Victor by Night | Finnick Odair

Turn the Weapons on the Capitol : 8

Chapter Eight

The final day of training ends with our private sessions. We each get fifteen minutes before the Gamemakers to amaze them with our skills, but I don't know what any of us might have to show them.

There's a lot of kidding about it at lunch. What we might do. Sing, dance, strip, tell jokes. Mags, who I can understand a little better now, decides she's just going to take a nap.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

Throw some knives, I guess. Eero said to surprise them if we could, but I'm fresh out of ideas.

As the girl from 5, I'm scheduled to go 10th. The dining room gets quieter and quieter as the tributes file out to go perform. It's easier to keep up the irreverent, invincible manner we've all adopted when there are more of us. As people disappear through the door, all I can think is that they have a matter of days to live.

Peeta and Katniss sit near us, and he reaches over and grabs one of her hands. He asks, "Decided what to do for the Gamemakers yet?"

Katniss shakes her head. "I can't really use them for target practice this year, with the force field up and all. Maybe make some fishhooks. What about you?"

"I keep wishing I could bake a cake or something," he says.

"Do some more camouflage," I suggest, smiling.

"If the morphlings have left me anything to work with," he says wryly. "They've been glued to that station since training started."

We sit in silence awhile and then I blurt out the thing that's on all our minds. "How am I going to kill these people?"

"I don't know." Peeta leans his forehead down on his entwined hands.

I stand up and go sit with Gerard, who has his eyes shut and his head pressed against the concrete. "I don't want any of them as allies. Why did Eero want us to get to know them?" I say. "It'll make it so much harder than last time. Except for Tuls maybe. But I guess I never really could've killed him, anyway. He was just too much like myself." I remember my little ally who killed himself trying to help me. He was only 12.

Gerard looks over at me, his brow creased in thought. "His death was the most despicable, wasn't it?"

"None of them were very pretty," I say, thinking of Nettle and Pocan's ends.

They call Gerard, so I wait by myself. Fifteen minutes pass. Then half an hour. It's close to forty minutes before I'm called.

When I go in, I smell the sharp odor of cleaner and notice that one of the mats has been dragged to the center of the room. The mood is very different from last year's, when the Gamemakers were half drunk and distractedly picking at tidbits from the banquet table. They whisper among themselves, looking somewhat annoyed. What did Gerard do? Something to upset them?

I feel a pang of worry. That isn't good. I don't want Gerard singling himself out as a target for the Gamemakers' anger. But how did he upset them? Because I'd love to do just that and more. To break through the smug veneer of those who use their brains to find amusing ways to kill us. To make them realize that while we're vulnerable to the Capitol's cruelties, they are as well.

Do you have any idea how much I hate you? I think. You, who have given your talents to the Games?

I try to catch Plutarch Heavensbee's eye, but he seems to be intentionally ignoring me, as he has the entire training period. I remember how every public event, he sought me out for a dance, how pleased he was to show me the pictures of me on his computer in the Arena. How he always told me my Games was his favorite.