It is a bright cold day in District Three, and the only sounds filtering through the brisk air are the snuffling cries and yelps of those having their blood taken, shuffling feet on smooth concrete slabs and the tolling of the Justice Building bell, regular as clockwork since the Games began, many years ago.
Some last-minute adjustments are being made to the stage. As far as most people can see, it's fine, but one of the light riggings is spluttering a little, casting a flickering glare over the assembled people. They scowl up at it as one great human machine, and there is a small ironic cheer from a few of the children in the pens - trying not to seem petrified - when someone finally scuttles up the rigging to fix it.
The morning ticks on. The District Two reapings are finished, and now there will be about half an hour of tribute analysis - the Careers always get a lot of excited attention - before the District Three reapings can start. The people stand around, not even fidgeting, or drift aimlessly in the too-big square, looking at all the space as if it has been put there deliberately to confuse them.
The children wear white. Not out of tradition, as in many other districts, but out of practicality. Most of the cloth in District Three is white; it's their colour, sandwiched between the deep, menacing purple of District Two and the vivid and lively blue of Four.
A woman is hauled into the square by two of the Peacekeepers, who hurl her roughly into the crowd even though she's not struggling against them. She looks like the rest of her district; resigned, fed up.
When Angelique, the youngest and newest escort, bounds onto the stage, several people groan audibly, casting a glance at the patrolling Peacekeepers to make sure they they're not going to react. The woman has wrapped herself in fairy lights, a safety hazard if they ever saw one. Luckily her dress is decent, but the little twinkling lights flash in a spectrum of colours and it's slightly nauseating. They'd rather the escort just didn't try at all.
"Hi, District Three!" she chirps happily. Her bubbly greeting falls flat, her words dropping straight to the paved floor. She gulps and tries to recover her composure; the only sound is the slight buzz of the lights that now feel like chains and several people snuffling.
She's been told to not expect much from District Three but she wasn't expecting it to be this bad. Sharp eyes stare up at her accusingly, like this is all her fault. She feels tears bubble up behind her eyes.
"Hold it together, Angel," demands the stern voice of her PA in her ear. She nods obediently, before realising that nobody else can hear and now she just looks crazy, stood on the stage, wrapped up in fairy lights and nodding her head randomly.
Her mind has gone completely blank.
"Erm...nice weather here, isn't it?" she tries.
A few children titter mechanically, glad to find something to alleviate the mood. Some of the older ones scowl, wanting to get it over and done with.
"The speech!" the voice tells her.
"Oh, right. Yes. District Three, I will now read the speech, and then we'll get on to the actual reapings, okay?" she bleats pathetically into the smooth microphone, adding a deflated "Isn't this exciting?"
"No!" shouts a boy who looks vaguely like a blonde rat. A Peacekeeper, the eye insignia emblazoned into his pristine uniform, scowls coolly at him and he goes pale, sliding back next to his friend, mouth pinched shut. Angelique buries her head in the speech papers.
District Three wait patiently, not even shuffling a little, as she blunders her way through, her voice rising constantly, getting closer and closer to hysteria. A few people start off by muttering along, showing off their memory and knowledge, but Angelique makes so many mistakes that this soon becomes impossible.
"And the districts and the Capitol existed in fragile the tensions got...oh, wait. No, I've missed a line there. Fragile harmony. They existed in fragile harmony, but it couldn't last. Eventually, the tensions got too great..."
Her PA hangs her head with a sigh. Angelique passed her mentoring skills with flying colours, but she's obviously not cut out for this at all. The cold and resigned eyes of District Three are too much for her. Though she doesn't blame her. In the Capitol everybody is different. Here, people look comparatively similar, almost like robots. They don't move. They don't make noise. It would put her off too.
Someone in the crowd bursts into a coughing fit, drowning out Angelique even though she's squeaking into the microphone. It's a middle-aged man, his face bright red, his cheeks wobbling, a crumpled picture of two baby girls clutched in his hand. Nobody goes to help him. Everybody is focused on the stage.
Someone laughs outright when Angelique, blinking as much as the lights on her dress, announces that the rebellious District One was completely destroyed.
"Thirteen!" her PA hisses, but it's too late. Angelique loses her composure completely and bursts into tears, burying her golden head in her hands. A quick glance to the cameraman; he's holding up five fingers. Angelique has five minutes to pull herself together before the whole of the Capitol - and tomorrow, the whole of Panem - will see her.
"Angel, you have five minutes to stop this wailing or you're as good as sacked!" she threatens. Through the microphone she hears her protegee sniff loudly, the sound carried across the whole square. And some people are muttering...
A figure is emerging from the crowd, pushing to the front. It's a woman, her hair in a thin brown plait, her face gaunt, one hand curled around her stomach. In the other, she waves a necklace, a locket on the end of it. An oddly personal possession, for the usually unsentimental Three. She's actually thirty five, but she looks at least fifty, and if she had any looks in her youth, they've been stolen. Now she looks blunt and haunted.
"What are you crying for, girl?" she snaps, her voice strong enough that she doesn't need a microphone. It helps that nobody else is daring to make a sound. Peacekeepers glide towards her, but since she's staying within the confines of the crowd, there's little they can do until she starts trying to push her luck.
"What are you crying for?" she snaps again, "What have you ever suffered next to us?"
Angelique and the rest of the Capitol crew gawp.
"I lost a child!" the woman declares, with a perverse kind of pride, "I lost my only daughter last year! Who else has lost someone? A sibling, a friend, a child?"
After a pause, in which the other residents adjust to this change, hands start to go up. A smattering at first, the woman's family. But the ripples travel. Children in the pens too, faces crumpling as they remember their lost ones. Before long, and with the ever-steady cameraman holding up two fingers, more than half the crowd have their hands in the air.
"Killed for your entertainment!" the woman announces, "Killed so you could reassure yourself that everything is okay!" She practically shouts, emotion and hate etched into every line in her face.
Now she's crossed a line and the Peacekeepers move in. She sees them coming, gleaming with triumph.
"Do your worst!" she dares them, "I have nothing left to live for! And you can try and silence me, but you cannot silence all of us! One day..."
She is gagged before she can continue. Wide-eyed and horrified at this show, the district watches as she is dragged out of the square. A few notice the irony that this is the woman who was dragged in just before Angelique arrived on stage. But most are focused on the bigger issue, the reapings, the certain loss of two of their promising youngsters. After all, there's nothing they can do.
"My legs ache," mumbles a voice from the younger pens. It could be either a boy or a girl; it isn't broken yet.
"Not long now," hisses a sisterly voice from near him. She doesn't say what until.
The light goes red. They are live. The camera quickly switches away from the backs of the Peacekeepers to the stage. Angelique's face is still stained with tears, but at least she isn't bawling her eyes out anymore. Still, she's emotionless and robotic as she reaches into the girls' bowl, decorated in thin copper lines. She mumbles the name.
"Shout!" her PA demands.
Angelique takes a deep breath. Her first tribute. She will have to look after her. Even though now it feels impossible.
"Abigail Handlind!"
Nobody gasps or claps or cheers. The girl herself blinks, her eyes startled. She's in there once. Once. So many emotions bubble up all at once. Angry. Sad. And a fierce determination to not get up on that stage, so far above her head.
"Abigail!"
The girl behind her gives her a small push.
Abigail pushes her back, knocking her to the floor with a thud, her face contorted with the effort of not crying. "I'll go up when I want to, thanks!" she sneers.
"Abby, just go, love," calls a woman's breaking voice. Abigail bites her lip; she can't let her parents down. They won't want her to make a fuss.
How did this happen? She was only in there once. It's not fair. Her face feels hot and she wants to stamp her foot right through the steps, see it all fall down. Maybe then she'll feel a bit better.
She sees her own image up on the screen, set up for the benefit of those standing further back. The freckles on her face are twisted so that she barely recognises them, and despite her mother's best efforts her hair is escaping from the ponytail it was scraped back into.
Angelique looks at her and thinks she's so skinny she can see her elbow bones sticking out, and she needs something doing for that complexion. And she's twelve years old, and she's got no chance, and she remembers the woman and she thinks she might cry again. So she reaches straight for the boys' bowl, hoping that it's at least an older one.
Connor Stanfield shuffles his way out of the pen, and she could probably lift him up with one arm. He looks smaller than thirteen, although there's a wariness about his expression that makes him look older. He swings his hands awkwardly at his sides, using them for balance as he darts up to the stage with impressive turn of speed. Someone mutters approvingly.
They know better than to hope.
Connor stands as far away from Abigail as he can, not expecting any volunteers and not wanting to cross paths with the angry looking girl. He feels dazed, like he's just had an electric shock. He pats his hair but it's not standing on end. So he's actually here.
Everybody is looking at him, an army of pale blue eyes and weak faces, resigned to yet another year to forget. Which of course, nobody will. Though in time he'll just be another name in the memorial, he knows nobody will really forget. That's what the woman with the plait was saying. He thinks.
Hopefully they will bring Zoe to the Justice Building so that he can stroke her one last time, nuzzle her ears and bury her head in the soft fur of her neck, tell her not to worry.
Angelique's PA talks in her ear soothingly as she files off the stage. She's not listening. Both of them are young. She cried on stage. The wires from her dress are digging into her arms.
She forgets to announce the tributes to the crowd, but that's okay. People will remember.