It is Gale who speaks: "At the time, there were already stories... legends, really, except they were consistent. It was reported that Schuyler Grey didn't just criticize the Capitol before the judges of the Games, he made a prophesy. Some accounts even say that it was about Katniss Everdeen. But any hard information was hidden or erased. Johanna, only you can tell us, what did he say?"

Tears spring up in Johanna's eyes. "All I can say is what he told us he told the judges, and I already said what his memory was like," she says. "The stories... they aren't wrong, but they aren't the whole truth, and nobody really understands. They like to think of a boy who said he had an angel on his shoulder confronting the Gamemasters. They don't know, and I think they don't want to know, the rest..."

Napoleon and Richard kept their aim on Sky as he talked, Napoleon with a poisoned arrow and and Richard with an equally poisoned wooden stake, while a one-ton Mutt looked up like a puppy under the table, and I pressed myself against a cliff face, quietly dying of snake venom, listening and hoping nobody really noticed me.

Napoleon looked like he was debating whether to shoot, but I could tell Richard wanted to hear every word. But Sky just kept talking, smiling. "Brought a snake with us, like angel says, to show men at the table," he said, and he stroked the snake that the Gamemasters had sent to kill him, still on his shoulder,. That much definitely sounded right. "Carry snake. Pet snake. Play with snake. Feed snake. Then men pay attention. They listen to what angel says. Good to have people listen. Usually don't. I tell them what angel says, and they listen very carefully."

Then he turned his head, and there was a change in his speech like night and day: "`You stand in judgment on children, but powers you do not know stand in judgment on you. You light your city to outshine the stars, but your deeds darken the Heavens. You have built your mansions on foundations of greed and fear and hate, but they will burn at the beat of a mockingjay's wings...'" I swear, that's exactly what he said, and you can bet I remembered it when Katniss came along.

"`You are not being told this so you might change. You will not, because you have already darkened your hearts, and the true light by which you might save yourselves, even for no better purpose than your own selfishness, has been cut off from you. You are being told, so your children's children will know, that you were warned. They will know, so that they might learn to deal with kindness instead of treachery, and govern with justice instead of oppression, and make lights in the Heavens instead of fires on Earth. Then if they do not learn, woe unto them, for where your fall will set this city to flame, theirs shall melt the very foundations from beneath it.'"

"Holy kaka," Richard said. "You're dead, man. You were dead before you got in the tube. You're lucky we're going to kill you."

"Yes," Napoleon said, "but what about us?" Then he and Richard fired together- at each other. Richard went down with an arrow in his forehead, already foaming at the mouth. Napoleon, down on one stump, drew another arrow, and then looked down with a sigh at the wooden dart that had just pricked the toe of his remaining boot.

"Oh," he said, oddly calm as his leg spasmed and then stiffened, "to fock with it all." Then he braced his back against the outcropping behind him and shifted his bow, to aim directly at me. Right at that moment, a swatch of ice and rock dropped from the crag beneath him. His truncated right leg slipped, and he pitched forward headfirst. The Mutt leaped and caught him in the air, crushing his skull at one bite. Then Napoleon's headless corpse dropped to the ground, and the Mutt sailed forward, between the peaks, and straight into the force field. The whole sky flashed with crisscrossing lines of fire that faded into points of lights like stars in the sunset sky.

For a moment, I just stared down, literally in disbelief. Then, remembering that I needed adrenaline and momentum, I tried making my way along the ledge, toward Sky. I almost made it, but when I reached the end where I had to pull myself up, I could hardly keep from falling off the cliff. Actually, I couldn't. I started to fall forward, and for a moment, I was happy for it. But then a hand caught hold of my arm, and Sky hauled me up.

The air stank of burned flesh, and there were big flakes of ash floating around. The Mutt hadn't been incinerated on impact, but the charred carcass the field had hurled back was little more than a skeleton. "Too bad," Sky said, looking down. "I liked it." Of course he would have.

He set me down with my back upright against a trunk. "Little lights," he said, looking directly into my eyes. "Millions of little lights shining in the dark." He pointed to the setting sun, and then up, where I thought I could make out a few stars. It was hard to tell, because it might be residual flash from when the force field lit up from the Mutt, plus I was seeing stars anyway. Momentum and adrenaline had kept me going, but they had taken a lot out of me too. I knew I didn't have long.

I knew something else then, what the prophecy was really about. Predicting the rebellion didn't mean anything. Anyone with an ear to the ground could have seen that it was a matter of when, not if. Even the mockingjay bit was nothing special. It was a symbol going back to the Dark Days, and if one of the rebel factions didn't come up with it in the first place, then they had been using it on and off for about as long as it had been around. None of that was the point. The point was about us.

We could hate the Capitol for how they treated us, and sure, they deserved it. We could even tell ourselves we would do things different if we were in charge. But in the end, the only difference between the Capitol and us was that we were on the sharp end of the stick. If we had the chance, we could do worse evil than the Capitol ever did, and we would have less excuse. Nobody knew it better than someone like me, and nothing proved it better than how the people who thought themselves decent and upright had treated Sky. And if we were sane and he was not, maybe it was time to give crazy a chance.

I wish I could say I really thought about it.

"Yeah," I said, "there's lots of little lights... But they all burn out." Then I reached for a knife.

An after note: I actually have a degree from seminary, and this chapter reflects my ideas about Biblical prophecies. For another take on apocalyptic predictions, see "Cassandra" in the Terminator fandom.