A/N: Here's the fifth and final prologue. I hope to enjoy, and thanks again for reading! Thanks to anyone who has expressed interest in submitting, you're all awesome and I can't wait to see what you create (:

PROLOGUE FIVE: "AND THE MOON BE STILL AS BRIGHT"

Excerpt from "A History of Panem", published 325HG.

One of the most peculiar scenarios in the history of Panem played out in the year 200HG, the same day the now-famous Adam Ward was successfully born in the Coriolanus Lab in the south of District 10. The four scientists who had made it their life's work to perfect the process of extraincorporated fertilization fled to the desert after creating Mr. Ward, where their captain, one Plinius Benedictus, beat each of his companions to death with a rock over the course of about five hours.

What motive Captain Benedictus had for murdering his scientific crew, we can only guess. Some scientists pin the blame on a peculiar fungus inhabiting the food of the Source, while others say there can never nor should there ever be a logical explanation for this man's insanity. We cannot know with full certainty what happened on that August night more than a century ago, but evidence from the dead bodies of the men suggests that Benedictus beat two of his three companions to death before facing the third, who splintered him in the face with a glass bottle. They each starved to death in the desert in the coming days. It was not for weeks that the Coriolanus Lab research team was able to locate and identify their bodies. They were ultimately cremated.

The event is most commonly called the Great Source Incident – named after a nickname for the Coriolanus Lab – but is called the Martian Hunger Games in common parlance. Indeed, the weaknesses and ignorances of humanity were exposed in a strange and beautiful world where mankind does not belong. Men once looked at distant worlds like Mars (a former name for the planet Molly) and saw their dreams for a future. Now, our dreams are right here in Panem with us, perfectly incorporated into the vision of human life we have made for ourselves. Long live Panem, long live the Capitol.

TIME: 11:12 PM, 5 August 200HG

It was so cold when they came from the Source that Ovid had to gather the brittle District 10 wood to build a small fire. He and the others gathered around it to watch it burn away. They said nothing about human progress or scientific advancement or the glory of the Capitol; they simply gathered around it to watch the flame rise higher and higher. There was nothing to be said.

"Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds," Ovid muttered at last.

In the gentle, timid flame that lighted the flimsy air of that shriveled-up wasteland, Ovid and the others watched the truck that had taken them to this distant desert place. There was the leader of the group, Captain Benedictus – and Leto and Odius and himself. They'd fled the factory and come to rest in a dead, dreaming world.

"Well, we've done it," Odius muttered at last. "We've perfected the great eternal human endeavor. There's nothing more to be done."

"Don't be so crass, man – there's no telling whether this will actually catch on."

"Oh, it will. It will."

And they sat still once more to watch the fire.

This was the umpteenth attempt to grow a human being in a factory setting, but the first time it had been done successfully. The project had been conducted in utter secrecy because of the awful response likely to rise up from the general public when the first few tests – inevitably – went poorly. Thousands of half-developed human embryos discarded to the flames. That wasn't the kind of news you revealed.

It had been nine months since the first Epsilon Test: the experiment to submerge a human zygote in a newly designed chemical formulated to perfectly approximate the chemical composition of amniotic fluid – and now the first fully developed human had been born. Now the scientists responsible had fled to the desert, where they could do absolutely nothing but sit in silence with the thing they had done.

"What will we name him?" asked Leto. It was almost laughable. They'd fled to the desert to get away from the thing they had done, just to think about it. Yes, there was nothing else to think about.

"It's obvious, isn't it?" Captain Benedictus muttered. "We shall name him Adam. Because he is the first."

"Oh, come on, Captain. Nobody believes in that story anymore."

"It doesn't matter. Stories have power. They have shaped our history."

"Lighten up."

"I will not."

Ovid stepped closer to the fire and finally opened his mouth to speak. "Why don't we use the chemical fuel from the Source instead of wood?"

Odius shook his head. "It just isn't right. After what we've done. To do something even more unnatural – no, we have to do this the proper way."

"And the proper way is to freeze to death in the desert?"

"The proper way is to do something – anything – the way it was meant to be done."

Of course. To do otherwise would have bordered on utter blasphemy.

To stand near the fire was like to stand over an immense tomb. They had just doomed the integrity of humanity, the meaning of human life, in what they had done. Maybe, Ovid thought, he was getting ahead of himself. It was like Odius had said – there was no way this discovery would fly under humanity's radar. The opportunity to perfectly breed every human, ridding the species of all genetic diseases and the weaknesses and shortcomings of evolution? In this century – in this decade, perhaps – every human would be made in a factory.

"And his last name? Adam's, I mean?"

"We shall name him Adam Ward," declared Captain Benedictus.

"Why?"

"Because we are his ward."

There was a sharp stick of pride in his voice. In some aspects it seemed Man was simply too proud to admit defeat, to admit that he had been made obsolete by the very science he discovered.

They gazed out once more at the silent, dreaming desert.

"Good Snow, men, is there anything alive out here?" grunted Leto.

"Of course there is. There is life everywhere on this damn planet."

"Not for much longer. I am become death, the destroyer of words. Do you know where that quote comes from?"

"No. Where?"

"The scientist who created the atom bomb. 1945 CE. It's a quote from the ancient Hindu scriptures."

"The what, now?"

"It's not our right. It's just not our right."

"To do what?"

"To go against the way things were meant to be done."

That brought Ovid pause. "Meant to be done? Everyone knows the universe has no master plan. That was disproven years ago."

"It doesn't matter," the captain said, grunting in frustration as though caught in a field of immense tension, as though building up carbonation against a cork. "It's not right. Splitting the atom, splitting the human soul. That's what we've done. We've split the human soul."

"Captain! You've – you've lost your balance. You can't go on talking like this. Forgive me, but you can't let yourself get personally involved. We were merely following orders."

"Sir, I am the captain of this group…"

"And that gives you the right to speak out against our world? Against our Capitol? If I didn't know better, I'd think you hated the Hunger Games themselves!"

"Oh, how dare you?"

A line had been crossed.

"Men, men!" shouted the scientist named Leto. "We have come here to be silent and alone, not to fight. Please settle down."

The men gazed out at the distant lights of District 10 twinkling in the starlight, the very last place you'd expect mysterious and inhuman things to happen.

"We're doomed."

"Don't be so crass."

"We have been doomed for a good, good long while."

Ovid knelt down like a child at the feet of a wise old woman and held his hands out to the fire, basking in the timid red glow that was almost phosphorescent in its tint. Their shadows flickered in the firelight and for a moment it seemed there were two versions of each man; the real man, made of flesh and blood, but also the shadow version, equally lively and vibrant – the version that is the last thing from solid.

The fire died. Again there was nothing but silence, like the silence of a dark window in a house that has not been lived in for hundreds of years.

"Well," said Captain Benedictus, "We've got to go back sooner or later. We'll be walking back, of course."

"What? And abandon the van?"

"It is the most natural thing to do. Walk, the way it is supposed to be done."

Leto jerked his head upward in agitation. "Oh, no. We're not going there. We're not going to lose our heads," he grumbled. "You know why we have clothes on our backs, roofs over our heads? Because we were given the brains to make those things. It's not unnatural to have them. It's unnatural to reject the gifts we've been given and tread over the earth like savages!"

A great silence, heavy and looming, hung in the air for several moments. At last, Captain Benedictus spoke up. "I have devoted the last several years of my life to this project, and now I have seen it to completion. I am no longer beholden to the Source, and it is my right to act as I please."

"And force us to trudge hours through the cold?"

"I am your Captain."

"No, you're not. Not anymore."

And the men glanced back and forth between the lights of District 10 and the faint light of the fire as it slowly died.

Ovid weaved to the rim of the canal, constantly stumbling out of line as he went. He carried twelve empty glass bottles and dropped them one by one into the deep murky water. They made great gulping drowning sounds as they sank. Then he returned to the camp as though he'd done nothing wrong.

At the camp, Odius was preparing food taken from the truck over the fire. The captain has been initially apprehensive about eating anything factory-prepared (heaven forbid they do something, anything, unnatural) but eventually succumbed to the powerful sense of Hunger that was almost carnal.

"What did you do with those bottles?" Captain Benedictus demanded over the fire (newly assembled by Leto using brittle wood they'd found over a nearby hillock).

A shrug, the shake of his head. "Did away with them, I don't know."

The thick fog hung over his head like an accursed halo.

"You didn't litter, did you?"

"'Course I did. Where else would we put our garbage?"

"In the truck!"

"I thought you hated the truck!"

He grabbed him by the throat, his eyes bulging in fury. "You know what my grandmother used to say? An old thing always lingers when a new thing comes. The version of humanity that came before. Before we did what we've just done, before the oceans rose, before the bombs fell – before there was a Capitol and before there were Hunger Games! It still lingers all around us – the natural way of things. We've got to pay it great respect, man! That is your only duty!"

"Mr. Benedictus," (not Captain) "Quite frankly, you're not exactly one to talk about not losing our heads."

That gave him pause. Captain Benedictus loosened his grip on Ovid's throat, and the color slowly began to return to his neck and chin.

"Have respect for the land," Benedictus muttered, then turned back to the fire. "It always remembers."

And there was nothing more to be said. The men returned to the fire and pretended there was still a reason to live life. In a hundred years, nobody would have any idea what a "grandmother" was. They would exist only in old-fashioned books and movies, lingering relics of a world long gone.

Captain Benedictus moved out into the moonlight, toward the dreaming lights of District 10. Disgust coursed through his body like blood. The disrespect the other scientists showed toward the land was unbelievable. There was Ovid, who'd discarded glass bottles in the gulley where they made gulping drowning sounds as they sank. There was Leto, who had washed his feet in the river. Then there was Odius, the most unsuspecting member of the crew, who posed the biggest offense of all; implying they ride the truck back toward civilization.

Without a word Benedictus filled the land with his mind. This was the most beautiful thing imaginable: a clear night in the desert. The purpose of human life was not to watch the Hunger Games – the purpose was to be here.

He squatted by the lifeless form of the land, admiring the gentle arch of the stones. There was a thing to the lights, the sky, the stones. He had done something abominable, yes, that was undeniable. But he could pay back the universe for what he had done. He could purge the world of the people responsible; he could uproot the problem and then it would shrivel. At least, he could hope.

He picked up a sharp stone and held it tightly in his grasp, so tightly his knuckles turned a ghostly white. It was time for action.

Of course, he had to kill them. It was the only way. Their disrespect toward the natural way of things was simply unpardonable. The thought that he – he himself – had contributed to the creation of Adam Ward and opened an entire new chapter in the story of humanity made him want to vomit right there on the desert sand. It was an outrage. It was unforgivable.

When he was finished, he would kill himself, but not yet. Not yet when there was a task to be done.

Odius turned lightly, as timidly as the fire. His eyes were wild in the moonlight and the light of the city. The night before, Captain Benedictus had caught him trying to load the other men into the truck and ride back toward District 10.

There was not a sound except for the wind. It was beautiful to watch as the men fell through the universe and then fell out of it. One day – one glorious day – humanity would revel in what he had done. He was the culmination of the justice Man had hungered for in every unjust advancement he had ever made. This was not violence, Captain Benedictus told himself. This was justice.

Leto went down in a flash. He didn't even know what had hit him.

Ovid took a little more time. He'd kept some glass bottles around and swung one straight into Captain Benedictus's forehead, bringing forth a bright red Rorschach. By the time Ovid was actually dead, though, Benedictus knew the debt had already been repaid – and it was no more fun.