Very sorry for the long wait; this is the chapter where worlds collide and Angel finally meets the HG characters (there's even an unanticipated guest appearance by Haymitch) so I spent a lot of time trying to get their interactions just right.

For an instant that seemed to last an eternity, Katniss froze, transfixed by the thing's unnerving gaze - lifeless as those eyes were, there was no doubt that it was looking at her, that it was somehow aware of her - then it lumbered forward, its strides eating up the distance between them alarmingly fast, and the survival instincts that had gotten her through the Hunger Games kicked in. Scrambling backward to the stump where she'd left her bow, she loaded it in record time and fired with her usual lethal accuracy, putting her arrow through the monster's loathsome, bloodshot blue eye.

The creature didn't fall, didn't even stagger; it continued toward her, not even seeming to notice it had taken a shot that should have been fatal. That was when Katniss' shock and dismay gave way to outright fear, because she didn't know what to do now that her trusty weapon had failed to stop this thing. She could try to outrun it, but it was too close for her to stand any chance of escaping now even if she had been willing to leave Gale behind. It was almost on her now, reaching out with a huge, clawed hand from which graying tatters of decayed flesh dangled…

Just before its thick fingers closed around her throat, a long, gleaming blade came spinning through the air and caught the creature's outstretched arm, slicing it neatly off at the elbow. Startled and confused, but mostly grateful, Katniss looked around and saw that the blade had been thrown by a man in a long black coat who had just appeared in the distance; that he'd hit his target from so far off spoke volumes about his strength and marksmanship, assuming the monster really was his target. Maybe he'd been aiming for her.

"Get down!" he yelled even as he drew an object Katniss recognized as a hand grenade out from inside his coat. He lobbed it in her general direction, and she automatically obeyed his order, throwing herself behind the stump and putting her arms over her head. A split second later, the grenade detonated with a deafening boom and an earth-shaking, bone-rattling concussion that ceased almost as soon as it began, leaving an almost unnatural silence and stillness in its wake.

Peeking over the top of her stump, Katniss saw that the thing that had attacked her and Gale was in pieces on the ground, and the man in black was approaching her hiding place. She had immediately deduced from his deadly aim and the strength it would have taken to throw such a long blade with such precision that he must be a formidable fighter, and seeing him up close reinforced that impression. He was positively bristling with weapons - she noticed two swords strapped across his back, more straps crisscrossing his chest that held, among other things, the small pouch from which he'd taken the miniscule but devastating grenade, multiple holsters holding an assortment of knives and other sharp instruments, even a short-handled battleaxe, and that wasn't even counting whatever he might have hidden under his coat.

He also had the haunted, hardened look in his eyes of someone who had seen and experienced things no one should have to go through, the same look Katniss saw every time she looked at Haymitch and was starting to glimpse in herself and Peeta. This man was no washed-up old drunk like Haymitch, though, nor was he a kid like District Twelve's newest victors; he was older than her and probably had more combat experience than she could even imagine, yet a lot younger and in much better shape than her mentor.

"Who are you?" she asked warily, instinctively gripping her bow tighter.

"My name is Angel. Are you okay?"

Katniss blinked; that seemed like a dumb thing to ask someone who'd just been attacked by a mutt too horrific even for the Hunger Games. If something like that was shown on TV, everyone in the Capitol would be too scared to watch. "My friend's hurt." She gestured to where Gale was groaning and clutching his chest as he tried to sit up.

Angel went over to check Gale, then pulled him to his feet, causing him to let out a yelp of pain that he quickly bit off. "Well, you're gonna have bruises, maybe even a cracked sternum, but you'll live. Who are you?"

"He's Gale Hawthorne," Katniss answered for him. "What was that thing? I've seen all kinds of muttations, but this was different." Most of the genetically altered animals that roamed Panem, such as mockingjays, their predecessors the jabberjays, and the deadly tracker jackers, while distinguishable from normal animals, were still very similar to their non-mutated relatives. The monster that had attacked Gale and Katniss, on the other hand, didn't look like any naturally occurring species she had ever seen…except maybe a human. She was terribly afraid that this creature, or at least some part of it, used to be human; the wolf mutts in the arena had been bad enough, and they were only made to resemble the fallen tributes. The idea of creating a mutt out of an actual person was too awful to put into words. "I've never seen one that couldn't be killed," she said instead, "but putting an arrow through its brain didn't even affect it."

"It's hard to kill something that isn't really alive in the first place." Angel retrieved a piece of its skull and showed her how the remnants of its shattered jaws were still mindlessly gnashing together. "The best you can do is take it apart so it's less of a threat."

"How'd it…attack us if…not alive?" wheezed Gale, who was having trouble drawing enough air into his battered chest.

"We don't have time for a biology lesson; all you need to know right now is that it was sent here to kill Katniss, and since it failed, there'll be more."

"Sent?"

"Snow," she declared, dismay clouding her features as the realization of how accurate Haymitch's dire predictions had turned out to be hit home.

Angel nodded. "He couldn't murder you in the Capitol with all those people watching your every move, but out here you're alone, unprotected."

"And there are more of these things?"

"Yeah. I haven't seen one in years since they're only used for high-priority assassinations, but he's probably got a whole army of them."

"Then he could've sent another one after Peeta!" She bolted back toward Twelve.

Angel followed her, leaving her friend with the cracked sternum in the dust; he wasn't the one Snow's assassins were after, so he should be perfectly safe out in the woods, and Angel didn't have time to wait on him - Katniss was his priority. He caught up with her near the electrified fence and grabbed her around the waist just in time to stop her from running into it at full speed.

"Let me go!" she shouted as he snatched her back. "I have to get home! If Snow's sent a mutt for Peeta - he lives next door to my family!"

"You can't help him if you get barbecued."

She quit struggling as soon as the words penetrated her brain and listened, and sure enough, there was the low hum of electricity coursing through the fence. "But it was off when I went through before…" A stricken look passed over her face as she realized it couldn't be a simple coincidence that sneaking out had been so easy, but now that she wanted back in the fence was on; when the power was turned off, it typically stayed off for a day or two. "Could they have purposefully turned it on to trap me outside?" She hadn't thought there were any cameras along this section of the fence - though if she'd asked, Angel could have told her Snow had other, less detectable ways of watching people - but she supposed it didn't matter how Snow's spies knew she had gone outside the district's border. The important thing was that she was outside, and almost everyone she cared about was inside. "I have to get through - my family's in there!"

"I think I've got something that'll help." Angel reached inside his coat and pulled out a tiny electromagnetic device which he used to short out the electric current, and Katniss dove through the opening, snagging her clothes on the sharp wires in her haste. He couldn't follow her - the hole wasn't large enough for him to fit through with all his weapons strapped on - so he vaulted over the top of the fence instead and hit the ground running, determined not to let her get too far ahead. With other assassins undoubtedly on her trail, he couldn't let her out of his sight.

###

A lot more people were out and about when Katniss charged through the district for the second time that day, and they all gawked at her, though for the first time since winning the Hunger Games, she wasn't the center of attention; the heavily armed stranger on her heels had stolen her spotlight. They weren't sure if he was with her or chasing her, but she wasn't about to stop and assuage their concerns or satisfy their curiosity about who he was and where he'd come from; she never even broke stride until she reached the Victors' Village.

Once it was in sight, she came to a staggering halt, staring in disbelief at what lay before her - because she saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. The Victors' Village was a picture of serenity that seemed incredible in the wake of her terrifying encounter in the forest. She recovered quickly though, and jogged the short distance to Peeta's house.

"Peeta!" Katniss jammed her finger on the doorbell while hammering on his door with her other fist. "Peeta, open up! Open the door! Please!"

He took his time answering her desperate summons - in fact there was a moment where he considered ignoring her altogether - but at last he did appear. Not wanting to show any emotion toward her after her revelations the night before, he took care to make his face blank first, but it was a wasted effort; his mask of indifference crumbled when he saw her ripped clothing, disheveled hair, and wild eyes. "Katniss, what hap-?"

Before he even finished speaking, she seized his arm and dragged him outside. "Snow just sent a mutt to kill me," she hissed in a voice barely above a whisper.

"What? Are you hurt?"

"No, some guy blew it up." She glanced around for her rescuer, but Angel was nowhere to be seen. "It hurt Gale, though-" Peeta's expression darkened at the mention of Gale, which Katniss failed to notice "-and Angel said there'll be more-"

"Angel?"

"The man who blew up the mutt. Peeta, are you listening to me? Snow isn't letting us get away with surviving the Hunger Games, and he's sent an army of mutts worse than anything you can imagine to kill us!"

"Actually, he'll probably only kill one of you." Angel had reappeared, seemingly out of thin air. "He only needs one more body - you don't want to know why - and I'd bet he wants it to be Katniss, but he might settle for you if he can't get to her." Seeing Peeta open his mouth to protest, Angel continued before he got a word in. "You're not safe here; taking you out inside the district will be harder since he's trying to be subtle about it, but his assassins are capable of almost anything, and they're relentless. Sooner or later they will find an opening in whatever defenses you think you have, and when they do you'll be dead. No warning, no mercy, just a brutal, bloody death, and there won't be enough of you left to bury in a matchbox."

Peeta and Katniss glanced at one another, each gauging the other's reaction. What Angel was saying seemed outrageous, unbelievable…yet they did believe him. After all, Panem's highest form of entertainment was watching children fight each other to the death, so they were under no illusions about the world they lived in or the kind of man President Snow was. Katniss in particular had no trouble believing Snow was out to get them, because there had been a moment at the crowning ceremony when she looked straight into his eyes as he placed the crown on her head, and saw pure evil looking back at her.

It was over in the blink of an eye; he had smiled and suddenly looked like just an ordinary man again, as if he had righted a mask that had slipped out of place. What she had glimpsed behind that mask shook Katniss to her core. "What can we do?" she asked Angel. "Isn't there some way we can stop this?"

"Forget it; there's no reasoning with Snow, and he won't stop until one of you is dead. Your only chance of staying alive is to go somewhere out of his reach."

"A place Snow can't get to?" Peeta said incredulously. "There's no such thing."

"Yes there is, but we'd better get moving if we're going to make it there; every minute we waste standing around talking brings them closer. Or you can just sit here and wait to be slaughtered, along with whoever else gets in the way."

"We're coming with you," Katniss said at once. "My family-"

Angel grabbed her arm as she started toward her house. "You'll have to leave them. You and Peeta are the targets, not them. Until we get to safety, being close to you will put them in more danger than they'd be in alone."

She reluctantly accepted the logic in that. "I have to at least tell them I'm leaving, and why - and get some supplies for the trip."

Angel nodded; he hadn't had to pack for his journey to Twelve, but humans needed food and all sorts of survival gear that he didn't. "Tell them to get out of the house; it won't be safe there until Snow realizes you've left the district. You should do the same," he instructed Peeta. "Say your goodbyes if you've got anyone to say goodbye to." He had noticed while scoping out the Victors' Village that Peeta, unlike Katniss, lived alone.

"My family lives in town, so I'll stop by our bakery when we leave." Not that it'll do any good. Mrs. Mellark would scoff at the idea that they needed to take precautions against mutts and death squads, and she had a way of browbeating the entire family into going along with whatever she thought they should or shouldn't do. Then Peeta remembered someone else who might be more receptive to his warnings. "Haymitch should know what's going on too - he lives close to us."

###

Haymitch grumbled loudly about being dragged outside before he'd had his morning cup of booze-laced coffee, but he shut up when he saw Angel, apparently shocked into speechlessness. Peeta took advantage of his silence to explain what had happened to Katniss, and Haymitch didn't seem surprised that the two newest victors had been targeted for assassination. Nor did he seem very concerned about the threat his house's proximity to theirs might pose to his own life; he actually laughed at the suggestion that he should leave with them. "Your new pal's right, boy, you need to get as far from here as you can as fast as you can. What you don't need is an old drunk slowing you down."

Peeta argued for a while but finally gave up and went to fetch the things he needed from his house. Once he was gone, Angel approached Haymitch. "You put on a good front, but I can tell you're taking this seriously."

"Of course I am." Haymitch's fingers twitched as if aching to grasp a bottle that wasn't there. "People think I drink because everyone I cared about was killed after I won the second Quarter Quell, but that's only half the reason. I also drink because I saw what killed them. You really think you and the kids can outrun one of those things?"

"Let me worry about Katniss and Peeta; you worry about the rest of Twelve." Once Snow realized his intended victims had escaped, he was sure to retaliate.

From the suddenly sober look on Haymitch's face, he knew what was coming. "We're gonna need to evacuate the whole damn district." His eyes narrowed. "How'd you get the kids to agree to leave when their home's probably going to get burned to the ground? That doesn't sound like the Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark I know."

"I told them they'd put everyone in more danger by staying, which is the truth."

Haymitch nodded his agreement. "That girl could be the spark that starts a revolution - I knew it the minute she pulled out those berries, Snow knows it, and I guess you're thinking the same thing. I've heard rumors about rebels from outside the districts, but all these years there's never been anything more than that, so I doubt you'd have poked your head aboveground unless you expected her to be a game changer."

"Can we count on you?"

"Yeah, I'll get as many people out as I can." Haymitch sighed grumpily. Looks like I won't get to have that drink today. "Where do I take them?"

Angel gave him a humorless grin. "Since you've heard of us, I'm sure you can figure it out."

Haymitch's eyes widened; he'd heard whispers that the rebel group, if they actually existed, were the surviving remnants of District Thirteen, but he thought that had to be crazy talk. Surely no one could have lived through the razing of the defunct district…except it seemed that some people had. Before he could ask any questions about how they'd managed that, Katniss and Peeta reappeared along with Katniss' mother and sister, who had gathered everything they wanted to take back to their old house in the Seam - but first they had to be peeled away from Katniss. Prim was particularly unwilling to let her big sister go so soon after being reunited with her, and only unlocked her arms from Katniss' neck when Haymitch whispered in her ear that she would see her sister again soon.

"I'll come home as soon as it's safe for you to be around me, little duck," Katniss promised. Then she tore herself away, knowing that if she didn't leave now she never would, and trudged down the road to where Peeta and Angel waited.

"You're doing the right thing," Peeta tried to reassure her as the three of them started walking. "I know it's hard to leave your family again, but at least now Snow's mutts won't-" He broke off then, because they had reached the gates of the Victors' Village.

Every Peacekeeper in Twelve was lined up to meet them with weapons pointed straight at their hearts.

Hope everyone's reactions to Angel were okay; I attributed Haymitch's lack of detailed knowledge about the rebels to the fact that they've stayed very well hidden for several years, and until Katniss came along he wasn't really interested in anything he couldn't drink. As for Peeta not flying into a panic over his family's safety like Katniss did, he didn't see the demon mutt and so, while he believes her claim that Snow's trying to kill them, how dire their situation is wasn't impressed as deeply on him. Plus I'm not sure how close he is to his family since in Catching Fire he told Katniss that if she died he'd have nothing to go back to, and the only other Mellark I really know anything about is his abusive mother.

Also, I included the detail about the wolf mutts being made to look like the dead tributes, which was omitted from the movie, because that felt spookier than generic wolfy creatures.