Cato is about to die, he knows that for sure.
It's the 74th Annual Hunger Games, and everything around him is dark, and in his arms is a small blonde boy he barely even knows, and this is where he's about to die. Because he made a wrong move, took a wrong step, and now the tribute girl from District 12 has her bow loaded and pointed directly at him, and no matter what he does now, he's about to get an arrow to the head.
"Go on, shoot," Cato says, although he feels as though he is already dead, as though somebody else is speaking for him. "Then we both go down, and you win."
Cato waits for the girl to get this over with, to just kill both of them so Cato can have peace, but she doesn't seem to have any intention of moving. And Cato's frustration continues to grow. Why can't she just kill him? Why does she have to care so much about the little blonde boy?
"Go on!" Cato says again, and even he can tell that, with every word, he sounds more crazed, but he doesn't care, because he's dead anyway.
He always was dead, really. The second his family chose to send him to District 2's training academy, the second he devoted his life to the Hunger Games, he was dead. Sure, there was always the tiny chance that he would be able to actually win the Hunger Games, but it was just that—a tiny chance, not big enough that it should have ever given him so much hope. He's dead, he's always been dead, he's never really even been alive.
He spins around to face the cameras that he knows the Capitol has placed in the arena. "How's that? Is that you want?" he yells to the audience, to the Capitol, to his parents. Have they always wanted him to die, never really cared whether he lived? Probably. For them, he's just another product in their assembly line, just another kid that they raised to have no conscience, to kill other children, to always follow the Capitol's commands without ever even blinking an eye.
That's all Cato is, really. A product of the Capitol's assembly line. The realization is so horrifying, so awful, that all he can do is laugh. He is the product of an assembly line, and the only thing that he was designed to do was kill. And at this point, it's too late for him to change his design, and so the only thing that is left for him to do is exactly what the Capitol programmed him to.
He can kill, just one more time.
Killing. It's the only thing he knows how to do.
Cato is preparing to move, to fall backwards off the Cornucopia into a pile of vicious and bloodthirsty mutts, to kill both himself and Peeta, when suddenly the girl from 12 has released her last arrow, sent it straight toward his hand. Cato is just comprehending what's happening when suddenly, the arrow has just missed its target and hit the blonde boy's neck.
The tribute girl has missed. And her last arrow is gone.
Without thinking, Cato drops the blonde boy, who is going to be dead within seconds, lunges toward the District 12 girl, and—before she can even react—he has wrapped his hands around her neck and snapped it.
He didn't even have to think about it, Cato realizes. He killed her, just like that, without caring. Like a product off an assembly line, programmed to kill and capable of doing nothing else.
And as the sun rises in the arena, and a hovercraft comes to carry him out, and he passes through crowds and crowds of people cheering his name, he's not really feeling any of it. He's not really feeling anything.
After everything he realized in the arena, he doesn't feel like a human being anymore, he doesn't feel real. He feels hollow, empty, void of emotions. Dead. He is not a victor of the Hunger Games, he is not Cato Hadley, he is not a boy from District 2—he is a product off the Capitol's assembly line, and now that he knows that, it's impossible for him to continue to try to exist as a true human being.
Hours and days and weeks pass by, filled with fancy dinners and fancy clothes and fancy people and lots of congratulations, but Cato isn't alive anymore. He's been dead for a long time now, ever since he was born, really. Ever since he first learned to kill.
He eats, he sleeps, he does interviews and goes on tours and even meets Panem's President, but he doesn't care about anything anymore. Before the Games, at least he cared about one thing, cared about killing, but now, now that the Games are over and he's already won, already done what his parents and what the Capitol programmed him to do, there is nothing left for him.
The worst part is, Cato thinks, that he is not haunted by the Games, like all the other victors seem to be. All the other victors of past Hunger Games seem to be tormented by guilt, or traumatized by watching other tributes die, but it isn't like that for Cato. The murdering and the children dying and the screaming and the blood do not haunt him; they never did and never will. What haunts him is that the murdering and the dying and the screaming and the blood don't haunt him. The fact that he doesn't care—that's what's scary. The fact that he has been turned into a heartless machine, that's horrifying.
Days and months and years continue to pass, and Cato continues to feel lost. He has a house and has money and has food on the table—all given to him as some sick way to reward him for winning the Games and causing the deaths of so many. But he doesn't feel fulfilled.
He even makes new friends, gets a wife, has children, but he never feels alive. Because he is incapable of having emotions. Of caring about other people. Of loving, of truly living. The only thing that he knows how to do is kill.
And there isn't much happiness to be taken from that.