Chapter 42: Ginnee Davenport

Androcles's refusal to play the Games as a Career has more than just long-lasting consequences for himself and his family decades later. The fall-out from his pacifist Victory after only a single kill to his name that was more of an accident but still credited to him anyway bleeds with more immediacy into the very next year.

President Snow is not happy at all that someone has managed to play the Games all the way through by their own set of unorthodox rules. It reminds him of the free-wheeling first decade of the Games, when he was a little boy and then young man, culminating in a single year as a mentor when he managed to smuggle Twelve its first, and to this day, only win. Sometimes, alone in the Oval Office, he can see her captivating face, because in some aspects, Androcles Lupton is her in boy form. Not in any sense of a refusal to fight, oh no – when it came down to it, Lu knew how to fight, but even so, she fought smart, distantly. Didn't get her hands entirely dirty. No, her method of murder was aloof, impersonal, and in some ways that is just as bad as having a boy unintentionally trip his last opponent so that she quite literally goes falling on her own sword.

Stop, the President has to tell himself when Lucy Gray's lovely face dances into his head again. She's been presumed dead for over thirty years, and yet still, she somehow always finds a way back to him, taunting him. He can hear her pet name for him in his head, delivered in her melodious voice: Coryo…

If there's one thing Snow doesn't like, it's cheaters, especially in the Games. Considering that he once resorted to cheating in the Games himself oh so long ago, a bolder man with little regard for his own safety might have the juevos to call the President a hypocrite. Ok, fine. But that was years ago, when he was nothing but a foolish boy allowing himself to get too attached to a girl. A district girl, no less. He's the President of Panem, by the State, and this is the last time he's going to let any tribute play God, or worse still, play at his job! Like they, a lowly tribute, have all the power! (Decades later, Snow will ultimately fail in that vow, but only because he was outmaneuvered by a drunk, a lovesick girl, and a media that could still get too sentimental).

The way Snow sees it, Androcles's ability to play the Games without compromising himself is indicative of a larger problem. Naturally, Snow goes right to the root of it: the Careers themselves. Oh, he's fine with them being loyal, he's fine with them feeding the system eager boys and girls who are willing and eager to fight while acting like proper patriots. But an Androcles Lupton happens when an individual consumes too much of one thing: arrogance. Whether that be the arrogance to refuse to fight at all, or the arrogance to think that the rewards of fighting should come easy. And that arrogance, no matter at which extreme it begins on the scale, can lead to entitlement.

The Careers coming out of 1 and 2 and, to a lesser but growing extent, 4, have gotten just a little too big for their britches – Snow cringes at the down-home country phrase even as he thinks it, for it is exactly the sort of thing Lucy Gray would say. Five Victories of the last ten Games have come from these three regions. Those odds could certainly be better, considering all the training Mags, Hippolyta, Amber and the others are filling their recruits' heads with… but they also could, and probably should be, a lot worse.

After all, as the saying goes, Pride goeth before the fall. Amen.

And so, in preparation for that coming summer, the President confers with Head Gamemaker Finis Valorum, who's been doing an admirable job, but now needs to do something a little more… ambitious. Then Snow gets in touch with the Institute in Two, and the School of Deportment (the actual acronym for District 1's Training Academy is impossible to pronounce) and Mags and Poseidon over in Four. He makes it very clear that this year, he wants their best, not just in strength, but in speed.

All the Career districts take the bait, and the volunteers are those who have been specifically tested for above-average running capabilities, both in speed and distance.

It's all the more delicious when none of the outliers called seem to have among them a legitimate contender. Everyone in the Capitol is already declaring that this is another Career year. It's just a matter of which one of the six will be the Victor. Snow almost wants to laugh.

Just as Snow is able to get at the root of the problem, the Gamemakers decide to go back to their roots in designing this arena. Specifically, roots from roughly forty years ago.

The tributes are lifted into something the media is dubbing a 'cloud forest' for lack of a better descriptor for this environment where the jagged cliffs and the tree canopies stretching up high above the Cornucopia seem to be floating above the low-lying clouds. The golden horn is standing in the center of a fissured, rocky plateau. From behind the Resolute Desk in his office, Snow sips calmly at his champagne. The countdown ends.

All six Careers easily outstrip the rest of the field in gunning for the weapons, and are just getting their hands on some and turning to face the other brave Bloodbath runners when –

There is a tremor that roars so loudly, it seems more than just an earthquake. As everyone watches in horror, the rocky plateau splits along the fissures in its edifice and caves in on itself. All six Careers, terrified understanding dawning, have the bottom fall out from under them, along with five other unlucky souls who were also a bit too quick. Eleven cannons fire in rapid succession and just like that, the Careers will have to wait another year to get one on the board.

With all the weapons and supplies lost as well – the dented Cornucopia is now stranded at the bottom of a truly massive crater – the remaining thirteen have no choice but to scatter in the forests beyond with nothing but the uniforms on their backs. Among these survivors is a wispy fifteen-year-old from District 6 who stumbles dazedly away. Ginnee Davenport.

There was, of course, a Ginnee as tribute in the year won by Lucy Gray Baird, but President Snow would prefer you not know that. And unlike that Ginnee, who didn't even make it into the arena to start, this Ginnee is emaciated, addicted to morphling from the time she was merely an apple in her drugee mommy's eye, and tiny. But she's also desperate, and resourceful.

Tributes who encounter each other in this cage match have no choice but to dispose of each other with their bare hands, so there are a lot of duels that involve rolling and punching, scratching and kicking. Ginnee kills the girl from 5 in this way – an upset that shouldn't happen because her opponent has at least sixty pounds on her. But Ginnee fights like someone with nothing left to lose. She fights like a possible Victor, but the Games aren't over yet! When the bloodshed becomes too slow, the Gamemakers send jungle cats – panther and tiger mutts – after the kids, until finally, there are only six left.

That's when the Gamemakers call a Feast – inside what is now being called Capitol Crater. Go time is set for dawn the following day.

When the appointed time arrives, all but Ginnee show up. The girl from 8 tries to ease herself gently down the one slope, but loses control and ends up falling into the pit headfirst, breaking her neck. Of these five, only three make it to the bottom of the Crater alive.

They find nothing but water bottles, which they guzzle and drink greedily. Then Claudius Templesmith comes on the line and announces that, actually, that water you just drank was poisonous, whoopsie! And oh, by the way, the antidote is on the far side of the arena, at the top of a cliff face.

The trio of tributes panic, scrabbling like drowning spiders to get out of the Crater, but only the girl from 12 gets over the rim alive. She staggers to where a lit arrow is pointing the way, knowing and not caring that she is being manipulated, driven by the Gamemakers in a certain direction. By the time she reaches the designated cliff, she is spasming, crawling towards where the vial of antidote is being held by…

Ginnee. She was sitting right next to where the medicine was deployed the entire time.

Twelve at first tries to beg her for it. Then, although still in a weakened state, she tries to take it. Ginnee shrieks and drives the butt of the vial into the girl's temple, cracking her skull and killing her instantly. Then, because she hasn't had anything to drink in days and thinking the treasure she holds in her hands is her next morphling hit and even though the antidote can't cure what doesn't ail her, Ginnee greedily downs the whole thing. It certainly tastes like morphling going down, but tastes all too much like bile coming back up.

Snow can't think of a better outcome through which the Careers can feel humiliated than by watching the Crown go to the district with one of the worst Victory records in the history of the pageant. All the more embarrassing as, now with their second win, District 6 is no longer tied with 12 for the worst Victory record. True, as a Victor, Ginnee Davenport will be largely forgettable and with only a single clean, but aging neighbor to help her in the Village.

But that's not Snow's problem. Keeping the only civilized nation left on Earth from falling back into ruin is.