A month before Reaping Day.


A sour mug of coffee cools by Kieran's elbow as he turns through pages. The laminated fluttering is hard to tolerate. There's a reason the Foundation's records can't be stored on a tablet- can't risk compromise, slipping every detail of this officially-forbidden operation to the first opportunistic dataminer- but the least they could do is invest in some cardstock.

The noise isn't really the problem. Kieran is...not satisfied. Out of his seven Volunteer candidates, nobody is lighting a spark. The girls are eighteen, lethal and beautiful as avalanches, staring out of their files with the unspoken challenge. Choose me.

The problem is-

District Two hasn't had a Victor since Augur in the Fifty-Second. That means something. Years of unprepared outliers, a One, and two Fours, while the Foundation's finest eat the dirt. Is Two out of favor? The outer districts sneer at the bad luck. What reason is there to mourn when Two is tasting defeat? Welcome to the club.

But they're outer districts, and any win they can scrape up is already from luck. This is eight years of Volunteers wasted: sixteen children trained their entire lives just to die on accident.

They haven't been good enough. He hasn't been good enough.

Kieran rubs the bridge of his nose. Pallas's file lists her top scores in acting and showmanship, a wicked hand with a battleaxe, and a smile that could melt concrete. Jericho is huge, with a deadlift record and three flawless unarmed kill tests. Erin is laconic and patriotic, Patina is harrowingly unhinged. Kieran's mentored five and saved none- he knows all these stories.

He shakes his head, belatedly checks on his coffee, and rises to dump it down the drain. He's pored over these files for hours into the night. The pale crescents are puffy under his eyes. He's far past the stage when his mentor was constantly at hand to ground him, besides the fact that he insisted he didn't need it, but sometimes it would be a safety net to have her close. Antonia's at work in the Capitol this year, and there is nothing between him and freefall.

In Two, mentoring is a choice. Mentoring is a closer responsibility than raising a child. Any reckless highschooler can drink theirself blind and make a mistake that will embitter them for nearly two decades. A mentor chooses a candidate to throw their entire soul into saving from the deadliest month out of a year; if they pull a Victor, they get to pick up the pieces for the rest of their life. He can never repay what he owed to his five Volunteers, but he can't make their sacrifice a waste.

He runs his fingers forcefully through the sheet of his unkempt hair, trying to think. What is he missing?

The Capitol has been enjoying their outliers. There's only one thing in them that a Career can't match. Authenticity. When you've trained for your angle and your interviews and every predicted kind of arena since you were eight, it's hard not to make it look easy. Too perfect. Is it pathos they want? A sense of humbleness?

Human Careers.

Kieran pinches his chin, gritty with shadow. He goes for a different file buried under the paperwork. Non-candidates. Seventeen years old.

There's only the glimmer of something else in here. They're still polished and crafted, with the calculated confidence of teenagers who have already killed. Maybe there's less arrogance, but all it comes down to is less experience. The rest of the Pack will be at the top of their game. He turns the pages with receding hope. The best thing to do would be to choose an actual candidate. Refine the angle. Try harder. With a face like Pallas's, authenticity will hardly be...

A girl's face catches him with a focus so bright it sears. The name is Aurelia. Kieran peers closer in some disbelief. She can't be seventeen.

But she is, barely. No mock-arena exam. Only two kill tests. And she's plain. This isn't bloody One, where every Volunteer looks like they came out of a perverted scientist's test tube, but her records will have to be something remarkable if she's made it to this tier. The Capitol wants them good on camera.

The records do match. Under her thin face and imperfect teeth, the stolidity of upturned brown eyes, she's unbeaten even in the tier above her with a shortsword. She has dexterity and composure, but low marks in acting. The Foundation's had trouble sticking her to an angle. She's loyal to them, without a doubt, but her dedication to the Capitol gets fuzzier. He can't risk this. He'd be throwing her to the sharks with weights on her legs and expecting her to swim. He would do better with Pallas. She's good enough to act genuine.

He closes up the file. He stares fruitlessly at Pallas and her dangerous, breathtaking smile. She knows she's supposed to be the choice this year. They both know it. He opens the younger file again.

Aurelia. She's not tiny, and there's no baby fat in her cheeks, but they're not sculpted. Her solemn, youthful concentration sticks into him. No vicious or alluring angle for her, but One nearly always provides that. She won't play easy and loose like a Four. Jupiter always picks his boys loyal and quarry-carved. Could there be a niche for this?

If it fails, it'll fail drastically. He won't be mentoring again for years. The little girl who thought she could hack it in the big leagues will be murdered with the indignity of an outlier, bringing shame back on the Foundation.

If she wins, Two still can't ever play this again. It's practically treachery to the Pack. If she's human, what does that make them? The Careers are monsters that distract the districts from the source behind the Games. In the Forty-Fourth, Kieran shattered the back of the Seven girl's head with a crossbow bolt, and that principle kept him ice-impassive before her district's burning hate.

Aurelia dies earlier than any Two should place. Or she lives, and Kieran's next candidate is doomed on principle. He can't throw off Snow's formula without the consequences. And which of those consequences come down on her too?

"Shit," he whispers. His thumb brushes over her printed forehead in some sort of apology. Whatever this girl entered the Foundation for, whatever she thought she would make of her life, she will not be expecting this year to be hers.

He's going to have a hell of a time convincing the committee of this one.


Jupiter Grantforth is wearing a timber wolf's mask, an enveloping trenchcoat, and four pounds of concealed weaponry, but he is not having a good time. He hopes to Snow that the encroaching puddle in front of his feet is not what it looks like. A gaggle of women wearing nothing more substantial than glitter have already offered him various drugs if he'd come and dance with them. You're younger than my daughter, he said, firmly pressed into the back of the velvet lounge seat. The strobes pulsed violet, magenta, indigo. When the ringleader giggled and swayed, he could see the dilation of her pupils behind her mouse mask's gray mesh. I could be your daughter tonight.

The sooner he can get on with this appointment, the better. Of course it couldn't be in the lobby of a hotel or a private residence. He's got to be kept waiting at the bottom of Cicero. He has been here long enough to reluctantly order a basket of quail wings and a miniature pumpkin stewed with chestnuts. If they think he's going to risk anything from the bar, they'll be waiting till a blizzard hits Ten. The chaise creaks under him as he scans for the host. How is anyone supposed to keep track with all these masks? The incessant light and noise are supposed to disorient him, he can tell that much. But he's no fresh Victor running on painkillers and too much adrenaline. He's the Twenty-Ninth. He's a Two. He weathers.

He's earned the right to weather in a private office, is all. Maybe one with some air conditioning. The humidity in here makes his beard itch.

"Mr. Grantforth?"

The voice comes from behind him. Maybe he's supposed to be awed that they recognized him so easily, but he's not fooled. The coat can only do so much to conceal his muscle mass. He turns to them. A slight figure in a green hummingbird mask and cloaking robes is perched by the armrest. Jupiter nods gruffly.

"We heading someplace private?"

The person cocks their head for him to follow up the steep, spiraling stairs. If he'd taken any sort of drug, he'd be fighting for his balance. He plods without a falter. His host ascends rapidly. Three floors up. Five floors. Six floors. The air coming through the door on his right is shockingly hot, and something is squealing like a pig, chased by laughter that echoes in the stairwell. The lighting is brighter up here. Nine floors. The light on the tenth floor is all red, and there's no noise. The eleventh floor smells like copper. The thirteenth smells overpoweringly of cleaning fluid. His host stands back as a fox-masked man comes through the door with a full bag over his shoulder and passes without a word. Jupiter can't see anything in the room but wet floors before the door swings shut.

"Mr. Grantforth," the hummingbird prompts him.

"I'm still coming." He rubs the cramp in his thigh and keeps moving up.

One of the doors is pressurized shut, with something pink and powdery concealing the windowplate. He can hear songbirds behind another door, and there is an enrapturing, floral-loamy scent, as though it holds a forest clearing. Traces of soil are scuffed on the step. Behind the next door is a slight ringing sound that makes him double over with dizziness. He catches himself on the railing, shuts his eyes, and drags himself higher until the floor doesn't feel like the ceiling anymore. Behind the next door a girl is screaming, ragged with hysteria, and calm voices are speaking over her. There are more and more doors. Jupiter breathes through his mouth, buries himself in the purpose of his appointment and the clean smell of the mountains, and he keeps climbing.

His host stops outside an unremarkable door. There are still floors above this, lit so brightly he has to squint. He can't make out the number of them. The hummingbird swipes their card and allows him into the room.

It's a sleek, modern office with several screens, comfortable chairs, and a bartop. Finally air-conditioned- the contrast of the cold is like a slap. Windows overlook the Capitol below them. Jupiter hadn't realized they were this high up. All the buildings are so bright. It's the city that never sleeps, and the miniature squiggling dots of so many automobiles do it justice.

"Have you ever seen it from this vantage before, Mr. Grantforth?" the host inquires. They pour a glass of bright emerald absinthe and take a seat in an office chair. Their feet barely reach the floor. The voice comes through a modulator, refined to a calming neutral tone. Nobody knows who the host of Cicero is. If anyone does, it hasn't leaked, and rewards are offered by the most prestigious networks in terms of millions. "I consider it an invaluable perspective."

"Never seen it like this before, no. Not high up very often. Hovercraft for my Games was shielded." Jupiter lowers into the seat before them with a twinge in his back. It's an odd thing for a Career, the spectre of age. Any time past eighteen is a blessed gift. You don't really expect you'll have to start thinking about arthritis. He mentally adds on to his exercise regimen back at the Village. Imagine a Two taken out by a staircase. "I understand you have business in mind, Cicero?"

"Do you see that bright building with the transparent floors to our southeast?"

He squints one eye. "Yeah. The Governor of Tesserae lives there."

"She's holding a party for Adrian Waller now. I hear the theme is aquatic. Kaito Ebihara has also made an appearance." They're smelling the absinthe, swirling it beneath their long beak. Of course there's no means to drink it without revealing their mouth. There are companies and persons of interest who would sponsor Jupiter for the entirety of the Games if he came to them with hard evidence.

"Our business concerns them, as well as others," the hummingbird says pleasantly. "I would like for you to make contact with the mentors from District Four, and the mentors Killian Corke from Six, Amber Lindell from Seven, and Corazon Ceylon from Twelve. You will inform them that an act of drastic significance is fomenting among rebel extremists, who intend to effect it during the month of the Games. You must ensure that they receive these invitations."

They splay a set of cream-colored cardstock tickets between their gloved fingers. The directions are each labeled with a different name and time. As though playing a role for a magic trick, Jupiter draws them and folds them into his wallet.

"Do these instructions surprise you?" They tilt their head, too, like a bird.

"They don't. I know there are mentors who make private meetings with each other where they can't be surveilled- outer districts, middle districts. Some of them talk nearly seditious under our noses. There's been pings traced into sealed data about the Nineteenth. You wouldn't know which set of mentors was coming into the Capitol if the President hadn't set it up for a reason."

They laugh and clap twice, softly muffled. The motion is uncannily stilted. "Mentors proven loyal and aware will be welcomed to conference in due time. The reward for your continued service will be momentous for your chosen tribute as well as yourself."

"We're not trusting all these ones on the tickets, are we? I could say we're safer with Four, but I wouldn't vouch for the Six."

"We are not to trust them. There are most certainly plants in our circle. What would you advise as the course of action?"

He knocks the desk with his fist. "Flush them out."

"A marvelous plan, Mr. Grantforth," the host says merrily. Now they are completely still. The glass is suspended in their hand without a twitch. "It has been my pleasure to conduct business with you on behalf of our nation. As always, I will be available at a call."

They shake hands over the desk. Jupiter finds himself searching the mesh that conceals their eyes. Imagine if he pulled away the mask. It would be the work of a moment. Can they sense his curiosity? Something glitters behind the hummingbird eyes before they release.

"Mr. Grantforth?" they say once more as he reaches for the doorhandle. "If you wish, you may use the elevator located to my northeast."

He presses his tongue between his teeth until he feels a pop of pain. "Much appreciated, Cicero."

He can see nothing behind the mask, and their head never turns, but he knows they are watching him leave.


(Bit of a plot-focused chapter- I hope it holds up! Thank you so much to my readers, reviewers, and submitters. Your interest and feedback mean a great deal to me.)

((If you can tell me what the layout/description of the Cicero building is a classical literary reference to, I will be delighted! c; ))