The fear made the palms of her hands slick with sweat. She slammed against the wall and then crawled behind a crate. The glowing sign of Fontaine's Fisheries lit up the water, the sparks flying off the I in Fisheries, casting an eerie glow over the water. The dim lighting did her no favors. She could dimly make out the shape of one of the other Tributes; they were looking for her. She could tell they had been splicing since the Games started.

"Katniss!" They trilled loudly.

She couldn't tell which Tribute it was. Her breathing came hard. Katniss looked down at the Plasmid injection she had in her bag that she hadn't dared use yet. But they were standing right in the water and suddenly Electro Bolt was looking better and better. Did she dare?

Katniss took a deep breath.

TWO DAYS EARLIER

"Sixty seconds to launch."

Katniss's breath stopped. She looked back at Cinna, fear filling her up. He tried to calm her down, whispering to her that he believed in her – that he would bet on her. But it seemed to be muffled in her own head from the noise that was ringing through it. She was not prepared to go up there.

When she had volunteered to take Prim's place, she was only thinking of Prim. It wasn't until she had gotten on the train that the full effect of what she had done had fully settled over her, like a thick, suffocating blanket. It doesn't matter, she told herself, this is for Prim. That became her mantra to help her through everything that had come after. She had to get through this. She had to try her best to live.

And now she was looking at Cinna and the moment was here and her head was spinning. How was Peeta during this? She thought of him in his own room, waiting to go to the arena. She wasn't even sure where they were. They had knocked her out with some injection when they placed her tracker. Just her, it would be just her in there. She would have to do it – for Prim.

Cinna led her to the launch pad. It looked different than what she had thought it would. Katniss had heard that they were tubes that took you up. Instead this looked like some sort of…words failed her as she stepped inside it. She tried to think back to school. It looked like those boats people you used to take underwater. Katniss couldn't remember the word.

She turned back to Cinna, looking at him as the machine closed around her. The fear came alive all at once, like a rapid dog, trying to eat her alive. Katniss pressed her hand against the glass of the small window and Cinna did too.

"Cinna…" She breathed but he couldn't hear her.

The machine started to rise as the countdown kept going. It lurched for a second and then kept rising. There was darkness. Katniss was surrounded in it. She tried to focus on her breathing, on Prim, on Peeta – no, not Peeta, he would be dead soon. And then the darkness broke.

She was in water. No, the machine was in water. And they weren't going up – they were going down. Deeper and deeper in the water they went. Was this the ocean? Her face was plastered against the glass as the machine went lower. The light from the sun faded. Soon it was dark. Soon pitch black. She could only make out what the lights from the machine illuminated. Katniss realized she was shaking. Had an arena ever been down in the ocean before? She tried to remember but her brain seemingly shut off.

Then suddenly there were lights. The lights grew brighter. Was that – was she really? It was a city. There was a city down below! Her eyes grew wide as she took in the sight of what looked like the Capital only under water. There were tall towers in a style she had never seen before and as the machine got closer, she realized there were tubes that connected the buildings together. The machine soon got closer and she was swallowed up in the buildings.

Katniss knew she had to focus on what was going to be coming up – the countdown, the bloodbath – but the sight of an underwater city was too much. She felt frozen, rooted in her spot, to stare out the window. The machine glided down into a tube with the words RAPTURE glowing for a moment in front of her. Then she was swallowed up again by pure darkness.

The countdown to the machine opening up began.