Chapter 13 : The Morning
Haymitch was sober.
That was the first sign this day was different. He sat at the breakfast table with clear eyes, hands steady around a cup of black coffee, watching us eat with an intensity that made the food taste like ash.
"You remember what I said about the Cornucopia."
Statement, not question. Katniss nodded, fork moving mechanically through eggs she wasn't tasting. I did the same.
"Most tributes die in the first minute because they get greedy. They see weapons, supplies, food—and they forget that other people are running for the same things." Haymitch leaned forward. "The Careers train their whole lives for that moment. They're faster, stronger, better prepared. You are not going to beat them in a sprint."
"So we run," Katniss said.
"You run. Both of you. Find each other, get away from the killing ground, survive day one." His gaze moved between us. "Half the tributes will be dead by sunset. Don't be among them."
The lamb stew I'd eaten on the train—that first night when Capitol excess had seemed like a cruel joke—sat heavy in my memory. Everything since then had been preparation for this moment. The parade, the training, the interviews. All leading to twenty-four pedestals and sixty seconds of silence before the slaughter began.
"Eat," Haymitch said. "Every bite could be your last good meal."
I ate. My body demanded fuel anyway, the healing factor burning through calories even at rest. Bread, fruit, protein—I forced it down while my mind ran calculations. The Cornucopia would be chaos. Careers would dominate the center. Smart tributes would grab what they could from the edges and flee.
But I wasn't planning to be smart. I was planning to be invisible.
After breakfast, I made my rounds.
The District 12 floor had become familiar over the past week—every corner memorized, every supply closet catalogued. Now I moved through it one final time, collecting what I could.
The dining table held leftover bread rolls, fruit, small containers of jam. Into storage, all of it. The supply closet near the kitchen contained emergency equipment: a thin mylar blanket designed to retain body heat, a small first aid kit, extra cord. Stored.
A maintenance panel near the elevator had been loose since day three. Behind it, I'd spotted a coil of fine wire—the kind used for electrical work. Now I pried the panel open, touched the wire, and added it to my inventory.
Twenty-three items. Maybe twenty-four. No weapons, but everything else a survivor might need.
The small knife from my District 12 home still sat in storage, waiting. It wasn't combat-grade, but it was mine. The first thing I'd stored in this new life.
I closed the maintenance panel and walked to my room one last time.
The hovercraft materialized above the Training Center roof like something from a nightmare.
Peacekeepers escorted us aboard in silence. The interior was clinical—white walls, metal benches, restraints that felt too much like a prison transport. Katniss sat across from me, her face composed but her hands tight on her knees.
A woman in a white coat approached with a device that looked like a gun. "Hold out your arm."
The tracker injection burned going in. I watched the small metal cylinder disappear beneath my skin, felt it settle against bone. Now they could find me anywhere in the arena. Now I could never truly escape.
My healing factor itched at the injection site, already working to close the wound around the foreign object. I wondered if it would try to push the tracker out eventually, if my body would reject this invasion the way it rejected poison.
Questions for later. If there was a later.
The hovercraft rose, and the Capitol disappeared beneath us.
The launch room was underground.
They separated us at the hovercraft bay—Katniss to one room, me to another. No final words allowed. Just a brief moment where our eyes met, and then she was gone.
Portia waited in my room, holding a bundle of clothing. Arena uniform. Practical boots, fitted pants, a jacket with a slight insulation layer.
"It'll be cold," she said. "At night especially. The jacket will help."
I stripped and dressed in silence while she watched. The old clothes—Capitol luxury, interview finery—disappeared into a chute. Probably incinerated. Nothing from the outside world allowed in the arena except what I carried in my mind.
And in my storage.
The uniform fit well. Designed for movement, for survival, for broadcasting my death in high definition. I checked the pockets—empty, of course. Tributes entered the arena with nothing but their bodies and their wits.
The Gamemakers had no idea what I was bringing with me.
"Thirty seconds," a voice announced through hidden speakers.
Portia stepped closer. Her eyes were bright—tears she was fighting to control.
"I don't do this usually," she said. "Get attached." Her hand found mine, pressed something small and cold into my palm. "For luck."
A button pin. Simple metal, unremarkable design. Something from her own clothing, given in secret.
I stored it before anyone could see, felt it settle into that other space alongside everything else.
"Thank you," I said.
She nodded once, stepped back.
The glass tube descended around me.
Sixty seconds.
The platform began to rise. Darkness surrounded me—the tube passing through rock and earth, climbing toward whatever waited above. My Blind Spot sense was muted here, isolated, with nothing to detect but the walls of my prison.
I closed my eyes.
Not praying. I'd stopped believing in anything like that long before my first death. But remembering. The hospital bed where I'd given up. The cracked mirror in District 12 where I'd seen a stranger's face. The moment on the Reaping stage when I'd chosen to stop waiting.
I died once without living. Not this time.
Light exploded around me.
The arena materialized in a rush of sensory overload. Forest stretching in every direction—green and brown and gold, trees taller than any I'd seen, underbrush thick enough to hide an army. And at the center of everything, the Cornucopia: a massive golden horn spilling supplies across the grass.
Twenty-three other tributes stood on pedestals arranged in a ring. Sixty feet to the horn. Sixty feet to weapons and water and everything needed to survive.
Sixty seconds to the gong.
My Blind Spot sense activated, and the world transformed.
Pressure everywhere. Cameras in the trees, mounted on poles, floating on drones. Gamemakers watching from their control room. Millions of Capitol citizens already glued to screens, betting on who would die first.
But the tributes themselves—that was where the chaos lived. Twenty-three bodies, twenty-three sets of eyes, all focused on the Cornucopia. Nobody was watching me specifically. Nobody cared about the six from District 12.
In the chaos of the bloodbath, there would be gaps. Moments when attention shifted, when observation fractured into a thousand competing priorities. My Blind Spot would find those gaps.
And I would move through them like water.
The countdown hit ten.
I crouched slightly, weight forward, ready to explode off the pedestal. Somewhere in the ring, Katniss was doing the same. I couldn't see her from this angle—too many tributes between us.
Nine. Eight. Seven.
The Career from District 2—Cato—was directly across from me. His eyes were fixed on the sword display at the horn's center. He'd reach it first. He always did.
Six. Five. Four.
The small girl from District 11—Rue—stood three pedestals to my right. She was looking at the forest, not the Cornucopia. Smart girl.
Three. Two. One.
The gong sounded.
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