+ Thanks for the review, Dancing-Souls! Here we go with chapter 1 of book 2. Here's where the main story really will begin its advance – book 1 was more of a prelude, between Terra's games and the riot in District 4, to the machinations ahead. Reviews always welcome, and thanks to all my readers!

/ / / / /

Arrian hated the sterility of this place.

The concrete walls, the slate gray neck-to-toe uniforms, the white lights, all of it made District 13 a high-tech labyrinth long since deprived of its humanity. The deeper he descended from the surface levels, the more Arrian pitied these people – and loathed their rulers. Fertility labs, level six. Armories, level nine. Battle shelters, level fifteen. Even poor, forlorn District 12 had a spirit. Isolation's great proboscis had sucked out District 13's life long ago.

Down in the bowels of the district were only lights and computers. Robots tended to these things, some with human skins and human eyes and human names, but robots nonetheless. Only an empty person could call them people.

Arrian could kill people. Shutting off machines didn't require a single thought.

He swiped a thin plastic card with a stranger's face across a door lit up with blue and red lights. "Secure Access Only" shouted at would-be intruders from the door's face, but a women's soft face greeted him with a, "Welcome, Garth Tanner! Access granted."

Garth Tanner lay dead on the bottom of an iced-over forest pool two miles from here.

Arrian had taken his clothes, his tools, and even his face and DNA. Cracking into District 13 was a hassle even for him, but he had played this job safe. Paranoia reeked from every corner of every hallway, and even the room lined with computers and bright blue screens that Arrian stepped into scoured him with suspicion. All the security and passwords and tests would drive anyone mad after a week. Maybe that's what killed their birth rate, Arrian thought as he waved his card across the foremost computer in the room. I wouldn't want to sleep with a lunatic machine, either.

Of course, the security state had its own weaknesses. Everyone expected Garth Tanner to be on duty right now, watching over these very consoles alone for the next two hours. Garth was a trusted worker, a loyal machine with more than twenty years on the job, one with rights to dig through all sorts of information in District 13's data vaults: Passwords, secure area access rights, personal data, and even weapons codes. No one thought Garth could be in two places at once.

Arrian didn't need fifteen minutes to get what he needed. Or what someone else needs…

After blowing aside biometric security, he was into the system and scooping out truckloads of data. Halfway into the download, however, a pleasant female voice welcoming a new visitor – Welcome, Vance Ray! – grabbed Arrian's attention. An identically-uniformed man with all the hallmarks of District 13 living, from his short-cropped blonde hair to his tired, weary gray eyes, pushed open the door and grinned.

"I hope you cover two of my shifts for this," Vance Ray said in a worn-out voice crackling with overwork. "Gus tells me you're 'sick.' Two hours, really? That's all they give you?"

Shit. Rookie mistake. Arrian had tracked Garth's schedule and spied on the man for a week, timing his twelve-hour shift down here to the exact minute he left every day. He'd overlooked any last-minute adjustments, especially from something like District 13's infirmary. They gave him ten hours off for a simple cold?

Arrian rubbed at his eyes, scratching his lower left eyelid in annoyance just as he'd seen Garth do in his moments of confusion. "They told me four," he said, nodding back at the computer he was rifling through. "Come back in a couple. That way I won't owe you anything."

"I don't want you coughing all over this place for me," Vance said, closing the door behind him and folding his arms across his chest. "Look, I don't want to get in any trouble. Gus likes to rat to the old hag. The last thing I want is Coin herself looking over my performance reviews."

"That bad?"

"Nah, it's just…you know. Get your sick butt back to the infirmary."

"Can I run this first? It's a project. Almost done."

"A project? For what? Something of Coin's?"

Arrian shook his head and leaned in closer to the man. "No, it's…you might not know him. He handles special projects all over the place."

"Huh?"

"It's a job for Suleiman."

Arrian moved before Vance could blink. He clutched the worker's throat with one vise-like grip and plowed his other palm into Vance's skull. His neck snapped with a loud crack.

The computer beeped behind him as Vance's body slid to the floor. Arrian sighed. Great. Another body to get rid of, and this one deep in the bowels of District 13, just one floor up from the nuclear weapons control stations. These machines would wonder why two of their robots had shut down.

At least that wasn't Arrian's problem.

/ / / / /

Dust. Always the dust.

I pulled my yellow scarf across my nose and mouth, adjusted my shawl, and went back to trying and failing to figure out what was wrong with this last solar panel. I'd been at it for what felt like an hour now under the hot winter sun of the afternoon. For a moment I almost looked forward to getting on the train for my victory tour in a week and heading off for the districts and the Capitol. I remembered the high peaks surrounding the latter, the last thing watching me go as the train led me back to District 5 after the Games had ended. Snow would cover them now. It'd be cold and beautiful there. I'd never seen snow, but I could imagine it from lessons in school. White flakes floating down in a gentle drift from gray skies above, glistening as they blew between neon-lit towers.

Now, however, I only had dust. Dust, sand, sun, and this stupid panel that wouldn't cooperate.

"Honestly, why do you do this?" a boy crouching to my left asked. He was more of a man than a boy, probably about nineteen or twenty, with stubby blonde facial hair running across his chin and muscles poking through the loose folds of his tunic. Blaze was his name, and he probably looked better underneath all that tan clothing that we all wore out here on the electrical farms. The head-to-toe thin fabric kept the sun off our skin, but sometimes it just felt like a nuisance.

Right now, though, I didn't want to deal with the new guy's questions. Blaze had only been at work out here for just a few weeks, and I'd already given him no shortage of help figuring out this problem and that. I waved him away and focused on what I was doing: "I'm good at fixing things."

"Doesn't look like it."

"I did half your work for you today."

He shrugged and sat down cross-legged in the red dirt. "That was a really bad answer, anyway."

I scowled at him. "Why do you do it?"

"Duh. I need the money."

"So what were you doing before? Family business?"

"Don't have a family. Just this and that."

"Mm-hm," I muttered, fiddling with a switch on the panel's side. Stupid goddamn thing.

Blaze sighed and dug a mound in the sand with his heel. "So you're just not gonna talk to me, Terra?"

"I am talking to you."

"You're just evading. You're not really talking."

"Big word. Evading."

"Fine. Forget it."

I yanked the scarf away from my face and rolled my eyes. "Because Finch told me to do something to take my mind off of things. I'm not gonna paint or sing songs or do whatever else victors are supposed to do. I'm not just gonna sit in my house and mope or cry all day, either. This is what I'm good at, so this is what I do. I work on these stupid solar panels that don't want to work."

"Yeah, you probably don't need the job for the money, I'm guessing."

"I told Orson to pay someone else what I'm supposed to make. Besides, he doesn't give me a schedule. I just show up. He's fine with it."

"Orson's a Peacekeeper. You really think he's paying someone else?"

I harrumphed in frustration, both at the panel and at Blaze's small talk. "If you're just gonna insult me, why don't you go somewhere else?"

"I'm not insulting you."

"Look, I get it. I killed people and came back. Now I'm lighting the Capitol's power grid for fun and making the supervisor's job easier. Woo. I'm a bad girl. Thanks."

"You're not a bad person."

"That was real sincere."

"No, I watched. You were a little less grumpy, sure, but you were a decent person thrown into a bad situation. Anybody can get that."

"Well, anybody doesn't," I said, reaching under the panel and finding a trigger. Red lights lit up around its hot, black metal base with a series of loud beeps. "Ugh. Finally. And I'm just grumpy because this stupid thing took forever to work."

He grinned. "Heh. Well, I guess you can fix some things."

A hot wind blew a cloud of sand in my face. I coughed, spat up a dark ball of dust, and pulled my scarf back over my face. "That's the last one. I'm gonna go wait for the jeep to go home. Are you coming?"

It was only a short ride back on the Peacekeeper jeep that ferried us to and from our work sites. The sun hung low over District 5's deep rocky canyon as I left Blaze and the other workers behind to troop back towards the Victor's Village, nested in a secluded river bend a mile down the gorge. The towering, jagged, sunlit sandstone walls on either side of me had never bothered me before, but as I walked down a red sand path past the iron gates of the Village, I felt something close to claustrophobia. The open desert of the arena and the wide vistas of the Capitol – not to mention the sandy plains of the solar arrays that seemed to stretch on for infinity, or to however far away the district's electric fence was – made me yearn for space. Down here things were too close, too tight, and worst of all, too dark.

It only got worse every night. As the sun crested below the towering peak of the canyon and the river that ran through the gorge grew dark with shadow, I tromped up to the white wooden door of my new house. Home, I guess – I'd gone back to my family's home once since I'd returned. I didn't know if it was something I'd done, but they'd hardly made an effort to see me since.

"Terra, c'mon," my twin brother, Flint, had told me once when I'd met up with him around town. "You get why Mom and Dad are a little pissed at you, right?"

That had hurt. "What, because I'm still here and breathing?"

"You dissed Dad in front of the entire country. When you were with those other kids in the arena, you talked bad about him. Yeah, they're happy you came back. We all are –"

"They don't really show it."

"Well, they are. But Dad hears about it in jokes from people who come into the bar. All the time. How do you think it makes him feel?"

I hadn't cared. I still didn't. Flint could keep his logical answers and sense all he wanted. In the arena I'd been scared, terrified that death waited around every corner in that dark necropolis. I'd opened up my heart and feelings to the kids I called allies in there. If that angered my parents enough that they barely saw me, then fine. I'd wait as long as it took for them to get over their pride. They could keep their stupid cantina, their family business and their egos.

If I ever had kids, I told myself I wouldn't follow my parents' example.

My home felt empty as I pushed open my front door. Everything still looked untouched, from the oaken tables and blue cloth chairs to the white walls that I'd left unadorned by decorations. My window sills in my kitchen and living room were bare and spotless. I didn't want to be here, but as the shadows grew darker outside, I didn't want to go anywhere else, either. I did what I had to.

I turned on every damn light in the place.

Click! Four lamps spilled yellow light across the green rug that covered my den's hardwood mahogany floors. Click! Light poured out of my kitchen windows onto the white-painted patio outside, its creaky wooden rocking chair looming large over a towering shadow. Click! The Victor's Village lit up with the sun radiating from inside my house.

Every damn light. I didn't miss one, nor had I for every day since I'd been back.

Squeak! Something scampered across the floor in my kitchen as I ignited a star inside the room. I froze when I saw it: A fat grey rat quivered on the floorboards near my cupboards, watching me with its beady black eyes for my next move. It needn't have worried: My next move was to run screaming up my steps.

Rats. Harbingers of horror. They swarmed and squeaked for faceless terror that ushered in dead children and darkness.

I dashed upstairs to my bedroom, cannoned onto the thick blue quilts flowing over both sides of my bed, and jammed my face into a pillow. I didn't move until I heard a loud crash from the street. Wary of some other demon coming to wreck my night, I peeked out my window until my eyes just crested the window sill.

Nothing. Just the street was out there, lit up with a fan of light reaching out in every direction.

Slam! I jumped as my front door banged open. The sound of boots thumping against the floor panels told me that it wasn't nothing at all. I snuck out of my bed without so much as a creaky floorboard giving me away, arming myself with a loose brick that had sat in the corner of my bedroom since the day I'd moved in. Another bang from below: Whatever or whoever was downstairs, they weren't concerned about making noise.

Slow step by step I crept down my stairs, clutching my brick as if it would run off the moment my grip slackened. A pang of fear snaked across the back of my neck. District 5 didn't have much crime, but break-ins and thefts happened now and then to wealthier folks. Few of them faced a fight, and I had no idea what I was in for as soon as I spotted my intruder.

Whoever stomped about downstairs snorted. "You're loud. Where do you keep the real food?"

Oh.

I sighed, laid my brick down on an end table, and stepped into my kitchen. On the other side of the room, Daud rifled through my cabinets, tossing open the bronze-inlaid doors with the sensitivity of an earthquake. His mammoth shoulders and legs seemed to fill up every square inch of the kitchen, and I was surprised his head even made it into some of the cabinets he muttered into.

After checking the corners for the rat – now mysteriously disappeared, as if whisked away by some cackling Gamesmaker pulling strings from my walls – I said, "You could've said 'hi' at the door," I glanced at a full loaf of bread lying on the table. Daud had taken out his hunger on it with a kitchen knife straight to the crust. "You murdered my bread."

"Victimless crime," said my mentor. "How does someone else have as little food in their house as me?"

"The odds aren't in your favor."

"They never are."

I expected Daud to go on, but he plopped down in a chair and sliced off a jagged, mangled hunk of bread. "You can't get a plate?" I asked.

"No."

Figuring he'd be eating for a while, I sat down across from him and slumped over the tabletop. "Can't you just wait to eat for the tour?"

"I don't like jellied eels."

"I don't think they serve jellied eels."

"Yeah? I remember when I was that naïve about Capitol food. I was eighteen."

I picked at my thumbnail to ward off the din of Daud's chewing. "So what happens?"

"What?"

"What happens on the tour?"

"Nothing good."

"Like?"

He wiped an army of bread crumbs from his beard, scowled at me, and said, "You're that eager to get on the train again?"

"No. I mean…I just want to know. I want to at least have a clue so I'm not running headlong into whatever comes next for once."

"And you're asking me because Finch would just tell you everything's happy?"

"I'm asking you because I just thought it up, and you're here eating my food."

"That Finch bought for you."

"Yes."

He coughed. "You really don't want to know the details."

"Can I just get a summary, then?"

"Gods, you do want to know everything. Is this why you still work the plants? So you can know everything?"

"I do that so I'm not moping around here thinking about what comes next all day! Daud, c'mon. I just don't want to be alone through all this again. Please."

"Well, you won't be alone thinking in your shrine to the Bright Lord, or whatever you've turned your house into," Daud said. "You want a summary? Fine. Disappointment. That's what's next."

"Disappointment?" I said. I folded my arms, unconvinced. "I'm not really expecting everything to be great on the tour."

"Not on the tour," he growled, standing up and shoving in his chair with a loud screech that made the hairs on my neck stand up at attention. "In life, in whatever your dreams are now, disappointment. Imagine someone else writing the rest of your years, because they already have."

Panic rose as a knot in my throat. I bolted out of my chair and moved to block him from leaving. "Wait. Wait. Can you just…just explain? Please?"

"No," he said, curling his upper lip and scooting me out of the way with one hand.

"Why can't you talk about anything?" I snapped. My anxiety twisted into anger in a split second. "You just sit in your house all day or go to my dad's bar and drink whatever crap he serves. Is that why you just ignore me? At least Finch is still mentoring –"

"You've got enough of what I think!" he yelled back. His voice was a blast of thunder against my protests. "I'll give you a crash course in disappointment right now. Go to the priest if you want answers. You'll get better ones than whatever you want from me."

He snatched up the ripped hunk of bread lying on my table, adding, "And go bug Finch for real food."