Chapter 21 : The Pursuit
"Something's wrong."
Katniss spoke the words I was already thinking. The rendezvous point sat empty, no sign of Rue, no response to our signal. The mockingjays had fallen silent—unusual after a disturbance like the explosion.
"She might have been delayed." I checked our surroundings, my Blind Spot finding nothing immediate. "The fires could have spread faster than expected."
"Or she was spotted."
Neither of us wanted to say the third option. The one where Rue wasn't delayed or spotted but simply gone.
Katniss dropped to one knee, examining the ground around the rock formation. Hunter's instincts, looking for trails. After a moment, she pointed east.
"She came through here. Recently—the leaves are still bent." Her finger traced a path through the underbrush. "But she didn't stop. Kept moving."
"Away from the rendezvous?"
"Toward the fires. Or..." She stood, face grim. "Something changed her path. Made her run."
We followed.
The trail wound through dense forest, harder to track than open ground. Katniss moved fast, reading signs I couldn't see—broken twigs, disturbed moss, the subtle marks of someone small moving quickly. I kept pace, my Blind Spot pinging constantly as cameras tracked our movement.
The Gamemakers were watching closely now. Two dramatic events in one morning—explosion at the Cornucopia, now a pursuit through the forest. Ratings gold. They'd be broadcasting this to every screen in Panem.
My hearing had almost fully returned. The blood on my neck had dried, the wounds inside my skull knitting together faster than any human body should allow. Katniss noticed but said nothing. Later. There would be questions later.
The scream shattered everything.
High-pitched, young, terrified. Rue's voice, cutting through the forest like a blade.
We ran toward it.
The clearing appeared through the trees like a nightmare given form.
Rue hung suspended in a net, rope wrapped around her limbs, struggling against mesh that only tightened with every movement. She'd walked into a trap—Career work, probably set during their hunts—and now she was helpless.
Marvel stood over her. Spear raised. Face twisted with the excitement of an easy kill.
Time stretched like taffy.
Katniss raised her bow, but she was too far. Twenty yards at least. She'd get the shot off, but not before Marvel—
I was already moving.
The spear left Marvel's hand the same moment I threw myself between weapon and target. No time to think, no time to calculate. Just instinct, just the absolute certainty that Rue was not dying in this clearing.
The spear took me through the shoulder.
Not the chest where it would have hit Rue. Not the stomach where it might have been survivable. Through the shoulder—muscle and bone and screaming nerves—pinning me to the ground like an insect on a board.
I heard Katniss's bowstring release.
I heard Marvel choke, arrow buried in his throat.
I heard Rue screaming my name.
Then I heard nothing but my own heartbeat, impossibly loud, impossibly strong, pumping blood out of a wound that should have been fatal.
The cannon fired for Marvel.
One Career down. One enemy eliminated. I tried to feel satisfaction but there was only pain—white-hot agony radiating from my shoulder, the spear shaft still protruding from my body, the ground beneath me growing warm and wet.
Katniss was cutting Rue free, knife sawing through netting. Rue was crying, saying something I couldn't process. Then both of them were beside me, faces pale, hands reaching.
"Don't move it," I managed. "Don't—"
"Nolan!" Rue's face hovered above mine, tears streaming. "You're bleeding, you're bleeding so much—"
"Get the spear out."
"We can't—the wound—" Katniss's voice was distant, thick with something like panic.
"Get. It. Out." I grabbed her wrist with my good arm. "I'll live. I promise. Just do it."
She didn't believe me. Why would she? The spear had gone clean through my shoulder, missing arteries by luck alone. In any normal world, removing it would mean bleeding out in minutes.
But I wasn't normal. Hadn't been since I woke up in a dead boy's body with abilities I didn't deserve.
"Please," I said. "Trust me."
Katniss's jaw set. She gripped the spear shaft with both hands. Rue pressed down on my chest, trying to hold me still.
The spear came out in one brutal pull.
I screamed. Couldn't help it. The pain was beyond anything I'd experienced—worse than the knife cut at the Cornucopia, worse than the explosion's shockwave, worse than dying in that hospital bed while machines beeped their indifferent rhythms.
But even through the agony, I felt it happening.
The wound closing. Tissue reaching for tissue. Blood vessels reconnecting, muscle fibers weaving together, bone fragments shifting back into alignment. Slower than my healing usually worked—this was major trauma, the kind that demanded payment—but unmistakably happening.
Katniss was pressing cloth to the wound, trying to stop bleeding that had already slowed. She froze when she felt it.
"What..." She pulled the cloth back, stared at the torn flesh. "That's not—it's not—"
"Healing," I finished. "I know."
Rue had stopped crying. Her dark eyes were wide, fixed on my shoulder where ragged meat was becoming smooth scar.
"You're not normal," Katniss said.
"No."
"What are you?"
The question every transmigrator dreads. The moment where secrets become impossible and truths become necessary.
I looked at the sky—cameras watching, Gamemakers recording, all of Panem seeing whatever they could see. Whatever I said now would be broadcast, analyzed, remembered.
"I don't know," I said. And it wasn't entirely a lie. I didn't know what I was. Just a dead man in a borrowed body, carrying abilities that didn't belong in this world.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have." I forced myself to sit up, ignoring the screaming protest from my shoulder. The wound was already half-closed, pink scar tissue spreading across raw flesh. "I heal fast. I always have. I don't know why."
"That's not healing fast. That's—" Katniss gestured helplessly at my shoulder. "That's impossible."
"And yet."
Silence. Rue reached out, touched the edge of the healing wound with one small finger. Her expression was impossible to read.
"You knew," she said quietly. "When you jumped. You knew you'd survive."
"I hoped."
"Liar." But there was no anger in her voice. Just wonder. "You saved me. You took that spear knowing it wouldn't kill you."
"I took that spear because you were going to die if I didn't." I met her eyes. "The healing is just luck. The choice was mine."
They helped me move to cover—a hidden hollow Rue had found during her fire-setting runs. The entrance was barely visible, concealed by hanging vines and fallen branches.
Inside, I let myself collapse against the dirt wall. The shoulder wound was almost closed now, but the healing demanded payment. Hunger hit like a physical blow, my body burning through calories at an impossible rate.
"Food," I managed. "My pack. Need to eat."
Katniss retrieved the supplies without comment. Bread, dried meat, fruit—everything I'd stored over the past week. I ate it mechanically, barely tasting, feeling my body convert nutrition into tissue.
Rue watched the entire process with unblinking intensity.
"In training," she said, "you let the Careers think you were weak."
"Yes."
"You scored a six on purpose."
"Yes."
"But you could have scored higher. Much higher."
I didn't answer. The truth was written across my healing shoulder, visible to anyone with eyes.
Katniss sat down across from me, bow across her knees. Her face had settled into something hard and calculating—the same expression she wore when hunting.
"What else can you do?"
The question I couldn't answer. Not fully. Not with cameras watching and Gamemakers listening.
"I heal fast. That's the main thing." True. "Everything else is just... instinct."
"Instinct like knowing when cameras are watching?"
She was sharper than I'd given her credit for. Of course she'd noticed. All those convenient movements, perfectly timed to avoid observation.
"Something like that."
"And the supplies you're always pulling out of nowhere?"
"I'm good at hiding things."
"That's not an answer either."
"It's the best I can give you." I met her eyes, letting her see something real. "I don't know how to explain what I am. I just know I'm on your side. Whatever happens, that hasn't changed."
Katniss held my gaze for a long moment. Then she looked at Rue—at the twelve-year-old who was alive because I'd taken a spear through the shoulder.
"Okay," she said finally.
"Okay?"
"Okay, you keep your secrets. For now." She leaned back against the hollow's wall. "But when this is over—if we get out—you're going to explain. All of it."
"Fair enough."
Rue curled up beside me, close enough for warmth. She was asleep within minutes, exhaustion finally claiming her. The fires, the fear, the brush with death—it had all caught up at once.
I watched her breathe and felt something I hadn't expected.
Hope.
Marvel was dead. The supplies were destroyed. Rue was alive. Whatever came next, we'd changed the game's trajectory.
The cannon count that night showed fourteen dead, ten alive. More than half gone. The arena was closing in.
But so were we.
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