Asper Fin, District Seven

I'd won the Games. I'd outlived everyone and then outfought Hermes to be the last one standing. I opened my eyes in the Capitol to start the real danger.

Most of the people bustling around my bed were medics. It was just the one man who stood off to the side. He carried a briefcase and a handheld computer. He was dressed in a sterile suit and wore a sterile expression.

"Asper Fin?" he said when he saw I was awake.

Asper Fin. Not Allen.

Head Gamemaker Exsequia Exil was a busy woman. It wasn't often she made time to meet a single individual. I didn't think she'd ever met privately with a Victor. I was lucky number one.

"Charmed, I'm sure," Exsequia said as she offered her hand and took mine in a painful grip. She sat behind an austere desk in a room that cost more money than District Seven's collective yearly income. Her thick curtains were drawn in a way that made me suspect I'd walked into the room but wouldn't be walking out. "So, young man, what about the Capitol made you think we enjoy being lied to?"

"I didn't mean it like that," I said, already shaking. With every passing second I was realizing I hadn't saved my life but had more likely taken my entire family with me. Or prevented District Seven from winning the Games for perhaps decades.

"No one ever does," Exsequia said dryly. She folded her arms lightly. "And yet it happened." She stared at me levelly until I felt compelled to say something.

"I won't tell anyone. I'll just stay in my house and never make trouble again." A flood of words bubbled up in my throat but died when she moved to speak.

"Boy, you've made trouble enough for a lifetime," she said. She leaned back in her chair and ran a hand through her hair. "Here's the thing. I don't really care about what you did. Honestly if you managed to pull this off we have no one to blame but ourselves for our shoddy bookkeeping. But the highers-up aren't going to see it that way. You got a lot of very important people very angry at you. So what, pray tell, do we do?"

"Can you just kill me and not my family?" I asked, my voice frail and thin. Just not everyone else. Not my whole family. Anyone who ever associated with me. The whole District, maybe. I'd wanted to do a good deed and succeeded only in destroying everything.

"Good news, kid," Exsequia said. "I have a way out for you." She waited for me to ask.

"What is it?" I asked.

"We don't kill you. We just kill who you are," Exsequia said. She continued as I sat wide-eyed and unable to understand. "You won't be Asper anymore. Not ever again. And your brother won't be Allen. We switch every bit of your paperwork- shouldn't be too hard seeing how haphazard it seems to be. We switch your lives. We even switch your fingerprints. Asper Fin is dead. Long live Asper Fin."

"I'll do it," I said. No matter what she'd suggested the answer would have been the same. I already had enough people mad at me. I couldn't afford to refuse her anything.

"I'm sure you will," she said. She pressed a button on her desk and the man with the briefcase appeared a moment later. "See to it," she said.

I never would have guessed how hard it was to be someone else. Allen and I were identical twins but we weren't identical people. It took a long time to get used to people calling me by the wrong name. I never got over the fact that Allen wasn't allowed to be a doctor because that was supposed to be my ambition. One day I realized that in my inner monologue I'd addressed myself as Allen and I couldn't remember how long I'd been doing it. I cried that day. But even if it was a warped and dissonant life, it was a life. I was alive and my entire family benefited from my prize money and house. I had to give everything to save my brother's life. I didn't regret it.

Allen Fin. Not Asper.