Reprisal: The 329th Hunger Games (Closed SYOT) Chapter 7: Reapings: Twelve, Nine and Ten, a hunger games fanfic

TW/CW: Fahad's POV includes mentions of alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual implications, and an extremely brief reference to suicide. Mare's POV also includes mentions of sexual implications. See my note at the end of the chapter for details on my trigger/content warning policy.

Nikita Valeta, 18

Peacekeeper Barracks, Twelve

D12M

July 1, 329 AEDD

There were some days that Nikita Valeta didn't care for being a Peacekeeper, and this was one of them. Normally he found his job tolerable, even enjoyable. He didn't miss the Academy, but he did miss District Two. He missed the way that, even though he was rather unpopular among his peers, the trainers would praise his progress to the extreme. He missed the way that, even though he was something of an outcast as an individual, people would whisper to one another as he walked by, saying, "There goes Nik Valeta!" or "He's sure to be our male Volunteer in a year or two!" and sometimes even "He'll blow us all away someday. That boy was born to bring District Two glory!" Most of all, he missed the way that, even though he was mocked ceaselessly, nobody spat on his shoes or clutched their children tighter as he passed by.

Nikita Valeta knew so much more now, thanks to his injury. He had been one of the most promising students at Morrow Academy when he was sixteen, coming early to lessons and staying to practice long after they had finished. He had spent every free minute training, or reading books about training, or getting advice about training, because he knew that it was the only way to earn the coveted position of District Two Male, going off proudly to seek fame and fortune in the shining Capitol.

He'd pushed himself so far, was so hard on himself in hopes that the extra effort would give him an edge, but he wound up pushing himself too far and going over it instead. He remembered every bit of it: the sudden explosion of pain in his ankle, frantic voices yelling over one another, a ride to the hospital in a fancy white car, and then the doctor informing him that he'd torn his ACL and wouldn't be able to engage in any strenuous physical activity until it was fully healed, which would take several months. Nikita had nervously asked the doctor what he considered several months to mean. He'd been so brave; he'd refused to cry no matter how much it hurt because he was strong, and because he was destined for greatness, and because everybody knew that Careers didn't cry. "Six to ten," the doctor said. Nikita had protested that he couldn't be out of commission for that long, couldn't fall behind in training, but the doctor had stood firm. "I'm sorry, son. There will be no training until you're fully healed." That's when Nikita had finally allowed himself to break down and cry. Careers didn't cry, but Nikita wasn't a Career anymore.

He knew the talk was coming, but he still wasn't ready for Grant Morrow to sit down at his bedside and deliver the terrible news. Unfortunately, it didn't matter if he was ready, because Grant Morrow was going to sit down at his bedside and deliver the terrible news regardless. There was a rule that every Academy followed, Morrow Academy included, and it was this: if a student was unable or unwilling to attend training for a length of time in excess of three calendar months, they would be unenrolled and their spot would be given to someone on the waiting list. Even though Nikita understood that it was a fair and necessary rule, considering that the Academy could only accept a certain number of students, and that it did so on a first-come-first-serve basis, and that he would be outraged if he were next on the waiting list but his rightful spot was kept open for someone who wouldn't show up at all for half a year, it didn't make him any less angry and disappointed. He was a complete failure. He'd ruined his chances at a future, and even worse, it was his own fault.

What's more, because he was zoned for Morrow, he couldn't enroll in any of the other Academies, couldn't even be put on their waiting lists. No, he lived in the eastern part of District Two. To the west there was Treek, Aragon lay to the north, Slade was for the southerners, and Floy sat smack-dab in the middle, for those who lived in the center of town. He tried to make it in anyhow, and, desperate for a chance to prove himself, even showed up at the gates to Floy Academy on his crutches to bargain with the Victors who ran it. The Floys were a dynasty of Quarter Quell Victors. The latest in their line was Petra Floy, who had won the 325th Hunger Games only four years earlier. Her parents, Ethan and Izzy Floy, had won the 300th Hunger Games together. Her grandfather, Sargon Floy, had won the 275th Hunger Games. Her great-grandfather, Marduk Floy, had won the 250th Hunger Games. Ethan was the one in charge of the Academy, but even though he had expressed his sympathies, he turned Nikita down. But then Petra had pulled him aside. "You should speak to Vallis Albertine," she suggested. "He's a Peacekeeper commander, and he's on the hunt for new recruits. The outer districts aren't toeing the line as well as they used to, and he's going to be deployed at the head of a platoon in a couple of years."

"Well, I like District Two!" he had huffed, "And I'm not leaving it!" In hindsight, he was awfully petulant, but that hadn't occurred to him in the moment.

"I think it would give you some purpose. And they say the country air is good for you. I won't force you to do anything, but I at least want you to pay him a visit. Okay? Here, I'll write down the address for you." Nikita had promptly discarded the note as soon as he had gotten home, and then spent three more days adamantly insisting that he would be reinstated before he reevaluated his options and, shame-faced, dug it out of the trash.

And then Vallis had offered him a deal too good to pass up: if he healed up nicely and still had decent functioning in his ankle, he'd go to boot camp for a year. If he graduated in the top ten percent of his class, he'd receive an officership, and if he made the top five percent, he would receive a promotion to Deputy Lieutenant that came with a fat raise to boot. And the salary he would earn was already more than his parents' incomes combined. He'd receive free food, transport, and lodgings. Uniforms and gear were to be provided by the Capitol. He could communicate with his family via letters that would be carried by Peacekeeper train at no cost whatsoever. Peacekeepers were normally deployed at nineteen, but because of the urgent demand, eighteen-year-olds were being deployed. And because he would be deployed at eighteen, he only had three years of mandatory service, and if he decided to stay for longer, they'd throw in an all-expenses-paid week-long vacation to District One.

Of course he took the job. His mother (oh, how he missed her! Inessa Valeta made sure her boy was the happiest in all of Panem, even though he had missed out on his chance of ever becoming a Victor) had nursed him back to health, but not only that, she had also made sure he was entertained while he was bedridden. He followed the doctor's instructions religiously, and Inessa spent the whole time reading to him about Peacekeeper and military strategy. She read him the manuals for firearms and stun batons, and the handbooks for every rank from Cadet to Head Peacekeeper of the District, and the biographies of successful Head Peacekeepers throughout history. Maybe most importantly, she had forced his siblings to treat him nicely (ever since she caught Grisha blowing a kazoo at him from just out of arm's reach) and then tearfully bade him goodbye as he boarded the train with a trunk containing all the possessions in the world that he would have in District Twelve.

He was his class's valedictorian. He had snapped up the Deputy Lieutenant position and the accompanying raise. He was competent and reasonable, and that combination of skills had shot him to the top of the rankings almost immediately. For the first time in a long time, he felt valued. But he wasn't thought of nearly as highly when he reached his destination. Nikita was never popular in District Two, but he was even less so in District Twelve. Maybe the kids at the Academy didn't care for the way he enunciated his t's. Maybe they found that his heavy eyebrows and soft jawline and sharp chin made him look strange and out of place. Or maybe they were just mean-spirited in their youth, picked him at random to make fun of, and never quite forgot his inferiority, even as they grew out of their petty playground squabbles. Whatever the case, he didn't fit in while in Two. He soon learned that he stuck out even more in Twelve.

The people there regarded him as one of the nicer Peacekeepers. They had learned that he was willing to look the other way for minor offenses, and that he didn't particularly care if they committed the occasional infraction so long as it wasn't hurting anybody. But they never forgot that even a nice Peacekeeper was still a Peacekeeper, and he still had plenty of power over them, even if he chose not to show it off. No longer a commander, Head Peacekeeper of DIstrict Twelve Vallis Albertine did show it off, however, and often. He believed that the most effective way to prevent unrest from spiralling into rebellion was through frequent shows of authority. Someone takes an apple from the market without paying? He'd hang them from the gallows in the district square, which was a relatively new piece of infrastructure that he'd personally requested to have installed. Someone speaks poorly of him? He'd host a public whipping on the post in the square. And if he caught even a sniff of rebellion, he'd decree the harshest punishment, by having them flogged to death on the post. And of course all of these events were to have the entire district population in attendance.

Nikita thought that was incredibly stupid, not to mention barbaric. To him, Peacekeepers should help maintain order and serve the public by making it safer. Ideally, a court system would be established, and offenders would have to make up for their misdeeds through some form of public service. That was the dream, and that was how Peacekeeping was in District Two, and that was what Nikita thought he was signing up to do. Watching mostly innocent people get killed was never his goal, and he found himself disgusted by both the Peacekeeping system, for making him complicit in its abuses, and with himself, for his role in the torture that was taking place. But that wasn't the only system he was upset with.

He was at one of Head Peacekeeper Albertine's awful execution spectacles, watching a twelve-year-old who had stolen a loaf of bread as her tiny body twitched at the end of a noose, when the revelation first hit him. Before his injury, he put the Victors on such a pedestal that he had forgotten they killed girls just like this. Girls, young girls, and young boys too, and he had wriggled eagerly in front of the television all his life when the eighteen-year-old Careers, adult men and women, butchered them before his eyes. Now he knew that there was nothing brave or courageous, or as he used to believe, selfless, about Volunteering. He had never been fantasizing about championship, he had been fantasizing about murder. He had such a visceral reaction to this thought that he had to whisper out an excuse as to why he was leaving and run to find a bush to throw up in.

Despite it all, Nikita was, for the most part, satisfied. The Head Peacekeeper favored him, and he knew it. He had received a second promotion, to Lieutenant, and another raise. He was rising in the hierarchy at a rapid pace. Plus, he felt like he was making progress with the locals. He had only been in Twelve for a few months, but they were beginning to gain trust in him, which he saw as a sign of progress. If he could keep it up, snatch up another promotion or two, he'd be well on his way to a position that held real power, and then he'd have the ability to make reforms. He could build a better system, a fairer system, one that wouldn't be so punitive.

He had grown to like his job, to focus on the connections that he made with the citizens of Twelve and the friendships within his ranks (which were now actually his ranks. As a lieutenant, he was allowed to give other Peacekeepers simple orders and had a whole barracks of his own to preside over, with a private room all to himself for his bed.) Even though Cass, his best friend, still lived in Two, he had gained a new companion: a slightly older Peacekeeper called Aurelio who shared his opinions about the system. Nikita wasn't lonely by any stretch of the imagination, although he did wish he could be with his family, but on this particular day, he wasn't exactly happy.

Reaping Day had always been a cause for celebration for Nikita. Reaping Day was a countdown to when he would make everyone so proud and Volunteer. The festivities were always grand, with cakes and candies and dances and the overwhelming sense of camaraderie that brought his peers to accept him, even for one day. The excitement always started in the morning, when he would get dressed in his training clothes and trot along to the Academy where a bus waited to take the students to whichever Academy was hosting the annual assembly (except of course when it was Morrow Academy's turn). One by one, the heads of the Academies would announce their four nominees, two male and two female, and when it was Grant Morrow's turn to make his selections known, Nikita would stand very still and hold his breath as he waited to learn which of the big boys and girls, so strong-looking with their athletic bodies and solemn expressions, would go on to fight. And then, when the ones from Morrow Academy were chosen, he would reach out as they passed by, clutch at their clothes, try to touch the muscles that stretched taut beneath them, and shout for them loudly as they walked to the mat in the center of the room. He remembered being fourteen and watching as Petra Floy pummeled one of the Morrow girls, her final opponent, into submission, and then she raised her bloody knuckles and he knew, he just knew, that he would be in her place someday.

But no more. In District Twelve, Reaping Day was a time of fear, not joy, and Nikita was finding it particularly difficult to be a Peacekeeper, mainly because there was no actual Peacekeeping involved. He had the day off, which was because he was still of Reaping Age, and that meant that he had none of his usual tasks to distract him. He stayed busy for the first part of the morning by cooking himself breakfast in the canteen, but after it was over and he had finished washing the dishes he'd used, he once again found himself with nothing to do. He pulled out a book in hopes of passing the time with some reading, but it took him about three seconds to realize that he wasn't going to enjoy it. Instead, he got ready for the Reaping. He had a hot shower and dressed in a smart navy vest and trousers that he had brought from District Two, with brown loafers made from buttery soft leather that he had purchased from one of District Twelve's shoemakers. He also wore a single safety pin earring, although that had less to do with the occasion and more to do with Nikita's personal sense of style.

At some point, he found himself at the check-in booth where Aurelio happened to be stationed. "Hey, Lio!" he greeted.

"Hey! Enjoying your break from work?" Peacekeepers generally referred to one another by their surnames, but Nikita and Aurelio were friends.

"Not really.'

"Ooh, that sucks. Well, I guess you have to give me your hand, right?"

"You mean to take my blood?"

"I meant in marriage. Yes, O Foolish One, of course to take your blood!" Nikita obediently presented his finger to be pricked, then stamped on an index card which was scanned to confirm his identity. "You're good, man. You're with the eighteen-year-old males, in the section closest to the back, on the left side of the aisle."

"I know."

"I know you know, but I'm still supposed to say it. May the odds be ever in your favor, yeah?"

"Yeah, Lio. May the odds be ever in my favor."

"Oh, buck up!" Lio smacked him on the back. "Don't look so sad, it's killing me! Everything'll work out, it always does." Nikita made his way to the correct place, which turned out to be uncomfortably claustrophobic, with people packed in like sardines far too close to him. He fidgeted and twisted around, trying to break free from the crowd, but had no luck, so he stilled and stuffed his hands in his pockets instead.

The escort came out on stage. She was genuinely cheerful, and Nikita respected that, but it didn't make her comments about valor and district pride seem any less tasteless. He ignored the reading of the Victors' names, the video, and the escort's speech. He only really started paying attention when those clawlike fingernails made their first foray into the glass bowl with the boys' names in it—apparently the old adage of "ladies first" wasn't in play this year—and withdrew a slip of paper. "Your male tribute," began the escort, speaking into her microphone just a little too loudly, "Will be Nikita Valeta!" Suddenly, everything seemed too sharp, too strong. He could hear the flecks of spit the escort was spraying into the microphone with every chirrupy word, he could feel the bodies that jostled him as they receded backwards, clearing a circular space around him, and he could see the camera feed on the screens trained on him as he looked up at his own face.

That finally set him into motion. He gave a light laugh to himself. Maybe fate had led him here. He had thought there was no way he was destined for the Hunger Games after his injury, and yet here he was. Ironic. He had practiced and prepared for this exact moment as a trainee. He had spent hours perfecting his expression in the bathroom mirror. He had spent years honing his posture and his walk so that he would look his best on television. As he stepped forward, he let himself fall back into the old paces, confident yet effortless, dashing in his blue ensemble and charming with his easy smile. He would be a tribute to remember, he decided. Not one of the outer-district kids, scared and skeletal. No, he was born and raised as a Career, and a Career he remained. The Academies had cast him aside, he thought bitterly, but that didn't change the fact that he was talented and capable.

So he ascended the stage with a poise unknown to the rougher people of District Twelve, and as he did so, he made himself a vow: he had to become the Victor because he wanted to live, but he was going to become the Victor to stick it to Grant Morrow and all the rest. He was going to win, and keep being a Peacekeeper, and someday find himself a husband to dote on and have some children to spoil just like he always planned, and then, he supposed, he'd be satisfied.

Maize Bono, 15

Chia's Bakery, District Nine

D9F

July 1, 329 AEDD

Maize hated Reaping Day, but she hoped that this particular Reaping Day would be slightly less awful than those of previous years. Aunt Chia had convinced her to participate in the baking competition, and all that was required of her was that she prepared a sweet baked dessert and presented it to the judges on time. Then they would taste each contestant's dish one by one, take a ten-minute break to deliberate, and announce the winner.

Maize was a very anxious person, and she had been since she was young. When Aunt Chia had dropped her off for her first day at school, she found it horrible and overwhelming, and she hadn't stopped crying until Aunt Chia picked her up early and took her back to the bakery. Maize had never set foot in a school building since. Aunt Chia had taught her to read and write, and some basic math, and then she had been expected to work in the bakery every day, which she really didn't mind.

Baking was fun, and easy, thanks to Aunt Chia's carefully written recipes. Usually, Maize would spend the entire day in the kitchen, baking, while Aunt Chia handled the customers in the front. There were plenty of customers for her to handle, after all. Their profits were enough to keep them living more comfortably than most other people in the district, or at least that was the way it used to be. Then the West Side Kings, the local mob, had come knocking. Aunt Chia thought the Kings were ostentatious and exploitative and didn't care about their community. Maize just thought they were mean, except for the kids. They mostly seemed okay, more bound by family loyalty than a desire to inflict suffering on other people.

The Kings demanded a sum of protection money, that was to be given to them on the same day each month that tessera grain and oil were distributed. If they didn't get paid, they'd destroy the shop and kill Aunt Chia and probably Maize too. That was something that seemed to worsen Maize's anxiety. Normally it was grown men who collected protection money, but at some point they seemed to take pity on her and start sending one of the actual King children around instead, a boy her age who stank of alcohol and never seemed to be very alert. She assumed he had some part in making the moonshine that the Kings were famous for selling, but she didn't dare ask him. He never really spoke except to remind her and Aunt Chia that if they didn't give him the money, he'd fetch his cousin Jeremiah, who was second-in-command of the gang and tougher than the rest of its members combined, and the threat of that alone was enough to ensure that they would never dare miss a payment.

Even with the cost of the protection money, Maize and Aunt Chia did alright for themselves. They were lower class for town folk, but they got by. Ever since Quinoa Bono had dropped an infant Maize off at her big sister's doorstep at the age of sixteen, then disappeared off into the night, never to be seen alive again, Chia, then nineteen, had raised Maize as her own. There were good days and bad days, as is true of most people. Reaping Day was always a bad day, but Chia had thought of a way to make it a little bit better for her young niece: perhaps winning a competition about something she loved would help her become more confident.

Whatever the case, Maize, for once, was excited at the prospect of going outdoors and interacting with people, and that was a massive step. Maize had decided to prepare biscotti as her entry. Biscotti were a type of flattish almond cookie that could absorb numerous flavors and were crunchy and delicious and best enjoyed alongside a hot drink, dipping optional. Maize had been in the kitchen all morning, as had Aunt Chia. They were bakers, so they tended to wake up early, and people liked to splurge on Reaping Day, especially if there was a fair, and they needed their display case to be fully stocked. While Aunt Chia handled the baking for the store, Maize lovingly chopped nuts and measured out lavender oil and tied a tiny bunch of basil that she would infuse the dough with.

All in all, it was a satisfying morning. Maize always found that baking eased her anxiety, and Reaping Day made her anxious, so baking one of her favorite treats and potentially receiving public recognition for it while not having to interact with the public itself made for a positive experience overall. Best of all, maybe after people learned that she was more than the girl who had panicked on her first day of school and then never came back, they would want to be her friends. She didn't really have anyone to talk to, but that was okay. Maize was happy to bake alone in peace.

But she did think it was unfair to judge her based on a meltdown she had as a young child. Maize thought a lot of things were unfair, like, for instance, the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games, in Maize's eyes, were just another way to create fear and further divide the districts. She was sure they would get some sort of comeuppance, though. That was how the world worked, in her opinion. People who hurt others eventually got hurt themselves and learned that hurting people was wrong. Then they would apologize, and be forgiven, and everything would turn out splendidly.

If you ignored the Hunger Games and the West Side Kings, the world was pretty fair, at least according to Maize. She someday hoped for money, to pay back Aunt Chia for taking care of her, even though Aunt Chia had never said anything about her needing to. It just seemed like a nice thing to do, Maize thought. It would be even nicer to run a really successful bakery as an adult, the best in the district, like the judges for the baking contest at the fair. They made breadstuffs and pastries for the Capitol, and they were highly respected in the district, selling to the locals too. Everyone loved them. They were so kind, and they were Maize's idols. She looked up to the famous bakers like she expected the Career tributes looked up to the famous Victors.

Maybe when she was a famous baker, she would take care of a cat or a dog, she thought. The famous bakers always became very rich, and had plenty of money to spare. Yes, a dog or cat would be nice. Maybe she would hand out cookies to the local children on occasion. She wanted to be exactly like Aunt Chia: good and generous and always willing to offer her help to friends in need. She would make people feel important and taken care of.

Maize had never wanted anything more from other people except respect and tolerance, but they judged her all the same. People in District Nine didn't forget, and that meant that your past determined your future. Even if by some miracle she woke up the next morning with her anxiety magicked away, she would never be able to make a new name for herself. It would always be Maize Bono, the girl who couldn't stop panicking.

Maize had made so much progress, she really had. It was hard, and she had to wonder if it was even worth it, but she deserved to not turn into jello every time she was expected to go out in public. One time, last year, Aunt Chia got sick and Maize had to run the bakery all by herself. Because Aunt Chia was in bed at their house, a full three streets away, Maize couldn't pop over to ask her for advice. She had nothing but her own resourcefulness to carry her through the day. Admittedly, she had experienced a great stroke of luck, and not very many customers had come in, only two, but still, Maize had spoken to another person without her aunt there to rescue her for the first time in her waking memory. She had taken their money and given them food in exchange. She had completed a transaction, and that was the hardest thing in the world, but she had done it, and if anyone but Aunt Chia had heard her exclamations of joy over it, they would have been quick to tell her she was overreacting and it was a normal task that normal people did every day with no problem because they were normal, not anxious like she was, and she really had no reason to be proud of herself.

Yes, Maize was very familiar with the trials and tribulations of social anxiety. Even when she made such great strides, nobody cared. Life was hard if you were anxious, and even though it had gotten significantly easier to manage as Maize had grown up, it still wasn't easy easy. It was just not as soul-crushingly difficult. Maize could act if she really needed to, she supposed, in an emergency. Her fight-or-flight reflex would kick in and she'd be able to do something other than stand there and shudder. But then again, her brain seemed to manufacture emergencies all the time when there really wasn't anything to be afraid of, and she was absolutely paralyzed by them unless she could find something steady to focus on. Would she really be able to handle an actual emergency? She didn't know.

What she did know was this: she was an anxious person. She suffered from panic attacks. She required reassurance. She loved her aunt. She tried to be a good person. She wanted people to like her. She hoped to build up a promising career as a baker. She dreamed of having an abundance of money, so that she'd never have to worry about the Kings again. She wished, that, if people grew to separate her from her child self and accepted her as an adult, she'd jive well enough with someone that their lives would knit together and they'd move into a house as a couple, preferably a nice, spacious house, bought with Maize's bakery profits, and grow old happily ever after.

There was a lot of bad in the world, and Maize experienced a lot more of it than most people did, thanks to her anxiety, but she knew there were positive things too, and she latched on to them as often as she could. Baking, for one, with its repetition of mixing and rolling and kneading and slicing. Some people might have called it tedious. Maize called it meditative. It was the one time she felt aware of her own body aside from when she was having a panic attack. It was her way of settling into her identity, affirming herself, reaching out to feel herself for who she wanted to be.

When she settled into those repetitive motions, she could see a vision of her future at the corner of her mind's eye, a petite but beloved baker who had such a hopeful outlook on life, fiery copper hair escaping its ponytail, flour dusting her apron. Maize's facial features made her look younger than she actually was, but when she was baking, she imagined them smoothing out and changing shape. Like her mother, who died when she was just a year older than Maize was now, but so much more adult-looking! Maybe the more sophisticated features came from hardship, Maize thought. But wasn't her anxiety a constant hardship? Maize knew that she was just fishing for possible explanations, but still, it didn't change the way she imagined herself.

Eventually, Maize knew that she had finished this step of the biscotti-making, so she sadly left the bakery and walked to the house alongside Aunt Chia. A cake of soap and a towel were found, a wooden basin of water was filled at the pump, and Maize stepped into it to wash herself off. Cleanliness was important to bakers, because if you had dirt on your skin or under your fingernails, it would touch the food, and that was unhygienic and could spread germs to the customers. She wouldn't be touching food at the Reaping, but still, she wanted to look and feel fresh. It was a hot day, and Maize didn't like hot weather, so the cool water was a blessed relief. Eventually, though, the bath had to end, so Maize got out, dried off, and found her outfit, which Aunt Chia had set conspicuously on the kitchen table.

Maize dressed slowly, procrastinating, trying to drag out a rather simple process in order to delay the inevitable moment when she would have to leave the bakery and go to the district square and suffer through the whole nasty Reaping. Sure, she would get to bake her biscotti afterwards, and maybe even win the contest, but that didn't matter at the moment. She would gladly skip the contest if it meant she could skip the Reaping as well. Unfortunately, that wasn't an option.

Her Mary Janes, which were a few years old and a few sizes too small, pinched her toes uncomfortably. The richest families could afford a fresh pair of Reaping shoes every year, but not Maize's. Her Reaping dress was also a few years old, having been bought when she was twelve, just like her shoes. It was a little short and tight on her, but not so far gone that she needed a new one. It was golden yellow, her favorite color, with a checked pattern and a lacy white collar. Maize considered herself in the mirror, wondering what to do with her hair. She decided to just leave it down. It would make her look childish, and people would laugh at her, but they did that anyway, because apparently laughing when people had panic attacks was the funniest thing in the world to some of her peers.

Aunt Chia walked her to the Reaping when she was done. Maize didn't do so well around people, but her aunt's comforting presence merely reduced it to suffocating instead of unbearable as they traversed the dusty roads of District Nine. The district square quickly came into view, and Aunt Chia shepherded her to the check-in booth. The Peacekeeper's indifferent features made her throat want to close up. She held her hand out to him, and he pricked it with his device, confirmed her identity, and directed her to the center pen on the right side of the aisle. Maize reluctantly left her aunt and went to it.

It was hard not to panic. The other girls around her were a massive wall of people, closing in, trapping her, stealing the breath from her lungs. And the noise! It buffeted her on all sides, as loud as a jet, no, as loud as a cyclone, and Maize knew, just knew, that there was no way she couldn't panic, because it was claustrophobic and deafening and the bright yellow of the escort's costume hurt her eyes, so sharp and blinding compared to the softer shade that she was wearing, and the knowledge that this creature before her, more makeup than man, could yell out her name at any moment and condemn her to certain death was so much, too much, but wait, what was that?

The video had come to save her. It was the brutal propaganda reel that they showed every year, but it was familiar, and Maize latched on to it immediately. She knew the words by heart, and they grounded her, took her back to her body, reminded her that she was safe, and that everybody else seemed to be doing just fine. Then, the escort began his lecture. He spoke about how excited he was to acclimate to District Nine after working in District Eight for years. He applauded District Nine for its role in feeding Panem and supplying its staple grains, like wheat, oats, barley, and corn, which only the District Nine folk referred to by its proper name: maize.

Then the escort moved on to the Hunger Games. He talked about the honor and courage that it took to win, and how the Hunger Games was both a way to remember the past and safeguard the future, and a bunch of other stuff that Maize mostly tuned out. The Hunger Games were an evil deathmatch. Even so, the escort's long-winded speech took her mind off of the actual Reaping that was going to occur. At some point, the list of Victors was read. The District Nine mentors for the year, Mae Lowland and Johnnie Amaranth-Miller, were seated on the stage, in the corner, next to the mayor. They were both in their fifties, and, with a shudder, Maize remembered that in the thirty-odd years since they had won, none of District Nine's tributes had survived the Games. If she was Reaped, she had no chance.

At last, the escort was ready to actually select the tributes. "Ladies first, of course," he announced, rummaging in the first glass bowl for a slip. "Your female tribute," he proclaimed, "Shall be the incredible, terrific, valiant...Maize Bono!" Maize was shocked. She couldn't run. She couldn't hide. She couldn't escape the square, and she didn't try to. Resigned to her fate, shaking, she tried not to panic again. She hoped that she didn't look too pathetic on television. The escort met her at the stairs and, extending a purple-gloved hand, helped her up onto the stage. She could see Aunt Chia in the audience, looking almost as anxious as Maize felt.

Then it was time for the boy to be chosen. Maize just hoped it wasn't anybody she knew. "Your male tribute shall be the incredible, terrific, valiant...Jeremiah King!" The second those words left the escort's lips, Maize knew at once who had been selected.

And then she really got scared.

Fahad Azerola, 17

The Ortega Tavern, District Ten

D10M

July 1, 329 AEDD

On this particular Reaping Day, Fahad woke up in a pub restroom, slumped over on the counter, with half his clothes missing, which wasn't exactly unusual for Fahad. His life consisted of three main parts: working at a meat packing plant, getting drunk to compensate for his lack of fulfillment in life, and seeking affection any way he could, which usually meant hooking up with random strangers. The second and third tended to coincide, and, thinking hard, Fahad tried to remember how they had intersected this time.

Oh, right. Today was Reaping Day. It came to him flatly. Fahad was no great fan of Reaping Day, and he had intentionally drunk himself into a near stupor the previous night in a feeble attempt to dull the fear he had of it. And then there was the middle-aged woman in the tight red dress that had hugged her just so, who had paid up his tab for the night and asked if he wanted to "go to the bathroom with her". Fahad knew what she was asking, and he took her up on the offer.

She had apparently ditched him while he was still passed out, but that wasn't exactly unusual for Fahad's one night stands. Even so, he savored the times that they stayed until morning, and, better yet, the ones that actually took him home instead of just heading to the back of the bar. When he woke up with an arm still tucked protectively around him, a warm chest rising and falling, he could almost pretend that he had a real lover.

This woman hadn't done that, though. It was fine. Fahad was used to it. He felt groggy and disoriented, but that was to be expected after heavy drinking. His intention had been to get so drunk he'd be completely numb at the Reaping. It's not like he had anybody to tell him not to.

Fahad's family had long ago disappeared. He grew up with his parents and his grandmother, in his grandmother's old house. His parents had never taken an interest in him, and eventually moved to the other side of the district, never to come back. Fahad had at least had his grandmother to cling onto, but she was elderly and frail, and she had died. And then it was just Fahad and Dyani and Conall against the world.

Dyani was a sweet drug addict with a rather pessimistic view on life. Conall was a gullible rich kid who wanted to have fun without his overprotective parents hovering over him. Together, they represented all the certainty that Fahad had. Where were they? They had accompanied him to the bar the night before, right? Then Fahad remembered that they had left early because Dyani needed to sneak Conall back into his house before his parents found out, and then she had probably spent the night at Fahad's place, considering that she had nowhere else to go to sleep except the streets.

Dyani was the closest thing that Fahad had to a friend. She was a pretty thing, all soft curves and gentle words. They had gone to bed together, once, when Fahad was really desperate for a distraction. He had felt disgusted with himself the next morning, certain that he'd ruined his only half-decent relationship, but Dyani wasn't mad. She was worried about him, had asked if he was okay and how he was feeling, and hadn't been offended when he said that he wasn't doing so well.

Everybody had their vices, though. Fahad's was alcohol. Dyani's was diamonds. Not real diamonds as in the precious gemstone that made up an integral part of District One's exports, but diamonds as in the drug. Diamonds were compressed powder crystals that looked a little blue, a little silver, but mostly see-through. Their effects were described as "peppy". Diamonds dissolved like salt in water. Some people snorted the diamonds, or ate them, but the most popular way was to put some in your pockets, wet your hands, and put them in your pockets to absorb the drugs.

Fahad knew the effects they had on a person. They'd stolen Dyani's strength as they pumped artificial energy into her instead. Fahad knew that no good came of chasing diamonds, but he knew that someday he too would succumb to their glittery allure. His thoughts were interrupted by Dulce Ortega pounding on the door. "Fahad? It's time to get up! Bar's closed for the day!" Fahad groaned. Dulce was the daughter of the bar's owner, a bossy thirteen-year-old whose job it was to shoo all of the patrons out when opening hours had ended. He didn't mind her, she was nice.

In Fahad's experience, most people were nice. He felt it was his responsibility to be nice to people in return. He wasn't stingy with his time. If a stranger, casual acquaintance, or friend ever needed his help, they wouldn't even have to ask because he'd already have offered. Fahad couldn't stand being away from people. And heaven forbid that somebody disapproved of him. He was joking around with Dyani once and she had made some crack about being disappointed, and it kind of ruined the mood, because Fahad started crying, and he didn't stop until Dyani could convince him that she really was just kidding and she wasn't actually disappointed.

Which was a good thing, because Dyani was more or less Fahad's entire emotional support system. He'd had his grandmother, too, once. But she had passed away a year ago, and his life had been in a downwards spiral ever since.

He'd started sleeping around when he was way too young to be sleeping around, first with people his age and then with older men and women he met at the bars. He'd already been drinking for a while, even though he was technically underage. It didn't matter. Bars in District Ten didn't care how old you were as long as you paid for your drinks, which Fahad did.

In terms of money, he didn't have much. But he did have his grandmother's house, which had been paid off half a century ago. He made do with thrifted clothes that didn't fit right and tended to eat very little. Most of his budget went towards alcohol. Fahad tended towards the legal kind. Sometimes moonshine entered the district, and when it did, even though it was stronger, Fahad avoided it. It was notoriously addictive, and besides, Fahad preferred the sweet drinks. And he wasn't an alcoholic, right? He could stop whenever he wanted! And surely that meant that he was fine.

Dulce jogged his arm. "Fahad," she said. "I mean it. We're closed. Do I have to drag you out by your hair?"

"No, Dulce. I'm going."

"You'd better." Fahad left the bar hurriedly, and walked to his house to find Dyani already inside, just as he'd predicted. She had food out on the table, too. He wondered where she'd found it. On the table lay two red apples. They were the nicest-looking meal he'd seen in months.

"Where'd you get those?" he asked.

"I passed by a horse corral last night and the grooms were portioning out Reaping Day treats for the horses. I figured they'd never notice if I took a couple. Oh, and that's not even the best part." Dyani opened her clenched hand, and on her palm sat two pure white sugar cubes. "If you can afford to buy white sugar to feed your horses, you can afford to spare a tad for some starving slum kids. And besides, they were giving, like, twenty cubes to each horse, plus a few carrots and an apple. So I didn't have any issue with liberating a little something for our breakfast."

Fahad didn't have any issue with it either. Normally he might have objected on moral grounds, arguing that starving animals was selfish and unfair, but if the horses had an abundance and he didn't have any, well, it felt different. He savored the apple, eating it slowly. It would be the best thing he'd have for a while, and he wanted to make it last. He let the sugar cube melt on his tongue too, fine granules mixing with his spit to create a sugary solution. Most of the time, he resorted to scrounging behind shops and in garbage bins for food. Conall snuck him and Dyani food sometimes, too, but it was only ever small things that his parents wouldn't miss. Fruit and sugar were out of the question.

Fahad wished he could have a shower, something to make him feel human again and wash away the perpetual grubbiness that made him feel like an abandoned mutt, but his grandmother's house didn't have its own pump and his legs were too unsteady from the alcohol to make the two-mile trek to the nearest free public well. He'd have to, after the Reaping, but the jug was full enough that he wasn't in danger of getting dehydrated, at least for a while.

The best he could do was dip a cloth in it and wash his face. He changed into his nicest clothes, which were the only pair of trousers he had that didn't sag too much, plus a shirt that buttoned up instead of just having a stretchy neckhole. Fahad was too poor to afford anything more expensive. He didn't bother going into a different room to change. Dyani had seen him undressed before, and anyway, neither of them were very concerned with modesty.

Modesty wasn't important to them. Some people saw it as one of the highest virtues a person could aspire to, but Fahad disagreed. He valued compassion, generosity, and camaraderie. He thought that keeping other people safe was one of the best things you could do, and that your moral fiber depended on how you treated people that didn't reward you when you helped them. Offering to do things for others with no expectation of anything in return was good, and it was good because it was goodness for the sake of goodness, not goodness for the sake of holding it over the heads of people you deemed lower than yourself. Fahad was used to getting sneered at because of his late-night activities.

Fahad could only assume that the people who preached about family loyalty and respecting your elders and the inherent corrupt nature of promiscuity had never been abandoned by their relatives, mistreated by adults, or dependent on the emotional gratification of playing the field. And it was curious, he thought, that those very same people then turned around and said that judgement was evil. Which one was it?

Fahad had done plenty of good things in his life. He had stayed up all night with a friend who was going to kill himself, preventing him from carrying it out, grabbing his wrists so he couldn't scratch at himself, keeping him alive, holding him when he was breaking down. But to some, that couldn't outweigh his dependance on alcohol, which Fahad knew was rather stupid, so he never really concerned himself with mainstream notions of morality.

He craved fulfillment. He wanted nothing more than to be looked after by someone responsible, who would be concerned for him and gratify his emotional needs and care about him as an individual. He wanted nothing more than a nice sappy romance with someone who liked him for who he was. He wanted nothing more than a true friend that understood him and would reciprocate the effort he put into the relationship.

Dyani came close to the last one, if you squinted, but she couldn't fill the void in his life all by herself, and her friendship rarely extended deeper than mutually beneficial actions. They were a team, true, and she was kind to him, true, but she knew little about his life other than the alcohol-related side of it. She was his listening ear, he gave her a place to stay in exchange. It was never a truly altruistic dynamic. She was capable of selflessness, and she was, without question, the best thing in his life, but they always had their snags.

Sticking by her meant that Fahad would get hooked on diamonds at some point, and he doubted his wallet could take that hit. He could very well starve to death. Dyani had tried to pressure him into using before, and so far, he had stayed firm, but he knew that he was susceptible to peer pressure. He'd either have to roll the dice and hope that everything worked out or give up Dyani entirely. There were no good choices.

It was at about this time that Fahad checked the clock and noticed that he was running a few minutes behind. He had to leave extra time since he would be walking wobbly thanks to his drinking the previous night, and the roads in District Ten weren't always well-maintained, so it might take even longer than expected. He stood from his chair, but he suddenly felt like the world was tilting under him, and he had to grab the kitchen table for support. It certainly wouldn't be an easy task.

Fahad wasn't sure he could make it to the district square in time for the Reaping if he walked on his own two feet, so Dyani had offered to carry him and had refused to take no for an answer. Fahad liked it more than he wanted to admit. It was so, so good to not feel like he was going to collapse at any moment. All he had to worry about was staying still and not forgetting to breathe. He could do that right, couldn't he? How foolish he must have looked to the people passing by, a drunk being toted around by an addict. Still, Dyani was doing him a favor.

He wasn't sure if it was the liquor coming to teach him a lesson or just his nerves beginning to act up about the coming Reaping, but his apple and sugar cube were threatening to make an unwanted reappearance. Fortunately, he experienced a stroke of good luck: they had arrived at the check-in booth. Dyani set him down, and after the Peacekeeper had pricked their fingers, they went to their respective pens. Fahad tried to step carefully, wanting to avoid people, but that wasn't really possible, considering that the entire population of the district had been crammed into one single space.

He was feeling worse by the minute. The constant swaying motion of the crowd was starting to work its way into his bones, only making him queasier. He hated Reaping Day, but he was grateful when the escort appeared. It was the same escort as the previous year. She wore a latex smock dress that looked just as vomitous as Fahad did in that moment. He had taken on an unhealthy pallor that turned his tanned skin sallow, and it was a struggle to stand up straight.

The escort talked about how amazing District Ten was, proceeded to go on and on about its raising of mammals such as cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens, failed to recognize why everyone laughed at that statement, and turned her attention to listing off the Victors. The year's two mentors sat in specially designated chairs. Harrietta had won two years ago, and was still very new to mentoring, whereas Penn had been around for a long time. He was District Ten's only living Victor, at least until Harrietta, a well-known bullfighter, had been Reaped. Penn slouched in his chair, disinterested in the whole affair, but Harrietta sat primly, with one ankle crossed over the other, paying careful attention to the escort's words.

The escort launched into another speech about the importance of the Hunger Games, and Fahad would have pretended to barf, except he knew that if he did, he'd end up barfing for real. Fahad had seen plenty of livestock being butchered in real time, and the process wasn't dissimilar to the way the Careers behaved during the Bloodbath. Aside from Harrietta's win, he had grown up seeing District Ten's tributes get slaughtered every year on television. Penn was such a useless lump that being selected for the Hunger Games in District Ten was an automatic death sentence. The whole thing was repulsive and unnecessary. What good did the violence do? None at all, Dyani had always said.

"Alright," began the escort. "Shall we start with the boys or the girls today? Give me a nice big hurrah if you'd like to see the boys go first!" No hurrah presented itself. "A nice big hurrah if you'd like to see the girls go first!" Again, there was no hurrah. Sighing, the escort frowned momentarily. "How about this. If you'd like to see the boys go first, just keep standing quietly. Ooh, excellent! You'd all like to see the boys go first! Okay, okay. I do like to try to please you all, you know!" Fahad didn't appreciate her charade very much, but at least she didn't play games and wait for the crowd to respond before making a choice. He'd seen an escort do that once.

The escort snagged a slip from the very top of the bowl. "Your male tribute will be Fahad Azerola!" Fahad moved slowly to the stage, trying to register what had just been said. His mind was clouding, and he was feeling more nauseous by the second. He needed to find some secluded place right away. He searched for Dyani in the crowd, and he caught Conall's eye too. Both looked at him with a mix of pity and longing that just made him feel worse. He didn't know if he could handle the stairs to the stage, but he had to try, so he took them nice and easy, one at a time.

He thought he had made it and the worst was over.

He was wrong. He passed the threshold, was finally looking out at the entire district population, promising himself that he'd be okay.

And then he promptly threw up on the escort's shoes.

Aspen Silvius, 15

Silvius Residence, Twelve

D12F

July 1, 329 AEDD

Nobody much liked Aspen Silvius. Not even her parents. She was what you might call a pariah in District Twelve. Some people called her a rabble-rouser, others called her a revolutionary, but there was one thing that everybody called her: a rebel. She even had the scars to prove it. Now, Aspen hadn't always been a rebel. She had never liked the Capitol, but she hadn't started hating it until Ben died. Her family had a tradition of giving their children names popular in other districts. She was Aspen, a tree, for Seven. Her brother had been Bentley, a car, for Six. Her father was Granite, a stone, for Two. His sister, Indigo, a dye, was for Eight.

Ben, her brother, was nineteen when it had happened. He and his friends ventured outside the district border in search of food on a fairly regular basis. They strung up massive nets and carried hunting knives to catch and kill their prey, and while they did that, Aspen foraged. Ben had never let her within ten feet of a weapon. He refused to let her face the potential consequences of being caught. "When you're an adult, you can make your own choices," he had always said, "But until then, no hunting for you, young lady!"

She had once found a new plant in the forest, one that neither Ben nor his buddies had ever seen before. She finally had something to brag about, even if it couldn't hold a candle to their tall tales of almost being caught outside the fence. Still, it made her feel like she belonged. She had finally carved out a spot for herself in their little friend group. Even if she had a tenuous relationship with her parents and grandparents and aunt, she was comforted by the fact that there would always be a place for her with Ben and his friends. Even if the rest of the family didn't care much for her wellbeing, Ben did, and he would never abandon her.

Then they had been caught outside the fence. It happened before District Twelve's Peacekeepers had become completely tyrannical, thankfully, so they spared Aspen from the worst of it. Even that knowledge didn't make it any easier, though. She was still made to watch as the noose was slipped over his head and the stool was kicked out from under him. He was one of the lucky ones. He was heavy enough that his body weight jerking against the rope made his neck snap instantly. Some of his lighter friends, Aspen's lighter friends, weren't so lucky. They suffocated slowly, strangling to death, writhing the whole was back when the occasional public execution was conducted from a tree branch, and not from the gallows that was now everpresent in the district square. Aspen wondered if the Peacekeepers would move it before the Reaping so it wouldn't be seen on television.

Aspen didn't really have an opinion about the Reaping and the ensuing Hunger Games. Children died all the time in District Twelve, two extra ones hardly made a difference. The only thing she cared about was the intent, which was to remind the districts of the Capitol's chokehold on them. Speaking of which, after seeing her closest confidantes asphyxiate, she had been subject to a different punishment, a nonlethal one, since she was still of Reaping age. (That was how things used to work, before this sadistic new Vallis Albertine had taken over. Now he was executing children left and right.)

They flogged her to the brink of death. There was a minute or two when the Peacekeepers thought they'd lost her, but no, she was still alive. Just barely. She still had the marks from it all over her back. Then, when she finally got home, her whole family fell apart. Her grandparents and Aunt Indigo just receded into themselves and didn't talk to her anymore. Her mother got hooked on alcohol and spent much of her time passed out with a flask in hand. And her father would tell anybody to listen that they didn't need to feel bad for Aspen and Ben, because they were stupid and disgraceful and would have been unharmed if only they had followed the rules. In recent months, he had even begun blaming the crackdowns on her, as though new Peacekeepers were getting shipped over from District Two solely because a year ago a group of teenagers had gone outside the border.

The Peacekeepers were frightening. They carried batons in hip holsters and had guns strapped to their backs. The floggings and hangings were getting more frequent, sometimes there were as many as three in a week. The fear of Peacekeepers was becoming greater as time wore on. Aspen understood perfectly. She had never stepped a toe out of line since her flogging, and she didn't intend to anytime soon.

But she would, eventually. The Capitol and the Peacekeepers had killed the only person in the world that mattered to her, and they would pay sooner or later. She had declared vengeance on them the moment Ben had died, and everything else immediately became secondary. She would avenge Ben if it cost her her life. She was preparing, though, in her own private way.

She began exercising her newfound strength as soon as possible after the fact, usually on younger children. People chided her, called her a bully, said she was mean, but Aspen didn't take heed. The Capitol was mean, not her. She was trying to stop the Capitol. How could they mistake her for the mean one? That was the half of the equation that she didn't recognize. But what she did know was this: it was dangerous to be associated with a rebel. Getting friendly with her might put people in danger, so they all steered clear. Except for Robin, of course.

Robin was the younger brother of one of Ben's friends. He hadn't gone out into the woods with them like Aspen had, but he was the only person who at least partially understood what the experience was like. She tolerated him because he was a good listener, and he didn't mind if she screamed her head off about the state of the world every now and again. Other than him, Aspen was all alone.

She would cripple the Capitol someday, she knew, and she would gladly do it alone. She didn't have the tactical ability or the resources to do it just yet, of course, but she would when she was older. She was always determined to think things through before doing them. It was one of her best qualities. She could wait for the perfect opportunity to present itself. That was fine by her, and she needed to do her duty to the best of her ability, which meant that she couldn't act unless she was certain she would succeed.

Aspen hated people. They told her that what she wanted to do was foolish and rash and would never be able to happen, but Aspen knew better. She knew that the only way she could ever be at peace was by taking revenge on her brother's murderers. He was responsible for every one of her happy memories. He had made her feel like she was part of something bigger than herself. And he was gone, because of the Capitol and the Peacekeepers it employed. It only made sense that Aspen would carry out the punishment for their brutality.

Aspen worried that she'd fail if she acted without thinking. She wasn't good at holding her tongue or obeying authority. Even when she did her best to seem compliant, even happy about her situation, she oozed disrespect. She was argumentative, and feisty, and refused to back down or accept that she needed help. She used to laugh. She used to smile. She used to have fun.

She used to have a brother and a group of friends and a stable family. She knew that getting too hung up on "used-to's" could drive you crazy. Knowing and thinking could drive you crazy too. Everything was unfair, and it was overwhelming to know that it was your responsibility to repair it all. Besides, it was still a fresh and painful memory.

It wasn't uncommon for Aspen to suffer from intense flashbacks and nightmares. Even just seeing a Peacekeeper could bring them on. They were unpredictable, chaotic, and they brought a sense of immediate franticness and danger that she couldn't stave off, no matter how hard she tried. She had asked Robin once if he had the same experience, and he had commented that he didn't have such an immediate reaction, but it'd leave him troubled and unable to sleep for days, thus trapping him in a perpetual state of exhaustion.

Aspen understood. She lay awake at night sometimes, unable to relax, the image of Ben's corpse locked into her brain and preventing her from doing anything but figuring out a way to avenge him. It would bring her happiness once more, she was sure. It would make it okay. It would somehow show the Capitol who was boss, and make the people of District Twelve who avoided her feel rightfully guilty for their disregard of her efforts. Yes, she was a rebel, and she was on the warpath. She was going to do great things.

And when she had done those great things and toppled the Capitol, she would take her mother into the forest and build them a fine house there and live free from oppression and floggings and public executions. She had wished for that her entire life, but in her dreams, Ben was always by her and her mother's side. Now he was dead, and he would never come back. He'd never again pick her up or call her "young lady" or bring home dinner. He'd never get the chance to be a big brother ever again, and she'd never get the chance to be a little sister ever again. The Capitol had ensured that.

It was a good thing that Aspen could work. Ben wasn't putting food on the table, and Aspen was forced to step up as the breadwinner. Her mother, she sympathized with. Her father and her other relatives, not so much. But Aspen toiled over laundry to keep them fed anyway, because it was expected of her and because it seemed wrong to let family members starve to death, even if she didn't have any particular loyalty or attachment to them.

She got up before the sun rose and went to bed long after it had set. She cooked meals and swept the floors and did the housework. She wanted Ben, wherever he was, to be proud of her. The Capitol would pay, she would be sure of that. How could its citizens party the night away while she didn't even have hot water unless she felt like turning on the wood stove?

Her days didn't usually vary, but it was Reaping Day, meaning that she had the afternoon off so that she could prepare for the ceremony and attend the entire thing without having to worry about getting back by a certain time. She had to be reasonably clean, so she used her hands and some water to give herself a sponge bath by the outdoor pump. She didn't particularly feel like immersing herself in the frigid water, even if it was warm outside. Too soon, it seemed, it was time to dress and then depart for the Reaping. Attendance was mandatory. From what Aspen had seen, she expected that the punishment for skipping it would be death, possibly preceded by torture.

Normally, Aspen would have been working at her job, washing the coal dust from miners' clothes, and scheming about how to take down the Capitol for good, but it was Reaping Day, so she had to get all dolled up. For Aspen, this meant putting on a long brown skirt, a maroon-ish sweater top that was the most formal piece of clothing she owned, even though it would leave her sweltering in the midday sunshine, and a white apron and bonnet. She wore her boots instead of her good shoes, since they were more comfortable and the skirt covered them anyway. Aspen wasn't usually a bonnet person, but on days like this when she wanted her hair out of her face but a ponytail was too casual a solution, she had learned that a bonnet could be a graceful way of dealing with it, even if it was an article of clothing more popular among older women.

When it was time to go to the Reaping, Aspen walked to the district square and found it blessedly free of the gallows and whipping post that had plagued the people of Twelve throughout the past months. Instead, there was a check-in booth in their spot, manned by a single Peacekeeper. "Hold out your hand, please," he said in a pleasant tone. "This will only take a moment." Aspen held out her hand as directed, trying to avoid looking directly at the Peacekeeper as she felt the telltale buzz of the needle entering her skin. Then, the whole thing was over. "You're on the right side of the aisle in the center section," he informed her.

People shifted away from Aspen as she entered her pen. People were usually repulsed by her, and Reaping Day was no exception. Truth be told, Aspen didn't care about the unfortunate girl who was picked to be the female tribute. What Aspen did care about was the Capitol video about the Dark Days and why rebellion was bad and why the Capitol's control was actually a very good and necessary thing. That was a blatant lie, Aspen thought, but couldn't say. The Reaping was not a good place to come off as anti-Capitol.

The escort read the names of the district's Victors, which were few and far between, and then delivered a speech. She spoke about the Capitol's partnership with District Twelve, and how District Twelve was just so dutiful and hardworking to supply all of the country's coal. She, with her expensive clothes and fancy hairdo, had the gall to comment that the district was very stylish, as "the rustic look is in this summer!" Poverty was not a style, Aspen wanted to shout, it was a circumstance that people had no say in. But she kept it to herself.

The escort finally got around to drawing the tributes. She selected the boy first. "Nikita Valeta!" she had proclaimed, and a boy had walked up with impeccable poise. He looked like a Career. He dressed like a Career. He acted like a Career too. But there was something familiar about him, and then Aspen realized what it was. He was a Peacekeeper. One of the new ones that had come from District Two, which explained his behavior. Aspen didn't recognize him as one of the really nasty Peacekeepers that you had to watch out for, and she had never personally interacted with him, but she had seen him before, and she swore she felt it get cold all of a sudden.

At least it would make for one less Peacekeeper in the district. It wouldn't make a quantitative difference to her cause, the Capitol still had plenty of soldiers in District Twelve to hurt and kill mostly innocent people and their brothers, but it would provide a message of hope, that even Peacekeepers sometimes got hurt by the Capitol. Aspen wondered absently if the Peacekeeper tribute would ally with the Careers.

Then the escort picked his district partner. "And your female tribute will be Aspen Silvius!" Wait, who had it been? Aspen wasn't sure she had heard right. "Aspen Silvius, would you please come up here?" the escort called. Why are they asking me to go up? They already Reaped the girl tribute, why am I–oh. Oh, no! No! It couldn't be happening, she thought. Things like this didn't happen to people like her. But it was happening to her, and she tried to stay strong, think about Ben, Ben was strong, right? Yes, Ben was strong, tall and strong, tall and strong enough, even, that he used to carry her on his shoulders. She had to be strong like Ben.

She couldn;t do it. There was a reason Ben had never let her hunt, obviously. She had rooted around in the dirt for plants instead precisely because she wasn't strong like Ben. She felt as though she might pass out. It was getting difficult to breathe with all the fear that was clogging the air. She saw the Peacekeepers around the square break rank, and a few came towards her, just like they had when she and Ben had been caught outside the district boundary, and it was bad, so very bad, and Aspen knew that in this condition, she couldn;t fight them. She recognized the Peacekeeper who had checked her in. "Whoa, whoa there," he was saying. "Breathe, alright? We're just here to get you up on the stage, okay? No need to be scared, we're going to help you, understand?" Of course they weren't going to help her! What was he playing at?

She tried to break free, but her strength had ebbed, and she couldn't seem to fill up her lungs with air, and suddenly she wondered if this was how Ben's friends had felt in their final moments. "Stop fighting us," the Peacekeeper said. "We're going to carry you to the stage, you have nothing to fear." Of course she had something to fear! He was a Peacekeeper! And the Peacekeepers had killed Ben at the Capitol's behest, and now she was going to die too, and she knew it, because the light in the corners of her vision was fading fast…

Her sight went black and she crumpled, draped in the Peacekeeper's arms.

Jeremiah King, 18

Sixth Street Warehouse, Nine

D9M

July 1, 329 AEDD

Jeremiah King cut an imposing figure. He was tall and heavy and strong, and that made him a perfect fit for the gang. Actually, it was less of a gang and more of a mafia-type situation. Jeremiah's grandfather, Curtis King, ran the most powerful crime syndicate in District Nine, and Jeremiah had been introduced to the family business when he was only knee-high. Everyone in the King family was big, but Jeremiah was the biggest. His father had been the biggest before Jeremiah had come along, and his mother was big too, and as a result, Jeremiah had practically been born to become a thug. Well, that wasn't quite right. Thugs were intimidating but stupid, and although Jeremiah was intimidating, he certainly wasn't stupid.

Instead, he called himself an enforcer. He would go out on Curtis's behalf and demand protection money from the local shopkeepers, and if they didn't provide any, bad things would happen to them. It was Jeremiah's job to make the bad things happen, and he was the very best at it. He didn't even need a weapon most of the time, but on the rare occasion when someone particularly stubborn refused to cough up the money, he would perform his favorite trick: pulling out an ordinary red brick from behind his back and threatening to pound their skull into a pulp. It was a highly effective strategy, but not one he had to use often. Everyone in the district knew who he was, if not by face then by name, and if not by name then by reputation. They didn't dare tell him no.

With one exception: the Peacekeepers. The Peacekeeper presence had steadily been growing in District Nine for some time, and it made Jeremiah feel uneasy. The way the Peacekeepers marched up and down the streets, legs coming up and back down in perfect time, conjured up fond memories of childhood trips to the fairs, like the one being set up by the riverbank for after the Reaping. Jeremiah had been taken to the fairs quite often when he was young, and the Peacekeepers' formation reminded him of a kickline, like when all the teenagers, fresh out of the fields, girls with their skirts hitched up and their kerchiefs loose and struggling to hold their curls, and boys with their trousers rolled up and their caps loose and struggling to hold their curls, as they all joined hands and danced the harvest-time dance.

Their helmets reminded him of the weaving competitions, where all the mothers and grandmothers and aunties would soak wheat and hay in water and somehow twist it into elaborate hats of fanciful designs, and then they would call over their toddlers, who would form a procession and model the fine hats for everyone, and then the wizened great-grandmothers, the really old ladies, with wrinkles set so deep in their skin that they reminded him of broken-and-reglued pottery, would act as judges and vote on the winner.

Their weapon-batons reminded him of the non-weapon-batons in the baton-twirling competition, when boys of ten and eleven and twelve would put on colorful patchwork clothes and take hold of their batons, decorated with everything that glittered and sparkled, sometimes with twin red tassels on the ends, as one by one, they were led to the stage and conducted jaunty performances as the batons went head-over tail and then tail-over-head again as the tassels wound around in the air and the light bounced off of them, all in a dizzying, enchanting haze.

Jeremiah had never been a laborer, would never work a day in his life, had barely even set foot in the fields like the others his age did. He didn't have a social group the way the rural kids stuck together, or how the town kids always hung around the other town kids. It was just him and his two cousins, who were just a little bit younger than him, but the whole district assembled on fair days. He had been a baton-twirler, and even if it was amusing to see someone of his stature in colorful patchwork clothes, he didn't care. He had loved it anyway. But those days were far behind him.

He would go to the fair after the Reaping, he thought. He didn't usually go out for fun. He had nobody to go with besides his cousins, and he hated that, because they always smelled like the alcohol they made, and it gave him an awful headache. Plus, his cousins had made a habit of taste-testing their product, and even though they swore that living by the bottle was the way to go, Jeremiah had no interest in getting so drunk on moonshine that he lost the ability to think coherently and ended up shitting himself, as had happened to one of them. Jeremiah didn't want to devote his life to liquor. He wanted to devote his life to money, which was less likely to turn his mind to mush and came in handy in almost every situation a person could face.

Jeremiah was going to live his life by the gang, because he was loyal to his family and that was where he was needed most. He fondly recalled the moment that his future had been set in stone: he was only fifteen and he was coming home from school (Curtis, his grandfather, whom he referred to solely as Boss or another honorific, had always harped on him when it came to education—he firmly believed that a strong foundation in arithmetic, composition, and literature would challenge Jeremiah's mind, and that healthfulness of mind was just as important as healthfulness of body, and that prowess in both were necessary traits of successful leaders) and reported to the other members at the warehouse on Sixth Street, as he always did. But this time, every single associate was present, not just the members of his family, who captained their own mini-mobs of their men. Every single one was there, and they had formed two lines facing inward. As Jeremiah walked through the passage that they formed, men three times his age took off their hats for him in respect.

Curtis was standing at the very end, hands clasped behind his back. His broad, flat nose, with a bump that suggested it had been broken in the past, protruded from his face, but his alert brown eyes were deep-set and framed by crow's feet. His thinning hair was partially hidden under his hat, which he was still wearing. His scowl was also partially hidden, this time by his gray goatee, but he didn't seem upset. Jeremiah approached him and bowed his head respectfully. "Good afternoon, Boss."

"Good afternoon, Jeremiah. Tell me, what do you think of this ceremony?"

"Ceremony, sir?"

"Yes, ceremony. You didn't wander through that little gauntlet by accident. Today is the second-most important day in your entire life."

"What's happening today, Boss? Why am I being honored?"

"Jeremiah, you are a man now. You have devoted your life to this organization, is that right?"

"It is, sir."

"You have displayed the utmost loyalty and respect for this organization, is that also right?"

"It is, sir."

"Then, if there are no objections—" he looked around the room in search of any such objection, ensuring that none was made before continuing "—I do declare and appoint you, Jeremiah King, to the esteemed position of Underboss of the West Side Kings. From this moment onward, you are my eyes and ears. You speak on my behalf. Each action you take shall be to further our collective interests across District Nine, and even beyond. Do you agree to assume these responsibilities, and the responsibilities of Boss when you succeed me after my time on this earth has concluded?"

"I do, Boss, sir." And then, Jeremiah recalled, everyone erupted with cheers. Only fifteen and heir apparent to the most powerful crime family in the nation, Jeremiah was living the dream. He had felt like the ancient kings of legend, matching his surname, amassing power and money. He had built his dragon hoard, and in time he would expand it along with his empire.

But Peacekeepers could put a stop to that the minute they caught word of any fishy happenings that suggested King Ale & Lager was in the business of something other than directly selling light beer to the Capitol or that it was connected to illegal activities. So Jeremiah couldn't beat people up to control them, at least not for the foreseeable future. He'd be arrested in an instant if he was caught threatening someone, so he used it as an opportunity to practice his negotiation and diplomacy skills. The other crime rings in the area were hyenas compared to the lions that were the Kings. They chased after scraps and picked the town clean for opportunities that Jeremiah and his crew had missed. All of them were weaker, fighting over the meager remains of the territory still untouched by the real gangsters. Jeremiah had no great love of them, considering they had a tendency to interfere with his operations and constantly tried to sabotage him, but he treated them rather like mosquitoes—they wouldn't bother you if you smacked them hard enough.

Instead of simply pummeling them, Jeremiah had recently begun to chat with them instead, and come up with a mutually beneficial arrangement. He had proposed that all the gangs join up and get absorbed into the Kings, and then collectively reap the rewards of their shared dominion over the district. The trick was that the bulk of the money brought in would go to the higher-ups, the captains and Jeremiah and Curtis, and the others that thought they'd strike it rich would simply be out of luck.

Jeremiah had been making these grand plans for a long time, but he wouldn't execute them for months. Besides, this day was something special. It was Reaping Day, and Jeremiah was busy thinking about the afternoon fair and trying to decide if he would rather enter the baking competition and help coach the children's mud wrestling tournament or lead the singing circle and try his hand at improv. After some debate, he went with the former. He might not have looked it, but he could bake a mean blackberry pie.

He mixed the dough and left it to chill, and then he got dressed. Shops didn't sell things in Jeremiah's size, so he had to order custom, but the cost was of no concern. He wore a tan sports coat and blue dress pants, along with a red pocket square. He had picked this particular outfit because the colors themselves didn't look garish or out of place in the district, but the quality and formality would make it clear that Jeremiah was someone of great importance.

Because he really was. Fair day meant that people would forget that they ought to be afraid of him, and there was nothing wrong with that. After all, Jeremiah wanted to win the baking competition fair and square, not because the tasters were too afraid to say that someone else's dessert was better than his. And he knew that he might not win, because District Nine was a district of food. There were plenty of bakeries, some that sold to the Capitol and some that sold to the civilians, and the people who worked there could make the most delicious breadstuffs. It was their job, after all.

The warehouse had kitchens, mostly because of the alcohol and drugs that were produced within its walls, but Jeremiah had taken it upon himself to convert the smallest one into a more homey space where he could cook actual food. He had purchased nice pans and other supplies, and knives that were built to cut food instead of people, and it was here that he spent most of his morning, stewing the blackberries and sugar, adding in the drizzle of blackstrap molasses that gave his pie filling that richer, more sophisticated flavor, and carefully toasting some lemon zest for his garnish. Once the Reaping was finished, he would roll out the dough, pop in the filling, and bake it so that it would be fresh and piping hot at exactly the right time.

Cost wasn't a problem. Jeremiah could afford the very best tools and ingredients, because not only did the mob men bring in vast amounts of money, but the mob women cooked the books to cover it all up. Falsified records of expenses and profits, forged bills of sale to the Capitol, the bribing of a few carefully selected Peacekeepers, and some friends in high places ensured that the illegal racketeering and selling of moonshine and illicit drugs would never come to light. Curtis's late wife, Jeremiah's late grandmother, had been doing it since she married him at nineteen. The records went so far back that it would be almost impossible for them to be prosecuted, but still, there was always a chance.

So Jeremiah was careful. He couldn't exercise his power in public, but that meant that he was becoming less feared, and even though fairs were an appropriate time for that, he didn't want it to become a constant thing, which was one reason that he was careful about his Reaping outfit, he mused, stepping into his trousers. He looked like a legendary mafia enforcer, and it would be a reminder to the people of District Nine that even though the Peacekeepers might have had power over him, the common man answered to him and him alone. His reign would be inescapable, and he wasn't a person to be trifled with.

He didn't walk to the district square, he rode in a carriage pulled by two beautiful stallions with high spirits and braided manes. Most Nine families had a horse or two, the townies with old nags that hauled their carts for them, and the rural folk with hardier specimens to help them work the fields. The West Side Kings had a whole stable of the most gorgeous horses money could buy, and they were taken care of by hired assistants.

The horse-drawn carriage served as another reminder of his importance. When he arrived at the check-in booth, where his driver tied up the reins, leaped out of the cabin, and rushed around the other side to open the passenger door for Jeremiah, bowing deeply as he did so. Jeremiah then sauntered out and looked over the Peacekeeper before him in an unfriendly manner. "Give me your hand," the Peacekeeper demanded.

"That won't be necessary," he replied.

The Peacekeeper broke into a nervous grin. "Ah, of course! Apologies, Mr. King, I should have known better. If it pleases you, you're free to head towards your left, in the back section." Jeremiah smiled.

"Thank you for your...help." Even the way he said it communicated a subtle threat. He went to his section, humming all the way. Yes, he thought, this was how it was supposed to be. There was nobody who could do this better than him.

He casually observed the other boys in the pen. They had all congregated on one end, squishing together to create as much distance between them and him as possible. Jeremiah noted this, then turned his attention to the other sections. If he looked closely, he could see King associates ducking through the crowd ringing the perimeter of the square, taking bets on which boy and girl would be picked. In addition to their other exploits, the West Side Kings knew that gambling could bring in a pretty penny.

At some point, the escort came onstage. He wore a canary-yellow suit that seemed to be patterned with small lavender circles with the middles cut out, and Jeremiah wondered what impression he was trying to give off with his outfit. Whatever it was, he didn't think it was successful.
The escort played the video, delivered a short speech about how grand Nine was, read off a list of the district's Victors, and then he began choosing tributes. "Ladies first, of course," he said. He was wearing lavender gloves that matched his suit, and he sort of swirled them around in the glass globe, burrowing deep into the bowl before choosing a slip. "Your female tribute," he announced with great drama, "Shall be the incredible, terrific, valiant...Maize Bono!" The girl that Jeremiah assumed to be Maize seemed frozen in fear as the crowd retreated away from her. A tiny little thing, he surmised. She might not have even been five feet tall, and she seemed even smaller than that, dwarfed by a vast swath of bouncy red hair. Her hands were trembling as she warily approached the stage, where the escort extended a gloved hand to welcome her up. Then he dipped that gloved hand in the other bowl, repeated the swirling motion, and withdrew a second slip. "Your male tribute shall be the incredible, terrific, valiant—" Jeremiah thought that repeating the same overdone introduction a second time was a little too gimmicky "—Jeremiah King!"

Onstage, Maize started shaking like a leaf. She obviously knew who he was. Jeremiah's mind was occupied by one single thought: I'm going to make Boss so proud. The reason for it was simple enough. Jeremiah had been fighting, and killing, since he was young enough to still be baton-twirling at the fair. He'd conducted his first hired hit at the tender age of ten. Winning the Hunger Games would be just another task, and then he'd come home and be even more feared than before, with even more money, plus immunity from the law as a nice bonus. He could get the gang full control of District Nine if only he could win, which he obviously would.

He moved forward, slow and purposeful, and when the escort instructed him to shake hands with his district partner, he had to stoop down, since he was almost two feet taller than her and he didn't want her arm to be almost vertical. Looking out at the crowd, he spotted his cousins in the sections for fifteen- and seventeen-year-old males, and he gave them a wink.

He would be the Victor, no matter what.

Mare Duster, 18

Badlands, District Ten

D10F

July 1, 329 AEDD

Mare Duster was used to loudmouthed, cocky, drunk men who wanted to take home girls too young for them. She had built her fortune off of them, after all. Mare had been an outlaw for years, which was kind of funny, considering that it was outlaws killing her parents that caused her to become an outlaw in the first place. This is how it happened: Peacekeepers living on their own terms, some veterans, some currently employed, had conducted a raid on the Dusters' horse ranch.

They had stolen as many horses as they could, and they shot the ones that refused to be subdued for their meat. They had held up Mare's family at gunpoint as they looted the farmhouse of their possessions, and they had ordered her parents and her twin sister not to move. But when Sunny heard the telltale whinny of a frantic horse, she couldn't stop herself. So they shot her dead. And then they shot Mare's parents too and took off with the goods, leaving the twelve-year-old who had ducked into the pantry completely unharmed.

Mare had ventured outside to find none of the horses left except Sunny's, who had galloped behind the house at the first sign of trouble and escaped the rogue Peacekeepers' guns. Mare didn't have any time to waste mourning the death of her own equine companion. She took Bluebell by the reins and got the hell out of there. She had made for the Badlands, a barren strip of desert in a valley at the edge of the district, where she survived on wild onion roots.

She couldn't live on them, though, even if Bluebell could, so after a month, she had headed back to town in the dead of night and broken into a butchery. Since it had worked so well, she did it again, and again, and then she went after other businesses. She could pickpocket too, and her favorite targets were the same crass, loutish Peacekeepers that rustled horses and shot twelve-year-olds in their spare time. It got to the point where she was making more through these illegal avenues than most people did through their jobs.

One day when she was scoping out a seedy bar to knock off, she encountered one of said Peacekeepers in a heavily intoxicated state, hoping to get lucky. He had brought her to a motel and rented out a room for the night, and Mare had first realized that looking old for her age and having a conventionally attractive body could be a strength of sorts. So she had stolen everything he had on him and left before morning.

It was her normal gig now, but she'd discovered some herbs with fascinating properties out in the Badlands. If you ground them up and forced someone to inhale the fumes, they worked to induce heavy sleep. And that was how Mare had arrived at her current routine. Every night, she found a new unsuspecting man, and every night, she sent him to sleep and robbed him blind. She never remained in one town for too long. All people knew about her was that she had dark hair, she was beautiful, and she always stayed moving. There were plenty of crass, loutish Peacekeepers, as well as other assorted miscreants, in District Ten's bars every night, and there were plenty of beautiful girls with dark hair.

They never saw it coming. Mare was one of the richest people in the district. She subsisted on a healthy diet of dark chocolate, prime rib, and pure spite. Her victims called her a talentless prostitute, as though it was some shameful secret that she made a living off of seducing people. She knew very well what she was doing, and if it allowed her to live in more comfort, so be it. The truth was that it was less about screwing over creepy, presumptuous men and more about honoring herself. She paid homage to her own survival every time she found a corrupt Peacekeeper and ruined his life. They called her that too. In addition to a talentless prostitute, she was known as the Life-Ruiner, a nightmare for every Peacekeeper, and District Ten's most wanted criminal, among other things. She wasn't their most wanted criminal because she was dangerous, though.

She was their most wanted criminal because she made them look bad. Her escapades made them out to be fools, and she had become an icon to both the rebel presence and average families that had also suffered from Peacekeepers who abused their power. She was someone they could look up to. She gave them hope.

The hope was the most dangerous part. Every one of Mare's conquests served as a reminder that Peacekeepers could be humiliated and taken down a notch too, like they were nothing but normal people with weapons and armor. It made the Peacekeepers uneasy. It forced them to be vigilant and think before acting, and they weren't used to doing that. People wondered if she had a political agenda, or a vendetta. Was she simply a jilted lover, they wondered, or a juggernaut in the making?

She was neither, but she cared about proving a point. Still, her carefree lifestyle didn't mean that she didn't have problems. She had a big one, actually, and she was running out of time to solve it. Bluebell had developed an infection in her hoof, and it needed to be treated. But any farrier would be suspicious of a teenage girl with a horse, no stable, and large amounts of cash to spare. They would tell someone, who would tell someone else, who would tell someone else, and then Mare's whole world would grind to a halt as the Peacekeepers hunted her down.

It was making Bluebell foul-tempered and irritable, and Mare certainly didn't blame her. Having a festering wound on your foot and still being forced to walk great distances with a smaller creature and lots of supplies on your back would be painful, and one might get disagreeable over time. It was making Bluebell resistant to her commands, and Mare needed to get her treatment without raising questions. She had finally come up with a plan, though, and it was time-sensitive.

Mare had to get to her money first. She intended to bribe a drug dealer, and considering the magnitude of the lie she needed them to tell, it was going to be a big bribe. She had to dangle something in front of them that would be irresistibly tantalizing. A year's rent would be sufficient, she thought, half to be paid in advance, half to be paid after the fact, plus the cost of the farrier. Which was why Mare was in the Badlands. She had a hole here where her money was buried, enough for a lifetime of luxury. But Mare didn't need luxury, she needed Bluebell's hoof to be treated.

She had selected the drug dealer because they owned a cart and a horse. The cart could be driven by either one or two horses, and the plan was that Mare would ask the dealer to hitch Bluebell to it, take both horses to the farrier for a "well visit", get Bluebell fixed up, and then return Bluebell to her. Mare was doing this on Reaping Day because the Reaping occupied the Peacekeepers' attention for most of the day, and also because people did favors for each other on Reaping Day and didn't pry as much as they normally did.

Mare quickly retrieved the funds, filled in the hole once more, and headed to town. She caught the unsuspecting drug dealer and asked them if they cared to make a quick buck. They, of course, said yes. Mare explained the plan, gave them the first payment, and hitched Bluebell to their cart. Then she found a hotel room to clean up in. Mare knew how to apply makeup, and on this particular day, she wanted to look friendly and innocent and not at all like the Life-Ruiner. She would be in public for the Reaping after all, and she wanted to keep a low profile.

Mare never showed weakness, though. She'd never stop fighting, and she was a bold person who wanted to emphasize that, so she wore a bright red sundress with white polka dots and her favorite cowboy hat, which she had stolen from its original owner two years ago. She was bright, energizing, attention-grabbing, but not in a sexy way, in a rich girl out on the town way. Her angelic blush and honeyed gold glow softened it too, as did her brown flats. Everything was carefully put together to give the impression of style that was still appropriate for the occasion.

She lounged around the hotel room for an hour before returning to the meeting place. She didn't have to wait long before the drug dealer approached. "Good news?" Mare asked hopefully.

"The farrier had to numb it and inject some medicine, but he said she'll be okay if you go nice and slow on her for a week. My money, now?"

"Of course." Mare gave them the rest of the payment.

"Thank you. It's in excess of what I could have hoped for."

"Well, we all feel a little more connected on Reaping Day, don't we?"

"That's true. Good luck."

"You too." Mare rode Bluebell back to their home base, an inn in a small settlement with boarding for horses. It mostly housed young people who had been kicked out for some reason and old people with nowhere better to go. Mare put Bluebell up in a stall, gave her some hay to eat, and walked to the district square in anticipation of the Reaping. Mare was no great fan of the Capitol or its Hunger Games tradition. In her mind, the Capitol exercised its authority too much. Its fixation with law and ingrained submission to hierarchy created a system in which greed prospered. Peacekeepers could do whatever they wanted with civilians. They weren't supposed to use that position of power to raid horse ranches and rob houses and kill innocent people, obviously, but they did anyway and nothing was ever done about it.

Mare tried to play the fun little recognition game of have-I-slept-with-this-one in regards to the Peacekeeper who pricked her finger and gave her the instructions to her section, but the mirrored visor of his helmet made it hard to tell. Some Peacekeepers preferred to wear their visors down, to conceal their identities, a habit that Mare's exploits had caused the development of. She headed to the pen at the very back on the right side of the aisle, and immediately blended in with the other girls there, striking up a friendly conversation about how nicely the cool breeze cut through the summer sun's heat.

The escort took the stage. At some point, Mare had grown to appreciate her the slightest bit. She was nothing if not dogged, always trying to interact with the crowd. Mare didn't like her, but she appreciated her. The escort was also good for providing comic relief, accidentally confusing chickens for mammals, and even though she had probably been serious, she took the muffled giggles in stride.

She had a whole spiel of trying to warm up the audience to her, letting the muted Dark Days video play in the background while she read off the Victors, presumably to make up for some of the time she had lost by babbling on, and then she chose the male tribute, somebody named Fahad Azerola. If you asked Mare, he looked decidedly...sickly. He didn't quite have a limp, but there was something off about his posture and stride, like he was trying very hard to prevent himself from doubling over in pain.

He had the hungry look to him. Mare knew all about the hungry look. It was the body type of a person who had been eating regularly but in small amounts for a long time. The street kids often had this look, teenagers who were hooked on drugs or alcohol or why were just poverty-stricken with no way to escape. It was the look of a person who was used to never feeling full. Mare wondered if he was under the influence, considering his stride. If so, he certainly didn't seem like a mean drunk. Mare knew that some people lashed out when they were drunk, and others got sad and mopey. Mare had slept with both types, but she only ever robbed the mean ones. The sad ones usually had other things going on. The mean ones were almost always Peacekeepers like the ones who had set her on this path so long ago. The sad ones were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This one was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time, she thought. He looked sickly, and sickly people didn't win the Hunger Games. Mare noticed how threadbare his clothes were. He was really trying to make it to the stage, but she didn't know if he could. For his own sake, she hoped that he managed to do it. In the end, he did, but then he threw up. Throwing up on live television was bad enough, throwing up on the Capitol escort on live television was worse, but throwing up on the Capitol escort on live television and then having to wait for the other tribute to be Reaped as you stood there, humiliated, while the entire nation picked you apart with their eyes was worst of all.

Then they stopped the Reaping. Not completely stopped, but the camera crew wasn't about to let the escort stay covered in vomit. They of course did nothing for the Fahad boy, Mare noted. He was left onstage as the escort was ushered away. They didn't even allow him the kindness of a glass of water. They left him up there, all by himself, surrounded by Peacekeepers, while the mayor and the mentors were ushered away in similar fashion as the escort and given Capitol-made apple spritzers for their troubles by those helpful, helpful cameramen.

That was pretty thoughtless, if you asked Mare. But nobody did ask Mare, and the Reaping resumed after ten minutes. But in those ten minutes, poor Fahad had to loiter alone onstage with everyone watching as they waited for the escort to return. When she did, her dress was as good as new, and a fresh coat of makeup had been applied to her pristine face. She had changed her shoes, gaudy bubblegum pink heels, for a slightly taller fuschia pair. She apologized for the interruption, and then she got on with the Reaping as though nothing had happened. The mayor and the mentors had also returned.

That meant it was time for the female tribute to be chosen. Mare was suddenly hyperaware of the people around her, shifting and moving as one. Everyone was watching, waiting, praying that they wouldn't be picked. The escort tried to drum up some support for Fahad, to her credit, but it was too little too late. "Let's have three cheers for our newest tribute!" she shouted. Nobody deigned to give her a response. "Now, let's select our lovely young lady to join him!"

The Reaping was wearing on for much longer than it was supposed to, thanks to the escort's chattiness and general theatrics, in addition to the break that she had taken to change. She let the suspense increase, hovering her hand over the second bowl for several minutes, before actually choosing a slip. "And that lovely young lady will be...Mare Duster!" Nobody instantly backed away from her, as usually happened with the tributes. It was because nobody knew her, so they didn't recognize that it was her that had been chosen.

But when she did start to move forward, they backed up. Mare knew how to walk to attract different sorts of attention, and she wanted to make the Peacekeepers look bad one last time. She walked calmly, placidly, glacially. Glacial in both the cold sense and the slow sense. She gave off a distinct air of I-got-this and she moved so languidly that the impatient Peacekeepers arrived to hustle her up to the stage. Even as they pushed and pulled at her, she kept walking, as though the Peacekeepers didn't exist at all, taking a moment to pause and sowl at one of them. She completely contrasted Fahad, when she stood next to him. She almost felt guilty for showing him up, but hey, if her crimes had caught up with her and by some stroke of fate, she had landed here, well, she was going to make it out alive.

Mare had a certain talent for staying alive, despite the fact that the deck was stacked against her. She had done it before, and she could do it again. She had no qualms about hurting other people in the process if she had to, and she was already considering her strategy. She would find a boy to manipulate into staying by her side. She would make him swoon, make him trot along at her side, and she would sacrifice him when the time came. Who would the lucky tribute be? Well, why search for somebody else when there was a perfectly good prospect right in front of her?

Cruel as it was, it was easier to convince someone that you were their savior if they were already down on their luck. You didn't have to put in as much effort, and they'd be accustomed to having so little that they wouldn't ask for more. She'd be in control the entire time, so, looking down at Fahad, she decided then and there that he was going to be her puppet of choice. She knew she looked like an appealing choice for an ally. A rich girl, confident and unbothered by the powerful Peacekeepers, jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and she had her sights set on him? He'd fall in a heartbeat. So even though she demonstrated her classy, firm handshake when the escort looked to them expectantly, she finished with a teasing little squeeze. The Games didn't begin in the arena, or even in the Capitol. The Games began as soon as she could talk to Fahad away from the crowd.

And he would be hers. Oh, by Panem, he would be hers.

Will Shakira, 17

Presidential Mansion, Capitol

First Son of Panem

July 1, 329 AEDD

He knew he shouldn't have been eavesdropping, but the subject matter was just too enticing to be ignored. The minute he learned that Pandora Mink, Nikolai Fassnacht, Jacqueline Muriel, the DuMouchels, his parents, and Uncle Linus were having a meeting together in his father's private study, he started figuring out a way to get in. It turned out to be even easier than he had hoped. He remembered how his father had put too much on a light hanging shelf and the wall in the upper corner near the door had split open, and how his father had put a tapestry over it instead of calling a repairman. All Will had to do was walk in before the meeting began and stretch the yarn apart to make a hole big enough to see through, then spend the duration of the meeting in the adjacent room, which just so happened to be his personal study, where he tended to spend most of his time anyway.

As a result, when the meeting began, Will was perched on top of a sturdy bookcase, secretly observing the events that were transpiring next door. Will counted eight people at the conference table, but nine glasses of water. An extra one sat in front of Pandora Mink. Was there a ninth person in the room? Looking just past her, he noticed a boy his age sitting on a loveseat. Pandora handed him the glass to drink from, then set it back down in front of her when he was finished.

Pandora's pants bulged around one of her thighs. Will had heard his father say that she had been shot in the leg, and he assumed the bulge was the outline of a bandage. Konstance, he heard, had been shot more severely, although he couldn't see a similar bulge beneath her blouse. It was the kind that was sort of draped in the front, and the creamy chiffon folds were designed to conceal belly fat, so they could certainly hide some gauze or a compression device.

Will's father wore a vacant expression, and his mother looked grave, stern, and worried. Uncle Linus just looked angry, and his face was bloody and torn up, like he had recently been in a bad fight. Nikolai's face was unreadable. Jacqueline and Karen, who he didn't know nearly as well, seemed frustrated and desperate for solutions. Konstance was frowning, which wasn't really unusual for her. Pandora kept glancing over at the boy in the chair and was the only person smiling. The first person to speak was Uncle Linus. "Willoughby, I have a problem with this whole endeavor. You owe young Will an explanation. Either you call him in here and tell him how you managed to fuck up this badly or I will." Will was immediately intrigued. He knew that Linus didn't really like his father, but the razor-sharp edge of fury that undercut his steady tone was unnerving. And what did Will have to do with anything?

"Calm down, Linus. We all know that you didn't tell your son what's going on here, and you're just mad that you're following my lead for once. There's no need to act like you're on your period."

"I didn't tell him because Eurydice already had, Willoughby. There wasn't any need to say it a second time. The point here is that Will's life is in danger as a direct result of your negligence, and you owe him the respect of looking him in the eye and offering him an apology, or at the very least, a justification for your lousy behavior."

"But," Willoughby sputtered, "Why single me out? Eurydice's negligence got her Avoxes hurt, right? And now Pandora has to be in charge of keeping them safe until we've dealt with that. I just think that I'm not the only one who makes mistakes, you know?"

"There's a big difference between making a well-intentioned effort that failed because of unforeseen abuse being carried out by any one of a dozen people that were vetted and background-checked, and making absolutely zero effort whatsoever and throwing your son, who is a minor child and fully dependent on you, under the bus, and placing him in a jeopardizing position that he has no legal avenue of extracting himself from. Just admit it: you rose to power on the backs of others and stole the fruits of their labor while capitalizing on your existing standing. You're an incompetent, self-serving fool who delegates because he's incapable of doing things by himself, you're a fraud, you're ruled by your emotions, and your son deserves to know both that there was an attempt made on his life and that it only happened because you refused to take the necessary precautions to protect him after being specifically told that they were desperately and urgently needed. I might not be a perfect father. I'm barely in my son's life now that he's an adult, and I didn't do shit for him when he was a kid, but even I understand that if your son almost gets killed because you decided that the instant gratification of watching a movie mattered more than making the single phone call that it would have taken to ensure his safety, you've failed as a parent."

Will felt a chill run up his spine. It wasn't just that Linus was saying these things, it's that his mother wasn't jumping in to play mediator like she usually did when Linus and Willoughby had a spat. Which meant that she agreed with what Uncle Linus was saying, and, he realized, she had been grimly nodding along the entire time he had been speaking.

"Fine!" Willoughby shouted. "Fine! You know what? If you don't like the way I'm doing things, find somebody else to do it instead. I don't believe my son is mature enough to handle what you want to tell him, but since you seem to not feel like taking into account what I, the person who knows him best, think about it, you can have it your way and let him take over the whole fucking country for the week if it so pleases you! In fact, that'd be a valuable lesson for you. Whatever shall we call it? How about 'be careful what you wish for?' Hmm? How about that!" With that, Willoughby slammed his hand down on the table, rose, shoved his chair across the room, hurled open the door, and angrily huffed down the hallway. Will watched from his peephole, mouth agape. Was this really how his father, a man he loved and admired, treated the people around him? Suddenly, he heard a wheezy, choking noise that sounded like the midpoint between a cackling witch and someone swallowing and proceeding to cough up their dentures. It was Konstance DuMouchel, and she was laughing. Then, even more disturbingly, she got up, pushed in her chair, and kept laughing as she left and headed down the hallway in the opposite direction, towards the foyer instead of the bedrooms. Pandora whispered something to the boy on the loveseat and he extended his foot and nudged the door shut.

"Well, you heard him," Nikolai said. "He's chosen to temporarily instate his son as President for the next seven days or until he decides otherwise. We'd better fetch the young man at once."

"Are you sure that's the best idea?" Linus asked. "I think he deserves the opportunity to decide what he wants to do. It's incredibly unfair for adults to bring a child into this situation, put him at the head of it against his will, and make it his job to fix everything that the adults did in the first place."

"Of course," Nikolai agreed. "You're completely right about that. If he says no, he has no obligation to do it. Now, who wants to go get him?"

"I can," Linus offered. Then Will saw him head for the door. He silently lowered himself to the ground as quickly as he could, then plopped down on his recliner and grabbed a book, opening it to a random page and pretending to be engrossed in its prose. In almost no time at all, he heard a knock on the door before it opened. "Will," Linus said, "We need your help in your father's study. Would you please join us?"

Will did his best to look like he hadn't been spying. He feigned mild surprise. "Oh? With what?"

"Your father and I had a disagreement of sorts."

"What about?"

"You'll find out soon." Linus led him into his father's study, where he gestured at the empty spot at the head of the table and the swivel chair across the room. "That's for you. Your father stormed out in a bit of a hurry." Will returned the chair to its proper place and sat down. Nikolai took the lead, while his mother seemed preoccupied with picking at a hangnail.

"Will, I don't want there to be any confusion here. Your father and your uncle just got into an argument, and your father, in essence, threw a tantrum, lost his temper, and made you President for the next week. Would you like to know what they were arguing about?"

"Yes, I would."

"Will, there was a shooting here just yesterday. Do you know this? Yes? Good. The assailant also detonated some bombs in my office. Do you know this too?" Will had, and he said so. "What I'm pretty sure you don't know is that they had rigged up a bomb in the library also. Did you notice it at all?"

"No. I was in the soundproof music room for most of yesterday. The one right behind the library. I have my own library, so I never really have a reason to use the main one. It doesn't even have a sofa."

"Anyway," Nikolai said, "Linus went to go check on you when he noticed a suspicious ticking noise coming from a device that he recognized as a chemical bomb, and he called your father to ask that a bomb removal team come remove it immediately from the premises, since it was too heavy for him to carry off on his own. Your father, however, refused, since he was watching a movie and didn't want to be bothered. Linus called me, but I missed it, since I was busy fending off an active shooter at the time. So Linus took matters into his own hands, draining as much of the activation fluid as he could and banging on the music studio door to try and get your attention, but as it was soundproof, that didn't work. He called your father a few more times, begging for help, but your father ignored him. When the bomb exploded, Linus placed himself in front of the studio door, since he wasn't sure how bad the blast would be. He had drained most of the activation fluid, so it was much less destructive than it would have otherwise been, but he leapt and tried to tackle the exploding bomb anyway, to keep you safe. He was angry with your father because he didn't want to tell you anything that had happened. You can check the security cameras if you'd like. The whole thing was recorded."

Will swore he could feel his world turning upside down. "He cares so little about me that he'd let me get blown up rather than quit watching his movie?"

His uncle must have heard the distress in his voice. "Your father loves you, but he distrusts me to the extent that he'd rather take the chance than believe me at face value. He probably assumed that I was making a joke. I don't like your father, but he absolutely cares about you. He's not heartless. It's his absence of a brain that caused the real problem."

"So, sir," Nikolai offered, "The floor is yours. Ask us anything you'd like. Order us to do anything you'd like. You have a week to rule the world, if you're okay with doing that and you think you can handle the responsibilities."

"I'm okay with doing it, and I can definitely handle the responsibilities."

"Any questions for us, sir?"

"Yeah. Who's the boy on the loveseat?"

Pandora answered him. "He's an Avox, one of the group that belonged to Eurydice but are being taken care of at my mansion until we can be sure it's safe here for them. He's gotten kind of attached, and Willoughby said it was fine if I brought him along. Wait, do you know about the Avox situation? No? Okay, so, Avoxes tend to be treated horribly, so your mother started adopting some herself and having them looked after in part by the domestic staff so that she could keep them safe, only somebody on the staff abused them without her knowledge. So until a thorough investigation is completed and we know we've gotten rid of the abuser, we removed the Avoxes from the situation entirely."

"So the young man is an Avox? And he was abused? That's terrible!"

"Well," Karen cut in, "Sadly, some people believe it's their right to punish rebels as much as they can, and they do it by beating their Avoxes. A good number of Capitolites don't even consider Avoxes to be people, my mother is one of them. Whenever she refers to an Avox, she always uses the word "it", like they're nothing but a labor-saving appliance."

"That's incredibly stupid. Hey, if I'm the President, I can, like, make laws and stuff, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, from now on, it's illegal to beat or otherwise inflict physical harm on an Avox. Anybody who hurts one goes to jail, no exceptions. I don't know why we've never done anything about this before, but I'm not letting this go unfixed for one more day. Oh, and while we're at it, why do we cut people's tongues out in the first place? It's archaic and barbaric. No more of that either. That severe of a punishment should be reserved for people convicted of heinous, premeditated murder or some shit, not randos who talk badly about the government."

His mother couldn't hide her smile. "I'd say those are some good laws for your first two minutes in office. What are you going to do with the rest?"

"That depends. I have some questions. Why was Nikolai's office blown up?"

"Because they wanted to destroy some incriminating evidence that I had locked in my safe and desk drawers. Your father put my backup copy right there when he left." Will read over it.

"It's a fingerprint report. Where did you collect the fingerprints?" Nikolai summarized the situation with the mysterious box, paper, and recording about the Wisteria Hitchcock execution. "So these are the fingerprints of the person who left that for you. Why haven't you brought them in for questioning? You have everyone's fingerprints on file, right?"

"Well, yes. But it's hard to question a person that doesn't exist."

"Whatever do you mean?"

"I know who those fingerprints belong to. The problem is that she died fifteen years ago."

"How do you know she didn't fake her death?"

"Because I knew her, and I saw her decomposing corpse with my own eyes. Pandora did too. Meg couldn't have had anything to do with this because she drowned a decade and a half ago. Her body was in the bloating stage, meaning she'd been dead for at least three days. There's no way to fake your death for that long."

"Meg? She was your friend? That's interesting."

"Well, not my friend. You might call her a bully, she didn't treat Pandora very nicely."

"And her name was…?"

"Megaera Arkinnian."

"Okay, good to know. So, changing gears, what do I need to do for the Hunger Games? The President has certain duties to perform, right?"

"Right. We'll say that Willoughby's got the flu at a most inopportune time, so you're filling in for him until he gets better. It's not a serious case, but he needs to stay in bed and recover. Rest assured, he's not in danger, but Will is in charge until he's well enough to reenter the public eye." This was Eurydice.

"You'll need to give a short speech at the opening ceremonies tonight. Pandora will interview you a few times; just go along with whatever she says. It's not difficult stuff."

"Yeah, that sounds easy. Hey, am I allowed to hire and fire people?"

"If you'd like."

"And promote them and demote them?"

"If you'd like. Why?"

"Konstance creeps me out and I just plain don't like her. Also, I was talking to my cousin Derp last week, and he says that she's mean. Jacqueline, Karen, give her a warning from me, please. Tell her that if I receive further reports that she's creating a hostile work environment, I'm going to fire her and promote the both of you. I'm beginning to get the impression that my father wasn't very hands on, but I am, and I trust my instincts, and right now my instincts are telling me that Konstance is getting a little too big for her britches. Hopefully, this will be a reminder that a new sheriff's come to town, and this one expects her to behave in an upfront and professional manner towards her coworkers."

"Anything else, sir?"

"Yes, Jacqueline. I'm well aware that you and Derp are together and expecting, and I'd like you to know that your jobs are safe. And Nikolai, I have an idea. I'm going to give these renegade Peacekeepers an ultimatum: from this moment, the Peacekeeping Force is forbidden from carrying out any whippings or executions at all, and any Peacekeeper who disobeys this order can expect harsh consequences. We will soon learn who truly has respect for your authority and the authority of the Presidency, and who wants to advance their own agenda. These announcements shall be made tonight, understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"I expect for Pandora to somehow relate these back to yesterday's announcement about the effort to uncover rebels. Frame them as tests of loyalty if you think it's best. We must ensure that the Hunger Games proceed without a hitch, and this will help us do that. Questions?"

He was sure everybody did have some questions, but nobody dared ask any. Except for Nikolai. "I doubt the senate is going to like this."

"The senate is rather traditional," Will conceded, "And no, they won't like it. My father left most of his decisions up to them, and he's been in power for a long time. They'll just have to understand that I have a different leadership style and prefer to have a tighter rein on things. But we have many loyalists, and if any of the senators makes a fuss, they'll be accused of being unpatriotic and therefore a rebel. The media will do our work for us. Any other questions? Going once, going twice? Very well. Dismissed, except for Pandora and her Avox. Karen, Jacqueline, you're needed in the Gamemaking Room to monitor the Reapings. Nikolai, you can borrow my study if yours is too badly destroyed, but either way you need access to the population databases in case they need to call in for info about a particular tribute. Mom, could you check on Dad? Uncle Linus, since Mom's going to be kind of busy, you need to be in charge of the tribute teams for the time being. If you need any help, Flossie Merveilleuse is probably the person to check with. Is everyone clear on that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, everyone. It's been a pleasure."

Hey y'all!

Now that we're getting into the meat of this story, I'm going to take the opportunity to explain my trigger and content warning policy. First of all, this is the Hunger Games, so you can expect plenty of violence, which I will not warn you of. If I deem there to be a serious topic that some people may be sensitive to, I will tag it as a TW/CW at the beginning of the chapter, either as "mentions of x" or "depictions of x". That basically just differentiates between telling and showing, telling being the milder version. I'm always willing to provide a summary of the material if you PM me, and I will keep this system in place to ensure that you won't be unexpectedly exposed to certain content.

Remember, most of the info I've put out is on the blog, and you should feel free to check it any time you want. I'll be adding things to it periodically. If you haven't already, you might consider exploring the Chapter Guide tab.

I hope you all enjoyed meeting our first six tributes! I'd love to hear your thoughts about them. I know the actual Reaping portion is a little repetitive, sorry. I'm planning to update next Wednesday, so that's when you can expect to hear from me next. Also, I'd love to know what you think of the subplot so far, especially since a subplot character will make an appearance in each chapter. If you want to know who those subplot characters will be, or when your tribute's next POV is, check out the Chapter Guide on the blog. I'm also always here if you have any questions!

—LC :)