I don't usually mess with alliances but this time I merged Floki's and Havelock's since it just made sense. If anyone messages me to split them I will.

Emorte Maydon- District Two male

Two wanted me to be like my father. I wanted to be a father. I didn't care about bringing glory to my District or making people proud. I cared about my own life and my own family. Astrid had to bring up our son Kael alone because other people felt entitled to run my life.

There was nothing to do about that now. If I wanted to see them again I had to win. It didn't matter to me that I had to kill other people. They felt the same about me. Whatever it took to keep myself alive and get my back to my family, I didn't consider it wrong any more than it's wrong for a starving man to steal bread.

That was how my alliance started. The Careers all looked down on Daffodil. She wasn't one of us and we didn't associate with people like that. I didn't care at all where she came from or the life she lived. If she offered something I needed I would ally with her. When I saw her shooting back-to-back kill shots on the archery range I made up my mind. She wanted allies so she wouldn't get overrun at the Bloodbath. I wanted allies who could kill people before they got close to me.

Someone like Astrid, someone who knew me well, would see the pessimism in my alliance. Koa was another one of the fringe Tributes. He would almost certainly have been a loner if I hadn't asked him to join me and Daffodil. He was strong enough that he'd joined the pack his first time around, but he wasn't on my level. A naive onlooker would think I was seeing the best in people who were often overlooked. A realist would know I was allying with human shields.

Myrian Cardiff- District Two male

I tensed up when I saw Emorte coming toward me. I never knew what to do during a conversation even in normal times. In the Capitol, anyone who talked to me probably either wanted to intimidate me or just wanted to kill me.

"Hey," Emorte said. "What are you up to?"

"Training," I said without thinking. I hadn't meant to be sarcastic. Things just never came out right for me.

"I'm putting together an alliance. We're kind of… unconventional," Emorte said.

"Who's all in it?" I asked, like I was going to have to think about it.

"Daffodil and Koa," Emorte said. "I'm the only actual volunteer. And you if you join."

"Yeah, I guess I can join," I said. I felt like a million bucks. Here I was making alliances like a normal Career. All that time at the Academy was paying off.

"Guess what!" I announced when I met with Crag after training.

"You killed someone?" he asked.

I laughed. "Not yet. But I joined an alliance!"

"Oh?" Crag was much less enthusiastic than I'd expected. "Who with?"

"Emorte, Daffodil and Koa. Emorte said he wanted another real volunteer," I said.

"And why do you suppose he wanted you?" Crag asked.

I thought for a second. "Because I'm careful and I'm stronger than I look."

Crag sighed and leaned back in his chair. He looked at the ceiling, then back at me.

"Kid. I hate to break it to you. Emorte isn't looking for allies. He's looking for meat shields," Crag said.

"No, he's not!" I said. Mentors aren't supposed to insult you. I was a valuable ally. I knew what I was doing.

"Daffodil, Koa and you. People who can fight, but people he can outrun," Crag said.

I folded my arms and scowled. "You have no idea what you're talking about," I said. "I'm going to go train with my allies." I stormed out as Crag sat blandly behind me, clearly expecting I'd burn myself out and come back. And I would come back. I knew he was right. He was a mentor with decades of experience and I was a dumb kid. I was dumb enough to volunteer and dumb enough to believe Emorte. No one would want to ally with a twelve-year-old. I'd just screw it all up like I did last time.

Koa Dragon- District Seven male

There were always bullies in the orphanage. Some of them would grab you in the hallway and shake you down for whatever you had to offer. Others set up more insidious networks of protection rackets and business propositions. They put on civil faces and pretended they were your friends so they could get in closer. I saw Emorte a thousand miles away. Careers thought they were the only ones who would lie. I grew up having to spot the liars before they took everything from me and my siblings.

The really funny part was that all three of us knew it. Daffodil knew because she was the smartest girl I'd ever met, and I could tell after I'd only known her for two days. Myrian wouldn't have known, but his mentor told him. And I knew because I'd seen it a million times before. Despite that, our alliance was as strong as it could have been. We were three of the also-ran Tributes who shouldn't have been picked and we knew it. We had to stick together if any of us was going to have the slightest chance of surviving. And Emorte was our benevolent leader.

Myrian shot another arrow as Daffodil watched his form. We'd spent all day training together and we were starting to look like a real team. Even though we came together out of necessity, I was glad I'd ended up with Daffodil and Myrian. Daffodil was just super interesting, and she was a great teacher, too. I wasn't about to give up my axes, but I felt like I could probably hit a target if for some reason I was forced to use a bow. It was fun sitting with her as she taught Myrian. And Myrian was a great pupil. He was nervous and eager to please and got so excited whenever he did something right. Both of them would have grown up into great people if things had just been different. Maybe for one of us thing would turn out different.

Daffodil Starshine- District Eleven female

It was hardly any good for me to train. It wasn't that I was some super-amazing phenomenon who was awesome at everything. I was just really, really good at archery. There wasn't much point in training in that and I wasn't going to master anything else in the time we had. When I wasn't training Myrian I spent my training time at the various little stations no one visited. The knot-making station came especially easy to me. At the end of the day I gave the trainer a pretty macrame potted plant holder I'd made for him. If the Arena is made of a bunch of ropes, I was destined for victory.

The next day I just hung out at the improvised weapons station. It was fun being creative and trying to come up crazy designs. I made a little catapult out of some boards and a bungee cord and sent a rubber ball flying. It went a little farther than I'd expected, unfortunately, and almost took out Chantal from across the room. I counted my lucky stars that I wasn't a better shot. Or a worse shot, perhaps, since I hadn't been aiming for her.

It was disconcerting to look at everyone else I was competing against. These people had trained all their lives for exactly this. I was just a normal girl doing her best. I didn't feel like I really had a chance. Someone picked me, so I guess someone disagreed. Or maybe they just wanted to see me die again.

Ember Steiner- District Two female

Something was wrong with Shui.

It wasn't even an hour after we revived that I saw it. Shui had always been taciturn and contemplative, but this wasn't that. He seemed empty, like a poured-out glass. He looked at me but never looked at me. When I saw Dad again I totally lost it. We were hugging and Dad picked me up and we were both crying and Shui was just there. He smiled and hugged Dad, but it was like they'd seen each other five minutes ago. It was creepy.

"Something's wrong with Shui," I said to Dad while we were sharing lunch and Shui was out doing who knows what.

Dad sighed. He looked down at the table and my heart went heavy at the thinness of his hair and the lines I'd never seen in his face. When did he lose so much weight? He looked like a candle burned too many times.

"I think it's the cloning process," he said. "I told him he should see the doctors, but he didn't care."

"I'll talk to him," I said. I didn't get up, though. I was glad to have some time with my father.

"I'm glad to be here again," I said.

"I missed you, sparky," Dad said.

My eyes misted. No one had spoken my nickname in ten years. In the eyes of the world I was thirty-five years old. Another thirty could go by and I'd still be my father's baby girl.

Havelock Grimm- District Four male

Floki and I had more than a decade of lost time to make up for. As weird as it was being the same age as my big brother, it felt normal after just a few minutes. I was still me and Floki was still Floki.

"Wait, you didn't even want to volunteer?" Floki asked as a Capitolite chef grilled the pieces of raw meat we'd picked out. The smell and sound of sizzling food filled the air.

"Nah," I said.

"And you did better in one try than I ever did in three?" Floki clutched his heart jokingly. "Oh little brother, that is going to be hard to accept."

"I never got half the fanbase you did. You're still a legend in Four," I said.

"In the Capitol too, I guess," he said. "They keep picking me anyway."

"Well it's not your good looks," I said.

"I know. I look just like you," Floki said. "Sometimes I cry when I look in the mirror."

Brothers are the same all over. We could be in Four, or the Capitol, or the Arena, and we'd both still have the trusting comfort that came from someone who knew you better than any friend. We grew up apart, but in the same family and the same home. Floki was like some possible version of me that didn't get selected when I was conceived. He was more religious than I was. I was more soft-spoken than him. But no one could fail to guess the relationship when two six-foot-plus Nordic musclemen walked side-by-side through the training building. We wouldn't be together forever, but we would always be brothers.

Floki Grimm- District Four male

Whyte's leg was heavy across my lap as we lay sprawled on the couch watching a terrible Capitol action movie. My arm raised and dipped with the movement of his breath.

"You're the only thing consistent in my stop-and-go life," I said. It was like that story about the time traveler's wife, but we were both time travelers and we always traveled at exactly the same time. We were frozen in time together.

"Honestly it's worth it," Whyte said. "What did we have to look forward to anyway? A life spent either fishing or getting rented out to the highest Capitol bidder. I don't mind this at all."

"Every time I die I know that if I open my eyes again you'll be there," I said.

"Let's have a baby," Whyte said. When I started laughing, he went on. "They're not going to send us into the Arena pregnant."

"Y...you're not wrong…" I said. "How do two guys go about having a baby?"

"You know how they say if you swallow a watermelon seed a watermelon grows in your stomach?" Whyte said.

I made a noise of disgust as I spilled him off the couch and onto the floor. "Look, man, I love you, but not that much."

Whyte lay on the floor in a heap. "Wow, you'd just leave me a single father. And here I thought you were a good man."

Whyte Roberts- District Four male

"What is it, I wonder," I said to Vera. "Why did you win and I keep… not?"

Vera made a noncommittal movement. "I won a special Games, for one. There weren't as many people."

"But they were nearly all Careers," I said.

"Some of it's just luck. Sometimes things just work out," Vera said.

"I don't get it. We both trained the same amount. We trained almost always at the same time," I said.

"We were only in the same Arena twice," Vera said. "And neither of us won either time. I think a lot depends on the group you're in the Arena with."

"That doesn't bode well for me," I said. I didn't have eight like Vera, or twenty-four like a normal Games. I had the single toughest group in history. Nothing but Careers, all out for blood.

"It's good you're with Floki now," Vera said. She wasn't talking about relationship-wise, either. What Vera and I might have had never even got started and now we both had someone else. She just meant Floki was a formidable ally, which was true. The real mystery was how he'd never won yet.

"Great, you jinxed it," I said. "Just watch us end up as the final two."

Caio Sagres- District Two male

My baggy clothes hung off me as I snuck up and down the Games building halls. Before I died I would have picked out the most attractive colors and cuts for my figure- anything that would make me look good. Now I didn't want to be seen at all. I wasn't the Games favorite anymore. I was just another failure. I didn't want anyone to see me and remember.

I found what I was looking for on Five's floor. The young woman was so small and unassuming. There was nothing at all about her that would bring someone to pick her out as the Victor from a group of twenty-four. She had a nondescript face and plain body, though she was far healthier than when I last saw her. The only striking thing about her was the star-shaped gold earrings she wore.

Meenah jumped when she saw me. She looked around and started to duck back into the room when she saw no one was around.

"No, wait," I said, holding up my hands palm-forward and backing away. "I just wanted to ask you something?"

Meenah stopped with her hand on the half-open door. "What is it?" she asked.

"How?"

I'd underestimated Meenah in more ways than one. She was strong enough to beat me and brave enough to let me into the Five lounge. She sent for some coffee as I took a seat at her table.

"I just want to know how you did it," I said. Obviously I was wrong about a lot of things, including my own capabilities. There were two people at the table. One of them had won the Games. It was time for me to be quiet and learn.