you leave me no choice ; infernal

Fern gazed at the crumbling building, an abandoned little thing that read 'Ed's Gas' in faded and chipped paint across the side. There was an old fuel hose attached to a pump with numbers that would have flipped up and down on the split-flap display.

The street was pretty much abandoned, everyone had moved closer to the centre of Three over the years and there were only a few oddballs that stubbornly remained.

Ed was not one of them, the little shop's door hung off its hinges and the shelves inside were bare. Fern stepped in slowly and ran her fingers over one. The place was coated in a layer of dust. She stepped behind the counter and wiggled the door on the little safe below the register. It was loose but empty as well.

Oh well, worth a fucking shot.

The back door opened with a single push and fell right off of its hinges, sending up a cloud of dust. Infernal gazed out across an empty lot streaked with rectangles of white paint in orderly lines. Weeds pushed up through cracks in the asphalt and she was half-expecting to see a tumbleweed, it was deserted.

Beyond the parking lot, she could see a long silver line shimmering in the distance. It was the fence surrounding the district. Nothing stood between her and it here but that wasn't the problem. She had to find a hole.

Fern scowled. Of course it had to be difficult, nothing could ever be easy when it came to Burdock. After five attempts at an inter-district travel permit, she'd finally bit the bullet and realized that if she wanted to find her girlfriend she'd have to do it the old fashioned way. There was a pair of wire cutters she'd tossed into her bag but she doubted they'd be much use.

All there was to do was walk.

So she did, it wasn't so bad. There was a bit of a breeze and birds swooped low over her head and in the trees nearby. If she concentrated, Fernal could ignore the loud buzzing from the electric fence that enclosed the district, keeping them all inside like cattle.

She knew that she should feel something, at least a sense of urgency, but Fern had never been the type to get afraid. Of course, she'd felt fear before, felt that primal thing that kept everyone else docile, but she'd never let it run her, not ever. Fern was brave and she was smart. That's what people said about her. She walked with confidence, even now.

But it's hard to feel fear with a freshly sharpened hunting knife strapped to your thigh and a gun in your bag, it's a little like cheating.

It wasn't long until she came across the entrance to a junkyard and Infernal stopped to pull out a poorly drawn map by a guy she'd found drinking at Krakov's shitty dive. He'd promised that there was a known tear in the fence at the back of the place, she just had to get over a couple of cars and an empty field first.

Easy, right?

She glanced over her shoulder and then walked in, eyes sharp but the place was pretty quiet. If there was someone else there, they were either hiding or uninterested in her. It was all a lot easier than she thought it would be, but then again if Burdock could do it she could too.

Fern scrambled over a huge pile of crushed junk and there was the fence again as promised, couldn't be more than one hundred yards away. For the first time all morning, she let herself feel a little bit excited. They'd always talked about going to Four to see the ocean and it stood to reason that it couldn't be that far from Three. Maybe she'd have Burdock back in her arms by midnight and she could finally get some goddamned sleep again instead of worrying about her.

Burdock still loved her even though she'd left her, she had to. She'd promised that she'd never stop.

She knew that she should stop and rest for at least a moment but the promise of freedom was so close, all she needed was that tear, that dead spot in the fence and she'd be home free. So Fern scrambled back down the junk pile, pieces of metal and plastic came skating down with her like a rockslide and she took off running.

Her feet hit knobby clumps of grass, the ground was uneven here but she could feel her lungs collecting themselves, pushing air in and out- it felt so damn good to run. There was the tear too, she could see it now as she drew closer, the wire was even already pulled aside, all she'd have to do was squeeze through. It was almost too easy, so much of her was screaming that it was a set-up.

But Burdock had gotten out somehow, so maybe good things happen too.

A dog barked.

Fern stumbled briefly and casts eyes over her shoulder as she keeps running. Sometimes the Peacekeepers hunt with dogs, Fern'd seen it before loads of times, they were big things that looked like they could eat a person. It was okay though, she was close, maybe twenty-five yards away tops and-

snap.

Grass and rocks, tumbling against her skin and catching at her hands, meeting with the earth, holding her up, keeping her face from making contact with the dirt and a spot of light so bright in the back of her skull that she couldn't even see anymore. Her mouth was open but no sound was coming out and she dragged herself forwards, her hands shaking in front of her. Fern's vision swam and the sky grabbed the earth roughly and then shoved.

She didn't want to look.

"Oh," Fern breathed slowly, "Oh, oh, oh." She clawed at the earth but she couldn't keep moving, couldn't keep dragging, a chain rattled, she was caught. She tried to pull her knee up to her chest, to push herself up but even the attempt to move her leg caused a quiet whimper that she tried to bite back. No one was even there to see her weakness but she couldn't bear showing it.

She knew she had to look.

She looked.

There was her left leg, fine, knee stained a little with grass. She'd twisted her left ankle once before when she was about twelve but it was okay now. There was her right leg, the jaws of a bear trap sunk deep into her leg just above her right knee. The grass and dirt beneath the trap was stained with her blood and her foot was mangled in the hinge.

Infernal gazed at it and she knew what had just happened and could recognize that it was bad but she wasn't entirely certain that it was happening to her. It didn't feel real, the blood didn't look real and the white light of pain was dim, it belonged to someone else.

She tugged on her leg carefully, hands braced on her thigh for some purchase. There was a tearing sound, the chain already taut and Fern watched as the flesh from her leg stretched further away from itself.

Odd.

So odd.

Her body throbbed, heart still beating fast from the run and the sound of the dog but they'd become background things to the immediate problem. She glanced over her shoulder. The hole in the fence was so bloody close and all she had to do was get the trap open to get to it.

Blood continued to drip down the jowls of the metal trap and Fern grabbed either side and tried to pull it open. A slow moan of pain fell from her lips as she strained but she could barely move the metal before it snapped back, calling forth a cry of agony instead.

The sun beat down and sweat plastered her hair to her forehead. There was too much blood and Fern didn't have time to just sit and wait to bleed out. Burdock was waiting.

She pulled her hunting knife out of its sheath.

The leg was already fucked, she didn't stand a chance just sitting there, waiting to get caught. Fern was brave, smart, a doer. She wasn't a fucking cooked goose.

The first cut fucking burned but the second felt alright, kind of good actually. She couldn't just chop. She had to saw through tissue. Luckily, the bone had already been bitten clean through. It wasn't her first time cutting up a body either.

And it wasn't her leg anymore, it didn't belong to her, it was just something extra- unnecessary.

The last cut was simple, just a quick swipe of the knife and she was free. Blood pooled around the stump and Infernal gazed down at it. Her hands were drenched in her own blood and the knife was on the ground somehow, she'd dropped it.

Well she didn't need it anymore either, the ground could have the knife then and the trap could have her leg and it was all fine, it was all fine, truly.

She just had to get to the tear in the fence and once she was through she could figure out her next move.

Fern turned over slowly, body aching and brain empty from pain. Twenty-five yards suddenly felt much longer than one hundred but she pulled herself unsteadily to one knee anyway because she was Infernal, she was stubborn, a little monster.

It was just a leg anyway, she'd seen tributes walk on less.

Her hands fell against the earth and Fern pushed hard, willing herself to stand but somehow her elbows buckled, her chest hit the ground and the grass was so cool against her cheek. Just a moment then, just a quick moment.

Then she'd go.

Footsteps, she shuddered, had to get away.

Then dark.