INTERLUDE

"Go back," Cor commanded the Gamesmaker. She obeyed, pushing her glasses up and looking up at him shyly. To her, he was like a god. She fancied herself to be privileged like a nymph or a mortal woman (perhaps even a queen) to whom one of the Olympians had come – as she termed it – to have his way with her. Since he'd followed her to her seat around the interactive map of the arena, she'd been day-dreaming the details of how he was going to do this, beginning with him talking dirty to her. With his tone of command, however, she was beginning to transform the scenario into one resembling her being dominated by him, and since she had been chosen to be a Gamesmaker for her creativity, she blushed at the intensity of her unexpected pleasure in imagining him commanding her to assume very compromising positions and do some shockingly inventive things to him. "There," he barked pointing to the moving dot on the map. "That's the girl, right?" The Gamesmaker looked down at the screen just beneath her fingertips and touched a button that read District Identification. The Tributes' names and District numbers arose upon the map in front of them, above all the stationary and moving dots in her specific wedge. Above the dot Cor was pointing to arose the following: District 10 – McKay, S. Cor clucked his tongue in disappointment. "That's the boy," he said.

"You're interested in the girl?" the Gamesmaker asked. Cor shot her a look.

"Have you been listening to anything I've been…" the Gamesmaker waved him off before he could finish.

"There's another way," she said without looking at him. She was focused on the screen at her fingertips, pressing this and that button, illuminating and darkening spots along the wedge she controlled. Finally, she sighed and pushed back from the map. "She's not in my jurisdiction."

"You're useless," Cor spat at her and stalked away. Hovering her fingers above the screen, the Gamesmaker clenched her jaw, and then pushed her chair back again and got up, making her way toward the Head Gamemaker. "Sir, can I speak with you a minute?" she asked, standing at attention. He gave her an absent-minded nod. "In private?" she added. This time, he looked her full in the face.

"In case you hadn't noticed, I'm trying to run a to-this-point-successful Hunger Games. What do you want, Tamora, Queen of the Goths?" Tamora shot him a look so piercingly cold that he softened his own. He knew she disliked the nickname and he knew he'd used it for that very same reason. She had a dangerous mind, though, and he had given her credit for it in the past but could sense that the same mind would turn on him if he wasn't careful.

"I would like authorization to make a mutt designed for a specific kill," Tamora said, finally.

"A kill of which Tribute?" the Head Gamemaker requested.

"McKay, Flaxie, District 10."

Cor pushed through the double doors leading into the Viewing Room; it was the annex adjacent to the banquet hall from where they'd begun the Games, and it was equipped with television screens on three of its walls, screening the Games in progress, while the fourth wall was devoted to those sponsors buying gifts for the Tributes they were supporting. This operation was carried out much like a registration might be: a long table separated the gift collectors from the sponsors and on that table were cash boxes and portable computer tablets. Cor strolled up to one of the cashiers (at least that was how he chose to name the gift collectors) and tapped once on the table to get his attention. He was another shy-looking young man whose nametag read, Demetrius Pavarol. Demetrius took Cor with one look and picked up his tablet. "How can I help you?"

"I'd like to sponsor a Tribute," Cor barked at Demetrius. The latter wasn't fazed by the gruff tone. He'd been dealing with unsettled and somewhat displeased Capitol folk for a long time, so one more was not a shock for him.

"Which Tribute?" he asked without much tonal inflection.

"McKay, Flaxie," Cor said quickly.

"District?"

"Ten." Demetrius began tapping on his tablet screen, occasionally swiping one way and another without saying anything more to Cor. After forty-five seconds of this awkward silence, Cor tapped on the table again, impatiently. Demetrius gave him a cursory glance but said nothing more and continued to tap and swipe. "Well?" Cor demanded after another thirty seconds.

"There seems to be a problem, sir." Demetrius said slowly. "McKay, Flaxie is already being exclusively sponsored." He put extra emphasis on the word exclusively so that Cor would get it into his thick head that this was an untouchable Tribute. Nonetheless, he rolled his eyes when Cor asked,

"What do you mean, exclusively sponsored?"

"Okay, the word exclusively means that no one else but those invited may participate in an event or situation. The word sponsored means…"

"I know what they mean, dumb ass," Cor banged both his fists on the table, startling the other gift collectors. Demetrius blinked at him and waited for another harmless, idiotic assault. He didn't have to wait long. "I want to sponsor her."

"Sir," Demetrius began, firmly. "You may want to sponsor her, but the fact is you can't. She's already being sponsored by another gentleman. Can I assist you in anything else?"

"WHO?" Cor leaned forward very close to Demetrius. "Who is sponsoring her exclusively?"

"I can't tell you that, sir. Can you please stand back?" Cor listened but sneered as he leaned back on his side of the table. "Thank you. Perhaps you would like to sponsor McKay, Seeder? He is also from District 10. High commodity he is, having no sponsors yet and being from the third poorest District. Good investment, most betting tables say. Poor odds but they're improving each day he's alive." Demetrius made the smallest effort to raise a single eyebrow toward Cor. "What do you say?"

"Fine! What does he need?" Cor hissed at Demetrius.

"He has a good stock of food but he could use more than a length of rope. Weapons are coming in at close to triple the cost from last year, and we're auctioning off anything bigger than six inches." Cor was not pleased with this news, which only added to his temper waxing foul. "A poisoned blowgun dart is beginning to sell at $450. Should I put your name into the auction?"

"A blowgun dart?" Cor hissed again.

"Actually, it's a poisoned blowgun dart," Demetrius corrected him unnecessarily.

"May the Fates shit on your grave," Cor responded. "What is the cost of a blowgun?"

"It's running between $900 and $1,250" Demetrius said matter-of-factly. Cor's response caused the entire room to gasp out of sync but simultaneously. Demetrius blinked, beginning to be amused by this amateur. "Should I take that as a 'no' then?" Cor was beyond words. He merely banged the table with his fists again and stomped away. "Have a good day," Demetrius cracked a bemused smile, "Sir."

Cor pushed through the doors leading into the Gamemaking Room and found his way to Tamora. She looked up at him, and this time it was a look devoid of innocence. "Round two," she joked.

"Sorry," Cor said painfully. "I was an ass before."

"Yes, you were," Tamora agreed.

"So can you do that thingy again where their names and District numbers come up?" Cor asked. Tamora gave a breathy laugh.

"Come on now, that's my party trick. He asks if I can do it again!" She laughed louder and some of the Gamesmakers around her wedge smirked. Tamora winked at Cor and returned to her work on the screen before her. She had a pen-shaped instrument in her hand and she was putting the finishing touches on a wild-looking dog. It was lean and had a particularly evil look to it. Cor decided it was in the eyes that this creature was most harrowing. Tamora finished the drawing, and then she put down the drawing instrument (called a stylo) and pinched the drawing with her index finger and thumb, pulling the image up on a hologram. She examined the creature, scrutinizing for imperfections as its image spun slowly. Finally, she nodded approval and tapped a button on the screen. The creature shrank and travelled from the hologram to the map of the arena, landing in the rubble courtyard at the center of Tamora's wedge. It stretched, and then followed its nose, tracking one of the dots. Tamora stretched her hands back and laced her fingers behind her head before acknowledging Cor again. "Sorry, what was it you wanted from me?"

"Could you show me the names and District numbers of the Tributes again," Cor began before adding a quick, "please?"

"Sure," Tamora said without moving. Cor shot her a look and she chuckled. "Oh, you mean now?" She moved into action again, more deliberately slowly than before. Cor watched as the identifiers appeared on the map. He was also fixated on the creature Tamora had just brought into the arena. It was tracking the scent of a specific dot: McKay, F – District 10.

With the Peacekeepers surrounding the common ground, Bess found the mandatory viewing of the Hunger Games more ominous than ever. Wherever she looked, there were Peacekeepers. They had arrived the evening before, barking at the residents of the Compound, pulling some women and children out from their hovels and destroying other huts in pursuit of a horse thief and a runaway ranch hand. Bess, ever the optimist, prepared Striker and Lenox for the assault, but when the Peacekeepers came to their hovel, the interaction had been very polite – if brusque. Amidst the confusion, the Peacekeepers hadn't seen Elka escape though Bess didn't miss it. After ordering the remaining Tylers to line up inside the Compound, the Peacekeepers interrogated them one-by-one, beginning with Bess – the oldest Tyler present.

"Name, surname first."

"Tyler, Bess."

"Miss Tyler, have you seen a horse and rider come through here recently?"

"Recently? I can't tell you," Bess had said, attempting to avoid a lie.

"Why is that, Miss Tyler?"

"Well,, we live right next to the Gaming Reserve, and I see cowboys and ranch hands on horses all the time, so recently, yes, but if you're asking me if I've seen the horse and rider, I can't tell you."

"Fine. Miss Tyler, have you seen this boy recently?" The Peacekeeper had held up a drawing of Deane. As Bess had looked at it, she could recognize Deane in it without trying too hard, but she had also begun to weave a web of half-truths that had put her in a specific mindset. She looked over the picture, searching for the weakest part of the question put to her, and her brain had been working hard to find a way to say – truthfully – that she had not seen this boy. "Miss Tyler?" the Peacekeeper demanded, shaking the picture he had produced.

"This boy?" Bess bought a few seconds with her question. "Uh, no. I haven't seen him recently." The Peacekeeper frowned at her.

"You are positive?"

"Always," Bess smiled, finally telling the whole truth.

Thankfully, Sissy, Striker and Lenox could answer entirely truthfully because none of them had actually seen Deane ever. Even so, as the Peacekeepers interrogated the remaining Prairie Dogs, Bess breathed in gasps, wondering if one of them might have been around when Deane had come to the Compound. In the end, if they had, no one gave him up. The Peacekeepers circled the perimeter of the Compound and remained there overnight. In the morning, they were relieved by a fresh set of Peacekeepers. School was suspended for the day though no word was communicated between the Town and the Compound about the search for the horse thief and the kidnapped ranch hand. With nothing else to do, Bess tried to curb her own growing anxiety by entertaining her siblings, but at some point they found that sitting around and saying nothing was the best solution. Since their dad had not returned, the small stock of food they had gathered diminished rapidly, and by lunchtime Striker and Lenox were getting irritated by their growling empty stomachs. Bess and Sissy had known hunger before, but with the twins' new experience of it, the infection spread to the girls. At the allotted time, the Peacekeepers entered the Compound and pulled its residents out into the common ground to view the Hunger Games, and as Bess looked around, she could see that the foul grip of hunger was widespread. Bess took in the narrow faces, the grim expressions on them and the odd child holding her stomach. She noticed signs of other things too. For every third person there was a Peacekeeper watching over them. Do they need to guard us, she thought. It's not like we're going to run away. A Peacekeeper caught her staring at them and tapped her boot with the baton in her hand. Bess looked away quickly, not interested in knowing what that baton felt like. Anyway, the Hunger Games were beginning; day 5.

Thatcher looked up. He was laid out on the cement floor of the slaughterhouse, flayed and chained. His lip was swollen and bleeding and he felt very alone as his other senses kicked into place. The previous day had been like a nightmare, beginning with the shock of waking up in the barn and finding Deane had gone. Although he'd tried to pull the weight of both his brother's chores and his own, it had only succeeded in stalling the inevitable. When Mr. Burliss barged into the barn to find that the rumors – Deane Scythe was missing – were true, he'd taken out his rage on both Thatcher and Biter. In the end, it was Thatcher that the cowboys had been ordered to take to the slaughterhouse. He'd been chained there and kicked hard several times before Mr. Burliss began interrogating him. Thatcher couldn't remember the interrogation, except that he had only one answer to all the questions asked, and that answer was "I don't know, sir." As the kicking intensified and he drew closer to losing consciousness, Thatcher vaguely remembered leaving off the "sir" at the end of his answers, which only made Mr. Burliss even more irate. And just before he completely lost consciousness, Thatcher remembered Mr. Burliss saying up close and very harshly, "I'm going to kill you, boy. And no one's going to care because you don't exist." Thatcher wondered if his response was "I don't know, sir." He figured he'd said the very same more than three hundred times.

Not surprisingly, the restless sleep that fell on him took him to a place where there were no slaughterhouses, no spurred boots digging into his starved frame. There were no men like the cowboys or Mr. Burliss, or Mr. Farnsworth before him. Deane wasn't there either, but that pretty Prairie Dog girl was; he could remember her face. Opening his eyes and finding that he'd slipped back into the nightmare, however, made him groan and attempt to return to his dream world by closing his eyes. It was the responding groan that brought him fully into the present. Thatcher could have sworn he heard Deane groaning nearby him. He couldn't move except to whip his head around this and that way, but his arms were pinned at an angle that made it impossible to see from where the groan had come. That was how the nightmare increased, believing but not knowing that the groan belonged to his brother, who was either in the process of being killed or was being brought to the edge of death by torture only to be kept alive – in the same way that Thatcher was certain he was being treated – and at some point in the hours that slipped by unmeasured, Thatcher realized that he was actually praying for his own death. Never before in his life could he recall a time when he had prayed, and yet at this very moment the only desire he had left – if that groan belonged to Deane – was to die. He fell unconscious again, perceiving nothing except for the inconsistent groaning sounds beyond his vision.

The very first action of the Hunger Games: Day 5 focused on the creature Tamora had constructed and placed into the arena. Cor watched as this rabid wild dog muttation tracked the female Tribute of District 10.

"You should get us some popcorn, pretty boy," Tamora joked, sitting back in her chair and watching the action in the arena replica before her while other sponsors and Cor watched it as shown through the cameras and displayed on the plethora of television screens around the Gamemaking Room.

"That's sick," Cor said, unemotionally. Tamora grinned.

"You know, I designed an eighth of this arena, under the supervision of the Head Gamemaker, of course. I know which buttons to push to make this building explode, or that wall crumble, or to make certain mutts appear en masse at any given part of my wedge." She studied Cor's expression as he comprehended her words. "But this mutt that I just got authorization to make, I think I like her the best. She's got the killer instinct of a Bloodhound and a Rottweiler, but she possesses, also, the instinct to track her prey and to guard it. Who knows what she'll do when she finds her target? Maybe she'll kill it quickly… maybe she'll strike it's throat and then leave it to bleed out… or maybe she'll chase it into another Tribute who can finish the deed for her, but only after having scared the poor victim to death." She grinned and Cor grimaced, and that made Tamora grin even more. "All I've told her to do is find Flaxie McKay and kill her."

As she spoke, the rabid dog mutt prowled the alleyway with her nose to the ground. And then, suddenly, she picked up the trail. It was as if a magnet had found its attracting pole and was being drawn, irresistibly toward it. The very first thing the dog mutt did, once on the trail, was to check the first building she saw. The camera followed her into the building, a very small room with a flickering overhead light and a stock pile of swords, behind which lay a sleeping Tribute. The dog mutt went to him – Switch, from District 3 – sniffed him a few times, bared her teeth in a snarl before determining that it wasn't the Tribute she was sent after, and then she turned around and went back out, leaving a suddenly awakened Switch behind her. The camera followed her out into the alleyway again where she was picking up the scent of her quarry much better; Maybe she can sense the fear coming from Flaxie, Cor thought. It proved to be an incorrect thought as the dog mutt continued to look in every succeeding building on the alleyway, and each time she found something – a cache of dirks, daggers and throwing knives, water bottles and flasks filled with pure water, and in one building she came upon some very interesting herbs and other greens that Cor couldn't recognize but which must have smelled strongly to the dog mutt – but none of those things were her prey. Several doors down from Switch's revealed hiding place, she picked up the trail indefinitely and began trotting toward its origination. Skipping past several doors, the dog mutt entered one on the right side of the alleyway and the camera that followed her revealed a small room with a water pipe leaking onto its warped wood floor. There was an empty pantry to the right behind a warped island table with several broken stools, and to the right was a cache of glass jars containing clear liquids within. On an exposed shelf about four feet off the ground, in a sleeping bag, lay Flaxie McKay. She was well out of sight from the entry but the dog mutt knew her smell too well to mistake her motionless – actually unconscious – body. The barking that came from the dog mutt sent chills up Cor's spine: it was supposed to sound unnatural because there was nothing natural about the animal, and yet it was so hauntingly unnatural that Cor couldn't help but feel fear. And neither could Flaxie as the barking yanked her from sleep. She saw the dog mutt snarling and baring her teeth, and her eyes went wide.

But her fatal flaw was that she moved. The dog mutt pounced, bounding, unnaturally, from such a far distance, using the pyramid of jars as leverage to lift her into the air and land with her front paws on Flaxie's shelf. Flaxie couldn't get out of her sleeping bag fast enough –literally. The dog mutt hoisted herself onto the shelf by pushing her hind legs off the ground and rising to the shelf almost effortlessly. Flaxie was tearing at the sleeping bag when the dog mutt joined her on the shelf. She kicked at the animal and managed to upset her footing enough to make her lose balance and slip off the edge, but it was only one hind leg that hung loose over the edge and the mistake was easily corrected. The dog mutt was even more furious that her prey was fighting back. She snapped at Flaxie, showing her sharp teeth and her ferocity, but she made no real effort to break skin or to bite the Tribute. That scared Flaxie even more, whose eyes couldn't get any bigger. She struggled even more in her attempt to get free of the sleeping bag, and as the dog mutt lashed out a clawed paw, Flaxie held the bag like a shield, letting the dog mutt make a gash in the fabric. It looked as easy for the dog mutt as if a person was running a knife through clear water. The gash separated the sleeping bag and Flaxie tumbled out, landing on her palms, face-first. She scrambled to her feet just as the dog mutt sprang and landed on her back. Now the dog mutt began to bite. She dug into Flaxie's back with her claws and buried her teeth into Flaxie's neck. The howls from the Tribute matched the howls from the dog mutt.

Flaxie spun and slammed the dog mutt very hard into the wall behind her. It began to buckle from the impact. The dog mutt released her jaws for a moment, yelping as her spine collided with the brick wall, but it was momentary. Seconds later, she had buried her teeth into Flaxie's neck again. This time Flaxie gave it all she had, slamming that creature as hard as she could into the wall. The wall collapsed, knocking Flaxie and the dog mutt over as a shower of broken bricks rained down on them. The dog mutt was no longer attached to Flaxie's back, and in the moment that they both realized their newfound independence, Flaxie scrambled to her feet, blood streaming from her neck wounds, and half stumbled, half crawled to the entry. The dog mutt had a slightly harder time dislodging herself from the debris, but she managed to get herself a step and a half behind Flaxie. Flaxie was out the door and stumble-running down the alleyway in search of another place to hide, but the dog mutt bounded after her, leapt, pounced and brought her down again. Flaxie pushed against the bricks of the alleyway and rolled herself on top of the dog mutt, vainly grabbed for a loose brick in the wall near her, miraculously caught hold of one and yanked it free, and then used what waning strength she had to reach behind her and smash the brick into the dog mutt's head. Simultaneously, Flaxie rolled side to side on top of the dog mutt, which was trapped beneath her and seemed to be losing her grip on her prey. Finally, Flaxie struck the dog mutt in the eye, tearing a gash across its face, including its iris, and with an awful yelp the dog mutt released her. Flaxie rolled away from her foe and tried to push herself up but discovered she had no strength for the task. She rolled onto her back, slipped into the shallow gutter on the side of the alleyway and lay there, breathing heavily and bleeding swiftly. The dog mutt made no further attempt to attack her but was clawing at its face and whimpering pathetically. Flaxie tried to look over at the dog mutt, but another rumbling noise caught her attention: from the building she had escaped, in domino effect, the roofs began to cave in, followed by the outer wall, and finally when it could no longer support the weight, the alleyway walls buckled and broke. All along the alleyway, bricks cascaded down onto the street, and as they reached the dog mutt and Flaxie, the dog mutt tried to get up and limp away. Flaxie turned her face away from the falling bricks and closed her eyes. The brick wall collapsed, burying the dog mutt and raining bricks across the alleyway at Flaxie. Dust and brick particles hid the alleyway from visibility as the stage came crashing down.

At last, at long, long last, the cannon boomed.