The Epilogue

September 2, 2663

(Two Weeks After The Hunger Games)

1904 Hours

The Capitol

Carlisle Cullen:

Blood.

It has a strange, unwelcome effect on me, now that it flows through my veins again. I feel my heart pounding within my chest, and strangely enough, it almost brings the thirst back to my throat. I can hear it in my ears, and the pleasant thrum is... indescribable. It is as though I am afraid of my own— now nonexistent— predatory abilities. I sense a predator that thirsts for my blood, and that predator is me.

But this is different than a paper-cut, different than a surgery at the hospital, far different from anything else. Blood is smeared against the wall and the floor and the spiderwebbed, broken window. Through the fray in the panes, and under stories and stories of offices and workers, is the body that it came from. She will never breathe or move again. Now, standing at the edge of death, I wonder what stops me from following her.

Human, vampire, or otherwise, I am a creature of instinct. We all are. I cannot bring myself to take the final step.

I sense Gwen behind me. My senses may be incapacitated, by I know how to make use of the ones I have. I feel her heat, I hear her breathing, and I smell the sickening, metallic scent of blood on her breath— and the flowery perfume used to poorly mask it. Never try to surprise a vampire, or anyone who has been one. "Why am I here, Gwen?" I ask, eyes still on the broken girl at the base of the skyscraper.

"I want you to determine how she died," she whispers in my ear, placing her hand on my shoulder. Right on the bruise. Right on the scar. I freeze. "I. Control. You," she hisses.

"Not at all." I laugh mirthlessly. "Gwen, I'm a doctor, not an investigator." I can't hide the shake in my voice.

"Mm. You're a genius, I won't deny that much. Maybe you aren't a man, maybe you're one of the most hypocritical abominations that has ever existed, and it is quite possible that you are a soulless... sadistic..." She pauses and flits to the other ear. " you are certainly a genius. I would like to see what you are capable of, once you have... mm... rid yourself of those petty customs." Standing next to me, she folds her arms behind her back.

"To what customs are you referring?" I inquire.

"Your customs," she says, turning to me. "Yourcustoms, that is... customs that belong to you. You are beautiful, but so... so marred with spirit and free will. You are so much better, so much purer when you do as I ask you to."

I close my eyes against the onslaught of irrational guilt. Stockholm syndrome and manipulation make anyone hurt, but knowing I have been unable to resist her thus far is… difficult. "I am who I am."

"No. You aren't. You are who I tell you to be," she argues, raising her voice to a sharp point.

"I am who I choose to be."

"You have no choice," she snaps.

"There is alwaysa choice."

"Not for you!" she growls. Her voice is still soft; those she commands are still here. "Not for you at all. You are who I tell you to be, not even who I wantyou to be. I suppose you are what you are, in a way, but not what you think you are. Not at all."

"Then whatam I?" The demand comes more harshly than I intended.

Gwen sighs and then mutters, "You're going to pay for that..." She pulls a notepad from her pocket and scribbles something — notes for her superiors, I suppose. She looks back up at me and smiles. "You are... you are a mirror. A perfect mirror of me. But your own will and twisted, disgusting personalitymar it. You are tarnished. I am only trying to fix you. You need to be fixed. Why won't you let me fix you?"

She reaches out to me with both hands, as if she wants to stroke my cheek. I catch her hands in mine before she can touch me. My almost-laugh is low, almost like a growl. Almost like a warning. "You are not my master, Gwen. And I am notyour shadow."

She snatches her hands away from me and tries to slap me. She fails when I flinch away. At least the reflexes have remained through this… last attempt at removing the vampirism. I suspect I've had it for too long for it to ever really leave.

"You should thank me for taking care of you," says Admiral Laudan. "My superiors wanted you executed."

The feral look in her eyes sends a chill through me— until I recognize something else. The admiral is not insane, but of impressive, if sadistic, intelligence; feigning madness in order to frighten me. At least, I hope Panem's military screening program is not inept enough to allow a psychotic harlot into their program, let alone give her the rank of admiral.

"Ah," I say. "I see what you're trying to do. I don't believe that 'good-cop/bad-cop' actually works when you are attempting to play both the good and the bad at the same time."

"I'll be honest, then," she says. "I am to evaluate your abilities as a thinker outside of the medical realm. It is also to serve as an evaluation of your superhuman senses."

"Do your investigators know what happened?" I inquire.

"Officially it was an Avox suicide," says the admiral.

"Was it?"

"No. Determine that for yourself."

I can see no harm in it, and walk back to the dented elevator doors that mark the edge of the crime scene investigation. There are droplets of dried blood staining the floor, and then red-colored footprints. Only the tip of the injured one's foot touched the floor at all, and it's smeared in odd directions. "She was running," I say aloud. "And injured — limping."

Gwen Laudan gestures for me to continue.

There are two sets of footprints on the floor, now that I begin to look. One is a triangle with a circle at the bottom: a woman, the same one at the bottom of the skyscraper. The other is wider, and toed: a man's foot, and more importantly, barefoot. This set of footprints led to shattered pieces of glass, various pieces with broken circle. It was a cup, from the shelf on the wall next to me. "The woman limped and fell into this shelf — " I point to it. "There was another following, a man. He was was walking, barefoot. He stepped on the cup she had knocked over."

I pause before continuing, "More importantly, he continued walking without pause."

"And what do you suppose that means?" asks Admiral Laudan.

"I am not a detective," I tell her.

She laughs. "I think you know what it means."

"This man either had a superhumanly high pain tolerance, which I find doubtful due to the lack of blood on the side facing up," I tell her, then add, "And… there is no scent of another's blood."

"Superhumanly high pain tolerance and blood that smells identical to the woman, or…?" prompts Gwen.

I swallow. "The man was a vampire."

I do not say, "Or one of your genetically-engineered super-soldiers has decided he wants to become a murderer." Even if one of the 'prototypes' had, it would not have been counted as a murder; she was only an Avox who had been well-liked by her was the destruction of expensive property.

I do say, "He was likely hunting her." I glance back to the shattered pane of glass, and walk toward the opening. "He demonstrated his strength when he pried his way out of the elevator. Janelle must have realized that he blocked the exit and had no chance of fighting him.

"She also must have seen the other girl die." I don't want to remember what I saw when Gwen forced me to examine her body. Her spine was snapped, she was killed relatively slowly, as painfully as possible in a short amount of time. There was also a gaping hole in her shoulder and a plastic straw found next to her corpse. She had bled to death from the wound… or the vampire had drank her, using a straw to add literal insult to injury. My stomach churns at the sick sense of humor required to do something like that.

It reminds me of Aro. But I cannot think about that.

"Janelle didn't want to die like that," I tell Gwen. "She jumped, and there was nothing the vampire could do but watch as she died on her own terms."

The admiral snorts. "He could have jumped after her."

I shake my head. "The velocity required to leave the building would have made him overshoot her, and once in free fall he could not have caught up to her at a superhuman speed. If he attempted to dive down, she would still hit the bottom before — "

Gwen is laughing. I stop. Never before have I been one to babble, not without reason. It must be Stockholm syndrome, prompting me to talk, because speaking is what she wants me to do, and I don't want to disappoint her for some unknowable, psychological reason that I don't pretend to understand, even if I understood it before it happened to me.

She stops the giggling abruptly. The madness is gone like it wasn't even there. And maybe it wasn't, mayhap she was only trying to and succeeding at intimidating me. "Don't you get it, Carlisle Cullen? We offer the vampires peace by including them in the Games — "

"The Games are not peace," I cut her off.

"They are the definition of peace!" she exclaims. "Mortus Propter Pacem. Through the Games, we ensure the future of Panem. Through the temporary blood in the Games we ensure that there will be blood and harmony in the future. The Games make everyone understand that war is never the answer!" The admiral composes herself. "And yet still, the vampires have chosen war. That little bitch you fancy as your daughter — "

"You dare…"

" — wants to choose war. The districts worship her, and soon they too may choose war." Gwen lunges at me, and I flinch backwards, but her strength is supernatural. "There are vampires on both sides, Carlisle Cullen. In District 13, who will soon be terrorists, and in the terrorists we have right now who call themselves the Volturi. There are vampires on both sides. Superhuman creatures of immense strength who will crush the civilians, in the districts and Capitol alike. They will crush them like nothing, and it will be the bloodiest war the world has ever seen."

She steps back from me, and I swallow as she sighs. "Forgive me, doctor. You may not always see it, I may not always act like it in those times when I try to intimidate you, but I hold a certain amount of respect for you and your… abilities. But surely you must see the importance of our work. The deceased… Janelle… was an Avox, yes. But if you had just completed your task already, this wouldn't have happened! She could have been saved, Carlisle, saved! And you want that. You want that so badly. All you have to do is finish the serum, and we can forever ensure that there will be no more blood in the future."

"You don't know that for sure," I tell her, unwilling to debate her ethics like I once did. "The experiment failed. Had Cato been a sire, he would have won."

"The sire/fledgling gene may change that," says the admiral.

"It's rare, and recessive," I say. "The vampires you created were weaker than usual newborns, and far more unpredictable."

"And the soldiers we create will be gods among men," she says. "You will continue the Fledgling program, and they will be gods among men. They will be strong, and fast, and intelligent, and easy to control. And you will continue the Sire program, and their soldiers will be gods, their commanders gods among them. And they will be strong, and fast, and intelligent, and able to control their soldiers. They will walk in eternity, with the blood of their enemies in their wakes. And together they shall smite the wicked.

"Panem today. Panem tomorrow. Panem forever."

The Acknowledgements

It took a lot of work to get this book — and I feel like I can call it that, after all I've done with it — onto virtual paper, but I didn't do it alone.

First and foremost, I want to thank SuchIsTheFateOfHeroes, because she was the first one I sent this to when I hammered out the first chapter in two hours one night because it was Thanksgiving and I was introverting away from my family. After that we spent countless hours brainstorming it together. It's as much her brainchild as it is mine, although she hasn't reviewed it yet through her account (wink, wink).

Secondly, I'd like to thank Wivren. He wasn't ever supposed to read it, ever, because I didn't want him to know I wrote romance. But he knew I loved writing, and he found out about it. At first I was terrified that he would blackmail me with it when he found it online (and I still don't know how), but he loved it for some reason. And we talked about more meaningful things together, and less meaningful things that carry a lot of meaning for us. It was this book that brought us together, and I'm overjoyed that he was here to see it through to the end. I can't compact it all into one paragraph, but know this: it was (and is, still, and I sincerely hope and believe it will be for a long time to come) a better love story than Twilight.

I'd also like to acknowledge Danceswithhorses (now Clarity's Illusions), who became my internet-best-friend for almost a year before she handed off her account to a friend. If you ever read this, just know that it was in-part your influence that helped bring this story to conclusion.

Finally, I would like to thank my reviewers: Savannah, LittlePixie14 (who reviewed almost every chapter, no less), grapeape, OrangeNinjaAttack, the human twitchtip, Amber, nia, The Professor, danceswithhorses, xxPrettyLittleWriterxx, Brooke, MEANDEDWARDFOREVERLOVE, Alexa Twilight, Alice Gone Madd, SarahAnn13, BONKERS, CrackedUpVAMPIRE22, lovexisamazing86, Kl, Lynn0255, Megan Cromwell, DreamerHorse, wolfbloods unite, StarlightGilgalad, and every one of you Guests. It's your support that has made this go from a few chapters and a concept to something that's come alive.

The Twilight Games will return in: Heart of Fire.