That same morning, they set out towards the centre of the arena. Or forcefield circle, whatever you want to call it — arena is shorter.

They had all their posessions distributed between the two of them, and they walked in silence. Samantha had tried to read Felix's mind, and find out what he was capable of, but found him surprisingly resilient. She gave up her efforts after a few tries, realizing that she was not yet as strong as Wanda, and hoping that Felix would tell her himself.

That afternoon, they heard the cannons.

It was a loud sound that echoed through the forcefield. They still couldn't see where the forcefield ended, and Felix began to wonder how big it really was. Maybe they could walk for days without reaching the other end. In any case, the echoing made it hard to tell where the sound was coming from.

"Eleven," Samantha whispered.

"What?" Felix frowned.

"Eleven cannon shots," she elaborated, "do you think that's the time?"

Felix shook his head.

"No, it's past noon. Way past."

He became little pale.

"Maybe this is a war zone or something. Or maybe they're blowing up an old building, and the forcefield is there to shield the surroundings."

"Do you see anything?" Samantha gestured to their surroundings.

"I see a forest," Felix answered sarcastically, "and it's not possible to see much beyond that."

Sam sighed.

"But still. There's no fire, no massive explosions, and no sounds indicating an approaching apocalypse."

 "Yet," Felix pointed out, and Samantha rolled her eyes.

"Do you have something against positivity?"

"If I'm in a life threatening situation, yes."

She looked for a sign that he was joking, but there was none. She began to attempt to access his mind, but he just stared at her.

"Please don't, Samantha."

She stopped, her concentration broken.

"How..."

"You were concentrating," he shrugged, "and there's not many things here for you to concentrate on other than me."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Your eyes were red," Felix found himself admitting, and he wondered if she'd made him say it, because he certainly hadn't been planning to. Could she do that?

He shook his head to clear his thoughts, and to clear Samantha from his thoughts, and looked at the stance of the sun.

"Should we begin to make shelter?" Samantha seemed to read his thoughts.

"No," Felix decided, "we press on a little further. I want to find out what is at the center of this thing."

-

It was morning before they knew it. They had built a camp when it had gotten dark, and now they'd packed everything up and were making a breakfast of a few berries, cautiously avoiding anything they didn't recognize, and some meat remaining from earlier hunts. They hadn't seen much animals since the cannon shots, which made sense.

"Don't look now," Sam whispered, "but we're being watched."

She spoke softly, just as she brushed past Felix to attend to the fire. He sat down beside her, pretending to help her.

"Where?" He muttered under his breath.

"Behind us, in the tree. It could be a monkey or something."

Felix nodded, standing up and turning around. He pretended to walk towards his backpack, eyes glancing up at the trees. He quickly distinguished a small figure, that could be no older than twelve, if it was a human at all, and not some sort of ape.

It moved, and then Felix was sure it was a child.

He picked up his backpack, and threw it to Samantha. His back was facing the tree now, and he took his dagger out of his boot, and threw it aside, slightly behind him.

"I'm unarmed," he spoke clearly, "and mean no harm. Who are you?"

Samantha watched as the figure climbed down with ease, stopping at one of the lowest branches.

"And the girl?" A young voice demanded. An extremely young voice, Felix noted. And a girl's voice.

"The same," Samantha spoke, shoving her stick — well, Felix's stick that she'd sort of claimed for her injury — away with her shoe.

Felix might've been a lot less comfortable with disarming himself if Sam hadn't been facing the child, her... mind shtick... ready for action. Just in case. He could hear the girl clambering out of the tree, and began to turn around.

"Don't move," the girl ordered, with a slightly shaky undertone. That reassured Felix more than anything. If she was scared of them, there was no reason for them to be scared of her, right?

She picked up Felix's dagger, or at least; that was what Felix guessed she was doing. He couldn't tell, because he had thrown it out of his line of sight.

"Alright," the girl spoke shakily, "you can turn around now."

Felix turned around slowly, his hands in the air to show that he was still unarmed.

Before him stood a young girl, with relatively short curly brown hair and deep brown eyes. As expected, she held Felix's dagger in her right hand, and Felix noted that it trembled slightly.

"Who are you?" The girl asked, clearly confused, "I... I don't remember seeing you before."

"Felix," Felix answered, before gesturing over his shoulder to Sam, "and this is Samantha."

"Call me Sam," Samantha added quickly, walking forwards to stand beside Felix.

"What district?" the girl wanted to know.

"We... We're not from around here," Samantha answered cautiously, not sure how she would react to outsiders.

"We mean no harm," Felix reassured her, and the girl's brown eyes seemed sorrowful.

"You've come to the wrong place for that," she spoke quietly.

"Where... Where are we?"

"I'm not sure exactly," she answered, "we came here by hovercraft."

"But... what planet?"

"Earth," the girl answered easily, and Felix raised his eyebrows.

"But..." Samantha protested.

Felix grabbed her hand unobtrusively to get her attention, and when she looked at him he mouthed two words.

"Mind shtick."

Sam closed her eyes in focus, to the girls dismay.

The girl was clearly not as at ease in front of them as she was in the trees.

"What are you doing? Who are you really?" she demanded, "Gamemakers? Illusions?"

Sam made eye contact with Felix, and slowly shook her head.

"Answer me! What are you doing?" She demanded again, raising the dagger, "stop being so secretive, or else..."

Felix pushed the tip of the dagger down slowly with his index finger.

"Relax, shortie. We're just lost. Now, what's your name?"

She eyed them suspiciously, but figured that there was no harm in telling them her name.

Yet still the words hit Felix harder than Sam's mind shtick could have.

"My name is Rue."