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Nines paused when he noticed Connor no longer following behind. He turned, and saw his idiot brother playing with a landmine.
“Jesus Christ, Connor!” Nines cried, running up to him. “What the hell are you doing!”
“It’s okay!” Connor insisted. “I can arm it. Then, if someone comes up from behind us, we’ll hear them. And they’ll hopefully also die.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed doing this!”
“I won’t!”
Connor paused to look up at Nines, a cocky smile on his face.
“I always accomplish my mission, remember?”
Nines frowned, his heart still pounding.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered. “You’re just being reckless because Hank-”
His voice failed him.
Hank had taken them in when they’d arrived at the Training Center, taking them under his wing and looking out for them. They were brothers from the same District sent to kill each other or be killed. To live without the other, or die together. Hank had lost his son to the Hunger Games three years back. And for some reason Nines couldn’t explain, he’d been willing to take in two more, knowing they were all going to die too.
Or leave the others behind.
Now Hank was gone. He hadn’t even survived the first day. And Nines knew they both still blamed themselves.
“This has nothing to do with Hank,” Connor snapped. “I’m trying to help you!”
“I didn’t ask for your help!” Nines sneered. “You want to help me? I need you to stay alive!”
“Stop being so paranoid,” Connor said, resuming his work on the landmine. “I’ve done this tons of times. I’m not stupid.”
Nines growled and turned away, trying to hide the tears forming in his eyes.
“Go catch up with the others,” Connor added. “Help them set up camp near that cave next to the pine trees. I’ll be there.”
“You fucking better be,” Nines said.
Without looking back, he walked on, joining their makeshift group.
Two minutes later, Connor still hadn’t returned. And two seconds after Nines realised that, he heard an explosion go off behind them, followed closely by the sound of a cannon shot.
Nines turned and bolted, ignoring Lucy’s cry of warning.
Once he reached the clearing where Connor had been playing with the landmine, his heart seemed to stop, and bile flew to the back of his throat. He bent over and vomited into the displaced dirt, cast outward from the blast, as what little bits were left of Connor’s body singed in the lingering flames that licked the dry ground.
~
After hours of tossing and turning, Nines rose from his bedroll quietly. The Sun still hadn't risen, but it was probably close to 4 AM. Chloe had taken Rupert’s bedroll, and he knew she’d fallen asleep late, so he let her rest for a bit longer.
He pressed himself against a tree, exhaling heavily as warm summer winds ruffled his hair.
This was his second night in a row with no sleep whatsoever. The few nights before that had been restless. He was tormented with dreams that were just visions of all that had happened, forced to relive the worst moments of his entire life squeezed into one week.
Nines ran a hand through his messy hair, a single tear sliding down his cheek.
~
“Don’t go. Please,” he begged, tightening his grip around Gavin’s forearm. “Chloe is staying here. Look after her.”
“You look after her,” Gavin snapped, shrugging Nines’s hand off. “I can do this.”
“What do you have to prove!? You’re just going to get yourself killed!”
“Keep yelling like that, you’ll attract unwanted attention and get us both killed.”
Nines groaned and turned away, his hands on his hips as he lowered his chin to his sternum.
The Feast had just been called, and Gavin hadn’t spent even a second to think things through.
“If I can’t convince you to not be an idiot,” Nines sighed, “then I guess I’m coming with you.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“I don’t care what you think you need or don’t need!”
Nines whirled around, levelling a glare at Gavin that finally had the man shutting up. He approached Gavin and grabbed his shoulders, lowering his head so they could see eye-to-eye, literally, and hopefully metaphorically.
“I will not lose you too,” Nines said, slowly. “And if something happened to you because I wasn’t there to have your back, I would never forgive myself.”
Gavin frowned at him, but he didn’t speak.
“You want to make it out of here alive?” Nines asked. “You want to go home?”
Gavin just nodded.
“Then accept. My. Help.”
The heat behind Gavin’s eyes sputtered out, and he dropped his gaze.
“Fine,” he muttered.
Nines sighed in relief, letting his hands fall from Gavin’s frame.
“But we go in on opposite sides,” Gavin added. “You’re not gonna be my fucking bodyguard or use yourself as a human shield or some shit. Got it?”
Nines rolled his eyes.
“Got it.”
Once they’d reached the centre where the Cornucopia was placed, Nines circled around to be on the other side. He held Gavin’s gaze when he reached his position, and Gavin gave him a small, pained grin. It seemed weighted with something Nines couldn’t name, like Gavin knew something he didn’t. Anxiety rolled through his abdomen.
The sound of a twig snapping to his left caused Nines’s eyes to leave Gavin, right as he ran out from behind the cover of the trees.
Amanda was crouched not twenty feet away, holding a finger to her lips. Nines hated himself for struggling, for hesitating. She didn’t care about him. She would’ve killed him if their roles were swapped. But he couldn’t.
Staring into the eyes of the woman who’d practically raised him and his brother before switching Districts and leaving them to fend for themselves, the woman who’d promised to protect them and then abandoned them when they needed her most, he just couldn’t hurt her.
It took just those few seconds, that half of a minute, for Gavin to fall, while Nines wasn’t looking. When Nines turned back to the Cornucopia, he saw Gavin bleeding out on the ground, two Sais stuck in his chest. Nines’s entire world fell away as he vaulted forward into the open, Amanda and any other possible threat immediately forgotten as he tore through the air to reach Gavin.
Even before he knelt at Gavin’s body, Nines knew he was dead.
~
Nines took a shuddering breath as the tears fell harder now, blurring his vision. He slumped against the tree, sliding to his knees.
The only people he’d had left, the only people he loved, were gone. What was the point of his pitiful existence now?
A warm hand grasped his shoulder gently. He didn’t startle.
“Please,” he gasped. “Please, Chloe. You have to kill me.”
He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was kneeling in front of him now, looking at him with those loving eyes that cared way too much for this broken man she’d just met a few days ago.
“Nines, c’mon,” she said, tugging his arm. “Get some sleep while it’s still dark.”
“I can’t,” he whispered, swiping a hand over his eyes. It was useless. He still couldn’t see. “I can’t s-sleep.”
Chloe wrapped her arms around him and pulled him to her. He fell against her smaller frame, crying silently onto her shoulder. She rubbed a hand through his hair.
Chloe had told him she wanted to be a mother, someday. That she would take her child far away from any district, away from the Capitol, and raise them somewhere safe. She had come here with her wife, North, who had fallen on the first day. Chloe wanted nothing more than to leave behind every trace of this god forsaken land. And Nines wanted that for her.
Chloe would be an amazing mother some day.
“Please, Chloe,” he tried again. “I have nothing. Nothing left.”
He sat up, trying to calm himself down so he could speak clearly. Chloe watched him with sad eyes.
“Kill me,” he begged. “Kill me, and make it out of here. Go start your family away from this wretched place.”
“Nines, stop it. I won’t kill you.”
“There’s nothing more for me here. The world still needs you.”
“Enough.”
He shut his eyes, knowing he was losing.
“Kill me,” he whispered.
Chloe put her hands around his face, wiping some of his tears away.
“Never.”
~
Nines stoked the fire carefully as Rupert and Amanda danced and sang. He couldn’t hear them. He didn’t care to listen.
Suddenly Amanda was at his side, pulled at his arm.
“Get up here and sing with us,” she demanded with a grin. “I remember you had the most beautiful voice.”
“You mean before you abandoned us?”
Perhaps Amanda hadn’t been expecting him to speak, or maybe she’d simply forgotten how she’d neglected him and Connor. Regardless, she faltered, her cheerful smile giving way to a nervous grimace.
“Yeah, sing with us, Nines!” Rupert called, unaware of the tension between his two companions.
Nines threw the makeshift fire-iron into the flames, and laid down on the ground. Amanda had backed off, and rejoined Rupert in singing, though her voice carried considerably less cheer than Rupert’s now.
“We’re alive!” Rupert called, laughing.
The cannon shots still reverberated in Nines’s skull.
Taking shifts, Nines offered to sleep last. Even with his exhaustion, his dreams were still plagued with images of their dead bodies.
When he awoke from fitful dozing the next morning, Amanda was nowhere to be seen. Nines rolled his eyes and helped Rupert pack up.
Trumpet blast filled the air. Nines winced, and braced himself.
“It seems alliances hold fast in these games,” the trilling voice of Templesmith called out. “Or perhaps love was not so deep?”
Nines frowned in confusion, looking about. This particular announcement felt… personal.
“Let’s hope District Eleven doesn’t take for granted the blind loyalty they’ve been shown…”
District Eleven? That was the District where Echo had come from. Echo, and…
Rupert.
“What the hell was that about?” Nines asked, watching Rupert carefully as he stood.
“I don’t know,” Rupert said quickly, “Echo died already.”
“But you haven’t.”
Rupert paused, his back facing Nines. He had his pack slung loosely over his left shoulder, but his grip around it tightened, just slightly. Just enough.
“How did you survive the Cornucopia, Rupert?” Nines asked, taking a step forward. “I’m assuming that’s where you got your pack. I saw others there like it, but… I never saw you.”
Rupert shrugged.
“I got there before anyone else,” he said. “I was quick.”
“What weapon did you take after you looted Adam’s body?”
Rupert didn’t answer him.
“I remember you had an affinity for daggers, in the Training Center.” Nines continued to step forward, his blood boiling and heart pounding. “I wonder if that affinity perhaps… extended to Sais.”
Nines placed a hand on the knife at his belt.
Rupert bolted.
Nines roared and chased after him, the fury-turned-adrenaline coursing through him pushing him to speeds he’d never before achieved. Rupert was fast, probably the fastest runner of any of this year’s Tributes. But Nines could be faster.
He chased Rupert through trees, over bushes, and across clearings that should have been dangerous but somehow were absent of any other ambushing Tributes. Nines pushed himself harder.
They reached a cluster of tall grass. Nines swore as he lost sight of Rupert, but he kept running. He broke through the grass just before the edge of a small but dangerous cliff. He managed to stop himself just in time, as a cry drew his attention away.
Rupert was a couple dozen metres away, wrestling his backpack away from the grip of a small girl.
Alice. The youngest Tribute that year. Her mother had died the first day, just like Hank had.
Nines watched as Rupert pushed Alice off of him, and she tumbled backwards towards the edge of the cliff.
“No!” Nines cried, dashing forward again.
Rupert spared him a brief glance before sprinting away. Nines swore again, and stopped where Alice had fallen over. He saw her small hands clutching desperately to a cluster of tree roots that had broken from the cliffside, just sparing her from an early death. Nines groaned and turned to where he could still see Rupert running away.
“I will fucking kill you!” he shouted, spit flying from his mouth in his anger.
Then he turned back to Alice, and knelt down, holding out a hand.
“Grab on!”
Alice grasped his hand just as her other hand slipped from the roots. Nines pulled her up easily, and they both sat panting next to each other on the ground.
“Why did you… Save me…” Alice asked between breaths.
“You didn’t deserve this fate,” Nines replied. “You should be at home worrying about school or what the other kids are gossiping about.”
Alice smiled at him.
“I was scared, but…” she looked away, her smile falling. “I thought about seeing my mom again. Do you think I could?”
Nines’s heart broke.
He placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. Alice looked up at him, and her eyes were watering.
“I think your mother died so you could survive this,” he said. “And I think you should honour her sacrifice by staying alive.”
Alice nodded as a few tears escaped her eyes. She hugged Nines, and he held her tightly.
“Stick with me, okay?” he said. “I’ll keep you safe.”
“Okay,” Alice nodded. “I trust you.”
~
“Nines?”
Nines turned around just in time to see Alice fall to the ground. He was at her side in an instant, pressing a hand to her forehead.
“What is it!? What’s wrong!?”
“I… I think-” Alice winced, holding her abdomen tightly.
Nines sucked in a breath as he noticed the blood soaking through her shirt.
“Alice!” Nines cried. “Why didn’t you tell me!?”
“It wasn’t- it wasn’t this bad before.”
He slid his backpack off and rummaged for any first aid materials.
Nothing. Chloe had been gifted the medical supplies, and she was off collecting food.
He tore a strip off of his shirt and lifted the hem of Alice’s to press it into her wound, and hopefully wrap it. But he couldn’t even see where the wound was. There was so much blood.
Too much blood.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and her voice, which was already so small, and so quiet, seemed to fade even more. “I’m sorry, Nines.”
“Stop it,” he demanded, tears filling his eyes as he dabbed uselessly at her stomach with the cloth. “Stop, just- you’ll be okay. You’ll…”
He glanced at her face. She’d gone sheet-white, and her eyes were open, but without focus, staring off into nothing.
“Alice!”
He shook her shoulders. Her head slumped against the ground.
A cannon shot fired overhead. Nines doubled over Alice’s body, weeping.
“Nines! I found-”
Chloe’s voice cut off when she saw him. He looked up at her, his view blurred once more by tears.
“Oh, Alice… ”
Chloe ran to his side and knelt next to him, putting one hand over Alice’s face to close her eyes, and the other hand around Nines’s shoulder, pulling him in. She cradled his face as he cried, and he knew her tears mixed in with his own.
She would make a great mother someday.
~
“You don’t want to kill her,” Amanda drawled, “do you?”
Nines glared.
“She deserves to survive this,” he insisted. “Neither of us do.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that…”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Amanda smiled mischievously.
“I could tell you something that would make it easier for you to kill her.”
“Fuck you.”
“Such a foul mouth,” Amanda chastised, circling him like a shark now. “I thought I raised you better.”
Nines said nothing.
“What if I told you that this… Chloe girl is the reason your brother was entered into the games with you?”
Nines laughed bitterly.
“I’d say you must be the dumbest fucker alive if you think I’d believe that.”
“It’s true!” Amanda said. “She is from District Three, the District of Technology. Yes?”
Nines nodded, still glaring.
“She arrived with her wife, North, who had previously belonged to District Twelve.” Amanda paused when she stood in front of him again. “How do you think it was possible for a woman from District Twelve to be safely transferred to District Three?”
“I don’t want to know,” Nines said, shuddering at the thought of what North might have had to do to join her lover’s side.
“I think you do…” Amanda insisted. “You see, Chloe knows how to work technology very well. So well, in fact, that she attracted the attention of a very Elite person in the Capitol. This person offered her a deal. They would pay to have North safely and legally transferred to District Three, if Chloe did them a little favour.”
Nines felt something unpleasant claw at his chest.
“She had to rig the Reapings.”
Nines shook his head.
“She couldn’t have- no, she-”
“She did,” Amanda nodded. “Ask her, and she’ll tell you the truth.”
Nines grunted.
“Even if she did, she couldn’t have known!” Nines shouted, standing to tower over Amanda. The woman had never been intimidated by his height, and she still wasn’t now. “She had no reason to select Connor. She couldn’t have known.”
“Maybe not. But you see, she didn’t just get Connor selected. She got half of the Tributes here selected. Ever wondered how it was possible that Hank Anderson was a Tribute, at his age? Or Markus, who had already won last year’s Hunger Games?”
“I don’t- I didn’t-”
“What about poor, little Alice? She was only ten years old, you know. Certainly not old enough to be drawn in the Reapings.”
Nines frowned deeply.
“You- you’re lying! You just want me to turn against Chloe so you can win!”
“Well, of course I do!” Amanda chuckled, coldly. “But I don’t need to lie to you to do so. I just need to tell you the secret she’s been keeping this whole time.”
Nines shook his head, feeling lightheaded.
“The Elite in the Capitol are rich, and so, very bored,” Amanda continued. “They’d do anything to see their preferred Tributes all in one Game. It seems the Elite who hired Chloe was a particular brand of… disturbed.”
“You mean ‘beyond fucked up’?” Nines spat.
“My point is, even if Chloe didn’t know who she was Reaping, the person who hired her sure did. And do you really think someone of Chloe’s talent couldn’t have figured it out?”
Nines shook his head forcefully.
“Shut up,” he snapped.
“Ask her. She’ll tell you.”
She couldn’t have. She couldn’t have.
Chloe wanted to be a mother someday. She would never have doomed someone else’s child.
She couldn’t have.
~
“You killed Amanda.”
Nines wasn’t asking. He’d found Amanda’s dead body, run through with a tree branch.
“I did,” Chloe nodded. “I’m sorry.”
Nines stared blankly. Chloe's eyes darted over his face nervously.
“She would have killed me if I hadn’t,” Chloe defended. “She attacked me first. She was going to kill me.”
“Maybe she should have.”
Chloe blinked at him.
“...What?”
“Maybe she should have killed you,” Nines repeated. “Then I could kill her easily, and this would all be over.”
Chloe's shoulders relaxed a bit.
“I don’t want to kill you either,” Chloe said.
“Were you thinking about that when you added my brother to the Reapings?”
Chloe stiffened again. Her eyes widened.
“Because I died as soon as they called his name,” Nines added. “You killed me before the Games even began.”
Chloe said nothing.
Nines rested his hand over the explosive strapped at his waist. He’d been gifted it from an unknown sponsor the night before, before he knew Amanda had died. He’d almost used it on himself, at first, furious that they would dare gift him the very thing that had taken the life of his brother.
Now he was glad he’d saved it.
“Why would you-” Nines groaned, blinking away tears. He couldn’t seem to get rid of them. “How could you?”
Chloe watched him carefully. She swallowed.
“They were going to kill North,” she said weakly. “I was a District Three in love with a District Twelve. They would have killed her!”
“So instead you made sure she died in the Games?” Nines asked, genuinely confused.
“She wasn’t supposed to be here!” Chloe cried. “They promised me she wouldn’t be selected. They promised. She shouldn’t have been here.”
“So not only did you sell out half of us to the Games, but you believed the Capitol scum?!”
“What was I supposed to do, Nines! They were going to kill her!”
Chloe had begun crying. Nines could no longer feel anything for her. He couldn’t let himself.
“You were supposed to not value twelve lives over the life of one,” he seethed. “Especially when those lives should NEVER have been selected!”
Chloe was sobbing now.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I was so blind, I-”
“You should have killed me, Chloe,” Nines interrupted. He clenched his jaw to stop another wave of tears. “You should have killed me when I begged you to.”
Chloe nodded.
“I know,” she sniffled. “I’m sorry.”
Nines watched her cry, and all felt was pity. He dropped his hand away from his explosive. He couldn’t do this. Could he?
“You took so many lives,” he said, his voice almost a whisper in its fragility. “Why didn’t you take mine?”
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I just couldn’t kill you. You have so much to live for.”
“But you don’t want to die,” Nines noted. “And I don’t want to kill you.”
Chloe nodded again.
“I have nothing to live for,” Nines said. “Yet, somehow, I have more to live for than you do.”
Chloe stared. Nines’s hand twitched, and her eyes flickered to it.
“How could you ever be a mother,” he began, tears blurring his vision once more, “when you have taken so many children from theirs?”
He could no longer see her expression. He didn’t quite care anymore. But he could see her move, as she grabbed a stone from the ground and threw it at him. Nines ducked, his heart racing in shock and offense, and he wiped the tears away in time to watch Chloe turn and run. He grit his teeth, and detached the explosive from his waist, activating it. He watched her run for a moment, as every moment shared between them flashed before his eyes. As if on autopilot, he felt his arm raise, and he felt his hand throw the explosive.
He wasn’t really trying to aim for her, and it landed just five yards shy of her. But it was close enough. He watched as the explosion tore through her abdomen, launching her sideways about ten feet before she tumbled and rolled. Nines stared in horror as she fell limp, her wounds singed and blood splattered.
Then a cannon shot rang out, and Nines was running forward.
He fell to his knees at Chloe’s side, pressing a hand to her neck to find a pulse, but she was dead before she’d hit the ground and he knew it. Most of her abdomen was gone, and she was just barely attached to her lower half. It was horrifying, and Nines had done it.
Templesmith’s voice was blaring over the speakers, but Nines didn’t hear a goddamn word he said. He wept openly now, clutching Chloe’s bloodied shoulders.
“You should have killed me,” he whispered. “Why couldn’t you kill me?”
And why could I kill you?