Karen DuMouchel, 29

Gamemaker

12 Witherkemp Road, Capitol

June 1, 329 AEDD

Karen DuMouchel's hair whipped wildly from under her hat as she soared along Plaza Parkway in the driver's seat of a candy-pink convertible that didn't belong to her. The convertible's owner was the enigmatic Nikolai Fassnacht, who was riding shotgun and rhythmically thumping the dashboard to the tune of a song that was blaring from an unknown speaker somewhere behind them. Nikolai was very possessive of his belongings, and it was a true testament to their longstanding friendship that he would trust Karen with his prized car.

They were best friends, no more and no less, and they had been since primary school. Nikolai remembered Karen's lopsided pigtails and goofy smile, and she remembered his perpetually knotted mop and buckteeth, and both of them, despite changing so much in physical appearance, had remained more or less the same in regards to personality. Karen almost couldn't remember a time without Nikolai. In all of her memories, he was right there by her side. Even when they were children, despite his then-sloppy appearance, Nikolai had loved order. He functioned well with neatness, with firmness, with strict boundaries.

Karen, however, wasn't like that. Karen had always lived vivaciously, and she had a delightful passion for life that was so infectious it put a smile on even the sourest of faces. Nikolai was afraid of his harsh, stern father, but Karen was fearless when it came to her equally harsh, stern mother. Nikolai taught Karen that sometimes it was necessary to follow the rules, and Karen taught Nikolai that sometimes it was necessary to act independently of them.

They complemented each other well. Twenty years after they had met, they were still going strong. It always irked Karen when people assumed they were a couple. There was nothing odd about affection between friends, and game nights in tank tops and sweatpants weren't exclusive to romantic partners. Regularly scheduled get-togethers (she would have called them 'dates', but that would only set off the people who decided the word came with an automatic connotation) come to pass when two people have been friends for many years, and although Karen would have loved to have a game of cards or a backgammon match, she knew that she wouldn't have time for that today. No, Nikolai had wanted to talk to her for much less amusing reasons.

Angling the convertible around a corner, she pulled into the driveway of a house on Witherkemp Road.

Karen knew this house well. She had feasted many times within its creamy yellow walls, consumed fine food off of porcelain crockery, downed all manner of beverages from beautiful teal glassware, relaxed for hours in the velvet-upholstered chairs, and played many a hand of poker on the cherrywood dining table. She knew everything about this house and its inhabitants, for it was where Nikolai lived, along with his younger brother Nigel, who was one of her coworkers.

Nigel was chewing on some kind of confectionary treat when the elder officials entered. Karen greeted him with a pinch to the apple of his cheek and a hug, which she suspected he secretly appreciated even though he tried to squirm away from her. Karen was as much of an older sibling to Nigel as Nikolai was. While Nikolai had succeeded his father as Head Peacekeeper and Karen would someday succeed her mother as Head Gamemaker, Nigel didn't bear those responsibilities. No, that was both a burden and a right to be borne only by eldest children. Nikolai and Karen had no choice in their careers, but Nigel was allowed to pick what profession he wanted to go into, and they had made a friendly fifty-dollar bet on which department he would join. He had only just turned eighteen and many of Panem's chairpeople had a vested interest in which direction he would take, as a promising newcomer to the gubernatorial world.

Karen was delighted when he decided to become a Gamemaker, both because she was glad he would become her coworker and because it meant fifty dollars had just come out of Nikolai's possession and into hers. Karen had been a Gamemaker for several years, was the daughter of the Head Gamemaker, (although not yet the Deputy Head Gamemaker–that position belonged to Jacqueline Muriel) and she loved having Nigel on her team. She was a happy woman, with good friends, a good job, and what she overall appreciated to be a good life.

She enjoyed work, and with the exception of her rather vindictive mother, she liked her coworkers. She thought that Nigel, Jacqueline, Derp, and Rosé were lovely. Especially Rosé. There was something about her that made Karen feel a little woozy, but in a good way, like when she and Nikolai were teenagers and had acquired a bottle of gin. They had passed it back and forth long into the evening, getting more and more ditzy and addled as their voices slurred and they fought hard to walk straight. At that moment they were both somewhat enraptured by the idea of alcohol consumption, so easily amused by the smallest things.

Yes, Karen thought, being in Rosé's company was a little like that. One minute she was composed as anything and the next she was giggling so hard she couldn't talk while holding onto a desk for support. Something about Rosé's presence made Karen go quite weak at the knees, and although she wasn't entirely sure what unfamiliar feelings Rosé was stirring up in her, she found them to be an overall pleasant experience.

She did not want them to end. The only person who was aware of her sometimes laughable, sometimes sappy, always secret thoughts about Rosé was Nikolai. Who would she be to hide something like that from her best friend? No, one thing that Karen loved about Nikolai was how well he could keep things under wraps. He wouldn't tell anyone.

Around the Fassnachts' dining table, Nigel and Karen indulged in some workplace gossip (Jacqueline had been behaving rather oddly of late, wearing oversized clothes and moving slower than normal. Nigel suspected she had been secretly replaced with a body double, which tended to be his standard rationale for off-kilter behavior, whereas Karen thought it was more likely a botched cosmetic surgery.) Nikolai made a pot of coffee and poured it into big mugs for the three of them, then passed out thick slices of quiche. As they tucked in, he shared news of some new edicts he planned to enact in his precinct.

Karen was glad to be among friends, but something weighed heavy on her mind. She had no wish to spoil the jovial mood, but she knew there were more sinister reasons Nikolai had invited her to his house that day. He had sounded so burnt out during their unexpected call and had said he had something confidential to share with her, so confidential that he could not discuss it over the phone.

Others might have elected to approach the situation more tactfully, but Karen thought there was a certain quality to frankness that ought to be admired. It ensured that there were no euphemisms, no beating around the bush, no misunderstandings. She broached the subject plainly, seizing the moment after Nigel had finished telling a funny anecdote about the time a mutual acquaintance of theirs had accidentally confused a realistic piece of decorative fruit-shaped soap for the real thing. "Nikolai, earlier on the phone, you mentioned you wanted to talk about something involving a spy in your department. Would this be a good time to take care of that?"

Nigel looked at her, then to Nikolai, and then back again. "Plausible deniability. I think I'll leave this one for you." Picking up his coffee, he left Karen and Nikolai behind at the table as the latch of his bedroom door clicked shut. Nikolai sighed.

"Yeah. Long story short, somebody's not playing by the book. A Peacekeeper somewhere is conducting illegal surveillance. They dropped off a recording of an old lady in the districts talking about a rebel contact in the Capitol. I have a pretty good idea of who they are, that's not the problem. I'm continuing to keep tabs on them so we'll know more about the rebellious activity and have the upper hand in case of a revolt. No, the issue is that whoever decided to go rogue is monitoring my office. And that they somehow got these highly regulated microphones out to Eleven, caught the lady talking about an uprising, and showed enough people to get her shot but not so many I'd hear about it. This was an unauthorized execution. I don't know the identity of this Peacekeeper, and I don't know their agenda. This needs to be contained somehow, and I wanted your advice about who to talk to."

"So what's the goal here?" Karen was immediately intrigued. Sure, it might have been a serious threat to national security, but it was always exciting when she got to collaborate with Nikolai. Besides, Karen was tough, and she knew she worked well under pressure. She was always glad to be of service.

"We need to root out this renegade Peacekeeper as soon as possible, without letting on that we're searching for them."

"May I suggest something?"

"Of course."

"I think you need to have all the top government officials in on this. Initiate a manhunt. Involve all of the Gamemakers, the tribute teams, the folks from the Remake and Training centers. Then cover up the kerfuffle with all of that by openly investigating somebody else."

"The Capitol contact."

"Yes."

Nikolai looked at Karen thoughtfully. "That just might work. I get what you're trying to say here. I don't want to steal your thunder, though. Care to expand on your idea?"

Karen grinned at him. This, above all else, was why she adored him so much. He could read her mind and finish her sentences, but let her triumphantly deliver her grand plans anyway. "I'd love to. Now, it's going to be obvious we're on the offense here, trying to catch someone or another. We break the news on television that the rebels have an inside man and that it'll take everyone working together to uncover them. The Peacekeepers' attention will automatically shift to managing the effort, which will dominate the free time of our spy. We only tell high-level, non-Peacekeeper officials of our true purposes and work together to lure whoever's responsible out into the open. Then we frame them as a patsy, tell all of Panem that they're the rebel contact, and let the actual contact think they're getting away scot-free while you continue to record their correspondences to keep our leaders informed about the rebels' objectives for years to come."

"Why Karen," Nikolai said with a sly smile, "I daresay I think it's brilliant."

"Why Nikolai," Karen said with an even slyer smile, "I daresay I agree." It was impossible for her to keep her serious voice up for long, and she and Nikolai both collapsed in peals of laughter.

"It truly is great, though. I'll call up Lula Jacobsen tomorrow morning and request a meeting with the Shakiras to tell them of the news."

"Both of them?"

"Unfortunately." The subtext of his statement, Karen knew, was that President Willoughby Shakira was a rather volatile man, and it was much better to speak to his wife first if it was at all possible. Which, in this case, it was not. President Shakira had been known to lose his temper and seriously injure people who proposed ideas he considered to be foolish or needlessly complex. Eurydice Shakira handled plenty of his affairs for him, and was a much fairer example of governance than her husband, in Karen's private and fairly insignificant opinion. However, Eurydice had no further political ambitions and acted solely as a sounding board and advisor. Still, Karen knew the President wouldn't do anything violent in Eurydice's presence, which calmed her worries.

Although she had fears, she also had faith, and her confidence in Nikolai's persuasive abilities was insurmountable. She lifted her mug to her lips and gave him a teasing jab to the ribs. "You got this, Nik. There's not a stubborner bastard in all of Panem."

"That's the highest compliment I've ever received. Except for the instance with Nigel when he told me my hair reminded him of chocolate icing."

"It does have that fwoop-y quality to it." She of course tried to mess up his hair, but it was so shellacked it seemed impervious to bullets. Her fingers couldn't crack his helmet of pomade. In fact, she mused, it was a miracle his comb was still in one piece. He probably had to dissolve the product with rubbing alcohol every night.

She often entertained rather strange thoughts, but she had long ago dismissed the idea of normality as too old-fashioned. The most popular Capitol fad at the moment was toting around rolling filing cabinets on bedazzled leashes, decorating them with accessories like tutus and fedora hats, and naming them after deceased Hunger Games Victors. If you asked Karen, that was much stranger than speculating about the hidden quirks and routines of the people close to you.

It was Karen's curious nature that caused her to wonder ceaselessly, as well as what inspired her to aid Nikolai in his mission. If she had known about the ordeal that was to follow, and was a little harder of heart, perhaps she would've told him to take a hike when he first called her. However, Karen could not predict the future, and besides, she was far too kind and loving to rebuff him. Strangely enough, in the end, it was those very two qualities that drove her to madness.

Hey y'all!

First of all, I've received a total of eight awesome tributes so far, so thank you to those that have submitted! There will be four more prologues after this one. The next will be released on 18 July, because I have to travel without my computer for a little bit, so although I won't be able to update the submission tracker or sponsor points on my profile, I can still answer PM's on my phone.

I forgot to tell you about the sponsor system last time, so I'll do it today. I offer sponsor points for specific things, namely submitting tributes and leaving reviews. These points are cumulative with points you may have earned in my other stories. You can check out my profile for info about earning sponsor points, but keep in mind that the shop is specifically for my other story and neither the items nor the prices are for Reprisal.

If you have any questions, you can always PM me, and I look forward to seeing what else you can come up with!

–LC :)