A/N: Hello, everyone. This is the sequel of Outlanders. As I said, the one major change is that Cato's perspective will be appearing, as is seen below. The story picks up a few days after the last chapter of Outlanders. I hope you enjoy.

Cato:

The list of interview questions lands in the middle of my breakfast, right on the poached eggs. I hurry to pull it out, but by the time I get it clear of the food, one edge of it is already soaked in yolk. The yellow goo drips onto the carpet at Brutus's feet, and as I try to mop it up, he gives me a look that says quite plainly "You are the biggest failure known to man."

"Read those," he orders. "Figure out what you're going to say."

"Interviews aren't until tomorrow."

"You could use the extra time. I don't want you embarrassing District Two any further. And Cato, leave the carpet alone. Cleaning is a job for an Avox."

Or a mutant. Brutus walks out, banging the door shut behind him and leaving those three words unsaid. Figures. The guy has it in him to be the world's biggest asshole and he still can't say what he means. I know he's thinking it, though. The look on his ugly face tells it all.

I give up on the mess. It's not coming out of the carpet or the list, and really, how is this my problem? I'm a victor now. I have money to burn. More food than I could ever eat. All the time in the world. Being a victor means that you live the easy life. But I've been a victor for a week now, and so far, I don't think there's anything easy about it.

I glance at the first question on the list. How did you get here? Here being the victor's throne, of course. It's a pretty standard closing interview question; it gives the new victor room to talk about strategy, or start madly thanking their sponsors, or yap about whatever it is they think saved their life. Most District Two victors use this question to brag about their fighting prowess or relive their kills. Me, I'm not sure I even know where to begin.

How did you get here? Good question. Wish I knew.

It's been a week since they pulled us out of the arena, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of the other victors. I don't even know if they're still alive. Well, that's not true. I'm pretty sure that Lief from Seven and Katniss from Twelve are alive. Neither of them was hurt when they pulled us up into the hovercraft. Lover Boy, on the other hand, looked wrecked. His leg was practically chewed off at the knee, and he was bleeding all over the place. And then there's Spirit.

She was the biggest mess out of all of us. I carried her into the hovercraft myself, and even in that short time, I still managed to get covered in blood. I had no idea somebody as small as Spirit could have that much blood in her. As soon as we got into the hovercraft, they took her away. She could be dead by now, shipped back to District Seven and already buried in the ground. Gone.

Brutus won't tell me anything. I can't decide whether that's because it's bad news or because he just enjoys messing with my head. But today is the ceremony, where they show the finished Games tape, and all the victors will be there. If Spirit's alive, I'll know for sure today.

My prep team comes up, along with my stylist, Dido. Dido is holding a black suit in a plastic bag and grinning fit to burst. At the sight of me, my prep team goes berserk, hugging me and kissing my cheeks and basically invading my personal space. Brutus, who's come in behind them, rolls his eyes.

"After your interview prep, I've arranged a meeting with Lief Holbrook," he says.

Great. Lief. The guy's a parasite. But I guess if it comes down to talking to him or either of the people from District Twelve, I'd definitely rather talk to him. And he's Spirit's district partner. He probably knows something about her.

As long as Brutus is here, I might as well have a shot at the question again. "Is Spirit all right?"

Brutus won't look at me. "I'm not authorized to tell you that."

I'm about two seconds from trying to beat the answer out of him, but my shoulder still has stitches in it and Brutus is even bigger than I am. I'd end up with a busted jaw and no answer besides. I look away from him and let the prep team get to work.

The prep team has a field day with all the new scars I have. General protocol is to do a full body polish on new victors, but in District Two, scars are considered very important to a victor's image and Brutus wouldn't let them do it. People in District Two just don't trust unscarred victors. Scars mean you've been tested and you've proved yourself worthy. You can't put a price on that kind of respect.

Dido passes me the shirt and jacket - I'm already wearing the pants - and I put them on. I can tell something's off right away; the shirt is enormous. It hangs on me like a tent, better fitting for someone roughly the size and shape of a tank. "Dido, did you give me Brutus's suit by accident?"

Dido frowns, or tries to. She's had so much surgery on her face to make her look young that she can't really move her eyebrows any more. "No," she says. "I tailored this especially for you."

"Then why doesn't it fit?" I'm starting to get jumpy. This whole thing is weird. I'm a victor now. The world is my oyster. Shouldn't I at least be able to fit into my damn suit?

Suddenly, Dido's face clears. "I know what the problem is; I tailored this for you before you went into the arena. No wonder it's a little big! We'll just take the seams in and -"

I tune her out. What the hell was Dido doing? You don't make your victor's interview costume before they go into the Games. I mean, first of all, you don't know if they're actually going to, you know, survive, and second, everybody loses weight in the arena. How is something that was made for you before you spent three weeks in hell supposed to fit you after you come out the other side?

Dido takes the seams in as far as she can, but the suit still hangs on me. I look like I'm playing dress-up in Brutus's clothes.

The prep team yaps on and on about the Games. Mostly about me; they compliment my kills and my strategy and all that crap. It crosses my mind to pump them for information about Spirit, but what would they know? I see the Games sort of like an enormous maze, and the prep team is only on the outer edge of it. They don't know the half of what's going on inside. By the time they finally leave, I only have an hour left before I'm supposed to go onstage for the closing ceremonies. Lief isn't here yet, and rather than going back to the list of interview questions or staring at the wall, I turn on the TV.

It's Games coverage 24/7, doctors and commentators and psychologists going over the actions of every single tribute with a microscope. Back home in District Two, the Games and everything related to them are required viewing for the trainees in the battle school, but even the kids who won't ever volunteer are probably watching, too. It's every kid's dream to become a victor, even the kids whose parents are too poor to send them to battle school. Unless you demonstrate serious skills and get in on scholarship, it costs a lot of money to send a kid, and most kids end up as stonecutters. Even the ones who get into battle school sometimes drop out. It's not for everybody.

They show a lot of fan-made videos. One guy recorded the footage off his TV and then spliced it, making this video solely devoted to the weird faces I made during the Games. He managed to find three minutes worth of strange facial expressions, and the director of communications feels the need to play the stupid video every fifteen minutes. I don't think it's that funny, but every time Brutus sees it, he has to leave the room.

Then there are the official broadcasts. The Gamemakers feel obligated to show coverage of all the victors, but one of us is completely dominating the airwaves. It's not me. And it's not the happy couple from District Twelve, either. It's Spirit. In the past few days, I've probably seen the one shot a thousand times from just as many angles; Spirit kissing me, then whipping around to take out a mutt's throat with her clawed right hand. Nobody in the Capitol can seem to decide what to think of her.

Brutus bangs open the door again. "Turn that idiot box off. Lief Holbrook is here."

I glare at Brutus, pick up the remote, and turn up the volume, just to show him exactly what I think of him. Brutus shakes his head and moves aside, allowing Lief to edge past him into the room.

Lief looks normal. Not starving, not nervous, not stunned, none of the emotions you usually see on victors. He's completely untouched, like these last few weeks haven't happened for him. Then again, they probably haven't. The coward spent practically the whole Games hiding behind Spirit, letting her take the hits while he reaped the reward.

My hands curl into fists. Lief is almost the same height as I am, but he's thinner; I could break him easily. But Brutus is still here, just waiting for me to screw up, and plus, I probably shouldn't punch another victor.

I stare at Brutus. "Are you leaving or what?"

Brutus smirks at me. "Of course. Be in the lobby in half an hour. Do not be late."

He leaves, and then it's just me and Lief and the TV, blaring yet another story about Spirit's mutation obnoxiously loud.

Lief is the first to speak. "Jeez, Cato, you're in a bad mood."

"You'd be, too, if you were stuck down here with Brutus." Just the thought of my mentor makes we want to hit something.

"It's worse on my floor," Lief says. "Blight - that's my mentor - is always lurking around, stoned out of his mind, and the prep teams never shut up…Johanna's a good laugh, though. On the rare occasions when she actually talks to me."

"Johanna? She's still here?" Mentors go home when their tributes die. If Johanna's still here, that's a good sign.

"Well, yeah," Lief says. "Why wouldn't she be?"

The expression on my face must give it away, because Lief's mouth drops wide open. "You mean they didn't tell you? Spirit's alive. She's going to be fine!"

All the air comes rushing out of my lungs in a sigh of relief. She's okay. Brutus was just being an asshole, as usual. He wasn't trying to tell me she was dead. Spirit's going to be okay. She's alive and I'm going to see her soon. Suddenly, panic clutches at me. What the hell am I going to say to her?

"How's she doing?" I ask, because Lief is looking at me and smirking. I have the weird feeling that he knows what's going through my head and he thinks it's funny as hell.

"She's okay," Lief says, shrugging. "Starved, practically bled out on the operating table, but she's okay. The mutts crushed her hip and the doctors are having a bad time trying to fix it."

"They fixed Lover Boy's leg, didn't they?" Okay, they chopped it off, but really, it was pretty much a loss already. If they can give Lover Boy a new leg, why can't they help Spirit?

Lief sighs. "It's a different thing. The damage on Spirit's hip isn't bad enough to justify taking off the leg, but it's a big mess in there. Tons of muscles to reconnect."

"Oh."

"That's why the ceremonies are so late. The doctors keep trying to push the ceremonies back so they can fix her up, but the Gamemakers put their collective foot down, and then our stylist stuck her head in it and said there was no way she was putting her victor onstage in front of all of Panem in a wheelchair."

"Oh," I say again. "So they're giving her a cane or something?"

"Yeah. Elisheba's having a field day decorating the thing," Lief says.

And that's it. Lief and I are officially out of things to talk about. What I really want to know is if Spirit has asked about me, or even said anything at all. Can she even talk?

Lief looks at me, the smirk on his face getting even bigger. "Come on, Cato. Just spit it out. What are you trying to ask?"

"Has she said anything about me?" I finally say in a rush. I can feel myself turning red.

"Honestly, Cato, she's barely been awake at all for the past couple days," Lief says. "They wake her up to feed her and then they put her right back under again. I'm not sure whether it's for security reasons or because they need to do more surgeries on her, but she hasn't had time to say much."

My heart sinks. I guess it was stupid of me to think that Spirit would be worrying about me as much as I was worrying about her.

"Although," Lief says thoughtfully, "she did ask to see you yesterday."

I'm starting to see why Spirit always got so pissed off at Lief. He's annoying. I decide I'd better drop the whole issue of Spirit and find a new topic. Or better yet, just find somewhere else to be until it's time to go downstairs for the closing ceremonies. I've selected my chosen escape route and I'm already opening my mouth to make the excuse when the door bangs open.

Lief jumps out of his skin and my hand flies to my belt, grabbing for a sword that's no longer there. But it's no one to worry about. Just the drunk mentor from District Twelve, escorting one half of Panem's most famous couple into the room.

"What are you doing here?" I snap at Katniss Everdeen. She can shoot arrows and her face doesn't look like someone stuck a dead rat to it, big deal. She's still from Twelve. She should not be on my floor.

"Waiting," her mentor answers brusquely.

Katniss looks around the room and shrinks away. "Where's Peeta?"

"They want to air your reunion live at the closing," her mentor answers. "You'll see him soon."

He looks to Lief and I. "We'll be back to get you lot in a few minutes. In the mean time, play nice."

He leaves - or tries to, walking straight into the doorjamb and bouncing off. Giving his head a little shake, he rights himself and gets going again, this time getting through the door. There's a long silence after he leaves.

"Well," Lief says finally. "This is awkward."

Damn right. Katniss is still standing by the door like a deer in the headlights. Lief and I are standing five feet away from each other, trying not to breathe each other's air. Spirit and Peeta are the sociable ones, and neither of them are here. So that leaves us, three people who've spent the last few weeks trying to kill each other.

Katniss is the first to open her mouth. "Have either of you seen Peeta?"

"Not since the doctors dragged off his stinking carcass." For want of anything better to do, I aim a kick at one of the couches.

"I saw him," Lief says. "He looks fine."

Katniss smiles at him, but she looks like she's about to faint. Or puke. "I saw Nails when I was down in the Remake Center."

"Who the hell is Nails?"

"Peeta couldn't remember your district partner's name," Katniss says to Lief, shooting a nervous look in my direction. "He just called her Nails instead. You know, 'tough as nails'. Like that."

Capitol attendants show up with our mentors in tow. The only mentor missing is Johanna Mason, but she's probably with Spirit. Lief's mentor looks drunk; Katniss's mentor looks hungover; my mentor just looks bored out of his mind. He's been through this a million times with other, more impressive victors. At least his other victors managed to eliminate all their competition.

They put us under the stage outside the Training Center, leading Lief and Katniss off to different areas. The place they put me in smells like sawdust, and I can't stop sneezing.

"Wipe your nose," Brutus orders. "And try to hold it together up there. I won't allow you to embarrass District Two any more than you already have."

"Screw you," I mumble, and sneeze again.

The anthem plays, and Caesar Flickerman begins announcing the names of this year's victors. I hear the announcement of District Twelve's victors, which is followed by high-pitched shrieking from all around me. The stage must be surrounded by fans. They never show the adoring Capitol crowds on the day of the ceremony; just the victor, alone in their chair on the stage.

Now it's my turn. "From District Two, Cato Lewis!"

I step onto my metal plate and rise up, blinking in the bright lights, trying not to blow snot everywhere. Caesar comes over and shakes my hand. His mouth moves and I guess he's congratulating me, but I can't hear him over the roar of the crowd. People are cheering for me. They're chanting my name. This crazy feeling of pride comes over me. I did this. I always knew I could, and now I have.

Caesar waves his arms, trying to get the crowd to stop yelling, and finally they quiet down enough for him to make his final announcement. "And last, but certainly not least, I give you the tributes from District Seven; Lief Holbrook and Spirit Emerson!"

The crowd is unnaturally quiet as Lief and Spirit rise from the stage. Unlike the rest of us, who've been reasonably patched up, Spirit still looks like a wreck. She's ghost white and her eyes are huge in her face. The crooks of both her arms are bandaged. In her left hand she holds a staff wound with twisted threads of silver, and as she steps forward off her plate, I can see that she walks with a limp.

Spirit sees me and starts toward me, the limp more obvious as she tries to move faster. I meet her halfway across the space between us and wrap my arms around her, and finally the crowd reacts, letting out a huge roar of approval. Apparently there are people who like us.

"It's okay. We're okay." I can't stop saying it. Go ahead, call me stupid, but until I saw Spirit on the stage, I wasn't entirely convinced that our escape from the arena had actually happened.

Spirit's voice is kind of muffled by my shoulder. "I told you."

Caesar comes over to congratulate Spirit and Lief, and I notice that even with her staff, Spirit is awfully unsteady on her feet. And she keeps yawning behind her hand. I think she's almost relieved when Caesar leaves to go break up District Twelve's make-out session.

"They woke me up about five minutes ago," Spirit tells me when I ask her if she's all right. "Did all my prep while I was asleep."

"Lucky you."

"Are you kidding? I was scared out of my mind," she says. "You try waking up to a bunch of brightly colored lunatics hovering over you."

Caesar returns to us, having successfully separated Katniss and Lover Boy. "Shall we start the show?"

He takes Spirit's arm, probably to help her over to the couch they've set up for us, but he hooks his hand right over one of the bandages and she flinches, letting out a little hiss of pain. Caesar lets go instantly. "Are you all right?"

Spirit smiles thinly. "Fine."

I step up to her side and offer her my arm to use as a support. I saw it in one of the old movies they have at the school back home. Lief has the same idea. "We've got it."

Ordinarily, the victor watches the Games tape from a throne, but since there are five of us this year, they've had to make adjustments. The couch is pretty big, but District Twelve still manages to take up half of it, cuddling and being gross. Lief, Spirit, and I have to squeeze into the remaining space, and since there's no way I'm sitting by Lover Boy, I quickly claim the free end. Spirit sits next to me and Lief sits on her other side, closest to District Twelve. I can tell he thinks they're as disgusting as I do because he starts scooting away from them right away.

I put my arm around Spirit and she leans her head against my shoulder. The lights in the City Circle go down and the movie plays.

They open with the reapings. It's weird to watch myself charge out of the crowd to volunteer, looking cocky as hell. The reaping in District Seven is mostly uneventful, except that when Lief's name is called, he bolts out of the crowd, shakes their escort's hand, and then gives Spirit a huge hug. I have a hard time not laughing at the disgusted look on her face.

Lief turns to Spirit. "Hey, Spirit, how about a hug?"

Spirit picks up the staff from where it's lying across her lap and points it at him. "Watch it."

Training scores. Interviews. They show stills of all of us, but the only live-action clips they include are ones from Spirit and Lover Boy's interviews. I guess they are the only ones who said anything interesting. When Spirit declares that she's going to win, a big group of people in the crowd start cheering, but they're drowned out when Lover Boy says his piece about Katniss.

Lief rolls his eyes. "I don't get it."

"Me neither."

Spirit yawns again. "That makes three of us."

The shots of the actual Games begin with a view from a tribute's perspective as they rise from the ground. It's only when the chosen tribute blows past the competition and reaches the Cornucopia first that I realize it's Spirit. Then the camera pans to a wide view of the plain, zooming down on individual groups of fighters every time someone dies. They show all my kills in detail. I always thought I'd be one of those victors who started cheering whenever they showed one of their kills, but I just watch. I can't believe that's really me cutting that person's throat and laughing like a psycho.

To be fair, they show almost everybody in our alliance like that; me and Clove and Marvel and Glimmer. Spirit and Lief are the only ones who don't get that treatment. In Lief's case, they can't, because he didn't kill anyone in the bloodbath, and Spirit's two kills come while she's protecting me. The only time in the first twenty-four hours of the Games when I don't look like an asshole is when I catch Spirit as she falls out of a tree. And even then, it looks like an accident.

They switch off between shots of Katniss Everdeen and shots of our alliance for the next few minutes. Then there's the tracker jacker episode; and then it changes abruptly from Katniss twitching around on the forest floor to Spirit, prying a stinger out of my face while pus and blood sprays everywhere.

"Ugh," Lief says. "I get sick just watching that."

He's not the only one. Katniss looks a little green, too.

They show Spirit taking care of the various members of the alliance for awhile, and then the Gamemakers send coyotes to scare her away from us. People in the audience actually start booing the coyotes when they show up. It turns out that Spirit downplayed the fight with the coyotes; it's bloody and lightning-fast, looking like a preview of the mutt fight that's coming. When one of the coyotes sinks its teeth into Spirit's arm, Lief swears loudly. "Was that when -"

"Yeah. Pipe down, Lief, people are trying to watch," Spirit says, hushing him.

It's while Spirit is cauterizing her own wound that I figure out what the Gamemakers are doing with the way they're cutting the footage. They're trying to set us all up for the final confrontation, to make it look like they knew what we were going to do from the beginning. The reason they focused so long on Spirit, her strength and determination and especially her fight with the coyotes, is so they can pretend they knew she was a mutant all along.

But the rest of us end up looking odd. Lief is mostly spastic, with occasional flashes of purpose, while I look like a dangerous, unstable creep in every interaction except the ones I have with Spirit. Katniss is sometimes lethal - so it was her who blew up our supplies and killed Marvel - but mostly pathetic. Lover Boy is mostly pathetic.

I glance over at him. He's stroking Katniss's hair and grinning like he's king of the world. Pathetic. Yeah, so what else is new?

After the Gamemakers announce the rule change, there's a long and pretty boring bit where Katniss and Lover Boy hang out in a cave, kissing and talking. Spirit and I meet up in the woods and she runs away. After that scene, they cut straight to the feast.

Spirit looks puzzled. "Huh. I wonder why they didn't show -"

"Shh," Lief says. Onscreen, Clove has just run toward the Cornucopia, and his eyes are glued to the screen. I don't like seeing how Clove died, but knowing that Thresh gets what's coming to him makes it easier. They show Lief saying goodbye to her, and the camera doesn't leave her body until they lift her into the hovercraft.

Spirit nudges Lief with her shoulder. "She's okay now. You know that."

Lief nods, but I don't think he believes her.

For the next ten minutes, the camera stays on Lief, Spirit, and I. When Lief kills Thresh, people in the audience cheer, and Katniss shoots an angry look at Lief, like the way they're acting is his fault. Spirit's eyes are closed. I think she's asleep. She stays asleep right through the end of the Games tape, and we have to shake her awake for the presentation of the victor's laurels. She's still pretty wobbly, but when President Snow places the crown on her head, she stands up straight and lifts her staff in a salute, getting a huge cheer from the audience. The smile that President Snow gives her looks forced.

Then it's off to the party at the president's mansion. On the way there, I hear Spirit's mentor and a couple doctors arguing loudly with one of the Gamemakers. Something about more surgery and not ready and needs rest. The Gamemaker shoots back with 'her presence is required'. Spirit's mentor loses the argument, and so we end up waking Spirit up again because she has to go to the party. I try to stay close to her, but she gets stopped by a couple of crazies who've had surgery done on their hands to make them look like her claws. Then the crowd gets between us and I lose sight of her. I haven't had time to talk to her at all. And I still haven't given back her ring.

People shake my hand, ask for autographs, follow me everywhere. District Twelve is getting the worst of it, though; everybody wants to see them. They're stuck in one corner of the ballroom, surrounded by photographers and drunken Capitol officials.

Four hours into the party, and I'm hiding in a dark corner with a bunch of sleepy drunks. These guys are so boozed up that they don't recognize me, which suits me just fine. I just need a break.

Lief runs up to me, looking panicked. "Where's Spirit?"

"I don't know. The last time I saw her was at the beginning of the party." Something occurs to me, and I say, "When was the last time you saw her?"

"The beginning of the party!"

Someone like Spirit can't just go missing. She can't have left the president's mansion. I remember in the arena, toward the end, when she was so sick she couldn't keep her eyes open, and I shiver. But that's over now. The doctors fixed it. Didn't they?

"I'll take that side, you take this one," Lief directs. "We have to find her."

We split up and move through the darkened ballroom, searching for her. I walk past a woman who's sitting against the wall, her head tilted to one side. She has short dark hair, and I assume it's just another person who's dressed up like Spirit, drunk into a stupor. Then I see the bandages wrapped around her arms and the staff lying discarded beside her, and I know it's not an imitator. It's her.

"Spirit!" I get down on my knees next to her and feel clumsily for a pulse. I can't find one, so I take a deep breath to try and calm down and check the other side. Nothing. I check her neck, hoping. She has a pulse, but it's weak. And it's really slow.

I pick her up in my arms. "Don't you do this to me," I tell her. "Everything's supposed to be okay now."

Then I shove my way through the crowd, searching for help.