Panem and its citizens belong to Suzanne Collins.
"This is getting out of control! Too many subjects are dying!"
"Then pull them out, doctor. We have what we need."
"Someone will need to keep an eye on them while they get used to the real world. Panem is a bit different than life out here."
"True. Call Rains and Taylor. They can take care of it for now."
"Yes, sir."
"Okay, doctor. Pull them out."
Katniss couldn't believe her eyes. Prim was dead. Her hate for the Capital grew before melting into grief. How could this be? Prim was so young, so sweet. All she ever wanted to do was help people. And now she was dead, killed by the very man who had destroyed everything else that was good in Katniss's life. She fell to her knees. This was it. This was what was going to push her into the inescapable void in her mind. Closing her eyes to block out the horrors before her, she waiting. Her ears were deaf to the shouts all around her. This is it.
She felt a jolt almost like an electric shock. No. The feeling continued as the electricity tingled throughout her entire body. Katniss guessed it was the Capital last attempt to finish her. "Leave me alone!" she screamed, covering her ears and keeping her eyes shut tight. It went on. Couldn't they just kill her already? She dared to open her eyes and the sight shocked her almost as much as the death of her sister.
People were… disappearing! They would blink in and out like a glitch on a screen before vanishing altogether. Katniss stared at the scene, awestruck. She dropped her arms, watching as a man nearby disappeared. She shook her head, trying to clear her mind and turned to someone at her side. She didn't recognize the woman but decided to ask her anyway. "What's going on?" she was growing frantic now as the number of people dropped faster and faster. The woman shrugged in response, her attention on her own hand which was starting to glitch. This wasn't the Capital's doing. Not even they could pull off something like this.
Katniss left the woman, knowing it was pointless staying there. She wandered around the area, weaving through the panicking masses of soldiers. No one seemed to know what was happening and there were too few of them now for it to matter. As she began to glitch herself, her thoughts went to Peeta. Was this horrible destruction confined to the capital or was he going through the same thing. She sat down, giving in to the static, her last thoughts in Panem of Peeta.
The citizens of Panem that hadn't been NPCs (a gaming term that the program had adopted meaning Non-Player Character) began to wake up. They were groggy at best. Doctors and scientists were doing their best to explain the situation without panicking the subjects. Their main concern, however, was making sure nothing went wrong in the awakening process. They had already lost a couple people from the brutal process of ripping a subject from the system.
The subjects had spent their entire lives in Panem, a computer program built to simulate a dystopian society to test how humans function and react to the unideal environment. The biggest strength and flaw in the programming was the realism of the simulation. Panem was so deep in the subjects' minds that they didn't know anything outside of the program. This also meant that if a subject died in Panem, their real self died as well.
It made adjustment to the outside world that much harder. The subjects couldn't believe that all they knew was merely a computer manipulating their minds. Jacklyn Rains had known this job would be hard but this was beyond what she was expecting. She was not trained for readjusting subjects. She was a soldier, not a psychiatrist. Taking a deep breath, she stepped down into the madness.
"Captain Rains," she turned to the disheveled doctor. "It's good you're here. They're already growing… anxious." Jack nodded. "That's understandable, doctor." The man paused for a moment, taken aback by the hardness of her voice. "Y-yes. Of course it is. Well, they need to begin the reorienting process as soon as possible. The situation could get very messy very fast if not."
Jack crossed her arms, mulling over the old man's words as she studied her charge. Warren Taylor walked up beside her just as she came to a conclusion. "There aren't quite as many as the General made it sound like." Warren raised an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to finish. "Even if we split them equally, we'll really only get about twenty-five each." She shrugged. "And we can divide them up and assign them to the officers in our teams."
Warren nodded, considering the plan. "Sounds good. So, how do we divide them up?" This time, it was the doctor who spoke. "I'll take care of that. I know these people. I know who should be with who." Jack finally broke her gaze away from the poor people of Panem, turning back to the doctor. "Agreed," she announced, dismissing the man.
The doctor, free from the two captains, scurried over to the bedside of a young women with dark hair who had been screaming since she woke up. Jack watched him go before looking over to Warren. He was watching the woman, trying to mask the emotion from his face. "And so, it begins."
"Peeta!" Katniss screamed to no one in particular. "Where is Peeta? Where is he?" People in sterile white swarmed around her; poking her with needles, trying to hold her still, cooing at her in attempts to calm her. Katniss would not be calmed, though. She was alive, and if she was still alive, that meant anyone could be. She had to know what happened to Peeta. The need burned in her skull and heart. She didn't recognize anyone in the large room and she wished for a familiar face.
The struggling went on for several long minutes and Katniss was growing tired. Exhaustion stirred in her body, threatening to give up the fight against them. Slowly, she let the darkness consume her, falling into sleep. She was almost out when a soft, comfortable voice penetrated the fog. "Katniss, Katniss it's okay. I'm here." Peeta's voice was the last thing before she fell into unconsciousness.