"Drop your weapons now!" Ohm screams from the control panel next to Lizzy's tube. Inside, she holds her head up, gasping at the last few breaths of air as the water is about to finally overtake her. I take a split second to scan for any hidden dangers. The room is empty, the hunters and guards all fell in the courtyard and the last technicians fled when Ohm released the muttation. It is just the three of us.

"I said drop your weapons!" Ohm holds his finger over a blue button on the control panel. "Do it now or I'll pump enough concentrated liquid Shiver into your mermaid's aquarium to melt her skin off. I know you've seen what it can do, Colonel." Subject E's gruesome final gaze passes through my brain. I immediately drop the magazine from my rifle, eject the round from the chamber, and throw the weapon to the ground. "Everything!"

I slowly unbuckle the rest of my gear and throw it away from me. I raise my hands to the air to show him that I am completely disarmed. Ohm is twitching, panic is laced through every word. "Good, good…" he mutters.

"So what now, Rikard?" I ask calmly. I know I'm running out of time. Lizzy probably has less than a minute of air left.

"Nothing has changed, My Dear Colonel," Ohm stammers through his sentence. "Nothing at all. You still have to make your choice. Watch her die before you run and try to kill me with your bare hands or kill yourself to save her. I'm perfectly all right with either option!" Clearly he's lost touch with reality.

"I think there's a third choice, Rikard. You calmly let Lizzy go and surrender. I will ensure that you receive a fair trial for your actions. I'll even testify on your behalf that they were the result of years of psychological trauma and that your service should be taken into account in your sentence."

"And spend the rest of my life in a detention center? Still a slave, just to a new government that claims it knows best! No, Ares. This ends now."

Lizzy pushes herself up to the top of the tube. As the water finally covers her face, she lets out one final plea. "Ares! I love you. Get him! Get him, just don't forget me..." Then she is under. I know from experience that I just over a minute before she passes out.

A grin creeps across my face. This enrages Ohm.

"What exactly are you grinning about? Your love is dying. I've won!"

"She can hear us through the tube…"

"Of course she can!"

"And the plastic is thin enough so that I can hear her…"

"Stop speaking in riddles, Snow!" Ohm is screaming through his Reevox collar. I pause as I ready myself.

"That plastic isn't bullet-proof, is it?" Ohm's eyes grow wide as dinner plates as I make my move. It is the fastest I have ever drawn a pistol. I reach back behind my waist, pull the gun from my belt, and fire a round directly through Ohm's arm. His right bicep explodes, blowing his hand away from the control panel and knocking him backwards into the ground. I quickly fire two more shots straight through the tube, shattering it into a million pieces and sending a tidal wave of water pouring into the control room. Lizzy collapses onto the floor above me.

I go to my gear, draw the hunting knife, and walk up the steel steps. Lizzy lies in a soaking wet heap. I run over to see if she is alright. Immediately, I can smell her beautiful scent in the air and it feels like the weight of the entire planet has been pulled from my shoulders. She is unconscious, but breathing normally. I let myself steal one soft kiss to her cheek before I gently lay her down and go to finish my other unpleasant business.

Ohm lies just a few away, bleeding profusely from the useless stump of his right arm. He crawls along through the slime of bloody water in shock, but I grab his shoulder, throw him onto his back and hold my knife to his throat.

He looks up at me with his sky-blue eyes and grins, almost in delight.

"It seems I was wrong, My Dear Colonel, he chokes out. "I guess there was a third choice after all, but it doesn't involve my surrender…Do it" he challenges with gritted teeth.

"You're a monster!"

"Perhaps, but how appropriate for one monster to slay another. Claim your birthright, Snow."

"How can you say that after everything's that's happened? After everything you've done? You violated the trust of everyone around you. You built a private army that killed innocent people at will. Do you even remember what happened when you actually ordered the use of Shiver on another human being? Do you remember the Avox girl, Subject E? Do you even remember telling her grotesque corpse, 'I'm sorry?' Yet you still used a weapon of death here that was too gruesome even for the Council of 10 to tolerate! And you still call me a monster?"

"Of course I do," he begins to shiver from shock and blood loss. "Because you yourself think that you're a monster. You've sold your soul to the UDP because you feel that if you don't selflessly serve every second of your life that you'll make them think you want to return yourself to power. Every time you walk out in public, you always ask yourself the question, 'Do they recognize something of their old tyrant in me?' probably because you recognize it in yourself. You even childishly rip the name off your uniform every time you walk outside not because you're afraid of what others will think, but because you are afraid to face it!"

My entire body drops as I realize that he is correct.

"Yes, it all becomes clear now, Colonel…and to answer your previous inquiry, yes I remember the Avox girl. In fact, I knew Subject E very well. She was my predecessor in personal service to old Coriolanus. It's just I'm surprised you don't know her, considering she was family…"

"What are you talking about?"

"So, I guess Old Snow was successful in keeping that little piece of information out of the Peacekeeper Archives. Yes, her name was Medea…Medea Snow, or at least it was until Coriolanus had it taken away, along with her power of speech."

"You're lying!"

"You don't believe that it would be something he was capable of? She was his half-sister. His father Nero had her with his mistress after he became bored of his wife, Snow's mother. Rumor in the Council was that Medea was Nero's favorite to succeed him after his death. He thought that she was, "more intelligent" than his first-born legitimate son. After Nero died very suddenly under somewhat mysterious circumstances, it wasn't long before Medea found herself strapped to a surgeon's table. If I can say one thing for old Cory, it was that he always liked to act very quickly when threatened."

"If what you're saying is true, then why go through all the trouble of making her an Avox before gassing her to death? Why didn't he just kill her?"

"Because, Ares, she apparently had other talents to Snow's liking. Certainly, you've heard about his little, shall we say, interesting sexual desires?" My hand begins to tremble around the knife handle as I feel the desire to throw up. The idea crosses my mind just to slit his throat now and end this horrible little lesson in my family's depraved history, but I stop myself. "One day, I guess little Medea grew tired of her brother trying to drunkenly fondle her and she slapped him across the face. Coriolanus then decided to teach her a lesson she would never forget..."

"Why are you telling me this!"

"I thought you wanted to know how I could use such horrible weapons, yet still call you the monster? The answer is simple: because Coriolanus ordered me to create it to kill his own sister….his own family. The images you saw were not a weapons test, they were an execution! Shiver's only intended victims have ever been named Snow. I figured I'd just complete the chain."

"He's right: Medea, myself…and Lizzy."

"You told me before you though I was a good man because I refused to create Snow's missile to save the lives of everyone in the country. Well, I hate to disappoint, but the real reason is far more selfish, My Dear Colonel. I knew that if Snow was willing to use horrible weapons such as those on his own family, then he wouldn't hesitate to use them on mine. How ironic then that I lost them as a result.

So, now that we've covered the bases, unless there are any other burning questions you would like answered, why don't we just skip the formalities and you finish what your grandfather started?" He is ready to die, and for a brief second, I am ready to oblige. But as I raise the knife, I remember everything: Head Mentor Callus, Venus, Lizzy, Annie, Katniss and Peeta, all of them flash through my mind at once and I slowly lower the knife."

"What are you waiting for? DO IT!"

"No, Rikard, because you're right, I have always been afraid of what lies inside of me. But thanks to your little Games, I think I have a better idea now. I am not Coriolanus Snow, or Venus Snow, or even Medea Snow…I am Ares Snow!" I say throwing the knife away. Ohm grits his teeth in anger.

"No! You have to kill me!" The high pitched wine of his artificial voice screeches in my ears.

"I'm not going to kill you Rikard, but I will finish one thing that my grandfather started. I'm going to take your voice." My hand reaches down and rips the Reevox Collar from around his throat. Suddenly mute again, he offers no protest as I raise it up and strike him across the temple with its metal surface, knocking him out.

I stand to my feet, and walk back over to Lizzy. As carefully as if I was holding a newborn, I cradle her soaking wet body in my arms and try to think of the way that I can most gently wake her.

I reach into my pocket and pull out the piece of chocolate. I waft it under her nose for a few seconds and slowly start to see her eyes flutter.

"There's my Lizzy," I say with a smile as she comes around. She stares up at me for a few seconds with her sea green eyes, the most beautiful eyes that I have ever seen. "Sorry, in all the commotion, in melted in my pocket." She laughs.

"So, with all the disaster and destruction raining down around you, you still found a way to bring me chocolate?"

"I have my ways…"

"I knew you'd come for me."

"Really? I thought you told me run away and save myself?" I say through my lingering smile.

"Well, ok, I hoped you come for me." We both laugh this time. Finally, we just silently stare at each other with grateful faces for a few seconds. She is not grateful that I saved her, and I am not grateful that she saved me. We are both grateful that we saved each other. "Well," Lizzy says breaking the silence. "What are you waiting for?" Our lips meet in a kiss that is so full of love and passion that it would be a crime to try to describe it in words. It is the first truly perfect moment of my life.

I manage to contact the Ministry using Ohm's radios. Holmes and Sturm already have Strike Teams on station in hovercraft off the coast of District 1. It takes them less than two hours to reach the island.

"I'll have to remember to thank them one day…"

I move Lizzy out to the courtyard. She smiles as she sees the sunrise light up the sky.

"It's the first time I've seen the sun in person since he brought me here. For a little while, I thought I might not ever see it again." Soon, she falls asleep in my arms. I let her rest. She's had a rough couple of days.

I pass the time by trying to make sense of what happened here, until I realize it may be impossible. I turn Ohm's bloody Reevox collar over and over again in my hands. I wonder if he was always this evil or if he was just made that way by someone else?

"No, it doesn't really matter," I finally realize in another quiet epiphany. "Evil can be within us all. It's what we choose to be at the beginning of every new day that really matters."

When I hear the roar of the approaching hovercraft, I pull out a flare and launch it into the sky. The pilot artfully maneuvers it inside the remains of the compound and sets it down directly in front of us. Before the ramp has even finished dropping, Lizzy and I are surrounded by heavily armed commandos. I brief the leader on Ohm and his team rushes inside to secure him.

I don't even let the medics touch me before they load Lizzy onboard. In just a few minutes, she is safely in the craft's sickbay. As another medic is just finishing placing a pressure dressing on my arm, the commando team returns.

"Where's Ohm?" I shout at the team leader. "Is he still alive?"

"Sir," he yells back over the roar of the hovercraft's engines, "We checked the entire complex. It's empty. There's nobody here but us."