Chapter 5: True Colors
The only sounds were the wind’s low whistle through the rebar and the ragged, rhythmic breath of sleep. Cassian was out, a deep, exhausted unconsciousness that left him still as stone. Orrin snored, a wet, grating rhythm that seemed to shake the platform. Sol sat against the cold steel, his back a sheet of fiery pain beneath the numbing ointment, his side a dull, persistent ache.
He didn’t move for a long time. He watched the false stars trace their indifferent arcs. He listened to the distant, unidentifiable clicks and rustles of the arena at night. He thought of nothing at all. His mind was a clean, white slate. The decision, when it came, wasn’t a decision. It was simply the next logical move on a board that had just been violently cleared.
He rose. The movement was fluid, practiced, a predator’s economy. The rusted grating didn’t so much as sigh. He padded on silent feet to where Orrin lay wrapped in his foil blanket, a bulky shadow in the gloom. Sol knelt. The cold handle of his knife was a familiar comfort against his palm.
He positioned the tip just below Orrin’s ear, where the jaw met the thick column of the neck. He calculated the angle, the depth required to sever the crucial pathways, to silence the scream before it could be born. He took a breath, held it, and pushed.
The resistance was a sickening give, a pop of membrane, then the soft, wet slide into muscle and vessel. Orrin’s eyes flew open, wide with a shock so pure it was almost childlike. A guttural, choked gargle bubbled past his lips. His hands flew up, clumsy, grabbing at Sol’s wrist, but the strength was already flooding out of him with the hot pulse over Sol’s knuckles.
Sol leaned close, his lips almost touching Orrin’s ear. His voice was a whisper, calm and conversational. “Still think I’m all bones and bullshit?”
Orrin’s gaze swam, locking onto Sol’s pale green eyes. He tried to speak, producing only a wet, tearing sound. His grip on Sol’s wrist went slack.
“I only let you live because he found you amusing,” Sol continued, the words dropping like stones into the dark. “Vesper. He liked having a blunt instrument around. A pet brute. I was tolerating you for him.” He shifted the knife minutely, and Orrin’s body gave a final, violent shudder. “He’s gone. So you’re just a liability who should have killed me that first day. My mistake, letting that slide.”
The light in Orrin’s eyes dimmed, faded, and went out. Sol held the position, feeling the last tremors fade into stillness. Then he withdrew the blade. The sound was obscenely soft. He wiped the knife clean on Orrin’s foil blanket, the metallic rustle loud in the silence. Every muscle in his back screamed in protest as he straightened. He ignored it.
He walked back to his post, sat down, and resumed his watch. He did not look at Cassian. He watched the horizon bleed from black to a deep, bruised purple. He listened for cannons. One shot echoed, flat and final, in the pre-dawn stillness. Orrin’s face flickered across the sky an hour later, pale and stern in the gray light, then vanished.
When Cassian stirred just after dawn, Sol was already standing, leaning slightly to favor his ribs. He’d packed the meager supplies: the half-empty water skin, the remaining protein cubes, the tape. He held the water skin out.
Cassian’s eyes went from Sol’s face, blank and composed, to Orrin’s still form, to the dark, sticky patch on the grating. His own face tightened, a complex knot of understanding, weariness, and something that might have been disgust. He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to. The story was written in the stillness of the platform, in the absolute lack of struggle.
“We’re splitting up,” Sol said. His tone was light, as if suggesting they try different paths for foraging.
Cassian didn’t take the water. “You’re bleeding through your shirt.”
Sol glanced down at the fresh crimson bloom seeping through the fabric at his side. “It’s tacky. Adds character.” He dropped the water skin onto the grating between them. “That’s yours. I’m heading for the salt flats.”
“The flats are a death sentence. No cover. No water. They’ll pick you off from three miles away.”
“Probably,” Sol agreed. He hitched his small pack over his shoulder, the motion pulling a wince he couldn’t fully suppress. “But it’s a straightforward sort of death. I’m done with forests.”
Cassian stood, moving stiffly, his injured leg rigid. He looked old in the gray morning light, the scars on his knuckles standing out like pale etchings. “This is your play? Suicide by geography?”
“It’s a change of scenery.” Sol offered a faint, brittle version of his smile. “You should stay here. Lick your wounds. You’re a strategic asset. They’ll keep sending you gifts. You might actually win this thing.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“I know.” Sol’s smile faded. For a second, something real passed between them—the mutual recognition of men trapped in a machine of their own making, one seeking redemption, the other seeking only a defiant end. “That’s why you should take the water.”
He turned and began the slow, painful descent down the ladder. He didn’t look back.
The metal forest at dawn was a cathedral of dripping rust and long, distorted shadows. Sol moved through it like a ghost, his pace steady but slow. Every step sent jolts of pain from his back and side. The world narrowed to the next tree, the next hundred yards. He drank sparingly from a small bottle he’d kept for himself, the water warm and metallic.
He walked for hours. The trees began to thin, their metal trunks growing more sparse, their foliage replaced by jagged outcrops of bleached, porous rock. The air changed, losing the damp, organic decay of the forest, gaining a dry, alkaline bitterness that coated his tongue. The ground underfoot grew hard, packed, cracking into a network of fissures.
By midday, the forest was a dark smudge behind him. The world opened up into a blinding, terrifying expanse.
The salt flats were a cracked, white hell that stretched to the shimmering horizon. The sun hammered down, reflecting off the crystalline surface with a glare that stabbed into his skull. Heat rose in visible, wavering shimmers, distorting the distance. There was nothing. No rock, no scrub, no hint of shadow. Just endless, blinding white and the vast, pitiless bowl of the sky.
Sol took a step onto the crust. It crunched under his boot, a sound like breaking bones. He took another. Then another.
Within an hour, the world had dissolved into a haze of pain and light. His side was a solid knot of fire. The claw marks on his back wept, the salt-tinged air stinging the raw flesh. His head throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He tied a strip of fabric from his shirt around his forehead to keep the sweat from his eyes, but it was soaked through in minutes.
He walked. There was no thought anymore, no strategy. There was only the mechanical lift of one foot, the crunch, the searing breath, the drop of the other foot. The arena felt empty, a vast, sterile testing ground just for him. He was a tiny, moving flaw on a perfect, white blank.
Memories began to bleed through the pain, unbidden. The smell of pine sap and sawdust from District 7. The heavy, breathless silence of the underground fighting ring just before the first blow landed. The feel of Vesper’s forehead against his temple, a moment of impossible warmth in the cold dark. The wet, grinding sound the mutt’s drill made.
His lips were cracked. His water was gone. The sun was a weight, pressing him down into the salt.
He saw mirages. A lake of cool, blue water shimmering a mile ahead. The dark, welcoming shade of a pine forest. Vesper, standing perfectly still in his jeweler’s apron, holding out a crystal glass of water. Sol would blink, and they would shatter into more blinding white.
His leg gave out. He didn’t trip; it simply stopped holding him. He collapsed onto his hands and knees on the salt crust. It bit into his palms. He stayed there, head hanging, sucking in air that was too hot and too thin. He looked up, squinting against the glare. Still nothing. An eternity of nothing.
This was it. This was the not showing weakness. Not in a blaze of glory, not in a final, clever stand. Just a slow, stubborn dissolution under a white sun. He almost laughed, but his throat was too dry.
He pushed himself back up. He stood, swaying. He took another step.
A low hum vibrated through the air. Not the wind. Something manufactured. He turned, his movements sluggish. A Capitol drone, sleek and silver, hovered about fifty yards away, its camera lens a dark, unblinking eye. It was watching him. Waiting for the final moment.
Of course. They wouldn’t let such a defiant, quiet end happen off-camera. They needed the close-up.
Sol stared at the drone. He raised one hand, slowly, and gave it a single, jaunty wave. Then he turned his back on it and took another step into the white.
The crunch of salt under his boot was the only sound. The drone’s hum faded as it maintained its distance. He was a solo act now, the last performer on a stage too vast for any audience to comprehend.
He walked until the sun began its descent, staining the western sky with streaks of lurid orange and purple. The heat lessened by a degree. The shadows grew long, though there was nothing to cast them.
In the distance, a figure resolved from the shimmer.
At first, he thought it another mirage. A tall, stark shape standing sentinel in the endless flat. But it didn’t waver. As he drew nearer, foot by agonizing foot, it solidified.
It was a derrick. A skeletal, rusted oil derrick, rising from the salt like the bleached skeleton of some ancient, immense creature. A relic from before the Games, perhaps, left here as another piece of arena scenery. At its base, a dark, circular shadow promised the only thing that mattered: shade.
A final joke. A mercy he hadn’t earned.
Sol didn’t speed up. His pace was immutable now, a slow, grinding march of will over ruined flesh. He reached the derrick’s shadow and the world dropped twenty degrees. The relief was so profound it felt like a blow. His knees buckled and he slid down the warm, rust-pitted metal of a support beam into a seated slump.
The shade was a physical embrace. He leaned his head back, closing his eyes against the striped orange light filtering through the derrick’s latticework. He was done. He had reached the only landmark in a sea of nothing, and he had nothing left.
From the pack, his numb fingers found the last object of any weight. He pulled it out. The white rose from his interview, now a sad, brownish thing, its stem brittle, its petals crisp and closed. He held it in his filthy, blood-crusted hand, looking at it in the dying light.
He heard the soft, almost silent footfall on the salt behind him a second too late.
He was too exhausted to startle. He simply turned his head, a slow, grinding effort.
A girl stood there. She couldn’t have been more than 25, from one of the outer districts—her face thin, her eyes huge in a dust-coated face. She held a spear, its point a sharpened piece of dented aluminum, aimed at his chest. Her hands were shaking.
She’d been hiding here. Waiting. She’d seen him coming for miles.
Sol looked from the spear point to her terrified eyes. He offered her the withered rose.
“For you,” he croaked, his voice a desert whisper. “It goes with your ensemble.”
Her eyes flickered with confusion. She jabbed the spear forward an inch, a threat.
Sol just smiled, a faint, cracked thing, and let his hand holding the rose drop into his lap. He looked past her, past the drone that had now zoomed in closer, past everything, to the violent, beautiful sunset staining the salt flats blood-red.
He waited for the final move.
The spear trembled, a faint metallic shiver in the still air. Her knuckles were white around the shaft. "Don't," she whispered, the word raw. "Don't try anything clever."
Sol let out a breath, more a ragged sigh than anything else. "Clever's all used up." He tilted his head, studying her. District 5, maybe. Electricity. She had the look of someone who’d been hiding more than fighting. "You picked a hell of a spot to make a stand."
"It's central," she said, her voice gaining a sliver of defensive strength. "I can see everything."
"You can see nothing for miles. That’s not an advantage, it’s a panic attack." He shifted, and the salt crust crackled under him. A fresh wave of pain from his side made his vision swim. "You’re alone."
Her jaw tightened. "So are you."
"Exactly." He coughed, the dryness scraping his throat. "So we can stop with the threatening postures. If you wanted me dead, you’d have thrown that thing while I was still a dot on the horizon. You waited for company."
The spear point lowered an inch. Her eyes, a washed-out blue, scanned his injuries—the bloodied shirt, the pallor under his dirt-streaked skin. "You’re dying anyway."
"Getting there." He nodded slowly. "The forest to the east. The metal one, with the watchtower. There’s a man there. Cassian. From Two."
Her expression hardened instantly at the district number. "A Career."
"Was." Sol closed his eyes for a second, gathering the words, each one an effort. "He’s not playing that game. He’s injured. Leg’s bad. But he’s… he’s the type who actually cares. The type who’d try. To protect someone."
"Why are you telling me?" Her suspicion was a physical force.
"Because you look like you could use a protector. And he could use a reason." Sol opened his eyes, meeting her gaze squarely. The charm was gone, the calculation stripped bare, leaving only a blunt, exhausted honesty. "Head east before full dark. The tower’s a rusted spike. Tell him Sol sent you. He won’t turn you away."
She swallowed, her eyes darting from him to the vast, darkening flats. "And you?"
"Me?" A faint, cracked smile touched his lips. "You should kill me. It’s the smart move. Take whatever’s in my pack. Claim you fought the tribute from Seven. It’ll get you attention. Sponsors maybe."
He let the suggestion hang in the cooling air. The drone hovered silently, capturing every micro-expression.
"If you don’t," he continued, his voice dropping to a near whisper, "the dehydration will. By morning, I’ll just be a piece of scenery. Save yourself the trouble."
She stared at him, the conflict playing out across her face. The primal urge to survive, to eliminate a threat, warring with something else—a reluctance, a humanity not yet fully scoured away by the arena. Her spear lowered completely, its tip digging into the salt.
"It’s a trick," she murmured, but it sounded like a question.
"Everything’s a trick," Sol said. "This one’s just more obvious."
She took a step back. Then another. Her eyes never left him, wide and uncertain. She clutched the spear across her body like a shield. Without another word, she turned and began to jog, then run, eastward into the lengthening shadows, toward the distant, jagged line that was the forest.
Sol watched her go until she was a fading speck against the vast, colorless plain. He let his head fall back against the derrick leg with a dull thunk.
The sun melted into the horizon, setting the salt on fire for one last, glorious minute before plunging the world into deep violet twilight. The first stars, cold and sharp, punctured the sky.
A soft, silver parachute descended on nearly silent threads, landing in the salt beside him with a gentle puff.
He looked at it for a long moment. Then he pulled it to him. Inside was a sealed liter of water, a small, ornate box of what looked like Capitol chocolates and glazed fruits, and a single, meticulously wrapped candy. He held the candy up to the starlight. The wrapper was translucent, and inside was a crystallized rose petal.
He let out a soft, incredulous laugh that turned into a cough. He looked up at the sky, at the unseen cameras he knew were watching.
"Thanks for the last meal," he called out, his voice rough but clear. "It’s beautifully morbid. I appreciate the thematic consistency."
He opened the water first, drinking in slow, measured swallows, letting the liquid revive parts of him he thought were already gone. Then he opened the box of food. He ate a chocolate, rich and dark, followed by a piece of fruit that tasted like summer in a place he’d almost forgotten. He saved the rose candy for last.
He placed it on his tongue and let it dissolve. The flavor was cloying and perfumed, an artificial echo of a dead thing. He stared up at the emerging constellations, listening to the absolute silence of the flats.
A single, distant cannon shot rolled across the emptiness.
The sound was absorbed by the vast space, but its meaning was final. He didn’t look for the face in the sky. He just finished the candy, swallowed the last of its sweetness, and let the quiet settle over him.
Six left.
Six left.
The thought was a dry leaf scraping against the inside of his skull. Sol didn’t move from the derrick’s shadow. The coolness of night settled over the salt flats, a deep, penetrating cold that seeped into his battered bones and made the fire in his side and back recede to a dull, manageable throb. He drank the last of the water in small, precious sips. He ate one more piece of the absurd, glazed fruit.
Sleep was a distant concept, but exhaustion was a tide pulling him under. He curled on his side on the hard salt, using the empty pack as a pathetic pillow, and shut his eyes. His mind didn’t quiet. It replayed the crunch of the knife entering Orrin’s neck, the mechanical whir of the mutt’s drill, the feel of Vesper’s temple against his own. The girl’s terrified, confused blue eyes. He drifted in a shallow, fevered sea where every sound—the creak of the derrick, the skitter of some tiny arena insect—was a footstep, a weapon being drawn.
He woke with a jolt, his heart hammering against his ribs. Gray predawn light bleached the color from the world. For a long, disoriented moment, he didn’t know where he was. Then the pain returned, a full-body ache, and memory solidified. He was alive. He pushed himself up, a grunt escaping his cracked lips.
“Huh,” he said aloud, his voice a gravelly mess. He looked at his filthy, blood-stiffened hands as if seeing them for the first time. “Didn’t see that one coming.”
He got to his feet, every muscle protesting. The salt flats stretched away, endless and indifferent. The Capitol’s massive, invisible dome arched overhead. A bitter laugh escaped him. “Might as well get the grand tour,” he muttered to the sky. “See all the sights. Put all that taxpayer money to good use.”
He had no destination, but his feet carried him north, away from the rising sun and the memory of the forest. The land began to rise in gentle, rocky folds. The salt crust gave way to hard-packed earth studded with sharp, flinty stones. By mid-morning, he saw a dark smudge on the horizon that resolved into a line of low, jagged hills. Caves. Of course. The arena’s idea of shelter.
A familiar silver whisper cut the air. Another parachute. It landed softly at his feet like a loyal pet. He crouched, wincing, and opened it. Inside was a small, warm metal tureen with a lid. He lifted it. The scent hit him first—rich, savory broth, thick with actual vegetables and shreds of tender meat. A small, crusty loaf of bread nestled beside it. A real meal.
He sat right there on the stony ground and ate. He used the bread to scoop the broth, chewing slowly, letting the warmth spread through his hollow core. He looked up, addressing the unseen viewers. “This is too much. Really. You shouldn’t have. I’m not a grateful recipient.” He took another slow, deliberate bite. “But it’s appreciated. The care is noted.”
Finished, he felt almost human. The food was a tangible fuel, sharpening his senses even as his body complained. He pushed on toward the hills, the caves now a clear destination. The entrance was a dark, vertical slash in the ochre rock, surrounded by scree. The mouth of the tunnels.
He was twenty yards away, scanning the loose rock for stable footing, when they moved.
They came from both sides, having buried themselves in the shale. The two from District 8, a man and a woman, their faces smeared with dirt, their clothes torn and uniform-like. They had the desperate, synchronized look of district partners who’d decided to go down together. The man had a length of pipe. The woman had a knife in each hand.
There was no time for strategy, for wit. Instinct took over. The old, deep-seated rhythm from the underground rings. Sol dropped his weight as the pipe whistled toward his head, feeling the wind of it pass through his curls. He came up inside the man’s guard, driving an elbow into his throat. The man gagged, stumbling back.
Fire exploded in Sol’s left leg. The woman had slashed his thigh, a deep, burning line. He pivoted, grabbing her wrist before she could retract, and twisted. A bone snapped. She screamed, dropping one knife. He didn’t let go. He used her momentum to pull her off balance, yanking her into the path of the man’s wild, recovering swing.
The pipe connected with her temple with a sickening crunch. She went down, silent. The man stared, horrified at what he’d done. Sol didn’t hesitate. He scooped up her fallen knife and drove it into the man’s side, once, twice, until the light left his eyes and he collapsed beside his partner.
The fight lasted less than a minute. Sol stood over them, breathing in ragged gasps. His thigh was on fire, bleeding copiously. His hands were slick with blood that wasn’t his. He felt nothing looking at them. No triumph, no remorse. Just a hollow, mechanical satisfaction. The instinct had worked.
He tried to take a step toward the cave and his leg buckled. A white-hot lance of pain shot from his knee. He looked down. It was bent at a slightly wrong angle. Not a clean break, but a rough, ugly twist. The woman’s slash had severed something vital, or the fall had done it. He didn’t know. It didn’t matter.
“Perfect,” he hissed through clenched teeth.
He dragged himself over to the bodies. Their packs were meager: a few strips of dried meat, a water skin with a couple of mouthfuls left, a roll of coarse bandaging. He took it all. Using the pipe as a crutch, he hauled himself upright. Every hop toward the cave entrance was agony, a jolt that traveled up his spine and made his vision spark.
He reached the dark mouth and leaned against the cool rock, panting. “Hello?” he called into the blackness, his voice echoing slightly. “Anybody home? Friendly neighborhood tribute here, just dropping in.”
Silence answered. He limped inside, just far enough to be out of the direct line of sight from the entrance. The dim light revealed a shallow, dry chamber that smelled of dust and old stone. It would do. He collapsed against the wall, wrapped his thigh with the bandage as tightly as he could bear, and used the pipe to splint his leg. The pain was a living thing, gnawing at the edges of his consciousness. He passed into a shallow, shocky sleep as dusk fell.
The cannon shots woke him. Two of them, close together. Then the sky outside the cave entrance illuminated, projecting the faces of the dead.
The man and woman from 8. Their official photos, stern and clean. He felt nothing.
Then the next face bloomed in the dark sky. Cassian. His photo was from his Peacekeeper file, unsmiling, his sandy hair trimmed short, his eyes weary even then.
Sol stopped breathing.
The next face was the girl. The one from the salt flats. Her District 5 photo showed a younger face, rounder, with those same wide, blue eyes.
A sound tore out of Sol’s throat, something between a growl and a sob. He lurched forward onto his knees and drove his fist into the rough cave wall. The impact sent a shock up his arm. He did it again. And again. Skin split. Knuckles grated against stone. He punched until his hand was a bloody, pulsing mess, the physical pain a feeble substitute for the sudden, violent void opening inside him.
Cassian. The girl. Gone.
He’d sent her to him. He’d given them a chance. And the arena had taken it anyway.
He sat back on his heels, chest heaving, staring at his ruined hand in the dim light. The raw, screaming anger bled away, leaving a cold, clear emptiness behind. He took a slow, shuddering breath. Then another. He wiped his bloody hand on his pants, the gesture methodical.
He looked out at the night. The faces were gone. The sky was just a sky again.
Two faces left. His, and one other.
A strange, calm determination settled over him. It was simple now. Clean. He used the pipe to haul himself upright. His leg screamed, but the pain was a signal, a reminder he was still alive. He gathered the supplies. He looked once more at the dark, empty cave.
Then he turned and limped out into the night, leaving the false shelter behind. He would find the last tribute. He would finish this. He would give the Capitol the final, bloody show it was waiting for, and he would do it without a single trace of the weakness they craved to see.