Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games series. Seriously. If it was mine, I wouldn't be here right now.

A/N: Some of the details described in the second book have been changed in order to work with the plot. While the landscape will be the same in the book, the arena will not be massively poisonous, and Haymitch will not be competing. Also, this chapter was written to be a teaser chapter to get people interested and leave people hanging. There will be more, but I'm going on writing hiatus because I'm having surgery in less than a week. Expect to be reading more towards the end of January.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let the Fiftieth Hunger Games begin!"

The words echoed over in my head again, having, it seems, been on infinite since the gong was sounded and everything began.

A knife whirred by, lodging in a tree somewhere just over Jeff's head—he was being hunted and, judging from the fact that the knife was a mere foot away from having lodged in his skull, he could guess who it was following him.

The female from District Seven—Hanne. Jeff had seen her in the training center, engrossed in the knife station. He'd seen her throwing them before, seen her hit the bulls eye of every target placed in front of her. She was deadly—he knew that for a fact—and that she had just barely missed his head was no accident. It was a warning—she knew where he was and she could have killed him if she had wanted to.

But why hadn't she?

Jeff scrambled to his feet, hardly remembering the pack he had grabbed during the mad scramble for supplies at the Cornucopia. His mentor had encouraged him to get out of there as fast he could, but no one had seen him run. He was fast—probably the quickest one in the Games—and had darted in, grabbed the first pack he could get his hands on, and was sprinting across the meadows and towards the woods before most anyone could make it to the Cornucopia.

There were 48 tributes this year—four from each district—in honor of the 50th games, the second Quarter Quell. He'd hardly known the other two girls sent from his district before the reaping, before training, but he'd known the other boy sent in with him.

Nick, his best friend.

Jeff couldn't believe he'd been so stupid as to run from the bloodbath of the Cornucopia without Nick. They'd grown up together, first sitting by one another in school, and, later, working side-by-side in the fields of District 9, harvesting grain.

Where Jeff was lean and wiry, Nick was stockier, stronger. Jeff was blonde, more attractive, assured that he would get plenty of sponsors by his mentor—Nick was at a distinct disadvantage, being the less outgoing of the pair. Two of the tributes from District 12—a boy and a girl—had singled out Nick as an ally, based solely on his looks. Jeff had assumed that Nick and the others from 12 would find him after the bloodbath—but where were they now?

Perhaps Nick has just made the executive decision to stay away from Jeff, thinking that if they stuck together for long enough, one might see the other killed—or worse, one might have to kill the other. He didn't hold it against Nick, really, but Jeff could count on no one but himself now.

When he felt a second body collide with his own as he sprinted away, jumping at him from behind a tree, he knew he wouldn't stand a chance in this fight. Two against one? He would have never stood a chance, not even with years of training—despite the fact that both of his attackers were girls.

He landed with a crash, his shoulder hitting a tree, before feeling the air rush out of his lungs just a split second later as someone landed on top of him.

Jeff saw her red hair—Ariella, one of the females from District 3—and remembered her interview in the Capitol with Caesar Flickerman. Her stylist had played up the sex appeal and turned her into some kind of mystical being that looked like it lived underwater—her dress seemed to consist of sheer mesh, giving the illusion of bareness, and pearls. Every male in the audience was captivated, save for Jeff and Nick. Neither of them could announce their disinterest in girls—not without losing valuable sponsors. But now Ariella wore the same things that every other one of the 48 tributes wore: long, olive green pants, with nice leather belts; fitted, tan shirts made from a soft, albeit durable, material; and black jackets made of some kind of material that made crinkling noises when his arms brushed against his sides as he ran.

The redhead pulled herself up before sitting herself down on Jeff's chest, smiling down at him in a way that suggested someone capable of distancing themselves from the guilt of killing another person.

"Hey, there, pretty boy," she said, her voice low and dangerous. "Where's your friend now?"

"I don't know," Jeff tried to say, but couldn't, finding that it was difficult enough to breathe, let alone speak, with her sitting on top of him.

Hanne jogged up, leaning against a tree as she caught her breath. "You got him. Good."

"I've just been trying to decide how best to kill him," Ariella told, presumably, her ally with a toothy smile, looking considerably less like a underwater creature and more like a jungle cat.

"I told you he was mine," Hanne replied, kicking Jeff in the head. It would have hurt more had there been more force behind it.

"How about we share?"

Jeff squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the next blows to come—waiting to die.

The cannon sounded twenty-seven shots that night.

Nick woke up, sitting up a little straighter. He peered up into the sky, trying to see the pictures of the dead tributes in the sky, but saw only the Capitol's symbol projected in the sky.

"You guys!" he said quickly, when his two allies—a male and a female tribute, both from District 12—returned from their explorations into the woods to the small clearing they'd chosen to sleep in that night. "Did you see who died?"

Camden, the male, shrugged. "I was trying to find something for food. I couldn't see the sky from where I was, but I heard the shots. Twenty-seven."

Nick frowned. "Did you?" he asked Iris.

She shook her head. Her long brown hair had fallen out of its braid and hung in her face. "No. I only counted the shots."

"Oh."

"Why? Was there someone you were looking for?" Camden asked.

"I just wanted to see who made it out alive from my district," Nick replied, half-truthful. He wanted to see if Jeff was alive. No, he needed to know if his best friend was alive.

Of the twenty-seven shots fired from the cannon that night, two belonged to tributes sent from District Nine.

Over half of the tributes sent in were killed on the first day.

Welcome to the Fiftieth Hunger Games.

May the odds be ever in your favor.