Even after all those years of hunting, I could never really grasp how the animals felt while I was after them, until now. The Careers are trying to intimidate us by singing the theme from a dumb cartoon I watched when I was a kid. They're not hunting, they're playing.

Peeta and I press ourselves down on the roof, even though we know the Careers can't see us from the street. I don't think they have the patience to check every single building on this block, so our best chance is to just stay quiet, and wait for them to go away. I can clearly hear their voices and footsteps coming closer to us, until they stop.

"Did you guys hear that?" A girl says, I think it was the girl from 1, Glimmer, the one from 2 who punched me doesn't talk. The group goes silent, and I catch myself holding my breath, unable to move a muscle. Like a pack of wolves the run for a building, not ours though, but a close one.

I start to drag myself to the edge of the rooftop to get a better view of what's going on, but Peeta stops me, looking at me with wide eyes. He's scared. I don't blame him.

"That's okay," I whisper, and he lets me go. From the edge of the rooftop, I can only see the shapes the Careers moving. But I can hear them clearly. The stumping of footsteps, things breaking, a girl's screams, and laughter.

They drag the girl to the middle of the street by her hair. Is too dark to see who she is, but I'm ashamed to be relieved that this isn't Rue. This girl seems older, my guess she's either the girl from 6 or the Foxface from 5, they were the only ones with long hair. The Careers circle her punching and kicking the girl, who tries to get up, but every kick makes her weaker.

"Please, just let me go!" she pleas and this is met with a kick on her back from Marvel. "Let me go, and I'll tell you where the guys from 12 are!"

"We need to go, right now," Peeta whispers. He already packed everything we have, but I stay put. Running would draw attention to us, and maybe she's bluffing, or maybe she saw me hunting the birds earlier today.

Cato lifts the girl up and lets her walk away from them. She gains some distance and points to our building, before falling on the street at the sound of the cannon. It takes a second to register that Clove threw a knife on the girl's heart.

"Let's go Katniss!" Peeta puts me up from the ground, and we run.

There's only one entrance to this building, but most constructions are on jumping distance from each other. The closest one is a four-story building with a crumbly rooftop. Peeta's foot almost goes through it when he landed in from the jump. We try to cross it as carefully as we can, but the footsteps and screams from the Careers seem to grow closer by the second.

The walk is slow and nerve-wracking. I'm dripping in sweat when we finally reach a place to jump to the next building. Peeta jumps first. The next rooftop seems to be more stable, but when I reach it, it collapses, and Peeta and I fall to the third floor of the building.

"Are you okay?" Peeta asks, between dry coughs. My heart is racing, and every breath I try to take feels like is full with the dust that fills the air around us. I nod him yes, although I'm still not entirely sure. "Good enough. Let's go."

We make our way down the building's staircase as fast as we can. The sound from the crash definitely showed the Careers where we are.

"Where are you, 12?" Marvel shouts, almost in a singing tune, from inside the building.

This building isn't too different from Peeta's bakery, with an open entrance for a shop and several rooms in the back for storage and working. My bet is that just like the bakery, this one will also have a backdoor.

We barely have time to hide under a cupboard when two of them run upstairs. Peeta points to an open window a few steps from us. He holds my hand tight. That's his way to say we can do this, and I believe him.

I'm the first out of the building, Peeta is right behind me, but as he starts to go out through the window a hand pulls him back, Cato's hand.

Peeta! The window is too high to see exactly what's happening. With the bow on my shoulder I climb back the window as fast as I can to see Cato on the floor holding his leg, and Peeta with the knife in one hand, and Cato's sword in the other.

"You better fucking kill me 12!" Cato shouts, his voice sounds like an angry whimper.

"Come on, let's go," Peeta says. We jump out of the building and start to run to the narrow alleyways between the buildings.

In the dark, this feels like a maze. The buildings look the same, and you can get lost between them easily. The Careers aren't shouting anymore, which means they probably either went away or got separated.

"Peeta, wait for a second," I whisper. I close my eyes and try to concentrate on the sounds around me, in the woods you get used to keeping your ears up for any strange sound that usually means something to hunt, or something hunting you. Besides Peeta's and my own shallow breathing, I can hear footsteps in the far distance and frustrated grunts. "We need to walk quietly."

Peeta was never a light walker. We found it out when I took him to hunt one day, and he scared half of the forest away. Back then we laughed about it, but now he's trying his best to not draw attention to us.

We walk in a line. Peeta behind me with the sword and me with the bow ready to shoot, carrying two extra arrows on my left hand. Using my backpack as a quiver is just too slow.

"Where the fuck are you, 12?" Marvel shouts. Peeta and I freeze on our places. He's close, too close. Peeta's hand on my shoulder doesn't make me jump. I know the way he moves well enough to expect something like this. Step, by step, Peeta's hand guides me to a darker part of the alley where we crouch together. I can see Marvel clearly now. With a spear in his hand that he juggles it up and down in the air, shattering every other window out of boredom. "Come on guys. I don't think they're here anymore!"

As Marvel passes in front of us, I can feel Peeta's breath on my neck stopping, his hands, that are usually warm feel cold close to my skin. My hands tighten around the bow. Marvel is a clear shot from where I am, I could take him down. But it would be fast enough to not draw attention to Peeta and me? Or to happen before he has the chance to stab me with the spear?

Ultimately, I just don't think I can do it. Before I left 12, Gale told me that hunting people would be just like hunting animals. At the time I considered that could be the same, but now I can see that Gale doesn't know what the hell he was talking about.

Marvel leaves, and the sounds start to feel distant. Peeta lets out a relieved sigh, and I lay my body against his, letting myself be held by him for a while. A part of me wants to cry, but I don't want to look weak, not with the whole country, and more importantly, the sponsors watching.

"We need to find a place to spend the night," I say, and Peeta agrees as he gets up. And that's the end of day one in the arena.