The waiting was the worst part.

It always was.

Waiting is like a gaping jaw of empty time in which you are trapped with nothing to do except fall victim to your own mind. My mind and I were hardly on talking terms. Don't get me wrong, it talked to me plenty however I hated everything it had to say to me so I gave it drugs to shut it up.

Only today I wasn't able to get any drugs. After being caught with the Freon yesterday I had been assigned my own personal peacekeeper to keep me from subtracting mind altering substances from conveniences. Quite frankly I wondered why they even cared if I was high.

Look at all of the faces around you, Lockwood, my head rambled deliriously. I slowly lifted my eyes to look at the tributes who sat in the little room crammed with benches as we awaited our training sessions. Take a good long look, because in less than a week most of them will be dead, reduced to nothing but worm food. Their eyes will be empty and their skin will be blue and freezing to the touch.

"Shut up." I muttered under my breath. A girl with long blonde hair looked at me as if I were crazy, the second I caught her eye I looked away. Focus on other things, I told myself. But what else could I focus on? The universal nervousness that seemed to cloak the room like a blanket? Who could blame us though after yesterday's interview with the gamemaker? I found myself shuddering as I thought of the man and his promise to kill me. Part of me didn't even want to win because I would have to live knowing I was on his kill list.

"District 3 Female, Aisling Cordel."

The speakers that hung from the wall above the door vibrated slightly as they summoned the next tribute into the training room. I briefly wondered why the Capital had chosen to hang such an old system in the room before my eye caught Aisling's crystal blue ones briefly as she made her way toward the door. Despite the fact we come from the same district I had never seen her before the games. She hesitated for only a second before she pushed open the door and disappeared from my view. The door banged shut putting a sharp crack in the otherwise heavy silence of the room.

"I don't think this is going to be a normal training session." A small, soft voice came from beside me. If the room had not been so quiet I think I would have missed it. I turned to find that the statement had come from a girl who was almost as small as the voice had sounded. Pip Bell, the girl from 8, hardly looked frightened though. If anything she looked mildly pissed as she clenched her jaw and stared at the door suspiciously.

"Is anything normal about these games?" I grumbled crossing my arms tightly across my chest and following her gaze to the door. "Really, the one bloody game I have to get reaped for is the one that is being hosted by our friendly neighborhood psychopath."

Pip frowned at me, "I wasn't talking to you."

I forced a tight smile on my face, "I don't care."

Pip snorted dismissively before rolling her eyes and looking away. She'll be dead too. How old is she? 13? She will be taken down in a heartbeat. She doesn't stand a chance. A wave of nausea washed over me as an image of her lifeless body flashed before my eyes. Why did I do this to myself? Why did I care so much? Why did I need drugs just to keep myself from wanting to throw myself off a cliff? How could other people function without them?

I must be broken.

It was about ten minutes before I heard my name called, ten long, tenuous minutes full of anxiety, guilt and that sickening feeling in my gut. "District 3 male, Lockwood Colt." It summoned as I stood up slowly, suddenly uncomfortable with everyone's eyes on me. A few lost interest within a few seconds and went back to tapping their feet nervously, but most didn't. Some watched with curiosity and others simply sized me up, either way I didn't like it. I fixed my eyes on the floor as I walked over to the door and pushed it open.

The room was unnervingly small for a training session and was void of anything besides a white medical table in the center of the room and a peacekeeper who stood next to a cart loaded with wires and needles. Her helmet was off revealing the pleasant face of a middle-aged woman. She looked up from her clipboard as soon as I stepped into the room. "Lockwood, would you please lay down on the table so I can strap you down?" She smiled sweetly as if she was simply asking me to pass the salt.

Yeah, that was definitely not happening. I turned around and tried to push the door open so I could run for my life.

"It's locked from that side, Lockwood, the only way out is through the simulation. Trust me when I say you don't want to go into these games without your training score. Think of the sponsors you could get." The peacekeeper walked over to me and placed a gentle hand of my shoulder.

I flinched and shook myself free from her touch. "Umm, yeah, no. I forfet. I get a zero. Oh well, it was a noble effort on both our parts." I laughed nervously and shrugged, despite the answer I knew was coming my way.

The peacekeeper's face hardened, "I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way. You have to go through the sim and receive a training score willingly or I have to call in my peacekeeper friends and they will force you to do it." She said with a frown. "Two of these said peacekeepers are pretty miffed as well in light of you elbowing them in the face and calling them..." She hesitated. "...armored marshmallows?"

"That's what they are." I said unapologetically.

She shook her head, "Either way they will not be gentle. Believe me when I say just cooperating is in your best interests." Slowly, very slowly, the way a child might reach out to touch a wild beast, she put her hand on my arm.

I didn't move. I was cornered and she knew it. I was going to have to let myself get strapped to a table and who knows what after that. I swallowed hard as the peacekeeper guided me to the table. "Lay down while I get the syringe ready."

The table was hard and cold despite the overall warmth of the room. The gleam of metal caught my eye and I looked over to see the peacekeeper holding a needle to the artificial light of the room. I swallowed hard as she placed it down and turned her focus on me.

One limb by limb she strapped them to the table, humming a little as she went. I resisted the urge to tell her to stop as I pinched my eyes shut and just kept telling myself that it was going to be over. I hated not being able to move.

Just when I thought the needle would never come, that it had all been a mistake, I felt it slide with a sharp prick into my neck. I felt my mind begin to numb around the corners as my senses blurred as they had on so many other drugs. I almost felt happy after a minute as warmth electrified my nerves.

I opened my eyes to find I wasn't on the table anymore, I furrowed my brows as I moved my arm that hard been strapped down just a second ago. I grinned, I was seriously going to have to get some of this stuff if I lived.

I scanned my perimeter. I was in a small marble lined shower, only a semi transparent shower curtain hung between me and whatever was on the other side of the curtain. I stared at what seemed to be just void blackness. A shiver crawled up my spine as I found it hard to rip my gaze from it. A cold draft drifted from whatever lay beyond, rustling the curtains.

That was when the shower turned on and I was blasted with a burst of hot water. The water rushed down my bare skin and plastered my hair to my face, I pushed it away genuinely enjoying the water despite the act I felt exposed. I looked over my shoulder at the shelves that held an assortment of multicolored soaps and there on the lowest shelf was a knife, I let out the breath that I had been holding, instantly feeling safe now that I knew I had something to defend myself with in here. I ducked my head back into the spray of water, letting the warmth blissfully saturate my skin.

Creak.

I stopped moving.

Creak.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Creak.

I ducked out of the shower spray and fumbled for the knife, my slippery hands nearly dropping it. I looked out through the sheer curtain at the blackness, scanning it for a sign of what made the noise. At first I saw nothing, but then very slowly my eyes began to make out a looming figure. My breath got caught in my throat, strangling me.

Creak.

The figure stepped forward.

Creak.

He was just a foot away from me.

Creak.

Adrenaline surged through my veins, there was nowhere for me to go. I pressed my back to the wall of the shower, trying to think of something to do but it was as though my brain refused to work. "Umm." I choked out as I watched the figure hover just inches from me with nothing separating us save a thin sheet of transparent rubber. "I-I'm kind of busy right now. Could you wait a second, or you know, maybe just give me a towel and we can work this out?"

The figure didn't move.

After one long, heavy second I spoke again. "Why are you standing here? What the hell do you want?" My voice was so low I could hardly hear it. I don't even know why I asked the question, I knew the answer.

"You." With that one, final, heart-stopping word he struck. The shower curtain ripped in half as a large silver knife tore through it barreling toward me. I felt horror rip from my throat as I ducked, only to slip on the wet shower floor and fall onto my back. My head cracked against the hard tile. Pain electrified my body as I vainly struggled to get up.

Through my blurred vision I saw the curtain pulled back as the figure stepped into the indent of the shower. I felt him looking at me and suddenly I was ashamed of myself. I was ashamed of my bones that poked through my deathly pale skin, I was ashamed of the parallel scars on my thighs and of the fresh needle pricks on the inside of my elbows.

I couldn't move. It was like a bad nightmare. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

The man lowered himself over my body and tossed his knife aside, instead opting to twist the knife from my hands in a sort of a cruel irony. I just stared at him as he brought my own knife's blade to my forehead. I can't believe that knife had brought me comfort just a minute ago. I felt my body begin to tremble and sweat begin to trickle down my forehead. God, I was going to die. This was it.

"Please don't do this?" I forced the words from my tight throat, looking up at the figure whose features were still obscured with an inky blackness.

The figure's shoulders shook a little with laughter. "Oh but Lockwood, I promised! Remember?" He laughed leaning forward enough that I could finally see his face.

It was him.

And just like that I exploded. All the energy that had been mounting in me to this point erupted as I kneed him in the stomach and made a swipe at his face with my fist. "Don't touch me! Don't you dare touch me!" I felt the words rip from my vocal chords clocked with anger and fear.

The man hardly flinched. "You know this whole charade of survival could have been a lot more successful if you hadn't spent so much time destroying yourself. Now I'm going to destroy you."

The knife plunged into my stomach, pain shocked my body as I felt my flesh tear. A blossom of blood spurted from my stomach and decorated the wall. He ripped it free and sent it barreling into me again, and again. I watched the tub around me fill with my own blood. There was nothing I could do about it. I felt tears begin to stream from my eyes, down my cheeks and into my own blood. "Dammit, just kill me you son of a bitch!" I wheezed coughing blood from my mouth.

"All in good time." He smiled plunging the knife into my lung.

Another explosion of blood exploded from my mouth with a burst of air. I tried to breath in only to find myself choking on blood. I couldn't breathe. I felt lightheaded, the man's laughter seemed to echo as it hit my ears. I dizzily watched his knife dive towards my mother lung, I tried to scream but the only thing that came out was a strangled gurgle. The knife tore through my skin decimating the last thing that held me to life. I let my head fall to the blood covered tile as the man stood up.

My heart stopped when I felt him grab my leg and place his foot on my kneecap. "What did you think I was done?" He laughed cruelly as I looked up once again in sheer terror, my vision spinning. He pressed down on my knee grinning madly and then he forced all of his weight on it. Even in my delirium I could hear my cartilage cracking. I screamed, forcing the last of the air in my mutilated lungs free in one small, drowned, animal-like cry.

My vision dimmed rapidly as my head fell limply to the ground, the darkness dragging me away. The last thing I saw was the tiled floor of the bathroom splattered in my own blood. The last thing I tasted was the metallic twang of my own blood filling my mouth. And finally, the last thing I heard was laughter of the man and the water from the shower washing everything clean.

It was only then that the pain faded and I succumb to completely numbness.

I opened my eyes.

Blood was pounding in my ears and my heart was racing. I looked around deliriously at the white walled room around me. In the corner of the room I saw the peacekeeper who had injected me with the serum leaning against a wall and looking at a hand held device. She must have sensed me looking at her because she looked up and smiled, "Oh you're awake." She pocketed the device and walked over to me, quickly undoing the straps that bound me. "You're much calmer than the other tributes when they woke up."

"Oh." It was the only thing I could think to say. Just because I looked calm, didn't mean I was. I felt sick and lightheaded, like I was going to pass out.

I heard a door open behind me followed by slow rhythmic clapping. I turned around to see the gamemaker walking toward me with a smug smile on his face as he watched me with a demonic twinkle in his eye.

I snapped.

"You sadist! You motherfucking sadist!" I screamed slapping him, irrationally, all of the adrenalin deluding any sense I was capable. "How could you do that to me? Why the hell would you do that to anyone, you sick, egotistical bastard!"

The gamemaker placed a hand on his rapidly reddening cheek and looked up and arched his eyebrows. "I did nothing. The serum merely made you live through your worst fear in one way or another.... It's not like I programed it or anything." He stared at me intently for a second before a grin spread across his face. "I was there wasn't I? I was apart of your worst fear?"

I said nothing to him.

The gamemaker's grin widened, "Oh how very interesting."