Tell me about it. The cruelty is unbelievable. They beat that poor kid from District 8 during the reaping. This isn't fair. The world isn't right and it hasn't been for a long time.: BigBoy17

Down with the Capitol! It's tyranny shall not stand!: DTOM

How can so many people be blind to the fact that the current circumstances aren't fixed. They could be changed if enough people wake up to the way reality really is.: JJ

The time is now! The rebellion is at hand!: DTOM

At this point, after seeing what the Capitol has done, I can't possibly justify the existence of the state any longer. The existence of the Capitol is an act of violence perpetuated against the people every day.: Pepe

Hoch die anarchie!: DTOM

The words on the screen scrolled by. The eyes of President Cornell Viktor tracked the text, reading every line carefully.

He was fascinated by the interchange between the invisible unknowable faces behind the screen. There were spammers, intelligent commenters, stupid commenters, trolls, and everything in between. There were people of all positions and value systems too, capitalists, anarchists, socialists, and, though there were few, even some people who believed in the potential of government.

Viktor found the whole dynamic incredible. He wasn't sure what this network was called, but the fact that so many people were engaging in this discussion and coming to the conclusion that the Capitol needed to be abolished was encouraging. It was a development Viktor had not expected.

The introduction of this network had sped things along nicely.

I'll make those bastards pay for what they did to my daughter.: Pepe

What happened?: JJ

She was reaped. She didn't deserve it. My girl deserved to live a long happy life, not to have it ruined by overzealous evil politicians.: Pepe

So a parent of one of the reaped girls conversed on the chat? Interesting.

Viktor was inclined to think the commentor was a man. People on this network usually were. Young men tended to be the revolutionaries of society, the ones who wouldn't simply accept things as they were.

He felt the father's pain. His own daughter fell to the same fate twenty-eight years ago. Viktor could still remember every day she was gone like it was yesterday.

He remembered her crying face when she was reaped. The tears rolled, symbolizing her pain and horror in physical form. She was only fourteen at the time. That was when he realized that the system was not only broken, but that it had never worked in the first place.

Viktor remembered holding his daughter and wife in his arms for the entire hour of visitation they were allowed before his daughter was taken to hell on Earth. They had all been so broken, sharing a connection in their brokenness. That was the only thing that connected them, that and their love for each other.

Then, Viktor's best friend, a fellow peacekeeper announced that their time was up. Viktor held onto his daughter desperately while men who he had once considered his friends ripped her from his arms and forced her onto a train heading to her inevitable death.

Once upon a time, another government thought it was a good idea to force people onto trains too. That was all Viktor saw every time he looked at the Capitol, evil authoritarians, fascists who saw it as their birthright to control the lives of everyone beneath them because they believed that normal people were incapable of doing that themselves.

It was cruelty to a scale Viktor could barely comprehend, yet he had seen it firsthand, experienced it for the majority of his life.

Even some of the evilest criminals Viktor had ever encountered agreed on one thing: kids were off limits. They were somehow sacred, completely untouchable. The vilest man was the one who didn't draw the line at kids.

If one treated the Capitol the same as any other person, then the conclusion would be that the person had murdered two-thousand-four-hundred-thirty-eight kids.

Two-thousand-four-hundred-thirty-eight. That surely made the Capitol the most villainous institution ever to exist.

We need to act! I'm tired of doing nothing! The time of nonviolent resistance has passed!: Pepe

Viktor wasn't sure whether this grass-roots rebellion would amount to anything. The anarchists in District 10 had done little more than annoy the establishment there. They had yet to accomplish anything because they weren't organized.

They weren't 'a well-regulated militia' as some authors hundreds of years ago would have put it.

Maybe the time was right though. Viktor hadn't anticipated action to be required this early, but if opportunity knocked at his door, he certainly wouldn't ignore its call to him.

Viktor saw his daughter's face again as it was brutally cleaved in half by an axe wielding girl from District 1. That girl had been the only survivor of the Games. How was that fair? Why could she come back at the expense of his little girl? The Games forced the kids to treat each other as less than human, mere obstacles to be removed from their path to survival.

It was pure evil. No other words could describe the Hunger Games.

Viktor's fist slammed against the table, jarring him back to reality. He barely noticed the time that had passed. He had sat, mired in his anger, for almost an hour. If he wasn't careful people would think he was up to something, which, of course, he was, but he couldn't let them know that.

Viktor took in a calming breath and stood from the desk in his room. He eyed himself in front of the bathroom mirror, adjusting his tie. He pulled his suit tight against his chest, ensuring it fit exactly as it should.

Then, with another breath, Viktor settled into his mask that he'd grown so comfortable wearing. That mask revealed nothing, displayed no emotion, and showed no weakness. Viktor stood before his door and gripped the handle.

It was time to stray once again into danger. He couldn't reveal anything to the people around him. If they found out what he was doing, then he would surely be destroyed in the most vicious of manners.

To be frank, he expected it. He was prepared to be destroyed. If it was his destiny to be a martyr then so be it, but Viktor unequivocally refused to give in to the malevolent killers.

There we have it for this time. A short Capitol interlude before we get into the serious stuff. Train Rides are coming next chapter which is really quite exciting.

Anyway, thanks for reading guys.