5 a.m.

The alarm went off. Not the smoke alarm, but the government-mandated alarm for immediate threats. It was five a.m.--the sunrise was just peeking over the trees surrounding the neighborhood— I jumped out of bed. Disoriented, yes, but I quickly came to my senses as adrenaline woke me up due to whatever emergency was occurring.

I looked into my brother's room; he was still asleep. My sister was still in her bed too. No noise coming from my parent's room either.

I jumped downstairs and opened the door to look outside. Already the neighbors were walking down the street in bathrobes and pajamas. That's when I saw them. A smooth black car had stopped on the curb just past my house and two men in suits had stepped out. They immediately focused on me, at the door. My house, the only one not to have anyone emerge from it yet. I shut the door and sprang back upstairs.

Why hadn't my family heard the alarm yet? Why was I the only one out of bed, awake? I shook my brother awake and immediately told him to wake up our sister. I ran into my parent's room only to find my mom asleep and my dad's side empty. I shook her awake and she suddenly grew wide-eyed in worry. But where was my father?

That's right. At the Capitol building trying to keep us safe. Keep us safe because staying here to protect us wouldn't be as effective. At least if he still went in to work he could keep his cover as someone who thought what the Capitol did truly was right. But he told us what to do if this time came, and apparently it had.

We had heard of other neighborhoods being wiped out. Every few weeks someone else would be absent from class, never to be seen again. No one really knew what it meant, just that the alarm had gone off in their homes and that was that. They were gone.

I peeked out my bedroom window. The street was nearly deserted now and the Capitol's men were walking up our walkway. Did I lock the door after looking outside? I heard knocking.

My entire family was now in my room looking at me, shoes on but still in their bed clothes. Dad's away, I'm the man of the house. I need to protect them. He told us that if this ever happened he would do everything he could to make sure nothing happened to us. He would be risking his life at work instead of being dragged off with his family and neighbors when the time came.

But he set up precautions for this too. We knew that while he tried to keep the Capitol officials out of our home, we now had to follow through and run, stay alive, keep out of their grasps. I heard the enhanced locks of the front door activate, something controlled only by the government. That was dad right there. More banging on the door as the men tried to get past it.

We ran downstairs to the basement; I shoved my family into the crawlspace just as I heard a gunfire and the glass of the front window broke behind me. I moved forward as my mom was keying in a code for an underground passage—our last line of defense. It was incredibly risky. Dad had it installed with only his trusted friends helping out. He was able to erase the records of it from the Capitol's computers. Now I closed the door to is as I heard the stairs creek to the men walking down them to look for us.

“Good, you're in. Go!” my dad said through the keypad. All this was too much, even for his position at work. I knew that while we would be safe fleeing, these were the last words I would hear from him.