Alysanne Audren- District Six female (15)

I had no idea if the plan would work. The bright side was that if it didn't work it would almost ceryainly be because it imploded before it ever even got off the ground- far before we encountered Flint. So if it didn't work we weren't really out anything.

The first part of the plan was getting to the security room. It wasn't exactly clearly marked. We had to go from floor to floor looking at each one of the vaguely-marked floor schematics before finally finding what we were looking for on the ground floor.

Security, the sign read. Just that one little word labeling a room on the west wing of the building. We had to cross the front entrance to the building to get there. It was beyond eerie to see the big empty foyer with a secretarial desk posted at the cross-section of three hallways that led in different directions. There was a set of revolving doors we could see through at the entrance to the building. There was what looked like a perfectly normal street outside and even buildings across the street. Neither one of us was brave enough to get near the door. It creeped me out something fierce. The Capitol might have built an entire ghost city in which we were the only occupants. Or that force field might have been just a projection and mere feet away there were Gamemakers on the other side watching us.

"That's it," Lacey said when we reached an unassuming door down the west corridor. The only thing that marked the door out was a number pad by its side. Lacey gave the handle a tug anyway but it was locked.

"It's locked," she said.

"Not for long," I said. My moves were meant for fighting other people but a door wasn't that much stronger if you knew how to kick it. Luckily the number pad lock was made to deter casual thieves instead of keeping out armed intruders- probably since a siren would sound if this wasn't an Arena- and a few kicks buckled the relatively shallow bolt lock.

We stepped inside and were greeted by something right out of a movie. The room contained nothing but a wheeled chair, a desk, and a screen that covered half of one wall. The screen was split into tinier screens in a grid, each one covering a different part of the building. My eyes were immediately drawn to movement in one screen and I saw Flint walking down a hallway looking into each of the rooms.

"I didn't know if it would really work," Lacey admitted as she looked over the screens. "It's really the whole building, isn't it?"

"Sure looks like it. But where are they?" I asked. We came here to find Clair and Oaken and I didn't see them anywhere. I looked from screen to screen at identically boring office rooms, most seeming untouched.

"Hold on," Lacey said after a long few minutes of searching. "What's that?" She pointed to the camera covering the elevator shaft. The footage was dark and grainy but when I looked right where she was pointing I saw two unmistakably human shapes.

Lacey Weaver- District Eight female (18)

"Great, there they are. But how do we work this thing?" I looked down at the desk in front of us. As we'd hoped, the security room was outfitted with an intercom, presumably to send out emergency alerts in case of fire or things like that. But if we just picked up the intercom and started talking I was afraid we would broadcast over every intercom in the building. We just wanted to talk to the twins.

"Uhh..." Alysanne leaned in and peered closely at the screen. She wiggled her finger on the touchpad attached to the old-timey keyboard and a pointer icon moved on the screen. She moved it on top of the screen showing the elevator shaft. "Maybe now?"

"I don't think there's an intercom in the elevator shaft," I said.

"Oh, right," Alysanne said. She fiddled with the touchpad again until the pointer icon hovered over the hallway outside the top floor, close to where the twins were. If the door wasn't too thick and if we talked kind of loud they should be able to hear us. "You think it's on?"

I leaned close to her and poked experimentally at the touch pad. It made a clicking noise and a red border appeared around the screen showing the hallway. Alysanne smiled in approval.

"Here goes nothing," she said, and picked up the intercom. She clicked a button on its side and gave it a shot.

"Hello?" she said cautiously. "They heard it!" she said to me as I watched the screen with Flint. He gave no reaction, so it must have worked. I looked at the elevator shaft and saw Oaken and Clair scooting down the cables toward the elevator door. They clung to the cables as they stared uncertainly at the door. Not that I could tell their expressions from the footage, but it seemed pretty obvious.

"Hi," Alysanne said again. "This is Alysanne and Lacey. We're in the security camera room. Can we talk?"

On the screen Oaken and Clair looked around the empty shaft suspiciously. Oaken said something and they hopped into the elevator doorway and.

"Flint is on another floor. We can see him. We can't hear you, though. It's safe," Alysanne said.

Clair made a very clear "and why would we believe you" gesture at us. They stood in the doorway and conversed for a minute, then started prying open the door. Oaken held an extended index finger up to the sky and ducked into the nearest room. We watched on the camera as he rummaged through a desk and came back out into the hall with papers and a marker. He wrote on the paper and held it up.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT"

Oaken Mushroom- District Seven male (17)

Whatever Alysanne and Lacey were up to, they definitely knew where we were. I certainly didn't trust them but we could at least listen for a while and see what we could learn. If we decided to split we'd have to go back into the vents. I was sure there weren't any cameras in there.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT" I held up the paper.

"We want to kill Flint," Alysanne said.

"SO DO IT," I sent back.

"He's really strong. Even with two of us I don't think we can," Alysanne said.

Clair was already writing on another sheet. "NOT OUR PROBLEM."

"It will be when he comes for you," Alysanne said.

Clair set down her paper. "What do you think?" she asked. "I certainly don't want to fight him on our own."

"We've been doing just fine not fighting at all," I pointed out. There were so many problems with this plan and the last thing I wanted was to trust someone I'd never met when they had every reason to want me dead.

Clair held her hands around her mouth. I was baffled until I figured out she was afraid Alysanne or Lacey could read lips. "If we don't, they might use the intercom to tell Flint where we are and keep helping him until he finds us."

That's true. It was something of a no-win scenario. Either we had to worry about Alysanne and Lacey or we had to worry about Flint. "But what will we do after the fight if we join them?"

"We could wait for a moment when Flint is engaged with them and then run for it. Hopefully he and Alysanne will both die or get wounded," Clair said. It was duplicitous but it was just self-preservation. If we did join up we all knew it wasn't because we were friends. It was just because there was someone more threatening.

Still wouldn't hurt to get more information. "WHAT ABOUT WHEN THE FIGHT IS OVER?" I sent up.

Lacey's voice came over the intercom. "Fight it out, I guess," she admitted. "At least you two have a guaranteed ally."

"You think the four of us can do it?" Clair asked me.

"I think we can stay in the back and let them do it," I said. "And we can at least get them away from those cameras." I started another message.

"IF YOU WANT TO TEAM UP, COME TO US," I held up the sign.

"We will-"

"We'll be there-" Alysanne and Lacey's voices overlapped. Clair and I got into the elevator shaft and lurked beside the door, ready to clear out at a single false move, and waited.

I had to give Oaken two POVs in a row since this chapter revolved around this interaction.