A knock on the door wakes me up slowly, drawing me through layers of sleep. The blond girl's head pops around the door and she flushes, apologetic, I assume for waking me up. I smile, stretch under the covers. The fabric against my skin is indescribably lovely. I wish I could just stay here forever.

The girl crosses the room, her feet silent on the thick carpet. She smiles at me, points down the train, mimes eating.

Mimes…? And then it hits me. This girl is an Avox. The Capitol's mute servants. The full horror of what's been done to this girl hits me. I thought I knew better than anyone what it was like to be trapped inside my own head, able to talk but with nobody listening, but surely she knows more than me. To have been able to speak, to say anything she wanted, even to sing, and never known how precious that was until she lost it. I still have all that, but without friends and an ignorant family, I rarely talk, and when I do it's like a gift. But she must have had audiences, dozens of people listening to her words. And now she'll never speak to them again.

How can the Capitol do this to people? How can they main them like this? Of course, any place that considers children slaughtering children to be the height of entertainment has got to be twisted, diseased and gnarly like an ancient tree.

I wince at the girl, shake my head. "I'm not really hungry. And I, um, I can't actually feed myself…" Both arms are always needed just to hold me upright, and the one time Father propped me up and let me try for myself, I hit myself in the face everywhere but actually in my mouth. The only good thing about the experiment was that Clarrine wet herself laughing.

The Avox girl smiles gently, mimes feeding me. She's actually volunteering to feed me? Father normally has to be dragged in to that, and he tends to forget about me halfway through and continues eating his own breakfast. Fear and shyness keep me silent. Hunger's like an old friend.

The girl leaves, closing the door behind her. I wait, staring at the ceiling, but it's only a few minutes before she returns with a tray piled with food. My eyes almost pop out of my head as I survey the feast that she's carrying almost carelessly, like it's nothing. There's stuff I can't even name, other things I've only seen once or twice. Even relatively normal things, like bread or fried eggs, are cooked completely differently to what I'm familiar with. And as she gets it all into me, forkful by forkful, I can tell it's delicious. Things I would only eat if starving at home are turned into wonders of cuisine by the Capitol. The girl smiles at me as I experience for the first time in my life the oddly comforting sensation of not being able to eat another bite, and there's still food there.

The Avox girl stands and goes to take the tray away. I want to ask her to leave it, in case I get hungry later in the day, but the words jam in my throat and she's gone by the time I get over my shyness. I'll just have to hope she'll bring me food later in the day, since I can't get it myself.

I don't even know who that woman was who dropped her axe on me, but I hope she knows what she did and feels guilty about it. I hope she knows my terror when I woke up and thought I was dead.

Although, speaking of terror, this is the first night I can remember where I've slept completely until day. Every night for years preceding this, I've had nightmares so terrible I yank myself out of them and refuse to go back to sleep, even if it's hours before dawn. But there were no nightmares last night. I was kind of expecting some really awful ones, given what my future holds, but no.

Maybe I've accepted it, then? That I'm going to die? That some child is going to have to carry the weight of my murder for the rest of their life?

The thought doesn't fill me with horror like it did yesterday. I guess my wish has come true. I really don't care.

The Avox girl returns with the two guys who carried me to bed last night, and they take me back to the lounge with the giant window. They prop me up in a chair, make sure I can't slide out, and leave again. Panem rolls past, laid out before my eyes. This is the country that survived droughts and floods, fires and civil war. This is the country that kills twenty-three of its children each year, just to prevent the reoccurrence of a stupid war that never should have happened. In all honestly, I think they've got it backwards. We in the districts would love the Capitol a whole lot better if they didn't take our children. But there must be a reason the Capitol rules through fear, that they feel it's necessary.

I shake my head. This is all too dangerous to even be thinking, even when I'm already on the Capitol's death list by virtue of the reaping. I have to stop this, now. I have to go to the Capitol, and like every tribute before me, pretend I love it. Pretend I love all the people there who can sponsor me, give me a chance at life.

The window goes black and the air takes on a rushing, echoey sound. I think we've gone into a tunnel, and I regret the loss of the view.

But only for a moment, because we shoot out into the light again and I see the Capitol.

It's gleaming, rainbow-colored like a field of flowers, buildings taller than any tree I've ever seen. The streets are wide, wide enough to fit a worthwhile plantation in. People turn and stare at our train, people as varied as all the species of trees I know. People turned sickeningly green or blue, people stretched to a height beyond what's humanly possible, people with horns and tails and wings. I feel tiny, insignificant, and unbelievably dirty beneath the sparkling, shining towers.

"That's really something, isn't it?" Kain says from behind me. "Never seen anything like that." For a moment we're both silent, staring at this unimaginable city. Despite all the television broadcasts, all of Father's stories, I'd never thought the Capitol looked like this

"Look at all those… are they people?" Kain's laugh is awkward but hides a genuine revulsion that I share. I look at a woman with four breasts and can't help cringing.

I think they were people once, before they got cosmetic surgery, the cost of which probably could have fed the entire district for a week. And they've all got it. What is it like, to have so much money you don't know what to do with it all? What is it like, to look in the mirror every day and see a completely different person to the one who woke up yesterday? I bet, if somebody's spine was broken here, they'd be up and walking within a month, at the very longest. I'd have been able to run and jump and turn cartwheels and anything I wanted.

By nothing more than accident of birth, I'm in hell.

The train rushes under a building and I panic for a second – have we crashed? – before the door to the lounge slides open and Nile steps in.

"Well, Kain, we're here!" she says, sounding oddly like Father: trying to be cheerful but covering a deep disgust or simple boredom. "Oh, and you're here too."

She's probably forgotten my name already. Certainly I don't matter to her, hopeless as I am. I'm sure she doesn't want to waste time mentoring me, only to watch me be carved up like I'm a plank in a woodshop while I do nothing to defend myself. And the time she would have spent mentoring me is instead given to Kain, who might actually have a chance. He may have only one arm and severe burn scars, but he's strong and can climb. Good enough to be going on with.

"Yeah, Aviary and I were just watching the city before it disappeared," Kain says, sounding kind of confused. "Where are we, anyway?"

"This is the Remake Centre," Nile says, and now she's dropped the cheerful tone. It's bored all the way. "You'll meet your team of stylists who'll dress you up in shiny costumes, and then there's the chariot ride to the Training Centre. I assume I don't need to tell you what goes on there."

"We train?"

"Nice job, wonder boy. Well, half right. You train, she'll probably just lie on the ground moaning, right?" Nile comes over and claps a hand on my shoulder; my head rocks with the motion before I can steady it. "Try not to look too useless, Avian. Don't turn the audience off sponsoring Kain." I want to shriek, It's Aviary! I want to demand an equal share of her time. I want to do anything other than sit here and listen to insults coming from the woman who's supposed to help save me. But memories of Father's face stop me, the rage in his eyes from the one time I'd yelled at him, the terror I'd felt at his response… the memories keep me quiet, and my teeth click together and lock the hatred down inside me.

Fortunately she leaves shortly afterwards, Kain following her. I sit there in my chair, eyes fixed out the window, trying to dig up some interest in the utilitarian station under the building.

Eventually the door opens again. It's the blond Avox girl and her two helpers, carrying a stretcher between them. She smiles and helps the guys lift me onto the stretcher, squeezing my hand as I go.

I want to thank her, I want to say something special – she's like the friend I never had, the sister I always wanted. But I know there are penalties for getting too close to the Avox servants, so I don't, she leaves, and I'm carried off the train, into an elevator, along a corridor and then left in a room that's scarily like an upgraded version of the medicine tents back home – everything looks sterile, smells odd, the lights too harsh and no thought for comfort. After the luxury of the train, this room cuts against my senses. I push myself up on my arms and look around. I'm lying on a table in the middle of the floor, white light beaming down. It looks oddly like the dressing room back home – wardrobes, clothes hanging out, mirrors everywhere, but combined with the medical aura it's truly bizarre.

"Oh dearie, dearie me," says a voice, unfamiliar, on my left. My eyes slide sideways and I catch a glimpse of two men and a woman, maybe, since the Capitol alterations make it hard to tell. At least their skin is still, probably, the natural color they were born with, but the resemblance to what I think of as 'human' stops there. One's eyes are too big for his head, gaping wide, with impossible purple irises. The other man's hair matches, a shade of neon purple almost painful in the bright overhead lights. The fingers on his hands each have an extra joint, so there's three knuckles, not two, and they're longer than they should be, and somehow that alone is more repulsive than anything I've seen in the Capitol so far. The woman has blue paint on everything she can; her lips, her eyes, her fingernails – she looks like she's got frostbite.

"What are we going to do with this?" she asks, in her odd Capitol accent, all strange sounds and stressing the wrong syllables. "My word, dear, you've got no meat on you at all!" In a chorus of squeaking shoes they cross the floor and examine me. I'm reminded of the doctors who decided I was the most disabled girl in the entire district and I shudder.

"What on earth has happened to her hair?"

"And who left her in these clothes? I swear, she hasn't had a bath for days!"

"Oh, Involus, Jannit, look here…" For the first time in what seems to be a couple of hours, they fall silent. "Oh, sweetie, we knew you were paralyzed, but this…!"

"We can't leave her like this," one of the men says decisively. "These Games will be terrible if she can't even move!"

"Jannit, go talk to Hecate. She'll get an alteration order right away." One of the men, the big-eyed one, heads for the door and vanishes from my unbearably limited sightline.

"Can we get alterations? Given the nature of the Quell, I'd think we wouldn't be allowed to."

"They have to be approved by the Gamemakers, but I'm sure this will be. It's all very well to have a disabled Games, but the public still expects entertainment, and she's just going to be plain old boring."

"Gimp Games," the remaining man – Involus? – grumbles. "This is going to be the most disappointing Quell of them all."

Their callousness leaves me stunned. Gimp Games? Disappointing? How can they not be horrified at the thought of mentally and physically disabled children killing each other? How can they be sad that we won't be as exciting as normal kids, who can hunt and attack others? How can they not care that I'll be dead in a week, and all their attention is on getting some alteration done on me?

"Well, I guess we'd better get started. Don't you worry, sweetie, we're experienced. Although I will say you're the greatest challenge we've had yet!"

I don't actually know what they do to me. I fall asleep while the woman and Involus are getting ready. At some point I drift upwards, only to be put under deliberate sedation by one of them. I panic, dream of cold white hands probing me like the Capitol doctors back in Seven, wrench myself from the drug-induced unconsciousness.

I jerk upright and catch the arm of the seat I'm on. My eyes flash open, I catch glimpses as I flick my sight around, trying to work out where I am. Are the doctors gone? I look down, don't even notice that I'm naked under a thin sheet, only worrying about what they did to me. What alteration did those people have in mind? Has it happened yet?

"Aviary – Aviary! It's okay, don't panic!" Hands grasp my shoulders, ease me back down on the sofa. "I'm Hecate, your stylist, and I need you to relax!"

It's the feel of her hands that does it, the warm, human skin against mine. This is no doctor treating me with less respect that you would a corpse; this is a real human being who sees me as one too. I obey her, let go of the back of the sofa, drop back onto the cushions. Hecate crosses from behind me and sits where I can see her easily, on another couch just across from mine.

At least she hasn't been altered like Jannit or Involus, she still looks human, and the flashes of color over her skin aren't as hideous as the woman on my prep team. Tattoos of lush, green vines twirl up her bare arms and disappear under her sleeveless shirt, and I catch sight of similar tracings on her legs under her semi-transparent skirt. I even recognize the species of vine, common ivy.

"Okay, Aviary, that's better," she says softly. Her accent is far more moderate than those of my prep team, somehow softer, more normal, but not in any way I can put my finger on. "I'll be your stylist, as I said, for these Games. Our first project is your chariot ride, you know that, right?"

"Yeah," I say. I expect her to demand more – these Capitol people all seem to throw around words like there's an endless, worthless supply – but Hecate just nods.

"Okay, and I've already got the perfect costume in mind for you. Let me just take a few measurements, and the team and I will start that right away. I'm afraid you'll be on your own again for a while." Hecate steps up to me, pulls away the sheet. Despite, or perhaps because of, my nakedness, she's completely professional. But when your father has to bathe you and dress you every day, you learn pretty fast not to care about being naked around people. Her measuring tape spans my arms, my waist, around my legs, takes measurements I'm sure are completely useless, distance between my ear and my hip, my nose and my belly button. Hecate jots everything down on a notepad, tears the sheet off, and leaves.

Paper.

I reach out and grab the pad. I lift it to my nose, inhale. It's been perfumed, but under that I catch the scent of pine. Home. This paper was made in District Seven – of course, where else – and it's traveled to the Capitol, just like me. It's a piece of home. I may have walked beside the trees this paper came from, may have marked their measurements before the accident. My fingers rub over the surface and my heart sings at the familiar texture. I realize then I've brought no token from home, but that doesn't matter. I want this for my token, I want this paper. I brought nothing with me, and I still get something from home.

Hecate returns before I've gotten over the joy of the paper, all three of the prep team with her. I finally learn the blue-painted woman's name, Leeya, as they circle around me, still on the sofa. I can't bear to look at their faces, Jannit's especially, so for the first time I look around the room. I'm not in the room from before anymore; this one's similar but lacking the medical tones. It's basically the same as the lounge from the train; plush, with more furniture than our house back home, but this room also features mirrors, cabinet, and sets of drawers almost everywhere. Of course, this is where they're going to dress me in a costume for the chariot ride later today.

"I'd like to surprise you, if that's okay, Aviary," Hecate says, smiling mysteriously. "Can you close your eyes, and not open them until we're finished?"

I don't want to, it reminds me too much of the doctors working on me. But Hecate seems so nice, so trustworthy, that eventually I close my eyes as she says. Besides, this is the woman who gave me the pad. 'Gave', or more accurately, 'had' a pad for me to take. I'm pulled to my unfeeling feet, frozen in place somehow, still like a statue. I can't move but I can still feel everything I should, which is absolutely bizarre and almost sends me into a panicking fit. But I close my eyes and wait while my team dresses me. I've got no idea what they're doing, I can't make sense of what my skin is trying to tell me. All I know it's its nothing like being dressed by Father; shirt, pants, done. I can't comprehend what costume could possibly take thirty minutes just to put on, and that's before they start daubing creams and paints all over my face. They get at my hair, too, putting it up and then down and running curlers through it. It's true, there's a lot for them to work with; I'm honestly surprised Father never hacked it off to save him the effort of washing it.

The hands disappear after I've lost track of time, leaving me hovering in the dark. "Open your eyes, Aviary," Hecate says softly.

My eyelids crack open and I catch myself in the mirror. No, not me.

I've disappeared, and I've been replaced by… I have no idea what it is.

Typical of District Seven stylists, they've tried to pull off something tree-related. The only problem is, I'm not sure they've ever actually seen a tree.

Gluing chunks of bark to somebody's body and showering them in drying leaves does not make them a tree.

They've drawn vines over my face, I suppose aiming for mystery and intrigue, but I look like I've been viciously slapped and left with half-healing bruises. My flabby, pale skin isn't at all disguised by the bark and the leaves are falling off even as I breathe. My hair's been caught up in a leafy tangle that bears some slight resemblance to branches, but really looks like I haven't brushed it in weeks.

I guess the most tree-related thing they've achieved is that I look like I fell out of one.

I turn to Hecate and my prep team, wanting to scream, to tell them how hideous I am. But they all look so delighted that I can't bear to tell them I hate the sight of myself.

"You look perfect, Aviary. They'll love you."

Love me? Oh, please. Nobody's going to sponsor me now. Any hopes I might have been holding of coming out in my chariot looking like a nymph or even a halfway-decent tree are crushed. I look stupid. Nobody in the Capitol will fall in love with this. They'll probably hope I die as soon as possible so they don't have to look at me anymore. I can't believe I'm going to be on national television wearing this thing. Everybody back home will know who I am and pity my appalling costume, and be thankful it isn't their own child or themselves wearing this travesty.

The team brings me down to the ground floor of the Remake Centre, one enormous hall filled with the chariots and tributes. Two massive doors in one wall hold the entire Capitol outside them. "Over here," Involus mutters, guiding me to our chariot. Kain is already there, with his prep team. He's been done up almost in reverse to me; whereas I have bark with leaf garnish, he's been covered in leaves with strategically arranged bark overlaid. He looks like a bush. We don't even have bushes in Seven. At least we can look stupid together, I guess.

"Hi," he says, looking my costume up and down. "I guess our stylists… are equally talented." I smile back, getting the message; Hecate and Kain's stylist beam at each other, they've totally missed it.

Involus lifts me up into the chariot and belts me into the side. Heavy leather straps secure my legs to the chariot so I won't fall out. I grip the edge with one hand and figure I'll wave the other; if anybody wants to look at me, that is.

The doors grind open and the noise of the Capitol rushes in. District One's chariot rolls out almost immediately, followed after about half a minute by Two's. That means we've got to wait about three minutes for our turn. It must be worse for Twelve, who've got six minutes before they can even start. With time on my hands, and my freedom of movement, I glance around the hall, trying to get a feel for my fellow tributes.

A boy without arms at all. A girl with no face. A boy who looks like he's got nothing wrong with him. A boy who must have turned twelve on the day of the reaping. A girl twisted and hunched over. Another boy who looks undamaged. Those ones, who appear completely healthy, must be the Careers, from the wealthier districts with less dangerous jobs. It's hard to get maimed while making jewelry, so everybody from One is pretty safe; kids don't go into the stone mines until they're out of reaping age, making Two even safer; and fishing accidents are either completely harmless or fatal, so the ones from Four must be fine too. They must have some slight mental disabilities, then. Maybe they're simply the bottom of their class in school or something like that. I'd been hoping that this Quell would mean there were no Careers, but it looks like I was wrong. They probably haven't trained as extensively as the Careers in the normal Games, but they're sure to be more prepared than I am.

Speaking of being unprepared, we're moving.

With a jolt, I panic, before I realize I don't need to worry. The straps are holding me steady. Our chariot rolls outside and I lift my head.

More people than I thought could live in the whole of Panem crowd the streets, almost fighting to get sight of us. Tentatively I raise a hand and wave, and I'm rewarded by a rush of people shouting my name. To their credit, they've got it right; the yells are unmistakably Aviary, Aviary, Aviary! I wave harder, more deliberately, allow a smile to creep past my nervousness. Then I see myself on the screen.

They might be shouting my name, but it's surely not because of our costumes. On the screen, in exquisite detail, you can see the terrible job our stylists have done. I look away from the screen and try to focus on the crowd. Maybe one of these people will sponsor me, despite the horrid costume. Maybe enough of them will that I'll survive.

Then I realize, for the first time, really, that my survival means twenty-three deaths.

My eyes slide sideways to Kain and I know that I can't win the Hunger Games, not if it involves killing. As a child, it almost broke my heart to carve into the bark of the trees, and I didn't even know if they could feel it. How much worse must it be to feel a life, an actual human life, slide away under your hands? How many people – children my own age or even younger – would Ihave to kill in order to live? Even if I physically could kill them, which is always questionable, there's no way I actually can. I know I'd rather be killed than kill.

Of course, that's probably what every tribute feels. And most tributes change their minds… I'm afraid of that, too. Afraid that surviving the Games means going against my own nature, against everything I think is important.

But I can't think about this now. That's all going to happen and nothing will stop it, but for now I am on live national television and in front of a crowd of thousands, and I look awful. I wave my arm mechanically and tune my mind to the careful blankness I've used so often to make a day flash by in seconds. I shut down almost completely for the rest of the ride. I only know that President Snow makes a speech because he always does, I actually experience none of it. I don't come back out until I blink suddenly and we're in the Training Centre.

The Training Centre is the one aspect of the Games that isn't televised, so I have no idea what's waiting for me in there, especially since my mentor and escort have decided to be solely Kain's mentor and escort, so Nile and Angel haven't said a word about it to me, and it's not like I can ask anybody. Technically there's a second mentor, but he's old and senile. I don't even know where he is. I haven't seen him since the first introduction on the train.

Forcibly, the chariot ride returns to my imagination. I could hear the crowd behind us as we went along, dropping our names almost instantly to cheer for the District Eight tributes. And I'm pretty sure their names hung around much longer than Kain's and mine did. Nobody in that crowd will remember us. Nobody will declare excitedly, I'm sponsoring Aviary Karradi this year! My mentor doesn't care about me, my escort is ignoring me, my prep team is pathetic and my first public appearance was a disaster.

I'm going to die in a few days, but it's like I'm already gone.