(Coriolanus Snow)
Cato Adams was almost my ideal Victor. He gladly volunteered and smiled as he stood atop the bodies, enjoying every minute of the honor and glory my propaganda told the country it was.
He wasn't perfect, though, making clear he wasn't single as he aggressively kissed his girlfriend on returning home. It was one of my many dirty secrets that I forced attractive Victors to prostitute themselves to Capitol citizens. I could've gotten plenty of money and curried plenty of political favor by using him. After all, even the Victors, the mightiest of the districts' population, were just resources to be used by the Capitol.
I was an expert at having people killed and making it look like an accident, tell it to Haymitch Abernathy or Johanna Mason, but I couldn't much disappear Clove Hawkins. The whole Hawkins family played by my rules. Clove and her younger sister Flavia both trained to become Victors. Their older brother Alexander was a Peacekeeper, like their father before them and probably going back further. There was a tradition of service with Cato's ancestors as well.
I knew that law enforcement depended on people volunteering to provide the force. I didn't want rebellious or just plain disinterested conscripts inside the system; the cadre of loyalists would have had to control them as well as the civilians. Fortunately for me and the other Capitol elite, the District Two propaganda machine kept running smoothly.
Cato played by my rules, too, even though his father died in the arena. Maybe even because of that – he seemed like one of those boys who tried to outdo the old man. I would know. My father had been a minor political functionary before he was murdered by rebel assassins during the Dark Days. I learned that when I was older, and was determined to rise higher than he had. On the way up and once I got there, I was resolved to suppress rebellion even more thoroughly. I was living my dream, and his and everyone else's seemed petty by comparison.
I checked Peacekeeper personnel records – Clove's brother Alexander was a field officer, the Lieutenant in charge of 1st Platoon, 1st Company, 3rd Battalion, 12th Peacekeepers.
For years, I had been concerned about the relative lack of criminal activity reported from District Twelve. However much my forces kept the population down, there were always isolated incidents of desperate people rising up. It showed a lack of internal discipline to do what they weren't supposed to, and my forces were glad to apply external discipline.
I worried that District Twelve appearing calm was a sign that its lawbreaking was being ignored. I was right. Two men were ringleaders of the poachers, trespassers, traitors and even I lost track of what else. Of course, they were coal miners, like anyone else in District Twelve poor enough to consider such foolishness. I had some especially trustworthy Peacekeepers rig a mine explosion to kill the pair of scumballs.
I figured it would break the resistance to eliminate its two figureheads. To do it quietly meant that I wouldn't have to divert forces from traitors elsewhere. Eleven was always particularly unruly, and it produced most of the food the nation depended on. Twelve just produced some coal for heating, the coke ovens at the steel mills out west, and some of the District Five powerplants.
To subtly execute those District Twelve traitors would also avoid riling up that district's surviving malcontents. To quell a riot would have been even more trouble than to reinforce the District Twelve Peacekeepers as a preemptive threat. I figured the families of those miners would have been the most trouble, having been poisoned by their relatives' rebellious propaganda. Perhaps this move would nip that in the bud.
I installed a new Head who was supposed to take a firm hand if the situation spiraled back out of control. Yet in another few years, I was getting worried again about the lack of reported activity. I knew I'd need to lay the heavy hand at some point soon. I debated whether to fix this problem before the 74th Games or after. If I waited, perhaps a victory would have mollified them or other problematic districts, and it would have given me more time to plan to action in general. If I struck as soon as possible, I wouldn't have to worry about the Games going bad for them and fanning the flames of discontent.
Whenever it happened, the fiercely loyal and extremely ambitious Romulus Thread would be the man for the job. He wanted to prove his devotion despite coming from the nondescript District Eight, and that he had. Many of the few other outer-district recruits muddled through their service for a lack of other options.
One of my intelligence agents reported the District Twelve mayor himself buying produce stolen from the Capitol's woods. I raged at the mayor being part of the problem too, as opposed to a good mayor failing to work with a recalcitrant Head Peacekeeper. I had snapped an order to prepare my flight to District Eight. That was all my personal assistant needed to know; I had General Travers make the military logistics arrangements to actually move the reinforcements into position.
My promptness was a smashing success. The newly promoted Colonel Thread caught the son of one of the fallen miners and the daughter of another poaching together. They would have been executed together, but the boy had managed to get the girl pregnant. I had long since supported a moratorium on execution for pregnant women. For some reason, the death of a fetus inflamed the population more than the death of an already-born criminal. Hopefully, the close call would intimidate the mother and contribute to the loyalty of the child. The nation's population crisis didn't need it anyway.
District Twelve nearly won the 74th Games, and Thread's implements of destruction kept the grumbling under control, whereas some of the fraternizing Peacekeepers might have joined in the complaining. Thread had executed Cray right away, and weeded out some of the other mutineers even before the Games, cowing the others.
District Eleven was, all things considered, a success for Capitol law enforcement, but I had needed to talk to General Claudius Domitian about his sky-high expenses for whips. I ascertained that was truly necessary to punish criminals, warn them not to do it again and warn their fellow workers not to do it in the first place, so I gladly disbursed the funds.
If more than the bare minimum was being spent in the districts, that meant less for Capitol luxury. We deserved the best as the fruits of victory, and it kept Capitol citizens pacified with distraction instead of force.
I had worried the 11th Peacekeepers may have been using those whips for some sort of sexual depravity. I had no problem whatsoever with sexual depravity, although my personal hot-blooded days were long gone.
However, any sort of sexual contact was banned in the corps. With it came all sorts of problems, which I supported trying to eliminate instead of trying to manage. There was the worry that such personnel would be loyal to lovers or children instead of the country. It would have spoken to a lack of discipline. Since time immemorial, prostitutes and the freely promiscuous contributed mightily to soldiers' morale. However, with that came sexually transmitted diseases, and with female soldiers, pregnancies. Soldiers' sex lives could simply distract them, and it could further inflame a civilian population; both of those factors had been problems with the late Walter Cray.
All these thoughts of internal enemies reminded me that Panem had one external enemy. District Thirteen had been a major fortress for the Capitol, with weapons up to and including nuclear missiles. The district had broken away from the Capitol during the Dark Days when rebels stole its weapons, leading to a stalemate that leaders on neither side could break. We had replaced it with a facility out west in the mountains of District Two, but I still dreamed of the Capitol marching back in to Thirteen. However, traitors in the districts the Capitol still controlled would be emboldened and empowered by Thirteen's support, so I wanted to continue to keep the two groups separate.
My attention was brought back to the responsibility to host the Capitol stop on the Victory Tour. Cato Adams was here now, enjoying the festivities, the last step before making another glorious return home. My granddaughter was enjoying too much of the distilled portion of the festivities. "Unlucky for me that girl from home got to you first!" she shouted. She was likely going to get a night with Finnick Odair for her 18th birthday and had apparently gotten a slightly different idea last summer. Likewise, her mother, my daughter, had her admirers since my son-in-law died of food poisoning after questioning my leadership abilities. Well, plenty of guys got prostitutes for their sons – I would know, having facilitated some of those arrangements, and this was really no different.
The Victory Tour concluded the cycle of rituals for a particular year's Games, although those affected would be stuck with a lifetime of reminders. The whole country would be reminded not to rebel, the taking of tributes as a warning of the Capitol's power and its willingness to use it.
The rituals for this year's Games began earlier than usual. Every twenty-five years, there was a special twist in the rules. This kept the excitement of the Games and the warning to the viewers from getting stale. Even I didn't know what the twist was going to be. The creators of the Games had written the rules on cards and sealed them in yellow envelopes. The small box containing these stacks of cards was one of the most secured documents of the Panem government; once retrieved by a multitude of high-ranking Peacekeepers, the President read that year's card in a live television broadcast.
I had been President since just before the last time. That card reading had gone well, even though the ensuing Games hadn't. Haymitch Abernathy dared insult the Games in his interview and won them with an unexpected trick. The Capitol was not to be outsmarted, so I made him pay dearly for that stunt.
The concept of the Quarter Quell was a wonderful part of my predecessors' great work. The box was presented to me by a small boy, who I think was General Travers' son Charles. I picked the third envelope from the first row and cracked it open to read aloud "To remind the districts of both the Capitol's punishment and its mercy, if a tribute's district partner dies they both die, but the final remaining district pair wins together." I wasn't sure what to make of it.
It could be good, to help ensure yet another victory for the loyal inner districts – one of the less enthusiastic outer districts would have to come up with two good tributes instead of just one. Maria had won the 73rd Games before Cato emerged as the Victor of the 74th, setting up the possibility of an unprecedented three victories in a row for the same district. Even more favoritism to the volunteer districts would increase the probability of this appealing storyline. Which inner district won wouldn't make much difference in the outer districts.
Chrome Goldman of One had broken Lyme and Brutus' streak in the 44th Games, only to see his son and daughter's streak left unextended by Finnick in the 65th Games. Chrome's other son, the daughter of a District Two victor, and the children of the District Two mayor were all amongst the potential volunteers this year. As Head Gamemaker Seneca Crane, going into his fourth year, put it, "This should be a very interesting mix."
I had considered the possibility of looking at the card ahead of time and changing it. However, there were some things that even I hesitated to do. I hadn't had a better idea, certainly not one good enough to merit the highly irregular procedure. Law was the main thing I had on my side, and even with repercussions highly unlikely, I skirted that very carefully.
