"Getting winded there Freckles?" Axel called over his shoulder. "You wish, Golden Boy." I kicked up my speed a notch and ran past him, my feet pounding hard against the track.

All four of the Careers were racing each other on the enormous pathway. The track ran along the very edges of the training center, and then wound upward, spiraling up towards the ceiling. Some places were quite steep, some sections were flat, and it wasn't all normal rubber track. It was divided into different sections of different terrain. At that moment, we were running through a section of smooth, slippery metal, and all of us were speeding incredibly fast along it. Additionally, as someone who had spent most of her life running and running away fast, I was quite skilled in the speed department.

It was nice, though. To have some competition, like this racing, that didn't involve beating each other up. Though there were a lot of jests and taunts exchanged whenever two Careers past each other. Axel and I had about ten different nicknames for each other by now.

Zeke was still flirting around with Lacey, though they weren't misbehaving too badly. And it wasn't like they were lame competition. I could tell Zeke wasn't trying to outrun me, that he was holding back just a little to keep up with Lacey, but Lacey was still surprisingly fast, and a couple of times they came close to catching up with me.

It turned out, despite her obnoxiously socialite personality, that Lacey wasn't completely hopeless. She could fight. She was decent at sword fighting, archery, and martial arts, but what was actually alarming was her skill with a simple, straight metal stick, like a baton or a short staff. I had watched her as she sparred with a trainer earlier, the baton flying around in her hands and whacking the trainer multiple times despite his skilled attempts to block her. When she later tried out the same skill in a ring of dummies, her very first blow had sent a dummy's head flying across the room, its neck severed in a blunt, rough fashion.

I was torn away from my thoughts when someone shoved past my shoulder and ran past me, laughing. I realized it was Axel, and I kicked up my speed again to try to keep up with him. "Did you see the redhead sparring with the Mellark girl earlier?" he muttered as we rounded the corner of the track and sped onward, "They're both little devils." "I know. And I imagine Mellark is even better with a bow." We reached the place where the track began its second loop, where it shot upward before wrapping around the room again. There was a new terrain here. Glass. Interesting.

I slowed down just slightly. I kept running but I turned my feet out, so they hit the floor at a diagonal angle, planting my feet solidly and firmly. And I made it up the slope without much difficulty. I had trained often in Academy on different terrains, and I had been to so many parts of the country that I knew how to adapt to new landscapes. However, when I turned around, I noticed that Axel was sitting on the floor, chuckling at himself. He must have slipped and fallen. "What, game over? C'mon District One, I thought you had more in you." He looked up at me, a bemused expression on his face. "I don't know how you did it, Mystery Girl, but that glass is really hard to stand on, let alone run on."

Zeke and Lacey caught up to us, and Lacey slipped and fell immediately. Zeke made his way up most of the slope, but slipped at the last moment, and caught the edge of the top with one hand so he didn't fall. "Well, now we know what you two need to work on," he smirked, pulling himself up and sitting on the ledge to look back down at the District 1 tributes. "Speaking of working on something," I spoke up, to cut off Zeke's condescension, "Aren't we supposed to, you know, plan for the arena? Don't we have to figure out attack strategies and survival plans together?" "That'll be next week," Lacey spoke up, "Your mentor and Jade, our mentor, are meeting up with all four of us. We can worry about all that then."

I didn't like her tone; it was as if she thought I was five years old. But I kept quiet, and I crouched and slid down the slippery glass. I landed hard on my feet, and almost fell over, a little unbalanced, when Axel caught my shoulder to steady me. "As I said, you can ignore her," he muttered, "She thinks she's a goddess."

At the end of the day, we put away our equipment and headed out into the hallway, talking and joking around. It seemed like we'd make a pretty good team, at least no one had started any fights yet. Even Zeke was relatively well-behaved, as he and I talked about how funny the little slaves around here were, the ones who just stared at the floor without saying anything.

Then Zeke smirked and nodded at behind me, and I turned around. The four children, the Mellark girl, Spark, and the two boys with them, were rounding the corner and coming down the hall towards us. "Well, if it isn't the miniature Mockingjay," Zeke mused, standing in the middle of the hall so they couldn't pass us. The Mellark girl stopped directly in front of him, facing him with her arms crossed.

"I'm afraid we're busy now, can we ignore you some other time?" The girl was at least a foot shorter than Zeke, but her calm, quiet attitude contrasted so vividly with his that it seemed she was his match, already. The anti-Zeke. The anti-Career. He responded predictably, with a snide, "I'd like to see you try, kid. I don't know if your dead mom told you this, but the Careers—that's us—are the ones who kill little girls like you and win. I wouldn't ignore us, if I were you."

"I think that if you were to realize how ridiculously try-hard you sound right now, you would close your mouth and leave." "Have it your way, kid, but don't be surprised in the arena, when we've got you cornered and helpless, that we don't listen to your pleas for mercy." "I'm sorry, what exactly is your problem with me?" "You're annoying. You're a little kid from a pathetic district who's trying to come in here and act like she's equal to us, the Careers, who have been training for the Games our whole lives."

I almost corrected him, that I had only started real training last year, but I decided that now was definitely not the best time.

"I think you'll find, if you use your eyes and look around some time, if you're not too busy reveling in your own greatness, that there are a lot of talented, well-trained kids here. Not just you precious four. You'd be surprised at what we're capable of." There were nods from the other three kids behind her. "Ooo, I'm so intimidated," Zeke chuckled, "What're you going to do, win and start another revolt? Get a whole bunch of people killed for a pointless cause? May the odds be ever in your favor." "My mom's revolt was not a pointless cause. She was a hero and a martyr." "Your parents were criminals, for crying out loud. At least, your mom was. I think your dad was just delusional or something." "My parents were a team. They fought for the freedom of the districts, for the freedom of Panem from the tyrannical rule of the Capitol." "Oh don't give me that, Mockingjay. Besides, your mom didn't even like your dad, she just let him knock her up because that's what the rest of the country wanted."

"Excuse you," an unfamiliar sharp voice cut in, and I realized it was Spark's as she stepped in front of Mellark, right up to Zeke in a bold, fierce manner, getting right in his face. "I don't know who you think you are, but we don't have time for your amateur taunts right now. Unlike you, we're actually focused and worried about what the arena is gonna throw at us, and while you're going around with your minions acting all gung-ho, we actually plan to use every minute of our time here wisely. We don't need your sass, and we don't need your belittling attitude. Save it for the arena, when you'll be more worried about me shoving a sword down your throat. And trust me, I can't wait. I know you think all the rest of us are terrified of you, but here's my wakeup call: guess what? I'm not afraid of you, nor will I ever be, heck, I'd jump you right here if we weren't constantly being watched. Hell, even with all that, I will not stand here and watch you insult a girl smaller than you. I would thoroughly enjoy putting you in your place before even getting to the real thing. So believe me, one more word out of you, District Two, one more word and I'll start it, and it won't end till one or both of us is unconscious. If you're the one unconscious, I'm not stopping till you're ****ing dead. So you can take that attitude and shove it up your ass before I feel the need to rearrange your insides, you incredibly ignorant bastard." Without another word, she shoved past him. Axel and Lacey moved out of her way, and the four of us watched in silence as Spark and the other three went down the hall without looking back.

When Zeke and I got back to our floor, we had to choke back down our complaints about the Anti-Careers, because Marcus was sitting at the table right in front of us.

"Good day at training?" His slick, cool words were well-intentioned, but even now I couldn't help feeling intimidated merely by Marcus's presence. He was just so…quiet. Mysterious. Calm. He never took off those sunglasses, and I didn't really want to know what empty, soulless holes of eyes they could be hiding.

"It was okay," I said finally, realizing that I shouldn't trust Zeke to say anything clean right now. "You look," he paused, his thin lips twisting into something of a smirk, "Troubled." Zeke muttered something vile under his breath as he pushed past me and went to his room to change. Great, leaving me alone with the possibly vampiric mentor.

"Well," I said, sitting down at the table without bothering to change, "We've got some competition." "I would say so." "Yeah, but, not just other tributes. Other tributes who seem to have marked us as their specific rivals. Powerful tributes, led by the daughter of the Mockingjay." Marcus raised an eyebrow. "Indeed? Fascinating. Tell me about them." "Well, there's Lily Mellark herself, who's very small and young, but seeing her up against Zeke just now? I think she's just as dangerous as he is, honestly. I haven't seen her in action with a bow, but she can fight with a sword. And she's got this quiet insolence that really gets under your skin—I feel like she's a lot smarter than she looks."

"She is the daughter of Katniss, after all. Katniss was quite the devious rebel." "So I've heard. What exactly happened to her? I know she was killed, but…" "Katniss Mellark was murdered quietly in prison just a few years ago, after giving birth to a son, I believe. I was surprised she lived that long, honestly, but I think the Capitol was waiting until it had a very firm grip on the country again. If they had killed her right after the failed rebellion, they would have created a martyr and started the riot up all over again."

"What happened in the rebellion? What went wrong?" "I'm not at liberty to discuss that, Blaze," he said calmly. "But I can tell you that its memory is all but gone. The Capitol has been erasing the details of its history, and rewriting other parts. Katniss will become no more than a memory of an insane radical who was a danger to our country." I had taken a sip of my drink, and I nearly spat it out at his words.

"I'm an insane radical who's a danger to my country," I muttered, staring at my lilac-colored drink as it turned to blood and a spider out of nowhere appeared and started crawling along the bottom of the glass. "Yes, I've been told of your medical record," he mused, and my head snapped up at his words. Did he know about my past? "Yes Blaze, I have a way of learning things about people that they don't want uncovered. Don't worry, the information is safe with me." That had to be his way of saying: I know about your childhood, I know about your fake identities, I know about your time spent in the asylum, and I know you aren't right in the head. I looked back down at my drink, finding it to be lilac again.

"What'd I miss? Blaze looks uncomfortable." Zeke came back into the lounge, buttoning up a wrinkled shirt as he came down and sat across from me. "We were just discussing what the dangers the arena might bring," Marcus answered coolly. "Oh, yeah, I've been wondering about that. Do you know anything? Last Quell it was a clock, which was neat. Basically a recipe for non-stop action."

"Indeed," our mentor nodded, "Non-stop action is what they've been angling towards these days. Little time for rest, or setting up a safe camp, or anything…lovey-dovey." I felt like he was looking at me, but I had no idea because of those black glasses he wore. "So…any ideas about this year?" I prompted. His thin lips twitched into a smile. "Indeed. If I'm correct about the one they picked…well, let's just say, you should be prepared for anything and everything."

"…So…What's our plan? Strategy? Advice?" He chuckled. "So eager. Well, think about the Third Quell. It was a clock, yes, with 12 lovely surprises at each hour. There were also many terrains: water, jungle, and sand." I waited for him to continue, but he said nothing, so I prompted again, "So…"

"The event is going to last for ten days. Ten, no more, no less. There will be four sections, the last one being particularly horrid." "How do you know?" Zeke asked. Our mentor smiled lightly. "My wife is the Head Gamemaker this year." I raised my eyebrows. "Oh." "Indeed. Now, to discuss the basics. The Cornucopia, setting up camp, adapting to temperatures, finding food…"

After an hour or so of discussion (the Cornucopia bloodbath, the very beginning of the Games when the Careers usually kill off a lot of easy targets, sure sounded…fun), Marcus slid back his chair and got to his feet. "Well, my tributes, I believe that will be all for this evening." "Thank god," Zeke muttered in annoyance, getting up immediately and going out into the hall. Marcus came toward me, and I was about to stand up, when his hand came down to rest on my shoulder.

"It was nice talking with you, Blaze." As he spoke those quiet words, his fingers slipped under the shoulder of my shirt, and for a moment I was seized by the frightening idea that he was going to molest me, maybe even suck the blood out of my neck, but instead I felt something being slipped under my bra strap, as he planted a light, cold kiss on my cheek. Then he straightened up, and walked out of the room without a word.

That incident had happened in a matter of ten seconds, but they had been an extremely strange and uncomfortable ten seconds, of having my vampiric mentor so close to my neck. But I could still feel something inside the sleeve of my shirt, what felt like possibly paper. I got up from the table, dropping my napkin on my plate, and I silently returned to my room, trying to comprehend what his actions had meant.

Then it hit me. We were being watched. Always watched. That idea had left my head for a while after a day of training and adrenaline. But the cameras were still everywhere. Marcus must have wanted to say so much more, but he couldn't. Because we were watched. At all times.

Perhaps the scrap of paper stuck in my sleeve was a message.