count to red { gray }

Pulling a trigger is as natural as breathing. My fingers were honed to perform the small but astoundingly powerful motion of pressing against the trigger. My arms have been molded into those of a gunman executioner Peacekeeper, and my eyes have been trained to aim with precision.

Every step in these boots, every breath drawn in District Six, in which I reign with the other Peacekeepers, has lead up to this moment. It is a moment among many others, drenched in crimson and echoing with the satisfying blast of a gun firing. Gunshots have never made me so much as flinch and blink an eye. Gore has never flipped my stomach over or scarred my eyes.

Scarlet ghosts of the dead do not haunt me. Those whose blood I have rained down upon the concrete of the District Square may turn in the confines of their graves, but there is no force that could break them free to taint my mind with guilt that never surfaced. Scream all they want; it will not reach my ears or strike a chord of remorse within me.

I am constructed of stone and ice, a tower of unforgiving mercilessness that flies the carmine flag of war and retribution. The tattered white cloth, once a flag of pathetic surrender, lies behind me, yellowed by the dust it was left to rot in. It radiates weakness; I exude power and strength.

My steady gaze is perceived more lethal than the gun trained against a man's head. It is my face, an oval of steel armor devoid of chinks, that evokes order in those I cast my frosted gaze upon. My voice is a ray of harshness and scorn and petrifies all who dare cross over the line into breaking the glorious laws of Panem. These laws are forged from the spilled blood of the innocent and the malicious and fortified by the minds of politicians, corrupted by greed. (Not that I mind corruption at its worst.) Laws do not stem from me - though I cannot say they would be any less harsh if they did; I am the messenger of justice, not the ruler.

The justice I deliver is twisted in the eyes of the citizens, monstrous in its own way. White suits mean ruthless demons, servants of their tyrant - and in a certain sense, they are not entirely wrong. But I do not mind if I am laced with darkness and malice, if I am Death himself in the eyes of the people that surround the District Square and stare with fearful eyes. If my white suit is the black cloak and my gun is the harvesting scythe, so be it.

Today, Peacekeeper is not the only title woven into my name. Executioner MURDERER burns crimson in the name Gray Loveless, as red as the blood that has yet to spatter on the concrete, several feet away from where the criminal's family stands, spectating in horror, Peacekeepers being the only barrier holding them back from interfering with the dark affair.

Among them is Delia. Letha. My daughter, and her mother - who I cannot quite call a former flame as there was nothing sparked within me. It is Letha's half-brother, a young man, just a few years above Reaping age, who sits on his knees at gunpoint. But to me, he is not Letha's brother or Delia's son. He is a traitor.

The boy shines with the true heart of a lion. He does not beg for mercy; he knows I will not, cannot, grant him life after his acts of treason. I expect nothing less from someone who would dare plot rebellion against President Snow; it would astound me if he shed a single tear from his steely eyes. He is built as I am: stone and ice. It is the one thing we have in common - will ever have in common - besides Letha and her mother.

Letha is screaming like a little girl throwing a tantrum over a toy she has been refused. But in her eyes that pour waterfalls, there burns something of a greater magnitude than the simple displeasure of the lack of a meaningless toy - sheer despair and horror and blazing resentment. Her blood - half of it mine - must boil with rage; I can hear it in her screams, muffled by the gloved hand of a Peacekeeper nearly effortlessly restraining her feeble attempts to escape her grasp.

She meets my eyes with a pair that match my own. Her gaze is a desperate plead to spare her brother, but there is no glimmer of hope in her red-rimmed eyes. She is broken before the sight that will burn into her mind, eternally etched far deeper than the surface to haunt her. And I will be one of the ghosts that trails behind her - me, though in a different, more heinous form, posed as a white demon with a firearm.

I can live with that.

My finger closes down on the trigger, slowly, drinking in the deed I have been ordered to carry out. There is a moment of hesitation, prolonged by Letha's glare boring into my skin like a dagger raking across a paper target and the grave approaching future of stealing away my own flesh and blood's happiness. But justice must be served, family and emotions shoved to the sidelines.

I count to red, each second a heavy thud of a hammer. One. Two. Three.

And then, click.

BOOM.

One single blast of a bullet, sent darting through the half-brother of my daughter's rebel's head, and it is all over with the crumpling of a traitor and burst of scarlet against the slate gray ground. And when he falls, Letha falls with him, collapsing to the ground in a hurricane of whirling rage and searing grief and agony.

The echo of the gunshot is like a distant cannon, mocking her.