DISTRICT 8
Boy Juno Phipps
Girl Hilarius Heavensbee
DISTRICT 9
Boy Gaius Breen
Girl Androcles Anderson
DISTRICT 10
Boy Domitia Whimsiwick
Girl Arachne Crane
DISTRICT 11
Boy Clemensia Dovecote
Girl Felix Ravinstill
DISTRICT 12
Boy Lysistrata Vickers
Girl Coriolanus Snow
Could there be a more stinging public reminder of his precarious position than to be dangling there at the end like an afterthought?
After Coriolanus spent a few minutes puzzling over why he’d been brought to the lab, the guard told him he could go in. At his tentative knock, a voice he recognized as Dean Highbottom’s bid him enter. He had expected Satyria to be present but found only one other person in the lab — a small, stooped old woman with frizzy gray hair who was teasing a caged rabbit with a metal rod. She poked at it through the mesh until the creature, which had been modified to have the jaw strength of a pit bull, yanked the thing from her hand and snapped it in two. Then she straightened as well as she could, turned her attention to Coriolanus, and exclaimed, “Hippity, hoppity!”
Dr. Volumnia Gaul, the Head Gamemaker and mastermind behind the Capitol’s experimental weapons division, had unnerved Coriolanus since childhood. On a school field trip, his class of nine-year-olds had watched as she’d melted the flesh off a lab rat with some sort of laser and then asked if anyone had any pets they were tired of. Coriolanus had no pets — how could they afford to feed one? But Pluribus Bell had a fluffy white cat named Boa Bell that would lie in her owner’s lap and bat around the ends of his powdered wig. She had taken a fancy to Coriolanus and would start up a raspy, mechanical purr the moment he petted her head. On those dreary days when he’d slogged through the wintry slush to trade back a bag of lima beans for more cabbage, it was her silly, silky warmth that had consoled him. It upset him to think of Boa Bell ending up in the lab.
Coriolanus knew Dr. Gaul taught a class at the University, but he’d seldom seen her at the Academy. As Head Gamemaker, though, anything related to the Hunger Games fell under her purview. Could his trip to the zoo have brought her here? Was he about to lose his mentorship?
“Hippity, hoppity.” Dr. Gaul grinned. “How was the zoo?” Then she was laughing. “It’s like a children’s rhyme. Hippity, hoppity, how was the zoo? You fell in a cage and your tribute did, too!”
Coriolanus’s lips stretched into a weak smile as his eyes darted over to Dean Highbottom for some clue as to how to react. The man sat slumped at a lab table, rubbing his temple in a way that suggested he had a pounding headache. No help there.
“I did,” Coriolanus said. “We did. We fell in a cage.”
Dr. Gaul raised her eyebrows at him, as if expecting more. “And?”
“And . . . we . . . landed onstage?” he added.
“Ha! Exactly! That’s exactly what you did!” Dr. Gaul gave him an approving look. “You’re good at games. Maybe one day you’ll be a Gamemaker.”
The thought had never crossed his mind. No disrespect to Remus, but it didn’t seem like much of a job. Or like it required any particular skill, tossing kids and weapons in an arena and letting them fight it out. He supposed they had to organize the reapings and film the Games, but he hoped for a more challenging career. “I’ve got a great deal to learn before I can even think of that,” he said modestly.
“The instinct is there. That’s what matters,” said Dr. Gaul. “So, tell me, what made you go into the cage?”
It had been an accident. He was about to say so when he thought of Lucy Gray whispering the words Own it.
“Well . . . my tribute, she’s on the small side. The kind who’s gone in the first five minutes of the Hunger Games. But she’s appealing in a scruffy sort of way, with the singing and all.” Coriolanus paused for a moment, as if reviewing his plan. “I don’t think she stands a chance of winning, but that isn’t the point, is it? I was told we were trying to engage the audience. That’s my assignment. To get people to watch. So I asked myself, how do I even reach the audience? I go where the cameras are.”
Dr. Gaul nodded. “Yes. Yes, there’s no Hunger Games without the audience.” She turned to the dean. “You see, Casca, this one took the initiative. He understands the importance of keeping the Games alive.”
Dean Highbottom squinted at him skeptically. “Does he? Or is he just showboating for a better grade? What do you think the purpose of the Hunger Games is, Coriolanus?”
“To punish the districts for the rebellion,” Coriolanus said without hesitation.
“Yes, but punishment could take a myriad of forms,” said the dean. “Why the Hunger Games?”
Coriolanus opened his mouth and then hesitated. Why the Hunger Games? Why not just drop bombs, or cancel food shipments, or stage executions on the steps of the district Justice Buildings?
His mind jumped to Lucy Gray kneeling at the bars of the cage, engaging the children, the thawing of the crowd. They were connected in some way that he couldn’t quite articulate. “Because . . . It’s because of the children. How they matter to people.”
“How do they matter?” Dean Highbottom pressed.
“People love children,” said Coriolanus. But even as the words came out of his mouth, he questioned them. During the war, he had been bombed and starved and abused in multiple ways, and not just by the rebels. A cabbage ripped from his hands. A Peacekeeper bruising his jaw when he mistakenly wandered too close to the president’s mansion. He thought of the time he had collapsed and lain in the street with the swan flu and no one, no one would stop to help. Racked with chills, burning with fever, limbs spiked with pain. Even though she was sick herself, Tigris had found him that night and somehow gotten him home.
He faltered. “Sometimes they do,” he added, but it lacked conviction. When he thought about it, people’s love of children seemed a very fickle thing. “I don’t know why,” he admitted.
Dean Highbottom shot Dr. Gaul a look. “You see? It’s a failed experiment.”
“It is if no one watches!” she snapped back. She gave Coriolanus an indulgent smile. “He’s a child himself. Give him time. I’ve got a good feeling about this one. Well, I’m off to visit my mutts.” She patted Coriolanus on the arm as she shuffled toward the door. “Very hush-hush, but there’s something wonderful going on with the reptiles.”
Coriolanus made as if to follow, but Dean Highbottom’s voice stopped him. “So your whole performance was planned. That’s odd. Because when you stood up in the cage, I thought you were thinking about running.”
“It was a rather more physical entrance than I had envisioned. It took some time to get my bearings. Again, I have a great many things to learn,” said Coriolanus.
“Boundaries being among them. You’ll be receiving a demerit for engaging in reckless behavior that could have injured a student. You, namely. It will go on your permanent record,” said the dean.
A demerit? What did that even mean? Coriolanus would have to review the Academy student guide so he could object to the punishment. He was distracted by the dean, who pulled a small bottle from his pocket, twisted it open, and applied three drops of clear liquid to his tongue.