Tomorrow, I will be in the arena. I need to sleep, to prepare myself, but the possibly of there not being axes at the Cornucopia. If they're absent from the Hunger Games this year, I'm dead.

What will the arena be like? I drift in and out of sleep, imagining foggy marshes, blisteringly hot deserts, freezing tundras. I spend the night dreaming of my own death, executed a thousand ways.

At dawn, Trinalle arrives and takes me straight to the elevator, where we ride up to the roof. Through the crystal doors, I think a catch a glimpse of Reena, walking down the hall, as we pass her floor.

A black hovercraft appears in the sunny sky as we exit the elevator. A metal ladder slides down. My throat tight, I start to make my way up the ladder. But as soon as my hands and feet touch the rungs, I can't move. The ladder slips back up into the cool inside of the hovercraft, carrying me with it.

With my body still locked in place, a doctor walks to my motionless form, pulling out a syringe. "Johanna, this is your tracker," she informs me briskly, stabbing my forearm with it and pressing down on the plunger. She pulls the needle back out, and I can move again. Trinalle is lifted up, and we're shown to a section of the craft where a table of breakfast had been provided. The years of watching tributes die of starvation are prominent in my mind as I gorge myself.

We soar for a few stressful hours before the windows go black. We're close to the arena. Trinalle and I are directed to my Launch Room, where the package of my tribute clothing waits on a white table.

Trinalle tears it open, and dresses me over undergarments. A black, close-fitting, long-sleeved shirt. Warm, yet thin, comfortable pants. A loose jacket with a hood. Leather boots with good treads. And at the very bottom of the package, a copper locket. Trinalle clasps it around my neck.

"Everything fits?" she inquires. I nod. "The fabric of the clothes conserves heat. It'll probably be very cold out there."

I sit on the table, dreading the next few weeks—or maybe I only have minutes left—of my life. Trinalle sits on a couch, staring at the floor. When a disembodied female voice proclaims that it's time for launch, I go stand on the metal plate that will lift me into the arena.

Trinalle stares sadly at me. "Good luck, Johanna." And really, what else can you say to a person headed for probable death?

A transparent tubematerializes around me, and the plate pushes me through darkness and suddenly into bright sunlight with a chilling breeze. The arena.

I'm still trying to get my bearings when Claudius Templesmith's voice blasts through the arena. "Ladies and gentlemen, let the Seventy-first Hunger Games begin!"

I have one minute before the gong rings and the action starts.

My eyes focus on the rocky terrain. There's a huge valley of forested area, sloping almost vertically down, as far as I can see. It's a mountainous place, with us on a vast stone plateau with the golden Cornucopia in the center. If you want to get off this mesa and find shelter, you'd better know how to climb or figure it out really fast. Luckily, I do have some experience from the cliffs at my lumber-chopping zone in District 7.

The Cornucopia! How could I have been so stupid as to not assess that place first? I desperately search the mound of supplies and weapons, praying for axes. Swords, clubs, spears, awls, knives are piled high. My hopes plummet, my eyes skirting around the edges of the heap, the stuff closest to me.

There! My gaze locks on a pair of throwing axes, sharp silvery blades glinting in the sun, hardwood handles polished and gleaming, a double sheath for the blades resting on the ground in front of them. It's risky, close to the Cornucopia, close to the bloodbath that will be sure to start. There's a tan knapsack beside the axes, good-sized, which I should probably grab as well. It's so near the mouth of that gold horn, it's certain to be packed with choice supplies.

I notice something else: We're at a rather high altitude here. The air's thin. And I recognize that this is excellent for me. Every day back home, we work in the sparse piney forests, which are also high up. I'm used to the thin oxygen. The Careers aren't.

I'm really running out of time, so I get ready to sprint. It's good I'm a fast runner. There's going to be a hell of a lot of Careers jumping around with sharp objects when—

The gong reverberates.