7. The Escapologist - Treacherous

Mirabelle Cropper, District 11, 76th Hunger Games, Placement to be Determined

The Nines were tight.

Mirabelle had managed to pick up a lot about her opponents by the way they shook their district partners' hands.

The girls from Two and Five, for example, had both glared at their district partners for the entire handshake. For Five it was understandable. She was a skinny, mousy little thing who took one look at her big, muscular victor's grandson volunteer district partner and must've realised straight away that he'd be prioritised over her. For Two it was less obvious. Both the girl and the boy from Two seemed to be pretty standard Careers. There was something suspicious going on there which Mirabelle resolved to keep in mind.

Then there were the district pairs who'd clearly had more positive relationships before their games. The Threes had embraced on the stage. It seemed as if the Capitol had rigged a pair of childhood sweethearts into the games to punish Three for the Victory Tour Attack. Childhood sweethearts who just happened to have the same surnames as two of the rebels who'd taken part in the attack.

The Nines were a little more subtle than the Threes, but Mirabelle had still caught the knowing look that'd passed between them. Mirabelle doubted they were in a romantic relationship, or at least, if they were, they were smart enough to hide it. Perhaps they were friends, or classmates.

Mirabelle had also heard rumours from a few of her contacts in the peacekeepers about the state of some of the other districts since the Victory Tour Attack. In Eleven, there'd just been a peacekeeper crackdown and a few riots in response to the crackdown that'd been shut down easily. But in Five, Nine and Ten, citizens had started taking justice into their own hands and forming posses to hunt down suspected rebels. Out of the three districts, the situation in Nine was definitely the worst. While the posses in Five seemed willing to cooperate with the peacekeepers on some level and the posses in Ten had the common goal of protecting Fawkes Chau, the posses of Nine were disorganised. They all had different definitions of what a rebel was, and they were prone to accusing each other of rebellion and fighting it out.

Perhaps Torte and Gregory had once been members of the same posse.

Mirabelle couldn't help but wonder, would she fit their definition of a rebel? She'd spied for the rebels during the war, sure, but she'd also spied for the peacekeepers.

Now the Nines were looking at Mirabelle from across the training centre like they'd seen her from across the bar and they liked her vibe. In the alliance sense, not the polyamory sense. Shame. Mirabelle could tell from one look at them that they would both prioritise each other over her.

Eventually, the Nines approached her.

"Hey," Torte said. "Would you like to join our alliance? We saw that the Sevens and Tens are so close and figured, why can't us Nines have something like that with our brothers and sisters in Eleven?"

Lady, I am not your sister, Mirabelle thought. But she nodded enthusiastically and said "Sure, I'd love that!"

Mirabelle's aunt had told her when she was a little kid, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." So she'd learned that the best way to get by in life was to tell everyone exactly what they wanted to hear. The peacekeepers, the rebels, and now the Nines.

By the last day of training, Mirabelle was sick of her allies.

Torte and Gregory told her stories about everything they'd achieved with their 'comrades' back in Nine, stories of brawls between different posses and broken bones, of clubs and knives and fists. It was impressive that a bunch of kids from District 9 all gathered together could do so much damage, but it was nothing compared to a peacekeeping force or an organised group of rebels with a fully-stocked arsenal of guns and bombs.

Even worse, the Nines had decided to join the Careers. Without Mirabelle.

"This benefits all of us," Gregory had explained. "We can use our influence in the Careers to keep them from targeting you. And you can sweep in and help us when the Careers turn on us. We know you're stealthy enough to pull this off. You can be our shadow."

"Okay," Mirabelle had said. "That sounds like a plan."

But in reality, Mirabelle had been watching.

The Careers were a treacherous alliance. They'd been in an unusual position since District 4 had been unable to produce volunteers this year. At first they'd recruited the Fives, since the boy, Guston Starkwain, was a victor's grandson and a clear favourite to win, but then he'd been alienated by his allies picking on outliers and he'd left them to join the Sevens and Tens, taking his district partner with him. It was obvious to Mirabelle that the Nines had only been brought in to replace the Fives.

Then there were the Careers themselves. Mirabelle could tell that the four of them were doomed. Minaret, the leader of the alliance, ran it like a dictator. All the other Careers hated her, but the Nines couldn't seem to see through the friendly façade she put on to keep them in the alliance. Sceptre was a weak-willed yes-man. Hephaestion was the biggest and strongest tribute in the alliance but all the other Careers hated him because he'd sided with Guston over the Careers picking on outliers. It seemed inevitable that Hephaestion would turn on the Careers and run off with Guston's alliance. The only questions were when, and who he'd take out when he betrayed them? And then there was Tsarina, who seemed to despise all of her allies and only sided with Minaret because she hated Hephaestion even more. Once Hephaestion was dead and the other Careers no longer had a common enemy, Tsarina would probably turn on the others. Maybe even sooner, as she seemed to be pretty volatile.

This year, the Careers weren't a force to be feared. They were a house of cards just waiting to collapse. And Mirabelle wasn't going to bet anything on her two 'comrades' who'd thrown themselves onto that pile. In fact, she was beginning to feel like the best course of action would be to stab them in the backs herself.

Mirabelle Cropper refused to be anyone's shadow. If she was going to win these games, it was clear she'd have to do it alone.

It took a lot of restraint not to make this chapter the Treech chapter.

Here we meet our second POV character for A Traitor's Tale, and we learn how Mirabelle earned her title as one of the titular traitors. Mirabelle and the Nines didn't get a lot of attention in Yours Faithfully, so it was fun giving them a chance to shine in this story.

Our next act will be The Archer. Yes, there's an archer at this circus. No, it's not Katniss.