His name was Cassius Silk but to everyone in District 9, he was known as the Spider. He wore jet black suits and shoes with red ties and laces. The hair on his head was the same vivid scarlet. Black and red… like a deadly spider. And every year he came to our District and perched on his stage, smiling down at us with a hand held over each of the Reaping Bowls, waiting for us to form up, waiting to lunge and claim his victims. First the Peacekeepers would paralyse us with the threat of their guns and batons and then Cassius would numb us with his 'Hello again, dear friends', 'blessed Hunger Games' and 'may your tributes bring honour to your District and display true loyalty to your Capitol'.

The Spider was through and through a gentleman and that meant ladies first. Some Districts they picked the boys first but the Spider, he always brought out the girls. Perhaps he thought that if a weeping twelve year old was dragged onto the stage he would be fortunate and pick out an older boy who clench his jaw and face it like a man, removing the embarrassment.

What made it easier not to look for a stone to throw at him was knowing that everyone else was thinking the same thing. We all wanted to pelt him off him perch and only the threat of the swift and likely lethal retribution of the Peacekeepers kept us from doing anything but enjoying the group fantasy.

I didn't know the girl whose named he spoke. There were hundreds of children in District 9 and it was a big District. This was the only time we were all together. The girl, June Barton, was my age. My age… over halfway to being safe from the Games. So close. She walked resolutely up to the platform where the Spider welcomed her with a warm handshake that still demonstrated his revulsion at touching one of us. She received only a nod from Ellis. The Victors of District 9 took it in turns to mentor, each deciding to saddle the responsibility of two tributes rather than each taking one. With three Victors in District 9, it gave them two years between Games. I guessed the Capitol thought we were too unimportant to force two of them to their responsibilities.

Cassius made another speech about the virtues of women and how of course no woman was complete without support from an able man. He then went on to say 'But of course, every woman knows she doesn't need to be complete to triumph', his way of humorously pointing out that June might well have to kill whoever came up to stand by her. The Spider sifted around in the bowl with his left hand, adjusting his tie with his right and then slid a piece of paper out on the tips of his slender fingers.

I had tried to eat only what I knew or at least could name but the Spider would have none of it. We were in the Capitol, not the 'Shadows of Civilisation'. I didn't even know what he had put on my plate and he had squeaked at me until I ate it. The unfamiliar food combined with his mindless disappointment in our stylists to make us stand out had made my stomach churn.

Now I was lying on the floor on my back, gazing out at the impossible city below. The tower we were in was puny compared to some of the buildings out there and they were all lit up. Not with the harsh lights of the mill factories at home or the lights the Peacekeepers used to keep watch on us, instead a warm, genuinely comforting light. The same light I could have switched on in here.

A door opened and it was her, June. She did turn the light on and my groan as the light seared at my eyes made her jump in fright. That wasn't inspiring.

"What are you doing?"
"Couldn't sleep."

"Because the bed's too soft?"

"Yeah." I left out my stomach problems; she looked queasy too. We had both suffered on the train.

"Like trying to sleep in a cobweb." She remarked and smiled. She was making a joke about Cassius and it was funny but I didn't laugh. She came over and sat down and looked down on the city. "It doesn't seem real, does it?"

"No."

"But it is, and here we are."
"Here we are."

"Are you going to talk to Ellis?"

"Why?"
"We have to learn. We have to be ready!"

"Ready for what?"

She gazed at me and I tried to figure out who was looking at me, the girl at the Reaping and on the train, the girl beside me on the chariot with her hair styled to resemble an ear of wheat who had worn a golden robe or the girl sat beside me in a modest nightdress with her hair loose. I didn't know. I didn't recognise the boy in the mirror in my room. Years spent indoors in the factory had made my skin pale and now I seemed almost golden by comparison. How did do they do that? How did they change a person's skin colour? I might have only looked like a normal fieldworker now but it wasn't me. "We have to be ready for the arena. We have to be ready to fight."

"Why?"

"Do you want to die?"

"No."

"So you have to be ready?"

"What does it matter if I go down in twenty seconds or twenty days?"

"You're not going to try and win?"
"I can't win. We, can't win."

"Why not?"

"Districts 1, 2 and 4 have won the last ten Games. And if it's not them, it's District 7; the people who swing axes for a living."

"District 1 makes jewellery. Do you think they'll throw bracelets at us?"

I let her have this and smiled rather than be pedantic and point out that District 1 relished the Games and their tributes went in trained. It was true that other tributes from Districts with no transferrable skills had won before. They just didn't manage it as often as the tributes who volunteered in District 2, learned more than enough in District 1 and grew up spearing sea life in District 4.

"What are you going to do in training then?"
"I'll train."

"Why?"
"Something to do."

"You're not even going to try?" She asked again.

"Death is inevitable." I said.

She had no idea why I said this and regarded the glow of the city for a while. I wanted to get up and go back to my room and privacy but my stomach said stay. Stay, and enjoy the sound of someone talking to you for a change rather than barking instructions at you. I didn't know my stomach was saying the second part but as the first part had me grounded… well it was something to do.

"I have to try." June spoke softly, addressing the pane of glass. I have people."

"I know. You told me. The rest of the calendar…" Her family had already breathed a sigh of relief as her sisters April and May had come of age, along with her brothers Jan and March. Now she was here and that left only her brother August to make it through the Reapings, unless her parents added July, September, October, November and December into the mix though I had no idea if the last four would have been boys or girls. I thought they were stupid names, like the kind District 1 would have given. I was mildly curious about the missing child February but not enough to ask.

"I know it's different for you. It really doesn't matter to you either way."
"No, it doesn't."

"You shouldn't just give up though. You could have a whole life ahead of you."

"And then you wouldn't."

"What are the odds of the two us ending up as the Final Two?"
"No one would bet on it."

"You shouldn't give up." She looked at me and she was very obvious. "At least don't make it easy for them."

"Not going to." I grunted. "Just not playing along."

"What are you going to do when you meet Flickerman then? Just ignore him?"

I didn't think any tribute had ever ignored Flickerman and spent their interview in silence. When a tribute was at first struck dumb at he would make a joke about them being overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the crowd and then say something else that would get words spilling out of them, words he could use. I almost smiled as I considered a question I would have liked to have asked Flickerman; if he had any idea what colour his hair had originally been. "We'll see."

"And Ellis?"

"If he focuses on you, would you care?"

"You should have a chance too."

"Why?"
"Because it's fair. Because it's right."

I was pretty much offering all the advantages she could get by ignoring our mentor and she was rejecting it… out of a sense of fair play?! "What are you going to do with Flickerman? Got it worked out?"

"I'm not funny. I'm not scary." She looked over herself and smiled ruefully. "I'm not sexy." She had a homely quality to her certainly but compared to the Capitol people and the toned beautified tributes from 1, 2 and 4, she wouldn't be stirring any carnal thoughts. "So I'll have to be strong and friendly and myself. I want to go home and I'll say that."

"Mention all those brothers and sisters. They'll be gushing over you."

"Mention being an orphan; they'll love you."

I glared at her but she only shrugged. I was the one who had been nasty first. "You really think you might go home?"

"I know I have to try and if I go in there sure that I've done everything I could to even the odds and then if I'm killed; I'll know at least I tried. I did my best to make it home. And I can die with that comfort."

"But you won't, June. You'll die in agony because of what the Careers will do to you because of something I did and the only reason you won't be in excruciating torment for hours is because one of them will mercy kill you first."

The forest floor wasn't like the hard marble of the Training Centre. It was damp and cold. The view was a short distance of forest floor. And there was no June. Just me and the memory of the girl who had only wanted to go home and had now joined her dead baby brother February. My curiosity had finally gotten the better of me and I had asked before we had presented our chosen skill to the Gamemakers. Her parents had had seven children and now they had five and perhaps next year or in the years to come, that number might drop to four.

I was lying for dead on the arena floor as the night closed in around me. Either Kayla was a master of psychological warfare or every word she had spoken was true and the girl from home I had almost had a friendship with had died a horrible death because she had suffered the misfortune of being there when the Careers had wanted to vent their rage over what I had done.

I hadn't asked if Alba had been there with them. I wondered if my kind treatment toward her slain body had been considered ironic in the Capitol, if she had been there as the hovercraft had retrieved the mangled, broken body of June.

What came to me, again and again, was the thought of M1 breaking her arm after telling her that her interrogation was finished. That was done only for pleasure. Not out of anger, not of revenge. Only the sick desire to do harm.

There was no doubt in my mind; Renown had to die. If someone died in screaming agony, twisting and writhing on the end of the spear I carried, it would be Renown. It had to be. It would be.

If it was the last thing I did, I would kill Renown.