Levi woke up with a start. He sat up and looked around. October and Cedar were both sound asleep. There was no one else in the cornucopia. Most notably, Yuki had not come inside during the night. The District 11 tribute carefully got to his feet, picking up the dagger he had stashed inside before he had gone to bed. For a moment he looked at Cedar. He squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. Not yet. He stepped lightly on the hard floor, wary of what would happen if he startled his testy allies.

He noted as he crept towards the mouth of the cornucopia that he could see his breath. How do people survive in these temperatures? he thought crossly, nostalgic for his balmy home. He paused and stuck his knife in the holster on his belt. He pulled a pair of gloves from the pocket of his parka and stuffed his hands into them. He flexed his fingers a couple of times and grabbed his knife before proceeding.

There were two approaches he could take to this. He could leap out and face the noise that must have caused him to wake so suddenly, or he could ease himself into it and hope he wouldn't get stabbed in the face.

He went with the former.

Sucking in a deep breath of icy air, Levi launched himself out of the mouth of the cornucopia and searched frantically for whatever woke him up so suddenly. But Levi didn't find a bold tribute or an enraged muttation. Instead he found a layer of snow roughly six inches deep. Around him, fluffy white flakes drifted gently around him. He looked up and watched them for a few moments. Judging by the amount of snow already on the ground, there must have been a bit of a blizzard overnight. He put away his knife and then paused. Yuki. His eyes instantly dropped to the snow. Her head and torso would stick up a bit from the rest of the snow. His gaze combed the field and eventually rested on the supply piles. There, in front of the stacks of supplies, the snow rose a few inches above the rest.

"Yuki?" Levi asked, taking a couple steps through the crunchy white precipitation. "Yuki?" He jogged over to her and knelt down, grimacing as his knees instantly went cold. Gently, he swept the snow off of what he presumed to be her face.

I know she was pale, but I'm pretty sure she wasn't that pale, he thought. "Yuki?" he asked again. He shook her shoulders lightly. No response. He wouldn't be able to feel a pulse through his gloves, and he wasn't in the mood to take them off. He experimented with lifting her up by the armpits. She sagged like a dead weight. Carefully, he dragged her through the snow into the cornucopia. Maybe there was hope.

"Up and at 'em, everybody!" he shouted, his voice emotionless. October and Cedar both jumped a bit.

"The hell?" October asked groggily, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

"See for yourself," he said, pointing at the motionless Yuki on the floor. "I was thinking we could try warming her up to see if her heart will start back up."

"What happened?" Cedar asked.

"Take a wild guess. I'm sure your brain cell can handle it."

"Hey—!"

"Boys!" October shouted. Levi and Cedar looked at her. She had a hand on Yuki's neck. "She doesn't have any semblance of a pulse. There's no use wasting our time."

Of course. "That's what woke me up!" Levi said suddenly. "Her cannon." October nodded.

"One second," Cedar said. "This doesn't add up. She couldn't have frozen to death. If she was sleeping, she would have woken up. The snow would have made her sneeze or something. Or she was still awake and would have come inside. I say Levi poisoned her, dragged her around outside, then brought her back in with his ridiculous story so he can keep us in the dark and get us next!"

Levi rolled his eyes. "You're kidding."

"I'm not!"

"Where would I have gotten the poison?" Cedar looked away. "No answer, huh? Let me enlighten you with some fun facts. Firstly, yes, Yuki would have come in if she had been awake when the snow started. Thus, we can safely hypothesize that it started up after she had fallen asleep. Now, hypothermia is a common ailment that is caused by cold temperatures. If Yuki woke up at all, she would have probably had moderate hypothermia by that point. Moderate hypothermia makes you unable to make rational decisions. On the off chance that she woke up, she wouldn't have had the sense to get up and go inside. She'd most likely just roll over and go back to sleep. Moderate hypothermia would develop into profound hypothermia. At this stage her body would stop trying to keep itself warm, and her heart would eventually just stop."

A pause.

"I'm not going to pretend to know what the theme of the Games is for sure, but judging by how quickly the temperature dropped and the winter gear we were given, it's not going to get very toasty in here. Yuki's death was a lesson, not a murder."

Cedar huffed. "Fine, smart ass. How do you even know so much about this? You're from District 11. You've never lived a cold day in your life!"

"I study."

A snort.

"You clearly don't," Levi added. Cedar turned red. Before any more damage could be done, October stepped between the two, green eyes ablaze.

"Stop it!" she shouted. "This is ridiculous. Your mindless bickering isn't going to win us the Games. At this point I'm beginning to question if any of us will even win. It's time to grow up and start getting some work done. Now, I was thinking—"

"Wait a minute," Cedar interjected. October shut her eyes tight and looked up at the roof the cornucopia. She took in a deep breath, then exhaled, lowering her head and fixing her piercing eyes on Cedar.

"What do you want now," she asked, rubbing her eyes.

"Who appointed you leader?" Cedar questioned. "I don't like you just taking over like you run the place. I, for one, think that there are people in this alliance better suited for leadership than you."

October snorted. "You mean yourself?"

"Me?" he asked with fake surprise. "Why, I am honored that you would nominate me to be leader. I will gladly accept the position."

"Cedar, honey," October said, shaking her head, "you're twelve and your temper is absolutely ridiculous. I'm not going to sit here and let you boss Levi and I around because I know you're going to screw up pretty royally. I don't know if you've noticed yet, but this is a fight to the death. This isn't a joke. We need to be serious, and you're not our guy."

Levi sighed. He squatted down and brushed away a section of the snow that had found its way into the cornucopia. The young man sat down, leaning against the wall of the cornucopia and turning his head to stare out across the open field where his alliance was situated. October and Cedar continued to fight on his other side. Honestly, his vote was for October. She was intelligent and bearable. She'd had good ideas so far. However, he wasn't in the mood to get in the middle of their spat. He was far enough on Cedar's bad side already. He didn't need to go and get his head smashed in by a mace before he could kill the brat.

Their alliance was on very thin ice.

October and Levi could function great on their own. Two loners who don't really care for the other but can put up with them? That's a dream team. It was Cedar that was screwing everything up. But the kid had brute strength, which was undeniable. It could come in handy.

The snow had not stopped falling. Little flakes settled softly onto their predecessors, piling up slowly but surely. Levi wondered just how far the Gamemakers would push the snow thing. Bundled up in his insulated clothes and parka, he figured that it was going to get even colder in the arena pretty fast. But would the snow stop? Would the temperature stop falling?

His thoughts troubling him, Levi hardly noticed that October and Cedar had finally stopped fighting. He turned his head one-hundred-eighty degrees to see that Cedar was staring at the wall while October was rationing out three portions of food.

"Good news," October said, glancing up at Levi for a moment. "Cedar has relinquished his claim to the leadership position." Cedar huffed. "Unless you want it," October added. Levi shook his head. She smiled. "Excellent. We can finally get somewhere. Come over here and get breakfast. You, too, Cedar."

She sounded like a mother, which struck Levi as strange for two reasons. The first was that, as he recalled, October grew up an orphan, and thus had no motherly model that she could be emulating. The second was that Levi, too, had grown up an orphan, and being solitary had never met a mother. He had observed, of course, but it was strange to him all the same.

Cedar picked up his meal—a roll, a handful of dried berries, and two strips of jerky—and went outside, leaving October and Levi alone inside the cornucopia. Levi took his food without a word and sat down, leaning against the wall. October sat opposite him. Neither of them were very tall, but if they both sat with their legs out—October's were bent with her knees close to her chest—then their feet would touch.

Levi ate without a word, uncomfortable. He had spent his whole life on the fringe. He didn't talk to anyone and no one talked to him. He liked it that way. Now, in the Hunger Games, he would be forced to communicate. Here he was, with only two other people, and he could no longer sit on the edges and let other people do the talking.

He glanced up at October.

She caught his gaze.

He looked down.

Embarrassed, he took a bite of his roll, hoping dearly that his cheeks weren't reddening. He could say it was the cold. He's not used to the cold. "It's pretty cold," he observed.

October nodded. "It is. It's usually warm in District 10, but sometimes it gets a bit chilly. The animals can take it. Never like this, though."

"Plants aren't so hardy," Levi smirked. "Even the weather when we entered the arena was on the cool side for me."

"Weirdo." She was smiling. Just a little.

Levi took another embarrassed bite, and silence fell over the two. After a few minutes he was nearly done with his food, and both of them had stayed quiet. Suddenly, Levi spoke up.

"Hey, October?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm glad you're leading us instead of that bonehead Cedar."

"Thanks."

She had a nice smile.