The sun was beating down hotly when I finally finished the net, just in time too. The other Careers were losing their patience and they needed to do something other than sit around.

I swam at the deeper end with the net, instructing them to scare the fish toward me. I had to see where the sand didn’t gradually slope down, and I directed Taffeta and Slate right at the edges of these. They were tall enough to still have their head in the water, whereas I had to keep my arms flapping to help me up. Lark, being smaller than them, was a little way back.

The water was clear and they would see the fish headed in their direction. I would scare away the fish from me first and make it head in their direction. They would then trick them into going into my net. Fish avoided anything that moved, so that bit was pretty easy.

I gave them the thumbs up and I submerged myself under the water, finding a school and seeing if I could catch it. Predictably, they headed for where the three Careers were.

I had to use all my strength to drag the fish toward the shallow area. While in the water, they would cooperate because they were confined in the net, but when they were out of the water, it would be more difficult to control, and I would need help.

The three of them saw me swimming toward them, with the bounty in tow, so they readied their weapons. At the shallow end, they sliced off the heads of the fish efficiently. We didn’t even miss one.

Once we started the small fire, we cooked every piece until it wasn’t very raw. We put our reserves into the plastic containers and ate quickly.

We started planning, now that we had the net in hand and no worries about water for the time being.

Slate and Taffeta were good at making traps. One wrong step from one tribute and they would end up suspended upside-down and ready for slaughter.

That would require rope, which we didn’t have, so Lark and I ended up making some alternatives using the leaves and vines. Lark didn’t know how to make them durable, so I let her bind them together for length. This task, she could do without a problem.

Right when Slate and Taffeta came out of the forest setting up the second trap, we heard it.

There was a rattling first, then a hissing. We all stood up in anticipation, waiting for something large to bound up from the shadows.

It seemed to be coming out of everywhere, and then we only saw it when Lark screamed in pain at something’s fangs buried at her ankle.

It was a snake and a lizard at the same time. Lark sliced it’s head off and it remained unmoving, but there were others, and they rushed toward us with such speed that we couldn’t do anything but run toward the direction up the stream.

I didn’t feel too good about leaving the ocean behind me, but I didn’t want to risk being bitten by those mutts. After seeing Chiffon poisoned, I assumed everything unfamiliar was poisonous.

When one seemed to come close, we used our different weapons to fling them away. We weren’t waiting around for each other. Somehow, Lark was managing a run even with her bitten ankle.

Slate tossed one into the stream as it hissed at his feet and prepared to strike. Water didn’t seem to be its weakness as it slithered on top of the water, going even faster than it did on land.

Okay. Duly noted.

The stream started to run out as we headed into the forest area. I was starting to lose breath, and I could see that Lark was slowing down.

There was a fifth tribute stumbling through the forest as she ran away from her own mutts. Frankly, I didn’t really care about aiming at her, because if I were lucky, the mutts would end up doing that job for me.

My sides started to hurt and my legs were scratched from the different plants and thorns that I was scraped by. My clothes were thin and damp and I could feel myself running out of breath.

As abruptly as the mutts arrived, they disappeared at the same time. We were in the middle of the forest when they seemed to just melt into the ground.

We stopped to catch our breath. Our backs were aching from our packs and we didn’t know where we were. The tribute that I saw had vanished. She had probably run away in a different direction. If the mutts hadn’t gotten rid of her, then we definitely would

Lark groaned and sat down on the grass and she pulled off her boots. She was sweating profusely and she was turning very pale.

She reached down and sucked out the venom from the mutt. She spat it out and repeated again, until she was satisfied. Her ankle had swollen and the marks where the mutt bit her were evident. She gargled some water and even spit that out.

“We have to find…somewhere…safe…to…set up camp,” she said in between breaths.

“I think we should stay put. You look in bad shape, Lark,” Taffeta said, examining her wound. She winced when he ran his thumb through it.

“You want to stay around a place where the mutts disappeared in? Be my guest.” She stood up slowly and wobbled a little, but she shook us off as we tried to help her up. “I won’t be here when they decided to come back from the ground and take a bite again.”

She wobbled off into the direction where the ocean was in closer view, but she didn’t bother going back to the stream.

I went ahead of her after an hour of wandering around. She was sweating and she might not have been herself by this time. She might have been hallucinating or near fainting, but she didn’t admit anything.

I saw the sand, but I didn’t dare go nearer the ocean.

Was it me, or did the tide seem to be higher?

The stretch of sand that had started out was covered halfway. There was less sand now than before.

There was a large rock where Lark found shelter under, and she seemed to decide it was safer here than in the middle of the forest. I was apprehensive. I don’t know how far we ran and what end of the island we were. This might have been where one of the tributes chose to seek solace in.

I took out the ropes that we had been working on before the mutts arrived and handed them to Slate. “Set up traps around here. There might be other tributes in this area. They wouldn’t have dissolved those mutts if they knew that there was a tribute nearby.”

They disappeared for a few minutes as they set up the traps.

I sat down next to Lark as I looked around the forest to see if these plants were poisonous. I found one herb that would alleviate her pain.

In the plastic container, I crushed the leaves with a rock and I added water until it looked like mush. After that, I put it on top of the bite marks on her ankle. There was a cannon that sounded and the anthem started to play.

I was nervous that either Taffeta or Slate had been the one, but it turned out to be the last tribute from 8.

Nine of us left.