+ Thanks melliemoo and FoxfaceFan1 for the reviews! Let's meet the new people. Shorter chapter for once.

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For a kid facing down the people who had doomed him to near-certain death, Quinn was a decent guy. Maybe it was resignation, or maybe he was hiding a mountain of animosity behind his friendly eyes. Genuine or deceptive, he showed no signs of pulling away from Finch, Daud, and me.

"Friends…I guess I have a couple," he answered to Finch's question while digging through a pile of leafy vegetables during dinner. "A couple guys work with me at the plant who aren't bad."

"Yeah?" Finch said. She led the conversation as Daud and I tossed glances back at forth, the two of us sizing up the kids. "So that's one of the power plants that gets the energy from the ground, right? I don't know how that kind of thing works. Explain it to me."

I had a feeling that Finch knew exactly how it worked, but her question was a good one. Let Quinn explain what he knows well and it'd boost his confidence and help endear him us. Right on cue, he failed to hide to a sheepish grin and mumbled, "It's uh…the guys who work with the important things heat up water into steam with the earth's energy and use it to push a turbine. I don't do any of that. I mean I'm eighteen, I just make sure bolts and screws don't pop up off things. It's not much."

"I dunno, sounds important," Finch said with a shrug, poking at a piece of white fish on her plate. "Terra here works on the solar plants. You should talk to her about it."

Thanks, Finch. Way to put me on the spot with out-of-date information. I hadn't told her or Daud that I'd stopped doing that since my chat with Pyre, but I wasn't about to mention any of that here. Quinn looked at me with knitted eyebrows and said, "You work? I thought you guys get paid for being victors."

Before I had a chance to explain, Summer, who'd barely spoken three words the entire dinner, chimed in: "There's probably nothing else to do most of the time."

Astute. I flicked a thumb her way while shoving a forkful of shimmering red shellfish in my mouth. "That."

"How 'bout you?" said Finch, taking the opportunity to poke past Summer's defenses. "You've got to be done with school by now. Work anywhere yet?" Upon receiving a shrug and the slightest shake of a head, she pushed on. "Any friends from school still?"

Another head shake. "That's not really important," Summer mumbled.

Daud fretted in my direction, his eyes giving off the vibe of might be trouble. "Friends help in the arena," I said. "They helped me."

"The boy from 12 slowed you down, and the other two would have killed you after taking out the tough competition, because they looked smitten and you were smaller than them," Summer countered immediately.

I scrunched my face and stared at her as I chewed a particularly tough piece of fish. "You still remember my Games?"

"It was only four years ago."

"I don't remember it that bad," Quinn said, looking uneasy at Summer's nonchalant recall of the 96th Hunger Games. "I barely even remember last year's, though."

"Nothing happened in last year's. The boy from 12 could shoot a bow well, so he killed people from distance. It didn't entertain anyone."

"That's not entirely true," I said, remembering Haymitch's near-stroke after realizing he was getting a kid out of the arena after almost fifty years of futility. "How many Games have you even seen?"

"All of them," answered Summer, as if I'd asked about the weather. She didn't even look up from her food.

A pause settled over the table until Finch, digging roads through a side of mashed potatoes with her fork, piped up, "Do you like watching them?"

"Nothing else to do in the past," said Summer with a shrug. Just as soon as she'd gotten to talking, she returned to inspecting her meager dinner, pushing peas and sliced carrots around her plate into little green and orange pyramids.

Quinn, still looking unsettled after that last conversation, said, "So I guess we're not watching the Reapings?"

"Nah. You don't need to worry about the other kids just yet," Finch said, shaking her head. "Besides, you'll see them tomorrow during the chariot ride. You can talk to them then and get first impressions if you want, or wait until the training days."

"'Bout bad first impressions too," Daud chimed in for once. He'd been just as quiet as Summer the whole dinner, watching, studying, saving his words. "Thought Terra was a damn crybaby when I first saw her. 'Course I was right, but I might have been wrong and gotten the wrong impression."

I rolled my eyes. "Thanks."

"It's about going in with an open mind," Finch added. "You know, maybe there's a tribute who looks small or weak but has a great mind for strategy, or maybe there's this huge hulk who actually has a good heart and isn't crazily merciless."

"How do you even go about all that? Making friends when it's…the Games and all," Quinn asked.

Finch waved her fork in the air as she searched for the right phrase. "It's, I mean, everyone's just people, right? Talk to people like people. Most of the other kids won't be gunning for blood. They're not psychopaths. You don't go through your usual day wishing everyone around you would keel over and die, do you?"

"Sometimes," Summer said.

Based on my past year in District 5, I couldn't really disagree with her.

Our two tributes headed off to bed as the sky outside darkened, the moon already high in the black sky late on a summer night. Dark desert plains raced past outside the train. There were no lights out here, so far from civilization, the landscape lit up only by the crescent moon and the twinkling stars. The white and blue milky band of the galaxy arced overhead, reaching out from some distant mountain peak far to the north. Somewhere out there where the band reached the horizon, the glittering silver and yellow lights of the Capitol glowed to the tune of anticipation and hype of uncharted Hunger Games territory.

Onboard the train, everything felt like business as usual, however. Finch dwelled on the minutest details of the dinner conversations, feeling as if she'd missed an opportunity to add some critical advice. Daud swirled wine around his silver goblet, looking as if he'd rather be rotting outside in the desert than slouching in the luxury of the dinner car. I only gazed at my half-eaten plate of food, wondering why I should bother finishing it when an unending buffet of the stuff waited for me as early as the next morning.

"The girl's like a damn carbon copy of you," Daud grumbled after downing his sixth glass. He wasn't even tipsy. "Go back to '74 and '75, and there's Finch, telling me everything I should be doing. This is what happens when know-it-alls win."

"I had a little bit of tact," said Finch, looking irritated with her nose scrunched and her mouth half-turned down in a frown. "The boy's a good sport, though. Listen, I can handle Summer fine on my own. Daud, why don't you and Terra mentor Quinn? It's kind of obvious that it'll be better to mentor them separately this year. They're way different people."

"Joy," muttered Daud.

"I'm surprised you're still coming," I said to Daud. "With three of us now…I thought you'd want to stay home."

He shrugged and eyed his empty goblet. "Nostalgia. I can't get enough misery and helplessness to satisfy me at home. The drinks are also better, and I don't ever have to leave our floor to get as much as I want."

"Why don't you at least try some baby steps and drink with other people?" Finch suggested.

He smirked. "I'm drinking to escape all the sanctimonious shits of the world, not humor them."

Hard to argue with that.

Huge, down bedspread. A shower with twenty, thirty dials controlling the kind of things only people with no drama in their lives could worry about. A one-way, floor-to-ceiling window looking out at the nighttime sky and the plains outside. My own personal chandelier, maybe a quarter of the size of the ones in the main train cars but still dainty enough to rattle and tinkle with every big bump the train ran over. I could get lost in the bedrooms of the train car if I spent more than two nights a year in them. They were even more glamorous than the rooms in the Training Center, even if the latter were much larger and sported those nifty holographic walls that one could program to show any scene from around Panem. I'd rather see the real outside.

I'd left my door open as I stepped into the bathroom to take a shower I emerged dripping water and in a bath towel to see Quinn peeking into the room from the hallway with wide eyes.

"Are you going to bed?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Oh. I'll –"

"No, I – what's up?" He waffled for a response, and to give him time to get his thoughts together, I jabbed my thumb over my shoulder and added, "Can I get changed first?"

He backed off into the hall before I could step into the bathroom again. Despite what the Capitol reports said, the kid could use some more confidence. I thought it over as I draped a blue nightgown around my shoulders. The air conditioning prompted goosebumps to creep out across my arms and back, and as soon as I opened the door for Quinn, I pulled a blanket across me to stay warm.

He opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and mumbled, "Are you okay?"

"I'm just cold," I said. "Can't sleep?"

"Probably, but –" He stopped, looked out into the hallway, and shut the door before taking a seat on the bed next to me. "Just wanted to ask something. Do you have to mentor us together? Since we're the same district at all?"

"No. We were gonna mentor you separate. Daud and I were gonna be for you."

He looked relieved. "Alright. Yeah, it's nothing. Stupid question."

"Is something up?"

"Nah. Nothing."

That didn't sound very convincing. I did my best to force a smile and said, "You don't have to team with Summer just because you're from the same district, Quinn. I didn't team with my partner, Glenn. We weren't much alike, so we went our separate ways. It's just how things are."

"No, it's just…nah, I feel stupid for bringing it up. I'll go to bed."

"I'm not going to judge you. I've seen enough tributes. Heck, the whole country saw everything I did in the arena. You don't have to play tough in private like this. What is it?"

He considered what I said for a moment before biting his tongue and saying in a slow, cautious voice, "It's…I do remember one Hunger Games once. It was the 72nd, the one the other mentor, Daud, won. I just remember him near the endgame stabbing his district partner in the back, and I get the feeling Summer's the same kind of person who'd do that. She's just, I mean, I dunno, I don't want you to think I'm out to get her already or something, but she's so robotic and all. Like she doesn't even have a feeling."

I let that settle while I worked on my reply. "There's lots of other kids you can make friends with. Look, I don't know much about Summer, and she didn't say much during dinner so maybe she's awesome, but if you don't like her, you don't have to. Just focus on you, alright? I'm mentoring you personally, and so's Daud – and he's not that bad, really – so we're gonna make sure you're okay. Don't worry so much about everyone else just yet."

"Why'd you pick us?" he blurted out as soon as I finished. He looked like he regretted it as soon as the words had left his mouth, as crimson flushed his cheeks. "I don't mean –"

"No, it's okay," I said. Sort of. Inside, it hurt. I knew the question would come eventually, but I hadn't prepared a good answer. "We couldn't just say no to the whole Quell thing. I know we look kinda guilty, and I'm trying not to feel that way, but someone was going to get picked. When you're a victor, you're not really free to do anything. If the Capitol tells us to do something, we have to. Otherwise, who knows. So we tried to find people who had a good chance to do something in the arena and come back home, and…" I felt as if I'd regret saying the next part, but I pushed on, "and in case that didn't happen, we didn't want to hurt any parents or families. So…"

Quinn bit his lip and looked away. His pained expression made me curl up and cry inside, and I stretched out a hand to rub his shoulder. "Quinn, I don't mean –"

"Nah, that's fine," he said, standing up and stepping away from me. "I guess that's a kindness, right? I mean, yeah. That's the right thing to do."

"No, it's not right, but –"

"It's – it's fine. It's alright. I'll, uh, see you tomorrow Terra. Whenever breakfast is."

Shit. He scampered away into the hall without looking back at me. I slumped against a wall, pulling the blankets tighter around me and sighing. So much for honesty, and all this pre-Games mess would last twice as long as this year. This was already nightmarish.