A/N: Who takes 13 chapters to get to the juicy stuff? This guy! And by juicy, I mean kids hacking at each other with sharp instruments. Yay!

Dawn came with startling quickness – much too soon for Sam. The morning alpine sun hung over the Capitol's mountains like a harbinger of something sinister, its crimson hues painting a ghastly red portrait across the brown peaks. A gentle tapping on the door alerted the girl of the urgency of the moment – by now, Dallas, Cheyenne, and Augusta had most certainly left to begin the rounding up of sponsors. If any would come, really – although the interview had gone well the prior night, how much would that negate the pitiful training score?

Not to mention the more pressing need of surviving the Cornucopia…

Sam wiped sleep from her eyes as she yawned, her mouth stretching wide. A digital clock on the wall read 6:45 AM…with the games officially beginning at 10 AM Capitol time, who knew how long she had? In less than four hours, she could find herself dead – straight dead, the type of dead with finality. Maybe Hadrian would stand over her corpse, spitting on it in disgust as a hovercraft speared it and moved away. Would they cry for her over an open casket back in District 10?

"Sam?" Agrippa's level-headed voice brought everything back to the moment. "It's time. Half-hour until we need to have you on the roof."

She got up and moving with that – so little time, not enough to figure things out. The streets of the Capitol outside her window lay bare with the early hour of the morning; in only a short time, these people who had shown her these accommodations and all the food she could eat would soon be eagerly awaiting her death.

Sam left her hair flowing down onto her shoulders, figuring Agrippa would do as he wanted with it later – she didn't have much of a mind to fix anything related to appearance, anyway. Tossing on a short-sleeved shirt and comfortable pants, the girl stepped out from her room as her stylist awaited her.

"Up to the roof," Agrippa repeated. "A hovercraft's going to be waiting. Most of the other tributes will probably be aboard; I let you have a few minutes extra of sleep."

"Thank you," Sam whispered, her hands shaking uncontrollably. Agrippa grasped each in his painted mitts, giving what comfort he could to the frightened girl.

"Sam," he opined. "Out of my three years as stylist, you've been my strongest tribute. Now, I need you to hold on – once you're in the arena, instinct is going to take over. But now, the time until that point requires you to be steady."

She nodded her head, following him and still holding one hand for the feeling of security. The elevator to the roof moved rapidly, opening to a blast of gusting air and sweet rays from the sun. A squat and stubby hovercraft maintained position above the training center; a pair of ladders, one for each stylist and tribute, hung down like escorts to an execution.

"Just grab hold," Agrippa pushed Sam on. "It'll take you up."

The ladder froze Sam in place as it rose like a beast up to the hovercraft, leaving behind the natural beauty of the dawn and opening up to a world of technology and artificial creation. Blue lights and white walls stared down from a truly alien place as the freezing field disengaged, causing Sam to stumble from the sensation. An attendant dressed in all white grabbed her by the arm, guiding her into the next room – where twenty-three pairs of eyes looked on the last tribute to board. Sam blushed as she was seated and strapped into the last available seat in the cargo hold of the aircraft, with a rumbling from below signifying the gust of thrusters. The Capitol had sent them off – off to death.

"Your arm," a gruff man in white walked about with an intimidating-looking steel needle gun. Without hesitation, he plunged the needle into the nearest tribute's arm – the girl from five, whatever her name had been – and injected a white light straight through the skin.

"What's that?" the girl from 2, Io, asked as she was injected.

"Tracker," the man replied without fanfare. Clearly, he was a talkative type.

Sam grimaced as he plunged the needle deep into her forearm, activating the trigger and sending a hot ball of white light beneath layers of muscle and flesh. She winced as the man pulled the needle out quickly, already moving to the tribute on her right, the boy from District 1- Fresco. No one talked in the hovercraft. No real reason to, after all – everybody would soon be killing everybody else. Alliances had already taken shape (those that even existed…who could she count on?) and everyone else was simply a target.

The hovercraft ride only lasted for a little under an hour as it decelerated quickly, the tension of braking thrusters kicking in. The interior of the craft went dark as the vessel thumped to the ground with a hard landing, and quickly attendants herded the tributes off like sheep, dividing them individually with the efficiency of a slaughterhouse. Tunnels ran below a low-slung building – the final passageways to beneath the arena. Sam felt her pulse rising rapidly as Peacekeepers forced her along the dank halls, a buzzing sound from ventilation and lighting filling her ears. This was it.

"In here," a Peacekeeper ordered after the long walk, opening the door to a room – the Slaughterhouse, as District 10 referred to it as. She would be the only one to use this room in history – but when Capitol tourists visited this place in the years to come, would they remember her? Just see her as some other tribute razed like deformed staple animals, perhaps?

Agrippa stood inside, as the Stylists had departed the hovercraft before the tributes. He spoke no words, simply wrapping his colorful arms about Sam in a protective embrace. The girl let loose every last tear she'd been holding up as she expunged her emotions – better to get them out now. No one else would give half a hump about her inside the arena; Storm? Who knows whether his act was for show, or whether he had been sincere?

"You've got an hour and a half," Agrippa consoled Sam as the two held each other inside the four green walls of the room. "Get a drink, put something light in your stomach. You don't know when you're going to get the chance to eat or drink again. I'll go see what they gave you for an outfit."

Sam's nerves jumped like rabbits inside her stomach as she forced down a few bites of protein and carbs, doing her best to follow Agrippa's advice. She lacked any words for the moment – the reality of the sadistic sport had come crashing down with the dawn, and now – less than one hundred minutes away from what could be an untimely death – she found herself visibly shaking from limb to limb. Water sloshed from a glass as she tried to drink, spilling over her shirt and the low-slung table in the room.

I can't take this. I can't kill anybody; I'm just a fifteen year-old girl! Why do I have to die? What did I do wrong?

"Looks like you're in for some cold," Agrippa brought Sam's arena garments to the table, laying them out. "Pants are light and white, but they're built to regulate temperature. Pretty thick boots; this jacket will keep out cold, as well. I'm a little confused why the undershirt is short-sleeved and light, though…"

Sam pulled herself together long enough to scan over the apparel. Brown boots that laced up just above the ankle; thin, yet durable light gray pants that would cover up skin well. The tan hooded jacket, crisp and thick in her hands, would signify her district; 10's color of choice, the light brown, had never been real attractive. A tan undershirt finished things off – but what to make of it?"

"You think it's going to be like snow?" Sam asked tepidly. Blizzard conditions represented the one place she'd do her worst; District 10's prairie snowed on occasion, but never enough to threaten anybody but the impoverished and desperate. Sam's well-to-do house had kept out the winter conditions well; the extreme cold would be a new and lethal endeavor.

"I'd think they'd find that boring," Agrippa mused, running his tattooed arms up and down the hooded jacket. "The Head Gamesmaker doesn't seem the type to want you all freezing to death. Maybe some kind of tundra, or cold swamps. Best I can think of, really."

Neither sounded particularly appealing to Sam. At least the tundra might have wood. Swamps would pull everyone into the marshes and suck unwieldy tributes to early deaths in their mucked vices.

Agrippa helped her into the clothes and tied her dark hair back with a simple ponytail in utilitarian fashion. Stylist and tribute stood together quietly for the remaining thirty minutes – nothing more needed to be said. At the end, a mechanical voice hung in the stale air like a reaper – "Sixty seconds to launch."

"Sam, remember, get away from the Cornucopia as fast as you can," Agrippa tossed in the final reminder, his voice dipping. "And just know…you're my champion. I'd put the odds in your favor any day."

Sam squeaked out a cry as the two embraced, with the voice ringing out a thirty-second call. With a deep breath out and a timid first step, Sam slowly approached the awaiting circular platform in the corner of the room. A white light hung over the bubble, as if bringing her up to some otherworldly place as she took her stance on it. Sam locked eyes with Agrippa as ten seconds came and went – and then everything before the Games had come to an end. A glass tube slid over the platform, encasing her in a transparent cylinder. She reached out and placed her hands on the glass, desperate to be free – no, I don't want to die!

Agrippa nodded from across the room in solemn silence as the platform began to rise – and with it, the stylist disappeared from view.

Artificial white light closed around Sam on all sides, blinding her with brightness as seconds ticked away. After half a minute, sunlight blasted down into the cylinder, and the glass tube began to retract away. As Sam pulled the jacket tighter around her arms, prepared for a blast of cold, she realized something was wrong – the bright shock wasn't a good sign at all.

Why had they given her a jacket?

"Ladies and gentlemen," the voice of old Claudius Templesmith rebounded across the boundaries of the arena. "Let the 98th Hunger Games…begin!"

District 10

Morning sun ran down warmly on the open plains of District 10. Midland Hill, the tallest point in the district and a grassy area rising hundreds of feet above the rest of the area, stood abandoned today, left in favor of observance of the 98th Hunger Games, as enforced by the Capitol. Still, with everyone around television sets and screens, no Peacekeepers would bother to come out this far. Three people had been keen to acknowledge and capitalize on that fact.

"When'd you two first meet?" Jake Parker, Sam's older brother, tossed a decapitated dandelion head off into the grass. He stretched out in the warm air, looking on over the view out past the electric fence of the district – a vast and cathartic sight, stretching over a dozen miles that gave forth a scene of grassy plains and a birch wood. On any other day, the sight would have been a thing of beauty under the robin's egg blue sky.

"Back in school; we were 'bout…I dunno, nine?" Clay Lamar spat on the grass. "I just remember her on that first day. We were taking a visit to one of the ranches – it was Clara's dad's actually – and the teachers were explaining how pigs were corralled and used to ship out as pork to the Capitol. Most of the kids were trying to pay attention, and the workers were ignoring us; Sam wasn't listening at all. She'd found a sheep – little one, a lamb I guess – and she just sat down in the hay with it, completely unnoticed by the teachers as they went on for about half an hour. She didn't care about what was going on as far as teaching. Hell, she probably knew it already, what with your family's ranch. She just wanted to pet the lamb. She was just so…so pretty sitting there, I remember. Little blue blouse that matched her big eyes, a powder blue ribbon around her ponytail. I didn't care that I was a poor bumpkin; I just thought she was cute. I had to go talk to her."

"Sam was always the sweet one," to Clay's left, a blonde girl – Clara Bowie, who had stood beside Sam at the Reaping – sniffed. "I always talked bad about some of the kids or the teachers, and Clay you were a troublemaker. She just kept her head down and made everyone feel better."

Jake kicked a clod of dirt down the hill, watching it fall away and snowball into a tiny avalanche of dirt. "I just wish it didn't come down to this. Do you ever wonder what it'd be like if the fence wasn't there?"

Clay laughed at the notion. "I have to take tesserae just to keep my siblings and parents fed; I can't go thinking on that kind of thing." He looked down at his feet, shaking away the wealth gap conflict that always divided District 10. "Just look at that. I take tesserae, and it's Sam who gets picked. It's she who has to go die."

"Maybe she'll make it back," Clara tried to brighten the mood, to little effect. A somber silence settled over Sam's two friends and her brother as the three watched puffy cumulus clouds roll by in a steady breeze. Sam could have been enjoying this alongside them; instead, she'd find herself in a marsh, or jungle, or prohibitive forest – who knew? The one sure constant would be its lethality.

"I think we've all figured it out," Clay put his arm around Clara. He'd always valued her as a friend – though he'd found himself feeling more than just friendship towards Sam. Now, he'd never be able to say the words he needed to. "There's a…a reason why our district never wins."

"Sam was really the only family I had, all I ever really held on to," Jake muttered, looking out onto the plains below the hill, yet looking nowhere in particular. "Our dad never really gave more than a horse's hump about either of us. Mom died in her birth. We did everything around the ranch together for fifteen years. I taught her to ride, taught her to rope a steer…she taught me the little things. What it meant to have somebody who believed in you."

Clara lost her usually steadfast demeanor, breaking into sobs again. "Why do they do this?" she asked to the summer air as she pounded a fist against the soft ground. "They know it tears us apart every year, whether it's those fishermen freaks in District 4 or us here in 10. How do they expect us to watch our friends and siblings and everyone else just kill each other? They're just kids…Sam's just a girl like me…how can all those people down in the square right now even be watching? Everyone in the district but us is! It's so sick."

"Not really a question of why," Jake grimly looked onto the pastoral land. "Makes you lose a little faith in people, though. Ya gotta wonder…have we been always doing this? People just killing each other for sport…so that a few rich and fat animals up in their towers can look down and place some bets while the rest of us have to pay for their fun?"

"If they did," Clay held Clara tighter as the girl struggled to compose herself. "Sam's never gonna find out. Neither are we."

The Arena

"Forty-eight…forty-seven…forty-six…"

Hot desert light beat down like a merciless slave driver. Dry, parched air forced Sam to reflexively swallow as she surveyed the surroundings, expecting what possibly was her final minute of life. A dry and cracked bed of earth extended out in a circular mesa in a one hundred-yard radius, spattered with dry scrub and sticks here and there. Off to her right, the ground sloped up into a grove of eucalyptus trees that offered potential cover – pretty far away, however, and through a number of tributes, including Io from 2 and Cascade from 4. That seemed like a death sentence if they could clear out to the Cornucopia in time.

In the other three directions, however, nothing showed – even behind her. The desert earth must have sloped off from each, down to a gorge or valley or depression of some sort. Either way, Sam figured she'd stick out of those, but might be able to make some more distance – which would be vitally important as tributes killed one another around the Cornucopia in the coming minutes.

Ah, the golden horn, sticking out of place like a fish out of water. As Claudius counted below thirty seconds, Sam took a moment to scan her area. A number of weapons – ranging from a sword nearly as large as she was to throwing knives, tomahawks, a chain flail with a lethal-looking spiked ball, and a long halberd adorned with a wicked curved blade – stood out at the Cornucopia's mouth. Phaeston Rex had obviously been in the mood for violence as he'd filled an obscene amount of weaponry about the place. Still, branching out from the Cornucopia lay several bags, sleeping bag packs, and other more utilitarian things.

There – just twenty feet away lay a bright blue backpack, seemingly full of things which would help Sam survive in the desert climate. Although heat filled her niche much better than tundra – District 10 remained hot through most of the year, only really cooling to snowfall in the winter – finding water would be an absolute necessity, and the parched air, lacking humidity of any sort, would quickly sap away any means of hydration. A waist pack on a belt sat just next to that, maybe seven feet closer. Sam didn't want to stray more than ten feet in towards the Cornucopia, but collecting both of those packs would go a long way to survival on her own. The boy next to her had the same idea – Troop, from District 6. He had stuck out in her mind a number of times, and now it seemed she'd have to go through him again as he readied himself for a running start.

As Claudius reached the ten second mark, one final tribute stood out to Sam. There, seven tributes clockwise from herself stood Royal in her regal glamor. She wore a sneering smile upon her face, ready to begin the slaughter – really good idea to get out of here, Sam.

Was Jake watching from District 10, seeing her last seconds?

"Two…one…"

With a loud bong and a red flare shooting vertically out the tip of the Cornucopia's tapered end, Royal had already managed to clear four bounding leaps before Sam even had the wherewithal to get off her platform. Beside her, Troop had his eye on the backpack – reaching it long before she did. Sam stumbled a few steps to the smaller pack, just having enough time to loop it about her waist and secure it tightly before a whizzz came whistling in. Acting on pure adrenaline, she dove for the side as Troop before her leapt up like a hurdler. A silver arrow zipped underneath him and shot just inches from Sam's outstretched leg – Royal had already reached the Cornucopia first, letting loose the shot that had almost claimed a life.

Well, she's a fast one.

Sam scrambled for her feet as she caught sight of Hadrian's colossal form grabbing the halberd and unloading on the boy from District 5. The tribute from District 2 blasted the axe head of the weapon into the boy's chest, driving him down into the ground with a spray of blood. Hadrian reacted on years of training, wasting no time in swinging the weapon about and spearing the boy from 5 on the angry curved blade of the polearm. A river of blood stained the dry earth as the boy choked up a spray of crimson – already, the arena had taken one tribute.

"Sam, remember, get away from the Cornucopia as fast as you can."

Agrippa's words spurned Sam into action as she made a mad dash to the open ground behind her. Troop had accelerated in another direction, already descending out of sight down into whatever lay below. Just as Sam began to feel as if she'd cleared the ring of destruction, a whump hit the ground beside her. A black tomahawk lodged itself into the ground, just a foot from where she had just been standing. Sam afforded herself a gaze back – here came Fresco, covering ground like a champion sprinter and holding a second tomahawk in attack position. Sam let out a shriek and bolted as fast as she could, trying to put distance between her and the daunting Career.

A thwack resounded off Sam's calf as she felt herself thrown forward – apparently, Fresco wasn't the best axe thrower around, as the straight wooden handle of the weapon had found her leg and ricocheted the tomahawk off to the left. The District 1 tribute had pulled up the chase upon reaching his originally thrown weapon, apparently unwilling to leave himself unarmed and thus vulnerable. Besides, there were other tributes who needed killing.

Still, the effect of the blunted impact had left Sam sliding down the rapidly-descending ground. She realized why she hadn't been able to see off where the land had recessed; not only did the ground dip out from beneath the Cornocupia's mesa, but a canyon stretched out like a gaping maw before her. Sam struggled to slow her slipping fall as she tried to hold on to anything, but the descent had grown too steep.

With a tumbling cry, Sam reached out for a handhold to grab onto as the ground dropped out into emptiness.