Im'g'twe Hills, Geonosis
The rocky hills not far outside Geonosis' capital city held many secrets. Orange spires dozens of stories tall stabbed into the sky, while at their bases, meter-long, six-legged lizards scurried into the shadows as she passed. With their collective love of blood sports, the Geonosians had hunted the most dangerous beasts of these hills to extinction hundreds of years ago. But as Johanna had learned over the last three days of trekking, even without its native monsters, Geonosis could still be deadly. Winds that reached ninety, perhaps a hundred kilometers per hour whipped at her face, sending sand and dirt hurtling towards her eyes and mouth. She sported hundreds of tiny cuts where the jagged pieces had ripped at both her clothing and the skin underneath.
Though her throat was parched, Johanna hesitated to drink the few precious drops of water that remained in her canteen. She had found a spring the first day, but since then, there had been no water to be seen. There had to be water somewhere, because otherwise the lizards would not be able to live here, but it was well-hidden.
At the low, dull roar of an engine, Johanna pressed herself into one of the crevices in the rock formation. The ship flew low over the hills, far lower than there should be any reason to. According to her maps, there wasn't another settlement for eighty kilometers in that direction.
But maps, particularly official ones, often neglected to mention the most interesting features. Seven years in Intelligence had taught her that. She grabbed her macrobinoculars from her equipment belt and trained them on the ship. Johanna watched in amazement as a hole easily a hundred meters wide opened up in the ground, easily swallowing the freighter before disappearing again.
She typed a short request for backup into her datapad. Johanna had little doubt of her ability to get into the facility, but nobody hid hangars underground and kilometers away from civilization if they wanted them to be found. Getting out - and living to tell the tale - might be more of a challenge. She had better get on with it, then. Johanna pressed her cheek against the cool stone for just a moment, savoring the partial relief it gave from the sun, tightened the straps on her supply pack, and stepped out of her hiding spot. The hangar couldn't have been more than six or seven kilometers away. She could be there by nightfall and off this Force-forsaken world by morning.
By the time she reached the clearing, Johanna's legs quaked beneath her with every step. Though she was burning up, she hadn't sweat in hours. Johanna knew the symptoms of dehydration, had sat through hours of lectures on what to do in these situations, but she couldn't stop now. Air patrols swept the area at least every half hour, and she had dodged more than one ground force in the last two kilometers. She took that as a sign that she was honing in on her target. Excellent.
She stopped when she reached the clearing. This was going to be the tricky part. Though she couldn't spot any obvious holocams or guard stations, there had to be eyes watching, guarding this place. Nobody would build a hangar out here if they weren't going to protect it from prying eyes. Her vision swam, and unconsciousness beckoned to her, inviting, but Johanna forced herself to focus on the area before her. One couldn't make a perfectly invisible hangar. There must be a seam, a crack, a control panel, something that a well-trained eye could pick up on. And perhaps, had dusk not been fading into night around her, there might have been, but she could see nothing.
Johanna had largely given up on finding the entrance before her backup arrived when she noticed movement on the far side of the clearing. Making sure she was well within the shadow of the spire above, she watched through her macrobinoculars as eight Geonosians emerged from an entryway that had appeared the ground. The eight filed out two by two, maintaining their formation as they headed out in the opposite direction from where she sat. That'd be the next set of guards, then. Good to know.
She waited until they disappeared, then edged her way along the perimeter of the clearing. It took her several minutes to make her way to the entrance. Now that she knew the door's location, it seemed impossible that she had not noticed it earlier. From this angle, the seam in the ground was clearly visible, and it took her only a moment to locate the button that opened the door. A blast of cool air hit her as she descended down the pedramp, and after spending three days out in the heat, she was tempted to stay and enjoy it. Maybe she could find some water down here and…
No, the mission came first. It was a miracle the Geonosians hadn't discovered her presence already; she couldn't tempt fate by wasting any time.
She wandered through long, meandering hallways of the same red stone as the rock formations above. Created for the insectoid Geonosians, even a small human like Johanna had to stoop in the tight space. She kept hold of her blaster at all times, ready for any signs of movement. In the distance, she heard clanging, grinding, the sounds of industry, heavy manufacturing. After rounding one more corner, the cramped space opened up into a huge cavern. Johanna found herself on a catwalk above an enormous assembly line. Workers poured liquid metal into molds in time with a mechanical stamp. The chamber stretched on for as far as she could see in every direction, and the entire area was consumed in a hive of activity. Johanna traced through the steps of production, from wiring to stamping to molding, back for another round of wiring, and so on. With the exception of scale, it was nothing she had not seen before. But when she craned her neck back, she could see rows upon rows of the final product, and it made her blood run cold.
Battle droids, hundreds of them. And that had to be just today's creations, for as she watched, fifty, a hundred more came off the assembly lines. How many could this facility produce in a week, a month? No world needed those kinds of forces for self-defense alone.
Johanna grabbed the holocam from her belt. With fumbling hands, she turned it on and trained it on the lines below. "This is Agent Johanna Mason, reporting from the Im'g'twe Hills region of Geonosis, coordinates one-seven-niner-niner-three-eight. I have found an unregistered underground factory that produces battle droids." Right now, even the act of talking made her stomach churn, and she worried she would collapse where she stood. Not certain what else to say, Johanna guided the lens towards the finished droids. Her hand froze of its own accord.
Her eyes widened, and she tried to retreat back into the shadows, but her body remained frozen. A horrible buzzing filled her mind, insectoid chittering that drowned out any rational thought besides the searing pain in her hand. Johanna's knees crumpled beneath her, and the last thing she remembered was the pool of liquid metal that had once been her holocam burning through the flesh of her palm.
District 12, Panem
After that day, the new decrees came quickly. Longer hours in the mines. Increased quotas. Lower pay. Limited permissible travel between the main town and the outlying villages. Frictions rose along with the temperatures. Old disputes between neighbors, unpaid debts that hadn't been mentioned in years, any excuse for a fight got tempers flared up in the once-peaceful district. Peeta tried not to think of the daily scuffles as foreshocks, but everyone realized the big one had to be coming soon.
The situation had been bad for business. Before the pay cuts, a few of the better-to-do miners had bought their bread from the bakery, and a handful even made a weekly habit of picking up a treat or two. But when you never knew if today was the last day you'd be able to afford to feed your family, bakery bread seemed too large a luxury for anyone. Still, Rye showed up as early as he could in the mornings to fire up the ovens, and Peeta stayed late every evening to get every customer they could. Today he'd baked only five loaves, less than a tenth what he would before the decrees, and at closing time, three of them still sat before him.
He ripped a chunk off and stuffed it into his mouth. At least it tasted good. Peeta wrapped one of the others up in a clean cloth for Rye in the morning. The third, he took with him for his parents as he headed upstairs. The new decrees had made it impossible for him to fulfill his obligations at the bakery while continuing to live on his own. It saved him some rent money. Maybe he'd have a little cushion built up by the time things calmed down.
While he wiped down the counters, he heard noises outside. A quick look at the chrono told him it was well past curfew. A flash of orange light joined the shouting.
The Seam. The neighborhood of ramshackle huts where the miners lived. It had to be. And if that place lit on fire, with all that fine layer of coal dust they never managed to quite clean away…
Peeta was out the door in an instant, consequences be damned. As he raced towards the Seam, he saw other townspeople emerging from their houses and shops. A few ran towards the scene as well, but many stood, taking in the curiosity of the faraway flames and screams. He wanted to drag them along, but Peeta couldn't stop now. He remembered all too well the last fire they'd had in the Seam. Clothes left too close to an open fireplace, the official ruling had been. Completely accidental. But that hadn't stopped it from killing eleven people, three entire families. And compared to the flames that danced in the sky tonight, that thing had been tiny.
The bang of a gunshot echoed in his ears, and for the first time, it occurred to Peeta that the fires might not be accidental. But he refused to stop now, when so many people were in danger, and –
The scene that greeted him was one straight from hell. Flames burst from the windows and ate at the roofs of the few houses left standing. In the smoke, he could make out only outlines of the flailing bodies. Only a few meters away, a woman lay, bleeding from a wound in her face. Peeta started towards her, but a young girl got there first. Satisfied that she would be well taken care of, he began to look for the other wounded.
"Step away from her." At the cold voice, Peeta stopped, only to realize the words had not been intended for him. "I said step away."
Peeta turned to see a Peacekeeper level his blaster at the girl and the old woman, and without thinking, he hurtled himself towards the man. He hadn't wrestled in years, but once you learned the basics, you never forgot them. With the man pinned under him, Peeta managed to grab the gun away. One shot, and it was over.
"Peeta?" the girl asked, questioning.
He didn't tear his eyes away from the face of the Peacekeeper. Romulus Thread. It had to be. The world dropped out from underneath him, and he was falling. This was it. They wouldn't let him live after this. Dad, Rye, Mom, they were all practically dead already. He shouldn't have come. He should stay here and let himself and the body burn so nobody would ever have to know what happened. He should –
Small hands grabbed him, pulling him up. "Peeta, come on! We need to get out of here!" The girl, Prim, he remembered dully, Katniss' sister, dragged him along, and eventually, he ran to keep up with her. "We need to get out of Twelve. Your family has a speeder, right?"
"Yeah."
"We're gonna need it." Together, they raced towards the bakery. He could still hear the screams. He could go back now, save them, die with them. But Prim kept him moving back into town, part of an exodus from the Seam as everyone who could still stand evacuated.
It took only a few minutes to reach the shed where the Mellarks kept their beat-up old speeder. "You get in and get it started. I've got to grab something."
"Hurry."
He raced up the stairs two at a time. "Dad! Get Mom ready to go. We need to get out of here." Peeta ran into his bedroom, grabbing the sack of credits he'd been saving these last few weeks. "Dad, come on!"
"Go on, Peeta. We'll only slow you down."
"Dad, no, you don't understand. You'll die if you stay here."
"And if we go with you, we all will." His father had never looked older than in that moment. Blue eyes so much like his own met his. "Go." Daniel Mellark flinched as one of the downstairs windows shattered. "Go!" He pushed Peeta towards the stairs, and with one last look at his father, he hurried downstairs to where Prim and escape waited for him.