One week before Reaping Day.


By luck, Easton killed a little girl and a boy half his size again; he found a trickle of water to suck from a crack in the stone, and outlasted the final Four who had the Capitol salivating into their cocktails, because the guy was too wounded to drag a canteen to his mouth. It's safe to say Easton hadn't been the pick of the litter. It's accurate to say he was dosed so high on his Victory Tour that he couldn't have picked out the faces of Marco's family if they'd vaulted the stage to tear his arms off. Maybe it's cruel to say that he rewatched him dying as the train sped away. Marco's tongue shriveled and poking in and out like a turtle's head, unable to moisten his lips. The tight, sick sheen of his skin in hi-def. Panning shots of his shirt glued to the ground with blood once he was too weak to roll over. That was the boy who was supposed to kill him. And he'd been wholly ready for it, tucked into his crevice with his hands over his face. It wasn't supposed to be his finale. When the trumpets blast, you can see the pure shock on him. It's two minutes until he starts to unfold himself, waiting for the trap. The catch.

Now he twists little statues out of wire on a live feed for Capitolites. All teenagers. Apparently they find his narration relaxing. It's ten in the evening, and his viewer count is in the low hundreds. Life is very weird.

"We're gonna twist this little bit into a loop, and we're gonna slide that through. Bunny ears," he says gently. "It's going great. And I'll fix its tail here. Not round enough. We can't, um, have with that. Careful and don't pinch your fingers."

Someone pings in an inappropriate comment about what else he could do with his fingers. Three indignant commenters shut them down right away. Easton murmurs some form of appreciation, tucks his knee under his chin, and continues to form the bunny. His viewer count remains solid until he signs off and heads to the room down the hall.

"I think young people in the Capitol don't like the Games," he tells Aldera, who stares at him with a sort of alarmed pity, as though there is a contagious mold growing out of his face.

"I think the second highest viewership block is the thirteen to mid-twenties demographic. Because I got the newest mentor brochure in days ago." She taps on it in the pocket of her chair. "Almost all the ads are geared for them- visit famous arenas and dress up for reenactments, learn sword-fighting from real training instructors. All the trivia games. Cartoon shows with guest spots. 'What Victor are you most like?' quizzes."

"Oh, reliable sources. One of those quizzes told me I was a dead match for Zachary Still." He half-grins at her. The corner of her mouth curls, but her grave attention hasn't fully receded. With an air of magnanimity, she gestures to the neat periwinkle coverlet of her bed. Easton flops backward and rucks it up instantly. She rolls herself away from her desk and brains him with a pillow until he's barricaded his face behind his arms.

"My parents are asleep," she hisses. Easton muffles his snort. "I'm serious. I told them you'd be going home by nine."

"I guess they still think I might crawl in and cut their throats."

He glances down. Maybe not as light as he was aiming for. Aldera's knuckles slip to her cheek. Something frigid seeps into the brief warmth of the air.

"It's not like that. Not as much anymore. They used to lock the doors because of me, too, E." She tugs through a knot in her short black hair. "They don't let me cook anything. I used to think they were just being helpful, because it's harder to reach things, but...I realized they don't want to risk me poisoning them. Like I used the toadstools just for fun. Like it turned me into a serial killer."

Easton folds the pillow under his chin, regarding his friend. Their conditions made them practically sibling Victors, her year right after his own. There are not a lot of other people they can talk to.

"I hate how much they hold us accountable. We were fifteen," she says. "We couldn't even drive motor vehicles."

"You can't even drive one now."

Bereft of pillows, Aldera calls him a son of a bitch and guiltily covers her mouth. Easton is repressing laughter. Friendship's pretty alright. He never made a lot of those in school.

Nineteen and eighteen. Both of them should still have been in school. In another world, the most interesting thing that's happened to Easton Watts is a fried circuit in the lab and an emergency defibrillation. His grandfather doesn't step around him like he's a bomb about to go off, and his deadbeat cousin doesn't creep to the gates of the Victors' Village day after day, asking humbly for another bill paid off, another grand to cover his ass in the betting rings, come on, you can afford it, man, you earned it, you can afford anything. And over there, Aldera never knew the smell of an ancient pine forest or the bloody foam forced through a flattened windpipe. She chatters with the popular girls, and she still walks, with unconscious, unthought grace in her steps.

"I think young people in the Capitol don't like the Games," he says. Aldera quiets down. The nervous twitch under her eye is evident as a signpost. In some of the outer districts, the superstitious old folks say that Snow can hear you when you talk treason, can watch your every move if you've been bad. In Three, they know it's no superstition. Easton scans for bugs every weekend and plays a static feed while he sleeps.

"They like the Victors. They like us. Not the Games."

"But they're obsessed with the Games. The merchandise isn't just about us. Stuffed mutts, holo-game simulations. 'Have lunch with a real Gamemaker' fundraisers. They can't get enough of it."

"Okay, maybe. It's fun for them. But I think a lot of them still have empathy for tributes. While they're still the same age as us. Their parents know we're just district trash. The kids think we might actually be real people like them. And they like the Victors the most because they get to follow us long enough to prove it."

"But how does that matter? Is that supposed to mean something?" She frowns. With Easton's help, she boosts herself out of her wheelchair and sits on her bed against the wall. Her thin legs are ashen next to Easton's milk-pale. "They're not going to do anything about it."

"You remember them teaching about the uprising during the Nineteenth?"

"The one with just three districts that lasted for a week, blew up the Head Gamemaker's house and a hotel, and got all the rebel families massacred?"

"I didn't say it was a long uprising. Listen, those were the only things they told us in school. 'Lasted a week, detonated two buildings, killed the rebel families.' But I've been researching it for months now. I've been looking for its connection to the Capitol. And the people who actually got blown up there." He eyes her cautiously. "They tell us district nutcases did it, because they have to. But two locations isn't a shoddy achievement for Nine, Eleven, and Twelve. I know they were involved. Some of them got caught in the Capitol. But you can't infiltrate the Head Gamemaker's place without inside people. And they tell us the hotel was random terrorism, but so many things are actually pointing to-"

"Stop."


Aldera's shaky voice dips below a whisper. She presses a finger to Easton's mouth.

"Stop. You've been working on this with Pascale, haven't you?"

Three's first Victor. The way she went off, people guessed Pascale might be Three's final Victor. There's a reason they use arena forcefields now, even at enough power expenditure per week to charge Panem for a year. There's a reason natural gas smothered her family before she could ever come home. And there's nothing anyone can use to shut her up now. The cool, relentless words of veiled sedition and the clouded anglerfish eyes...

Easton's never been able to lie to her. Aldera can see the twinge of guilt cross through him.

"You can't listen to her. Do you understand me? She's giving you this- this treason, and these conspiracies, and she doesn't have anything to lose. You do. And you two wanted to spring this on me right before we go to the Capitol? So we could pick up her game? Maybe try for another Nineteenth?" Aldera harshly wipes her eyes. "Got some civilian centers in mind? The only thing I'm going to do is mentor my tribute. And you'll have your first one. That's what you should be researching."

His brow twists with pain. "So the plan is to do that every year, for the rest of our lives. Scrape together a tiny chance to bring a kid home. Maybe one or two every twenty years. That's all we get."

"Yes. Maybe. Do you think I like any of this? I know it isn't fair. It's not- this isn't the right time to even think about this. Maybe after-" She cups her hand over her mouth. "Maybe after Snow dies, when there's upheaval, and they're tearing each other apart for the position, there'll be enough unrest to make a move. But that won't be for decades. He's too powerful. You think he can't account for any of these records being uncovered? You want to reveal this to the Capitol- a conspiracy theory about a frame job, right? He'll make sure it never gets out. Nobody will hear it or believe it. You know what happens after that?"

She exhales, resting her head against the wall. It's sky-blue. She wanted blue in her home. There's little enough of it over the light pollution in the district and the Capitol, and the pines were too dense to catch more than glimpses. She remembers lying broken on her back under the great branch. A wet, cold numbness radiating from her waist, seeping downward. Something was horribly wrong with her legs. Her feet. And the stifled blood pushing through the Career's clenched teeth, her purple face turned to Aldera. She couldn't look at that. She tipped her head back to find the sky while she died. Just a glint of it.

The trees blew back in a circle above her, and the sunlight turned the grass into silver. The blue of noon was the clearest thing she had ever seen. And the hovercraft dropped a ladder to her, and a claw to pull away the branch that paralyzed her. And Aldera Steel was still alive.

"Snow would kill you, and your grandparents, and your cousins. If I were culpable, in any way at all, he might kill my parents and my sister. But not me." A tiny noise twists in her throat. "In nine years, he could Reap my niece, so I could watch her die knowing that I had it coming the whole time."

"It's like that for all of us," Easton says softly. "It's not just me and Pascale. You don't know how many-"

"Don't tell me. Don't tell me any of them." Her jaw tightens. "I'm not going to turn you in if you want to play this. I will not be involved. But they could still question me. Don't make me culpable. Please don't do that to me."

He smooths the hills and valleys of her rumpled coverlet. It's an imperfect job. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay." A corrosive lode of dread is lodged in her stomach. "You should go home, E. Don't talk to me about this anymore. Tomorrow I'll go over the sponsor catalogue with you."

"All right. You should get your sleep."

"I'd better. Dad's waking me up early for pancakes." She cracks an uneven smile. Easton mostly returns it. "Mind the table manners and he might let me invite you over."

"I wouldn't miss it."

Aldera watches him through the window blinds as he leaves. The light flicks off on his porch. The upstairs one flicks on. His silhouette moves around unrestfully in there. It's so small. They call him the tribute who never grew up, who makes rabbits and cats out of wire, and earnestly displays all the hundreds of them that his little fanbase sends him. She knows he really appreciates them. He couldn't lie about it if he tried.

The tribute who will probably never grow up.

A taller silhouette moves past the frame with him, and Aldera watches the conspiracy of Easton and Pascale early into the morning, until the hazy dawn colors of the sky find her shuddering with nightmares on the windowsill.