"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." - George Orwell, 1984

Dr. Scipio Hendrik, The Capitol

The night was cold as Dr. Scipio Hendrik, Skip to his close friends, made his way home from work. An icy wind was whipping the leaves off the trees and whirling them around his head and he was forced to turn up the collar of his coat to protect his ears from the vicious gusts. In his hands he clutched a stack of documents that the wind was doing it's best to tear from his numb fingers. His eyes streamed with the cold, almost blinding him as he battled his way along the deserted street towards home and a warm, luxurious bath.

He was a tall man, around 35 years old, with pale amber eyes and skin the colour of dark chocolate. His dark hair was short, the ends of the many gelled spikes died blood red to match the lab coat he usually wore. The effect made it seem like something had been impaled on the spikes and bled to death on his head. Skip hated it. He found himself wishing the wind would ruin his hairstyle beyond repair, but whatever product it was his hairdresser had used seemed invincible.

That was the thing about being a doctor in the Capitol. It wasn't about helping people, it was about maintaining an image. Wrong image, no patients – no patients, no money, simple as. Image was everything.

The other thing about being a Capitol doctor was that everybody always had such preconceived notions about you, Skip thought grumpily as he turned the corner into his own street. It was astounding how many people heard 'doctor' and asked him how much a facelift cost or if Botox was really very painful or what the maximum sized breast implants were. One woman had even asked him if it would be possible to implant enough silicone into her shoulders to make it look like she had the wings of an angel. No one ever considered the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he was actually a proper medical doctor, not some crackpot old quack who got rich off turning the Capitol's population into walking plastic circus freaks.

In fact, at least twenty times a day Skip found himself explaining that, no, he was most certainly not a plastic surgeon and it was unethical to charge people vast amounts of money to surgically alter their bodies when it would do their health no good whatsoever.

That was usually the moment in the conversation at parties when the adoring crowd of women (and men) who had gathered around him started to slowly disperse.

Skip sighed and buried his free hand deeper within the folds of his coat. Nearly home now, only a few more steps and he'd be out of this dreadful wind.

A few doors down Skip stopped suddenly, staring through the gloom at his front door. A woman was stood on his doorstep wrapped up in a long brown mack, collar turned up to hide her face, with an unattractive felt hat jammed right down over her eyes. Only a couple of blonde curls peeped out from under the edges of the hat and her shapely legs poked out from under the coat, feet clad in shiny red heels. The effect was bizarre, she looked rather like she had stepped out of a detective story in some cheap, early twentieth century novel.

What was even more bizarre was the fact she was clearly waiting for him, as, when Skip approached her, she pushed off from the doorframe and made her way to meet him. "Dr Hendrik?", she asked, raising her voice to make herself heard over the wind. There was a faint lilting accent to her voice that Skip couldn't quite place. Definitely not a Capitol accent.

He eyed her cautiously, trying to catch a glimpse of her face under the hat. Nothing. "Yes?"

"I saw you yesterday on television before they stopped broadcasting. Chanel Five? The debate? You spoke out against the Games."

Skip remembered. He'd been invited to participate in a debate on the ethical issues surrounding the Hunger Games. As a well-known medical man, they had assumed he might be a valuable asset to the panel which already consisted of a headmistress, two scientists and a handful of politicians.

When they said 'debate' Skip had known full well that there would never be any debate. Everyone would sit around congratulating the government on their genius idea of creating the Hunger Games all those years ago and wipe away any possible doubts anyone watching might have had as to the morality of murdering 23 innocent children. Famous people praising the Games was enough to keep the shallow, stupid Capitolites convinced that they were a good idea and that murder was, in fact, not morally wrong after all as long as you packaged it as a sporting event not as the slaughter of innocents.

He had tried his hardest to go along with the others, saying as little as possible and only when directly asked for an opinion, but it had only worked to an extent. The others had been so fanatically pro-Games that, try as he might, he had been unable to control his temper. Skip distinctly remembered giving a rather fierce lecture about hypothermia at one point and getting rather riled up about the whole thing. On reflection and with a stranger stood on his doorstep asking awkward questions about it, Skip decided that this may possibly have been a mistake.

"Well, I wouldn't say against the Games exactly", Skip mumbled cautiously. "Maybe against some of the more drawn-out..."

The woman didn't give him time to finish. "Here!" She shoved a letter into his hands. "Read this and if you agree meet me outside the training centre at dusk tomorrow."

Skip glanced down at the paper and noticed the envelope was covered in thin, spidery handwriting. It looked very old. "What...", he began looking up in confusion. The woman was nowhere in sight, it was as if she had just vanished into thin air.

Shaking his head, the doctor unlocked his door and entered, bolting it again behind him just in case.

It wasn't until later, when he was lying back in a warm bath with a glass of red wine balanced at his elbow and the soft strains of Vivaldi's Four Seasons floating through the open door that Skip decided to read the letter. He had been in two minds about it and puzzling about it over dinner had rather spoiled his digestion.

Without getting up, Skip reached over and grabbed his coat off the floor by the bath, pulling the letter out of his pocket. His first impression had been right, it was very old. The paper was yellowing and cracked in place, the ink faded. The seal on the back had long since peeled away, leaving only a greasy stain to show where it had once been. Skip flipped open the envelope, pulled out the sheet of paper inside and read:

To the future, as pretentious as that address might sound,

I am writing this on a sad day for Panem. The war is over, the Capitol has subdued the districts but at what cost? District Thirteen has been utterly destroyed, it's citizens wiped out. The other districts have suffered horrendous losses, as have we. Must peace always come at such a price?

And even now the killing must continue but, as if we weren't monstrous enough before, it is our children who must now become killers. If you are reading this in the future then you will know what the Hunger Games entail. If you are reading this, that means the Games have been implemented and continued annually, as planned. How many children have died so far? How many years have the districts suffered at our hands?

I am writing this letter to let you, the people of the future, know that not all members of the Capitol government condoned this course of action. There are those of us who condemn these Games as what they are, acts of sheer barbarism.

We have formed a resistance group. An undercover organisation to fight these Games with whatever means available to us. If you are reading this, you sympathise with our cause. Maybe you even wish to join us? Know this, if you do so, it is at your own risk. The government are barbarians and will stop at nothing to retain power over the districts and their own citizens. If our group is discovered, we will be killed.

If you still wish to join us, follow the instructions given to you by whoever gave you this letter. You will recognise members of our organisation by the tattoo of a pair of crossed swords on their right palm. The code word is 'phoenix'.

Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favour!

Skip read the letter three times before carefully folding it back into his pocket. His heart was hammering with excitement and his hands were shaking as he reached for his wine glass. This was it! To think, all this time there had been a secret organisation opposing the Hunger Games, right here in the Capitol, and he had never even known! Right from the beginning there had been people prepared to stand up for what was right. All those wasted years when he could have been helping their cause...

As he got out of the bath and headed upstairs to bed, Skip made up his mind. He would meet the woman tomorrow and join the fight against the Hunger Games. Finally, he would be doing the right thing.

Author's Note:

I hope you enjoyed the second prologue. Again, feedback is really helpful :)

Thank you to everyone who has submitted so far! I have got some absolutely brilliant tributes!

To anyone still wanting to submit: I'm not telling you where to submit but I am rather short on D2 and D5 guys and D11 in general. If that helps :D

Also, I have loads of good tributes, so I'm tentatively bringing the deadline forwards to the 22nd June at midnight GMT. If I don't get the couple of tributes I'm still missing I'll move it back again.

Tea xx