Prologe
"Katniss," Gale said softly
I recognized the voice. It was the same one that he uses to approach wounded animals before delivering a deathblow. I instinctively raise hand to block his words, but he catches it and holds on tightly.
"Don't," I whisper.
But Gale is not one to keep secrets from me. "Katniss, there is no district twelve."
I gasp and my heartbeat hikes to full speed. "District twelve?" I ask again, hoping that it isn't actually true, what Gale says. But Gale never lies to me. Never.
He shakes his head, and I fall back heavily onto my pillow. To heavy.
"Katniss, it's OK. I'm sure that Peeta would have taken this easy right? No need to worry. We're doing the be-"
Suddenly everything is dark around me, and Gale was cut off. I could still fell my heart beat a thousand mile in my chest. But there were no whirring sounds coming from my or Beetee's hospital machines. My blankets were no longer stiff, they were soft, heavy and rumpled around me, but where was I?
"Gale?" I whispered into the darkness that had involved me. My eyes slowly started to adjust to the dark room, and I could almost see through the extreme dark.
"Gale," I tried again, though I was pretty sure that he wasn't here with me anymore, "Are you there?" I reached out my hands to the spot where Gale had been just moments before.
Looking to my left I saw that there was a tall window, with long heavy drapes, that blotted out almost all of the light outside.
Slowly I got out of the cushy bed and made my way over to it. Taking a deep breath I pulled open the velvety sage-grey curtain, and quickly pulled back, my long braid smacking my lower back in the sudden movement.
I gasped as I took in all of the lights shining around me, pushing there way into the room, and a city rose up around me.
For a moment I had the thought that I was back in the capitol, but no that wasn't right.
A wave of relief and excruciating dread washed over me. I wasn't in the capitol, but yet Peeta was. I needed to save him, but...
I looked back at all the towers. Looming high and shadowy, only lit by all of the small lights hanging off of things.
The buildings here were to short to be the capitols. Squat and fat, with thousands of tiny windows on each of the buildings, rather than the huge glass windows that covered the capitols most glamorous buildings.
I drew even farther back from the window, stubbing my toe from the short, jerky movement. Falling back onto my bed I wrapped my freezing toes in the soft blankets, and shivered.
I locked my eyes for longingly back out of the window, huddled up n my mass of covers I stared for a long time out of the window, quietly. Observing everything that was going on outside.
This city scared me. It wasn't the odd buildings or the large green park in the middle of this grimy city. It wasn't even the people outside, for they at least were more normal then the capitols kind.
It was the fact that I did know this place. I knew, what street I was on and I knew the name of the strange city I was in.
New York City.