LIKE A CAGED TIGER, Iko paced circles into the marble tiles. Inside the Justice Building, the waiting room and its grave silence felt more like a mausoleum, a tombstone of cold, white marble walls ornamented with silver detail. It was quiet enough in this cavity of a timeless space that Iko could hear the shuffle of Peacekeepers standing guard on the other side of the door, could hear the buzzing static feedback leaking from their comms, could make out every shift of their weapons as they fidgeted in subtle boredom, could recognise the familiar, rhythmic clicks of a magazine getting released and shoved back in, over and over.

Promptly after Reaping ceremony, Alex and Iko had been escorted into the Justice Building, flanked by Peacekeepers. They hadn't spoken once. Not even the few precious seconds alone, away from all the cameras and the crowd. Iko had caught Alex glancing at her askance a couple times, but she let the anger flex its talons in her chest, sharpen its teeth against her bones. When the Peacekeepers led them both to their separate waiting rooms, Iko hadn't met his searching gaze once, not even before the Peacekeepers showed her into the room.

Iko clung to her icy composure until they shut the heavy oakwood doors. The moment she heard the lock turn, she let the control slip. Let the anger surge through her blood, char her veins black. Nobody was going to visit her, anyway, so she used this time to open up the channels of emotion. Channels that she kept shut, locked and bolted, always. Her mother was wheelchair bound, excused from attending the ceremony and unable to look her daughter in the eyes. Iko could count on one hand how many people cared about her, and they were all gathered in the other room, visiting the only person she would lay down her life for.

You are alone. Always have and always will be. The weight of solitude slammed into her chest full-force. But that was alright. It's how she survived. She didn't need anyone. She'd grown up without a father, ignored by her mother. Family meant something different to her.

Save for the plush armchair sitting in the centre of the room like an executioner's throne, the room lacked any trace of warmth. But Iko couldn't sit. Couldn't let herself stagnate. Couldn't stop pacing furious circles around the room, prowling back and forth, the radiant fury wicking off her shoulders like poisonous fume. Because the world was crashing down around her, chunks of debris falling like flaming missiles at her feet, threatening to take her with it, threatening to crush her beneath the weight. Everything was slipping right out of her hands. Slipping out of control, spiralling into chaos. aAll while her mind screamed at the boy in the other room, ripped holes in the walls and tore brick from structure: How could you do this to me? How could you do this to your family? Do you realise only one of us can get out alive? Do you realise you've ruined all my plans?

   "It's all falling apart," Iko murmured under her breath, curling her fingers into fists, nails staking into her palms, harsh enough to split the skin. A flicker of resentment licked at her guts, searing her organs, ugly and sharp and growing. "It's all falling apart now."

Since the moment Alex spilled blood under her knife, the threads of their lives have run irreversibly intertwined. Inseparable binary stars in gravitational orbit, sharing everything from water and snacks to body warmth and flimsy mattresses to houses and memories, traded secrets and stories and scars sheltered under blankets and in the dark. Sometimes it was difficult to distinguish where one ended and the other began. Sometimes it was so easy to see how they'd never let go. Everything Iko has ever let go of had claw marks in them.

When you spend your life by someone for that long the bond of trust solidifies into something unbreakable. Apart, you rest easy knowing they will do everything in their power to keep this bond alive. Together, you are the upper echelon of invincibility. Standing at the apex of the world with the sun under your feet and the world on its knees your symbiosis burns bright and fierce as a star. With this tunnel vision you might kill for each other, you might die for each other.

Betrayal is the last thing on her mind when she's with him. Now, just weeks before she will win the games, claim her glory and bring home the victor's crown and all the rewards reaped from her coldhearted ruthlessness to show that she is stronger, she is better than they are, betrayal makes a home between her ribs, inhibits the cavity of her soul, floods her veins from head to toe.

Fury burned and burned and burned away at the despair ripping a chasm in her chest, immolating every other emotion thrown into the convoluted current threatening to tear down her walls. But she kept her features schooled into the mask of cold indifference she's always put on. her fingers are still behind her back but there's a dark energy festering insider her, surging through her veins and wrapping a clawed talon around her chest and she wants nothing more than to submit to the searing urge to reach out and tear down the fabric of the universe with her bare hands. This isn't right, she wants to scream. You can't take this from me. I will win, but not at this cost. This isn't right. How fucking dare you?

There was only one solution to the problem. One angle she had left to play. She hadn't expected it to come down to this, but cutting her losses was the best option. If severing whatever she had between herself and Alex meant self-preservation, so be it. Hopefully, another tribute would take care of him before she's forced to. Guilt was a knife spinning in her gut, slashing up her organs. She let herself seethe in the agony of her decision for a second. But after the moment lapsed, Iko shoved all that ugliness in a box and buried it under six feet of rage. In this moment, there is only hatred, a messianic inferno purifying her veins.

He volunteered when he knew it was my year, Iko thought, seething. He volunteered knowing I'd have to kill him. He volunteered because... Well, there was no explanation to his actions. Why Alex would deliberately throw her plans into the fire, she didn't know. But theoreticising reasons for this ugly predicament wouldn't help her win the Games.

Impatience blazed under her skin. Nobody had thought to put clock in the room, so she couldn't tell the time. For all of the minutes that'd elapsed, minutes that'd felt like an eternity, Iko had been itching to leave this place behind. This not-knowing... it was driving her insane. A sick joke, Iko thought, bitterly. Now that she got the chance to do something, to go somewhere, they were making her wait for nothing. Waiting with no end in sight... it felt like purgatory.

Stop.

Iko paused in front of the only window in the room overlooking the mountains in the distance. They sky had clouded over, a thin overcast that shone silver, made the dust falling through the air look cryogenic. For an endless moment, her vision blurred as the world seemed to fall away, dissipating into the distance. For an endless moment, she was here and yet she was not. Suspended in the nothing space between the abyss and the subliminal. Iko blinks, pulling herself short of her reverie. The world shifts back into jarring focus once more, and she meets her own gaze as her phantom-like reflection stares back, wolf-like eyes threatening to melt through the glass, brows knitted, lips pulled back into a ghost of a snarl. Distant and empty and furious.

A resonant click of a lock turning punctures the silence. Company. On instinct, her spine straightens, but she doesn't turn around. Iko rearranges her features back into its cold mask, shutting the channels, locking away her anger under the ice, as the oak doors swing open with a dissonant whine. The door shuts with an echoing slam. She watches as the reflection of the old crone's sagging face materialises beside hers as she steps into the room, filling it with the musky miasma of fermented sage. Two ghosts trapped in the glass

The crone smiles, lipless, the wisened wrinkles and carved creases of her dark, kind face shifting like sand.

   "Hello, sweet child," the old crone rasps, coughing violently, and with each hack, her frail, ancient body seemed on the verge of collapse. Iko felt compelled to offer her the only seat in the room, but kept silent.

   "What are you doing here?" she asked, instead, voice low, but lacking menace. Iko eyed the old woman's reflection in the window in skepticism.

   "When you came to my stall earlier today, I didn't realise you were volunteering," the woman said, gnarled hands cupped over the swollen handle of a homemade walking cane. "Do you believe in a god, my dear?"

   "No." The icy bite in Iko's voice sliced through the room, sharper than a blade.

But the crone didn't flinch. "Luck, perhaps?" she pressed.

   "Do not speak to me of such intangible things."

Since she was old enough to walk, old enough to understand why she had no father and why her mother didn't love her, Iko learnt not to wish on luck to save her. She knew better than to count on miracles.

   "So you're a non-believer," the crone remarked, scratching her chin. Her expression remained indistinguishable, misted with curiosity.

Jaw flexing, Iko turned to face the woman. "Tell me why you're here."

Tell me why you care, she wanted to demand. You don't even know me. We only met this morning, and here you are, where my own mother isn't.

Stung by Iko's waspish command, the crone blinked, the white cataracts of her half-blind eyes glimmering in pity. She let out a shaky sigh.

           "I came here because I wanted to give you this."

          In a flash of yellowed nails, the old crone unfurls a trembling fist, and her gnarled fingers blossom like withered petals to reveal the bracelet of sea glass beads sitting like a pearl in her palm.

           Iko's heart stopped.

           "You told me that you couldn't take this because it would be wasted on you." The crone pinned Iko with a searching look. "But that's not true. Bring it into the Games. They'll allow it. No tampering, nothing special or advantageous other than the fact that it's yours."

           Iko pursed her lips. "I can't pay you back."

          "I'm not asking you to."

          "Then what do you want from me?"

          "Nothing," the crone said, letting out a breathy laugh. She burst into an attacking fit of coughs so vicious that Iko feared, for a paranoid moment, the old woman would rupture an artery and die in this room, right there and then. When the crone recovered, her half-blind eyes glimmered with amusement and something that resembled pity. "What is so hard to believe about a gift?"

           Iko fixed her with a dubious look. "People always want something in return."

          "What could I possibly want from you, sweet child?" The crone mused. "People might be users, but some are kind. Some actions don't always need echoes."

           "Not in my world," Iko said. In her world, she traded in favours. Her whole life had been shaped by the harsh sting of metal blades, blood staining her clothes, her teeth, her mouth, her skin. She'd dealt with harsh realities, failures, disappointments, roughhousing from the older kids, violence, and the tutelage of pain. She never let anyone do anything for her; worked for everything she ever wanted. Iko hated owing people. It meant that the power belonged to someone else. When she wanted something, she had to scavenge for leverage. It was either that, or desperate pleas. And Iko was done with begging for scraps.

           "I see you carry your battle scars," the crone croaked, softly, reaching for Iko's hand, cross-hatched by old scars from mishandling weapons and untimely attacks. Tensing, Iko watched the crone with frosty eyes, but let her grasp her calloused hand in her bony, wrinkled fingers. Hands quaking with effort, the crone slid the bracelet onto Iko's wrist, tightening it where the string went too slack. "I know you're well equipped to save yourself, where you're going. You don't need prayers to keep yourself warm. Perhaps a reminder, just so you know that someone cares."

         Narrowing her eyes, Iko pins the crone with an accusatory look. "What's that supposed to mean?"

           The corners of her eyes crinkle as a surreptitious smile ghosts over the crone's wrinkled mouth.

           Brows furrowing, Iko's mouth parts to press further, but before she can demand more, the doors swing open, and the Peacekeepers storm in. "Your three minutes are up," one of them snaps.

           Pointedly ignoring him, Iko grabs the crone's by the wrist as she turned to go.

         "Who are you?" Iko demanded, suspicion staining her tone. "Why are you being so kind to me?"

           One Peacekeeper wrenches the crone's wrist out of Iko's grip, flashing his gun in her face as Iko flicks him a lethal glower, baring her teeth in a wolf's snarl.

            "Remember," the crone said, wagging a finger at Iko as the two Peacekeepers escorted her out of the room, "you save yourself."

            As the woman limped out of the room, the doors slammed shut. With the click of the lock sliding back in place ringing in her ears for an unrelenting minute, Iko found the bitter solitude closing down on her like a bell jar, leaving her to simmer in her own perplexing thoughts and festering loneliness. Swallowing, Iko dropped her to the bracelet encircling her wrist, the sea glass beads glistering in the garish sunlight slanting in through the windows. A kindness without reciprocation, from a stranger, no less. Iko turned her wrist this way and that, admiring the way the light glinted off the glass beads, green in one angle, blue in the next.

         It hit Iko then, a dawning realisation.

          She didn't even get to thank her.

          When the peacekeepers come to collect Iko, when she rejoins Alex outside the Justice Building, she is ice and steel, a void hellbent on destruction, the resolution sitting in her stomach like a stone. Aeneas strides ahead, leading them down the carpeted path bisecting the roaring crowd to the platform. As they walked side-by-side, Iko did her best to ignore Alex, the camera crews, and the feeling that they were stepping onto a cattle car on the way to the slaughterhouse. While Alex embraced the attention, wearing the grin of an angel falling from Heaven, waving to the crowd and the cameras, already slipping into the effortless limelight, the role of the ruthless heartthrob (she could already envision the number of hearts breaking when the light faded from his eyes), Iko kept her eyes trained forward, playing the part of the coldblooded killer, the focused predator. A face that screamed no mercy. Let the Capitol dissect it however they liked.

            Twenty-three tributes standing in-between her and the crown. No room for weakness. She'd gut all of them in a heartbeat if it meant she could come home to the spoils of her victory.

* * *

THE WORLD GOES QUIET when the train doors slide shut with a mechanised whine. Inside, there's not a slab of stone in sight. Nothing marking this District 2 property. Of course, these trains were engineered in District 6, but the interior—the polished furniture, the sleek carriage bar, the velvet armchairs and plush cushions, the chandelier dripping with crystals, the ornamental gold detail—refined by luxury items of District 1. Heaps of food were piled on tables draped with blue velvet tablecloths, an assortment that stretched beyond Iko's dreams. Folding her hands behind her back, Iko had to pinch herself to keep from getting too swept up in the surreal opulence. Every inch of this train screamed Capitol-manufactured. But Iko needed to maintain her focus.

            "Well?" Aeneas said, a cat-like grin stretching his gold-painted lips as he fluttered a clawed hand around the train carriage. "What do you think? Too flash?"

            Struck speechless, Alex scoffed in bewilderment, running a hand through his hair in disbelief. Iko didn't move. In the silence where there's only the sounds of her heartbeat roaring in her ears, Iko counts two beats before the generators kick in, and the train gives a jolt as it starts to move, and with it, the glistering chandelier hanging above them begins to sway and tinkle. Outside, the world rockets and blurs into a watercolour of pictures running together like paint smeared behind the glass. Trees flash by, the mountains diminish into the distance.

          "Even though the trip to the Capitol will be brief, the both of you still get rooms to rest in, if you're feeling drained and want a nap before you have to show your faces to the cameras, again, upon arrival." Aeneas ushered them down the carriage to a set of doors that slid open with a mechanised hiss when they neared, to a separate carriage bisected by a narrow corridor with two identical doors on each side. One for each of them. "You can decide between the two of you which rooms you'll take, if you require so."

           Without pausing to think, Iko put her hand on the door to her right and flicked Alex a blank look, staking her claim over her room before he could initiate a conversation.

             "Come, come," Aeneas sang, clapping his hands. Iko cringed at his vibrant enthusiasm. "Dinner will be served soon. In the meantime, Enobaria and Evander will be waiting for you in the dining carriage. We'll be at the Capitol before sundown, so you should make use of the time as much as you can."

            Since District 2 was geographically closest to the Capitol, it'd take less than half a day for them to get there. so Iko understood Aeneas' urgency to bleed the all the use out of the hours they had on the train dry.

             Alex hazarded a glance at Iko, but she turned away at just the right moment, going after Aeneas as the escort started down the corridor, lion tail swishing behind him, through a set of sensor-automated doors that slid open with a cold hiss, and into the dining carriage. Setting his jaw, Alex let out a slow exhale through his nose, let the frustration tug at his features while nobody was looking. Ultimately, he had to understand why Iko was shutting him out. He'd thrown her into the gauntlet, battling between two of things she didn't know how to choose between. With one last lingering look trained on her back, Alex shook his head and followed.

           We all have our reasons.

           For the life of her, Iko would never understand what practical use the Capitol had for their elaborate decor—especially the candle holders and expensive vases. She'd grown up surviving on the bare necessities. Every one of her possessions were attained out of practicality. Now, glimpsing the extortionate extravagance of the Capitol-owned train, the silenced Avoxes standing like sentinels in the corners of the carriage, waiting to be called upon to be of assistance, Iko felt her stomach curdle. Disdain tugged her lips into a snarl. Nobody on this Earth needed that much money while children outside their little scope of resplendence and privilege were starving to death.

               Both mentors, Enobaria and Evander, were already seated side-by-side the dining table. Suddenly finding herself under their evaluative stares, Iko felt the nerves in her stomach coil, but kept her face carefully blank as an Avox—a girl about Iko's age—with dark hair and dulled eyes pulled out a chair for her at the place directly opposite Enobaria. Nonplussed, Iko Aeneas took a seat at the head of the table where a hollow-eyed Avox had prepared his place for him.

           An Avox made to pull out the chair beside Iko for Alex, but he flashed the mute girl a smile and said, "thanks, but I've got it."

           "Oh, it's alright, Alex," Aeneas said, waving a hand. "This is their job. Let them be of service."

           Alex's smile turned mocking as he held Aeneas' expectant gaze, pulled out the chair for himself, anyway, and took a seat. Evander barely stifled an amused laugh as Aeneas clicked his tongue in disapproval. The Avox retreated into the corner of the compartment, a silent and ghostly presence.

             Folding her arms over the edge of the table, Enobaria regarded the two of them with a cool expression, magnetic eyes skewering through flesh, taking measurements, sizing up her tributes. For a faltering moment, Iko had to fight down the urge to avert her gaze from Enobaria's critical evaluation as her confidence waned and withered slightly. Enobaria was unbreakable as she was indecipherable, steel-eyed gaze piercing and unnerving. There was an archaic, adamantine strength about her, it was in the geography of her features, so carefully composed and so guarded and disciplined it almost looked natural. Even though the years since her victory had passed, Enobaria still looked every inch a coldblooded killer, like she could rip out a man's throat with her own bare hands (or teeth) without flinching.

           Iko sat a little straighter as Enobaria's chilling stare met hers.

            "Your head trainer, Minerva, has already sent us your files from the academy," Enobaria said, the harsh quality of her voice grating against Iko's ears. Enobaria's lips pull into a satisfied grin, flashing her razor-sharp canines. "Very promising, I have to say."

            "I suppose we can hold off discussing game strategy until after the parade," Evander added, twirling his steak knife over his knuckles. Iko's hands itched to do the same, just to feel the weight of a weapon in her hands again, albeit, she restrained herself from the compulsion. Playing copycat wouldn't look professional in front of her two mentors.

          While Iko knew which box to put Enobaria in, Evander was a little more difficult to pigeonhole. At nineteen, he was already bigger than most, stacked with muscle straining against his tan skin, built for power. One punch could crush her skull. But the intimidation stopped at sheer muscle mass. With his boyish grin and friendly eyes and a face that hadn't quite lost its youth yet, you wouldn't be able to tell he'd killed his way to the top.

             "Just a forewarning," Enobaria said, as a line of Avoxes swept into the dining carriage with trays of food balanced on their arms, "no matter how much you hate being touched, you have to force yourself to get over it and just let your prep team do their jobs. Remember: you're Capitol property now, which means the moment you volunteered, you've revoked any rights to privacy. My advice? Learn to get comfortable quickly. Don't lash out at your prep team or your stylist. They're the ones trying to help you win. You need them more than they need you."

            Iko picked up her fork as an Avox set a plate of fish before her. Back home, most people learnt not to touch Iko or risk facing the other end of her blades. Letting things happen to her wasn't her way of dealing with the world. Every step she took to get to where she was now, she had to fight for it. She fought and fought and fought until the language of war was all she knew, and nothing else. Letting strangers put their hands on her without consequence made her feel weak and helpless. Made her feel like she was on the losing end. With a vengeance, Iko stabs her fork into the fish with more force than necessary. From periphery, it seemed that Alex didn't look too happy about the idea of being manhandled by strangers too.

              "First rule in the book," Enobaria said, cutting into her steak. "Trust no one. Nobody is your friend. Not even your allies."

             "Your allies should be the tributes who you think will be the biggest threats to your success in the arena," Evander pointed out. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, you know what I'm saying? Everyone wants to survive just as much as you do. They'll all be looking out for themselves. The only team you will ever have is you—" Evander levelled Iko and Alex with a meaningful look, drawing a line between the two of them with the tip of her steak knife— "and you. So you better work together until the very end, and if mercy has it, someone else will off one of you before the other has to do it. Don't take it too personally. Don't forget that victory belongs to the district first. That being said, is this the first time you'll both be working together?"

             All the air inside the dining compartment seemed to have been sucked out, replaced by a strained dread hanging above them like a deadweight on a fraying length of rope as the two mentors pinned Alex and Iko with expectant looks. Iko felt their incisive scrutiny vivisecting her piece by piece, as if she were a bug beneath a microscope, being prodded here and there. Alex flicked her a pensive look, but she kept her gaze trained on Enobaria.

           "No," Alex said, finally.

          Spearing a piece of meat with her fork more violently than intended, Iko kept silent.

            Alex sighed. "We've known each other since we were eight. It's... it's a long, complicated story."

            Iko's jaw flexed. "He wasn't supposed to volunteer this year."

             "I was told to," Alex snapped, irritation stinging his tone. Screwing his eyes shut, he pinched the bridge of his nose, and exhaled slowly, in an attempt to calm his nerves. "It's my duty to the district."

            Cold shards of horror pierced through her flesh at the same time a wave of white-hot anger swept through her veins. Her grip on her knife tightened until her knuckles blanched. With so much rage cumulating inside, building and building, she felt dormant as a volcano about to erupt, like she could rip the world to shreds. Like she could burn down this entire country and the seven seas with it.

            "Minerva made you volunteer?" Iko snarled, cutting Alex an acidic look. "And you agreed? Did you ever stop to think about how I would feel about this? Or how your family would feel? I was supposed to win, come home, make the district proud. You were supposed to stay and wait your fucking turn. You don't get to take that away from me."

             Anger flared sharply in Alex's lambent eyes. Iko's blood turned to slush. With the rage of a jilted sun god, he let out a harsh laugh like he was ripping out a chunk of air and spitting it back out. "I had no choice," he snapped, a lethal sheen poisoning his tone. "Minerva swapped me out with Julius at the last minute because we both know he's too volatile to be of any use to you. And now I'm here, what do you want me to do? What's done is done, there's no going back."

            The concussive silence that struck them electrified the air, forced Iko to choke down her biting response. Alex rarely succumbed to his temper because he'd told her once that he didn't like how anger took something from him. That it debilitated, rather than empowered. But when he took it out of its shackles, it was slightly unnerving, almost frightening to glimpse this other side to him: the endearing golden boy melting away, morphing into something with teeth and thorns and darkness. There came a certain threshold, with every light-emitting source, where the warmth would start to hurt, and the brightness would begin to blind. A reminder. No matter how gold he shines, never forget his fire.

               Smouldering, Iko glowered into her plate. As much as she resented their predicament, Alex was right. There was nothing they could do to rectify it. Dwelling on hindsight didn't help matters. What's done is done. But that didn't mean she had to make peace with it yet.

           "You could've let Roman go instead," she said icily, in a voice that sliced through flesh.

           The look Alex gave her could've incinerated her on the spot. "That kid? Roman was thirteen years old. He had no prior training, whatsoever. He never stood a chance in the arena anyway."

           "So?"

           Shaking his head, Alex cast his gaze elsewhere. Anywhere but her. The agitation radiating off his body could've scorched the earth. "You can be so ridiculously heartless sometimes."

           "I'm heartless?" Iko scoffed. "Do you know the position you've put me in?"

          Before Alex had a chance to retort, Enobaria cut in. "Enough. Whatever it is between the two of you, pack it in. You need to focus."

          Holding up four fingers, Evander levelled the both of them with a stern look. "Four hours between now and until we reach the Capitol. Use this window of time to sort it out. Once this train stops, you two better be tight as fuck."

          They ate in a smothering silence, the kind that comes from the gallows, or the remains of a city moments after a nuclear bomb went off and decimated everything in its wake, as the two mentors and their two tributes concentrated on holding down their food. After the outburst, it seemed as if they'd detonated something radioactive. Aeneas spared a despairing glance between the four of them, opened his mouth to say something or start some mundane conversation, seemed to think better of it, shut his mouth and shifted his attention to his food. Appetite lost, Iko pushed her food around, still simmering in her anger, yearning to get away from the chemical environment they'd made of the dining carriage as quickly as possible.

           The moment they were finished the Avoxes detached from the walls, moving swift as sentinels as they cleared up the dining table. Without prompt, Aeneas lead them to the sitting area, a separate compartment where they were meant to watch the re-run of the Reapings. Iko stalked over to the furthest corner apart from everyone else, passing the long sofa, which looked big enough to comfortably seat a family of five. She sank into a small chair, isolating herself from everyone else, and kicked her legs over the armrest. Enobaria and Evander took their seats on the aforementioned long sofa, while Alex perched himself beside them, on the end furthest from Iko.

               When the District 1 Reapings began to air, Iko restlessly fidgeted with the sea glass beads of her bracelet as names were drawn. But the moment the volunteering process commenced, her attention snapped to the screen. Out of the corner of her eye, Iko caught Alex leaning forward, beginning his own filtration process. Whilst making inventory of useful allies based on their first impressions, Iko discarded the unmemorable faces. She kept the names of potential allies locked in her brain, mouthing them to herself a beat after their district escort announced it.

Opal. An olive skinned girl who'd volunteered in place of some twelve year old shrimp. Opal's muscular arms were displayed by her sleeveless, sunflower-yellow dress, and the muscles in her back rippled with every step she took. It's without a doubt that Opal has had some form of training. Her vulpine smile was condescending and regal and glimmering with feline arrogance. Opal's male counterpart was a lithe boy named Titus. From the moment he stepped onstage, Iko knew he was a problem. Judging by the irksome, arrogant grin and the flirtatious winks fed to the crowd, it was obvious Titus thought himself something of a half-god. Albeit, as far as charm went, Iko knew Alex had already stolen the contest.

               When the feed switches to the silver banners of District 2, Iko recognises the red paper lanterns fluttering in the breeze, the mountain ranges in the distance. The footage cuts to their Reaping and Iko is pleased (if not, slightly relieved) that her facial expression had remained the way she wanted it to as her onscreen self slinks onstage—aloof and detached, features composed into a cool mask, unreadable, untouchable, unkillable. Alex lets out a breathy laugh as, onscreen, an outraged Yara stalks off with her bruised pride, leaving Iko the obvious choice of candidate. Iko winces internally as Alex volunteers after Roman, and takes his place on the stage beside her.

               District 4 offers up a girl about Alex's size, equipped with flame red hair and power wired in her broad shoulders. Sage. Iko frowned. There was something undeniably off about her, the way she flashed toothy grins at the cameras, equal parts sunshine and school-girl innocence, like she was making friends rather than making impressions. Iko couldn't put her finger on why her gut coiled in alarm at Sage's appearance onscreen, but she wasn't about to ignore instinct, no matter how irrational.

               The rest of the Districts filter through without impression. District 10 procures a muscular boy with dark skin, a hulking figure stalking up to the stage. The resentful glower he cuts at the cameras burned through the screen. Fingers going still, Iko watched the familiar glimmer in his eyes. I know that look, Iko thought. That is a boy who plays like he has everything to lose. A flicker of movement in her peripheral vision caught Alex's spine going ramrod straight as he evaluated the boy—Elias—with keen interest, eyes narrowed, biting down on his bottom lip in contemplation. Scheming face.

Once the feed cut to the two commentators—Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith—who were staple presences in every single Hunger Games, and their voices filled the carriage with their individual critique on this year's turnout, drawing comparisons between past Hunger Games, but all of that flew over Iko's head as her mind turned the list in her head over and over and over.

Opal. Titus. Sage. Elias.

"Elimination should be easy," Evander said, an offhanded remark slipping out of his lips, turned up in a half-smirk as he glanced between Iko and Alex, gauging their reactions. But Iko didn't hear. Nor was she trying to listen to anything Enobaria was saying. Or paying attention to Alex's response. Or Evander's attempts to engage her in their discussion about potential allies. Locked in her own bubble, miles away from the present, eyes still trained on the screen, Iko flicked through the faces she'd encoded into memory, rewound the tapes in her head, reviewing the playback to pick apart their weaknesses, their strengths, making mental notes based on her first impressions as Enobaria's advice echoed in her skull.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

Height. All of them were at least a foot taller than her. She'd have obvious advantage when it came down to agility, but who knew? People could be surprising, and while Iko was assured of her own abilities, she was not complacent. Opal's long limbs would be an advantage in a hand-to-hand combat situation. And whatever weapons she had in the moment could make or break Iko's chances. Titus walked with importance in his step, and the hubristic overconfidence shone through the way he treated the entire Reaping like a pageant rather than a death march. Sage was big enough to rival Alex, and there was something off about her entirely. Iko didn't know what it was exactly that her gut was telling her, but she was about to find out. Elias might turn out to be a dead end, but she wasn't going to write him off. Especially when she knew, firsthand, the look of someone who would do whatever it takes to survive.

Opal. Titus. Sage. Elias.

For the first time in an hour, Iko hazarded a pensive glance over at Alex, who was too invested in something Evander was telling him to notice.

Do not forget his fire.

He must've felt the frost in her stare, though, as his intense gaze flickered to meet hers. Iko cut her eyes away instantly.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

At the same time, she added another name to her list.

Opal. Titus. Sage. Elias.

Alex.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
ya i give up on paragraph spaces
everytime i copy over the text from my pages document it never copies the spacing correctly????? and im too lazy to manually add it myself on mobile????? so whatever here's to inconsistency and ugly formatting! i'll just own it i guess 🙄