies' voices. Cristoff quickly but quietly put all of our things in the backpack and pulled me backwards, into the darkness that was provided by the wall. I hoped that whoever was walking by wouldn't come and investigate what was in the darkness. If they did, then the Games were over for me and Cristoff.

The voice got louder and louder as they got closer, but I still couldn't identify who it was. But one thing I did know is that it wasn't Bates, Lyla or Rosetta. It was a loner, but I wasn't paying that much attention during Training to see who was allied with someone and who wasn't. However, I could identify that it was a male's voice and not a females. This didn't make me feel much better. Shortly thereafter, the voice turned into a person. And the person made my stomach churn.

It was Augustus, the boy from Nine, who proved to be going crazy, like I had initially thought. I was so terrified of what he might do to us that I almost let out a whimper, but Cristoff realized it and put his hand over my mouth. I felt a little better remembering that I wasn't all alone. I don't know how he heard it, but Augustus heard the movement of Cristoff's hand over to my mouth and stopped and stared right at me. My heart stopped. This would be it. I would die and never get to see my mom and dad again. Tonight it would be my face in the sky. Augustus slowly walked over to us, and faster than what would I think was possible, grabbed my neck and raised me above him so that I couldn't reach the ground. I couldn't breathe.

"Well lookie at what I found! Don't you think she's pretty guys?" After pausing, Augustus laughed as if someone had told the funniest joke in the world while I was slowly dying. My thoughts all blurred together, I couldn't hear that well and my eyesight went in and out. Somewhere in all of my incoherent thoughts I remembered my mom and dad's face. I remembered how I promised to try my hardest to come back home. I remembered Cristoff, who somehow disappeared while I was dying. I remembered how I still had the dagger that he got for me out of the Cornucopia. My arms fumbled down to my pocket where it was concealed as I felt my heart start beating even slower as I struggled for breath. I don't know how I was able to survive for this long; I should have been dead by now.

I willed my eyes to open and found that I was on the ground, and saw Cristoff and Augustus in a heated battle. Wearily, I lifted my hand, gripping the dagger as if my life depended on it (which in a way it did), and threw it in the direction that I thought was Augustus. I heard someone scream. I couldn't identify which tribute it came from, and couldn't open my eyes to find out if I had succeeded in killing my enemy, or if I killed my ally. I slowly blacked out, and the last thing I heard was a cannon go off.

I heard voices. I wasn't sure whose they were, or even if I was alive. That cannon could have been mine. I opened my eyes, and saw that I indeed hadn't died and that I was still in the maze. Slowly, I tried to lift my head to see who I was with, but that proved to be painful, and a slight whimper escaped me, much to my dismay. The voices all stopped, and I could hear one person run over to me.

"She's awake!" I heard someone shout out excitedly. That voice sounded so familiar, but I hadn't heard it in such a long time that I couldn't figure out who it was. The person's face came into view, but it was blurred, along with the rest of my vision, due to the near-death experience I just had when Augustus choked me. I blinked, and everything became clearer. The smiling face, blond hair, blue eyes... it was Lyla, my ally.

"Lyla? Is that you?" She nodded, with a smile that made her eyes crinkle. "W-what happened?"

She waved someone over while explaining to me that she wasn't there for all of it to let me know what happened. Attempting to turn my head again, with less pain than before I saw that the person she waved over was Cristoff. Cristoff! He hadn't died! He smiled when he saw I was awake.

"Thought you would've never woken up Violet." I must've still looked incredibly confused, so Cristoff took a big breath and began telling me what happened.

"I'm not sure how much you remember, but Augustus came over to our hiding place and found us... well namely you. He grabbed you by the neck and nearly choked you to death. At that point I came out of the spot, because no one hurts my allies without me at least attempting to do anything about it. So after holding you off of the ground by your neck for almost a minute, he threw you to the ground and came at me instead. He and I started wrestling, because my sword was back at our hiding spot after I carelessly left it behind, and because he didn't seem to have any weapons.

"It was a pretty intense fight. Turned out he did have a weapon, a small knife, and gave me this," I looked down and saw a long, jagged cut on his arm. It was sloppily put back together with stitches. "...when out of nowhere a dagger flew through the air. Your dagger. I still have no idea how you were able to throw that accurately, but I wasn't complaining. It flew right next to my neck and embedded itself into his chest. Augustus backed away, staggering. I could tell he was in a lot of pain, and his breathing sounded very laborious. He begged me to just end it, so I ran back, grabbed my sword, and, well..." He trailed off. "Yeah. Anyways, he died and you seemed dead too. I ran over to you, but not a moment later to be greeted by all of these people." I slightly turned my head and saw Bates and Rosetta watching me. Smiling, Bates walked closer to me.

"We heard all of the fighting and were close enough to come and see what happened. We saw you on the ground not moving with Cristoff hovering over you with a sword... and let's just say it wasn't the happiest reunion in the world." Cristoff and Bates exchanged a look of... was that embarrassment? I decided I really didn't want to know what happened.

Lyla continued. "Once we realized that Cristoff hadn't injured you, we helped set up camp here so we could wait for you to hopefully wake up. Rosetta stitched up his cut, and we tried to make you as comfortable as possible. We've been waiting for about... an hour I think for you to wake up. And you just did, so now you're all caught up." She beamed at me. I was really glad that I had found my allies now. At the moment though, I was more concerned on getting moving again so that we wouldn't be out in the open. Lyla helped me stand up, and I got a better look at the camp that we had.

All of the supplies that Cristoff and I had were still in the same spot as they were before our encounter with Augustus. Next to it, I saw what I guess the other group got from the Cornucopia. They got a first aid kit, another sleeping bag, a flashlight, and a backpack that seemed to have a tiny bit of food in it. Everyone was staring at me, I guess trying to see what my initial reaction would be.

"Sounds...exciting." They all laughed. I'm not sure where the 'comical' side of me came from, but I liked it. No more of the shy Violet that almost got me killed. It was now time for the butt-kick Violet that also enjoyed making her allies laugh. "Um, can I have something to eat? I'm a little hungry."

Rosetta leaped up from where she was sitting and handed me a tiny piece of bread. "Sorry for how small it is, we have to ration things out now that our group is bigger." I shrugged, accepting that some things had to be done in order for us to all be able to eat something.

Bates checked with me to make sure that I was fine, and then suggested that we go ahead and pack up camp and move on. We had been resting for long enough, he said. I agreed with him. We needed to find something to help us in the Games, like a water source. The other group had managed to grab two water bottles from the Cornucopia, but both of them were almost empty. They let me have a tiny sip of it before closing off the bottle and storing it away with the rest of our stuff.

"Have to save it for emergencies now, you know?" Cristoff smiled at me, and all thoughts of him possibly betraying our group vanished. He was actually worried that I had died, and had almost died himself while trying to protect me.

With each of us feeling ready to go, we moved on through the maze, not knowing what we would encounter next.

And boy was it terrifying.