The screaming doesn't start immediately. Awful as the moment is, nobody would scream. Why bother wasting energy they don't have?
So they turn off the television. The children are sad to see it go, because they were enjoying the colours, the smiles, and now it's off and all there is are their parents, their siblings and friends, lit by distant firelight with shadows under their eyes.
Over the next ten minutes, the popping sounds of gunfire increase in rapidity. The chanting and yelling of rioters becomes quieter and more dissonant, and then gives way to screaming.
So this is when the screaming starts, a young boy thinks, and sits and begins to cry. His parents should comfort him but they have nothing, nothing at all they can say that wouldn't be an outright lie.
Soon every child is crying, and no parents move to comfort them and then the door is caved in and there's reason to scream now as they yank the teenagers' arms behind their backs and drag them kicking and screaming from the room.
Throw them in a van. Next, light the tenement buildings on fire and catch them as they run.
It's a new definition of a scorched-earth policy, and if one was to investigate papers on the desk of President Snow, one would find papers authorising this technique, a technique authored by one Mr Caesar Flickerman. It's a two-step strategy, the paper says, and this is Act One.
They crowd them up in the squares, Districts One through Twelve. They won't televise these reapings. Velarius Eppoxe has called them a surprise, one we'll discover the day they go in the dome. It's remixing what we know, he says.
It certainly is.
There's a member of the Capitol on the stage, but it's a member of the Capitol Guard, and there's no ball filled with neatly handwritten names. There is no pageantry, and they aren't lined up- they are squashed into ten-foot high riot barriers, kettled into position and unable to move in the crush.
"Do I have a volunteer?" A man asks in District Eight. There is stark silence; confusion, too.
The Capitol Guardman nods. One of the Guards surrounding the teenagers cocks his weapon and fires. A boy, no older than twelve, collapses silently and his blood stains the sand. The screams start up and the group rears and bucks like a frightened horse, but they're crushed too tight and they can barely move and they've closed the riot barriers behind them.
"Do I have a volunteer?" The Capitol Guardsman repeats. This time they're not silent, they're screaming and crying and begging for mercy, but nobody volunteers.
A nod. Click, bang. A girl almost aged out of the system is hit in the very middle of the crowd, and those crushed up against the riot barriers are forced against them even more by the surge to get away.
"DO I HAVE A VOLUNTEER?" The Capitol guardsman screams, and the rain has started and children are being trampled into the mud by teenagers scrabbling up against the walls.
"I VOLUNTEER!" A scream sounds out, and Guardsmen surge into the crush and drag out a bedraggled, mud-streaked boy, crying and fearful but staring down the guards like it was his duty.
"Do I have another?" The Guardsman yells as they drag Nico Marquette inside.
Robyn Blackthorn is back home just in time to be dragged back out as her parents scream her name. She watches her horse disappear into the night as she's thrown into a van and she's so scared all she can think is that she didn't remove his saddle. She thinks this is about the rebellion and she thinks she's going to die, and she throws up in the back of the van, sliding over it as it takes sharp, juddering turns. She wipes her mouth and tries to prevent her half-sobbing, half-retching from being audible, curling into her oversized leather coat and trying to disappear into the floor.
The van stops and they drag her to a walled area she doesn't even recognise as the town square until she sees the familiar sight of every child together in it, but this time she can barely move in the crowd, and her small stature means she's beneath most of them in height. She breathes deeply- she hates crowds.
"Do I have a volunteer?" A Guardswoman says, and Robyn realises what is going on.
She looks at the crowd, and looks at the guns, and realises what is about to happen.
And she can stop it if she just says-
"I volunteer," she says, and it's quiet and thin and reedy but it carries, and two Guards make their way into the crush and grab each arm and pull her out. She's frogmarched up the steps as the Guardswoman calls "Do I have another?"
The crowd is silent, and Robyn is desperate to call to them, say yes say yes, but her throat has closed up. She hears the Guardswoman mutter to a subordinate as she passes them by, and the Guardswoman says while smirking, "make an example".
And then the Guardswoman nods and the cracks start like lightning, and suddenly the blood is stained with mud and dozens are on the ground and everyone is screaming and so is she, but the Guards walk more quickly and the doors close behind her and she's damned, she's damned, people have died regardless and she's damned even if she's not yet dead.
In District 3, it's earlier in the day, which means that it's easier to see the bloodstains on the cobblestones and it's more scary when all the light is blotted out by crowds of scared children trampling you to the ground.
He can't tell where people start and where they end, but he can feel them standing on top of him, pressing him to the ground. Occasionally the monumental pressure of feet on his head lifts, and he raises his head to gasp, and then another person pushes forward to try their luck on the walls and another person falls and now he's buried.
He's buried and he's so, so, scared.
He can hear screams but they sound underwater, and he tries to breathe but there's someone standing on his back, crushing his lungs into the ground.
Eventually, the boy muses as spots start swimming in his vision, we'll pile up enough that the rest can escape. Our bodies will join the purpose of our district, technical to the last.
And then the pressure moves and he can briefly breathe in again, and he realises he doesn't want to die and he doesn't care about the rest escaping, and there's only one way he lives through this, and he struggles up as far as he can with the last of his strength and takes a deep breath and screams his only deliverance-
The Guards take him from the crush and he passes out as they pull him inside. The shooting stops behind him. Everything stops but the darkness he willingly sinks into.
Caesar Flickerman drinks a glass of scotch and savours it. He watches the feeds like one would watch a sport.
Quint knows they're on their way. He leaves the door unlocked.
They come for him, and he stands up and grips his cane and lets them pull him to a car.
It's time for his Victory march.
When they come for Rufus Warnke, they find an empty house.
Welcome to the tributes, and a special first welcome to Viridian Calotte. It's time to begin the fun.