I charge through the brush at full speed, not slowing down for an instant. My lungs burn from the chokingly hot, humid night air, but the adrenaline keeps me moving forward. The huge wet, tropical leaves slap at my face and I jump and twist through the tangle of vines and undergrowth. I can feel the nicks and scratches of thorns and bark digging into my damp skin. The moist air and sweat have already caused the cotton of my t-shirt to glue itself to my body. Again, the adrenaline is my savior.

The loud noise I make doesn't matter. Everyone knows where I am. The hunters are already on my trail, and have spotted their prey. My only chance for survival is to put as much distance between them and me as I possibly can… rapidly.

I cannot see the stars. The tree canopy is too dense. It is pitch black and I run on instinct alone. Who knows what dangers naturally lurk in this rainforest hell…or what manmade dangers could have been placed here as well? Ohm has already mentioned the Hunger Games. If there is one thing I understood from watching those twisted showcases of terror, it is expect the worst because it's usually true. But I don't have time to think about any of that now. My only motivation is too stay alive long enough to form a plan; even if it is ultimately a doomed one.

Suddenly, the silence of the night is pierced by a shrieking whistle I have heard many times before. Without any conscious thought, I fling myself forward and flat onto the wet mud of the forest floor. KABOOM! The artillery round explodes a few feet inside the tree canopy, sending deadly jagged shards of metal shrapnel and wooden splinters flying just inches above me. If I had not flattened out, I would be dead. When the shock of the explosion passes, I push to my feet and continue the sprint for life. The whistling returns and I dive for the safety of the ground again. My luck holds out. I am not fooled by this distraction, though. Ohm is a weapons genius and knows I am experienced in combat. Artillery like this is useless in the jungle where the tree cover is so dense it causes the rounds to explode far too above the ground to be really dangerous to those who know how to adapt. No, these are not designed to end the hunt; after all that would be too "unsporting." Obviously, he didn't expect me to move this far this fast, and wants to slow me down so that his hunters, with their heavy body armor and equipment, can finish the job. No doubt, he is looking forward to watching my painful demise live on the intricate network of surveillance devices that he has surely installed all over this island. In fact, he is probably laughing at my soaked, muddy appearance right now as he forces my wife to watch her beloved's end.

"Lizzy!" the heartbreaking image of her sobbing in that aquatic torture device of Ohm's own sick creation fills me rage and keeps the adrenaline flowing enough to force me moving forward, but the delay caused by the artillery has cost me dearly.

"Over there! I'm reading him over there!" I hear the shout faintly through the trees.

"Damn tracelet…" I think to myself. As long as it is manacled to my wrist, I'm a dead man. I won't be able to hide to rest: I'll just have to keep running until my body gives out and the hunters corner me. I think back to my Escape and Resistance training. Tracelets are waterproof and hardened against impact, but they do have a weakness…the epiphany hits my brain like a lightning bolt, too bad I don't have something to produce a…

The whizz of automatic fire slices through the trees and I hear the bullets fly close to me...way too close. The hunters are in direct fire range, but my movement combined with the thick foliage means they probably can't get an exact fix: not that it really matters with the firepower they're packing. Back in the pit, when I saw the assault rifles that the guards were carrying, I immediately recognized them as Mark 17s, the prototype that Ohm showed me that day in Special Defense. The haunting image of the perforated steel plate and destroyed target dummy makes me realize that there's not a lot out in this jungle that will save me from those bullets. Another burst of fire cuts through the leaves. I have to get to some kind of protection or I'm done for.

Just as I'm about to lose hope, I see what is my salvation. Over the eons, a creek has cut nearly ten feet deep into the jungle floor as it wound its way to the sea. In this darkness, it may be just enough to hide me and confuse their sensors until daylight when I can get a better grasp of my surroundings. Suddenly, it occurs to me that I don't even know how long daylight will be from now. I guess it doesn't really matter. At the very least, if it doesn't fool them, at least it will make it a little harder to shoot at me. I dive down into the miniature ravine, splash into the water below, and keep running without slowing down. After an agonizing minute of hoping for a miracle, I hear the few voices fading slowly into the blackness behind me.

"The signal is breaking up!"

"What do you mean? He was right here!"

"Keep looking, dammit, he's close." I see them shine bright white search beams through the trees, but thankfully, they're pointing in the wrong direction.

It seems my ruse has at least temporarily worked. I continue running along the creek bed. As fatigue and the cold wetness of sweat and humidity sink into my bones, I try to keep myself focused. Failure, in either direction, is not an option at this point. I refuse to let Ohm win. I have to find a way to escape from this nightmare.

"When she took the last name, Snow, she made her choice." Ohm's words echo through my ears both as motivation and punishment. It was never Lizzy's fault. Her only mistake was falling in love with me. At that instant, I curse Fate for flinging me into such abysmal circumstances. Why did things have to be this way? Life would have been so much simpler if my name had been anything but Snow. Fate answers back with a memory that pops into my head and fills me with such a warm feeling of joy that my tired legs feel fresh and new. I run on.

"When she took the last name, Snow, she made her choice." I remember the moment when she made that choice:

I awoke from a nightmare, pulse pounding, sheets drench in sweat and tears. She was beside me, still lying in blissful slumber, unaware of the thrashing and tossing next to her. One my first impressions of Elizabeth Odair when she finally began to spend her nights in my company, was how deep a sleeper she was. I swear I could have set off a firecracker next to her, and she wouldn't budge. "Clear Conscious," was the only explanation that I could settle on.

In the dim glow streaming in from the window, I looked down at her angelic, sleeping face and marveled at its lines, its curves, the way her hair fell across her shoulders like the finest silk, the creamy alabaster of her skin as it reflected the moonlight, the subtle movement of her gorgeous breasts as they rose and fell with every peaceful breath. However, the real miracle: the epiphany of that moment was that despite her tremendous physical beauty, it paled in comparison to the amazing beauty of her soul. Her tremendous faith in the inherent goodness of the human spirit, her willingness to put aside preconceived notions of hatred and prejudice and judge every single individual for the generosity and kindness within, but most of all, she did not see me as "Ares Snow, grandson of Coriolanus Snow" like every other person I had ever met: she simply saw me as Ares, the man she loved and the man who loved her.

Gently, my hand moved toward that perfect face and my fingers softly caressed her cheek, sweeping a few strands of hair away. She released an unconscious sigh of contentment that immediately put all my anxieties and uncertainties to rest. I knew at that moment that I lived for her and for her alone. As if the universe was guiding my actions, her eyes, her gorgeous green eyes that glistened like the sea after a storm opened and stared directly into mine.

"Hello there," she whispered in the quietest of voices.

"Hey," was my only ineloquent response.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, except for the fact that when this moment is over, I'm scared that I'll never be this happy again."

"And why is that?"

"Because I'm afraid that if the answer to the question I'm about to ask is "No," you and I will never be the same again."

"Well, that depends on the question, doesn't it?" she says to me with a gentle hint of a smile. I gently stroke her hair again. She sighs once more and I know that she is as content in this perfect place as I am.

"Elizabeth Odair, be my wife." For what seems like an eternity, those green eyes just stare back at me. I worry that my fears will come true, but in one of the few times of my life when I was absolutely sure that I had done the right thing, I hear a single word from her lips.

"Yes."

"When she took the last name, Snow, she made her choice." Ohm was absolutely correct, but it wasn't because of any kind of moral deficiency or latent evil as he would believe. Quite the opposite, it was because the good was so intense inside her little body that she would choose living in the joy of that one moment forever and risk the fate that confronts us now than to live the rest of her life in the safety of distrust and fear.

Lizzy placed her fate in my love. That is why she wanted me to run and save myself. I am sure of it. She knew that my love would save her as well, and on the price of my soul, I will not betray that. I will find a way.

As the first rays of daylight began to poke over the eastern horizon, I come to the end of the creek bed. The water continues to trickle down a natural, volcanic stone staircase and then disappears into mist over a cliff to the ocean below. My first thought is to break for the cliff and find a way down. Where there is heavy surf breaking on sheer rock wall, caves are sure to form and may be the perfect place to hide and regroup. I charge forward out of the tree line and down toward the edge. Just as I am about to reach it, I freeze as I realize that I am about six inches away from an instant death.

It was the dawn that saved me. If I had come here in darkness, I would have surely suffered an abrupt and ugly end. Just as the first beams of sunlight cause the surface of a pond to glisten, they occasionally cause other things to glisten as well, including a force field that would otherwise be invisible. I reach down and grab a rock from ground to test my theory. Taking a few steps back to a safe distance, I gently toss the stone towards the cliff. As if it was struck by lightning itself, the rock freezes in mid-air with a sickening sizzle and then falls to the ground smoking. It is immediately apparent that this isn't a normal force field, even for Hunger Games standards. The one that Peeta Mellark accidently hit during the third Quarter Quell was mere child's play compared to this thing which would most likely sear the skin from my bones like a blowtorch. The phrase passes back through my head: "as if it was struck by lightning itself…"

The wheels in my brain begin turning as I start to formulate a plan, but my contemplation is cut short by voices I hear rapidly approaching from the west.

"Signal's clear as a freakin' bell now."

"He's ours!"

"Come on, hurry!"

I'll have to save my idea for later. The hunters have found me, and there is no running away anymore. It's time to fight.