The dome shattered.
I didn't know that the top of the arena could fall apart.
Debris started raining down. Sparks flew from split wires that dangled toward the forest floor where I stood. Where the hell is Katniss?! I started running back toward the lightning tree, which seemed to be right under the epicenter of the dome's destruction.
"Katniss!" I shouted, running around a large sheet of metal that had fallen in my path. I could feel smaller pieces of the wreckage bouncing off of my shoulders. The forest floor seemed to be covered with shards of a busted mirror.
That's when I heard the unmistakable sound of a hovercraft, and felt strong gusts of wind pushing me backwards. I shielded my eyes as more debris started blowing into my face. Peering around my arm as best as I could, I pushed forward toward the tree. "Katniss!" I screamed again, but I could barely hear my own voice over the sounds of metal screeching. I felt a few shards of debris slice my raised arm. Some found their way to my exposed neck. They prickled, like how it felt to nick myself while shaving.
"Peeta!" I turned to see Johanna a few yards to my left. She had just emerged from darkness of the trees, and she was holding a knife in her stained red hand.
"Where's Katniss?" I demanded, and I charged toward her without caring that I was unarmed. I would snap her neck with my bare hands.
"Stop right there!" Johanna warned, raising her knife and taking a defensive stance.
"Who's blood is that?!" I roared. "You were with her last!"
Johanna rolled her eyes. "I cut her tracker out, asshole. Now they can't find her."
"How do I know that can I trust you?"
Johanna opened her mouth to respond, but instead her eyes rolled back and she immediately fell to the ground at my feet. I saw the dart in her spine first, before looking up to see a Peacekeeper aiming a gun at me from about 50 yards away. I unconsciously expected to hear a canon go off to count Johanna's death. But it was a dart, not a bullet, so she was probably just unconscious. I wanted to run, but I couldn't leave her to be captured. I glanced back at the Peacekeeper who raised his left hand in the air as a signal, which prompted more soldiers in white to begin pouring out of the trees.
I grabbed Johanna, quickly tossing her over my shoulder and turning to run. The wind whipped around me, which made it hard to make any real progress forward, but I was powered by the fear of being captured. I only made it a few strides before I felt an excruciating pain in my thigh right above where they amputated my leg after the first Games. The nerves that were connected to the wires in my prosthetic fried, and I cried out as I fell forward onto the ground, taking an unmoving Johanna with me. The pain in my thigh continued in pulses and I realized that I was being electrocuted by my own prosthetic. How did they do that?
I was lying face down, clenching my teeth tightly as I tried to ride out the shocks. I could see white boots running toward me, but I couldn't move. I couldn't fight the spasms that rang again through my thigh and up the rest of my body. "That's enough!" I heard someone say, and the shocks stopped, but I still couldn't move.
I was hoisted off the ground by two Peacekeepers, one of either side of me, gripping my arms to support my dead weight. "We've got Mellark and Mason," a Peacekeeper in front of me spoke into a device. Two other Peacekeepers had lifted Johanna from where I had dropped her.
I felt my arms being forced behind my back and cuffed, but the electrocution had left me too dazed to fight back. It only occurred to me to struggle when it was already too late. "Calm down or we'll shock you again," the Peacekeeper to my right muttered as they pulled me along toward a platform that was descending from the sky. Now I noticed the hovercraft. They were taking us to the Capitol.
"Katniss, run!" I shouted back toward the trees, hoping that if she were close she would hear my warning. Smack. My neck twisted and I tasted blood in my mouth.
"Shut it," a Peacekeeper growled, "I'll break your jaw." My eyes looked past the Peacekeepers toward the lightning tree, desperately searching for Katniss. I didn't know what to make of not seeing her. Was she hurt? Was she captured? Or was she dead?
Johanna was still unconscious, but when they loaded her onto the platform I could see that they had cuffed her, too. They laid her down on her stomach, and a Peacekeeper pointed a gun at her head. When they got me onto the platform they forced me onto my stomach in the same position. A Peacekeeper pressed his boot into my neck, making it hard for me to breathe. I felt the barrel of a gun press against the back of my head.
"Let's move," I heard, and the platform started ascending. Wanting to take advantage of the birds eye view of the arena, I struggled against the boot at my neck. The Peacekeeper who had been standing over me slammed the butt of his rifle into my jaw. "Stay down." He pressed his boot into my neck harder until I felt my head swimming with the lack of oxygen.
The platform loaded us into a hovercraft. Once inside, it was extremely dark minus the sickly green glow of lights lining the floor. I felt the boot finally release my neck and I inhaled air greedily. I turned my head to see Johanna still lying beside me, but she was starting to blink slowly. I wasn't sure if she was really seeing me, and didn't have much time to decide because we were both hoisted back off of the platform. They push us into seats, and secure our cuffed hands behind us. I give it an experimental tug and find that our wrists have been strapped to hooks behind us. I see Johanna across the aisle from me, still blinking slowly, right before a black bag is pulled over my head.
My thoughts go to Katniss and the end of the last Games. Even though Snow had been furious over our trick with the berries, the situation was so diplomatically handled. Snow visited Katniss in 12 in order to threaten her to keep the act of loving me alive, but I did not see this side of things until later. I had been so grateful to be alive and to have reciprocated love. I had been so stupid.
It was clear from the way the Peacekeepers were handling us that there would be no diplomacy this time. They have to have their winner. But it certainly wasn't me and Johanna. What had shattered the dome? Why were they removing us? Johanna and I were so close to killing each other – why hadn't they just let that happen? Where were Beatee, and Finnick, and Katniss?