I settle in to my very numbered expensive eat-outs in the control room, out in the open in a control seat instead of tucked away into a corner as is usually my custom around Mr. Abernathy. Today it's a steaming bowl full of spicy vegetables that leaves my mouth in flames, mixed in with a bright orange sauce that leaves my fingers stained yellow. The cook I ordered it from had told me this was one of their special Games dinners: instead of civilized forks and spoons, they handed over tiny flat triangles they called "Peeta bread" that we're supposed to dip into the sauce.

When he first handed me the bread basket, I had peeked under the warm cloth incredulously. "Peeta bread? Like after District 12?"

"'eah, 'eah, pita bread!" the cook had said enthusiastically. "Some old recipe we found. Guess it might be pretty common 'round District 12."

Dining in District 12 would get some getting used to, from what I gather from the meal. But it seemed to perk Mr. Abernathy up. He dug right in, dipping his fingers into the steaming dish as we sat in front of our large split screen. It's still dark outside, and all the tributes look to be dead asleep. Glimmer is slumped over in her watch position against the tree, Cato is face down in a pillow of brown pine needles, his hand clamped around a spear even in deep slumber. Katniss is still up high in her tree. Everyone being featured right now is out like a light… except Peeta. He lies there on his back, his eyes wide open in terror as he stares questioningly at the smearing of stars across the synthetic arena skies.

I tap lightly on the stack of donation slips I gathered from the lobby and placed neatly on the control panel desk. There are tons of things people have stopped by to suggest, from heavy saws to cut Katniss free from her tree to giant parachutes. Mr. Abernathy doesn't even look at them, though. He's saving up for something big to happen. Or "anything half as dim-witted as this load of crap," he had told me, tossing aside some of the electronic slips I'd handed to him.

It's quiet as Mr. Abernathy finishes up his late-night meal, spinning his finger around the bowl to lick up every last bite. I look at the tiny pile of dusty paper particles on his control panel, stained red from wine and scattered around, stuck to buttons or keys. I still don't understand why Finnick gave me that note if it didn't seem to hold any important value, but Mr. Abernathy is mute on the subject. The one time he caught my eying the tiny evaporating bits, he looked away immediately, his eyes flitting around the perimeter of the room for the briefest of seconds. Maybe it's some secret joke among victors: "let's see how long it takes to get the poor Capitol slave to go crazy, that'd be hi-lar-i-ous, wouldn't it Finnick?" they'd all ha-ha. It felt real to me, though. Finnick immediacy, the awful places he had me flashing back to—

Mr. Abernathy clears his throat hurriedly with a loud hem hem and my thoughts are scattered. On our private screen, Katniss is crawling out of her sleeping bag, knife in hand. Her cracked lips are set in a line of grim determination.

"Smartest one in a long time," Mr. Abernathy says to me, and I'm startled to hear a touch of pride in his voice. All I feel is a tiny knot of tension deep in my gut.

As Katniss saws away at the branch with the nest, the tiny gold bodies of the tracker jackers send a wave of disgust through me. They showed me videos about them—they, the black-clad figures who had stolen my father—when they questioned me. The little stingers filled with potent toxins, the screams they played over and over as victims sweated out their torture. They used to play the mutt's distant buzzing in my cell as they interrogated, just loud enough to itch and burrow under my skin.

I close my eyes for a few seconds, and when I open them, there is complete chaos. The nest hits the ground and bursts open, a wave of golden wings taking flight. I can hear the buzzing as if they were in the room with me. Anaya, cuddled up at the base of the tree, jerks awake, the green of her eyes blocked with shimmery, shiny gold bees. The wall of mutts rear up and descend on her immediately, leaving giant purple bumps on any skin they can reach. Anaya shrieks and scrabbles back onto her hands, kicking her feet out in a hopeless attempt to block the mutts out. Her arms are twice their normal size as she finally staggers to her feet. The rest of her pact are screaming, running full speed away as they shout, "To the lake! To the lake!"

Anaya takes a step forward, then another. The toxins already look to be coursing through her; her eyes are crazed, her feet take her in half circles as she moves farther and farther from the tree. Finally, her knees buckle out from underneath her and she crumbles to the ground, her swollen limbs splayed out in every direction.

Mr. Abernathy, seemingly unfazed by the whole scene, clicks a button and the screen zooms away from Anaya, rocketing over to Peeta and the pack as they crash blindly through the trees. Peeta's feet land in random directions as he runs and his arms swing crazily at his sides. Ahead of him, Cato, Marvel, and Clove are already almost to the lake. Peeta lags behind, but with every heaving intake of breath, he chokes out the name of the girl on fire. His feet smash into the ground to the rhythm of his chants, pulling him up beside the pact with every "Kat-niss—Kat-niss."

They all dive into the lake, Cato thrashing and pushing heads under in his fit to get away from the tracker jackers. Peeta takes a kick to the gut as Cato flails about in the water, and he sinks out of sight for a minute in the murky lake.

I look over to see Mr. Abernathy gripping his wine bottle so hard his fist has turned white, but he's not watching Peeta's side of the screen. Instead, he's fixated on the hyperventilating, deranged Katniss as she digs under the dying District 1 tribute for weapons. With each tug of flesh and bone, Katniss stops to heave out dead air, her head probably swimming with the noxious fumes I know leak from the oozing stings.

Over the dying screams of Anaya and the shouts of the tributes on our wallscreen, I hear Claudius Templesmith's voice drift from the official airtime, tinged with worry and excitement. "She's racking up the odds against her this time. Can she make it away from the alliance, Panem?"

I whip my head back towards Peeta's screen, and sure enough, there is the pack, crawling through mud and water towards the lake's banks. "We have to get her! Back to the tree!" Cato splutters, his eyelids twitching oddly as he struggles to shore.

Peeta, already laying face down on the muddy banks of the lake, jerks up and dives for Cato. "No!" he screams, landing flat on Cato's back and flattening him into the sandy bottom of the lake two feet under water. Clove launches herself at Peeta, digging her fingernails into his eye sockets. Peeta is momentarily distracted as he twists out of Clove's grasp, and Cato rears up and knocks Peeta from his back altogether. Peeta hits the surface of the water but immediately pops back up, slipping up the steep bank and sprinting away back towards Katniss.

"Get him! We're going to kill both of them!" Cato roars, but his reflexes are slower than normal. The tracker jacker venom is taking its toll, giving Peeta precious seconds as Cato staggers to his feet. "Clove! Clove!" he calls, but Clove is unresponsive. She's lying in the mud in fetal position, her hands clamped over swollen ears. Cato doesn't even stop to drag her all the way out of the water, just takes off after Peeta.

As the screen follows Cato and Peeta through the woods, Mr. Abernathy is clutching his bottle tighter than ever. "Shit, shit, shit," he says under his breath. "Shit!"

As Peeta reaches Katniss at her tree, the wallscreen melds into one giant picture. I can't help noticing Anaya's decaying body in the corner of the screen. Her face is distorted beyond recognition, those blood red lips broken and twisted, blooming purple with new stings. In places along her body with multiple stings, the flesh is sagging, the skin stretched out and tearing as it falls away from muscle and bone. Worst of all, though, are her dead eyes; the irises are tinged a striking deep red, giving the impression of a new breed of deranged mutt, sinking down into the fiery earth.

I'm snapped back to my own tributes as the screen pans away from the tree and follows Katniss streaking crookedly through the trees. I fiddle with a few buttons on my control panel and the screen splits again, Peeta standing ready on his half of the screen as Cato looms toward him. It's clear both of their mental capabilities are slipping quickly: Both of their eyes dart around in their sockets and their feet carry them in crazed half-circles over the ground.

Peeta lunges first, his sword missing Cato by whole feet. The momentum slams him into the ground, the packed dirt underneath causing blood to begin spurting from his nose. Cato laughs derisively as he staggers over to Peeta, his own sword swaying in his unsteady hands. "This is the end for you, Lover Boy."

Peeta kicks Cato's feet out from under him and Cato comes toppling down over Peeta. Peeta tries to scramble away backwards on his hands, but Cato brings his sword down hard on Peeta's upper thigh, pinning the silver metal into warm flesh. An agonized scream pierces the air and Peeta rolls over on the ground, spit mixing with dirt and blood as his face contorts in pain.

Cato gets to his feet unsteadily and stares for a minute down at Peeta, a huge grin on his face. Peeta manages to throw a knife haphazardly in the direction of Cato, but Cato just dodges it easily and laughs. He turns to leave, splashing through the stream and whooping freely, the sound far from matching the deranged path Cato carves through the forest as the toxins start taking over his system.

Peeta is left moaning on the ground, rolling around as his fingers grab at his thigh. Eventually he manages to pull the sword out from his flesh with violently shaking hands. Slowly, painfully, he gets to his hands and knees, inching forward toward the stream. As he pitches forward into the burbling water, he cries out again. He has to stop and heave up mouthfuls of thick, green bile before he can drag himself up into a crawling position again.

It's quiet for a long stretch of time as Peeta crawls slowly up the stream. I look over and see Mr. Abernathy freely drinking from his wine bottle, already punching down commands for more whiskey to be sent up to Level 12 immediately. Katniss is curled up tight in a ditch somewhere in the arena, shaking and screaming as the venom takes hold of her. I can't believe Mr. Abernathy is just going to ignore Peeta, drinking himself into intoxication as he sits on a bank of donations. But then—what can he do? There's always high volume skin adhesive and a needle and thread, but that would take careful fingerwork: not something a sixteen-year-old boy is capable of filled to the brim with tracker jacker poison. It seems Mr. Abernathy doesn't want to take the risk, spending careful donations on something that might up and die on his anyway.

I fall back against my chair, chewing on my fingernails as I watch Peeta struggle through the stream. It makes it ten times harder, what Finnick said to me. Ever since our rendezvous behind the City Circle, I just… my stomach twists and my heart pounds as I watch the tributes jump through these hoops, my body twisting with imagined pain instead of jumping with excitement like it used to. I want Finnick to come back here and take it all back, laugh as if it were all a joke.

And come Finnick does… crashing out of the elevator and stumbling through Level 12's lobby, ripping at the control room doors as his shoulders shake uncontrollably.