IMPORTANT:
Did you read Chapter 20? The one with Petronius? I did double updates that day and just want to make sure everyone read it…because that becomes a crucial point here…

Chapter 21

Level 10, Training Center Tower

Katniss Everdeen could not move.

Sitting on the couch in the screening room of Level 10 in the Training Center tower, she could not move. Her mouth was open, and her eyes were fixated on the television screen in front of her, but she could not move. What was going into her ears was not making any sense. The children had figured it out. They had realized their potential for rebellion, when the ones manipulating them had dismissed the possibility as too unlikely.

Well, not all of the children had figured it out. One of them had, and spread the word to four of them. That one was the same one who had previously attempted something of revolutionary power. Artemis Gossamer –– the girl with the control disk, the child genius, the juvenile mastermind of the Seventy-Sixth Hunger Games, and the representative of District 11 who just so happened to have run away to that very district three years ago –– was refusing to go down without a say in the matter. She had put it as clear as day –– she was fighting fire with fire.

Next to her, Peeta was talking frantically into his cell phone with someone that she assumed was either Plutarch or Beetee. Katniss found that if she listened closely, she could hear the person on the other end. That person in question sounded very mad. Plutarch, probably. She was correct. "First the control disk, and now this?" squealed Plutarch. At which point the Head Gamemaker launched into a stream of rather colorful language that would have made even a Peacekeeper blush, and at which point Peeta interjected, "I think we get the picture, Plutarch. Just calm down and tell me what you're going to do about it."

"I don't know what in the blazes I am going to do about it!" screamed Plutarch through the phone, so loud that Peeta actually flinched.

"Calm down," said Peeta. "You don't have to do anything. She said it herself –– probability of success is three to seven percent."

"That included the intervention of the Gamemakers!"

"Then don't intervene, and see how it turns out."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm curious, that's why. Just leave them alone. It'll fizzle out on its own. The girl is half crazy anyway."

Plutarch audibly sighed. "I don't know why I am realizing how much sense you're making, Mellark. But I think you're right."

Peeta nodded, then turned a very interesting shade of red when he remembererd that while talking on a cell phone, Plutarch probably couldn't see him. "Yeah. Sure. Bye."

He hung up, and then turned to Katniss. Her eyes were once again locked on the television screen, where Artemis was untying Petronius's ropes. Out of the blue, Katniss said absentmindedly, "I wonder what would have happened if we had given her the control disk."

Peeta scrutinized the young woman next to him. She was so beautiful, he realized. Stunning. But so distant, so unreachable. Of course, they both were. The psychological damage dealt in the Games and the war had made sure of that. He turned his eyes back to the television screen, where Artemis, Iris, and Romulus were feeding the gangly teen and giving him back his weapons. He pitied them, to say the least. He wondered how they would come out, if they came out at all. Whether or not they would still possess their sanity. That was how he knew at first mention that the Seventy-Sixth Hunger Games was a bad idea. He knew that the Capitol children, whether or not they were the descendants of the rebels' worst enemies, still had consciences and minds. Both of these were fragile things, and two weeks in the arena could batter them until they broke.

"I don't know," he replied truthfully.

He didn't. There were just too many unknowns about Artemis to be certain. She had spoken like she cared about the well-being of the tributes, like she had made the control disk just to save them, but he knew that inside, there was always that primal instinct to save yourself first, and save others later. Plutarch Heavensbee himself had said that Artemis might have made up her alibi about helping people just so that she could keep the disk, then use it in the arena to provide for herself and kill others. It was very probable, and this strange behavior in her "alliance" only supported it. It was also very probable that Artemis would use her alliance to protect herself and eliminate the threats such as Caius the loner, Cornelius her district partner, and the Elites; then, once all of these threats were gone and only she and her alliance remained, kill her allies and emerge the victor. It was not a bad strategy. But it was obvious, and Artemis did not seem like the type to use an obvious tactic. Well, unless she considered the fact that since they thought that she wouldn't do the obvious, she would do the obvious, or vice versa and so on so forth… no. She was either a very good actor with extremely good deductive reasoning, or her motives were pure.

And then there were the options that she could be both or neither. Maybe she was secretly very stupid, and she just had a heck of a lot of luck…

Groaning, Peeta lay back and closed his eyes. All this thinking was giving him a headache. He would just let the tributes find out for themselves.

I feel really happy...Dear Fanfiction Writers, one of my other fics, just broke the 70-review barrier in less than ten chapters! HAHA! So me very happy now ^_^