+ Big thinks to ArtemisCarolineSnow for the ongoing reviews, and for everyone reading along!

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"The Games aren't your little plaything, Galan. They mean something. It's not just entertainment."

"You can stop standing on ceremony. They're games. I don't see what you can think they are besides entertainment, a little slice of fun and action to bring people out of their hollow lives for a few days."

Cyrus Locke raised his shoulders and frowned. The Head Gamesmaker, Galan Greene, had never struck him the right way, even if he had conducted the annual blood festival with a deft hand for six years. Maybe it was his casual arrogance about his running of the business. Maybe it was the spiky, inky tattoos that littered the man's bald skull and snaked down his thin arms, the ones Galan always kept bare to show off his body art. Or maybe it was the way he walked with a cool, swishing confidence, his chin raised high so that his eyes looked down on the rest of the crowd in the Capitol Forum as if he were some feudal lord deigning to dirty himself among the peasantry.

The less time he had to spend with this man, the better.

"They're Coriolanus Snow's games," Cyrus said. "The word tribute has significance this year."

Galan scoffed. "Coriolanus Snow's been dead for six months now, Cyrus. You should try living in the present."

"You owe everything you have to him."

"And you too, but that doesn't matter much now, does it? Look over there."

Cyrus stopped and shielded his eyes from the hot morning sun with his hand. On the far side of the forum, where the wide asphalt square tapered off into an adjacent street leading to the Avenue of the Tributes, a black sedan with tinted windows hurried past a goggling crowd. The onlookers cried and cheered, throwing rainbow confetti at the car as it passed.

Galan laughed. "District 2's tributes headed off for a remodeling. Look at all the entertainment."

"Creon's not so happy about all of it," Cyrus mused. "I've done my best to convince him otherwise."

"He'll learn to like it. His father did. Let's get going, hm? I don't want to keep the lab geeks waiting on us for too long."

Galan ushered Cyrus towards a squat, gray, domed building at the far end of the two mile-long forum. The Capitol Science Center looked so out of place amid the hustle and bustle of the Forum, with its myriad stalls and storefronts selling anything and everything that money could buy. Out here, bright colors, screams of delight, and sweet aromas threatened to overload Cyrus's senses.

"You need to relax a little bit," Galan said as the two men hurried past a crowd of giggling boys crowded about a cluster of street performers satirizing the past year's Hunger Games. "It's all good fun, and you might be getting more out of this year's contest than you think."

"Like what?"

Galan glanced around and leaned closer. "Good authority wants to keep closer tabs on the victors and the districts. This year's winner will be…working…much closer with all of us. Even with Creon."

"Good authority?"

The Head Gamesmaker smiled. "Good authority. There're a million ways to conscript a victor into jobs that need doing."

Cyrus felt heat rising in his gut. Someone else had dug their claws into the Head Gamesmaker, and he had a good idea just who it was.

For as warm and lively as it was out in the Forum, the Science Center was equally as cold and sterile. The bitter smell of antiseptic assaulted Cyrus as he pushed past a pair of white-cloaked lab technicians and walked into the Center's foyer. Slate-gray walls met him with blank expressions. An energetic buzz of chatter flitted through the air, from a trio of short, heavily-tattooed scientist types in one corner of the wide hall to a pair of young women with matching fuschia hairdos seated on a bench near the half-moon reception desk, but it was all a hum of confusion to Cyrus's ears. He didn't understand all the talk of transplant and subjects and genotypes thrown around from lips to ears. The man left the nitty-gritty of the Hunger Games to those with bigger brains and smaller eyes.

Galan stopped him as they reached the reception desk. "Ah!" he cried, reaching out a hand to a gaunt man exiting an adjacent hallway that smelled of lemon with a hint of something foul. "No waiting around for you!"

The newcomer pulled up the sleeves of his black lab coat and shook the Head Gamesmaker's hand with a vigorous squeeze. "Well, you're pressing us for time. Games less than a week away…less than a week – Counselor Locke? Pleasant surprise. You here to check in on the project?"

"Project?" said Cyrus. He didn't shake the man's hand, but something about the scientist took him off guard. Cyrus had expected some stereotype of the lab technicians, a slouching, balding man obsessed with his work, perhaps. But while this man was no physical specimen with his slouched shoulders and blonde stubble that dotted his face in patches, he carried himself with the utmost confidence. His voice was as dark and brooding as distant thunderclaps. "Galan only told me I'd be interested in what this place had to show."

"Interested?" the scientist said. "Understatement of the 96th Games. I'm the chief scientist here, Varno Rensler. Mr. Greene has me working overtime just to see this through. As our new leader's right-hand man, it's best you do take a look."

He moved to lead the two down the strange-smelling hallway, but paused just before taking a step. "It's…I'm not sure what you're expecting, Counselor, but I think you'll be the one in for a surprise next."

"What're you concocting in here?" Cyrus said as the three headed down the hallway.

Varno waved his hand in the air. "This and that. It's science. We make miracles here and people on the street call it entertainment. Doesn't diminish the miracle. Sometimes we don't even make miracles, we just…stumble across them. Dig them up, even."

"The Games don't need a miracle. Just a solid showing, no mistakes. It's important we get it right this year of all years," said Cyrus.

"We'll get it more than right," Galan murmured.

Cyrus folded his arms as the trio stepped into an empty elevator. The Head Gamesmaker's arrogance would get the better of him one day. For all he knew, the victor would be some meek fourteen year-old who got lucky. That'd hardly be much of a first victor for Creon Snow's new regime.

"I know what you're thinking," Varno said as the elevator rushed downward. His voice was little more than a whisper. "We're just making mutts. Mutts, what the districts call what grows and births down on the bottom floor. Mutts. But mutts are dumb things, things that don't think and things that don't feel. Unthinking things and unfeeling things bore me. I have a better eye than that for what your contest needs, Counselor. Just…"

He frowned. "You might want to know going ahead of time that what we're making might seem a little…unnatural."

"And that means what?" Cyrus said.

The elevator doors opened, and chilly air rushed in between the doors. It wasn't the cold, however, that caused goosebumps to stand up on Cyrus's arms. It was the smell, the reek of things that were caught somewhere between death and life, things that other men may have called science, but to Cyrus smelled only…unnatural.

"I've been hard at work. We all have," Varno said with a smile. "We'll give the country something it hasn't seen before."

/ / / / /

I gritted my teeth. I'd had enough of the cold air and the smell of antiseptic.

What in the Two Hells was taking so long? My trio of stylists had long since left this concrete-walled box they called a "styling ward." It'd been a hectic ride since this morning, when the train had pulled in between the gleaming skyscrapers of the Capitol before Elan had left Glenn and me in this horrible place.

I was grateful that my stylists had left after what seemed like an eternity of them scrambling like roadrunners about the room, grabbing tools and brushes and squawking to one another in their mockingbird voices. A million pricks and scrubs and prods from things only the Capitol and the three lords knew and I'd been abandoned here to shake and shiver, damp, naked, and confused.

All this in the name of "styling" for the chariot ride that night. Who knew looking presentable required a full-on bodily assault?

The paper gown I'd worn earlier lay crumped in a heap on the floor, covered in water and some grimy, shiny-looking substance. I wondered if Glenn was having as much fun as I was. I wondered if he even cared.

Creak.

The door squeaked open so slowly I imagined an earthworm was pushing it. But it was no worm: The tallest woman I'd ever seen sauntered in, her all-white, neck-to-ankle ensemble clinging to her paper-thin frame. Elan's appearance might not have seemed much different than any I'd known back home, but this woman was far from anything I'd seen in District 5. Tattooed-on hair seemed to spike up from her bald head. Tiny purple whorls of body paint spun around on the top of her hands and across her cheeks. Perhaps most startlingly, a pair of dark brown streaks drooped down from her eyes all the way to her jawline, as if she'd cried out some horrible abomination from deep within.

She didn't say a word as she approached me. Between her height and her drastic body art, I was too intimidated to say much myself – even as she yanked me up from my seat.

Like a snake she circled me, eying every inch of my naked body and missing nary a thing. Her silence prickled my skin, and the way she stooped down to examine parts of me I'd never wanted examined made me want to sprint out of this hellish stylist center.

For all I knew, she was just some random passerby who'd decided to take a look.

Another near-eternity passed until finally the strange woman muttered, "It's too gangly. Not going to work."

I protested, but before I said two words, she clapped a floral-smelling hand over my mouth. My eyes widened. What in…

The woman pulled away and began scribbling notes on a computer tablet. "Let's see if it'll stay quiet long enough for me to work," she said to herself.

This wasn't what I was expecting out of my head stylist – or at least, I figured she was my head stylist. No introduction, no questions, not even a reference to me as a person. Was I just a thing to be dressed up and paraded around? "It, the tribute." That was me.

Another five minutes of silence dragged by before the woman hurried out of the room. Curious, I snatched her tablet off of the metal styling stand she'd left it on and flipped it over in my hand. I didn't know how to use this thing, but I did learn one thing from it: Stenciled on the back of the black cover read, "Property of Rhea Perrigo, chief stylist, District 5 contingent."

Rhea Perrigo. So she was my stylist – or at least, she was the stylist for "it." That wasn't comforting.

The door creaked open, and I tossed the tablet back on the stand. But it wasn't Rhea coming back in. A hand reached through the door, holding out a fresh blue paper gown. I grabbed it with a "thank you" and hurried to pull it in, eager to dress in anything after hours of having everything bared.

"I'm fine without thanks," a familiar voice said from the other side of the door. "I just lunched with your compatriot. I'm guessing Ms. Perrigo hasn't fed you, or said more than one word to you."

I ripped the shoulder of my gown in surprise. My escort had a way of finding his way everywhere.

"Elan?" I said. "I'm half-naked."

"Only half," he said, shoving the door open and walking in with a tray full of steaming food. "Besides, I'm not so interested in your body as your stylist is. She won't be back for a while. Every year, the stylists take an hour or two for alterations to their designs. You should eat."

I wrapped my arms around my waist and eyed the food. "What is it?"

"The best of District 11," said my escort, taking a seat in one of the stylist chairs. "It wasn't cheap, so hopefully I'm making a good bet on you and Glenn. He wasn't very receptive to my words, but he did at least take my food. It's one thing I can do."

"Is he alright?" I said, taking my tray and picking at an orange. "He's quiet all the time around me."

"Oh, he's quiet around me, too," said Elan. "But I've come to…well…"

He scratched his nose and looked down. "I understand where he's coming from. My father was a Peacekeeper, after all."

"What?"

"If you win the Hunger Games, I'll tell you all about my story," he said. "But your story matters more at the moment. You'll be happy to know that your showing back in District 5 has made you one of the worst candidates on the betting boards. Last I saw two hours ago, your odds were twenty five-to-one."

I gulped. "I…I don't really know –"

"It's not a bad thing. The favorites draw the attention early, but people grow tired of the same old, same old winning every year. The real supporters of the Hunger Games love surprises. The golden boy or girl isn't a surprise. Perfection is boring. Entertainment is from the underdogs, or the cowards, or the villains, or the monsters. They all have much better stories than the perfectionists have."

He lowered his head. "Although, I think Ms. Perrigo has something planned for you tonight that will stand out. Something shocking, even."

"Shocking?"

"Play on words. Nobody with any class wants to see naked tributes out there tonight."

Elan leaned against the wall, his eyes half-closed yet still staring at me with a force much greater than his nondescript image conveyed. "I won't be able to see you again before tonight's parade, so work with the image you've made. Don't look flashy tonight. Timidity, shyness. You'd be surprised what can endear the hearts of the Capitol's vainest and wealthiest, and if we're looking for a surprise in the Games, you'll set up a nice contrast to a survivor in the arena. It's all an act."

"I don't know anything about the arena," I said, twisting my hands in my lap. "I just…I've seen the old Games, but that's it."

"Well, then that's something you'll need to work on," said Elan. "Your mentors will help you through skills, but you need to think beyond that. Finch and Daud may be good at what they do, but they're humans. Ms. Perrigo will help you tonight, but those two will help you through the arena. If you want to better your odds, you'd do best by making them want you to win."

"Don't they already?"

"Finch is a smart woman. She'll pick sides strategically, and as long as you show some initiative, you'll be fine in her book. But Daud is a tougher nut to crack."

"Like he really does a lot," I scoffed, hiking my knees up to my chest. "He's said as many as words as Rhea."

The tips of Elan's lips twitched. "Words might not be his thing, but gaining sponsorships are."

"Who would give him money?"

"I won't spill his secrets, but victors go to lengths far greater than those taken by you or me," said Elan. "Another story for a later date. But Daud is quite good at his job. If I were Finch, I'd tell you that he's one of the best chances you have at improving your odds in the arena. "

Elan got up and brushed off his pants. "I'll get going before Ms. Perrigo comes back. You listen to your stylist today, and you stick to the path you've made so far. I told Glenn the same thing: If you're serious about going home, everything you do needs to further that goal. You're part of the Capitol now, Terra."