Hunger games

The cold in District 12 was not like that of other places. It was not a clean cold that heralded snow or frost. It was a dirty cold, a cold that seeped from the bowels of the earth, impregnated with coal dust and the stale breath of the mines. It was the cold of those who rise early to work in darkness, of those who sleep hungry and wake hungrier. It was the cold of resignation.

The people of District 12 knew that Grave was a hunter. That was enough. But the truth was darker and more precise: Grave Blankell was a Human Hunter, a title the Capitol granted sparingly and only the most lethal could possess. He tracked deserters, rebels, fugitives - men and women who believed they could escape the yoke of Panem. Grave found them where no one else could, in the depths of the forbidden forests, in the forgotten tunnels beneath the cities, in the sewers where the desperate went to die. He found them and delivered them to the Capitol. Or he killed them, if that was the order.

From her first breath, Alianelle was a piece of a larger machine. At six months, Grave began taking her into the forest, strapped to her chest in a leather carrier while he hunted. At two, she already held a real dagger, not a toy, and learned to skin a rabbit. At four, she set simple traps. At six, she killed her first animal - a giant squirrel - with a precise stone throw. At eight, she could follow a blood trail for miles without losing it. At ten, she mastered hand-to-hand combat, and at eleven, she knew twelve different ways to kill a man with her bare hands.

While the other children of District 12 begged for crumbs and prayed not to be chosen at the Reaping, Alianelle trained for the opposite. Her father did not want her to avoid the Games. He wanted her to dominate them.