Omar Beatriz-Calvert, District Ten male- 15

Apparently the Careers didn't think I was a threat. I wasn't mad, since I quickly figured out their plan- not that they were trying to hide it or anything. But once I realized the Careers were all targeting one specific person, I saw that I was literally invisible to them. The ones they weren't targeting, the b-team I guess, started just wandering in closer and grabbing stuff without anyone even caring. I couldn't believe it at first, but I just kept grabbing stuff and no one ever came at me. I started scooping up backpacks and looping them over my arms until I looked like I was wearing a huge coat. The only trouble I had in the whole bloodbath was one time Preji and I went for the same bag. He snarled at me, so I let him have it. I already had four.

The bloodbath was something I would never forget. As much as I wanted to focus on getting supplies and staying alive, I couldn't keep the sounds out of my ears. Every one of those screams was no doubt echoed at home by an entire family losing a beloved member. It was going so fast I wasn't even sure who was dead. I just knew it wasn't any careers. What was it like, to volunteer for this and want it to happen? They weren't even scared. People were dying all around but they didn't have to be scared because they were the ones killing people.

It wasn't hard to find Bess. She was really strong, but she was not really fast. I was a little surprised no one had targeted her in the bloodbath, just because she was so strong. After I'd grabbed a ton of stuff, I found her disappearing into the distance and ran after her.

"Bess!" I called. She turned around and threw up her fists, then saw it was me and put them down. She looked behind me fearfully but must not have seen anything because she relaxed a bit.

I caught up with her and we started looking around for a place to hide out. There were all sorts of buildings, from a lot of rows of beat-up houses to a few skyscrapers. A lot of them looked pretty similar so we ended up picking one with pretty thick-looking walls and only one window, since I thought it would be easy to barricade ourselves into and keep the Careers out.

"I can't believe no one went after you," I said, breathing heavily as I set all my bags down.

"I think Allure did," Bess said. "She missed, though."She roamed around the room and looked for weak spots where the Careers might be able to get in. Our best hope was that they wouldn't notice us, but we still had to take precautions. There wasn't much in the building, which seemed to be a house, but I took the splintery table in the middle and leaned it against the window so no one could see we were in there. I locked the door, not that it would keep them out. Bess climbed up on the table against the wall to tug some of the ceiling beams free, careful not to take too many from one area so the roof wouldn't fall in. She propped them under the door handle for an extra barrier.

"How'd you get all those?" Bess asked, noticing all my bags for the first time.

"No one wanted me so I just walked right in and took them," I said. I opened one up and dumped it out. There was a pocketknife, a flashlight with a crank, a rain poncho, and some plastic bags.

"Ooh, let me do one!" Bess said. She flipped over a bag and a bunch of packaged food came tumbling out, and some water bottles. I flipped another bag and got another pocketknife along with a first aid kit and a coil of rope. Bess dumped out the last and found a bunch of wires and electric-looking stuff. Too bad Cheyanne or Preji didn't get that one, I thought.

"It's so much," Bess said quietly. She looked at it for another minute. "All this stuff... this is worth more than I make in months."

"Yeah," I said. My own family was richer than a lot in Ten but I knew plenty of people who could barely afford food. This could change some people's lives. But to the Capitol it was just cheap prizes you could hand out like candy.

Nailah Nebit, District Two female- 18

It was crazy, how Anthony died before Nero could reach him. And to an outlier, too. It almost sounded like maybe it wasn't Oberon who killed him. But I wasn't going to say anyhting. I could be wrong, for one. And if I wasn't, what was there to say? Tell everyone and trigger the career breakup one day into the games? And it wasn't like I was mad at Nero. We all came into this knowing we were going to kill each other. If Nero just did it that quickly, I could understand that. It was bold and took out an enemy before he even knew what was coming. And it worked out for me, too. Now I knew who not to trust.

But who can I trust? Not Allure, surely. Apparently I wasn't on her hit list yet as one of the "pretty" people, but I would be eventually, after she killed everyone she thought was prettier than I was. I could probably trust Kjole- relatively speaking, anyway, since I obviously couldn't trust any Careers. But other than that, I had another idea.

"Can I help cook?" I asked as the sun neared the middle of the sky. I'd volunteered to stay back as guard with Dionysus because I had something in mind. Not something deadly, not yet at least. Just something.

"I guess, but the chef has pretty high standards," Dionysus joked.

"Does "the chef" know anything about Egyptian food?" I asked. I'd gotten the idea yesterday when I noticed some of the spices in the beans and rice tasted familiar.

"I must admit I don't. Is it good?" Dionysus asked.

"Best in the world," I said.

I rummaged through our supplies to find the couple dozen packets of spices the Capitol had nicely included. I found the ones labeled "cumin" and "coriander" and picked them out.

"This is the good stuff," I said. I added some to our boiling rice. It wasn't the rice my family used. Ours was skinnier with longer grains. It wouldn't taste quite right, since the shorter rice was fatter and puffier, but maybe I could have a little taste of home.

"I guess I never thought about what ancient Egyptians ate," Dionysus said. "I mostly just thought about pyramids and mummies and stuff."

"It takes a lot of energy to build a pyramid," I said, since I knew Dionysus wasn't being dismissive. Everyone thought of pyramids and mummies when they thought of Egypt. I took out a package of dehydrated beef strips to rehydrate once the rice was done.

"At home we had something kind of like a taco," I said. "We used grape leaves instead of tortillas, though."

"I'd try it," Dionysus shrugged. Even though I knew we were competing, I found myself warming up to Dionysus. Sure, he was kind of a screwup and the weakest Career, but he was just a nice guy. I had the feeling that when someone killed him he'd shake their hand and say "good game".

My eyes fell on a can of corn and I thought of my plan again. "Oh hey, corn," I said, picking up the can. "You know, you can make alcohol out of that."

"You can, can't you?" Dionysus asked, his eyes lighting up. "I tried to make vodka once out of potatoes. It... didn't work out. I got this gross rotten black gloop that even I didn't want to drink."

"Yeah, it's probably pretty complicated," I said. But it wasn't always, I knew. If people in jail can make alcohol in their toilets then it must be possible for anyone.

Dionysus picked up the can and looked it over, pretending he was looking at the nutrition information. I didn't say anything more- best not to come on too strong. Dionysus looked like right now he was just curious, but as time went by, his cravings would get stronger. Eventually he might give it a try. If he did, every possible outcome would work out for me. If he made something rotten and rancid but it smelled like alcohol, he'd drink it and poison himself. If he made actual alcohol, he'd go back to his old habits and be way easier to kill. And if he did manage to drink in moderation- I didn't study poisons for nothing. Everyone would assume he did it wrong and poisoned himself. No one would suspect me. I'd be even less suspected than Nero.

Samantha Von Hindenburg, District Twelve female (13)

See, we had nothing to be afraid of. No one even looked at us during this "blood bath".

Because they didn't think you were a threat, dummy! Samantha said.

Preposterous. Of course I am a threat. I am a brilliant scientist!

Brilliant enough to get yourself thrown into my body. What's it like going through puberty a second time?

Madam, I am a gentleman. I have not looked.

That's the LEAST of my worries.

Though Samantha was unconvinced, it was true no one had confronted me during the opening moment of these games. I was able to walk around at my leisure seeking out scientific components that I could surely use to make something that would get me back where I belonged and her back in control of her body. I had everything from wires to switches to batteries.

You wouldn't happen to know anything about temporal mechanics or escher theory, would you? I could use an assistant. I asked my unintentional companion.

I'm already your assistant. You're using my hands. When you get back to Germany, Einstein, make sure to send me my paycheck.

I was not personally acquainted with Herr Einstein. Werner Von Braun, though, now THERE was a brilliant man! I do hope his rocket propulsion experiments worked out.

They did.

Oh? He was able to achieve high-altitude flight?

Get ready to have your mind blown. He took us all the way up to the moon.

Mein Gott! You are jesting?

Nope. Big ol' flag up there on the moon with our name on it.

Ahh, the wonders of Germany.

Try again.

What does this mean?

Not the German flag.

Acck! The Russians?

Panem, my good fellow. And your friend Herr Braun defected. He died in Panem. It wasn't called that then but it was what is now Panem.

Of course he was dead. It had been hundreds of years. But I still felt a pain in my heart when I thought about how Werner, along with everyone I'd ever known, was lying in a grave- some of them, it seemed, not even in the Fatherland.

Enough of this. I need to get to work. I grabbed a circuit board from my pile of supplies and started to tinker with it.

So how does this all work?

A woman would not-

More news. Women are people these days.

Has EVERYTHING changed?

No, there's still death and taxes.

Very well. You will only keep bothering me if I don't tell you. I laid out some supplies ahead of me. Temporal mechanics is founded upon the principle that while time does not have actual mass, it does possess theoretical mass, as measured by the extent of the entropy it is able to exert upon the universe around it. By converting this theoretical mass using a temporal actuator apparatus, you can render it into something tangible and thus usable for our purposes.

In movies there's a cliché where someone says something scientific and someone else says "in English, please?" But seeing as you're German I'll skip that.

That WAS in English. Or really it wasn't in any language at all, since I was just thinking. I DID think things in German but it was only a translation, really. Before I thought the words I already had the concept in my head.

So how'd you learn all this?

I was a brilliant lone thinker. No one ever understood me.

No way, really?

Yes, it is true.

In Panem we have a thing called sarcasm.

Ah, we have that also in Germany!

Some of you do anyway.

Wait, you are being sarcastic to Me!

There's the genius.

Says someone who didn't even know what a temporal capacitor is.

Bro I am thirteen years old. Did you know all that when you were thirteen?

I ignored Samantha and got back to work. It was going to take time and concentration for me to finish this. Even in this advanced future, I was working with the equivalent of stone knives and bearskins. My work had taken decades to complete and all my notes had been lost in the leap. What I was trying to do was like attempting to rewrite a novel from memory. Honestly, I didn't expect an exact replica. My best hope was that I was essentially able to reinvent my original breakthrough, most certainly with a few differences and tweaks. As long as it got me home, I didn't care.

Ha ha it was fun making up fake science :)