Jack grabs onto me and drags me toward the water, which I'm really not wanting to do. I've already had two fingers severed off, I don't want to lose any of my toes. But would I rather face the Peacekeepers again? Hell no. I follow him into the river and I immediately regret it.

The cold water hits me like a sledgehammer. My feet are pretty much numb instantly and the moss on the rocks make it slippery. With the current, water splashes up up higher and higher on my legs, and there's even parts of the creek where the water's up to my waist. Everything's numb - everything is numb.

I want to strangle Jack for even suggesting this, but that will have to wait. Right now we need to escape; once we're at safety, I'll murder him with my bare hands.

My teeth are chattering and I'm slipping just about every other step, and when I enter this one particular deep part, I slip and the next thing I know, I'm completely submerged under the icy current. The air gets sucked right out of me and I feel myself tensing up, and even memories start flooding back. The last time I lost my footing in a river, I was carried along a good distance and ended up with a broken femur. But luckily this creek is small, and the current takes me tumbling only a little distance, and as soon as I get my footing, I nearly leap straight out of the water, gasping for air and coughing up water. I quickly realize that I'm being loud, so I clamp a hand over my mouth to quiet the hacking, stumbling along to keep up with Jack, but my body's numb like crazy and my joints are locking up.

There's a very light breeze out tonight, but it might as well be icicle needles drilling me at breakneck speed. This is colder than I had been when Jack had found me, but my heart's pumping so fast that I feel a very slight sense of warmth. Kind of wrong, if you ask me. There's nothing I can do, though, so I suck it up and calm my coughing down.

Jack comes over and says pretty much that I'm clumsy, and even though I want to retort, I can't say anything, so I just growl lightly at him. I shake my head and fling excess water out of my hair, which makes my hair stand up in a crazy wind-blown fashion.

Aside from the rushing current, it's quiet. Eerily quiet. My eyes scan the area, but I don't see anything. Maybe we're alone finally. I breathe a very shaky sigh of relief, my teeth chattering like mad and my body shaking. My clothes are soaked through-and-through and there's no hope for warmth anytime soon. Can't chance a fire, so I'm just going to have to tough it.

He grabs my arm and says to get out, but how? There's rocks on either shores. I look some more but don't see anything. Jack must've thought of something because he goes over and starts climbing a bit, so I follow, my trembling hands having great difficulty holding onto the rocks to pull myself up next to him, clinging to the rock face that was becoming slippery with all the water dripping off of me, growling and grumbling quietly to myself.

I don't think I've ever clung to anything tighter in my entire life. My numb fingers clutched onto the rocky surface, my nails digging into the rock to keep me there. Good sheesh, how did I end up here? How did I get from a cozy little shack-type house in D11, with my family, to this freezing river in the dead of winter in Ripred only knows where? I don't know. My mind's kind of blank on all the events that's put me where I am now, and I don't particularly care. All I know is that I'm freezing my ass off - again. What have I done to be a human icicle again? All that happened was I got fingers cut off... maybe taking Jack out here was a bad idea. Maybe fate is punishing me for it. I'm just shit out of luck.

While clinging to the rock like some desperate hooker clutching drugs, I watch Jack as he tries to climb up to what looks like a cave, but he falls and ends up in some water and a bush. I look down at him, concerned, but I know better than to make any noise. He seems alright, though, when he gets up and starts climbing again, pulling himself up into the cave. Well, now it's my turn.

It takes everything I have to pry a hand off the rock surface and reach up further, and my arm takes a lot of force to get the elbow to bend and haul me up. And after a lot of struggling and scraping and grunting, I manage to join Jack in the little cave, panting and nearly wheezing from both the cold and freezing air, and I just collapse onto the ground, relieved.

I snort in jagged laughter at his joke. I did smoke once, though, if you could even call it that. No, I think it's called "snorting." In District 5, with some guy named Luke. I had gone in a bar to get a drink and I gave him my money so he could get me something, but he took it all wrong. He dragged me out back and stuck a packet of white powder and showed me how to use it. So I, being a curious and very stupid bastard, snorted that white stuff and holy mother of Neptune's blue planet, it was the weirdest experience I've ever had my whole life. Everything had felt so.. so... slow and fast all at the same time. Like my life was being warped in some way.

But anyway, I don't think that's why I'm wheezing, but it still made me laugh. It's the cold air and the fact that I'm soaked again. I craw with him to the back of the cave, relieved to be out of the wind that feels like a spear when it hits you. I curl up and bring my knees against my chest, wrap my arms around them, and try to keep myself warm. I nod to his question, murmuring a sort of quiet "mhmm." He then tosses me a water canteen and I barely catch it. I'm scared of my trembling hands dropping it, so I hold it tightly with both and drink some, but not all of it. Conservation is key.

I do believe that what he's holding up is nothing short of a miracle: a blanket and socks. Perhaps two items any wanderer would kill for and hold as a most prized possession. And not only that, but a flashlight, too. I briefly panic and think that maybe the Peacekeepers will be able to see the light, but I doubted it would be turned on for much longer, so I relax and watch Jack with the bag of treasures. A knife, another bag, and some fishing line with a hook. No more spear fishing for me! That would've cheered me up greatly if I hadn't seen the blood on Jack's leg. I look from the pant leg to his face and back, my eyebrows furrowing in concern. Was he alright? Obviously not. He's probably as frozen stiff as I am and therefore can't feel anything. What if he had been stabbed by a branch, or something? That wouldn't be good. We can't afford him getting an infection. I uncurl and move so that I'm on my knees beside him, waiting to see if he needed help with bandaging or whatever was needed to tend to it. Hey, I wasn't one of the medics in the Uprising for nothing.

He hands me the socks and blanket, but I set them aside. My freezing ass could wait. I want to help Jack because who knew what was beneath the bloody part of his jeans? I, in a non-creeperish way, watched him lower his pants and that's when I saw the piece of stick protruding from his leg. My face scrunches up as I look at it. It's a very good thing that his leg is numb and he can't feel it. While he tries to pull the piece of wood out, I reach over and take the hook from the tackle bag and use it to tear the end of my shirt, and I then rip off the bottom seam all the way around. I place the hook back in the bag when Jack suddenly stops.

I listen. There's a whistle in the distance and my blood runs icy cold. Oh shit, they found us. I turn back to him quickly. The piece of wood is still in his leg, and without bothering to ask him, I just reach out and pull it out of the skin, and using the torn seam of my shirt, I did a really speedy wrapping and tied it off, but not too tight. Can't risk cutting off circulation to his leg. I then glance up at Jack, at the cave's entrance, and then back at Jack, questioningly.

The bandage is really a makeshift job, but with the limited materials we have, it's good enough. My attention quickly turns to the mouth of the cave and I see the lights of flashlights dancing in the distance. Did they know there was a cave here? I really hope they don't. I instinctively duck down in the back of the cave, my eyes trained on the lights. I glance over at Jack, but I can't answer his question. I don't know how they keep finding us. I mean really, how on earth did they find us here, in all the woods of Panem? Even if someone had sent them from District 10, it's highly unlikely they were able to just follow our footsteps all the way here since we took part of the way in the creek. They must've had something tracking us.

The minutes ticked away like hours. I sat there completely still and silent, watching the lights swing to and fro. My heart was pounding and I could hear it in my ears. But soon it's all over. I breathe a sigh of relief and look back at Jack, who's looking at me and asking yet another unanswered question. Three times? That's no coincident. If this was the third time they had just randomly found him in the woods, then either the Peacekeepers had some tracker or we had something. They couldn't have a scent tracker because our scents would've been lost in the water, so that left only one option. In the spur of realization, I reach out and grab onto his upper arm, and that's when I feel it: a small bump underneath my palm; small and natural-looking to the eye, but abnormally hard beneath my tight grip. I quickly take my hand off and lean closer to his arm to see it. Sure enough, a small bump with the faintest of scars underneath it. That was it! I tap the bump repeatedly with my finger, anxiety starting to overwhelm me. If he had a tracking device in his arm, there's no telling how much time we had until the Peacekeepers found us. But what if it isn't what I think it is? What if it just happens to be a natural bump with a random scar under it? Well, then I'd feel like an idiot, but right now, anything's worth a shot.



(( ..... surprise? xD I can change it if you'd prefer them being tracked another way.))

I keep poking the hard bump on his arm, hoping he'd get the message. There's no way on earth I can mime out a tracking device, so I have to just hope he's excellent at charades.

He tells me to get warm and shoves the socks at me, but I persist in poking him. I can get warm later, but right now it's literally a matter of life and death. I growl at him when he accuses me of groping him. Groping? If I really wanted to grope him, I'd go for a different area. And anyway, I don't swing that way - for him, at least. Felix, yes, but Jack, not so much. He's more of a good friend.

And then he gets it, I think. I stop poking as he pulls the blanket over our heads and uses the flashlight to see the abnormal bump. He starts scratching at it, but I really doubt that's going to do anything but hurt himself. He then hands me a knife and I know what he wants me to do before he tells me. I reach around and grab one of the socks, which I assume are clean, and motion for him to use it as something to bite on if he needs it. I set it on his lap and then get to work.

Holding the end of the flashlight in my teeth, I make a slit on his arm right where the scar was. It was somewhat deep, but not drastically. Ignoring the blood, I pressed down on the lower half and figured I could gently coax the tracker out by rubbing down on the bump with the flat, non-sharp end of the knife, and after a while of quick, but careful stroking, a bloody tracker slides out from underneath his skin and into my sticky red hand. But what do I do with it? I set the flashlight down and get out from under the blanket, sneak out to the mouth of the cave, and check the forest for any lights. Seeing none, I chuck the tracker down into the creek, then quickly retreat back to the back of the cave.