12.

It was a good thing that Patch had the flu, because one of the side effects was loss of appetite. Something that was proving to serve him extremely well right now.

He was so exhausted from literally just staring at the walls for hours. He had nothing better to do, really. Marrow was still up there in the tower looking for something for them to eat while Patch tried to figure out the alleged riddle. He was now starting to have doubts that was even what it was.

He'd been at it for too long. He needed to take a break or he was going to lose his mind. So he spent a little time walking around the space. He should get some rest, but he was too wound up, his mind just wouldn't rest. Besides, temporary alliance or not, Patch still didn't fully trust the big guy not to kill him while he was sleeping. Though he supposed that was a pretty ridiculous thing to be afraid of considering the fact that he could have easily finished the job already if he wanted to.

At some point Patch found himself sitting on one end of the see-saw, just sitting there, feeling pathetic and stupid and helpless for the fact that he'd decided to do this. Hadn't Tassel called him selfish for it? For putting his need for glory or whatever reason he thought Patch was doing this above what the needs of his district might be? Yeah, Patch really felt selfish now, like he was living the high life while everyone else was eating scraps. Really, would Tassel have been so much better off in here than Patch? He doubted it, though that could very well be the lack of sleep, water and food in the past several hours talking.

Then there was the Inga problem, which for now was the fact that her face hadn't appeared in the sky tonight. It had made him feel awful, that initial disappointment at the realization that he actually wanted someone from his district, that he wanted anyone to die. But this was Inga after all, and he had no doubt that she was planning to do much, much worse to him right now.

Patch was half tempted to call Marrow down purely out of boredom and have him sit on the other end of the see-saw, but Patch realized that he was so big it might not have helped. Patch would have just been stuck in the air and eventually forced to jump in order to get down.

He thought about this while staring up at the other seat. That's when he noticed, for the first time, that the seat was purple. It was a faded kind of purple, but it was still purple. He scooted off the seat, standing next to the see-saw as he watched it balance itself. The seat that he had been sitting on was purple too. Patch looked up at the wall and saw the purple bricks with the spaces in between them. No, it couldn't be.

But then he looked at the other playground equipment and started to notice some things that he'd inexplicably missed. Like the fact that the wood used to make the sandbox that was straight across from where Patch had been sitting on the see-saw was black.

Patch walked towards the sandbox, suddenly feeling curious, but trying not to get too excited or risk having his hopes quickly dashed. Standing by the sandbox he noticed the three swings had flat seats. And they were…Patch walked over to get a closer look to confirm his suspicions. Yes, they were brown.

Patch looked up and saw that the slide was facing the direction of the swings, the steps to get to the top of the slide on the other side. Descending stairs…Patch walked around and sure enough, there were three steps, and they were all red.

His mouth was hanging open from the shock at this discovery. He looked up at the wall and realized out loud, "It's in the wrong order. I had the wrong order. Purple, purple, black box, brown, three red down. But, what does it mean?"

Patch was about to investigate the area, but, remembering the picture, tried a different perspective. He went back around and walked up the slide, which required an embarrassing amount of effort on his part, and once he got to the top, only then did he walk down the steps. When his feet hit the ground, he heard what sounded like a strange, metallic thud. His feet hadn't made that sound. There was something underneath him.

"Patch!" Marrow called down to him, causing Patch to jump. "Patch, can you come up here, please?"

"What? No, you come down."

"Please just come up, it's important. I, uh, I want your opinion on something."

"No," Patch said simply. The way he said and worked it sounded ominous and Patch didn't fully, or even halfway trust Marrow yet. "You want to show me something then you come down. Besides, I think I've just figured something out so I need you down here anyway."

"Okay," Marrow said, sounding very reluctant. But after a minute or two he did come down, and when he did, he was clutching a round silver container to his chest, on top of which were two long silver cylinders that he was keeping steady with his other hand.

"What is all that stuff?" Patch asked, pointing. "Did you find it up there?"

Marrow's eyes seemed to have a hopeful gleam to them, but it also appeared to vanish as quickly as it appeared as he bent down and gently placed the containers on the ground.

"See for yourself," Marrow said, almost a little too encouragingly as he gestured to the mysterious haul.

Patch hesitated, not wanting to go forward. Especially since Marrow's smile seemed forced and he now had a nervous look in his eyes. Patch tentatively walked towards the pile, bent down and slowly unscrewed the lid of the container and removed it. Stupidly, Patch's first instinct was to look away as if he was going to get hit with a face full of poison gas or a large spider. Or worse, hundreds of tiny spiders. But he didn't smell gas or feel things crawling around his feet, so Patch decided that it must be safe to look.

Inside the container, which had a divider down the middle keeping the food separate, were half a dozen bread rolls that smelled fresh on one side and plenty of blueberries on the other. Patch looked up at Marrow in disbelief. "Is this real?"

Marrow looked relieved at his reaction, almost like he'd needed someone else to see this so that he too could believe it.

Patch quickly screwed the lid back on the container, then grabbed one of the cylinders, and unscrewed that lid. Water. Fresh water!

Patch quickly screwed the lid back on the cylinder and looked up at Marrow, still in disbelief. "All this was up there?"

"It's from a sponsor," Marrow explained a little more confidently. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper and what looked like a tiny white flower. He handed it to Patch who took it, and unfolded the paper. It read 'Thinking about you'.

Patch looked up and gave Marrow an intrigued look. "Have you…got a girl back home with some connections."

"Don't be ridiculous. 'Thinking about you', the daisy, it's a reference to my interview with Lucky. I can't believe someone actually sent me something. I thought…" Marrow shook his head, seemingly trying to get himself to focus. "You really didn't see that come down?"

"No, I was too busy focusing on this," Patch gestured all around them. "A sponsor—wait, so it's for you."

"There's two containers of water," Marrow pointed out. "And I think there was another piece of paper in there next to mine. You must have missed it."

"Really?" Patch unscrewed the large container's lid again and saw that, up against the divider on the berries' side, there it was, a white folded piece of paper. He gently pulled it out so as not to lose any berries on the ground, unfolded the paper and read 'Rooting for you, kid'.

Patch actually felt his eyes start to become teary. He looked up at the sky, hoping that wherever there was a camera that it would catch the message he wanted to send perfectly. "Thank you, Woof."

"And thank you, Hedy!" Marrow called out through cupped hands. "You two must have worked together on this, so thank you!"

Patch chuckled, screwing the lid back on the container, realizing that the two of them were, in fact, a package deal now. Maybe that was a very good thing, especially at the rate they were going.

He folded up the paper, quickly shoved it in his pants pocket, grabbed one of the cylinders, unscrewed the cap and took a quick sip, stopping himself before he finished half of it in one gulp. As he screwed the cap back on, he started to cough a little and swore internally.

"That cough again," Marrow sounded almost as if he was thinking out loud when he'd meant to keep that to himself.

Patch waved him off. "This is a game changer. This'll keep us going until we find something—if we find something. So we'll need to pace ourselves with all of it. But, here, come check this out."

Still holding the cylinder, Patch led the way towards the other side of the slide. He walked back on the spot that he'd discovered and jumped once on top of it, smiling eagerly as he did so. "Do you hear that?"

That hesitant look was back on Marrow's face. "Is that…is there a hatch door under there?"

"I don't know," Patch said excitedly. "Here, help me move this slide."

Marrow picked up the slide without much effort, much less help from Patch, and sat it to the side. The two looked down on the ground curiously, trying to find the source of the sounds they were hearing.

Patch walked over the ground that the slide had once been on and jumped slightly, listening for more of those metal sounds. The effort made him start coughing again.

"Here," Marrow said gently. "Let me."

Patch was too busy coughing to argue with him. In the time it took Patch to catch his breath, Marrow had apparently discovered something.

"Patch, come over here!" he said.

Patch looked over at him and saw that Marrow had easily peeled back a layer of what appeared to be fake grass, and there it was as predicted: a square metal hatch door with a short metal handle on the right side. Marrow grabbed the handle and lifted it up, and that actually did look like it required some amount of strength. When the hatch door opened they saw that there was a ladder leading downwards into the unknown.

Marrow looked awestruck. "Am I seeing things?"

"No," Patch assured him, grinning ear to ear. "I think we just found our way out of here."

…

Grandfather told Nona about the day religion was outlawed. Or more specifically, the speech made that would lead to the law being passed.

Beatrix Vroom had been the person who'd given the speech. A senator from back when there had still been a Mexico, a Canada, and a United States. There had also been a place called the Netherlands that had existed an ocean away. That had been where Vroom's parents were from before they came here to what would become Panem years later.

Grandfather had been raised not to believe in any Gods, and growing up this hadn't changed for him. Before the law was passed, he'd never opened a piece of text meant to educate people on the Old Gods. His only education on the concept had been what he saw other people do with it. All the excuses for violence, the dismissal of science and medicine, the ability to be forgiven for otherwise unforgivable acts, which he had found especially preposterous when it was revealed that the wrongdoer had shown no faith in the Old Gods before they'd required forgiveness.

So when he heard Senator Vroom's speech, he'd been so inspired that he'd memorized it. And to this day he still felt that all of her points were valid and fair. Objective, dispassionate. All about necessity and saving the human race.

"We are a people," Vroom had said. "We are one species. And right now, our species is at the risk of becoming extinct. We squabble like children insisting that we are right about matters when a compromise can be reached far more efficiently than this. We are making it complicated. We are choosing not to be productive. We insist on division and we demand there be a winner and a clear villain. But let me rid you of this delusional dream: No one in the world with a problem made that mess all on their own. The most evil, amoral people needed to be held up so that they could oppress whatever masses would follow them. You can look to your left, to your right, up at me or others in power, down below to those on the street and in a gutter, to the heavens themselves. Look in a book, look in a mirror. The problem is all around us. We are the problem. Our prejudices and insistence on division has made us weak.

"That is why now, more than ever, when all hope seems lost, we must stop looking to false prophets, stop giving money to pretty houses that contribute nothing aside from sheer good will. Go to war, persecuting our neighbors, imprisoning, neutering and breeding our young, forcing, insisting, demanding the same cycle be perpetuated until the end of time. Now is not the time for faith, or prayer or even simply talk. It is a time for action. A time for you to decide if you want to hold onto your prejudices, hold onto this idea of what may be or may become of us, or take control and try to solve the problems and answer the questions right in front of you now. Our fate is not in the hands of a so-called benevolent force that we cannot even see, it is in our own. We have the power to say no. No to drugs, no to violence, no to overindulgence. We can ration. We can give what excess we have of something to those who have less. We have the power to make a change. It's within us. And it's called courage, not faith."

Grandfather loved that speech. And Nona had to admit that just hearing it made her feel greatly inspired, to do what, she wasn't quite sure. Which begged the question, why did Grandfather want to study the Old Gods if this lady was right about so much?

Grandfather had smiled at her, but she noticed that his eyes also seemed a little sad. "It's not so much about faith or belief, it's about the freedom to believe and read what you want. The speech was true enough, but the world didn't get better or worse without the Old Gods. It's people, it's always people. And when people tell you what you can and can't read, that is the truest sign of a corrupt system. So…it's more an act of defiance, this education that I'm passing onto you. A small act that probably won't mean much in the long run, but that should not suggest that it means nothing."

Nona thought about this as she watched all those faces flash across the sky. Nine faces. Nine tributes. Nine children. Just like her. Dead. And all the people here were responsible. People that she had to sleep next to and pretend like she didn't feel unsafe being near.

Nona said that she would take the first watch, although it seemed unlikely that anything would happen given that the walls hadn't moved once after the sun had gone down. Still, she wanted to be as far away from the others as possible, and she definitely wanted to be armed at all times. So she walked around the space all along the walls with the ricasso of her sword resting on her right shoulder, gripping the hilt with her right hand while gently running her left all along the surprisingly smooth stone walls. From time to time she would look up, almost as if looking for a way out. Though she knew that she was unlikely to find one up there. There was no way that it would be that easy.

Then a cold chill suddenly ran through her. She stopped in her tracks, slowly looked behind her and saw that Inga was several feet behind her, standing still. Nona wanted to ask her what she was doing, but something forced her to keep her mouth shut. The two looked at each other for a long time, and Nona felt her breathing get heavy, but she tried not to let her nerves show. Instead she took the sword off her shoulder and started to flourish it, never breaking eye contact with Inga who didn't blink once. She just seemed to be following the sword's movements, almost fascinated, and yet, not impressed. In fact, she seemed almost amused.

And Nona knew why. She'd proven that she was good with a sword, an expert even, but she had yet to prove that she was willing to use it, especially if her life depended on it. So maybe that was what Inga was doing now, she was testing her to see how she would react if the situation presented itself. Would she cut Inga down if it came down to just the two of them? Nona would have liked to think so. After all, she had told Grandfather that she would only take a life if someone tried to take hers first. And it certainly seemed as if Inga was itching to take a shot at her.

So Nona raised the hilt of the sword, aiming the point of it in Inga's direction, again, not breaking eye contact with her. Then Inga actually burst out laughing, turned around and walked away. Nona held the sword with the point facing downwards and felt her heart start to sink. Was that a good thing, Inga not seeing her as a threat, therefore not someone she should target right away? Or was that a very bad thing in its own way? After all, someone who wasn't a threat was also someone who could be easily destroyed. And right now, Inga was trapped in here with her.

The next guard shift was Servius', and Inga seemed content to just go to sleep, or maybe she was faking it. Either way, Nona was laying down gripping the hilt of her sword tightly in her hand, too afraid to even shut her eyes. When she watched Servius walk behind the cornucopia, Nona, as quietly as she could, got to her feet, still firmly gripping the sword.

Servius seemed surprised to see her and opened his mouth to speak, but she didn't waste any time. She leaned in as close as possible and whispered to him, "She's dangerous. District 8. She followed me around while I was on my guard shift, she was trying to intimidate me. We need to cut her loose."

Servius' eyes went wide and he whispered back, "What are you talking about?"

"She's crazy. Do you understand? She's going to kill us all one by one and we are trapped in here with her. We need to get rid of her."

"How? You mean—"

"I mean send her out there. Say that she's the strongest of us all and that she's the only one who can do it. Call it a scouting mission."

"She'll never believe that," Servius argued. "She's gonna know we're—that you are trying to get rid of her."

"Just me?" Nona asked him incredulously. "You want her here? You can sleep while she's in here with us? Because I can't."

"It's better to have a lunatic on our side than out there planning her revenge against us for banishing her from the safety of this space."

"Supposed safety," Nona retorted bitterly. "We don't know if we're safe in this spot, or at least if we're gonna be safe here for much longer. They may force us to move. The Gamemakers, I mean."

"Look," Servius said sternly. "If you want her gone, don't make us do your dirty work for you."

Nona blinked, taken aback. "What are you talking about? What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," Servius said, as slowly and delicately as he possibly could. "If you want her gone, you have a sword. You remember what Mr. Meagle said?"

Nona worried that she might become sick again as she remembered, out loud, what their old combat instructor from school once said. "'To practice with a sword is preparing yourself to slay'."

Servius nodded. "And you chose to pick up a sword all those years ago. Look, if you want her gone, I'm not gonna get in your way, and I don't think anybody else will stop you either, because you're not wrong. And if you need help, I'll help you. But you need to be prepared to do what needs to be done."

"I—" Nona couldn't believe what she was hearing. This was someone that she had known since childhood telling her that she would need to murder someone else, and that if she chose to then he would help her. But he wouldn't banish someone with her. "I can't do that."

"Well," he said, shrugging. "Then I guess she's here to stay. For now."

Nona was dumbfounded as she watched Servius walk away from her. She looked around at all four walls and wondered, for the first time since she was chosen, and, she feared, not the last time while she was in here, What have I done?