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Daphne was not ashamed to say that she slept until midday the next day, plagued by nightmares, having been woken up by a cannon shot. She wondered briefly what would happen if she just lay there and waited for everyone to slaughter each other. Just sleep out the Games and survive that way.

"If only it were that easy," Daphne rasped to nobody in particular as she dragged herself out of the house, her hand still numb from sleeping on it. She flinched at the croaking sound of her own voice, and speaking sent waves of pain through her throat. Mellie really did some damage to her vocal cords.

The cool ocean breeze that greeted her was so unlike the blistering heatwaves back home. It was unnerving.

Her stomach gave a meager grumble. She hadn't eaten anything since breakfast yesterday, and she'd exerted herself quite a bit after that. She needed food.

Her throat was still quite sore, and it continued to hurt when swallowing. Daphne choked down a couple handfuls of water from the canal before wandering towards no place in particular. She supposed that day she would explore the arena, try to scout for food.

There was considerable plant life in the suburban town, and Daphne set out to look for one that bore fruit. She eventually stumbled across a bush dotted with small dark berries. She racked her brain trying to recall the edible plants station from training, staring at the berries for a frustrating minute or two. She came up empty.

She did, however, recall a way to test whether or not the fruit was safe. She plucked a berry, then crushed it against the surface of her wrist. Almost immediately, an itching sensation spread across her skin, and Daphne hastily scraped the berry off of her and onto the ground.

She muttered a curse, gave the bush a hard kick for good measure, and stalked away.

She swept through a couple other houses in hopes of maybe an abandoned refrigerator, but she came to the conclusion that all the houses were empty like the one she'd crashed in. Not a single piece of furniture or decor that hinted anyone had ever lived there.

Her wrist stopped itching a couple hours later, when Daphne found herself at the border of the urban adobe towers and the beach town. It was about mid afternoon, since she'd slept half the day away. It was just her luck that she hadn't found a single other fruit plant.

Her hunger hadn't gotten better. During hard times in the winter back in District Ten, she'd sometimes have to go days without eating. She liked to think she could hold out pretty well, but she'd been eating good for the past week at the Capitol. Her stomach was now used to being constantly full.

As if in response, a hard cramp nipped at her abdomen. If she didn't find food soon, who knew how well she'd fare if someone were to attack her?

Daphne tried to assure herself that she hadn't run into any of the other thirty remaining tributes so far, and that she had time to scavenge. Just as a faint rustle sounded in the tree behind her.

Daphne whirled around, a knife instantly cocked her hand. If there was a tribute hiding in that tree, deciding this was the perfect time to strike, the irony would be hilarious.

The leaves rustled, and she tightened her grip on the knife. A dark streak shot down the trunk, and the knife was flying before she could even register what it was. The blade hit home with a splatter of blood, and the thing gave a squeak before falling limp to the ground.

Daphne suddenly felt quite stupid as she picked her victim up by the furry tail, frowning. It was a squirrel. She'd been spooked by a damn squirrel. And now she'd killed the poor thing.

Daphne yanked her knife from the squirrel's hide, wiping the blade clean of gore on the grass. She was about to set the squirrel down when her stomach convulsed again, reminding her ever so rudely of her current predicament. She hesitated, then glanced back at the dead squirrel.

She found herself soon in search of a safe place to roast it, wandering into the labyrinth of alleyways and towers. If she was going to make a fire, she should probably do it where tall buildings would conceal most of the smoke.

Daphne used drops of the squirrel's blood to mark her path so she wouldn't get lost. Smeared against the occasional crate or wall, nothing that would attract curious tributes.

It might be a bad idea and she might end up dying of smoke inhalation, but she gathered some hay and a crate from a nearby pile and creaked the door open into one of the adobe towers. Hauling the squirrel and the hay on top of the crate all the way up five flights of stairs and onto the top floor, she prayed that nobody was occupying this tower.

The inside of the tower was barren and empty like the houses, except everything was made of stones and clay instead of wood. Each floor consisted of a long hallway and several doors that lined the walls, each opening up to an identical, bare room. Windows were cut in the stone walls, glassless and open to the outside.

Daphne set down the crate and began breaking it apart, the wood old and brittle enough that she could yank away the panels without a great deal of effort. She threw the wood onto the ground and covered it with a layer of hay, then took to skinning the squirrel and cutting off the inedible parts. She took another wood panel and sharpened the point with a knife, spearing it through the chunks of meat and hoping the weight of the creature wouldn't snap the wood in half.

Now Daphne truly felt like an idiot. She'd prepped the materials, was about to sit and roast the squirrel, and she realized she had no way to actually start the fire. No matches, and she'd avoided the fire-making station during training, dismissing it as useless.

She broke off two more sticks of wood from the crate and set to work. It took an hour or so of blood, sweat and tears–literally–before she was finally able to create a spark and nurture it into a functioning flame. She sat and held the squirrel over the fire as it charred, thinking back to summer nights when she, Lysa and Tobe would roast nuts in the fireplace. Barley would always be there, begging for a bite.

Smoke filled the room soon, and Daphne pulled her shirt over her nose. The smoke seemed to trickle out the window unnaturally slowly. She prayed that nobody would wander past and see it.

Alas the meat turned from a bloody scarlet to a golden brown, and Daphne got the hell out of there without bothering to put out the fire. It would simmer away on its own, and she had to keep herself from simmering away from smoke inhalation. She couldn't have risked making it outside, where it would be a beacon of light to help tributes locate her faster if they were to notice.

She feasted as she hurried out of the building and back towards the suburban area, which wasn't far. Squirrel meat was tough and chewy, and it scratched against her raw throat painfully, but it filled her stomach and that was what mattered. She thought she heard footsteps from afar a couple times, turning around with a hand on a knife, but so far nothing had happened. She must've been losing it.

As Daphne neared the canal, she picked up sounds of struggle over the roar of rushing water. Screams and the horrible ripping of metal across flesh. Daphne halted in her tracks, wiping her mouth clean of the last bits of squirrel. Every instinct screamed at her to run in the opposite direction, but a small part of her heart raced with curiosity. What if it was someone she knew? What if they needed help?

Daphne crept towards the source of the noises and poked her head around the corner of the building. There, on the dock by the canal, two Careers stood over a pair of cowering girls, huddled together and bleeding onto the wooden planks. Daphne recognized them as the two from District Nine who'd been ogling after Theron on the night of the Banquet.

The girls looked mangled, whimpering in pain, drenched in their own blood. One of them looked as though her eyes had been shredded with a knife, and she clutched blindly to the other tribute, who used to be blonde but now had hair darkened by dirt and gore. Daphne fought the urge to vomit, the squirrel meat in her stomach suddenly not sitting so well.

Daphne's blood ran cold as she took in the fiery orange of Glory's hair, a reddened knife clutched in the Career's hand. The other Career held a spiked mace dripping with blood menacingly towards the girls.

Daphne wanted to run. To turn away and pretend she'd never stumbled upon this horrible scene. Her feet remained glued to the cobblestone beneath her, and she found herself unable to look away with morbid fascination as Glory lashed out and the blinded girl let out a curdling scream. More blood splashed into the canal.

"Stop hurting her," the blonde girl begged, dragging herself closer to her partner as if she could shield her. "Just kill me and let her go!"

Glory giggled, low and menacing. "Do you really think she could survive even if we did let her go?" She then turned her silver eyes upon the other Career, his tanned face lit with bloodthirst. "Knock yourself out, Cosmo. Just make it slow."

Cosmo's mouth widened in a delighted smile, looking quite like Barley at the prospect of a bone. Daphne finally tore her gaze away, realizing that she should probably get out of there before Glory and Cosmo discovered her and delivered her the same fate.

Daphne scampered away as quickly and silently as she could. The sounds of the girls' screams echoed still minutes and minutes later. Daphne found a pile of hay and promptly emptied the contents of her newly filled stomach, the image of the torture and gore seemingly imprinted into the insides of her eyelids.

She should've saved them. She should've sent a knife straight into Glory's back, like Caelum had said at the Banquet. Or maybe one at the girls themselves, freeing them of their suffering. But no, instead Daphne ran. Ran like a coward.

Two cannon shots burst about an hour later. An hour. Sixty minutes of pure pain and suffering. The sun was setting, and Daphne reached the suburban part of town and collapsed on the dock, spooning handfuls of water from the canal and letting it soothe her aching throat before she stopped dead.

The girls' gore had washed into the canal. They'd bled for an hour on those docks under Glory and Cosmo, smirking down on them. The evidence had been splattered into this very water, regardless of the fact that it had probably already washed into the ocean by now judging by how fast it was rushing.

A sick feeling shuddered down Daphne's spine and she suddenly had the urge to vomit again, except she couldn't afford to expel more of the precious meat from her system. She needed the protein and the energy, the least she could do was try and hold it down.

She didn't hear the light footsteps over the thunderous roar of the rushing water below. But she did feel the wood boards shift beneath her as another weight stepped onto the dock. Judging by the slowness, the softness of the movements, Daphne realized that she was quite possibly in danger.

Her own knife was in her hand as she leaped to her feet, poised to strike. Daphne found herself face to face with a mousy girl with short brown hair, a shortsword raised as if to gouge Daphne from behind. Daphne quickly jumped back, pulling another of her blades into her free hand, pointing both at the girl. The girl snarled, as if frustrated Daphne had heard her approach, but made no move to advance.

"Impressive sneakiness, by the way." Daphne said, her voice slightly less raspy than earlier. "You almost got me."

"You," The girl hissed. "You were the one who got Mellie killed."

Daphne narrowed her eyes. Now she remembered who this was; this was the girl who'd been reaped from District Eight. She was the one who picked Mellie to join her in the games.

"Why'd you choose Mellie then, if you didn't want her to die?" Daphne couldn't help but ask. Stall for time perhaps.

"She's a lot stronger than she looks," The girl said, eying the bruises around Daphne's neck. "She could've helped me, if that skinny boy didn't shoot her to save your sorry ass. And since I can't find him, I'll settle with killing you instead."

Daphne's already sore throat tightened at the mention of Caelum. She realized she hadn't quite thought of him all day, which was an impressive record on her part.

"First of all, if Mellie hadn't attacked me for no apparent reason, she would probably still be alive." Daphne said, adjusting her grip on her knives as the girl took a threatening step forward. "And second, 'skinny boy' Caelum is actually pretty jacked if you look close enough-"

The girl struck, fast as an asp, her blade glinting in the sunset. Daphne barely had time to dodge, and an explosion of pain erupted across her cheek. Her mind flicked back to her nightly lessons with Theia, and she let her body move in the familiar patterns. She went low and sliced at the girl's legs, feeling a rush of satisfaction as blood welled up in two neat streaks.

The girl shrieked in pain and lashed again, this time Daphne met her sword with her own two knives. There was a loud clang as metal connected, and it was a few seconds of struggle of pure might before the girl suddenly lunged, catching Daphne across the arm. Daphne clamped down on her own teeth to stifle the yelp. The mere slash was enough to make her arm go numb and useless. Every small movement sent red lightning through her body.

In the stories she'd read as a child, the hero would always seem fine after getting hit. They'd get back up and fight as if nothing happened. It was only now did she realize how unrealistic it really was. The authors clearly hadn't been in a real knife fight before, didn't know how intense the pain was for someone who'd never been sliced in such a manner before.

Daphne reeled back, clutching her arm in pain. The girl had slowed down from the slashes Daphne had given her on her legs, but she staggered towards Daphne regardless.

The girl was too close to risk throwing a knife, so when her blade came arcing down, Daphne met it with her own. The reverberations echoed through Daphne's arm. The girl shifted her sword, grazing it across Daphne's knuckles. It left surface cuts, no deeper than accidental kitchen slip-ups thanks to Daphne's quick jerk backwards. Still, pain laced across her hand, but she forced her fingers to keep hold of the blade. Meanwhile, she jabbed forward with her other hand, feeling her knife slice into her opponent's torso.

The girl yelped, shrank back, then lunged, and once again Daphne parried. The impact knocked the knife right out of her left hand that time. Adrenaline was pumping through her veins. She reached for another knife around her belt, but it was then did the girl feint to the right. Instinct had Daphne lashing in that direction, right as the girl spun and shoved hard against Daphne's left side.

Daphne stumbled, and the adrenaline quickly morphed into panic as her foot slammed backwards into empty air, then icy cold water. Next thing she knew she was falling, falling off the dock, trapped in gravity's grip.

The last thing she could think to do was hurl her knife. She watched it embed itself into the girl's shoulder–her aim tended to be a bit off when she was in the process of falling into a canal–before Daphne hit the surface of the water, the racing current dragging her beneath the foaming waves.

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