I'm hooked up to the machine again, in room B-1. The heart rate tracker is on my finger, and it's ready to go.

I can't think about Katniss right now. I have to focus on the machine and do the best that I can to trick it, even though I haven't been successful at it so far. But I can't endure any more torture. Maybe it's because of what happened to Johanna, but I have a feeling that door number twelve is one of the less painful ones. I will go into another room if I fail this test.

"You're name is Peeta Mellark," Mr. Yves begins.

"Yes."

"You're from District 12."

"Yes."

"You tried to defy the Capitol by threatening to kill yourself with night lock berries in the 74th Hunger Games."

"No."

"You are in love with Katniss Everdeen."

Yes. No, you're not. She's dead. You can't be in love with her if she's not here, she doesn't exist.

"The real one? Or the mutt?"

"The real one."

"I was, yes."

"But you're not now?"

"No, I guess not."

"Yes or no, please, Peeta."

"No."

"The mutt?"

"What?"

"Are you in love with the muttation of Katniss Everdeen?"

I Hadn't thought about that. Am I? I was in love with the Katniss I drew pictures for for her book. I was in love with the Katniss that I held at night on the train. I was in love with the Katniss I kissed on the beach. Yes.

But, is it possible to love someone who is not naturally human?

"I'm not sure if that's possible."

Mr. Yves is twirling a pen around in his fingers while he stares at my chart. He asks Snow, "Satisfied?"

"Hardly," Snow replies. Then Snow turns to me. "For argument's sake, let's say that yes, it is possible."

"Then, yes."

"That's what I was afraid of." Snow says.

"What? Why do you care?"

Snow gets up and paces back in forth in front of me, slowly.

"You don't completely understand, Peeta. She is dangerous."

I laugh. "She's a handful, but she's not dangerous, at all."

Snow nods his head towards Mr. Yves, who then takes the machine off of me. I'm still restrained in the chair. "Am I done?"

"Not yet," then I try to think happy thoughts while I watch the thick needle go into my skin, holding the tracker jacker venom:

I'm in the arena, during the second games. We leave the beach, and enter the beginnings of a jungle. A very hot, very humid jungle. We don't run very far before we're all tired and out of breath, and sweaty. The air is so thick.

Finnick, Mags, Katniss and I resolve that the first thing we all need to do is find water. We walk for awhile, but we don't find anything and Katniss suggests that we should try the other side. Still, I think if I could just slash away some of these vines with my knife, maybe we'll find a stream. I hear something, like a faint humming sound. It could be water. Then the last thing I remember is being pushed. The only one behind me, was Katniss.

I wake up after being revived by Finnick. Katniss is sitting away from us, and her look is cold. If looks could kill, I'd be dead.

I look around me and Finnick tells me that I hit a force field. She pushed me! Katniss pushed me into a force field! She tried to kill me! WHY?

Fast forward to that night. We all have a dinner of force field roasted nuts and seared "Tree rat," is what Finnick called it.

Finnick takes first watch and Katniss volunteers to go next. I'm a little afraid to sleep, since she tried to kill me just a few hours ago.

A short time later, I wake up to the sounds of choking, gagging, and coughing. I open my eyes and see Katniss running. So I look in the other direction and see a wall of mist. The outer mist is starting to enter our camp, and breathing it is worse than not breathing at all. It's poisoned.

Finnick helps me up, and he carries Mags while I struggle to run in back of them. Katniss is now way ahead of us.

The mist gains on me, and I accept my death before slowing down, to let it take me.

But it doesn't get the chance to. Finnick comes back for me, having dropped Mags off somewhere, I'm assuming in safety.

"Ready?" He says. He helps me up and runs off, leaving the mist behind us.

"Why did she leave me?" I ask him, while he's running. He's too out of breath to answer.

After it's over, Katniss, Finnick, and I are the only ones left. I don't know what happened to Mags, but I don't want to ask. I remember my dad telling me that salt cures everything, and so I dunk my body in the ocean when we get out of the mist.

I see a murky white substance draining from my pores underneath the water. The pain from it is worse than the fog itself, but the longer I stay in the water, the less pain I feel. I am relieved to know that it's working.

I'm the first one healed enough to walk, so I offer to take our spile and go tap a tree for water.

Shortly before I finish cutting the hole in the tree I need for the spile, Finnick comes to get me, and tells me, very calmly, that there's something I need to see and to follow him back to the beach. He sounds calm yet urgent at the same time, and I know there must be a reason, so I do as he says.

We're almost out of the jungle and back to the beach, when Katniss, who is still on the beach, looks over our heads, and screams.

The scream sets off a huge group of ravenous monkeys hanging in the trees above us.

"Damnit!" Finnick tells her, "What the hell did you do that for?"

She smiles and watches a monkey come straight for me, but then a girl from district 6 jumps in front of me, and the monkey's claws and teeth puncture her lungs instead of mine.

I sing to the girl while she dies in my arms, then let her float out in the water until the hovercraft picks her up.

A short while later, Johanna, Wiress, and Beetee join us and now we've got an alliance of six instead of three, upping our odds.

Wiress figures out that the arena is designed like a clock, in that each hour wedge has something different. One wedge has the poison gas, one the monkeys, etc.

More cannons fire, and there are more close calls for each of us.

Before I know it, we're walking up a steep hill, trying to reach a tree that gets struck by lightning every hour. Beetee has created a plan to electrocute the career tributes, using an electrical wire and that tree.

Katniss and Johanna are assigned to take the wire and run it around some trees and bushes, taking it down to the beach and dropping it in the water.

Finnick and I stay here with Beetee.

Everything goes smoothly until the wire snaps back, frayed. Someone cut it.

Instinctively, I go looking for Katniss and Johanna. But I don't find them. I make my way back up the hill, and then see Katniss at the top, kneeling over a body.

She has her bow in her hand, and she steadies the arrow.

She looks at me while she fires her bow, though she doesn't fire at me. She fires at the force field. The impact of it hits me, and the last thing I remember before my spinal cord hit's a tree and snaps, is her blowing a kiss to me, like she did it on purpose. To kill me. Again.

I jolt up in my chair, hyperventilating. I can't catch my breath. Snow and Mr. Yves are looking at me with anxious eyes. "She…" I try to say, while trying to catch my breath, "She tried to kill me."

Snow looks pleased. Asshole.

He nods. "Several times."

"I remember now."

"Now you know why she is dangerous."

"I guess."

"We designed her to seduce and then kill you."

I don't completely understand the "seduce" part, but that's not the question on my mind at the moment. "Kill me? Why?"

"So that we could kill her without the country rebelling."

"But, you did kill her."

"Yes, but the country didn't know that. See, after I shot her, I knew the country would be pissed as then I found out she was the face of an uprising. So then we created the mutt. Her assignment was, like I said, to seduce and kill you. They'd be upset with her for it, and they'd either kill her, or at least not care if we did."

"You're evil."

I said it, I don't care. He'll torture me, but I don't care. I'm too heartbroken.

My life is hell.

I watched Katniss die and couldn't save her.

The mutt of her tried to kill me several times.

Snow did it all with the intent for her to kill me.

"Maybe." He says. "Take him to door 4."

The guard takes off my restraints, but I'm unwilling to walk. He is strong though, and he throws my body over his shoulder like I weigh nothing, making his way to door number 4.

Once inside, I stand in a small room identical to the one I was in behind door 12. Except, there's no chair and coals in this room. In this room, there's a large silver box in the corner, and a small, round pool of water, about five feet deep.

Snow comes inside and instructs the guard to leave, leaving only Snow and I inside this room.

"Remove your clothing," He tells me.

Well, what choice do I have? I take each piece off until I'm naked. Then I remember Enobaria coming back to the cell naked, wet, and shivering. And I can't help but think that will be me soon.

Snow tells me to get into the water.

This isn't so bad. I can't swim, but I don't need to, my mouth and nose are above the water still, and I'm on my feet so I can breathe. The water isn't cold at all. It actually feels good, because the cool water soothes my coal burns.

But I speak too soon.

Snow opens up the silver box and takes a shovel that I didn't see before from the other side of the room.

Inside the silver box, are large cubes of steaming dry ice.

Shit.

The only thing worse than a fire burn, is a dry ice burn. Dry ice is more painful, and it eats your skin. It gives you frostbite almost instantaneously, and then if you so much as touch or move the skin too quickly, it will come right off.

Snow takes the shovel and tosses the dry ice at me. I move, and it falls beneath the water. If it doesn't touch me, I won't burn. I'll get hypothermia once it chills the water, but I won't burn. He tosses three more large blocks of it in, and now there is just a small area left on the bottom of this small pool that I am standing in, clear of dry ice.

There are no more blocks. I'm safe.

Nope, spoke too soon again.

Snow stands there watching me get colder and colder. First, I get chills. I hug myself with my arms, desperately trying to warm up. I blow hot air into my hands and rub them together, and try to generate enough friction to warm them up but it never lasts long.

Then, my teeth begin to chatter and my lower body goes numb from the extreme cold.

Eventually, my upper body goes numb and it gets tougher to breathe because I'm so cold.

It's painful, but it's a constant kind of pain, and it's not quite as bad as the coals yesterday, so I stand here. I don't know what he wants. I don't know what information he wants. I'd better get used to standing here in the cold water though, because I don't have any information.

There's no clock on the wall. I feel like hours go by, but I'm in so much pain that it might just be minutes. All I know is that my skin has turned blue all over, in some places, purple. I must look dead by now. Mr. Yves joins us in the room after awhile, and he's got a green syringe with him. What are they going to do to me in here?

Snow presses a button, and I feel myself sink. The floor is getting lower. I'm sinking. I can't swim. Snow speaks up.

"The floor will lower two feet, making your head underwater. You have three options. One, you can let yourself drown. Two, you can stand on the dry ice. It will keep your head above water, but will freeze off the skin on the bottom of your feet. Or three, you can admit that the Capitol knows what's best for you."

Do I want to freeze the bottom of my feet off, and cause myself more pain? Do I want to let myself drown? Or do I want to say something I don't mean?

Well, it may be the cowardly move, and I'm sure when I'm back in my cell, I'll hate myself for it, but I don't hesitate when I say, "The Capitol knows what is best for me." And simultaneously, Mr. Yves injects the needle into my skin, sealing my statement so that I will believe it.

My mind should be racing the way it has been lately, what with all the pain and confusion and torture. But as I lie here on my cot in my cell, my mind is blank. I find myself bored, actually.

I decide to count the bars on my cell. Then I count the amount of small lacerations I have on my body from the dry ice shards that floated up in the water and cut me. Then, I sing. Nothing in particular, I don't even know what words are coming out of my mouth, I just sing.

Am I going crazy?

It certainly would explain the indifference to all the shit happening to us.

"Shutup, Peeta."

I forgot Enobaria and Johanna were in the next cell.

"Why?" I ask. Because really, why? So they can sleep? Ha, it doesn't matter. We'll all be dead soon anyway, or at least crazy. What do we even need sleep for? To lie in a chair and let Snow fuck with our minds all day long? Do we need sleep to stand in the same position for hours on end while Snow hurts us? Gives us hypothermia? Burns us? Beats us?

I don't get an answer, instead, I hear choking. I snap my head around and see Enobaria, hanging by her neck.