Chapter 1

Childhood had always been hard for the people of Clux.

Aside from the fact that that the land we lived in sounded like the noise a rather stupid chicken would make, it also happened to be a raging cesspool of poverty. Mix that with a healthy dose of maniacal tyranny and a sprinkling of inhumanity, and you'll have yourself a bona fide recipe for some disastrous first years of life. It's a miracle any of us survived to spawn another generation.

As I ducked around the black hooded guards surrounding the square in the middle of town, I could feel their blank eyes boring into the back of my head, as if daring me to try anything that broke protocol. I might have been offended by their suspicious glares, if it weren't for the fact that they treated everyone like that, from the smallest toddler to the crippled old man begging for bits on the side of the road. Their suspicion was beyond being a lifestyle choice. For the Core, it was in their programming.

Of course, they were also programmed to recognize the difference between a toddler and a strapping young lad of eighteen, which is why I knew their eyes would follow me until I disappeared from their sight. Eighteen was considered the beginning of what officials liked to refer to as the "rebellion stage."

Or, in other words, my birthday that year had officially bumped my threat status up from "keep an eye on this one" to "watch him like a hawk."

Which was fine by me. I like a good challenge.

Slipping down an alleyway between the local pharmacy and the baker's shop, I darted around several huddled masses on the ground before continuing on my way. That particular street was well known for being a safe haven for wanderers, outlaws, and those who simply didn't want to be interrogated by the Core. The heat from the bakery made the Core uncomfortable, sometimes even short-circuiting their systems if they hung around for too long. Short-circuiting meant a trip back to the Capital and several hours of downloading paperwork, so it was avoided if at all possible. Luckily, for the people in my district, it meant a momentary respite from a life of terror in an alleyway that always smelled like baking bread.

For me, the street was not a hiding place, but a shortcut. As I exited the other end, blinking in the watery mid-October sunlight, a cheerful, sing-song voice greeted my ears. "Luka! I have a surprise for youuu!"

A smile twitched at the corner of my lips, though I had yet to locate the source of the sound. As I crossed the dirty street, a blur of color came barreling towards me from the left, stopping just short of knocking me clean off my feet. "Luka! Didn't you hear me? Don't you want to know what the surprise is?"

Turning to face her, I kept my face set in a mask of passive indifference. "Eh. Not really."

Jenna's face scrunched up, wrinkling her nose and distorting her freckles in a way that made it hard for me not to laugh at her. One hand she had tucked in a pocket of her overalls, and the other she quickly used to punch me in the arm with what I'm sure she thought was bone-crunching force. I flinched away good-naturedly, then pulled on one of her blonde, braided pigtails. She swatted my hand away, her lower lip jutting out into a pout. "Fine! I won't tell you. Just… just go back to whatever nonsense you were doing before, jerk."

"Aw, Jenna, don't be like that!" I replied, my lip forming a goofy pout identical to hers. It was bizarre just how much we could look alike, when we wanted to. Despite the fact that we weren't technically identical twins, the sibling resemblance between us was uncanny. "You know it's my job as big brother to tease you until the cows come home."

Her green eyes threw daggers in my direction. "You know full well that I am three minutes older than you are, you brat."

"Only in dog years," I quickly threw back. Her look of outrage was matched in magnitude only by my ever-expanding grin.

"You… you…" Unable to come up with a retort (that had always been my specialty), she turned on the heel of her well-worn boots and began to storm away.

I caught her by the elbow and tried to drag her back, which resulted in both of us losing our balance, nearly tumbling us headfirst into the filth-laden gutter. The reminder of our surroundings snapped us both back into a more appropriate demeanor. We tended to forget things like the Core and neighbors and common decency when we were around each other. It had been a source of unending terror for our parents, who were sure one of our arguments would land us in a detention cell one day.

It looked like we were safe, for now. It was lucky for us that there weren't many Core members in sight, because they weren't the biggest fans of squabbling and rowdy behavior. The only one I could see was lounging against a fence a couple hundred yards from us, and he certainly wasn't cut from the same cloth as the ones guarding the mayor's house. Possibly a scout with some bad programming (or perhaps just a lazy patrol drone), he wasn't even looking in our direction, despite some of the nervous glances we were receiving from some of the human passersby.

Either way, we were better safe than sorry. I poked Jenna in the shoulder and then nodded my head eastward. We trotted towards home together, in silence, leaving me plenty of time to examine the scenery.

I had never left the district limits myself, but if gossip were to be believed, District Ten was second in size only to District Eleven. We lived a relatively simple life. Our clothes were generally homemade, and our food came almost entirely from the animals we raised. That was District Ten's specialty, livestock. As long as we met our quota for the Capitol, we could do whatever we wanted with the leftovers. That sounds generous, except for the fact that the demands of the Capitol often exceeded the abilities of the local farmers. Even in plentiful years, poorer families would occasionally go hungry. In a year of drought or famine, half of us all but starved to death.

Jenna and I were lucky. Our father was a particularly enterprising man who, under the watchful eye of the Core (to ensure he wasn't overstepping his boundaries), had managed to build a farm that could support the Capitol and his family, even managing to have leftovers to store or share during particularly good years.

It was good, then, that we had been born into the Taylin family. The birth of twins to an unsuspecting family could mean financial ruin, having to provide for two bundles of joy instead of one. Mama called us "blessed," because hunger had never been a frequently used word in our vocabulary.

However, this did not mean we lived an easy life. On the contrary—the success of our farm actually made that much more work for all of us. I was up at four every morning to feed the animals, and Jenna's arms and legs were burning with fatigue at the end of each day when we tumbled into bed. Despite naturally being more dirty-blonde, both of our heads had been bleached nearly white by years under the hot summer sun. Despite being thoroughly tanned, freckles dotted both of our noses. We were approximately the same height. At five-foot-nine, she was a little tall for a girl, and I a little short for a guy, but she was of a more slender build than I. I could trump her at arm wrestling, but I was no match for her in any sort of race.

My parents said our birth had been the shock of their lives. I knew at one point in time there were machines that could predict the occurrence of twins, but ever since the Great Purge, humanity's technological advancements had been channeled in other directions. Nevertheless, after the surprise had worn off, we had been welcomed into the family with open arms. My mother was as gentle as a spring breeze and as sweet as apple pie; for her, two children just meant more for her to love. My father, a giant, burly man who towered over most everyone he had ever met, was a little more withdrawn when it came to the whole 'emotions' thing. To him, two children meant twice the labor, just as two calves meant twice the milk. Either way, we were welcome.

Despite having a set of good, reliable parents, Jenna and I had grown up leaning heavily on each other for support. Oh, it's true, we did argue constantly—the whole town could attest to that. However, when it came right down to it, if there was one person in the world I would trust with my life, no questions asked, it was her.

Unfortunately, once a year, the blessing of having a twin to lean on became the ultimate curse.

Because, once a year, there came the Hunger Games.

Just the mention of those two words could send shivers down our backs, even if the Reaping had been only yesterday, and we had escaped for another full year. If the Games could tear apart a family and break the hearts of siblings and parents everywhere, then imagine what they could do to us. Twins, one female and one male? It made my head burn just thinking about the possible disastrous results.

So, instead of focusing on that unlikely future, I chose instead to focus on my complete hatred of those from whom the Games had originated. The Core, yes, but it was more than that. It was the inhabitants of the Capitol, and every other filthy program and bit of data that had streamed into our world years ago.

I didn't know all the details. After all, it had been over a hundred years ago, and the details were hazy to begin with. What I did know was this: some crazy inventor and his son had opened up a pathway between the world inside of computers and the outside world—our world. I don't think he was trying to cause problems. He was probably trying to help the world in his own, strange way. Some years after the original invention was created, a program in the system went rogue and escaped from the computer with a massive army, determined to destroy the human world and all its imperfections.

They did a damn good job of it, too. Before anyone realized what was happening, half of the world had been burned to the ground. They would have finished us all off, too, if it weren't for one bit of information that wasn't explained to the crazy program before he went on a killing rampage. Not only were the humans the only ones with the creative and logical power to develop new technology, but they were also the only ones who knew how to run the computers from the outside, including running the power plants that made the computers tick in the first place.

Whoops.

So, with only a small chunk of the world left unravaged, the program decided, instead of eliminating humans, he would simply set himself up as their overlord and rule over them as his slaves.

And so came about our mighty and eternal leader, CLU.

He divided up the remains of the world into 13 districts, each with their own purposes and tasks. District 5 produced electricity, to power the Capitol and occasionally the other districts. District 10 and 11 focused primarily on farming: livestock and agriculture, respectively. District 3 was research and development, to come up with new, nasty ways for the Capitol to kill people. And so on. CLU settled back, certain his new empire would last forever.

Unfortunately, as part of a computer, he had no way of predicting the sheer tenacity of the human race. After only a couple years, CLU had a full-scale rebellion on his hands. Sadly, what the rebellion had in spirit, it lacked in resources, and it was soon quashed beneath CLU's powerful army. Furious with his new subjects and no doubt drawing on his years of success with games inside of the computer, CLU decided he could implement the same process to keep the 'users' under his control.

And thus the Hunger Games were born. Every year, one boy and one girl from each district, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, were chosen to compete inside of the original computer on a battleground that changed from year to year. They were dubbed the Hunger Games because, being computers, they forgot to throw in some food sources for the users the first time around, and most of the contestants starved to death. Unfortunately, that doesn't even begin to describe the horror of the Games. Sometimes the contestants were given lightcycles; these years, despite being brutal, were often mercifully short. However, more likely than not, they chucked you in there with a variety of weapons in a vast computerized terrain, forcing the contestants to hunt each other down until only one was left alive.

You can see how this might be a problem for male and female twins.

But what could we do about it? There was absolutely no resisting the Core, unless you had a death wish. They were the elite killers of the programming world. Admittedly, some were more impressive than others—some of the weaker programs on the outskirts of the organization had gotten the job by chance, or through a glitch, or simply because they were having a slow day at the recruitment office. The true Core, however, could kill you faster than you could ask for forgiveness and never blink an eye, because that's what they were programmed to do.

Also, they couldn't die—at least, not in the traditional sense. Though they were physically part of the world, in reality, they were still only bits of data. Just as a human still bleeds real blood inside of the Grid, a program damaged on the outside world will merely shatter, then be retransmitted back into the original terminal, where they can pop right back into the real world in a never-ending cycle.

There was no fighting it, and no stopping it. CLU was just a computer program—he couldn't age or die. You just had to keep your head down and slog on in the hopes that one day a giant meteor would crash into the main terminal and finally wipe out CLU for good.

As I mulled all these depressing thoughts over, we made it out of town, past about a million fields of grazing cattle, and to the dirt road that led up to our little white farmhouse. Mama was waiting anxiously on the porch, as she always did when we were more than ten seconds late for anything. However, her usual expression of concern was shadowed today by something that ran even deeper than fretting about the time. This brought the date back into the forefront of my mind, though I had determinedly been trying to keep it blocked out for most of the day. Naturally, there was a reason for the silent nervousness in town and my out-of-character thoughts on all things Capitol—tomorrow was Reaping Day.

Or, to be more precise, our last Reaping Day.