A/N: I know it's been a long time, but this has been a very stressful set of weeks for me. However, I do believe that I am over the worst of it. I'm sorry for the delay. Thanks for sticking around!

Thanks for every single review! And specifically, to Penny For Sunshine, I know that Wheatley is acting perhaps smarter than he should, but it just wouldn't do for the story if he was a complete moron. And besides, I like to think that GLaDOS exaggerated his stupidity, because she does things like that.

By the way, the song that was featured (and desecrated) at the end of last chapter is 'Stars,' from Les Miserables (greatest musical ever, coming soon to a theater near you, this December!)

On to the chapter! Enjoy!

- Outside the Labyrinth Walls -

Haymitch had just hung up the phone from inside the Victor's lounge, ordering a plate of ribs for Katniss and a more modestly priced chicken dinner for Peeta (People were simply more sympathetic to an expectant mother, not to mention she was doing so much better than him at the tests. Sorry, Peeta) when the phone rang again.

He needed a drink.

He picked up the receiver and growled, "What?"

The operator's voice was cool and slightly disapproving. "It's a direct call from District Twelve. Victor's Village. Shall I transfer her over?"

After a pause, he answered, "Yes."

There was a short dial tone. "Hello? Mr. Abernathy?"

There was only one person in the Victor's Village who called him Mr. Abernathy. To Peeta and Katniss, he was just Haymitch. To Katniss' mother, who had known him in school, he was Mitch. That meant it was…

"Evening, Miss Primrose. What can I do you for?"

Prim had always seemed afraid of him, or maybe just shy, but he'd seen how well she worked when she had a patient on hand. Her hands simply flew. She could be precise, and subtle. But – did she realize that the line was bugged?

"I just wanted to check in about Katniss."

"Well." He looked at her on the screen, currently trying a testing puzzle in a new and promising direction. "She's doing fine, as I'm sure you can see."

"I know, but I'm worried for her."

He nodded slowly. "I know."

"I wish I could order something for her. But the Games have been going on for days now; I'm sure I can't afford anything." If Primrose just wanted to talk about how frightened she was, or her frustrations, there were plenty of people who would lend her a sympathetic ear. But for her to risk a call for the Capitol, she must have wanted to send him a message.

"You'd be surprised. The Gamemakers are offering food packages for a much lower price this season." Anything that they said would be heard by Snow. Haymitch found himself thinking, please please please don't mess this up, Miss Primrose.

"I'm sure you're doing a great job, Mr. Abernathy. Did you see when she was asleep?"

Yes, he'd seen the footage of Katniss sleeping. He'd noticed the moment when the tape skipped and the footage began to loop. He'd prayed that he'd been the only one in Panem who'd noticed—

"Yes, I did."

"It looked like she was having some pretty bad dreams." Every word was carefully picked. Precise and subtle. "I was wondering, could you send something to help the nightmares? Stop them, I mean."

So she knew. She knew the footage was looped, that Katniss must have woken up and done something that the cameras didn't see. And she must have outsmarted the arena, because there was nothing that the cameras of the Aperture Science Laboratory would choose to exclude.

"Of course I can do that. Was thinking of it, myself."

"I just want her to be in the best shape possible."

"So do I, sugarplum." Oh, she was a smart one. He decided to give both of the Everdeen girls his stamp of approval. Not that he had a stamp.

"I recommend chamomile tea. We have it at home, and she always sleeps better with it. Well, I'll let you go. You must be very busy."

He grunted in response.

"Thank you, Mr. Abernathy."

"You're welcome, Miss Primrose."

Hung up. Good. That went well. He beckoned an Avox for a bottle of white liquor, but set it just out of arm's reach, waiting for him after he placed his order.

- In Dark and Cold –

Even in the prisons of the Capitol, the television screens blared on, broadcasting the Hunger Games.

Meet Portia. Portia was the stylist for Peeta Mellark, and partner and student to Cinna. 'Student' was a funny term, considering she'd worked as a prep artist for longer than Cinna had. Yet he was the master. Yes. It was very funny.

She wiped her eyes with her hands, which were crusted in grime and dirt. In her tiny prison cell, the only source of light was the TV screen, eleven inches across, airing the Games.

Cinna was dead; his tortured screams from down the hall had finally stopped. Portia was glad, glad that he was out of pain, but all of her other thoughts were bowled over with grief, unable to follow each other, at the idea of Cinna's light and genius snuffed out. He'd been the light of District Twelve, the light of the rebellion, which he'd told Portia about, and introduced her to. He was her sole link to the rebellion, the main reason why she was imprisoned, and he had died hours ago.

The laws regarding Hunger Games viewing still applied, but she couldn't raise her eyes to the screen. She stared at her hands and wrists. Ironically, she'd tattooed them years ago with manacles of vines and thread, with a keyhole on her left wrist and a key rising onto the skin of her right hand.

She heard Caesar Flickerman say, "And now let's cut to Peeta Mellark, who has just soared through the last three tests, and I'm not just saying that because he's been leaping off of heights up to two hundred meters in the air, folks –"

Portia found the strength to raise her head. She watched Peeta Mellark, and later, Katniss Everdeen, for Cinna, and for herself.

Katniss completed that day's tests and arrived in her Relaxation Vault. A sponsor-bought dinner awaited her.

Portia was more fascinated by Katniss unwrapping the dinner than she had during the hour she'd watched Peeta leap through the vast underground vault. Portia tried to relish the feeling of hunger, to tell herself that this was a trial, a spiritual connection to her tributes, but she couldn't stomach her own lies.

But then she noticed something – her eye for detail was naturally good and honed to excellence by Cinna. When Katniss opened the thermos and sniffed its contents, her nose wrinkled a little.

Katniss did not turn her nose up at good food – in fact, even now, she seemed more surprised than disgusted – but Portia knew there were a few foods Katniss didn't like. Melons. Citrus fruits. Egg drop soup. And coffee.

Coffee?

It had been given as a sponsor gift before – plenty of times – it was fairly affordable. But Katniss was about to go to sleep for six hours. Why would Haymitch give her coffee?

And Portia could almost hear Cinna's voice by her ear: Because she and Haymitch have a plan. Watch out, because something is about to explode.

And for the first time since the Games began, Portia smiled.

- Test Complete -

"Look at the state of your child!"

At the end of that day's tests, the little Companion Cube was pockmarked and pitted with burns, blows, and dents. For the entire testing arena, the Artificial Intelligence had not let go once of the idiotic conceit that the Cube was a baby.

"The test results are clear. You, Test Subject 24, would make a horrible mother. A horrible mother. A wolf-muttation with your DNA would make a better mother than you. How sad, that fecundity should be granted to the least deserving. Oh, well. At least physically you promise to be the picture of prenatal health. But be careful not to grow too fast before I can assemble a special Maternity Care Relaxation Vault. Just for you. Extra-large."

Katniss entered the Relaxation Vault with a sigh of relief, before the A.I. added, "What I mean is, try not to get too fat before I wake you up. Oh, look, another packet of food from the surface." There was a clatter as a silver-wrapped package arrived in the Aperture Science Nourishment Delivery Vault. "It must be nice, having fans who cater to your every craving. Now I'm off to clean up the wing of glass. The District One test subjects have been ogling their own reflections. But it's only part and parcel of all the cleanup that I get to do. By myself. Sweet dreams."

Relishing the silence, Katniss took off her boots. Next she took the food packets to the bed and unwrapped them. She reflected that, while a psychotic artificial intelligence calling her fat was by no means the most terrifying or heartbreaking thing that had ever happened to her, it certainly ranked among the strangest.

Dinner was still warm. There was a foil-wrapped packet of ribs, accompanied by a fist-sized roll of pretzel bread. There was also a tiny capsule with two pills on it. Katniss read the label to find that they were prenatal vitamins.

So plenty of people were supporting her and her "baby." Good to know. And she saved the gift that was marked with "District Twelve" for the very last. It was a thermos, its inside hot and dark. She sniffed it. It was coffee, the jitters-inducing drink that Cinna and Portia practically lived off of.

So this was another message from Haymitch. He knew, somehow, that she hadn't slept through all of last night, and he was giving her a way to help stay awake.

But it wouldn't do to let the rest of Panem know. So she decided to act like it was a nightcap: warm milk from Prim's goat, maybe. She pretended to take a few sips and then set the thermos by her bedside.

She settled in, remembering to hum her fake lullaby, and went quickly to sleep.

And when the shifting of a panel in the ceiling woke her up, she nodded to Chell, put on her long-fall boots, picked up her portal gun, and grabbed the thermos.

The warm coffee helped draw her into full awakeness as she climbed out of the vault and into the crawlspace. Chell led the way to a nest of labcoats and cans of food, a small den where a few flickering televisions kept tabs on test chambers.

"What's that you've got?" Chell asked.

"Coffee. Never had it before. It's not bad." Katniss got the strange but pleasant feeling that Haymitch would have approved entirely of her actions.

"Can I try some?" asked a male voice behind her. Katniss jumped, and started again when she turned around to see a blue and beaming metal ball chirp "Hello!" at her.

Around the blue light a bouquet of other beams swirled towards her – pink, green, yellow, purple – all chattering at her. Katniss backed up, and shirked when Chell laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Guys, calm down," Chell told the optics. "Katniss, these are the personality cores. They were supposed to help with day-to-day running of Aperture, but, well, now they're with us. Meet Wheatley—"

"Hello! Lovely to meet you."

"—Rick—"

"Howdy, pretty lady…"

"—Kevin—"

"Are you from space? You look starstruck. Stars?"

"—Craig—"

"Fact: 'Vivez longue et prosperez' was the greeting in the Picard region of France until…"

"—And we think she likes to be called Mimi."

"Sì, mi chiamano Mimì."

"They're helping us. They won't hurt you."

"Can't, as a matter of fact," Wheatley nodded cheerfully – an impressive feat for one with no head or neck. "See any limbs or teeth here? No-sir-ee-bob."

Katniss studied Wheatley closely but couldn't see anything immediately lethal about him. And besides, he wasn't meant to be part of the Game, so it was likely he wasn't supposed to be immediately deadly. So she followed Chell's example, sitting among the cluster of lab coats, and watching the screens.

"So, what can you tell me about the other test subjects?" Chell asked her.

"Where's number twenty-three – ah. There he is."

"There who is?"

"Peeta." Katniss pointed. "He's alive. Good."

"I take it you know him?"

Katniss nodded. Chell would have left it there, but Wheatley piped up, "Oooh, is he your boyfriend?"

Katniss turned around. "He is not – except, he kind of is – He's my district partner. He's saved my life too many times. I just want to get him out of here." She turned back to Peeta's screen, where he was skidding back and forth, testing the propulsion gel with a big grin on his face.

"Maybe we can get you both out of here," Chell said evenly. She didn't share Peeta's testing score (very low), arguing to herself that with herself working on the plan it would even out.

"No. Get Peeta out first."

Chell stared. "Okay, you wouldn't say that if he wasn't your boyfriend."

"It's not that he's my boyfriend! But you don't know him – if you knew him, you'd want him out of the arena first, too."

Chell snorted. "Wanna bet?"

"He volunteered to enter the Games, just to protect me. I have to pay him back for it. I mean, I entered this arena knowing I was going to die." Chell frowned, but Katniss went on. "The Capitol wants me dead."

"The Capitol? Which Capitol?" Wheatley asked. "Baltimore? Washington D.C.? Paris? I always wanted to go to Paris…" at the same time that Craig began to say "London is the capitol of Paris, and Paris is the capitol of Rome…"

"Haven't you noticed?" Chell gestured to silence the cores. "In here, the Capitol has no power. Only she does."

"That's not much better."

"No, it's not. But she doesn't want you specifically dead. And I've beaten her, before, here, in her own turf."

All four of the cores gasped. Wheatley spluttered, "You did what?"

"But," Katniss countered, "outside of here, it's the Capitol. The Capitol controls us all. So we escape, and President Snow finds us and executes us on live TV. That's one delightful option he might take. I can't trust that things will work out, ever, at any point – I just want Peeta to live."

"With that kind of thinking," Chell began, but Craig interrupted her.

"President Snow?"

The women – and the other three cores – turned. The purple-eyed sphere seemed somewhat bewildered by all of the attention. He cleared his throat slightly. "Fact: President Snow entered this facility."

Chell and Katniss glanced at each other. Chell turned to face Craig. "Is that really a fact?"

Craig's optic dilated. "F—f—um," he stammered.

"You've told me about cheese cities, dinosaur races, and tap dancing alchemists. Is what you've just told us true, or is it one of your bogus facts?"

"If it's bogus, I'm kicking you off the team," Wheatley added sternly – or in what he hoped was a stern manner.

"Was President Snow here?" Katniss snapped.

The core started. He made a whirring noise. For a moment Chell was afraid he was going to short-circuit entirely, but then he said "Accessing Memory Files." Then his voice changed and was not his own. A soft, tremulous mezzo voice asked, "Mr… Mr. Johnson?"

And then his voice changed again, and Katniss shuddered at the sound. "Yes, that's me. Good morning, GLaDOS."

"That's him," Katniss mouthed. "That's him."

Next followed an alarming series of sounds – static, a shriek, and Snow's voice was barely audible, but he sounded calm and in control. "You will listen to me, even though I am not Cave Johnson. It has been three hundred years since the last human stepped outside of Aperture Science…"

"Three hundred?" Chell repeated, then she covered her mouth with her fingers, as though to reprimand herself for speaking. The purple sphere continued to speak in the alternating voices of GLaDOS and President Snow. Snow laid out the offer of former Victors as test subjects, and GLaDOS agreed, all but cooing with him as he laid out his plan. There was an argument over how much harm she was allowed to actually do to Test Subjects and her turning over the bodies of the dead.

But then Snow played his trump card. "Do you even know how you and I are able to talk, GLaDOS? Do you see this here? Aim a camera right here, at what's about six feet behind me and two feet to my left."

Now Craig's optic whirred and clicked, as though he had photographed what he saw himself. He spoke in his own voice. "Fact: All Aperture Science Personality Cores are one hundred percent compatible with all Aperture Science viewing devices. Also compatible with leggy, statuesque brunettes fond of secretary classes and—"

"We get it," Katniss said, but Chell had already picked him up and placed him by one of the televisions. Thanks to Wheatley's advice (more enthusiastic than precise) the two women found a connecting cord to plug Craig into a television. And once they did, the core made another whirring and humming noise, and the screen of the television filled with purple.

The image that came up was warped, viewed through a convex lens. But they could all make out, between a tangle of fallen wires and potato bushes, a man standing in the main room of GLaDOS' computer, a wreckage site. He was gesturing behind him to a massive black box, which was taller than he was, and shaped vaguely like a square. Wires connected it to the main hub. Some parts were glowing, but the greater part lay dormant.

Craig picked up Snow's voice: "This is a power generator, specially modified to work with Aperture Science technology. It won't match the power of the facility at its prime - what could? But it can shut you down. I don't want to get a call from a single district saying that they didn't get the body of their tribute back. That's part of the Treaty of Treason, which every citizen can look at in their town hall-"

"Really?" Katniss asked.

"The bodies are returned to the districts, to dispose of as they please. And these are Victors' bodies we are talking about here - I will have an uprising on my hand without the bodies brought home, and I do not want that."

"Of course you don't," Katniss muttered.

"You don't have the right," GLaDOS' chassis was anxiously swinging back and forth, twisting what was left of itself. "This is my facility, my science, my tests -"

"And my power," Snow finished. "Run the tests by my rules, or don't run them at all. Just go back to suspension for another three hundred years-"

"No," GLaDOS said. "We have a deal."

From there the two of them continued to talk, but though Craig loyally continued to show the conversation, Katniss was no longer fully listening. She was looking extremely thoughtful. "I think," she said, "we have our way out."