Standing on the Edge (That Goat Will Probably Eat You)

Morning Has Broken

The fog has not only been causing problems for the tributes. Even with the high-tech gizmos attached to the cameras, the pictures are hazy at best. There have been complaints in the Capitol.

Andros hates to be late, but his daughter was playing up last night and he'd sat up for hours waiting for her to come home to make sure she was safe and overslept badly. He's Head Gamemaker, so he can get away with it, but he still practically breaks into a run as he makes his way down the gleaming silver corridor and into the meeting room.

The other Gamemakers greet him politely. The woman with rainbow hair has dyed it again and is now a startling shade of green. The shrewish man sits in the corner, away from all the others. His hair is slicked back and glistens with various styling oils. Unlike the tributes, the Gamemakers don't have the benefits of a stylist. The room itself is small by Capitol standards, although there's plenty of room for them to all have a few feet to themselves at the table, and for the walls to be lined with Avox, one for each of them, in case they need anything. There's been a massive surge in Avox recently, so they may as well take advantage of it.

On a huge screen down one wall, the Games are playing. At the moment the cheerful night-watch commentators are doing some analysis of the Career group and musing about Alice, although in the corner of the screen is a little box showing a map of the arena, with little dots from the tribute's trackers, and in the opposite corner is a box where one camera switches from foggy view to foggy view, looking for some action. But it's still early in the morning, still dark in the arena.

"Muh-morning, Mr Villes," stutters the one like a shrew.

"Sorry I'm late," he replies smoothly, "Karaline didn't come home last night." The whole table mutter; they all know about the Head Gamemaker's renegade daughter. Everyone in the Capitol knows about her, unfortunately. Andros is horribly worried that one day the wrong kind of person will recognise her in the street.

"She's eighteen, Mr Villes; she'll be okay," assures one of the other Gamemakers, the one most people call 'the compassionate one'. Relatively speaking, of course. Andros nods briskly. "

Now, to business. Before we discuss when to release the mutts..."

"The mutts are prepared and ready to be released when needed," 'the scientist' mutters. Andros carries on talking over him.

"...are there any immediate problems that are demanding our attention?"

The rainbow woman coughs and taps on her laptop screen. The laptop itself is only just big enough to type on, and is decorated in all manner of insane colours. It gives Andros a headache just looking at it, so he turns his attention to the screen instead.

They're discussing Forest, the boy from Seven. The commentator with the towering beehive complains that he's being boring and hints loudly for the Gamemakers to 'spice things up for him a bit'. Her co-presenter thinks he's got a plan and we should wait around to see what it is. Either way, he's done nothing but wander around eating snow.

"Not true!" insists beehive woman, "He went to the bathroom once!"

Andros turns the sound off.

The woman has managed to find what she was looking for and slides the laptop across the table. Andros picks it up and frowns at the miniscule screen; he's not that old but his sight is going. He needs some of those contact-implants. Not in a ridiculous colour though. Can't have the Head Gamemaker going around looking like one of these people you can't take seriously. Eventually he can make out on the screen a little list. It looks like complaints. Almost all of them are RE: FOG!!!!