Watch a prodigy create {Geebs}

The day dragged on. I spent today in the combat stations, trying to learn how to duck and roll and throw a variety of sharp objects. I wasn't used to tossing anything with precision. My muscles were primed from years on the ranch. I was taught to heft hay and shovel waste. I could lift a seventy five pound calf, but I couldn't throw one at a target.

I slipped into the dining hall for a quick dinner, filling my plate with the food that reminded me the most of home. Cornbread, beans, and water. There was plenty of decadent food I'd never tried before, but what I needed in the moment was home.

I finished quickly, walking out into the hallway to head to the elevators when my heart stopped. One of the younger tributes, a girl, was standing in front of a message written in what I at first thought was blood. I saw the jar of preserves in the girl's hand, her fingers dripping with scarlet.

My eyes checked the hallway for any Peacekeepers patrolling. An Avox stood at the corner facing away from the scene, but that was it. Quickly, I jogged up behind the girl and grabbed her upper forearm.

SNOW SUX dripped long thin lines of raspberry down the clean Capitol wall.

I point the girl towards the elevators and start marching her over.

"Do you have a death wish?" I whispered angrily at the girl, my eyes still scanning the hallways for any white uniforms.

Frustration rattles my brain, the familiar feeling brought on memories of Kahinta whining in the middle of the night. To be young is to be ignorant.

"Yes! My wish is to finish that skull before it's time to go to bed!" the little shit slips under my arm and runs back to the scene of the crime. I follow her, insistent on getting her out of the hallway. If any Capitolite were to turn the corner the young girl would certainly have a mutt thrown at her back the instant she got in the arena. She's finger painting on the wall again and I grab her arm a little more roughly than I intended. I wish she could understand that now was a time for survival. Here, behind closed doors, were they could do anything to you and no one would know.

Her fingers swipe a few more times against the wall, completing the rudimentary skull.

"Being here is a death sentence already. Did you seriously think anyone here could do worse than that?"

I look into her young face. She just a year older than Kahinta, and just as stubborn. Kahinta wasn't terrified of Peacekeepers or danger, she was unburdened and free. She didn't hear about what officers of the peace do behind closed doors. Ma hides her away inside when there's a public whipping, or when they march prisoners to the train to be sent to the detention center.

I've seen the few that come back, they don't look human. I've seen the blood in the district square, the scars on cowboys' back they think no one notices while they tend to their cattle.

Here, in the Capitol, they had a million different ways to kill you. In the Arena they only had to press a button to do it, but they'd never allow it to be that quick. They'd draw it out. A mutt would rip your skin apart, exposing bone but never kill you. They'd lower the temperature at night until you lose a toe, but not kill you.

I look down at the girl and let me fingers fall from her arm. It was useless. She was going to be thirteen and snarky, and she'd pay for it.

"Yes."

I turn towards the elevator. I didn't need to be considered an accomplice.