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CANARY'S SONG
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ONTARI CAN SEE the wheels turning in Katniss' head. Her stormy grey eyes dart across each of the segments of the arena, divided into twelve pieces by the thin lines of black rock between each tribute platform. The blood rain is still falling at present. That means that the fog is next. The ragtag group of them are seated below the monkey-infested trees, but they're still close enough to the next slice of jungle that Ontari feels her skin crawl beneath her jumpsuit.

"Get up." Katniss abruptly shakes Johanna awake, then moves on to Peeta, Cassian, and Finnick. "Get up— we have to move."

Peeta mumbles a sleepy, incoherent question about why they're being roused. Ontari shifts her gaze from the lightning tree to the newly-awakened tributes, all with scowls on their faces. Finnick brushes sand from his cheek and sits up once he sees the expressions of alert on Katniss and Ontari's faces.

"Wiress hasn't been speaking gibberish," Ontari explains as she puts her back to the salty spray of the water.

Katniss nods. "The arena is a clock. Every hour, there's a new horror. First, the lightning every time it strikes twelve. Next is the blood rain, then the fog, then the monkeys, and so on. Every strip of rock represents a new section of the arena; that's why the fog disappeared once we crossed into the mutts' territory."

Johanna's already permanent scowl etches deeper into her mouth until the lines around her lips look like slashes in her skin. "Of course. As if this wasn't already enough of a nightmare."

While Katniss moves to wake Wiress, Cassian gets to work on rising a still-delirious Beetee from his slumber. The injured man is still weak. His skin has a pale sheen to it, but he's still able to gasp, "Wire."

"She's right here," Peeta says. "Wiress is fine. She's coming, too."

The older man shakes his head and repeats, "Wire."

"Oh, I know what he wants," Johanna sighs, crossing the beach to pick up a small, blood-coated cylinder near Beetee's discarded belt. "This worthless thing. It's some kind of wire or something. That's how he got cut. Running up to the Cornucopia to get this. I don't know what kind of weapon it's supposed to be. I guess you could pull off a piece and use it as a garrote or something. But really, can you imagine Beetee garroting somebody?"

Ontari hides her smirk under an equally as false expression of confusion. This is where their plan falls into place. Kill the remainder of the tributes who aren't a part of the alliance, then Plutarch will handle it from there. Only, they have to play a bit dumb in order to maintain their compliant façade to the Capitol.

"He won his games with a similar wire," Cassian reminds them. Of course, they can't play too dumb. Cassian Nightfall not figuring this detail out would likely ring bells of suspicion in the Gamemakers' ears. His reputation holds him as too smart not to put two and two together.

Peeta nods in remembrance. "He electrocuted everyone, right?"

"Exactly," Cassian confirms, hazel eyes flickering with relief that he'd gotten the point. "Whatever he wants with that, we should listen to him."

"Seems like you'd have figured that out, considering you nicknamed him Volts and all," Katniss says to Johanna, a small frown pulling down her lips. Ah, shit. Perhaps she had overdone the cluelessness a bit.

Johanna's gaze narrows to dangerous slits. "Yeah, that was really stupid of me, wasn't it? I guess I must have been distracted by keeping your little friends alive. While you were...what, again? Getting Mags killed off?"

Katniss' hand drifts to the knife at her belt and tightens on it. Ontari, casually placing her fingers on the sheath of her sword, snaps her eyes toward the black-haired woman. "Too far, Johanna."

For a fraction of a second, the air crackles with enough tension to fuel the 12-o'clock lightning strike. The two females participate in a stare-down; both of them are too stubborn to look away first. Even without her ax in her hand, Johanna could easily dodge all of Katniss' weapons and rip her throat out. Ontari is reluctant to allow that. If Johanna does pounce, would she be able to kill her friend if necessary to protect their agreement with Plutarch? To keep this rebellion going?

"Maybe we all had better be careful where we step," Finnick advises, effectively snapping the lingering tension as he shoots Katniss a wary look. He sets the coil of wire on Beetee's chest. "There's your wire, Volts. Watch where you plug it."

Ontari gives him a quick once-over. If Johanna's comment about Mags had struck him, he doesn't show it. There isn't even a hint of resentment in his carefully-guarded face. He merely schools his expression into neutrality, proving that they aren't quite done wearing their masks.

Soon. It'll be over soon, and then they'll escape this hell-hole.

Peeta bends down and heaves Beetee into his muscular arms. "Where to?"

"I'd like to go to the Cornucopia and watch," Finnick suggests. "Just to make sure we're right about the clock."

It seems like a smart idea. Since the tidal wave doesn't hit until later, they'll likely be out of range from any attacks by the arena itself. The only thing they'll have to worry about is onslaughts from other tributes. Ontari quickly runs through the list of remaining fighters in her mind, trying to decipher if any of them are strong archers and can shoot at them from afar. Her mind draws a blank. Unless they get snuck up on, they'll probably be okay.

The alliance makes the brief swim to the nearest strip of rock and walks slowly toward the Cornucopia in case anyone is lurking nearby. Ontari is in front, sword drawn and a hand out in case she needs to signal to those behind her. Cassian is next. His large frame will protect Peeta, who's still carrying Beetee, if necessary. Together, the two Nightfall siblings will rain death on whoever is unlucky enough to cross their path.

Ultimately, there isn't anyone nearby. Only the picked-over pile of weapons remains in the center, half-hidden under a canopy of metal. Ontari gives the signal for them to scatter. Peeta quickly lays Beetee down in some shade and Wiress crouches down near him. He hands her the bloodstained coil of wire, asking, "Clean it, will you?"

Wiress seems happy to oblige. She scampers to the edge of the small island, quietly singing a song to herself about a mouse running up a clock. It tugs at a faint memory in Ontari's memory. She thinks it's an old nursery rhyme meant for children, but she's not sure. Maybe it's another one of her whimsical tunes.

"Oh, no, not the song again," Johanna groans with a roll of her eyes. "That went on for hours before she started tick-tocking."

Wiress abruptly stops singing and stands. She extends a frail hand toward the jungle. "Two."

Ontari follows her pointed finger to see the fog seeping onto the sand from the jungle. Prickles erupt over her skin as she recalls the searing sensations it had brought, along with the sureness that she was going to die there. The memory of Mags' cannon booms in her ears. Will she ever get that image out of her mind?

"Yes, Wiress is right," Katniss says patiently, bringing Ontari back to the present moment. "It's two o'clock and the fog has started."

"Like clockwork," Peeta agrees. "You were very smart to figure that out, Wiress."

Wiress gives him a grateful smile and continues cleaning the coil. Ontari feels her admiration for the Baker Boy grow, letting a small grin quirk her lips upward. He's a ray of sunshine that is so rare in these days. Despite the hardships he's faced, he hasn't lost that brightness within him. For his sake, she hopes he never does.

"Oh, she's more than smart," Beetee says, his voice already gaining strength. He pushes himself up a little further so he's sitting instead of reclining on the rocks. "She's intuitive. She can sense things before anyone else. Like a canary in one of your coal mines."

"What's that?" Finnick questions. Ontari, too, cannot recall an image of the unfamiliar word.

"It's a bird that we take down into the mines to warn us if there's bad air," Katniss replies.

Johanna frowns. "What's it do, die?"

"It stops singing first," she answers. "That's when you should get out. But if the air's too bad, it dies, yes. And so do you."

Though Cassian's interest is clearly peaked by this new information, he doesn't push more out of Katniss. There's a faraway look in her eyes that suggests the mines are a sensitive topic for her. Ontari struggles to pull any personal information about the Girl on Fire from the depths of her mind. Katniss hadn't been a victor long enough to have her secrets dragged out into the open one way or another. Some victors paid reporters to keep their mouths shut. Others become too drunk to remember last week. For Ontari and Finnick... it hadn't been easy.

Johanna amuses herself by discovering twin axes in the pile of weapons. She gives Ontari a feline grin as she swings them around with chilling expertise, throwing one so forcefully that it embeds itself in the golden metal of the Cornucopia. That's one of the advantages being in the lumber district. Axes are not only tools for chopping trees, but also deadly weapons.

Cassian and Finnick are engaged in a mumbled conversation that Ontari can't hear from where she stands near Beetee. Finnick always seems a bit larger than life because of his supposed ego, but he's easily dwarfed by the youngest Nightfall, who towers over him by a good half a head. As always, Ontari feels her heart warm at their interactions. She'd been cautious of her family's perceptions of Finnick at first, but he'd soon become fast friends with both of her siblings. Well, if Hestia can count as a friend. She may only act like she's civil to him because of his attractiveness, but Ontari knows that it's also because of how good he is for the middle sibling.

I care about you, Hestia had said to them that day in the dining room. If Ontari had gotten the chance to say goodbye, she would have told her older sister the same thing.

She needs to distract herself from the pain of home. In an effort to do so, she stalks toward the half-empty pile of weapons and examines it with a concentrated frown on her face. Some of the weapons are ones she's never used before— throwing stars, garrotes, and even a club made of metal. Others are more familiar. Ontari carefully considers her options. Should she go with something she's used to or just arm herself to the teeth, knowing one can never have too many weapons? It's better than someone like Enobaria having them, at least.

In the end, she decides to grab a sword with a sharper blade than her current one, snagging a few throwing stars as well. She'll leave the knives for Cassian.

A hand gently caresses her hip, and Ontari would have drawn her knife had Finnick not spoken a millisecond later. "Anything worthwhile?"

"Barely," she answers through a sigh. Finnick's seafoam-green eyes scan the pile before snagging on another, smaller trident than the one he already has. The ghost of a grin turns his lips upward at the corners. He bends down to retrieve it, tossing it a few inches above his hand before catching it again. She rolls her eyes when he gives her a smirk. "You love tridents so much I'd think you slept with one at night."

Finnick's voice lowers, though it doesn't matter, because the hidden microphones will pick up his voice anyway as he mutters, "I'd rather have you."

Johanna, who seems to be dissatisfied with her meager amount of weapons and had started to come closer to take her share from the pile, outright cringes. "Oh, God. I did not need to hear that."

"You could always join us, Johanna," Ontari teases, if only to irk her friend even more and play on the reputation she has in the Capitol. Finnick cackles.

"Cassian!" Johanna calls to the younger Nightfall, who looks like he would be blatantly plugging his ears if it weren't for his image, then glares at her for bringing him into the conversation. "Didn't your parents ever teach your sister manners?"

The boy grumbles something incoherent as he snatches a rogue knife from the ground and shoves it in his belt. Ontari feels something prickle her back and turns to see her brother's eyes on her. To anyone else, it would seem like a protective gaze, but the Nightfall siblings have learned to speak silently over the years. She glances at Katniss and Peeta, who are talking quietly and hunched over a part of the island that merges into sand. A discreet nudge to Finnick and Johanna has them looking as well.

Peeta is drawing a rough sketch of the arena with pointers from Katniss. He has several circles that make up the jungle, beach, and Cornucopia at the center. Eleven lines slice through like pieces of a pie, representing each segment of horrors. They only have five that they know of. It seems like so little.

Katniss, knowing this, looks up at the four of them. "Did you notice anything unusual in the others?"

Johanna consults Beetee and Cassian, who come to the conclusion that all they could see was a lot of blood.

"I'm going to mark the ones where we know the Gamemakers' weapon follows us out past the jungle, so we'll stay clear of those," Peeta says, drawing diagonal lines on the fog and wave beaches. He sits back and considers his drawing. "Well, it's a lot more than we knew this morning, anyway."

Ontari's back prickles again, but it's different than the time it had been because of Cassian's stare. This feeling has dread pooling in her gut before she's even turned around. One second, she's standing still, and the next, she has her sword out and pivots quickly enough to give herself whiplash.

She immediately realizes what had been off. The silence. Wiress had stopped singing because Gloss has split her neck open in a crimson smile.

Before Ontari can strike, an arrow whizzes past her head and embeds itself in his right temple. She explodes into action before his body hits the ground. She and Johanna go back-to-back, the latter launching an ax into Cashmere's chest. Ontari slips a few throwing stars out of her belt and hurls them at Enobaria, who dodges the first one and takes the second to the shoulder. Before she can impale Katniss in the back with a blade, Cassian intercepts her with a knife fight that's too close for Ontari's comfort. She forces herself to tear her eyes away from the scene and focuses on the next potential attack. Cannons pierce the air, marking the fallen tributes. Boom! Boom! Boom!

"Where—" Ontari's question is cut off by a cry of pain as the tip of a blade grazes her calf, shredding the thin blue jumpsuit and slicing her skin open in the process. Her head snaps up to see Enobaria and Brutus running like hell down one of the strips of rock toward the beach. She grits her teeth at both the pain and anger of being caught unawares. Cowards. Damn cowards—

Then she realizes that Cassian has his arm reared back, poised to let a knife sail toward Enobaria's retreating figure. Hope blooms in her chest for a millisecond.

But then her feet begin sliding out from under her. Ontari releases a grunt of pain as she's thrown onto her side, a sharp edge of rock jabbing into her side and producing a blooming ache. The jungle begins to swirl in a sickening array of colors as the Cornucopia spins at a rate too fast for her brain to comprehend. Instinct tells her to hold onto any bit of rock she can, but centrifugal force pulls her close to the island's edge. She can hear the heart-stopping clang of metal striking rock as the weapons pile empties. Something cuts open her forearm. Saltwater stings her eyes. Her heart is beating so fast she almost thinks she'll pass out from the exertion.

Then something heavy strikes her left hand— the one she'd been holding on with. Her fingers spring free of the rock, and another desperate swing of her right arm does nothing to save her. Ontari doesn't have time to see anything except the overcast sky before she's dragged under the water.

________

honestly? is this chapter the best? no. am i proud of myself for even managing to finish it? yes.

i suffered a very bad spell of writer's block for pretty much all of my stories during the month of january, so i barely updated any of them, but no matter. february will hopefully be the month of change! there aren't many chapters left to write because the games are almost finished, so i'm planning on wrapping this book up asap.

also, i may have become teary-eyed when foreshadowing peeta being brainwashed

a heads up: although i haven't made a final decision, i'm leaning away from writing a sequel to this book (aka writing mockingjay). although i have plans for it and it would be a good challenge, i also don't want to get sucked into another centuries-long series. and i don't want to write finnick's death because...bro. it would destroy ontari.

again, it isn't a for-sure thing, but i just thought i'd give you guys a notice!

—kristyn