I wrote this chapter listening to One Girl Revolution by Superchick on permanent loop. It's a good song; I recommend it.

Chapter Seven

Madge desperately tried to scratch the fiery polish off her perfect nails. The outfit had gone over well. Everybody had loved it and they were calling her The Girl on Fire. Stupid, unoriginal nickname. The interview had gone over well, too. She had acted depressed about dying.

Her ring finger presented some difficulty. What was this polish made of, anyway?

Madge had gotten a five in her private session with the Gamemakers. Her final judgment, she had called it. That was funny, considering she had done nothing.

"So this is it?" she had asked. "This is my final judgment?"

The Gamemakers were clearly bored. If they were bored, Madge decided, so was she.

So she pulled up a chair, crossed one leg over the other nonchalantly, and read a book. It was a book on plants that were poisonous. After about fifteen minutes, she was dismissed.

She finished her left hand and used it to scrape her right.

Tommorrow. The Hunger Games were tomorrow. Were they really so cruel as to send her into in unknown environment with nothing but thousands eyes trained on her and a one, two, three, go? Did they really expect her to kill those whom she knew and loved? Well, she wasn't going to. She would only kill somebody if they tried to kill her.

She tried to use regular soap to wash the nail polish off, but her nails were not cooperating. She went back to scraping.

Who do you die with, Madge? She asked herself. Peeta, the boy who makes bread? Haymitch, the emotionally unsound alcoholic? Effie, whose last brain cell died in solitary confinement years ago? No. Madge would die with twenty-two other innocent children who were thinking exactly the same toughts as she was. She would die in the middle of an unknown area that didn't even exist. Would a Capitol official who was only doing his job kill her? Would she die with a rope around her neck? No. Madge would die at the hands of an unstable innocent child who was acting purely out of self-defense.

She finished scraping her nails. She should probably get some sleep.

That's me, thought Prim as she watched Madge parade in her flaming outfit on the television. That's me in an alternate universe.

She witnessed the face of the smiling, well-fed Capitol children. That's me too, she thought. That's me in a world where innocent children's deaths exist only on television.

Give me a little bit of that, thought Prim. Give me just a little bit of ignorance, give me just a little bit of bliss.

Katniss Everdeen was returning after a day of hunting with the Huntresses. The group dynamic was different from what she did with Gale, but she liked it. This is the good life, she thought. And to think I used to wish I was a Capitol child.

She caught a television in of the Capitol restaurant. They were playing reruns of the reaping in district 12.

"Primrose Everdeen," Effie proclaimed proudly.

Katniss spun around. "She was reaped?" she asked.

"Yes," said Artemis.

"You said I would be reaped!"

""I said you would be the tribute. Think about it, Katniss. Would you not volunteer for your own dear sister?"

"You lied to me," said Katniss.

"Don't be mad, Katniss," said Annette.

"You're all a bunch of liars!" screamed Katniss, and stormed off into the Capitol. She didn't look back. She felt something leave her as she left. Immortality, maybe. She hadn't even noticed it was there.

"You didn't take away her precognition," Katia told Artemis.

"She's going to need it. Trust me, she'll be back," Artemis replied.

"Why? Did you have a psychic vision?"

"Trust me on this, Katia."

"Yes, Artemis."

President Snow awoke to find an unmarked letter from an anonymous sender. It didn't appear to be ticking, so he opened it.

In it, there were some pictures from previous Hunger Games. Some of them were taken a long time ago, back when the Hunger Games was new and the filming of it wasn't quite as sophisticated.

Upon closer inspection, they all appeared to be of a seventeen-year-old boy. They were all different people, obviously, but they looked remarkably similar. He noticed one of them still had traces of blonde dye in his hair.

There was a letter attached to the pictures. It said:

Photos taken from Hunger Games numbers 8,12, 15, 36, 42, 52, 57, and 65.

For all of these people, this was their first, second or third time being counted in the Hunger Games census. Before that, there is no record of any of them. They all died shortly after winning the Hunger Games. The 65 victor has a small tattoo on his right wrist.

All of these people are one in the same. You probably should have noticed, you idiot. Don't be paranoid.

-Anonymous