A/N: The first decade of the games is now complete! Thanks to anyone who's been reading along. I think it's worth noting that this will follow none of the canon established by the 2020 prequel; as much as I adore the Hunger Games, I am not a fan of BSS one bit.

Ten down, more than sixty to go. There is no rest for the wicked…

Canary Roselock from District 12
Victor of the Tenth Annual Hunger Games

Angering the head peacekeeper of District 12 probably wasn't the best idea. Taking out tesserae annually for seven years probably wasn't the best idea either.

Canary Roselock sighed in resignation as she slid to the ground, long-withheld breaths bursting out of her throat. Even in this far-flung region of District 12 – the outskirts of the Seam, near the fenced-off Meadow – the soil was littered with coal dust. It was impossible to escape.

I can still be home by sundown, Canary thought. She just had to stay out of the peacekeers' watch. Which was easier said than done, of course, but she had a knack for moving quietly.

She peeked around the corner of the shed, taking in a glimpse of the dusty alley. A swarm of agitated moths fluttered into the air, coal dust floating off of their wings.

Canary remembered her late grandmother's words. Moths are special, child. They fly souls to the moon. Her grandmother had lots of stories. Stories about the way every creature played a role in the universe. It was a beautiful thought, she believed, that the moon was some great light she could reach if she had wings.

But those were just fairy tales. Stories for children. Sources of happiness from a time before she understood such things as starvings and beatings and tesserae. The day she watched the first ever Hunger Games on television was the day she stopped believing in fairy tales for good.

It was getting dark now. Half a mile away, the fence would soon be alive from electricity. Canary never dared enter the Meadow, not the most far-flung reason being that it was punishable by death. But there was something else there that kept her away from that place.

As she scuttled along the base of the shed, her toes crushing painfully against her shoes, she remembered the noose that had hung in the Meadow for ten years. The noose used to execute the "treacherous" mayor of District 12, who'd tried to save his people by hiding them in his cellar during a peacekeeper raid.

Canary began to hum the tune the mayor sang while he walked to his execution; an old folk song that had been outlawed in the districts because of its use as the anthem of the rebellion:

The night is young, so don't be late,

And come into the tree.

The knotted necklace still remains here

Calling you to me.

The strangest things did happen here,

But death can set you free.

Just come and meet me late at night

Inside the hanging tree.

She imagined the mayor's dead body, swinging in the wind. Reanimated as though by some magic force, beckoning his companion to join him in death.

The thought of tomorrow's reaping snapped her out of it. That was enough for fairytales. Canary broke into a dash, traipsing through the moths and clouds of coal dust. She thought she heard a peacekeeper's boots, but it was only some old man who'd crept out of his house for a cup of rainwater.

Canary remembered stories of Capitol officials disguised as starving people, meant to weed out rebels in the districts under the pretense of friendship. Unwilling to take risks now that it was getting so dark, she sprinted the rest of the way home.

As always, her father was waiting for her. A gruff-looking man who appeared thirty years older than he actually was, but was nonetheless as friendly and charming as a father should be.

"Welcome home, Canary," he said. "Get anything worth mentioning today?"

Canary smiled, ready to unveil her surprise. "Only this!" she exclaimed, dropping the loaf of bread on the table.

Her father's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Where did you get that?"

"Oh, some kid in the square. I gave him an old hammer and some herbs."

She was a terrible liar.

"You got this from that old warehouse, didn't you?" Her father had found her out. There was no use lying.

"It's safer than you think," she said shortly, defensively.

"I've already told you, Canary, I don't want you going there. It's too dangerous."

They were referring to the coal warehouse near the Justice Building that was used by the Capitol before Panem's train system was fully developed. After the war, it became apparent that speedy transportation and communication was essential to keep the Capitol up-to-date on the goings on of the outlying districts. Yes, even the joke district that was 12.

Nowadays, the warehouse was used for everything from music performances to illegal trading. In a matter of years, Canary predicted, it would be the biggest black market in the district.

"I suppose… well, I suppose bread is bread," Canary's father said. "Thank you. Now let's eat."

Canary's father had a point. The warehouse wasn't always a safe place for a teenage girl. Besides, she was already on the peacekeepers' bad side, so they could make her life hell if they caught her doing something even slightly illegal. Most of the people in 12 were criminals. It was just a matter of who the military could be bothered to deal with.

Canary's father spent the next few minutes recounting his day in the mines. One of his co-workers, a guy named Albany, had just lost two children, and each of the miners brought him a coin in consolation. It was little financial help, but no cent was ever unwanted in District 12, and Albany accepted it gratefully.

"But there's good news, too."

Canary stopped chewing to get a good listen. As much as she hated fairytales, she loved good news.

"It's a butter day!"

He produced a small metal butter tin: a priceless treasure. Perhaps twice a month, if Canary's father did his work particularly well, he was rewarded with enough money for extra food. And it was always butter. Their favorite.

She picked up a knife and spread the butter, and it was rich and creamy and much better than anything provided by the tesserae, and for just a moment the father and the daughter forgot that they were hungry and poor.

"How much food do we have saved for tomorrow?" Canary asked.

"Not much," hummed her father.

She nodded. "I'm going shopping in the morning. I need some new boots. And maybe some sugar."

Her father was used to her wandering away from home in the mornings, but that didn't stop him from being nervous about it. "Be careful out there," he said.

They hugged before going off to bed, and Canary couldn't help noticing that their embrace lasted much longer than normal. Families were closer than ever around reaping time. They took nothing for granted.

Canary woke up with the sun. She slipped out of bed into her boots and pulled out the toy wagon filled with coins. Income from her old job laying bricks.

The dead silence of District 12 was both remarkable and eerie. The streets were normally packed at this hour: people rushing to the market, to the water pump. But today they were completely empty. No work or school today. Might as well catch up on your sleep. If you can.

Of course, the black market was still alive with movement. Canary approached a little food stall and purchased some bitter-looking but edible greens she knew her father would appreciate.

New shoes as well. Scratchy but functional, sold by Hale, the old shopkeeper who'd lost his kid to the Hunger Games a few years earlier. He wasn't a great shoemaker, but it wasn't like the citizens of 12 could afford to be picky. She left the market with a package of creamy butter, thinking about the smile it would put on her father's face. Today would be another butter day.

But first there was the reaping to worry about.

She stopped by home for a moment to pick up her father. "Don't be scared for me," Canary told him.

"Oh, I'm not." It was one of those moments his gruffness and playfulness shone through in equal proportion; the tone of his voice was hard to read.

The reaping balls, Canary noticed, were much fuller than last year. Probably because the people of District 12 were taking out so many tesserae. Canary had taken them every year for herself and her father. She knew kids at school who'd supported massive families for seven years by adding their names to the reaping over and over. The odds were not in their favor.

Before long, the square was full, and the escort appeared on stage. Dressed in a bright green, frilly dress. Canary giggled to herself at the thought of a giant green insect. The mayor of District 12 approached the microphone and said some introductory words.

"I will now list the past victors of District 12. There are no past victors of District 12," he intoned.

Then it was time for the escort to speak. "My name is Calliope Thunderbrook," she said. Calliope's voice was far too cheerful to be taken seriously. Her hair was too bright for anyone to look away from it. And her butt stuck out way too far for anyone to be at ease.

She clapped her hands over her head. "Let's get down to business. I'll pick a girl, then a boy. Are you ready?"

Dead silence.

"I said, are you ready?" she repeated. Someone cheered from within the crowd, probably just to make her get on with the reaping.

She reached her hand into the girls' reaping ball, and suddenly everyone was hoping and praying and whispering and begging that they would not be chosen.

The next thing Canary knew, she was lying on the ground, staring up at the face of a concerned girl her age. "Canary Roselock? Canary Roselock?" Calliope's voice boomed. "Where are you?"

It was too late to hide or run. The crowd had already cleared around her, recognizing her as the owner of the name that was being repeated with increasing volume.

"Canary Roselock! Come up here or we will find you!"

And the next thing she knew, she was standing on the stage, with only faint memories of the time it took her to walk there. She looked out on the square: the braids, the tattered clothes, the faces gasping and sobbing with relief. Her heart began to pound.

I may as well be dead right now.

Calliope asked her a few questions, and she responded halfheartedly, madly thinking of anything that would help her in the games. She was strong. She was a fast runner. She could – what – use a slingshot? She couldn't fire an arrow to save her life. Or use a sword. She had some hatchet skills. But would those really be useful in the arena? A knife would be quick to learn. Or maybe she should just give up right now.

"And now for the male tribute!" Calliope sang. But her voice sounded distant and distorted, like she was inside a fishbowl. "Ainsley Fuller!"

A dark-haired boy Canary barely recognized stumbled to the stage, his face twitching and contorting rapidly as he tried not to cry. And then the reaping was over.

Inside the Justice Building, her father visited her first. In tears. That made her heart skip a beat. She'd never seen her father cry before.

"I need you to make me a promise right now," he said.

"Anything."

He took a seat on the pristine purple couch, looking lost in thought. "Promise me you'll never give up fighting. Ever."

"I…"

She wasn't sure she could make that promise. Canary could be brave, yes, but she wasn't stupid. She knew there's a point where it's pointless to keep fighting.

"Dad, they're going to laugh at me." She thought about a squirrel fighting and flailing in a trap. "They'll play it over and over every year and laugh at me again."

"Promise me you'll never give up fighting," he repeated.

"I… I promise."

There was silence for a while. Words would only make a heavy situation even heavier.

After her father, there were no more visitors. She didn't know what she had been expecting. Her friends from school? The men her father worked with? No, they would never show. People in District 12 stayed out of the Capitol's business whenever possible. Only her father was willing to foray the danger of the Justice Building.

As she lay back on the couch, staring at the ceiling, she remembered the promise she'd made to her father. To never give up fighting.

That would be easier said than done. There would be tributes with twice her strength, kids who had spent years training for the games. Suddenly a bolt of panic struck her in the heart and she couldn't move. She was going to die right here, right now. The fear itself would destroy her from the inside out.

But Canary Roselock did not die right there. She just looking at the ceiling with all the determination and hopelessness and tact of her mind, and she savored the brief moment of silence.

The instant she entered the arena, Canary was swarmed with mosquitoes. There were thousands of them, attacking the tributes in droves, forming such a thick cloud overhead that the sky was almost completely obscured.

The muddy terrain between the pedestals and the cornucopia would be difficult, but not impossible, to traverse. Beyond the horn, she saw a small lake. She also heard a river rushing behind her. Beyond that, there was only dense jungle.

What Canary didn't know was that this was no ordinary jungle. It was infested with giant bugs: spiders as big as trucks, dragonflies the size of people, and deadly moths with the wingspan of planes. All of them were capable of killing or maiming the tributes.

But for now, the only threat on Canary's mind was the bloodbath. The decade-old question: to dive into the fray or to run for her life?

50, 49, 48, 47, 46.

The swarms of mosquitoes made it difficult to see clearly. By swatting them away, she formed a picture of the wooden hut cornucopia, and the supplies it contained: food, medicine, knives, hatchets:

Hatchets! She remembered all the days her neighbors had enlisted her to cut wood to help them construct new houses. In District 12, everyone helped their neighbors whenever they could. It was the unspoken law of a starving society. She thought of the feeling of swinging an axe, and suddenly she knew without a doubt that she wanted to head into the bloodbath.

30, 29, 28, 27.

Only thirty seconds left!

She used her hand like a visor to block out the sun and gazed around at the other tributes. Ainsley stood six pedestals away, trembling with fear. Canary was terrified too, but she wasn't exactly the trembling type. Her fears stayed internal.

Fortunately, none of the careers were near her. She noticed the boy from 6 was sandwiched between both of the tributes from 2. The odds were not in his favor.

Alright, Canary told herself. I can do it. I haven't been dealt a terrible hand. I just need to think quickly.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6.

Shit! The tributes were leaning forward on their pedestals, ready to pounce. When the horn rang, Canary's brain went blank of everything, even her instincts. Move! she told herself, and the next thing she knew she was thundering toward the cornucopia.

Tributes screamed around her, falling to the ground, kicking each other, breaking out into fist-fights and weapon fights. But she couldn't look back now. It was too late for regrets.

Yes! She scooped up the hatchet and swung it back and forth a few times. It fit perfectly in her grasp. The next thing she knew, her back was on fire. Something had pierced her. Whether it was an arrow or a blade she had no idea. Suddenly she was on her knees, heaving with pain.

But she was not defenseless. The girl from 2, Domitia, was a strong fighter, but Canary was bursting with adrenaline. Domitia was shocked by Canary's first few blows. One of them managed to disarm her of one of her throwing knives. However, she had an entire belt of the weapons; she was far from disarmed despite Canary's efforts.

The next few seconds passed in a blur. Domitia raised a knife, ready to strike; she froze in place, her eyes wide with shock; and she fell to the ground, a knife lodged in her back.

"Ainsley," Canary murmured, gaping gratefully at the boy who'd saved her life.

"That's me," he said shortly. "Now let's get moving."

They escaped into the jungle without speaking to each other. There were no words to adequately describe their situation.

"Thanks for… for saving my life back there," Canary said, finally breaking the silence.

"Don't worry about it." His voice was still shaking from fear. "Us tributes from 12 – we look out for each other."

It was true. They were the small district, the poor district, the joke district whose tributes always died in the first two minutes. Being put in the games bound District 12 tributes together like a contract. We are in this together, it seemed to say.

"I guess that's because we're both equally fucked," Canary said, trying to lighten up the situation.

"Don't talk like that," Ainsley said.

It wasn't true, she realized. The gamemakers had assigned her a six while Ainsley had only a three. She wanted to say something to cheer him up, but nothing could be said. There was little room for consolation in the arena.

The chorus of crickets began as soon as night fell: a roaring sound like a thousand electric motors running in unison.

"The crickets were never this loud in District 12," Ainsley noted.

"These aren't normal crickets," Canary explained ominously. "They can't be."

There were twelve faces in the sky that night: the boy from 2, both from 3 and 4, the girl from 5, the boy from 6, the girl from 7, both from 9, and the boys from 10 and 11. Only half of the tributes were left.

"The boy from 6…" Canary stammered. "I noticed him during the countdown. He was right between two careers."

Ainsley just nodded. "I saw what happened. As soon as the games started, they pounced on him. He was attacked from both sides at once."

"Hopeless."

"Yeah."

The gamemakers must have specifically wanted him to die, Canary thought. What could he have done? She wasn't sure. But rebels were never allowed to win the games. It was the single unspoken rule of the competition.

The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees after the death recap: either from actual nightfall or from the change in mood. "We should stop moving now," Canary said, noticing the fake moon in the distance. "They'll want us to tuck in so they can recap the first day without anything exciting happening in real time."

Ainsley nodded wordlessly. There weren't any obvious places to hide, so they came to a stop amongst the huge roots of a giant tree. It was sheltered down there – comfortable, even. Something she had never dared to hope for when she entered the arena.

"Homey," Ainsley muttered as they squirmed down between the roots.

"Should we set a watch schedule? Or just go to sleep?"

"We're both tired. It's only Day 1. I don't see the point of either of us staying up."

"Alright," Canary said.

They lay there in silence for a while, listening to the noises of the jungle. It should have been peaceful, but it wasn't. The crickets were too loud. The rustling of the leaves was more eerie than calming. And the air was so damp it felt physically heavy.

"I miss home," Canary whispered.

Ainsley didn't respond at first. Maybe he was asleep.

"Worrying about starving every day? Yeah, good times," Ainsley whispered back. So he was awake.

Canary was disgruntled by this. "Our families are there. They're probably watching us right now. Maybe even listening to us."

"I love my family," Ainsley said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "A mom who takes drugs all week and a dad who only shows up when he wants money."

Her stomach fell. "Ainsley…"

"Don't say you're sorry. We're all equals now. Any of us could die in here."

He was right. They couldn't afford to be sorry.

"Let's go to sleep now," Ainsley whispered. "We can worry about dying in the morning."

That was an ominous thing to say, Canary thought. "Goodnight. Thanks for… for helping me."

"You got it. Sweet dreams."

She slid down into the soil, resting her back against the cool earth and using the soft roots as armholds and a pillow. She thought of her father and the hanging tree and creamy butter, and soon a dark cloud of sleep enveloped her in its tendrils.

A mutt screeched in the distance.

"Did you hear that?" Canary cried out.

"Be quiet," Ainsley urged. He was right, and Canary instantly felt guilty. By this point in the games, the tributes were closer to each other than ever before. A single word spoken too loudly could spell their doom.

"Well, did you hear it?" She was growing frustrated.

"Yeah, I heard it. I didn't hear the last one but I heard this one."

They stood in silence for a minute or so, their weapons at the ready. It had been an entire week since Canary's hatchet felt blood. That was Day 2, when they were attacked by the giant dragonfly mutt. It almost killed both of them before she hacked open its abdomen with the small axe. From there, Ainsley damaged its wings using his knife, rendering it incapable of flight.

It had been a rather horrifying sight, Canary remembered, to watch the incapacitated dragonfly mutt squirm and thrash on the jungle floor. Not that she was being sympathetic. The creature was, after all, designed to kill her.

"Holy shit," Ainsley muttered. "I think I can see it."

They scurried up the forested slope to get a better view of the charging creature. It must have been fifty yards away: clicking, roaring, tearing up the vines and the undergrowth as it travelled over the forest floor.

"We can't run from it," Canary said. The moment she said it, she knew it was true. It was travelling too quickly.

Her heart was pounding as she readied her hatchet. Ainsley tucked one of his knives (courtesy of the sponsors) into her shoe, weakly smiling at her. "Are you ready?" he asked.

"Ready as I'll ever be."

Five seconds later, the enormous spider came careening out of the jungle. At the sight of the mutt, their faces both turned white. Its eight legs were long and black and hairy and covered with hooked barbs that looked deadly. Its demonic head was adorned with eight glittering black eyes and a mouth lined with vicious teeth.

The spider pounced, and Ainsley barely rolled out of the way before it ejected a shot of poison. Where the poison landed, the undergrowth sizzled and burned black.

"I'll attack it from behind!" Ainsley shouted. "Try to cut off its legs!"

Every cell in her body screamed for her to let the spider kill her, but that wouldn't do. She'd spent too many years devoted to maintaining her life to turn back now.

The mutt screeched as Ainsley's knife landed in its bulbous abdomen, and Canary took the opportunity to make her first attack. She landed the hatchet in one of its front legs, gagging as its itchy hairs floated into her mouth.

"Keep doing what you're doing!" Ainsley shouted.

"I can't!" Canary screamed. "It's moving too quickly!"

And she was right. The mutt adjusted remarkably well to the removal of half of its leg. It seemed to lean more toward the other side, as though counteracting the loss of limb. Of course. This was a super-intelligent creation of the gamemakers. No normal bug repellant could kill this spider.

Against the odds, she found the energy to keep fighting. She severed another one of its legs, narrowly dodging a jet of venom in the process. Ainsley was similarly successful, dealing enough damage to its backside to prevent it from moving.

The next thing Canary knew, she'd been knocked against a nearby tree trunk. There was nothing but darkness. She couldn't see. She couldn't hear. She was only vaguely aware of the earth touching her backside. She groggily looked downward and saw the poison sizzling on her right wrist.

The next ten minutes were filled with rapidly changing hallucinations. Purple bubbles, pits of churning earth; being swallowed and torn apart and reformed. The poison wasn't enough to kill her, no. But it was enough to send her to hell and back.

Ainsley sat with her the entire time, rocking her back and forth, gradually urging her out of her poisonous prison.

"Am I alive?" she whispered thirty minutes later, having finally found the strength to speak.

"Believe it or not." Ainsley awarded her with a rare smile. "And look, we've got a present."

The silver parachute landed in her lap. She was expecting food or medicine. Instead, there was only an empty glass jar.

"What the hell?" Ainsley opened the jar and felt around inside. "What's this for?"

"I know what it's for," Canary said.

"What? What?"

But Canary had fallen under again.

"What? Canary! Canary!" He grunted, shaking her body rapidly. She blinked and slowly sat back up, trembling like a leaf.

"It's for… gimme…"

She grabbed the jar and hobbled toward the massive spider corpse. She gripped the jar with one of her trembling hands and placed it under its big black fangs. Ainsley tugged on the fang like a faucet, filling the jar with sparkling black poison. Carefully, Canary screwed the lid on the jar.

Before she passed out again, Canary managed a weak smile.

"I know how we're going to kill the careers."

"Are you sure about this?" Ainsley asked.

"No," Canary admitted.

The two tributes fought through a tangle of vines, continuing their journey through the dense jungle. They were moving toward the cornucopia, weapons at the ready in case of an attack. But Canary's real weapon wasn't her hatchet. It was the jar of spider venom.

"Let's go over the plan one more time," Ainsley said. His voice was shaking with anxiety. Canary couldn't blame him; she was terrified too. But she wasn't the type to show it outwardly. "We set up the bonfire. The careers run to the bonfire. We mix the poison into their water supply. Then we run like hell."

"Pretty much."

So many things could go wrong. The careers could fail to notice the smoke, ending their plan before it even began. Or they could still be at the horn when the careers returned. But if a District 12 tribute was going to win, this was how. Canary knew it deep down somehow.

As evening fell, Ainsley and Canary started gathering firewood. Getting the first spark was the most frustrating process imaginable, but they persevered, and eventually they'd formed a lightly crackling fire.

Canary's stomach dropped. "What if someone found us right now? We would have to run. We should plan to meet up somewhere if we're ever scattered."

"The spot where we spent the first night," Ainsley suggested. "Next to the big rock cliff, where the moss is thick and the trees all have aboveground roots."

Canary nodded. This wasn't a great plan, but it was all they had.

She soon found herself procrastinating, dreading the moment the fire was finished and they would have to put their plan into action. But all too soon, the fire was finished, sending a broad trail of smoke into the moonlit sky. It would be unmissable.

Then the allies were barreling through the foliage, traveling in a curved path around the marshy cornucopia clearing. "You got the poison?" Ainsley asked. Canary nodded, holding up the jar of toxic fluid. It seemed to shimmer in the starlight like liquid obsidian.

They knelt at the edge of the cornucopia clearing. For the first few minutes, the plan went perfectly well. One career pointed to the trail of smoke, and another career excitedly followed him away into the jungle. Canary's heart pounded in her chest like a jackhammer.

"I saw two careers leave," Canary said, every word trembling violently. "Aren't there three careers left?"

"It's too late to turn back," Ainsley said. "Now we pray to the Hunger Games gods that this actually works."

They sprinted forth, travelling over the marsh as quietly as possible. Their footsteps sank into the mud, which made covering their tracks nearly impossible, but there just wasn't enough time to be any more secretive. Canary knelt inside the horn, hurriedly glancing over the rows of supplies and weapons.

There! The thermoses! She unscrewed the first one and poured the venom inside. Then the next one. And the next one.

"Canary!" Ainsley screamed.

The arrow came flying out of nowhere. Two seconds later, the brutish boy from District 2 was creeping out of the darkness, cackling. He was dragging an unrolled sleeping back between his legs. No, that wasn't a sleeping bag. That was Ainsley.

Panic seized all of Canary's veins, and she splashed the career boy with the venom. He led out a savage scream of agony as the toxin splattered over his skin, triggering his cannon almost instantly.

Now what to do? Every second felt like ten. Ainsley was probably hurt; he would need Canary's help to escape the cornucopia. But if her plan was to work at all, the dead body would have to be hidden somehow.

Make that two dead bodies. Because the poison had killed Ainsley too. Two cannon shots confirmed this.

She was too terrified to feel grief. By this point, the other careers were almost definitely suspecting some sort of trick. They would be heading back to the horn now. And if they found two dead bodies, they wouldn't exactly drink their water without checking it for poison first.

She grabbed Ainsley by the scruff of his neck like a kitten and dragged him into the open, retching in disgust. She did the same from the boy from 2.

Please hurry. Please hurry, she urged the hovercraft that collected the dead bodies.

By the time the bodies were gone, the other careers had returned to the horn. She could see their silhouettes in the distance as she slipped back into the jungle. She hoped the darkness would keep them from noticing her footsteps until they had been naturally hidden.

An hour later, there were two more cannon shots. The careers had drunk the poisoned water. Canary's plan had worked – but at a terrible cost.

As she sprinted through the forest, not even bothering to be quiet, she realized something was wrong. The smell of the air, the swarms of mutts running in the same direction, the faint crackling noise coming from the distance…

Her bonfire had spread out of control. The jungle was on fire.

Ten years later, Canary Roselock, the victor of the tenth annual Hunger Games, sat on her couch in the Victor's Village. Her father embraced her tightly as she burst into tears.

She still re-watched her games every year. From the reapings to the training center to the interviews to the games themselves. She watched the bloodbath where she hastily allied with Ainsley because he saved her life.

The tributes from 1 and 2 didn't do much fighting the first few days, simply because the giant insect mutts were such a big distraction. On Day 3, an enormous praying mantis attacked the careers, forcing them to stay at the cornucopia because they were all injured.

All the while, the cameras showed Ainsley and Canary traipsing through the trees, fending off mutts and gradually forming their plan to poison the careers' water. The only scene the movie showed in its entirety was the killing of the spider mutt. There was just too much juicy action to cut anything out of the film.

The forest fire that the 12s started by accident killed three tributes, scorching nearly half the rainforest before the gamemakers extinguished it with some heavy rain. Then there were only five tributes left, all crammed into the small area of the jungle that hadn't been burned away.

With the lack of any careers, deaths were slow. The boy from 5, who was armed with a knife, made two kills in the following week, cutting down the boy from 7 and the girl from 8 with impressive skill for a tribute of his size.

By Day 20, it was apparent that the final three tributes would not keep the action going without being provoked. While Canary and the boy from 5 were armed, the other tribute, the tiny girl from 10, was not. To remedy this, the gamemakers supplied her with a belt of knives.

Later that day, the gamemakers sicced a pack of dog-sized mosquitoes onto the boy from 5. He fought hard to fend them off but was ultimately overwhelmed. It all came down to the girls from 10 and 12. The next day, Day 21, the gamemakers sent deadly moth mutts after both of the tributes, driving them toward the cornucopia.

"They want us to kill each other, don't they?" said the girl from 10 as Canary came into earshot.

"I guess so," Canary said, her voice full of pain. That face had already seen too much.

It was the last thing from a fair fight. Neither of them were exactly careers, but Canary was faster and stronger than the tiny girl from 10 could ever be. In a matter of moments, the little girl was lying on the ground, groaning with pain as blood spurted out of the hatchet wound in her chest.

Canary could hardly bear to watch as she slowly died. "Just get it over with!" the little girl urged.

"I can't…"

"Yes you can!"

"What's your name?" Canary asked.

"Kill me! Wait…" Her face began working elaborately. "My… my name is Daisy. Daisy Kind."

Canary froze. "It's a nice name."

"Thanks. Now kill me!"

"Daisy…"

"Kill me!"

Canary obliged. The symphony of trumpets sounded, and the girl from District 12 was declared the victor.

The ten-years-older Canary sobbed in her father's arms. "I never learned any of the other tributes' names," she moaned. "Only Ainsley and that girl Daisy."

"It's okay, baby girl. It's okay," her father whispered.

"It's not okay."

And it wasn't. Her father knew it. It was all he could do to hold her close and love her with all his heart and pray to some long-lost god that things would be alright.

"I guess I hoped it would be easier to kill them if I never learned their names," Canary proposed. "But it wasn't. I've never been the same."

"Canary…"

"I'm so scared, Dad. Every day I try to be the same girl I was before my games. But I can't be her. And I never will be. She's gone."

"I still see her when I look in your eyes."

That gave her pause. "Well, I don't feel her inside."

When the movie was finished, she and her father turned into bed. After his final statement, she wasn't really in the mood for any more consolation. Her father understood that. Sometimes everyone just needs to be alone.

She lay in bed thinking of the terrible things she'd seen, the mental scars that would never heal. Suddenly the song began playing in her head. The song the mayor sang as he walked to his execution. The song of the war, the song of death. The song that never left her memory no matter how hard she tried to forget it.

The night is young, so don't be late,

And come into the tree.

The knotted necklace still remains here

Calling you to me.

The strangest things did happen here,

But death can set you free.

Just come and meet me late at night

Inside the hanging tree.

As she rocked herself to sleep, she imagined herself swinging back and forth, noosed up in the sprawling willow. The scariest part was that it wasn't a hard thing to imagine.

List of Victors

District 1 (2 Victors): Luxor Dodge (1st), Citrine Whitacre (9th)

District 2 (2 Victors): Tyrell Crowley (3rd), Lancaster Percy (6th)

District 3 (0 Victors):

District 4 (0 Victors):

District 5 (1 Victor): Electra Wilty (4th)

District 6 (1 Victor): Jaguar Stratton (7th)

District 7 (1 Victor): Rowan Dobson (2nd)

District 8 (1 Victor): Georgio Bronte (8th)

District 9 (0 Victors):

District 10 (0 Victors):

District 11 (1 Victor): Bluebell Singer (5th)

District 12 (1 Victor): Canary Roselock (10th)