A Bitter Aftertaste (or, District 3)

x

I have always been in love with
last chances especially
now that they really do
seem like last chances

'The Imaginal Stage', D. A. Powell

x

Jaego Lofton, District 3

The last time I spoke to my brother Mezzi was the night before I was scheduled to take the train to District 8, on the verge of something great, something far bigger than me or even my district of origin. I had to be on the platform by six - that's in the morning, mind you - and he was up late, with about all of his friends over, by the sound of it.

That had been a common theme for the few months leading up to my acceptance in the Interdistrict Cooperative Exchange program. I was up late studying, Romex and our parents were out late working, and Mezzi's friends were talking, often loudly, about… something.

Plausible-deniability 'something', usually.

And usually, that was fine by me. The noise from the next room, the larger of the three bedrooms, which he shared with Romex, kept me from falling asleep on my soldering work. It was comforting, honestly, not to be alone in the house. I love my older brothers. Did then, still do now. There's never been any question about that, never any doubt as to how much. Maybe the five-year age difference as a buffer is behind that, since I was never competing with either of them for anything the way they, more or less, did with each other, being about the same age. They could just be proud of me, and I could be proud of them. No matter how much our paths in life have always seemed to be running in three radically different directions.

Mezzi would like that turn of phrase, 'radical'. Ha.

The problem was that, proud or not, I needed to sleep.

So, as I sometimes did, I knocked on his door, stomach doing flips at the thought of bugging him, but even more knotted up at the prospect of missing my train and making a total idiot of myself on the precipice of what should have been something amazing, a moment to celebrate.

"Is that your brother?" someone asked, too muffled by the barrier to tell exactly who.

"Hey, JJ, come on in!" Mezzi called. "Just keep your eyes closed, don't see too much, okay?"

He never meant that literally. It was more of a joke than anything, since Mezzi has never especially believed in consequences, while my fixation on the future and concern about what'll happen once I get there is almost debilitatingly intense.

The door swung open.

A haphazardly erected board showed what could have been several weeks of scribblings, diagrams, one blueprint that I took special care not to look at too closely. Plausible deniability. Several of his friends sat scattered around the room, on both his and Romex's bed, and where space was lacking, on the floor.

"What's up, little man?" he asked. "Shouldn't you be asleep?"

"Uh, yeah," I said, coughing nervously, unused to this many eyes on me in close quarters, acutely aware that not only was I wearing my pajamas, I was wearing my least nice pajamas, all of my even remotely decent clothes packed away by my door in advance of the 5-in-the-morning dash to the train station. "Sorry, that's kinda why I knocked."

"Shit. Sorry." He grinned ruefully. "Kinda got carried away."

A few of his friends chuckled at that. Some familiar faces among them - Aramid Yagi, still looking fixated on the plan despite the interruption, one of the many childhood friends involved in the student protests, that Mezzi has become far closer with, since the 89th Games. Penrose Gordon, who I happened to know he had a pretty massive thing for, from the broadcasting and signalling academy, sitting beside him on his bed, elbowing him in the ribs.

"Yeah, Mez, you gotta settle down a bit," she laughed. "Wouldn't want to get the police in here, fuck everything up over a noise complaint."

Pretty rich, coming from her, since Penrose and a few other dropouts from broadcasting had basically spent the last year in and out of jail for disrupting official district telecasting. Mezzi considered that approximately the coolest thing he'd ever heard. Worth telling his kid brother about at length, hearts practically materializing in his eyes as he did so.

Our parents would have lost their minds if he did half of what Penrose got up to - probably even if they knew she and her crew were over.

Lucky for him, or maybe ultimately unlucky, I guess, I've never been a snitch.

"You're right, you're right," he sighed. "Yo, Aramid, anyone from microtech get back to you yet on the disruptors question?"

"Not yet," Aramid said, looking away.

"Well, we're kinda stalled anyway, then. Hey, you're not nervous, are you? Looking for an excuse to come see me?" Mezzi suggested, back to smiling like an idiot.

"No," I insisted.

"Aw, come on, I'm gonna miss you, JJ! Come on over here. Damn, don't look so freaked out, you've got bigger stuff to worry about, don't you?"

I couldn't help but see the blueprint, noticing, acutely, how much it looked like the Justice Building. How the diagrams could definitely have been side doors, windows, very recognizable recording hardware from the building's external features.

"Where're you headed out to?" Penrose asked, scooting over on the bed so I could join them, conveniently edging almost into Mezzi's lap. "Mez keeps insisting you're off to save the world."

"Just, uh, District Eight," I said quickly. "Not even really to save it. Just a year's exchange."

"Shit, you got accepted?"

"Impressive," Aramid added, looking up. "Someone got the brains in the family."

"Rude!" Mezzi complained. "Romex is smart, too, I'm an aberrational dipshit, not the rule. JJ's getting out of here before any of us, though. My baby brother's a little genius, isn't he?"

He leaned over Penrose to try to pinch my cheek, and I jerked away.

"Don't be an asshole," I complained, the tips of my ears feeling uncomfortably warm at the praise, at the way some of Penrose's friends were looking at me, now.

"That's really cool," Kilany, a girl I thought might even be in my year at school, though in some other field, cut in. "Wait, are you actually working there?"

"Yeah, some infrastructure projects, but also going to school there like normal," I said, trying not to choke under the scrutiny, but far more stressed out about the whole thing than I'd been even for the selection interview a month prior. "It's about culture exchange as much as building stuff."

That was what I'd been told, at least. An initiative underway to mend fences between Three and Eight, address some of the fractures in interdistrict relations that had been created by the addition of greater levels of mechanization to Eight's factories. All the same people, all from the same country. Proving District 3 isn't just some awful place full of assholes come to steal away your livelihoods. We can help, too. Hence the public amenities projects, and also hence the sticking of a bunch of especially bright and interview-able young people in schools in the process of doing it. We're humans, too. Easier to believe that about someone you've met than about a whole population you only really hear about during the Hunger Games.

The idea was positively nerve-wracking. I'd always thought of myself as more of a… well, the same way almost anyone from District 3 thinks of themselves. I build stuff. Being an ambassador was something totally different, though I did come up with a great off-the-cuff line in my interview about 'building bridges' as a metaphor for the work the project was doing.

"Well, we'll shut up a bit, don't worry," Mezzi reassured me, reaching a little further to give me a comforting pat on the shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm definitely gonna worry," I complained, glancing back up at the board. "Please don't do anything stupid."

"I, uh…" he trailed off, glancing at Penrose with a smile that was far more obvious than be probably intended, that made my heartrate catch, just slightly, in my throat.

"Please?"

"C'mon, JJ, we can't all ship off to District Eight to fix the world," he said, sounding, oddly, almost cheerful. "You know as well as me that shit's still broken, that someone's gotta make things happen. And it's gonna have to be us. So you take the whole rest of the country, and I'll handle District Three, okay?"

I glanced back at the board. Beyond the blueprint and the sketches of Justice Building fixtures, I knew, viscerally, that I'd seen some of these schematics before. Recently, too. As recently as the last Games. When Bridget…

We'd watched together, like everyone had last year as our tributes made it so abnormally far along. Him and me and Romex, even our parents when they could. Including my dad, wheeling up to the television in his chair. Getting excited, really excited, for the first time in a long time. Dion was cool, of course, but Bridget - we knew her. Everyone knew her, after she'd basically organized the student protests herself, but Mezzi had actually met her a few times, through Aramid, who was kinda in her core team.

At first he'd been all 'I told you so' about how agitators tended to get reaped, which was harder to deny than usual after having accompanied him to the protest on the steps of the Justice Building back then, clambered onto his shoulders to get a better look while she spoke. Feeling that energy, and then, the next day, the air knocked out of our lungs as her name was called at the reaping.

But then she lived, one day, two days, a week, two weeks, and it was like - maybe Mayor Rhodes finally found someone he couldn't just recycle into parts like a defective machine when they didn't fit into the district the way he wanted them to. Maybe she was coming home, like Polly had, years before, and we'd have another mentor, a success story, a 'screw you' to the people trying to keep us down, trying to warp our district into something awful.

I mean, I never really got into the whole burn-the-system deal she kind of had going on the way Mezzi did, but most people didn't. Bridget had fought the plans to get started on a training center, and she did end up dead at the hands of a trainee. Really dead. Not like him, who… no one's totally sure what happened, there, but the guy who killed her got scooped out, is alive right now, even though he didn't win.

And Bridget was dead-dead, and a lot of people's hopes were dashed, and all of that energy started to die right back down, like she'd never even existed. Sometimes even worse, like it was her own fault for having died, since someone who made it that far, I mean… if someone from District 3 could do that with no training, what could we be doing if we hadn't - led by her - fought the construction of the Center so hard?

People forget, Mezzi always liked to remind us, just how many of the trainees she killed before she met Manari.

One thing people don't forget, or at least, I realized I definitely hadn't, looking at a sketch of it pinned to the board, was the IED she built in the arena.

"Mez," I said quietly, taking a step back, having forgotten everything else, all of the rest of it, as the pieces of what was being planned in the next bedroom over clicked into place. "Whatever you're planning… you gotta know, they have surveillance and stuff, you're the one who told me about that, if I can hear you from the next room..."

"Don't worry about it."

"Mez. Mezzi… they can hear you!"

"It's none of your business, JJ," he said, his tone just as soft and serious as mine, the room gone quiet. "This isn't you. It's all me. Sorry I kept you up. Go to bed."

Penrose shot me an apologetic expression as he put an arm around her shoulders.

"If I don't see you tomorrow morning…" I started.

"Crush it in District Eight for me," he replied. "You know the drill. Represent, make a difference."

"Yeah."

"I know you're gonna make me proud. I'm telling you, get some sleep. Big stuff coming tomorrow, huh?"

There was, indeed, big stuff to come the next day.

Suitcase in hand, I made it to the train in time. Said goodbye to a quiet house.

I spent a day on the railway to our destination, and then all of half an hour in District 8.

The sky was cloudy, strangely hazed with air pollution in a way that we've been working on reducing in Three. The buildings were grey, aging, like the life had been sucked out of them a long time ago.

On the platform, I was told by a pair of helmeted Peacekeepers that I was needed back in Three for questioning.

The next train to arrive took me home.

Big stuff indeed.

They might as well not have questioned me - I truly didn't know a thing more than anyone could have guessed from what actually went down. To the best of my knowledge, the best of anyone's knowledge who walked past the Justice Building within about a week or so of that night, explosive devices were detonated deliberately with the intention of both destroying some of the building's aging facade and, apparently, breaking in to locate the Tessarae records with some plan of… something to do, probably, with the conviction that they'd been being rigged.

I told three different Peacekeepers that I wasn't privy to my brother's plans, that the rest of us weren't, either, that I didn't know any of his friends, that I hadn't ever heard or seen anything, possibly ever in my life.

The 'totally ignorant' act would have worked better if I hadn't spent the month leading up to it, in the process of my application, trying to convince everyone in earshot of my competence and capability. Nice. But eventually, I think they realized there wasn't much else to wring out of me.

Supposedly, the day went like this.

Shortly after sunset, a well-financed and highly-professional team of terrorists attempted to infiltrate the Justice Building using improvised explosives. Luckily for all involved, despite their devastating capability to go totally unnoticed, they accidentally detonated one of their devices in the process of breaking in, killing some, injuring others.

Officially, that's what happened.

The 'shrapnel' that rendered Mezzi comatose left suspiciously bullet-shaped marks.

When I first came to visit him, immediately after I was released from questioning, the hospital room still had the scent of whatever they'd used to make the bombs.

He was just as silent then as he is now, save for the sound of the ventilator, the beep of the monitors. Early morning, before school. I'm not sure why I felt such an impulsive need to check in on him, but at the same time, when I already do on most weekends, why it had to be right away, but I know exactly why I'm here. The announcement last night. The Games are coming back.

Wondering, mostly, what he'd have to say about that, since it's been two years since I heard him say anything.

I'm not sore about being stuck in Three, really. It's not a bad place to be stuck. I like my work, and I like my friends, and I love my family, every part of it that's left.

Rather than char and rubble, t just smells like saline and a sort of acetous back-note of some kinds of drugs, the fresh plastic tubing from the latest IV nutrition supplement. Mezzi's hollowed out, barely recognizable after so long. But I figure he'd want to know, if he could hear me, and I don't know enough about comas to really know whether he can or not, and it feels right, and…

Before I can get any of it out, though, there's a quiet knock on the door.

"Early for visitors," Mayor Rhodes says, opening the door carefully and closing it behind him.

I've never actually met him in person, just seen him onstage or on a screen, heard Mezzi rail about something or another that he did. He's shorter in person, almost young-looking. Like, younger than my parents. Most notably, one of his arms is mostly-missing, a tangled web of black scar tissue protruding slightly from beneath the tailored sleeve of his suit jacket.

"Ah," I say hesitantly, edging unconsciously between him and my brother's bed. "Good… good morning?"

"You're a very dutiful brother, you know," he observes. "A very regular visitor, here."

"Family's… important?" I agree.

"My brothers were killed in the rebellion. While I was tending to the wounded, they were slaughtered in the streets. I wish there was a bed somewhere that I could visit, to speak to them again. I wonder what they'd think of the end of this. The finale. I imagine that's why you're here?"

I blink, disoriented, thoughts still blurred slightly by just how early it is.

"Not that I don't appreciate it, ah, Mr. Mayor, but you're right, I was really just hoping to talk to my brother alone. And I'm kind of… confused, right now."

"I'm sorry, Jaego, you must miss him terribly."

"Whoa, how do you know my -"

It's like an icy bucket of water has been tipped over my head. Confirming everything Mezzi ever warned me about surveillance, every piece of advice he never took for himself...

"Please listen for a moment," he interrupts. "I'd rather not turn this into something agonizing when it doesn't have to be. I'm here to make an offer to you, an exemplary student of District Three, with a heavy heart but an open mind."

"Um, what?"

"I'm going to encourage you to volunteer for the Hunger Games. There will be benefits if you choose to do so, and costs if you don't. Who better than you to represent us, put a good face on our district in the final Games?"

I glance nervously at Mezzi.

"You have a lot to lose, Jaego."

"That's kind of why I wasn't planning on volunteering," I say, grimacing at my own tone, wondering if I might be channeling Mezzi, somehow, since surely I'd never say something like that to the mayor.

"Much to gain, too. Perhaps don't think of it as a punishment," he suggests, one corner of his mouth tugging up in a smile. "You've done nothing wrong, after all. Bad luck is all it is. You would have made a great ambassador, and think of it this way - you still will."

I feel myself nodding along, though my mouth is too dry to speak. Wondering at how quickly the world can crash down around your ears, like it did when I realized what they were building, on the platform in Eight, now…

How helpless it all is.

If my comatose brother hadn't taught me that before, I'd be in for far more of a surprise.

"Isn't what what Mezzi would have wanted? Represent. Make a difference."

Sometimes I wonder.

x

Buzz Fabry, District 3

"It just wasn't the right fit," I tell my case manager, fidgeting on the edge of my seat.

She sighs, long and indulgent.

"Baby, I know, and that's hard, but maybe it'd be a better fit if you made any effort whatsoever."

"I made an effort!"

I made plenty of effort, to tell the truth. Perfectly decent couple trying to foster three kids at once, that's all fine and good. Biting off more than they could chew, the way the younger fosters usually do, like they think this is how they're gonna save the world. The food was pretty decent, actually. I knew from the second I passed the threshold that they had money, connections, that kind of thing. It was too nice of a place, in too good of a part of town. And that made it pretty clear what I was dealing with.

Judging by the other kids they'd picked up, Breaker, three years younger than me, and Concata, two years older, they'd been going for high marks in school. You're allowed to do that, pick up kids based on how smart people think they are. So maybe I should have been flattered.

Two other kids, though!

"Which part was the effort, hm?" she asks, flipping through my file. "Unlicensed use of a government official's computer? Tampering with property?"

"Didn't know he was a government official," I complain.

At first, at least.

Just knew he was kind of an asshole when I asked if I could see the build of his computer, still trying to pick up some tricks and stuff to deal with mine, make it better, and he gave me the complete brush off. I don't think they've figured out just how much to the guts of his build (like he built it himself, yeah right) I switched out with mine, but that was well after I asked him to show it to me and he laughed it off. I tried first.

That's called 'making an effort'.

"...theft, Brooklyn. They can prove you stole from them."

"Buzz," I correct her. "My name's Buzz."

"Not legally, baby," she sighs. "Now, you got an explanation for the missing wallet?"

"Rebels broke in while we were asleep and ransacked the place," I suggest. "Probably after they overhead literally anything they said at the dinner table, it was pretty awful stuff."

"If you were willing to tell them where to find it…"

"You know, I super-completely-totally would, if I knew. Luckily, I don't know anything at all!"

"So you're not going to try," she say. "Look, you've got time to turn this around. You're thirteen. You're clearly a bright kid. But you're gonna wind up in jail or on the streets if you don't figure out…"

"I know my own deal," I say, sharply, not wanting to hear the rest of that sentence, not really fearing it but hating the idea, knowing that the consequences of my actions are something that I can't avoid growing into.

"Br-... Buzz," she says, and I relent, just slightly, since, I mean, it's nice to hear my own name.

I picked it out myself, since the one they gave me at the home, when I got dropped off who-knows-when by no-one-knows-who thirteen years ago, is completely lame and doesn't mean anything and it's just stupid, okay? It's just stupid that a bunch of random people got to pick what I'm called forever.

"Do I have to do anything, y'know, to make up for it?" I say, trying to flutter my eyelashes innocently, aware that this tactic gets less effective with every passing month.

The case manager sighs.

"Just promise me that if there's a next time, you'll try. People want to help you, obviously. The setup seemed great - your friends Breaker and Concata, you know, they haven't been displaced. I just thought this was going to be it for you, baby. I'm sorry."

"Oh, don't be," I say hastily, abruptly uncomfortable. "Not like it's your fault, I mean."

She closes my file with another slow exhalation, though less as sigh than a kind of calming, meditative breath. Mrs. Riggs really does her best to do right by us, and I know that, and half my lucky breaks have been through her, and absolutely none of it is enough to just… I don't know. I know I'm gonna keep messing up and disappointing her, probably until they day she dies of a stress aneurysm after walking in on me stealing parts from the home's television or something.

"Fine, off you go, get unpacked, I think you know where the rooms are by now," she says, sliding the file into the cabinet and summoning up a holo-screen to input the updated information on my whereabouts.

"Yes, ma'am," I say, trying to get her to smile, though she seems mostly uninterested, just waiting for me to get out the door.

"Just try to get along," she calls after me, but I barely hear her, already lugging my massive duffel, more computer than clothing, up the stairs.

On my way out, I nicked some great stuff from the last foster. Like, screw those guys, but they had their hands in some really interesting pots, I think, and now the guy's got my old wiped hard drive where his used to be, and I've got basically a terabyte of fun new stuff to dig through and parse out and clean up into something that might be worth something to someone, most importantly me. Among other stuff. I figure after all I've been through, I was totally due a boosted processor and a new graphics card, even though I don't usually do that kind of stuff.

I've got friends, ish, sort-of-friends who are interested in anything I can get them. Older kids who've since left the home with real connects, to people with their own money and their own plans who'll fork it over for anything resembling a blueprint or a schematic or a travel itenary, and I've gotten good at figuring out where to look for those. Figure if I can get past the encryption, which I usually can, after a few years of messing around at every possible opportunity, the hard drive will basically be a gold mine.

I also happen to know - sorry, Mrs. Riggs, I'm really in here lying - my last foster home totally had something to do with the mayor's office, in the 'coming Games' sort of way, and I bet if I can dig deep enough to find anything on that, it's be worth a damn nice new monitor. Maybe I could even get ahold of an unmodded holo-tablet, really sort out what the deal with those things is, since at the moment, my tech experience is limited by what I can get ahold of and what I can afford, which is limited by what I can carry and where the five-finger discount is accepted.

For the moment, the room where I usually live, shared with three other girls in the twelve-to-fourteen range, is empty. School's about to get out, though - I just happened to miss it today, after being hauled back to the home like some kind of criminal after a night of my foster mom losing her mind about the wallet I lifted out of her purse. Somehow that takes precedence over my education, which is dumb, and the dumb-ness of it all was something I reminded the Peacekeepers involved of at length.

As I unpack my stuff and reassemble my computer, I take a few intermittent breaks to snoop around in my roommates' stuff, since they won't be back too soon. Partially to confirm who I'm rooming with, since who's where changes periodically in the home, and partially to see if there's anything worth taking, which there is.

Sereen, who I recognize by the little hand-carved wooden box she keeps tucked under the foot of her bed, always has a handful of hard candies lifted from one teacher's desk or another, so I take two of those, just the right amount to stay inconspicuous. I shove one under my own mattress once I have it dressed, and pop the other in my mouth, for a distraction as I put the disassembled pieces of my computer back together. Most other people don't have anything especially worth knowing about, but it's good to have a basic lay of the land, I think.

By the time they make it back from school - I get an early warning as the front door of the home opens and a deluge of voices and movement comes pouring in, thanks, thin walls - I've got my computer up and running, though the single light in the middle of the room is dimmed by the abuse of the shoddy public-services wiring system.

As Sereen, Bola, and Optine crowd into the room, I'm frowning my way through the first layer of security on the hard drive, scrounging through a pocket full of flash drives full of code from previous attempts to crack into things I wasn't supposed to be messing with.

Flash drives are very small, fit well in the palm of a hand, very easy to steal.

"Look who's back," Bola announces, sounding very not excited to see me, which is pretty typical. "Hear we've got a fourth roomie, again."

I ignore her completely, which is the best call with this sort of thing, since I've kind of learned the hard way that, left to my own devices, once I start speaking up, I'm really really good at making situations worse.

"Brooklyn. Yo. What happened?" Sereen follows up. "Thought you were out."

That's enough to make me look up and frown.

"Buzz," I say.

"Nah," Sereen says, crossing her arms, smiling like she knew that was the exact way to tick me off. "Says 'Brooklyn' on the announcement we got this morning."

I grind my teeth and try to go back to the problem at hand, an unexpected twist in the encryption that's made my first two keys fail. If I had an extra port, I might be able to combine them, but I lost my additional two USB drives in the last move, and I haven't had time to figure out how I'm going to get my hands on new ones.

As long as I don't squirm and make myself a good target, the other girls don't actually care that much about me until they realize I've stolen their snacks or whatever. Fun as it can be to do exactly that and get into a good sparring match with Sereen or Bola, I really want to focus on my drive, for the moment, so I ignore a few more barbs until Optine blessedly intervenes, complaining that my computer is making the room too hot and suggesting they go bother someone else.

Well, not in quite so many words, but that's the implication.

Most of the other people in the home are perfectly smart, in their way. Some are actually very smart. Metric aged out of being allowed in the home two years ago, but him and some of his friends taught me pretty much everything about computers, starting out as a joke, but in the end, it's become kind of my whole thing.

I maybe could have been happy at the foster home, if they hadn't had windows that didn't open, to keep the air conditioning in. If they hadn't kept me from going out to see him.

Now, once I get frustrated enough with decryption, which has never been my best area, I get right back to thinking about him, how he probably has some extra ports I can borrow and maybe even some advice for getting past the weird first layer, which keeps terminating my keys even though I've definitely safeguarded them against error-generating terminations, so I can't for the life of me think what must be the problem.

Why deny it? Metric and a few of his friends are basically the only people who've ever made me feel smart, helped me learn how to do something that actually matters, not just dumb stuff I'll only ever use if I get a stupid job somewhere and have to bend over a motherboard for the rest of my life or something.

We're not really supposed to learn software this early, I think, and that's why it's so fun.

Pulling one over on 'em, I mean, I get it. I get why there's so much general not-happy sentiment kind of swirling through the district. There's a lot to not be happy about, lately. A lot of stuff going on that we're not seeing.

Right now, though, I care a lot more about scooping up my stolen graphics chip, knowing Metric will appreciate it more than I will, and be more inclined to help me if I come with a present. And I also care a lot about shimmying down a crumbling drainpipe, just down from the second floor, landing safely in the just-rained-yesterday mud, and scooting off a few streets down. Very little, honestly, about what's to come with the Games.

The subsidized housing isn't too far from the community home, and it's frankly in an even worse state, all falling apart and stuff. Like half of Metric's deal is playing games on the internet with Capitol people and trying to con them out of money through some in-game system, and the other half is something even sketchier, I think, which is super cool.

He doesn't open his door, though by the sound of things, he's home and playing his usual game, something to do with driving cars through simulations of old arenas that everyone from the Capitol absolutely goes nuts for. Built here in Three.

Instead, I'm greeted by his boyfriend, Atax, who's even older than he is and seems continually surprised by the fact that I'm allowed to hang around in what I guess is his living room, too.

I push by anyway, before he can greet me, which isn't hard since I'm not super big.

"Metric!" I call. "I gotcha something!"

"Hey, is that Buzz?" he replies, loud enough to hear from across the flat. "One second."

Atax and I spend a few awkward seconds pointedly not looking at each other. There's a lot of gear in their living room to look at instead, luckily. Some of it I don't even recognize, not far enough along in school for that.

"So," Atax says. "How's life?"

"Fine, I guess," I say.

"Haven't seen you around lately. You get picked up?"

"Fostered."

"Oh."

"And un-fostered, so I'm back," I add, feeling a little less proud of it now that I've put a few blocks between me and the community home, now that I'm remembering what it's like to be in a house without climate control.

"...condolences?"

Luckily, Metric interrupts before anything gets any weirder, his headset swinging around his neck, the cord dangling carelessly.

"What's up, Buzz?" he says. "Did you get me something nice?"

"Graphics card," I say, tossing it to him.

He catches it easily, whistles as he holds it up to the weak light coming from an exposed bulb overhead.

"Some nice shit. Who'd you steal it from?"

"Foster dad."

"Nice, fuck a foster dad," he says, giving the chip another glance and stuffing it in his pocket. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, it's not all I took," I say. "Got a shiny new hard drive, too. He thinks I just wiped his, but I switched 'em, actually."

"Ooh. Who's he, by the way? Anyone who'd have my name on a list?"

"Probably. Last name 'Cantilever'?"

This ignites a lot more of a reaction than I was expecting, not knowing, myself, pretty much anything about district politics.

"Come on, couldn't you have come here and told us that before you got kicked out? Fuck, we coulda used you to poison them or just stab them or some shit, that would've been great," he sighs, shooting Atax a look. "Tell me about the hard drive."

"Super encrypted. Having trouble with it, like, that level of encrypted, y'know?"

"What computer?"

"One in his office, he sometimes forgot to lock the door."

"Shit, dude. You didn't happen to bring it with you, huh?" he suggests.

"Maybe take a step back before you start telling this shit to a thirteen year old," Atax cuts in, a little scathingly.

"Aw, Buzz isn't thirteen, she's an old soul, huh, Buzz?"

I can feel my cheeks getting warm at the thought. Yeah, exactly, he's exactly right, and Atax can go take a walk off a bridge if he wants to mess with me, because I stole the hard drive, he didn't. So who shouldn't get told shit, now?

"I got it all set up in my room back at the home," I say, adding… well, embellishing a little, for Atax's sake, "I've almost got it cracked."

Metric and Atax are practically mid-silent-conversation with the intensity of the looks they're shooting each other.

"You know…" Metric says, trailing off, "the Mayor's personal secretary almost definitely has some insight on the selection process for the volunteers stored somewhere on his hard drive."

"With what happened to Aramid and his crew -" Atax cuts in, "It's a risky time, Met."

"Uh, yeah, that's the point. Risky times, risky measures. How soon can you crack the drive, do you think?" Metric asks, back to paying attention to me, delightfully enough. "How can we speed you up?"

I give him a list.

One item on the list is a six-pack of technically-not-legal energy drinks, which I know he has, uses them to fight through the time difference to game with people all over, all through the night. I include that stipulation to get a read on just how serious he is.

Twenty minutes later, I'm trekking home with an armful of canned sugar-and-caffeine and a back pocket full of wires and new ports and a few custom keys Atax came up with a while back, supposed to be tailored to help break the typical government encryption.

So, serious, then.

It's legit stuff.

Weighed down by gear, it's a lot harder than usual to clamber my way up the drain pipe, but I manage, rolling into the room with a sigh of relief, dropping all the cans and wires in the process.

People have always been able to find reasons to treat me like garbage, whether or not I did it on purpose. I didn't have to steal anything from my parents to get them to ditch me in the community home, after all. I never did anything to Mrs. Riggs, other than be a little kid who needs her help, really, and she still butchers my name, year after year. No one really gets it.

Like, the other kids in the home should get it. But they don't, because they don't care about the kind of stuff I do, about getting out of here on our own terms. Not adopted into some stupid house with nice, clean carpets and cloth napkins just to pretend to be someone else, for someone else, on some stupid couple's terms.

Shuffling through the wires, I hastily reconfigure my setup, plug in some fresh commands and put one of Atax's keys into play along with mine. Line by line, the monitor displays the code as it runs through, piece by piece, no longer grinding to a halt with every piece of text designating an error.

The fan at the base of the tower whirrs, swirling hot and dusty air throughout the room.

Just as quickly, it all stops, goes quiet except for the hum of the monitor.

First layer? Done.

I crack open one of the energy drinks in celebration, nearly spitting it out as the thing fizzes unexpectedly on my tongue. That doesn't seem right.

But what does seem right, and far more familiar, is the second-tier encryption. I've seen this before, know which keys and commands will get me past it. Now who's just a dumb thirteen year old?

For a moment, at least, everything seems exactly right in the world. Here, doing this, I know exactly who I am, and exactly what I'm going to do. Like Metric's always saying about this stuff, the point doesn't have to be complicated. There's plenty of organizing going on in District 3, plenty of groups who'll be tripping over themselves to get ahold of these files if Metric and Atax are to be believed.

None of that's my job to worry about.

I take a sip of my energy drink, and it feels more natural, this time. Like I'm growing into myself. The point being, as always, to raise some hell, and let someone else handle the fallout.

For at least a few more years, safely ensconced in the home, no matter how Mrs. Riggs or anyone else feels about me and my bullshit, I'm consequence-proof.

x

Marina Trevino, The Capitol

His office was deceptively normal. She didn't know why she always expected people's living spaces to be so reflective of their characters; her sparse apartment was as much a disguise as her practical dress and careful avoidance of the spotlight. Almost anything could be manipulated to fit a character.

The evidence of manipulation was certainly there. Rhodes' desk was assembled with an assistive device, to compensate for his missing right arm, made conspicuous by his suit jacket tailored to reveal the stump, snaked with black scar tissue. His degrees, including a medical certification, hung in a place of honor on the wall.

And he was asking her to do something utterly ridiculous.

"No," she said, after a moment's thought.

"Hard no?" Mayor Rhodes asked, looking up from the newspaper propped up on his desk. "I don't see any reason to turn Mr. Lofton down. Clearly a fine young man. I hear you're looking for variety."

It sounded unnecessarily cold and clinical when he put it that way, she thought. Of course, as with any casting, variety was important. He didn't have to say it like that.

"I wasn't talking about Jaego Lofton, though I'm not sure I understand how you have him ready to volunteer," she said, after a pause.

"Redemption. Powerful. His brother…"

"Fine. I truly don't need the story, the profile you've already shown me makes sense," she interrupted.

Certainly, there would be more than enough time to learn about Jaego Lofton in the year leading up to the Games. Dwelling on it now seemed unnecessarily morbid. The headshot from his ID card on her clipboard showed him to be a slender young man, delicate-featured, good looking in a disconcertingly-young sort of way. Sixteen now, seventeen by the time the Games would roll around in the coming year. Nothing wrong with him that immediately jumped out to make the situation make sense. Had dropped out immediately from some Capitol-sponsored program years prior, but made stellar grades and, on paper, seemed almost alarmingly normal.

She supposed she must be missing something, and given Rhodes' predilections, it was probably something awful, but she couldn't work up the motivation to dig too much further into the file. Flipped down another page, so his warm brown eyes would stop staring up at her.

"You gave me a list," she clarified. "The vast majority of these girls are under sixteen. What are you playing at?"

Indignantly, he frowned up at her, reaching over to turn the page of his newspaper as though his only care in the world was some mildly offensive comment she'd just made.

"Presumably all other mayors received the same assignment," he said. "I only did what you asked. Wasn't the list what you requested? Ranked in order of preference, as well, if you want to work your way down, though any of them will do nicely."

"Nothing you say is going to make me believe you have a handful of fourteen year olds lined up to volunteer for the Hunger Games," she said sharply.

The first girl on the list, Brooklyn Fabry, was only thirteen. And she wasn't the only one, either. As young as they could possibly be, how utterly ridiculous, why and in what universe...

"Well, not precisely ready. Not just yet. With your approval, we'll secure whichever volunteer you - presumably acting as a representative of the President or Head Gamemaker Snow in this capacity - so choose. It'll be done."

A tightness rose in her throat as she looked back down at the names, ages, addresses. Not really knowing what most of the information meant, District 3's cultural specificity being a factor, though many of the candidates were sourced from areas with the same sector identification code.

"Why?" she asked, pointing at the first name.

The thirteen year old.

"Oh, a long list of reasons. We considered our options very carefully. This one is a bit of a nuisance - well, understatement - talented in school, compelling on a number of levels. She's also very young, as you've noticed. That's as much a reason as any."

Marina grimaced at the thought. Younger than she'd been, facing death all those years ago, locked in her own room. It seemed so depraved, hand-picking someone to die that young. Someone who didn't volunteer for it, who would have to be convinced…

No, it wasn't so different from what Claudia did in Two, what Sequin did in One. That was one of her most fundamental beliefs, something that she had to trust or all of this was for nothing - people had to be taught to want to harm others, and could be taught, as well, not to. There was no point in ending the Games if it wouldn't end the cycles of violence fraying Panem at the edges.

And to do that, to have peace, one of these girls would volunteer, and from the way that Rhodes had explained his selections, they had been chosen like animals for slaughter.

Was it really so much better to condemn an older child?

Well, on some level, it meant that they would be better-prepared, better-equipped to negotiate their way out of it…

"You chose for youth. What's your rationale for that?" she finally asked.

"The directive, of course," he said politely. "This is a casting. You're intending to tell a story. What kind of story of the Games doesn't have a few innocents?"

He had her, there.

It had to be horrible. She knew that much for certain, and she'd thought about it, though as little as she could manage, about what that would mean for the volunteers. The stakes had to be high, the brutality had to be meaningful. An arena full of willing and intensely capable competitors was a spectator sport.

For a massacre, for something terrible, for a reminder of what they were leaving behind, something so difficult to watch that the taste left behind in the viewer's mouths was one of ashes…

"Choose whoever you like," she said. "Consider the list approved."

Mayor Rhodes clucked his tongue, smiling up at her with disarming familiarity.

"Ah, you know, I'm afraid the guidelines were very clear. I need formal approval. My role is submitting the list, your role is making the final selection. Unless you'd like to send out a revision of those guidelines, meet with me in a week or so, review the options again…"

The sheer thought of coming back, going over this again, confronting this again, made her blanch.

"Brooklyn Fabry, then."

Brooklyn Fabry, thirteen, soon enough to be fourteen.

"An excellent choice, and one I doubt either of us will regret," Rhodes replied with a smile. "And Jaego Lofton as well?"

She nodded.

"Wonderful. How pleasant to see you in Three, Ms. Trevino. I look forward to watching the Games this year - I've been told to set my expectations high."

"Head Gamemaker Snow is very capable," she said, a little stiffly, wishing she could leave her body, just for a bit, to escape the crawling feeling in her stomach.

"I hope so. You've all been working so diligently on this project. I do hope all will fall into place as you've planned."

The slippery sincerity with which he wished her well nearly made her laugh aloud, but she bit it back, handing him the list of names and profiles again.

"The Presidency appreciates your support. Take care, now," she said, simply, turning on her heel and making a hasty retreat, simultaneously wishing she knew what she was running away from and horrified by the prospect that she very much already did.

x

Bopping along, just about ready with the blog - expect a link to that along with District 4's intros in the next chapter!