Author's Note: Before Katniss Everdeen sparked a revolution in the 74th Hunger Games, the Capitol imposed its iron will on hundreds of victors – and hid its share of secrets. In the 68th Hunger Games, District 2's 17 year-old Scipio Arcturus is set to enter as any other Career from Panem's most formidable district. But he is not any other Career: Scipio won't play these Games as everyone expects him too…and in his journey, he'll stumble across betrayal, heartbreak, love – and the dark soul of the Capitol's vise-like stranglehold on Panem's liberty.
District 2 - Year of the 68th Hunger Games
Her name is Clove.
The pint-sized girl's one of two dozen or so nine year-olds filing into the foyer of the Champion's Institute. At first glance, she's no different than the others, with her wide brown eyes staring around at the marble floor and limestone columns of the wide entrance hall. Her name, and names of the other initiates chosen to train as potential Tributes for the Hunger Games in future years shine in yellow on the black electronic display hanging high on the foyer's far wall.
I know it's her. Beside each of the initiates' names, their height and vital statistics are shown. Clove's the shortest and the lightest. The odds of becoming tribute aren't in her favor.
"They keep getting smaller," a raven-haired girl to my right says, leaning against a pillar and watching the children file in while she chomps on the end of a toothpick. "Every year. Think any of 'em make it, Scipio?"
"Not my problem," I say. "Why do you care, Julia?"
"Just sayin'," Julia shrugs, rubbing a finger along her slender arms.
Julia's the picture of a tribute. She's tall, almost as tall as I am, and her sleek, shiny dark skin covers her muscular body like a leopard's coat. Her hair hangs in a pair of short braids that run down to her powerful shoulders. I have no doubt she'll be picked eventually for the Games: I've trained alongside her for eight years, ever since we were both fresh-eyed nine year-olds walking into the foyer for the first time. Her combination of shadowy beauty and lethal skills with a dagger has no equal.
That's the day we're all waiting for. The day we'll be called up to the Hunger Games is one every Initiate dreams of. It's an honor to be chosen as one of the boy-and-girl pair from District 2, our home, to compete in the annual competition of combat and survival held by the Capitol, the political hub and central city of our nation, Panem. Out of all the 12 Districts that surround the Capitol, only District 1 – a district many here call our brothers – have had more victors come out of the sixty seven years of the Games since their inception following the end of Panem's civil war, the Dark Days.
Those victors stand in elite company. Out of the twenty-four children between the ages of twelve and eighteen that enter the Games each year, only one comes out alive. In District 2, we train to win.
"We should probably get back to the Commons," Julia looks up at the clock on the foyer's white marble wall, rubbing a hand over her silver initiate jumpsuit. "Almost time for dinner. I'm hungry as sin."
I look back at Clove and the other initiates, standing in the middle of the foyer as yellow winter sun filters in through the hall's frosted windows. I was there, once – once before time became a precious commodity, once before training overruled my childhood.
That boy who stood there was someone else. It wasn't me.
"I gotta meet with Marius first," I say, brushing my blonde hair away from my forehead. "Told him I would today."
"Why?" she asks, jabbing her hands into her waist and standing with hips askew.
"You know how old victors do things," I say sarcastically. "So much wisdom and experience. I'm thrilled."
"Don't let him bore you to death. That'd be a pathetic way to die. I'd piss on your grave."
I snort and wave Julia off. She'll make the Capitol laugh, too. If she wasn't so combative with our trainers, she probably would have already won the Games. Now she and I only have two more chances to be victor.
It's a title worth killing for in District 2.
I slip out of the foyer through a small granite door and turn into a bathroom. Despite what I said to Julia, I want to at least look presentable for Marius after spending most of the day in hand-to-hand combat training. I rub a hand over a split in my lip and stare into one of the small bathroom's cracked mirrors, the prize of some angry initiate venting in private.
A pair of solemn hazel eyes stare back at me. They lack the snarling fire of Julia's spirit or the rage of some of our fellow Initiates. No, my eyes are almost bored. Tired. Strained. I'm only seventeen, yet I already look like I'm in my twenties. My blonde hair has resisted my attempts to make it lie flat, and my cobalt jumpsuit bunches up around my muscled chest.
Blech. Hardly presentable. Hardly the ideal District 2 tribute.
I shrug and slap my palm into the fractured mirror for good measure. Might as well leave my own mark.
A brutish boy with boulders for shoulders bumps into me as I walk out of the bathroom. He smirks, sticking a dinner plate of a hand into my chest and holding me back from leaving.
"You go in there for a cry?" he says, his coal black eyes dangerous and cold. "Depressed about getting the shit kicked out of you this morning?"
"Bug off, Commodus," I say, shoving him away. I'm in no mood to deal with his antics. "I got somewhere to be."
"What? I'm just talking," Commodus says with a smirk, holding his hands against the back of his shaven head. "You always act like a coward around me. What's your problem, man?"
I have every problem with Commodus. I could tell him how I hate how he spews talking points from our trainers like they're gospel. I hate how he bullies around everyone who either isn't a superior or doesn't kiss his rear. I hate his down-to-earth act that can't hide his arrogance.
But I won't tell him that. I won't give him more reasons to get in my face.
"It's your head," I say instead. "It's ugly. You scare the new kids."
"Yeah? Try me when I become victor."
"Oh, I'm sure you'll win. One look at your face will kill everyone from the other districts."
He snarls and shoves me into a wall, stomping into the bathroom without a comeback. I smile, feeling pleased with myself as I stroll down the white-walled halls of the Institute. Maybe living inside these walls for so long has gotten to Commodus's head. He's the strongest of all of us seventeen year-olds in training, but I doubt he'd win in the Games. The sly, quick-thinking tributes from District 1 would outstrip his tiny brain's power in seconds.
I pass by several pictures of past District 2 winners on the walls and take a left, stopping at a crimson-lined oaken door. A gold nameplate hangs at eye level on the door, with onyx letters reading "M. NERVA." I rap my fist against the door once, twice, three times, the solid thud of each pound echoing around the empty hallway.
"Just a minute," an exhausted voice says from within.
A minute turns into four or five as I loiter outside in the hall, leaning against the far wall and picking at a fingernail. The door finally opens with a slam as an older, dark-skinned man wearing a ripped violet tunic looks out at me with a mix of amusement and bewilderment.
"What're you doing here?" he asks, throwing a book in his hand over his shoulder into a wastebasket.
"You…wanted me to meet with you," I say, holding my hands out. "You said that this morning."
"Yeah, whatever. Screwing with people's heads again. Is that your new strategy?"
"Something like that."
"Fine. Come in and sit down before I die of a stroke."
I laugh and walk into Marius Nerva's cramped office. The room would have a lot more space if every corner wasn't littered with old mementos, treasures, and worse. Marius's 30th Hunger Games Victor trophy lays on top of a pile of The Complete History of Panem, presided over by a withering yellow palm brought in from District 1. A replica of the Capitol's Center City Music Hall, where tribute interviews are held each year for the Games, lies on its side next to his redwood desk. A brass lantern hanging from the wall shines musky light across the room, the best it can do with two of its four bulbs burnt out.
"You're not even that old. Stop complaining," I say, slumping back into a plush blue chair that smells of raccoon. "Although this place smells awful. Did something die in here?"
"Yeah, I took one of the new kids and killed 'em," he said. "I should take that back. You look like you'll believe that and go squeal to Livia."
"I take back what I said, too. Your old age is making you paranoid."
"See? 56 years old is old. I could still beat you to a pulp out in the Combat Hall, Scipio."
I laugh. Marius is an outlier in District 2: He's a victor who never took victory very seriously. His father's place as one of the elite commanders of the Peacekeepers, the Capitol's white-armored and uncompromising standing army, meant that Marius never lacked for anything as a boy. Winning the Games thirty-eight years ago only added to his accolades.
Like several of the victors of District 2, Marius had used his free time as a victor to train initiates as he grew older. He'd won his Games by appealing to the Capitol through wit and humor – and by mowing down his competition with a set of poisoned blowdarts. He was an interesting change-up to many of the trainers here in the Institute who took the training process deadly seriously, and I took a liking to him almost from the day I'd stepped into the foyer. We'd developed a bond ever since.
"You don't make any sense," I say, leaning an arm over the back of my chair. "You can beat up trainees, but you're old. Those aren't compatible."
"I don't have to make sense. They pay District 3 to make sense and music players and stuff I don't need but keeps finding a way into my office," he says, banging his hand on the table and drawing a metallic oval out of his desk. "Look at this thing. It's a holographic recorder. Electronic diary. It's some Capitol thing. Why do I need this? Well, because some idiot in the market today wouldn't leave me alone, so I either had to buy it or kill him if I wanted him to go away. I wanted to do the latter, but sometimes I compromise my morals."
"Great morals," I say.
"What? Mass slaughter is a great way to get what you want. Ask Livia."
I snort and look off at the dying palm. Livia Spate's the director of the Institute, a young and ferocious woman who won the 52nd Games through unadulterated violence and a head for laying lethal traps. Marius's unorthodox style for the district has never meshed with her ruthlessness and cold, calculating logic.
"I'd rather not ask her anything," I say. "Do you just want to talk to me to complain about Livia?"
"Nah, I have lot more things to complain about. Like this dying plant. But first, I gotta talk about you."
"What about me?"
"Your hair, first off. It looks like a bird took up roost there. Secondly, something a bit more serious."
Marius knocks a pile of papers off his desk and thumps his elbows on the dirty redwood. His dark eyes rise to meet mine, the graying hair on his end shining in the tempered light.
"I know there's still six months before the Games," he says, his voice dropping into a baritone growl. "And you're not to tell anybody this. Anyone. Even if your father left the stone quarry one day and burst in here at noon, you couldn't tell him."
"I wouldn't tell him much of anything, but…what?"
"You know Diana? Eighteen year-old girl, maybe five-eight, red hair, likes to shoot arrows?"
"Yeah. What about her?"
"All of us old victors have made up our minds. She's going into the Games this year."
A jolt of excitement flows through me, tinged with disappointment. Julia's much more enthusiastic about becoming a victor than I, yet she'll miss out again this year. She'll only have next year to win entrance, and if not then…than she'll never make it.
"Alright, so Diana's going in," I say. "Fine. Why tell me if I'm not supposed to tell anyone?"
"Because you're going in with her."
The previous jolt was nothing compared to the bolt of lightning that blasts me now. A whirlpool gurgles in my stomach as I sit stone-faced for a moment, looking at Marius as if he had begun a lecture on physics.
"What?" I mumble finally. "I mean, thanks, but –"
"Stop with the bullshit," Marius says quickly, cutting me off. "You get it. Some of the others would be jumping for joy right now, but you're letting it sink in. That's a big reason why I made a push over the past few months to get the others to go with you."
"You? Why? I mean, apart from the fact we're good…"
"Shut up a second and let me talk. After that, you can ask anything you want," Marius says.
He steps up from his desk, kicks a book out of his way and stares at the wall. He leans a hand against the wall, slouches, and starts to explain.
"No matter what Livia, Brutus, or the others might say around here, the Games are nasty. They take you out of your comfort zone and throw you into something you can't imagine or conceive. Sometimes the arena's by-the-book, sometimes it's ridiculous. You've got to think, adapt, come up with plans on the fly and react to any situation that comes your way. The big, strong grunts and kids who can do math in their head might be tough and book-smart, but unless you know a lot of different things that can work together, you don't have a chance. It's breadth, not depth, of skills that wins."
"You're not really the toughest guy ever. No, don't go cry over that. A lot of the others are smarter than you. A few are faster, but I'll give you that one. But you have some skill in a bunch of different things, and you look at the games the right way. I like that."
"I look at them right?"
"What part of quiet doesn't get through to you? Kids. Look, Scipio. Your dad's a stone miner. Your mom sleeps around town."
"That's nice of you."
"What else would you call it? A bunch of the other kids see the Games as some sort of celebration or coronation or reason to get excited. But you see it as what you should: An escape. After all, where else do you go if you don't make it? The Peacekeepers? The Capitol Guard, if you're lucky? The stone quarries? None of that's any good. You'd make a terrible merchant, so throw that out. You have a quiet desperation to make it in these Games. You might even make a decent victor if you win 'em, and you just might have the skills to win. You have enough to win some of the Capitol's support, at least, and you'll be a change from the usual male idiot we put into the Games."
He sighs, slumps his shoulders, and says, "And I'll admit, I'm playing favorites a bit. So you can say thank you, or whatever you're going to say now."
I sit quietly for a minute. I only half-listened to Marius's explanation. I'm still digesting this blow that Marius dropped on me. I'm going into the Games in six months? That's no time at all. Six months rushes by an instant. Six months to make sure I have everything down, six months to make sure I shore up any weaknesses.
And I have plenty of those.
"So why not some 'usual idiot' this time?" I ask.
"Were you listening at all? I just explained that. Everyone's tired of the same old grunts from District 2, and we haven't had one victor the last five years. District 1's kicked our butts with three of the last five victors, and even District 4's moving up on us with that Finnick Odair idiot winning in '65. Sometimes you need to shake things up."
"Why Diana?"
"She's like you in her skill set. Smart, tactical, physical enough to compete, and she's savvy enough not to get in a straight fight if she doesn't have to. That shooting skill of hers helps a lot. It might not be the sexy way to win, but she's dangerous. She'll be a tough out for any of the other districts. I'd make sure you're on good terms with her over the next few months."
I think of all the new initiates in the foyer not even an hour ago. Will little Clove ever be in this position, confronted in a dimly-lit office with the knowledge that she's facing the cusp of destiny – of glory, of escape from the monotony of everyday District 2 life? Can she even imagine that now?
Did I, when I was only nine? It doesn't matter. That was a different kid, another boy I don't know anymore. That was a kid who only had to think about what was coming up the next day in training, not how to become a champion in six months.
Doesn't matter. Not anymore.
"Alright," I say to Marius, slumping down in my chair and resting my elbows on his desk. "Tell me what to do next."
Author's Note: Time to cover what I didn't in the early abbreviated note at the beginning. Welcome and thanks for reading! This is ultimately a 5- or 6-book series, but it will all be contained in a single thread to avoid having you jump around from thread to thread. Any questions, suggestions, constructive criticisms, I'm happy to hear 'em and don't get offended easily.
Disclaimer: The Hunger Games, the Capitol, District 2, Snow, Clove, Brutus, Enobaria, Cato, Katniss, Finnick, etc etc all belong to Suzanne Collins. Some creative liberties have been taken in the existing universe (once again, if you've got questions, I've got answers.) Rated T for blood, violence, themes, language, and intimate implications (nothing explicit).