Chapter 11: Snow Adjusts the Arena

The viewing room smelled of white roses and something underneath them — a chemical sweetness that Snow had installed in every Capitol building he occupied with any regularity, so that comfort and his presence would become indistinguishable in the minds of those who served him. He had found this useful for twenty years. He found it useful now.

The screens covered the north wall entire. Forty-three feeds, most of them tracking the standard metrics: Career movement, food and water distribution across the arena, the flooded plaza where three bodies still rotated slowly in the current, their cannon sounds already absorbed into the evening's broadcast highlight reel. The Gamemaker — Sera Vantille, forty-one, third year in the position, technically excellent — stood to his left with a tablet she had stopped pretending to look at. She knew better than to pretend when he was in the room.

Snow watched the numbers.