And then she’s bursting through the forest into a small clearing and there she is—there’s Prim, all tangled in a net, her eyes wide and scared and wet and brown—

Brown?

Katniss skids to a halt, her brain finally catching up to her in one split second as reality slams over her.

She’s in the games.

That girl, tangled in the net—it’s Rue.

Not Prim.

Rue.

Prim is safe. Prim is at home. Prim is not in this arena— never this arena.

Katniss’s heart slows down. She releases a breath. It’s just a net. Katniss can handle a net.

Rue , she almost calls out, the start of a smile on her tongue, when there is the smallest, tiniest, wisp of a crunch to her left. She doesn’t even think. She turns and shoots. There is a thunk as the arrow hits its mark—a boy—District 5?—who stares at her, wide eyed and open mouthed as he falls, a spear tumbling from his hand.

He’s dead before he hits the ground.

Rue screams again, and Katniss turns away from the boy, trying to ignore that she just killed a person—a living, breathing human person —but it was for Rue (for Rue!), and she is running again. Katniss throws the net off her, and Rue throws herself at her. Katniss catches her, burying her face in Rue’s hair, breathing in her scent, dirty and metallic and musty, but alive .

Katniss , Rue cries into her arms. Katniss .

Prim , Katniss does not say. Prim .

Katniss only tightens her grip on the little girl in her arms, her heartbeat slowing and relief flooding her body.

They are safe.

Both of them are whole and alive and safe.

They’re safe.

For now.

***

If she had been anyone else, she wouldn’t have noticed him. But she grew up in a household that shook when the head of it entered, where you always had to be on alert—on guard.

A household where you had to learn how to make yourself small, quiet, and above all, fast. If you weren’t alert enough, invisible enough, quick enough, you wouldn’t survive.

Sometimes she thinks the games were made specifically for her. Or that maybe he had seen the games and the state of their finances and had known she was likely to be reaped, and so he had decided that the best way to prepare her was to train her. Maybe this was the only way he knew to protect her. Maybe his cruelty had actually been kindness.

An act of love, even.

Probably not.

But the thought was nice. It was all of her “training” that had allowed her to survive this long, that was for sure. It was also the reason she spotted him.

She froze, thinking this was some sort of trap set by the boy, but after a few moments when he didn’t move, she sank low to the ground and crawled closer to get a better look.

He was covered in some sort of colored substance that allowed him to almost blend into the forest floor. She would have been impressed with the shading had she seen him under any other circumstance. But this was the Games. Her eyes traveled down his body to what she thought was his leg. A deep red stripe glared back at her, almost black and soaking through the boy’s clothes.

She approached him slowly, cautiously. It was only when she was inches away from him that he noticed her. He seemed startled, jerking backwards with wide eyes.

He probably thought she was here to kill him.

She probably should kill him.

But she was curious. She always had been, no matter how much she tried to stifle that particular trait of hers.

Curiosity killed the cat, as they say.

She studied him, as his chest rose and fell rapidly in his panic, though he made no indication that he was going to run away. He probably couldn’t , she thought. His leg was really bad. She leaned in closer, and he flinched, closing his eyes tightly as his body tensed. Preparing for death.

She still couldn’t quite tell who it was. Maybe the boy from twelve. How he got so good at camouflage in twelve, she didn’t know. But he wasn’t one of the careers, which was enough for her to relax just a bit.

Though not all the way.

She moved her gaze down to his leg, where the injury was. It didn’t look good. She could tell he had lost a lot of blood. Keeping her face impassive, she flicked her eyes up to his. He had opened his eyes, probably surprised he wasn’t dead already.

He would be soon.

And it would be horrible. She could feel the sun beating down on her back through the trees, and smell the piss from his body. He would die slowly and painfully. A terrible fate.

She sighed, but so quiet and small that no one but her could hear or see. She stood up. She met his gaze again. He didn’t look scared anymore. A little confused. A little pained. But mostly tired.

She could understand that.

And perhaps that’s what made her stick her hand in her pocket, kneel down, unfurl his shaking fingers, and press two small berries into his palm before sprinting away once again, gone as quick as she appeared.

A minute later, a cannon boomed throughout the arena.

***

Clove was a natural killer.

She was born one, stealing her mother’s last breaths as she took her first ones. Her father didn’t hold it against her. She was lucky like that. She knew some people would have held some resentment for this child, a stranger, taking away the love of their life, but fortunately, Clove’s father hadn’t cared much for her mother anyways. He didn’t really care much for Clove, either, except for when she made him.

She killed for him in the beginning because he always had had a fascination with the games. She thought he’d like it if she could win for him. But then she found she quite liked it, the killing. And then she started killing for herself. A modern woman, she liked to think. She was so excited to volunteer, especially when she saw it was Cato she was going in with.

Here was some real competition. He would be fun to play with, but even more fun to kill. She smiled every time she thought of it, taking his face in her hands, gently, soft, caressing, before she snaps his neck and he crumbles in her arms, his body slumped against hers, his head tucked into her shoulder, and she would kiss the top of his head and lean him back, brush his hair out of his eyes, and then let go. He would drop to the floor like deadweight, because that’s what he’d be—dead—and she would have been the one to kill him, she would have had that power, and she would have been victorious. She thought about it a lot.

In fact, she was thinking exactly that when Thresh smashes her head in.

***

Thresh shakes when he kills Clove.

He makes it look like rage, because that’s what they expect from him, and his mother taught him that the best way to avoid the bad things is to be what they want you to be. When you’re defying expectations, you’re not keeping a very low profile. And so when his sponsors look at him and see his muscled arms and tall stature and his narrowed eyes and see a killing machine, he lets them.

Doesn’t matter that he’s only tall because his dad is tall, or that he’s only bulky from all his years logging, and that had he had a choice, he wouldn’t be doing manual labor. Doesn’t matter that all Thresh has ever wanted to do was be a bug scientist. An entomologist, his grandma said they used to be called. They studied insects. She only knew about them because her mom had told her about all the different jobs people used to have.

Entomologist .

He used to whisper the word to himself on those long afternoons endlessly hacking down trees, chanting it like it was his lifeline. A dream to aspire to. He knew he would never get to be an entomologist. Logically, he knew that. But it still shocked him when his name was called during the reaping, shocked him to realize that he never truly would get to study his bugs.

His mentor told him he would have to kill someone if he wanted any chance of survival.

Just one or two kills, his mentor had said, his smile strained and his eyes too bright, just to show them that you can; make their investment look smart. Then you’ll get their help.

Thresh didn’t like thinking about having to kill anyone. He had never killed anyone or anything—even when he was little, he had an intrinsic belief in the value of all living things. He cried once when he accidentally crushed a spider while trying to capture it and release it back into the wild.

But now he would have to kill a human.

He thought that once he got to the arena, he would somehow be so scared that killing wouldn’t seem as hard. But the feeling of horror and deep wrongness about the idea of murder stayed with him even after the games began. If anything, they worsened. To distract himself, Thresh would lay under the stars and recite the names of bugs he knew until his brain shut itself off from exhaustion.

During the day, he would focus on surviving, on getting food to eat and water to drink, mostly subsisting off berries (because he couldn’t get farther than trapping an animal to eat before releasing it as his stomach rolled).

He was three days into the games, still with no kills under his belt, when he saw the boy and girl from one in a distant clearing. He was thirsty, having drank all the water in the pack he had grabbed from the cornucopia.

If you want help, just ask for it , he heard his mentor’s voice in the back of his head.

Thresh knew how to ask for it.

He knew as soon as he saw the two careers what he was going to have to do if he wanted to live. And Thresh did want to live. Maybe it was selfish, especially when there were kids younger than him here who deserved to live more than him, a practical adult. He had turned sixteen a month before the reaping. Little Rue, who Thresh had forced himself not to think about, was only twelve.

Maybe it was because he was selfish, or maybe because he knew he was going to die anyways, but whatever the reason, Thresh felt himself pick up a rock, carefully creep up behind the girl, and bring his rock down on her head as hard as he could.

She crumbles immediately, her body contorting in on itself and landing with a soft thud. He stares down at her, ignoring the career boy’s surprised shout.

Huh , he manages to think before he felt a sharp pain in his back, mushed like a bug .

And then Thresh thinks no more.

***

Cato is angry.

He’s always angry. He’s not angry at anyone in particular. He’s not angry at his situation, or at the world. He’s just angry, always. When he’s awake, when he’s asleep. He’s angry before he gets reaped, he’s angry when he volunteers, he’s angry when he trains, he’s angry when the games start, he’s angry he has to work with Clove, he’s angry when she dies. The only time he’s not angry is when he’s killing someone. That takes the angry away, if only for a minute, and he feels pure ecstasy. It’s a high he has to chase.

He feels the relief when he kills the boy from eleven. But then there’s no left around him who can be killed, so he gets angry again. He stalks through the forest, alone now. He thinks about who is left, and how it should be easy to kill the remaining tributes, if only he could find one.

Girl from five.

Girl from eleven.

Girl from twelve.

He’s surprised any of them have lasted this long, except for the girl from twelve. Katniss Everdeen, with her stupid eleven and her stupid dress. He’s angry just thinking about her.

He gets angrier and angrier, and he gets so angry that he almost doesn’t notice the flash of red next to him.

Almost.

He whips around just in time to see the tiny girl from five shove a knife into his stomach. Cato grunts, surprised for only a moment, and then his training kicks in and then his knife is in the girl’s chest. She gasps, her hands flying down to where the knife rests, lodged in her chest. Right where her heart is. She’s dead in seconds.

As Cato watches the light fade from her eyes, he feels one last stab of euphoria coarse through his veins.

When he bleeds out an hour later, it’s with a smile on his face.

***

It isn't supposed to be them.

They hear the second cannon on the last day during breakfast, only a couple minutes after the first. Katniss’s heart stops beating for a moment, and Rue inhales sharply.

That’s… that’s all of them , Rue says.

There’s something lodged in Katniss’s throat and she can’t swallow.

But that means , Rue starts, and then her voice cuts off.

Katniss stares at her plate, unseeing. Her ears are ringing.

That means we’re the only ones left.

When they had heard the first cannon, Katniss had felt relieved. One more competitor down. She assumed it was Foxface, but it could have been Cato. That would be good. Either way, Katniss and Rue would confront the last of the tributes, and then… and then there would be a winner. Katniss was trying not to think too hard about it. The fact that there was only one winner. The adrenaline was propelling her forward, giving her something else to focus on. A task.

Kill everyone.

Survive.

Protect Rue.

But now there was no one to protect Rue from. No one but herself.

Katniss? Rue whispers.

She sounds scared. Katniss doesn’t look up at her.

Do we… do we split up?

Katniss thinks of Prim, of Gale, of her mother.

Or should we… should I…

Katniss imagines killing herself. She imagines her family watching, Prim sobbing, Gale standing there with clenched fists and his jaw tight. Gale taking care of Prim, of her mother. Them healing and growing without her. She imagines Rue returning to her family, smiling her beautiful smile and being wrapped up in the arms of people who love her.

They’d be okay.

They all would.

She looks at Rue, who is crying, shaking, holding her plate in her little hand so tight that her knuckles have turned white. Katniss closes her eyes.

I’m sorry, Prim, she thinks.

And then she picks up her bow and shoots Rue in the chest.

*

*

*

Ladies and gentlemen, Seneca Crane’s voice crackles through the speakers. I give you the winner of the 74th Annual Hunger Games: Katniss Everdeen.