+ And here we get into some of my more creative liberalizing of the Capitol…and if you thought we were done with people around Terra dying now that District 5's out of the 97th Hunger Games, think again!

/ / / / /

"First you convince me to take you to the villa district. Now we're in the poorest slum in the Capitol. Quite a step down. Should I be afraid of where you ask to go next?"

"You offered to take me to the villas."

"District 13, perhaps? District 14?"

"Yeah. Both. One place that never existed, and one that no longer does. I can't see how to lower my standards anymore."

I pulled the lip of my hood lower over my eyes. Out of anywhere in the Capitol, I couldn't be seen here. Auburn's Belly, as Elan called this place, made Redhammer look like an oasis, and it was plain as day to see why the Capitol hushed it up. The slushy streets checkerboarded with cracked asphalt and runny mud, the gray stucco buildings tattooed with anatomically correct graffiti, the open-air, aluminum siding stands lined with steaming roasted animals and cheap-looking tech goods – the whole scene belonged in the industrial slums I'd seen in Districts 3 and 8, not the Capitol, not the center of civilization as I knew it.

The people, too, were a race out of place. No gaudy tattoos and surgical procedures marked the faces of these men and women, no fancy clothes of linen and lace, no unnatural colors swept from a sunset into silk. Brown ruled Auburn's Belly. Brown streets, brown faces, brown clothes, even the brown haze that hung about here in this valley below the great white-capped mountains of the Capitol. It even smelled brown.

Elan had been careful to camouflage me before we left. Dark, dirty streaks lined my cheeks and below my eyes, and my hair hung about my shoulders, curling about from under my hood in lazy, loose circles.

"I just don't get how any of this exists," I mumbled as we passed by a man slumped against a building, a needle in his hand. His eyes were open, but I doubted he saw much of anything. "Here, at least."

My escort chuckled. "There are twelve districts, Terra. Twelve. Each has a specialty. Do you think that's enough to keep a city this size and a population this hungry sated?"

"Yeah. I mean, there's avoxes, too."

"Slave labor is hardly a solution for the niceties this city takers for granted. The people of Auburn's Belly and the other neighborhoods like this handle what jobs can't be sourced out to the districts or handled by avoxes and are beneath the inner city dwellers. Try as you may, Terra, but you'll never learn every nook and cranny of the Capitol if you only spend a month or less out of every year here. Its population alone is larger than six of the districts combined."

I kicked a broken brick out of the way as we walked down a busy avenue, a pair of scruffy dogs weaving in and out of the crowd. The sight baffled me: Not the dogs, not with the Capitolians I'd seen cradling pink-dyed dogs the size of jackrabbits like babies, but the brick. The street cleaners, whoever they were, cleaned every inch of the roads and alleys of the shining downtown. Here, I half-thought people would walk right over a dead body.

That's something people back home would probably do.

"Are you going to tell me who we're meeting before we arrive?" I said. "Unless we're going to take all day to arrive, since we're walking."

"Cars aren't so ubiquitous here, and don't even mention a hovercraft," scoffed Elan. "As for who I'm taking you to, her name is Derva Trevelyan. She runs a small-time criminal racket here in Auburn's Belly, mostly engaging in smuggling in goods from Districts 1 and 3. Once married, no longer, although I have no idea what happened to her once-husband."

"How do they smuggle things from District 3?"

"They don't go all the way to the northwest, for sure. The people who supervise avoxes in the transportation tunnels below the Capitol largely come from here. A simple bribe and some altered paperwork covers everything."

"Not very original. What were you getting for this meeting?"

Elan pulled a fist-sized sack off his belt. Something that sounded like glass clanked inside. "Not anything looked upon highly where we're coming from," he said. "Here, just a token of good will. Derva and I have long gotten along, but we haven't seen each other in more than half a decade. Times change."

Something illegal, then. Oh well.

The place wasn't some gaudy villa or ornate headquarters like I'd been used to in the Capitol. Instead, it was a small concrete hovel, sandwiched between two two-story buildings and caught in the perpetual shade of both. Only a single guard – if he could be called that – stood outside, hands in his pockets, eyes half-closed. I figured a criminal would have better security against enemies, but this was my first foray into this kind thing.

"You want somethin'?" grunted the guard, wiping the sweat off of his forehead.

Elan pulled a vial out of his sack. Inside, an amber liquid with flecks of silver and black sloshed about. "Coming to share gifts," Elan said, shrugging. "I like to share gifts with old friends, but my only one tells you what to do."

The guard folded his arms and sized him up for a moment before snatching the vial. "She stays outside."

"Afraid that doesn't work. Business partnership."

The man pulled the sack away from Elan, reached inside, and helped himself to another vial. "Payment doubles, then. Weapons?"

"None, I'm afraid."

"Damn stupid."

"Prefer it that way. What is it about being dumb and happy?"

The guard didn't leave it to Elan's word. He patted down the both of us, reaching a little too far between my thighs for my comfort, but I didn't squeak. Not here.

"Fine," he said, nodding to the door.

The cool, bland entrance way led down to a circular staircase. Into the depths Elan and I descended, down what felt like at least two stories' worth of stairs before the walls opened up to a bright chamber. However small the building looked on the outside, the basement was massive. One large room dominated the whole, capable of fitting at least a hundred people if I guessed right. Tables and chairs scattered about this way and that, not the shiny metal and ceramic things I was used to, but worn furniture, hewn from splintered wood and rusting iron, cheap and disposable. Three men sat about one of the tables, tossing red and blue cards that I recognized from the game Quintus had taught me. Elsewhere, a circle of men and women stood about a broadcast of the Hunger Games, their backs to the television, caught up in conversation.

It was the head of the room that caught my attention. A tall, broad-shoulder woman sat in a towering chair, waving away a blustering man. She looked bored, her dark eyes sagging. Everything about her contrasted with the bright white lights of the ceiling – her ebony skin, her long, straight black hair that fell in waves past her elbows, her irritated, almost violent expression. She had a powerful build, the kind that could command attention in a place where strength superseded all.

She looked up, and her eyes stared past me at me escort. The woman stood up, frowning, her eyes narrowing as she bellowed, "Everybody get out. Go get your kicks somewhere else."

Elan didn't budge, even as I started to move. He understood what everyone else in the room seemed to get: The woman wanted to talk to the new arrivals alone.

It didn't take more than two minutes for the room to empty as people filed out of doors I'd barely seen coming in, shrinking away into other rooms of this colossal basement. The woman strode forward, her walk powerful and authoritative. She held her head high and pursed her lips as she approached us, brushing right past me and standing up to Elan.

"You little dick," she growled.

She shoved him, and for a moment I felt a wave of panic strike me. Before I could think otherwise, she wrapped a hand around his shoulder, smiled from ear to ear, and laughed, "You too busy to see me for five years? Six years? Whatever it's been?"

Elan smiled, too. For once he lost his uptight and serious demeanor: "You made the better career choice. More free time."

"You stupid liar. You get to prance about in your pretty clothes on national TV while I deal with these stupid schmucks," she said. "You bring me a present? What's this, an engagement ring? A little large. You want to stay forever now?"

"Something for the stupid schmucks," said my escort. "I'd heard shipping from District 2 was getting harder. Tough to get the right rocks in this city, if you get me."

"The shit you say. You did get all kinds of pretty in your job," the woman said. Finally, she looked my way. "I guess my gate guard was too asleep to see who you'd brought. Does she want a job, or something?"

"Too caught up in her Hunger Games for that, I think. Terra, this is Derva Trevelyan. Who we're here to meet, as I said."

"'Here to meet,'" the woman, Derva, snorted before I had a chance to recover. "I'm not a caterer, Elan. Poor girl's probably soiled herself with all this commotion. Did you even tell her you were stepping away from the ivory towers for a bit?"

"Oh, I think she's figured out a bit about my past by this point. She's not nude shots and snakes as the advertisers make her out to be."

"That so?" Derva barked. She smirked and asked me, "I could tell you didn't want any part of that funhouse the moment you paused before mercy-killing your district partner. So spit it out. What d'you want, girl? Why'd you make Elan finally come back here?"

I looked to my escort for a hint, but he only nodded towards his old friend. Swallowing hard, I said, "I want to ask about someone. Privately."

"This isn't private enough?"

Elan interjected, "The last time I played a hand of cards against anyone other than a gullible victor was at least three years ago. I think I'll help myself to a hand against your people. Don't yell too loudly at Terra. She gets that enough from her mentors."

My escort slipped through a side door without a sound, navigating the room as if he'd been here many times. In hindsight, he probably had.

Derva watched him go with a chuckle. She was even more imposing in person, the most intimidating woman I'd ever seen, far more than any of the victors or tributes. "Man's probably shooting up on ryle," she snorted. "Doubt it's acceptable among your kind of company."

I paused, found my voice, and said, "Shooting what?"

"Ryle. A drug," said Derva, slumping down into a chair with a thud. "Elan introduced me to it when we were littler than you. Give it to my people now. Pff. Whatever the vids say about you, you're a lot more unblemished than they portray you."

She reached for a bottle of something clear, pouring a glass, starting on a second, and stopping: "Guess you wouldn't want any of that, either."

I stuck out my jaw. "Pour me."

"Ha!" Derva filled the glass to the brim and slid it my way. "At least you're not afraid of drink."

I felt nervous sitting in front of her, this woman who looked as if she could fight Daud to a draw. Yet an excited bubble deep in my gut urged me forward, pressing for answers to questions that popped up in my head. Watching Fenton and Mari in the Hunger Games, I'd been helpless. Powerless to intervene, a believer watching as her church burned down. Here I had agency, if nothing else. I wasn't responsible for anyone but me.

Derva coughed into her drink and said, "Doubt you're here to ogle and drink. So fine. Why're you here?"

"Elan said you know about a guy named Gar," I said.

"And what would you want with someone with such a boring name?"

"Ogling and drinking?" I said, taking a sip from the glass. The liquor was strong and hot, but the bite felt good.

"You're not as good at keeping secrets as you think," Derva said. "I know you've been walking in and out of the Presidential Mansion. Anyone with eyes knows. Bet you're here for them. But only for someone in particular, considering that Peacekeepers have been sniffing around for Gar the last week. So I'm guessing you either overheard the name, or someone who wouldn't resort to sending in the boys in white sent you. The president?"

"He didn't send me," I said. That much was true.

"Something I would've expected of him. Paranoid shit. All those advisors and he shuts himself in, so everyone hears," said Derva. "So you're playing detective, then. I don't know if I like that, but Elan must like you enough to come back to this place he hated so much, so that's a point for you in my book. What's Gar done to bring you here?"

"Peacekeepers are looking for him?"

"Whoa now. Slow down. I may know that, I may be guessing. What do you want with him?"

I slumped my shoulders. Evasiveness wouldn't work forever. "I heard he was doing things for the president's daughter."

"You heard that?"

"From someone close to Calla."

Derva narrowed her eyes and grinned. "Huh. I don't like that succubus much myself, though not like she'd ever sully herself here. So you heard things. What do you want to do about these things?"

"I want to talk to him."

"You're talking to me and making me think you're in way over your head."

"I know what I'm doing."

"Famous last words."

"Elan said you could help me find him. Can you or is he lying?"

She laughed. "You're a relentless little harpy. Fine. Gar hasn't done much for me lately, anyway. Word I get is that he's helping bigwigs. You want to find him? He squats in an abandoned warehouse a dozen or two blocks from here. Hates permanent addresses. But Elan's an idiot if he's agreeing to go see him with you."

"Why?"

"Dammit, told you. He's a wanted man. Why, I dunno."

"It doesn't matter," I said, taking a leap of faith. "I'll see him alone. Elan doesn't have to worry."

Derva paused. "You're an idiot. Elan's wrong. You haven't understood his past as much as he thinks. This is the kind of place where pretty girls like you end up in ditches, maybe alive, maybe not. But not my problem if you have a suicide wish. That's how they mark it if a victor dies in some strange way, you know? Suicide. That's what they mark. Hides any drama. Learned that from some sloshed Gamesmaker one day when I ventured into the inner city a few years ago."

"Can you show me where he lives, or not?"

"I bet he'll give you a real warm welcome, especially when he finds out who you are. Playing detective is a real bad idea for someone in your position," she sighed. "Fine. One condition: If you don't end up as some high-as-a-hovercraft man's plaything for the evening after this, I'm going to call in a favor sometime. Maybe next year, maybe a decade down the line. But I don't forget faces or conversations. Ask Elan about that. You want something from me, I'll want something from you."

I gritted my teeth. I was doing a lot to satisfy my curiosity and answer Creon's questions, but so be it. I couldn't abandon a trail like this.

"Fine."

/ / / / /

Another girl had died in the Hunger Games by the time the next evening had rolled around, but I didn't care about that spectacle any longer. Fenton and Mari were dead. Drake's kids were still alive – and likely the favorites, considering that Achilles was their last real competition – but I had my own mission to complete, one I had decided upon, not one that had been thrust upon me.

Twilight cloaked Auburn's Belly in violet melancholy. The streets were a shade darker, the stands, abandoned by vendors retreating into their hovels for the night, were forlorn and vacant. Passersby still went this way and that on the street, but I felt more visible out here at this hour. More noticeable, as if someone would run up, rip off my hood, tie my hair back, rub off the dirty makeup, and stick a label reading "Terra Pike" in capital letters on my chest.

I hurried.

The warehouse stood right where Derva said it did. It was a lonely old building, all aluminum siding and old age, a tired thing standing on a creaky foundation likely full of mice and worms. A lone door beckoned me to knock, but when I tried the handle, it opened. No one had even bothered to lock it.

I inhaled immediately. It was dark inside, far too dark for my liking. I hated this, the black, the shadow. My head swam with the thought of rats rustling in the darkness, swarming and scurrying out as soon as I took a step inside. I regretted not bringing someone else. Couldn't I have persuaded Phoebe to come along or something?

Crouching, I took a step inside. The floor creaked. It smelled of musk and history in here, and a taint of something sour. I couldn't place the scent, but it was familiar. Fortunately, despite my lack of foresight, I had brought a flashlight. I fumbled about my belt before I found it, clutching it for dear life and clicking it on.

Relief! The narrow band of light didn't crowd out the darkness entirely, but it was enough to give me something to lean on as the shadows crept in from all sides. Anxiety welled up in me as I waved the light around.

"Gar?" I called out. No one answered.

Stupid. What had I expected? A lone girl, stepping into an old, seemingly abandoned warehouse at this hour. I hadn't even asked Derva to set up a meeting or anything. For all I knew, I was breaking and entering. Stupid, stupid. Did I really think he would just magically show up for me?

I considered crouching in a corner with my flashlight and waiting things out – the darkness a horrifying prospect – just as I noticed a glowing light far away in the warehouse. I sucked in my breath and took a step forward. "Gar?" I called again, getting nothing in response. Why hadn't I asked Daud for a weapon? If anyone could have gotten me that…

The closer I stepped to the light, the more the darkness closed in. My heart thumped, so loud I thought it would alert whoever was there. When I finally reached it, however, I found no one – only a computer, its display opened to the Capitol intranet, on a page linked to District 1.

Travel arrangements for Capitolians on the go! read a bright advertisement on the intranet page. Looking for a cheap getaway? Relax on the southwest coast beneath the white towers of District 1! Picture yourself on the beach, nothing but bliss at mind…

I looked around before focusing on the screen. Whoever had been using this computer wanted to get away – to leave the Capitol. But why?

That smell again. I held a hand over my nose, hoping to block out whatever it was while I searched the computer. I didn't have a lot of experience with these things, but I'd gotten enough from Finch to know my way around the intranet. It was handy for connecting to sponsors, and in this case, it was handy to see the last places this user had been. Travel destinations, mostly. District 3. District 4. Travel advisory for District 4 – unstable weather patterns. What?

Clack!

I wheeled about, my breath freezing. Something made a noise.

My flashlight didn't find anyone, but it did find something else. Crimson stained a nearby support pole that stretched up to the warehouse's ceiling. When I drew closer, I recognized it . More on the ground – there and there. Splotches only, but someone had been hurt here. They were dry, but they didn't look that old.

Glancing around the darkness, I clutched my flashlight for dear life and followed the blood trail. There – something different on a wooden crate. Not blood, but splinters, an impact pit. Someone had smashed something heavy into the crate's side, something blunt. A weapon? A club, maybe, or the butt of a gun? Even a brick? Whatever it was, it had made a sizable dent. People had fought here, clearly, and someone had lost.

Considering the smell, I feared what I'd see next.

It wasn't a minute before I found it. I shined my light on the hand first. It was white, pale, a dead limb. As I shined my flashlight higher, I saw the results of Derva's warning. A thin man lay on the ground, his eyes glazed over, his chest still, his legs contorted. A pair of small holes bored into the right side of his chest – bullets. Semi-dried blood stained the ground and his shirt around the wounds. Either this was Gar, or an assassin he'd killed, and whoever it was, I doubted they'd died quickly. Probably punctured the lung with the shots.

Creak!

I switched off my flashlight a moment before someone opened the door. I knew it wasn't just me imaging things this time, and I bunkered down against a crate as a pair of lights shined into the warehouse. The darkness was overpowering. It reached in from all sides now that I no longer had light of my own, leering at me, taunting me, laughing from its dark corners. Afraid of me, Terra? It chuckled. No time for re-dos.

I clamped a hand over my mouth. My heart raced.

"Smells like piss in here," someone behind the new lights said. "This where we find 'im?"

"Quiet!" Someone else barked. "Keep your sights up. Finger on the trigger. Dunno what's in here."

"We searched the last two…"

"Quiet!"

A spear of light cut overhead. I squirmed against my crate, desperate, hoping whoever it was wouldn't come this way. There's no one here alive. Except me, but you're not here for me. Go away.

I was wrong. Someone coughed, and not one of the two I'd heard.

"Can I help you two?"

The lights snapped away from me. "Who're you?"

"A visitor. I was checking up on someone."

Hold on. Goosebumps ran up my arms. Something about that new voice sounded familiar.

"Identify yourself!" barked one of the entrants.

"Gentlemen, please, there's no need for this."

"That's an order!"

"You wouldn't believe my name if I told you. Either of you…study your history? Capitol history, earlier?"

The voices paused. Feeling brave, I clutched my flashlight like it was a gun and looked up. I didn't believe what I saw: Whoever controlled the two sources of light, they shined them right on perhaps the last person I ever expected to see again: The Capitol artist who had escorted me to Calla Snow's party before the Hunger Games had kicked off, Rex Rousseau. He looked no different than that day, dressed in an elegant suit and clean-shaven as if this place didn't bother him a bit.

What?

"The hell are you?" one of the two newcomers barked. "Hands! Where I can see 'em!"

"I told you…"

"He's got something on his belt, sir!"

I swallowed hard. I had a feeling the two newcomers weren't random arrivals, but Peacekeepers. Derva hadn't lied to me about who was after Gar.

"What's that?" the other Peacekeeper snarled. "Hands where I can see 'em!"

"Sure you want to see what I carry?" said Rex. Was this the same Rex? The schmucky artist?

"I told you to identify yourself! Don't think we won't shoot!"

Rex laughed. "You know what they think of Peacekeepers in the districts? Boogeymen. The bad guys coming to kill them and abduct their children in the night. You're perfect stereotypes, the two of you. Bandit A and Bandit B. Now me, I'm a storyteller. I'm carrying a very old story, and it's…it's not the kind for your sort of clichés."

"Hands! Last warning!"

"This city's full of clichés, and I'm so sick of them."

"He's reaching –"

"Fire!"

A gun cracked, and then something else, something that both was and wasn't a firearm. It sounded like a man sighing and yelling at once, a sad, mournful note. Hao! Hao!

Two sighs.

Someone screamed.

Footsteps. One, two, three.

"You wanted to see it," Rex said. "You wanted to see what I carried. Are you sure now?'

"Ahh –"

"Curiosity. Curious thing. Other guy's dead because you told him to shoot. You? Not yet. You see this? See this thing you wanted to see?"

"Wha –"

Rex grunted. My heart had long since iced over. "Funny thing. Death. Comes in all forms and flavors. But me, I wasn't content with the finality of it all. So I reached into a grave, dug my fingers in the ashes. And that thing in the grave, well, it answered me. It gave something back."

Something clicked. "See? I can tell a story. It's one that's been written and wants to be written again. You, you're just standing in my way."

"No –"

Hao! The mournful thing cried again.

Silence. A long pause hung over the warehouse. My pulse deafened me – thump, thump, thump. All of the sudden, lights flickered on, so many lights, both a relief and a terror shining down from a hundred white bulbs in the ceiling. I couldn't move.

Rex coughed. "I like to think before I act," he said, his voice echoing around the warehouse, bounding off the many crates and boxes in here. "I do not know what you were thinking, Terra. I'm not going to shoot you. Step up out of there."

Panic overwhelmed me. I glanced over the side of the crate to see him standing there in the open, an off-white pistol in his hand, smoke trailing from the barrel. He was looking right at me.

Every one of my nerves tingled. I tumbled out from behind my pathetic excuse for cover, crouching down and facing him, ready to jump away at a moment's notice. "Scared?" he asked.

I didn't answer, but another voice from behind prodded me. "Coming here alone was a bad decision. You are not as invulnerable as you think."

I whirled around. From behind a stack of crates strolled Arrian de Lange, a knife in each hand, a smirk playing across his face. I was boxed in.

"This is no place for a victor," he said.

I bit my lip and glanced between the two, looking for a way out. What did they want?

"What is it that tempts you to come here, this soulless place?" Rex said, twisting his gun in his hands and walking towards a mountain of crates at the far end of the warehouse. Now I saw it: A pair of bodies lie on the floor. White armor encased both of the Peacekeepers, and they were still. Rex had killed them both. "Creon Snow gives you assignments. Cyrus Locke talks to you like you're an equal. Elan Triste accepts your request to venture into the Capitol's cesspool. This makes you, what, a part of this establishment? A sixteen year-old girl, a year off of her own victory in the Hunger Games, suddenly capable of playing in Panem's most competitive league?"

The door I'd came in through was so far away. Even if I sprinted, I'd never make it before one of them gunned me down.

"She thinks we are here to kill her, too," said Arrian.

Rex smiled and holstered his pistol. "Looking for Gar – you found him, Terra. That body's him. Garres Bulwer's his name. Son of a streetwalker. Arrian here killed him."

My breath caught again as Arrian said, "Smallest mercy."

"Peacekeepers don't show up by accident, hm?" said Rex. "Not here. Just chance you happened to be here, otherwise I wouldn't have cared about Gar. Just a smuggler. But when Arrian learned you were following up on your meeting with Derva, well…"

Finally my throat cleared, and I swallowed enough fear to blurt, "What do you want?"

Rex laughed. "Nothing you'd know. Not yet. Now that I'm saying that, though, there is something I want. Assets."

"Reckless and persistent," Arrian said. I glanced towards him as he sheathed his knives, looking back towards Rex just as he crept behind the mountain of crates.

"I know why you're here, Terra," Rex said, slipping out of view. "All the way back to that party, I knew Creon Snow pegged you for something. Strange, really. You're an average victor, normal teenager, really, but Creon was so suspicious of his council, so afraid of the circumstances surrounding his father's death, that he wanted any newcomer – even a fifteen year-old victor – to trust, so long as they knew less about this game than he did. Imagine my surprise when I've seen you want to believe in him. President Snow. You want to believe Cyrus when the man tells you Snow's going to change Panem for the better. Yet here you are, skulking in dark warehouses, playing the same game of intrigue that has ruled this city for a century."

Rex stepped out from behind the crates, but he was no longer Rex. Gone was the handsome Capitol artist I'd met that night of Calla's party. Stepping out was a towering man, all muscle and strength. His skin was pale, almost white, his hair as black as the night sky.

He smiled. "Look at yourself. You fit in so well in this city."

"Wh-who are you?" I stammered.

"Who am I?"

"What hap-happened to Rex?"

"Rex is a cover. There is no such man as Rex Rousseau. I enjoy playing him from time to time, but you, me, Arrian, the smart victors, we're good at pretending to be people, hm?"

I gripped my flashlight as if it'd run away, my fingers going numb from clenching. The man who had formerly been Rex glanced towards the Peacekeepers and said, "My name is Suleiman. Arrian is my apprentice."

Arrian smirked when I looked over my shoulder. "This charade comes down to one thing," Suleiman went on. "You're following Creon Snow's order to hunt down clues to his father's murder. You won't find a better one than right here."

"What?" I breathed.

"Gar is a smuggler of advanced technology from District 3," Arrian continued, perching on a box and frowning. "Was. Music chips and doo-dads for everyday people, yes, but every now and then, something dangerous. Something like high-grade weaponry. Like a mine."

"When you're powerful and someone's no longer useful, what do you do?" Suleiman asked. "Why would you keep them around when they know too much?"

My chest heaved. "I dunno anything about this. I'm just – I'm just – I want to get out. I'm just a mentor."

Suleiman laughed. "You don't need to lie to me, Terra. I know who you are. District 5 and the Hunger Games and tributes, they don't matter to you. Sponsorships and vapid socialites are boring. You've had a taste of real influence. This game of whispers and backroom conversations and power is the one that really intrigues you."

"If one would want to give real information to Creon Snow," Arrian spoke up. "It is not Gar he needs to be worried about."

Suleiman smiled. "What do you think I was doing that night we went to Calla's villa, Terra? Business? While you were fraternizing with the elites, I was digging through Calla Snow's computer archives. I found more than enough to make his head spin. More than enough to convince him that anonymous district rebels didn't assassinate his father. But I sure can't tell him that. Only someone he trusts could drop that kind of bombshell."

He looked at Gar's body with a sad sort of expression: "So either your fact-finding mission for Creon ends here, or you tell him the hard truth: That he'll only find the answers he wants when he suspects his own child."

I swallowed hard and pressed my back against a crate. "Are – are you gonna hurt me?"

"We won't see each other for a long while," Suleiman said. "I am going east once these Hunger Games are over. Arrian with me. I have no reason to hurt you. But I know this sort of game tempts you, this one where you live as someone larger than a normal nobody from District 5. This is a dangerous game. Coriolanus Snow died because of it. I wouldn't walk in his footsteps."

He nodded to Arrian. "My leave. Safe trip back to the Training Center, Terra. Don't forget what Creon wants to know. And –" he tossed a black cylinder to the ground in front of me. "Spare flashlight. In case yours dies. No shame in being afraid of the dark. The whole Church of the Triad is. Until next time."