Cato's POV
I block out the 'encouraging' words from my mentor as we ride the elevator down to where the hovercraft is waiting to pick me up for the Games. When the metal elevator opens, I step out. I'm still shaken from my dream last night.
I try not to think about Clove. We could be dead in a matter of hours. It would be no use. I take a deep breath and walk across the huge square of exposed concrete used as a docking station for the hovercraft I was about to step onto.
Clove's POV
Tributes are divided onto two separate hovercrafts and in no specific order. I sit on the end, with Katniss to my right. On the other side of her is curly-haired kid, then Thresh from Eleven, Jayson from Five, and Chase from Three. Across from me was Rue from Eleven, and to her left was Foxface, then Henson, then Cato, then Bran from Nine, and then Ivy from Seven.
I watch a woman start instructing tributes to "give me your arm." The plain and concise procedure reminds me of the blood they take before the Reapings, with scared children reluctantly offering their arms and a bored Capitol person.
She treads around the room in no certain order, first at Thresh, then Rue, then Chase, then Katniss.
"What is that?" Katniss finally asks.
The woman pays no attention to her and takes her arm, inserts something into it, and watches it flash, then finally says, "Your tracker."
She continues this until she has done everyone on the hovercraft and we start. I'm ready to get tribute blood on my knives. Other than me, Cato is the only one that doesn't look completely terrified. In fact, he looks bored, slumped over and leaning his arms on his knees instead of sitting stiffly straight up like anyone else.
When we landed, Peacekeepers accompany me to get my picture taken, just in case it has to flash in the sky, and then take me to a large, tiled room with my stylist inside.
The stylist doesn't get to do much right now. All the tributes wear practically the same thing: V-neck t-shirts for the girls and crewnecks for the boys, light brown cargo pants fastened with a thick black belt, and black combat boots. The only differences are that the boys wear a more masculine version, the girls wear a feminine version, all the districts have a different dark color to distinguish them, and everyone, obviously, wears their respective sizes. The clothes change every year suiting each arena's climate.
Each tribute is allowed a small token from their district. Glimmer's got taken away because it revealed to having a poisonous spike encased in the jewel of her ring. Idiot. Each female tribute also gets her own hairstyle, though it's not like we get to pick it. Our prep team does, of course. Mine is a ponytail that has elastics every few inches, creating little balls of my dark hair.
We all wore T-shirts on the hovercraft, without the colored anorak jacket. District Two is crimson. Foxface had a wine red shirt, Chase from Three's was a dirty yellow color, Thresh and Rue are a deep chocolate brown, and Katniss wearing coal black.
Theon gives me my own crimson anorak jacket. It's warm and water repellant, so it'll do good in rain. I zip it up. The barred-in clock on the wall says 6:55.
The computerized voice calls out 'thirty seconds'. I take deep breaths, ignoring Theon. Twenty seconds. I slowly walk to the glass tube waiting to raise me into the arena. Ten seconds. The tube closes and starts rising. I see concrete then a flash of blinding white sunlight. Let the Seventy-Fourth Annual Hunger Games begin.
