The Big Applesauce

The heavy jungle air feels like water in his lungs as Peeta waits by the lightning tree. Finnick circles the small clearing under the tree's vast branches, his focus on the treeline and any approaching danger, but Peeta's eyes are glued to the gently twitching wire that is his only connection to Katniss. As much as he trusts their group, as much as he understands why Beetee split them up the way he did, Peeta doesn't like being away from Katniss, especially now. He has a bad feeling, a crawling under his skin that he can't shake.

The others don't notice when the wire gives a particularly violent shake; Beetee is working on the opposite side of the tree, and Finnick's circular route has taken him to that side as well. Peeta is already instinctively walking toward the wire when it loses tautness, sliding through the grass with a shushing sound as it retreats toward the tree.

Peeta grabs the wire and gives it a tug. There is no tension to the line, nothing to indicate that someone is holding the other end.

“Finnick,” he says, heart pounding so loudly in his ears he can't tell whether he shouts or whispers the name. Panic rising in him, he gives the wire a rough heave and feels it fly, weightless and untethered. “Finnick!”

Terror has sharpened the edges of the world, and his own yell cuts through him like an icy blade. He's already running, traversing the uneven, rocky slope in desperate leaps, when Finnick catches up to him.

“Veer that way!” Finnick calls, pointing to their left. “I'll search more on this side.”

Peeta doesn't have the breath do more than nod, but Finnick doesn't wait for a response before he pulls away, his longer stride quickly taking him farther down the slope and beyond Peeta's vision. Peeta angles more to his left, searching frantically for any sign of Katniss, or Johanna. He yells their names, but the sound doesn't seem to make it more than a few feet before being enveloped by the thick air.

All his worst nightmares begin to unfold, stretching out from the back of his mind to frolic in harsh daylight. Every noise sounds like the beginning of cannon fire. Over every ridge, behind every rock or tree he expects to find Katniss, bloody and broken and dead. Little moments flash through his mind: the way the light played across her face in the Justice Building dome, the mixture of terror and anger that had been in her eyes at the Reaping, opening his eyes after dying to see her face. He thinks about the way she has started to look at him.

He can hear the sound of water and knows he is getting close to the beach again when the clouds above the treetops start to darken and swirl. He stares up at them, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun from the rest of the arena. Increasingly worried, he turns back up the slope, intending to head toward where he last saw Finnick. But even as he takes a step in that direction, lightning flashes from high up in the forest, and a bright shockwave blasts across the sky. The force of the blast makes the ground tremble beneath his feet and he stumbles slightly.

Peeta's first thought is that something has exploded, and he is partially right. Through a large gap in the trees, he can see that the sky above the lightning tree has split open, revealing what looks like girders and wiring. Then fireworks erupt across the entire dome, covering the arena in a frenetic light show that makes his head swim and throws odd patches of shadow and light that make his frantic scurrying over the rocks even more treacherous.

He thinks he's screaming Katniss's name, but the sound of the fireworks is so loud he can't hear anything else. Then, as abruptly as they started, the fireworks stop, and the arena fades into twilight. In the sudden silence, his call for Katniss seems to echo.

He can hear the hovercraft before he sees it, and his stomach drops. For a split second, options for hiding places speed through his mind, but the craft is over him before he can move. Uncertain whether he should run, whether he should attempt to keep looking for Katniss, whether there is still someone to look for, he stares up at the bright light on the bottom of the craft and blinks.

Peeta finds himself staring up at the sun, and he quickly looks away, surprised and confused.

He glances around in bewilderment: the trees that surround him are unfamiliar and too widely spaced to match anything he has seen so far in the arena, the land is much flatter and tamer, and – where is the hovercraft? Crouching slightly, he flicks a worried gaze around the treetops. The hovercraft was just above him, but now he can't see it. It couldn't have missed him; it was no doubt sent especially for him and its absence now is somehow more ominous than its presence was. He can't hear the craft, either, though there is a strange sound in the air, a faint, dull, indeterminate humming or roaring that he can't identify.

Katniss. His raw panic for her, momentarily outstripped by disorientation and confusion, roars back to life. The urge to call out, to locate her – to locate anyone – rises unbidden and burning in his chest, but he clenches his teeth together until it passes, convinced that doing so would only bring trouble. Instead, he edges under the shelter of the treeline and more closely surveys his surroundings from the safety of the shadows.

Where is he? This can't be the arena – however much control the Gamekeeper has over the arena environment, he couldn't completely change the layout, the vegetation, even the sky in the split second of a blink. Peeta would have noticed.

But what if they drugged you? a sly voice whispers in the back of his mind. They could have taken you anywhere.

Peeta shakes his head. If he had been drugged, he would have noticed that too. And he wouldn't have come to standing straight up, staring at the sky. Something else is going on. He has to find the others. He has to find Katniss.

Ignoring the voice, now telling him that maybe the others aren't here at all, maybe they're dead, he begins to work his way through the trees, unsure of which direction he is going or what he might find. As he walks, he notices that the air smells different than it did in the arena, and while the arena was hot and humid, wherever he is now has a lighter, cooler temperature. The sweat on his body starts to cool and he shivers slightly, but he stays under the trees. However inviting the sun may appear, walking in it would leave him exposed and vulnerable, and he has no idea who or what might be looking for him.

So on he walks, looking for signs of life, for anything that will tell him where he is and what is happening.