SOMEHOW, THE MEAGRE TWO HOURS OF SLEEP Iko got the night before the first group training session with the other tributes didn't feel like a death sentence when her eyes snap open to the sound of footsteps outside her bedroom door. Instinctively, her hand reaches under her pillow for the steak knife she'd claimed the night before. Three sharp knocks siphoned through the silence as her fingers close around the hilt.

"Rise and shine, Iko! It's a big day!" Aeneas chirped, voice muffled by the door.

Irritation blazed through her nerves. Iko had half a mind to throw the knife at the slab of wood and see if the blade could at least nick Aeneas in the eye. But, because harming her district escort might result in an immediate disqualification, or other worse consequences, Iko only held onto the knife for a moment longer with an iron grip, testing the weight in her palm, and mimed throwing it at the door just to actuate her imagination—a morbid picturesque, of the knife sinking into the wood down to the hilt, of the blade somehow skewering Aeneas right between the eyes, of the blood pooling in dark crimson on the floor, seeping under her door like ectoplasm—before releasing it and rolling out of bed.

The knowledge that she could, if she really wanted to, if she let her self-control slip just a little, was enough to placate her for the moment. Her eyes slid to the clock on her nightstand. Seven in the morning. The numbers glared back at her in the dark, red and pulsing and searing into her irises.

In no time at all, Iko found herself clocking into the military-indoctrinated regime of the day. Back home, it wasn't uncommon for kids who attended the academy to be early risers. Routine, and the importance of structure, of order, of respect and all such military qualities were drilled into the children of District 2 from the moment they could comprehend behavioural patterns. When your future lay within either one of the big two prospective jobs of the district—Career tribute or Peacekeeper—watertight organisation was everything. Without complaint, Iko got ready as she felt herself kick into autopilot mode. In the bathroom, she scrubbed her face of exhaustion, pulled on the training uniform—a simple, black shirt and black pants made from a sort of stretchy material, and brand new combat boots—that Janus had sent to her sometime in the previous evening. Under five minutes, she was out of her room, letting an Avox pull a chair out for her at the dining table where a buffet of breakfast food were piled on serving trays.

"Morning, Iko," Evander said, flashing her a bright grin. The sheer wattage made her blink, nonplussed, scrambling for words on her tongue.

"Hi," Iko said, a beat too late, as she piled on scrambled eggs and possibly more slices of bacon than socially acceptable.

It went without saying—everything that came free in the Capitol, Iko would make capital out of. It's what she was owed. The only time she's ever had bacon was at Alex's house. In her own, breakfast was whatever meagre leftovers from dinner her mother could salvage, usually accompanied by an in-depth criticism of her achievements, based on the reports the trainers from the academy sent home. She'd stopped eating breakfast at home three years ago, and, instead, rose before the sun, stole fruit from the vendors in the local market, and cut through the district straight to the training academy and threw knives until her hands bled before it was time to get to school. There was no way to make her mother happy, and there was no way to make her understand that she was already the best. No way to make her believe in her own daughter. But Iko didn't need her mother's assurance. She found her own in the sick thud of the knives finding their homes in the bullseyes and the panic flickering in her opponents' eyes when they realised there was no fighting their way out of her chokeholds.

What had her mother known about her training, anyway? What had her mother known about anything at all, considering she was never good enough, back in her day, to even be considered a candidate for the Games? The selection process was cruel. Brutality marked a Career tribute. Brutality, ruthlessness, and an edge that most people seemed to lack. Her mother hadn't made the cut. But Iko did. One would think that might make the woman ease up on her, but it had the opposite effect.

Undeniably, her mother was monstrous. Just not the right kind of monster.

Before Evander could strike up conversation, Alex materialised beside her, freshly showered, the scent of mint and pine staining her senses, dressed in a similar training uniform to hers.

"What's up, man?" Alex said sunnily, saving Iko the torture of small talk she didn't have the patience to entertain, grinning at Evander like they were life-long friends rather than mentor and mentee.

Evander waved a thick forkful of bacon in the air. "We're gorging ourselves on bacon this morning. You'll never find stuff this good back home or in the arena, so if we're getting seconds, we gotta do it fast. Let's go, kiddos."

Taking her place at the table, Enobaria rolls her eyes. "Of course, don't eat too much, or else you're going to be sick in the middle of your first day of training. That wouldn't be a good look on this year's most fearsome Career tributes, would it?"

Alex laughed.

Evander shrugged. "More for me then."

* * *

ANGER MAKES FOOLS OUT OF EVEN THE BEST GENERALS. Vengeance puts people on strings, dulls every rational thought in their minds, puppeteers their impulsive decisions, puts their necks on the line. It's fear that makes the best motivators. Strike fear into your target, and even the scrawniest of prey will bring out their teeth. But the first time Iko hits the bullseye on a stationary target, it's anger that puts the knife in her hand.

Having spent nearly five years at the training academy already, she'd played around with both traditional and nontraditional weapons, but that was all just to get a feel of what she liked, what felt like home. Trainers put her on different courses, just to learn how to hold a throwing star correctly without slicing her own palms to shreds, learn how to wield Chinese ring daggers without wearing her own fingers to raw ribbons, learn how to stand up after getting knocked down. They saw a girl trying out different weapons for wear, stumbling through the motions and techniques, never quite grasping it the first time round, but learning all the same. What they didn't realise was that this was a girl sick and tired of begging for scraps, sick and tired of being the runt of the litter because her mother couldn't afford better cuts of meat or the regular grain. This was a girl who was sharpening her claws, honing her skills and stitching together the taxidermy of her own darkness so she could become the right kind of monster when her time came.

The first time Iko throws a knife, she is nine years old. Granted, it's not until she is eleven that she feels it sit in her hand less like a weapon and more of an extension of herself, of her own lethality and her teeth. It's not until she's eleven that she knows what it's like to be truly deadly.

All her knives were embedded in the target, just inches shy of the bullseye. Frustration clawed at her veins, a heatwave that rotted her mood. To add fuel to the fire, Alex had been out sick that day, and the trainer assigned to her at the time had been exceptionally unhelpful with his demeaning criticism.

She'd watched in anticipation as her penultimate knife sailed through the air before the steel tip drove into the wooden target with a satisfying thunk, only an inch off the bullseye. An inch of failure that dug through her flesh and pried apart her ribs. Disappointment was an avalanche that crushed her insides. She'd been so certain that that was the one to finally make the mark.

"You're not pushing yourself hard enough," the trainer snapped, scowling at Iko's form. "Your footwork is sloppy, and you're not applying the technique right. At this point, I'm wondering if you're really serious about your training because you're just wasting my time now when I could be training candidates who actually listen to advice."

Something malicious inside her snapped. Rage was a double-edged blade pinwheeling inside her stomach, cutting it to ribbons, a flash flood tearing up a tempest in her blood. How dare he? How dare he make the assumption that she wasn't serious about the first and foremost thing she cared about in this world? How dare he? What the fuck did this has-been know, anyway? For one, Iko knew he definitely wasn't a victor of any Hunger Games. Sure, some victors spent their time helping out at the academy, training kids to become future Career tributes, but this guy—he was an underpaid nobody. He was just another kid who couldn't make the cut. If only her mother could afford to actually pay for a legitimate trainer...

"Fine," Iko snarled, fury contorting her features, fingers curling around the hilt of her last knife. She hadn't even realised she'd picked it off the weapons rack. Or even knew when she'd snatched it up. It seemed to have materialised there when she most needed it. Anger was a wildfire inside her veins, ripping up the foundation of all that was calm and composed before, burning her organs to ash, itching her hands to do something monstrous. To cut the disdainful snarl off that trainer's face.

Instead, she wheeled back to the target, to the bullseye that mocked her from thirty yards away. You want serious? I'll show you. I'll show you serious.

Without hesitation, without taking the time to carefully place her feet in the correct position the trainer had shown her, and the stance that she'd been copying for the past forty minutes spent on this session, she threw. With all her might, with all the rage pent up inside seeking an outlet, she flung the blade at the dummy's head so hard that when it struck the centre of the target, the dummy rocked back and forth from the sheer impact.

Bullseye.

Shock froze her to the spot.

Nonplussed, the trainer merely blinked at her in surprise, but recovered just in time to nod stiffly, a grudging expression etched into the lines of his face that makes Iko almost crow in triumph. "Again. Then fifty rounds around the track."

A lethal energy wicked off her shoulders as she picked another knife from the rack.

Again.

In years to come, Iko would be named the most talented girl in District 2—excruciatingly dangerous on her feet, straight-up lethal with a knife in her hand. She is small but she is monstrous. In years to come, her lacking stature doesn't mean weakness. It means no room for mercy, even less for error. She is agile and precise and cutthroat. Nobody wants this more than she does, and she knows this because even though some of the blood in the combat ring is hers, even though her head spins and her eyes are going cloudy and her opponent might've slashed through her defences and sliced her skin open, she's still on her feet with her teeth bared and her body thrumming with adrenaline, driving forward until she's the only one standing. Until her adversary is not just on the ground, but black and blue and her name has been cut into every frightful flinch, every trauma-induced twitch of their muscles, her monstrosity etched into memory, each time they have to face her again.

All except for Alex, who seemed to be the only one who wasn't afraid of her. He should be, but he wasn't. And no matter how many times she would beat him by a hair's breadth in hand-to-hand combat, he would never back down from her. What hung between them, despite the inbred competitiveness and the constant need to one-up each other, seeded a mutual respect woven into the blood they spilled and the bruises one held the ice to while another stitched up the other's gashes. However sweet, however charming, however endearing Alex might be, he could be heartless where he needed to be. They both are. Growing up, the first lesson taught to every child born in District 2 is that feeling paints a target on their backs. It is a weakness. It will get them killed. Pity, empathy, melancholy, love; none of those will keep them alive. Such weaknesses have no place in the Games. The second lesson is that bloodshed is not a headless frenzy but a passion. Power is the altar they kneel at, fear is the god they pray to, the Academy is where their dedication lies. Both Iko and Alex take this seriously.

Staring down the target thirty yards away, far from home and edging ever closer to her glory, Iko barely listens to a word the training supervisor, Atala, says as she delivers short introductions for each and every station—agility, knives, swords, spears, harpoons, archery, hand-to-hand combat, snares and traps, edible foods, poisons, etcetera—posted around the facility. Aside from the survival courses, Iko knows every single one of them like the back of her hand. In actual fact, Iko suspects that it'd been a former victor who'd built the training facility of the Academy, back in District 2, since the layout of this one and the one back home were uncannily similar, if not almost an exact replica. What's unfamiliar, however, are the Gamemakers in their purple robes, lounging in the elevated stands surrounding the training facility. Their critical stares bore down on the tributes gathered around Atala, a council of vultures watching the corpses below, but Iko isn't a stranger to being constantly evaluated for performance. The heat of their razor-sharp surveillance glances off her skin as thought she's made of marble.

They'll know she's worth keeping an eye out for once she's able to get her hands on a knife. At the mere thought, her fingers itched for the weight of a blade.

Even as Atala spoke, Iko felt the eyes of the other tributes on her, felt their shifting gazes roam the scars marking her sinewy arms, felt them sizing her up, felt them eyeing the number 2 pinned to the back of her training uniform. They watched Alex too. Alex, who was cool and confident and paying them no mind, an Adonis with halo for hair. Although, Iko could tell, from the way he stood stock still, a leopard in the prairie, that he was watching them back. Watching from periphery had been a skill they'd mastered back at the Academy, a skill habituated into instinct. Watch for the knives pointed at your backs. Keep your eyes open.

The first tributes Iko searched for in periphery were her biggest competition. Opal. Titus. Sage. Elias. Her potential allies. Opal stood three paces to her left, spine straightened, paying close attention. Beside her, Titus had his mouth half-open in a yawn, languid eyes sliding back and forth between the other tributes. He wasn't even trying to hide his inability to care for a single word Atala was saying. Sage was five tributes to Opal's left, and Elias lingered behind a group of scrawny tributes. She felt his eyes bore into her before she even turned to look. Felt the heat of his glare, the resentment boiling within. Of course the hostility would be there. District 2 made the most vicious killers; nobody else stood a chance against them. Other districts mourned their children before they could even set foot in the arena. District 2 made monsters out of their own. So she cuts Elias a look that could slice him to ribbons. He looks away first.

When Atala dismisses the tributes, Iko turns to Alex.

A confident grin etched on his lips, Alex arches a brow and crosses his arms over his chest. "Anyone catch your eye besides the usual?"

Iko's lips pulled into a tight line.

"We're not taking on the District Four boy, that's for sure. He's no use to us." Iko's voice is flat, and her eyes cut to the tributes tentatively approaching the stations with a timid uncertainty. "I want the boy from Ten on our side."

Alex cocks his head. "Do you see something in him?" They're not allowed to show any dissent between them in front of the other tributes, so he'd coded his words carefully. Enobaria had made sure to reinforce this point. Evander thought showing the others that they were a brutal duo of coldblooded killers who could work together as smoothly as a machine would go further than a dysfunctional pair. Even though Alex's level tone betrayed nothing of his thoughts, Iko knew he was doubting her decisive finality.

"I have a feeling," Iko said, flatly, fingers itching to close around the hilt of a knife. Now was her chance to show them all that she wasn't just a girl with big dreams. She was deadly and young and alive. She was the right kind of monster. But the knives would have to wait. Enobaria had said to save the best for the last. To give the Gamemakers a good show.

Alex shrugged, taking her word for it. He didn't fight her. He never did. Trusting each others' judgement came naturally. Even in such a predicament as this, they'd never break this foundation until the finish line.

It was Titus who approached Alex whilst he had a go at the swords station, artfully hacking away at dummies and eviscerating the targets, a perpetual motion machine as his sword glinted in the light, blade flashing with every manoeuvre, chopping through wood and plaster with metal precision. There was a noticeable energy around him as he moved, sure-footed and powerful.

Across the room, at the shooting range, Iko fingered the guns sitting on the rack, distractedly admiring them, testing their weights, all while she watched Titus make his introductions. Alex stopped his practice and ran a hand through his hair, which was plastered to his forehead with a light sheen of sweat.

Ignoring the training instructor stood by the station, Iko picked up a black pistol as Titus laughed at something Alex said. Cocked it as Alex and Titus struck up conversation, moving towards the javelin and spear-throwing station. Iko narrowed her eyes at the target ahead, but her attention was on her district partner and the boy from one with the cocky attitude and the condescending smile. She could aim with her eyes closed. She's done it before. A hundred times blindfolded. Titus picked up two spears and handed one to Alex. Sucking a deep breath in, Iko centred herself as Alex and Titus took their places thirty yards before the targets and fell into throwing stances. It was evident that no matter how cordial or friendly they were being with each other, despite the charming grin on Alex's face and the smirk on Titus' lips, everyone could see the competitive tension between them, undeniable as the palpable mistrust in Alex's guarded eyes and Titus' buried fury at the idea of being bested. They were scoping each other out, testing limits, pushing boundaries, forging the bare bones of an ally-ship. Exhale.

At the same time both boys launched their spears into the targets, Iko emptied the entire magazine of bullets into the bullseye of her target.

"Impressive."

Iko turned sharply, coming face-to-face with the girl from District Four—Sage and her wild, flame-red hair and her light freckles dusting every corner of her face. Like Iko, Sage had scars pockmarking her arms, friction burns crosshatching over her elbows, the lumpy grooves of callouses on her hands. Standing over Iko, a looming, unapologetic presence with her broad, swimmer's shoulders and muscular arms, Sage regarded Iko with a friendly grin, amusement glistering in her eyes. She cocked her head.

"Iko, right?" Sage asked. Her tone was cordial, and her eyes flicked up and down Iko's smaller figure in mild interest. "I'm Sage. District Four. You have a good eye. Are you a sharpshooter?"

Iko bristled. Granted, Sage's once-over was more out of curiosity than condescension. Still, Iko wasn't one to trust too quickly. A bad feeling festered in her gut. Back in the Academy, Iko had learnt that when someone was nice to you, it meant that they thought you were a threat. The friendlier they were, the more they hated your guts. Some girls were genuinely nice, but you couldn't tell them apart from the cruel ones. Back home, the closest friends were always the biggest competitors, the harshest enemies. If Sage was anything like the girls back home, Iko knew she had to play the same game.

"I'm flexible," Iko said, the frost in her tone growing teeth. Frankly, it wasn't that Iko was trying to drive Sage in the other direction. She was just establishing distance. Allies didn't need to be friends to work together. They only needed a common goal, and once that was accomplished, they would part ways.

Sage grinned, a flash of crooked teeth. "Good to hear. If your district partner is anything like you, we've got some real competition. My district partner's a total sardine. Fucking useless. He's never held a harpoon in his entire life."

"We?" Setting the gun back on the rack, Iko narrowed her eyes. In the Games, there was no 'we', it was everyone for themselves, and Iko was going to win by herself. Any consequences that would come with, she would deal with on her own in the aftermath. Without waiting to see if Sage would follow, Iko moved on to another station she'd spotted earlier, plucked a katana off the rack, and unsheathed it. The blade glinted brilliantly in the light. Iko felt the blood in her head pulse.

"Yeah," Sage said, shrugging. "I mean, glory to the districts, right? That's what it always is. They don't care which of the tributes come back. Just as long as it's your district, it doesn't matter. Kind of messed up, if you ask me, but we all gotta do what we gotta do, don't we?"

Truth rang in Sage's words, but Iko didn't care much for the ethics of the Games. It was messed up, but even more messed up was wasting precious training time, even though Iko didn't exactly see this as training time as much as the tributes from more hopeless districts might. It was all just for show, a performance, and she was taking centre stage. Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Iko shot a cutting glower at the girl tribute from District Eight who was fumbling away with a katana, more afraid of the blade than focused on the targets. What was she doing? Trying to cut off her own wrists? Idiot. The girl let out a squeak, and scurried off, giving Iko the space.

"You don't talk a lot," Sage remarked, unsheathing a katana and running a finger along the flat of the blade absently.

"I'm training," Iko deadpanned, shortly, as she flipped the katana over her knuckles and fell into a combative stance. See me, she thought, feeling the gazes of the Gamemakers falling onto her. See this. See what I can do. See that nobody stands a chance against me.

"Oh, spare me, Guppy," Sage snickered, waving Iko off dismissively, a bloodthirsty hunger rippling in the grey of her eyes, "you're not training. You've had years of monstrosity tucked under your skin. You and I? We're the same. We're not like the others. We know we can kill. Scratch that—we want to kill."

Iko cut her a look icy enough to freeze an empire.

Scoffing, Sage tucked a renegade lock of red hair behind her ear before falling into a similar combative stance. On the trainer's mark, they moved. Like twin hurricanes, the two girls lunged, just one step out of sync. Sage was more brute aggression, using her strength and size to her advantage, decimating the target dummies in a wild firestorm of action. Control was important in combat. Iko would never erase the impersonal nature of it from her muscle memory. While Sage raged a violent bloodbath, Iko slashed and ducked and parried, quick-footed and precise in her movements, delivering deadly blows, fighting off multiple invisible opponents with a cold, vicious composure.

Limbs and heads hit the ground with rhythmic thud as she sliced and twisted, running her blade through helpless dummies. Blood pounded in Iko's head, a heartless symphony only she could hear, and with every manoeuvre, she turned combat into a dance to her own music.

When the trainer standing at the station signalled for them to stop, Iko looked him dead in the eyes, unsmiling, and stabbed her katana through the last dummy standing. Not bothering to return the katana back to its place, Iko turned back to Sage, who tossed her own katana to the ground. Around them, their destruction lay at their feet. Dummies cut into pieces sprawled all over the combat space. Other tributes shot them wary looks as they passed. In periphery, Iko caught Alex watching them. He raised a brow, gaze flickering back and forth between her and Sage. Iko ignored him. Sage's grin turned sharklike, predatory, like she could eat the world raw.

Caught you, Iko thought, intrigued, stalking off the combat space in dignified silence. Letting out a satisfied whistle, Sage fell into step with her, red-faced and pleased with her performance.

A slow, sick grin spread over Iko's lips.

"We're not like the others," Iko said. "But we are not the same kind of monster."

Smirking, Sage arches a brow, not backing down. "Just because we've got different teeth and claws doesn't change the fact that we have the same nature. Besides, I like a little challenge."

Iko didn't answer. Her attention was already elsewhere.

There were more stations she had to get through, and she still had to figure out how to induct Elias into their group. For now, she would have to settle for playing the waiting game. For now, she had other matters to attend to. Brick by brick, she thought. That's how you build your throne.

Down by the spear-throwing station, Alex was calling her name.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
so....
what do you guys think of sage?????