The Hunger Games: Book Four - How it Might Have Been ... Gale.

Page Thirty-Four

Oenothera

The cell is damp and cold, and there are scratches on the wall. Some cell mate obviously went crazy here - who knows how long ago. I'm still not sure where exactly I am, but I'm guessing, from studying my coveted history book, that this is the Capitol.

The scary man with the white rose pinned to his lapel, calling himself the President, had ranted on and on to his pack of brain-dead scientists for what seemed like hours. I had been sitting on the steel lab table, my bones slowly turning cold, in silence as he had shouted angrily about the abscence of my mother. Thankfully, Mom is safe, back in District Two, with Kuwai. But Uncle Gale...

I can't think about it.

Dad had been 'asleep' in the corner of the lab for a majority of the time the President had shouted. Dad was pale, but at least he was still. When he had been awake before, it hadn't really been my father. He was under some sort of spell.. no. He was being controlled. I almost hadn't wanted him to wake up. When he had passed out on the hovercraft, I had been relieved.

Most of what the President had said had gone over my head. I had blocked out most of what he had said, rendering it unimportant, my mind ticking and my face passive and I calculated ways to escape. But there was no way. I was trapped.

For now.

When the President had begun to talk about The Hunger Games, my attention had been grabbed immediately.

"Call the Gamemakers!" he had demanded. 
"But sir," one of the scientists replied. "There are no Gamemakers left, not since the Rebellion."
The air had turned colder, if possible, and again, another scientist with a lose tongue had been killed. The dull sound of his body hitting the metal floor didn't affect me anymore. This was the fourth man to be killed in my presence.

They had begun to plan the Games there and then, planning my part in it and pretending as if I wasn't even there. But I was there - and I was listening. The President had suddenly noticed me, halfway through a sentence about someone called 'Seneca Crane' - the name had rung a bell. The President had demanded I be taken to a cell.  I had gone quietly, stealing one last glance at my father before I left. He had been awake, standing in the corner, restrained, but calm, his eyes eerily blank as he watched me leave the room.

Now I am sitting in this cell, frozen to the marrow, racking my brain for every morsel of information it contained about the Hunger Games. The books I'd studied secretly, the videos I had watched in Gale's on the ArchivePlayer.... It's all coming back.

I am going to escape. The Capitol are back, and the Hunger Games are beginning again. But this time, my mother is unable to overthrow the corrupt government.

That's why I have to.

I will be the Girl on Fire.