All rights to Suzanne Collins, author of the The Hunger Games trilogy
Suddenly, the entire space is obscured by the thick black smoke from the destroyed factory. After three days in the air, it is finally falling down like a burst of black snow. If this doesn't signal the end of the games, nothing will except the mechanical dragon itself, that caused the calamitous explosion. The crow is practically floating above, and the jabberjays are gone. Dead. All of them. That's all this game has been, is one feast after another for the death with wings.
It's impossible to even tell who's still alive at this point. Even if I could, there's no way to change anything. Nobody anywhere in Panem can change anything about what happens. All they can do is wait, and for those districts whose tributes are still alive, hope that theirs is the last one standing.
The smoke blots out a swath of arena all the way from the forest where Peeta still stands strangling to the sea side he followed to get there. The smoke covers the flattened slope he tumbled down and goes all the way to the gorge which now only has one wall. It's not much in the way of cover anymore, but it's the closest thing there is to shelter from the coming fire, if the dragon is built to resemble its form from ancient myths.
Peeta's not dead yet, though. Still, he's survived beyond expectations in situations where anyone else would have left a cannon ringing all throughout the arena. His cannon hasn't fired yet, but there's no telling how much longer that can keep up. What does sound over the blistering wind is the crow's screech and metal grinding on metal. The crow and the dragon. Still so imminently on the way. Maybe if he gets to the gorge, and doesn't die for lack of air on the way, Peeta can still win this, but the odds of that are extremely slim. There's no direction he can wander towards to escape the smoke, and even if he does, the blackness covers the only safe place.
He has to stay in the smoke. The more ground he covers coughing, he closer he should be to the rest of his life. Here, at home in district 12. Well, in the Victor's Village at any rate, and being its third resident ever. For a whole year, if he or Saige survive this- I think she's still alive, anyway- if one of them survives, it would mean an entire year long reprieve for us. Capitol parcels would cover the harshest winter we'll have ever had.
Templesmith said something a few days back. He said there would be two victors if they were from the same district. In honor of a year of first times all around, because for the first time, both tributes from both district 11 and district 12 have survived to the last eight. Well, seven. And there are only five left now. They can pull this off. They can both come home. It's an unprecedented offer from the Capitol to let two tributes leave. And the way it benefits us of all districts, it makes me suspect that Haymitch is planting ideas in the Gamemakers' heads.
And that's terrifying.
Is he really more than just a drunkard? I guess it takes something to survive this grueling mess, and in a Quarter Quell. . . But it's still hard to believe that Haymitch could get both Peeta and Saige home alive. If they do, though, there's no higher testament than their lives to his acuity, and there's no way anyone will begrudge him the bottles of liquor that have been his constant companion for twenty-four years.
A parachute falls from the sky. Blown across raging winds, it looks like it goes nowhere in particular. It looks like a lost gift, but the editors in the Capitol filter out the smoke from the footage. The parachute has found its way to Peeta, who's only a few steps away, and walking right towards it. He has one hand over his eyes and the other covering his mouth like the kind of mask used to block the inhalation of coal dust. It's as close as he can get.
There's another metallic grinding sound, sending something like a roar through the arena. Peeta stumbled forwards when he hears it, and trips over the silver capsule and falls hands first into the bedrock. He turns on his back with some serious looking injuries. The editing even makes a point to highlight them with glowing red and annotations. Every detail of his deteriorating health is laid out for me, including a constructed image of the inside of his lungs, filled with smoke.
The district has been busy lately with all kinds of people from the Capitol. Today, they're doing interviews for Peeta and Saige, because the games are down to seven people and they're both still alive. In my entire life, I don't think this has happened before. Maybe once when I was really young and can't remember that far back, but that says enough about our odds of winning each year. There's one thesaurus in school, and the grim joke surrounds it that the first match for the word "tribute" is "corpse." It's accurate enough, here. We also have one dictionary. I've never taken a look at the entry for "tribute," and I'm told that the dictionary is the same everywhere in Panem.
I think the dictionary also says "tribute means corpse."
As far as these final eight interviews go, of course Katniss gets targeted for questions about Peeta. It's unnerving to have a swarm of people who look like Effie Trinket holding cameras around in our house. Katniss is taking it well, though. Even though she's nervous in front of the cameras, alternately looking at the lenses, looking at the Capitol people, looking at Gale, mom or me, and looking at her arm and just blankly looking forwards off into space. She has a different face for every direction she looks.
Can anyone blame her? She's still in recovery from an injury that's stripped her of the little bit of freedom she had before. She's living off charity- my charity, which she can't know anything about- and stuck laying down all day so her arm doesn't worsen. And now a troupe of people who have clothes and hair and skin and who-knows-what-else in every color of the rainbow are here to ask her questions about a boy whose only connection to her was a public declaration of love. I wouldn't know how to deal with it.
The first thing she asked was, "Have you talked to his family yet?" When the interviewers, backed by Caesar Flickerman himself, try to explain their excitement to get her side of the story with Peeta's confession of love during the last night in the Capitol, she tells them, "I haven't even known him for two weeks."
They laugh it off in their piercing voices, and in a way that seemed measured. Like each chuckle is deliberately timed from practice and each one diminishing in volume from an outburst down to calmness. "It must have been a quick ride for you!" they suggest before they get into another laugh cycle. "How many times did it take you seeing him for you to fall for him so fast?"
"U-uh. . ." Katniss stammers, eyes flickering another connect the dots journey. "Well I only saw him once," is all she gets out before the colorful people gasp and take over.
"Just once! He's a real charmer, isn't he?" They give blindingly white smiles into the camera, and I giggle to see their luminescence feel the first brush of the coal dust that's so pervasive. They start to cough, and it's so acute from never having breathed air worse than whatever controlled mixture fills the Capitol, I rush over to make sure they're not choking. Mom gives me a curious glance for just a moment, and then comes to help, too.
Only one of them has any major breathing complications. Mom offers to go get water if that will help. The man who's dressed in the blue color of candy over skin dyed in a black and white grid pattern murmurs that he thinks it will, since it always seems to do the trick in the Capitol. He also mentions that choking is very rare in the Capitol, and I force a smile on myself for him. Mom turns away to go measure out a cup from the bucket heating up.
He gulps down the water impressively fast. Drinking like that would make me starting choking, not stop. His breathing settles down after it, though, as mom explains, "There's dust everywhere. You inhaled some, and now you've washed it down. Nothing to worry about."
The recording group discusses what to do amongst themselves, very loudly. "Is that footage still usable?" one of them asks, and they start debating it in as organized a fashion as they are able. "I don't see why not." They bring up how quickly we jumped into action, and how to spin it into a message to the other districts. How to spin it into the propaganda that district 12 is now loyal to the Capitol. Katniss, from behind them, is rolling her eyes and interrupts them with a suggestion.
"You always go interview Peeta's family and then just come back," she says, looking melancholy at her arm. It's making progress, though I still don't know when it'll be healed, and mom is reluctant to examine it for a deadline. "I'm not going anywhere."
But it turns out I am. "Go on, Prim," mom says when she hears that I've been recommended for an interview about Saige. She come closer to me and whispers in my ear, "It can only be better than what we did."
I don't know Saige that well, and if Lily recommended me, I don't think I'll be doing much else besides trying to figure out what prompted her to think of me. I shrug my shoulders and bye good-bye to mom and Katniss for just a little while, and follow the candy looking people outside. They walk around the district like they know where they're going, but it takes half an hour for me to realize that I must convince them to ask for directions. We're somewhere that's not quite town and not quite the Seam, and not even some place in between the two.
I even know where Lily's house is. I just can't find it from here. Lesson learned. I can't trust Capitol people to do anything.
Hunger starts to take hold of my thoughts when we reach Lily's house. It had the interview team a long time ago, and I think it's been their constant complaining that drove me off the edge. I suggest that they head over to the bakery for Peeta's family's interview, and they can go back to Katniss after that. We bicker about it, and a lot of their impatience comes from being accustomed to having food literally on demand. They don't want to wait when they're hungry, and I can accept that. Back in the days when we were starving, I didn't feel like I could wait either. Like if I waited another moment, I would have died.
"The Camphor family won't have any food," I tell them at last. There's nothing but rationed grain and oil in the Camphor family. There was, at any rate, when Saige was still at home to claim tesserae. Now there's just nothing. The promise of food. That's what it takes for them to understand that they should go back to the Mellark bakery.
I find another crew still at Lily's house. One of them, currently taking a break, comes up to me and says about Lily, "She's been talking for a while. I think I could listen to her forever."
Nodding absentmindedly, I look up at him and bite my tongue before saying something sharp. "Hi, I'm Primrose Everdeen. I think Lily wanted to have me here?"
"Yeah, she was hoping you'd have a few words about her sister. Saige is doing really well, you know? That thing she did last night was just stunning. I'm glad I got the chance to come out here to meet her family." That thing Saige did was tear another person's flesh from his bones with a knife barely any bigger than a scalpel. I only saw the beginning of it before Katniss covered my eyes. I counted the time by my heartbeats. I got to around fifty before the cannon fired, but Katniss wouldn't let me look.
I counted another hundred before a second cannon fired and Katniss finally took her hands off my eyes. I remember I looked at the clock afterward. A little over two minutes had passed.
The first question they ask me is how well I knew Saige. "I met her once," I look to Lily for confirmation. "I think that was it, but it was enough. She was visiting because her sister was sick." The team asks me what my family would be doing near sick people. "We're as close to doctors as it gets in district 12," I tell them. "Everyone comes to us for health issues. And it's mostly emergencies." I give a smile to the camera and wait for them to catch that before continuing.
"Saige is a great sister. In the wintertime especially, when leaving the fireplace is the single craziest thing imaginable, it's too easy to give up on sick people. Even if they're family. But she never gave up. Saige would do anything for her family." Except hunting. Katniss and Gale are the only ones out there, but they're also the only two people with the experience for it.
They ask if I'm comfortable discussing what Saige did yesterday, and if Lily knows about it and is comfortable hearing it. I struggle to think why they would even ask that. It shouldn't matter what we're comfortable talking about if we're already being hemorrhaged of what we need to live. But I'm getting the notion that the Capitol is built entirely on appearances. They don't even want us to look like our lives are hard, so they can believe it's not.
Lily admits, "I didn't see anything last night. What did my sister do?" Nobody wants to be the one to tell her. The camera crew directs me around it by just asking me what I thought about it.
I rack my brain for something. I didn't see, but I can imagine the cuts, and that's much worse. All I saw was the thing that passed for a corpse. It looked like the kind of meat that a novice butcher starts and gives up on. "I don't know what to say. As soon as it started, Katniss covered my eyes and didn't let go until it was over."
We try to transition to other things. We go on to talk about her chances of winning, and they mention that her odds have increased dramatically overnight. It's not hard to tell why. But they leave me with one last question about what I would want to happen.
I need Peeta dead, and I need Saige dead. If they live, if either of them makes it back, district 12 is going to be put under a microscope of Capitol attention. When I give them my answer, "It'd be such a shame if she died," it's all I can do to sound sincere.
I find Gale still talking to Katniss, whose bit about Peeta went a lot smoother than my bit about Saige. He usually doesn't come unless it's from the Hob or the woods, and wouldn't normally return from either for another few hours. "Hey," he calls at me with a resigned look. "Peacekeepers all over the Meadow today. I couldn't get out, couldn't even get close."
"Capitol troops, to boot," Katniss adds. "Have you seen them, Prim? It's like there's something huge going on here." We all take a moment to just glance at each other and reflect on the fact that both of our district's tributes are still alive. Gale and I seem to get it first, and I can hear mom sniggering from across the room. Then Katniss catches on and snaps, "But aside from that!"
I choke out, "No," between fits of laughter. After the room settles down, finished with our joke at my sister's expense, I say, "I haven't seen them. We can always take a look, right? Couldn't hurt."
"I don't know about that," Gale says. "The group near the fence wasn't quick to chat. Some of them were carrying clipboards, making notes about things. The fence was off, I think. I don't remember how close they got to touching it, but it sounded like it was off."
"They're not considering having it powered all the time, are they?"
"It might just be that way, Catnip." Gale plays with her hair, and Katniss looks like she's trying not to scowl back at him for it. But it looks like it's coming easy with him. "What else would they even want to look at?"
Mom asks for help bringing water in and Gale jumps at the call. They take the bucket and mom shoots me a look and a nod on the way out. I go ahead and press Katniss's arm.
"Watch it, little duck," she teases me, "It's not healed yet. I could have told you that."
"Yes, you could have," I say. I rest my head down on her good side's shoulder and quack into her chest. "You could have just told me. Would you have done it?"
"Ugh," she sighs. "Well, how's it coming? I feel like I can move it on my own again." I let go of her arm to let her prove it, and impressively enough, she can control it. "Whatever you and mom did, it definitely worked." She swallows, and asks, "Knock me out again?"
We both laugh it off, and I give an indecisive shrug of my shoulders. "How would Gale take that? If you were just unconscious all the time."
"I don't know. He's probably like it if he had to take care of us. Even though he and I both know I wouldn't. How much longer?" Katniss nods towards her arm. "I feel like it's really getting somewhere. It has to be fine soon, right?"
"Soon," I promise. "The remedy's working fine. If you're serious about doing it again, I can ask mom about it. See where it gets us." She tousles my hair, and it loosens the careful plait on my left. I get up turn my head to show it off to her.
"It looks good," she comments, not without a slight chuckle.
"Thank you," I curtsy and try to put on as Capitol an accent as I can get before sitting down beside her again. "I don't think we'll be able to anesthetize you again, though. Used up the last of the herbs for that the first time. I still can't believe Gale collected the huge variety pack."
"What about me?" Gale shouts as he carries a bucket of water back inside. "You're curious about the herbs?"
"Yeah, it turns out one of them was a good anesthesia substitute. Katniss is looking into accelerated treatment for her arm." I look at mom to ask her, "Can we do without the numbing?"
"It's possible," she answers. She doesn't seem sure, and follows it up, "Actually, Gale, I'm just going to step outside with Prim for a moment. Make sure Katniss doesn't move her arm too much, okay?"
"I'll make sure she doesn't get in trouble."
I follow mom outside, around to the water pump near Lady's shack. "So," she asks me, "how was the cook? Everything went fine?"
"Everything," I echo. "Your extracting agent was nearly perfect. I got a much bigger yield this time. It's about two pounds. Up from a third."
"Prim. How much is that going to sell for?"
"I haven't the slightest idea. I mean, last time was ten thousand dollars, for a third of a pound, making thirty thousand a pound for two is sixty. I don't know what that looks like! Are there even sixty thousand dollars in the whole district?"
"Well, there's certainly no place to put it. Nowhere we could hide that unless we bury it, and then it's useless. So that's out of the question. How long before you sell it?"
I haven't given that any thought yet. Right now I'm just worried about the situation at the bakery, and trying to get rid of the money. I barely even want to consider what another pile of money is going to do when it comes. And besides, I point out, "Who would I even sell it to? There's no one left in the Hob who would take it."
"Okay," mom tries to figure something out; she's quiet for a long time before coming up with nothing as well. "The the time your sister's arm heals, Gale will be. . . he'll be a miner for sure by then. He'll be in the coal mines a while before that, actually, won't he?"
"As soon as the games are finished. Which seems pretty soon." I take the tin bucket from its place and place it under the pump. "Bathtime for Lady," I mention, and we begin drawing water up. The sound of the pump creaking and the water splashing into the bucket muffles the sound of our voices. That, and Lady needs a bath.
"Two pounds of morphine," she says. She looks towards the pile of hay that the box sticks out from underneath. "Right there?"
"Can't keep it in the house. I thought Katniss would never look near Lady's shack."
"None of it can stay anywhere near the house, Prim. That and the money. None of it can stay close to us, or we will get caught."
"I'll find a way." I look down into the bucket and see that there's more water than a simple bath should ever use up, but we can't take it inside because of the coal dust. I keep pumping just a little more, trying to make as much noise with the metal and get as little water as possible. "Someone will want this, and I'll find them. As for the money, don't worry about it. There shouldn't be much coming."
Mom nods. She places her hand on pump and tells me, "Enough." It's way more than enough, and a lot of waste. "I saw the Peacekeepers near the bakery. I'll bet they're looking for either the drugs or the money. They don't think you're involved, do they?"
As far as they know, I think brought Mr. Mellark a sack of flour. "They saw me bring him something. A sack of flour, the money was hidden inside. If they found the money, they'll link it to him, not me."
"Do they think you're involved?"
I shake my head, and begin to wash Lady down. The water is just a little bit warmer than it was before, which is fine, but I notice Lady doesn't like it as much warm. We're taking too long. I rub the short layer of fur she's already started growing back, pouring cupped hands of water on her skin every time I stop feeling the water. Between splashing Lady, I try to explain a bit of what happened to mom, and how in both my encounters with the Capitol Peacekeepers, I was nothing but amicable.
Mom can't see that. See even presses on, "Both encounters?"
"Yes, mom," I heave. I press too hard on Lady's body and we both hear her bleat in pain. I lower my head to her skin and her short layer of hair, nuzzling her as I rub the opposite side to check where it hurts. As mom rushes to help as well, I whisper to the poor goat, "I'm sorry, really, I am."
Mom gropes around on Lady's body with me, and her evaluation is that there's no serious injury, not of the like that Katniss has. I hold my breath, keep on washing her and look at mom like I've just killed someone.
Which, all told, I should have been feeling a long time ago.
ATTN: all citizens of district 12. Do not go near the active investigation site at 21 Brennan Street. A Capitol Peacekeeper division is currently gathering evidence of a criminal enterprise of potentially national significance. Currently, it is projected that at least five thousand dollars have illegally transited through the Mellark household, using the family bakery as a front.
The district 12 local Peacekeeper Division thanks you for your cooperation.
-Mestrius Cray, Head Peacekeeper
-Lawson Undersee, Mayor of district 12
It's almost too hard to take this seriously since it's coming from Cray. I can barely stifle my laughter to see that fat, lazy man put out a notice like this before a week has passed since the Capitol people have left. In fact, the only thing keeping me from letting Katniss see this- she's not going near the bakery any time soon anyway- is that I know why they're there. It's the only thing stopping me from showing her, the only thing stopping me from wondering how late Cray is.
Katniss still takes his announcements seriously. She has the same image of him that I do, and everyone else in the district does as well, but Katniss leaves the district limits regularly. On the off chance that one day Cray announces that there will be any sort of monitoring or that the electric fence will actually hum with electricity, she has to know that. I'm just now starting to see it the way she does.
I can't see how the Mellark family can get out of this one. I don't think the Capitol would get personally involved in anything the districts do without deciding beforehand that they were going to arrest someone. Mom's right. I shouldn't be going back there and exposing myself to the investigators at work. And it's too late to make sure they won't say anything about me. Either they have, or they won't. But I can't change it either way.
Peeta. My thoughts turn to him as I help mom cut some spare roots that Gale brought. Would Peeta have tolerated this, if he could see it? He sounded like he'd do anything to help us survive through winter and beyond, but I can't believe he'd accept the drug enterprise. And then there's his father, who's the only one among them who knows exactly what my part in this has been. I've always thought too little of him. He could be hiding anything from the investigating Peacekeepers. Just like he could be hiding anything from me.
My cuts get more vindictive as I consider that I've made an example of someone before. Mr. Mellark saw the aftermath of it. Did I tell him that all that blood on my dress wasn't mine? I think he could have figured it out.
"Prim, those are roots, not meat," Katniss reminds me. She's a little bit irritated by the noise, and I'm leaving marks in the tabletop. Mom keeps her hand on her own share of the cutting, and she offers to take over from here. With a sigh, I let her do it, which will slow dinner for just a few minutes more.
"Gale's still bringing us everything he can," I mention. I take a seat next to her.
"He is. He hasn't been going out, though," Katniss says, "How much is the Hob giving him?"
"It'd have to be enough for his family," I tell her.
"That's not enough for both of us."
"It is for now."
"It can't last, and we can't go on living off just that. He's going to be trapped underground soon. I wish he could spend the last few days before that in the woods where he belongs."
"And you wish you could be there next to him."
"Yeah, I do." Katniss touches my arm and slides her hand down to mine, where the markings from gripping the knife handle too hard still are. She asks, "What were you thinking about?" without any sort of accusatory tone.
I hesitate to say anything, obviously not wanting to say anything about Mr. Mellark. I tell her, "Peacekeepers." I was thinking about the Peacekeepers coming to take up space.
"You weren't thinking of doing that," she lifts her hand up and makes a stabbing motion in the air, "to them, were you?"
"No, no," I say, but it's true. I was thinking- just briefly- of doing almost exactly that, of having to silence someone again. "It just feels like that's what they're doing to us."
"Ah," Katniss breathes. She looks down, saddened, at the floor. "It always feels like that, doesn't it?" Her head starts shaking, like she's looking around suspiciously. She wouldn't be this open about the Capitol out in public, but it's safe enough at home. We want to think it is.
Everybody's opinion about the Capitol is plain enough to see. All it takes is the first glance or word and a little thought, and everyone everywhere, and everything they say sounds like a secret code aimed to criticize the government.
There's a knock on the door. Someone shouts through it, "Mandatory viewing soon! Turn your projectors on now! Also, there's a special notice from the mayor and the Head. I hope you all got it!"
"A word from Cray?" Katniss asks me. "I didn't hear anything."
The piece of paper with the message is folded up in my dress pocket. I tell Katniss that the message is about the Peacekeepers from the Capitol, and that, "They're inspecting some damage at the fence and want everyone to just stay off the Meadow. Gale should already know about it, don't worry."
"How long ago was this?"
"Not that long actually, but he's been told about it before, and he might even be the reason Cray issued the statement. Katniss, you've got nothing to worry about."
I go to turn the projector on and an image of pure white flickers onto the screen, with just Saige walking through a snowy gorge. She doesn't appear to be drenched in Cato's blood, and I'm surprised how much happened over the past twenty-four hours, until Caesar and Claudius Templesmith point out that, in order to make the plight of the final seven tributes more exciting for everyone watching at home, the games would now be broadcast live as they happened.
Instead of being surprised at how much has happened, I'm suddenly perplexed how much did happen and how it's still daytime in the arena. But if that X Marcellus guy can make a bird that controls mutts, there's no reason to think the Gamemakers can't control the day and night cycle. The most curious thing is Templesmith's announcement for the tributes, and how Saige reacts.
"Attention, tributes! Attention, tributes!" is his famous call. "In honor of a year full of first time occurrences, we would like to add a first time promise of our own that we are very excited towards seeing fulfilled. For the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games, there may be two victors, provided that they are from the same district."
Katniss and I both try to figure out the districts that this impacts. Saige we see on screen, also trying to figure it out herself. She calls out, "Peeta! Peeta!" which plainly indicates that we're affected. I remember seeing Thresh still alive, and I don't remember seeing anything new about Rue. There was the four note mockingjay song which is her signal.
Cato's dead. Glimmer's dead. Clove was on the verge of dying that last time I saw, but I don't know what's come of that. Saige might have gone back to finish her off; she might not. "Who does that leave?" I ask Katniss.
It sounds like she's just as confused as I am. "I think the boy from 1, Clove, both from 11 and Peeta and Saige. One more, but I don't know who." I've lost track, too. I think it was one of the outer districts, and I say as much, but that's all I know.
The sun, or whatever source of light there is in the arena, is set very low, and Saige's shadow in the gorge seems to stretch on as far as it will go straight. There's another one behind her, creeping up in exaggerated steps somewhere far away. Something like a horn sticks out the the other shadow's head, and Katniss observes it to be a spear. There's nothing blocking the light, but there's an occasional dark hue reflected back from somewhere far in the distance.
A scene of the factory is cut into the field of view, to show us both Saige in the gorge as well as what appears to be just a smoldering, burning wreck. There's a pile of rubble and broken metal, with the odd bit shifting around like it's trying to stay alive.
Caesar tells us that this is what's left of the factory after the catastrophic explosion set off by the brave actions of the girl from district 7. "I don't know what broke my heart more," he laments. "That she gave up her life to safe her brother, that it didn't work, or," he looks teasingly at Templesmith and flashes his smile that's even whiter than the snow in the arena, "that you've just stepped all over her sacrifice. But," he turns back to face the camera, "Katie's courage will not be forgotten."
"Not for a long time," Templesmith agrees. He points out the gorge camera pulling back to get a wider look at what's going on near Saige. There's Marvel behind her, wandering around and "looking like he's pretty much lost. I don't blame him, it's easy to get confused in there. Great job, Seneca!"
The camera pulls out far enough to show Peeta as well. Noted by an annotation, since everything now is far too small to just see with the naked eye. Just above him, a section of the arena zooms in on an avalanche that collapses a part of the gorge no more than a hundred feet from where he is. An overhead view of the fallen ice wall shows some blood pooled at the foot of a jagged cliff, and a gleaming silver siege weapon, the kind described in some stories of a time called the Middle Ages.
Peeta looks behind him and sees Saige's shadow in the gorge. Only, he can't identify it, and it sounds like he whispers, "Clove?" He certainly sees the silhouette of a knife to back it up, and it pushes him forward, all the way into the ice wall where he looks down at the pickaxe he has. He gives it some consideration and begins digging wherever on the wall he can, probing around for a weak spot to break through. His wild strikes at the wall reflect his desperation to escape.
On the factory scene places right next to the footage in the gorge, there's a constant whirring sound that's only sometimes muted to let us hear what the tributes are saying. A huge mound rises, and a side view shows it to be higher than any building in all of district 12. Waste scraps of rock and metal slide off the rising object, and a burst of smoke rushes out of the opened up vent.
The workshop, where the boy from district 3 was building whatever project he had, must be relatively undamaged by the explosion, and the Gamemakers like his project enough to want to finish it themselves. The sky eye view pushes in on the molten metal and liquid fire boiling underneath, and splits to show two perspectives of an array of machinery working on what looks like armor. A massive suit of armor bigger than any person could possibly need.
By now Peeta has broken through the ice wall and he begins to climb the cliff that will surely tear at his skin on his way up. Someone else has already bled enough to clue him in on that, but he persists in going up. On the other side of the wall, Marvel's shadow falls completely over Saige's body, and Saige's touches the ice wall. His shadow just keeps getting bigger as he gets closer, and he draws his spear into his hand, ready to put it into the first person he sees.
He catches up with Saige, who turns and tosses a knife right into his chest with the unerring accuracy of Clove. At least, as per her training results. But the spear leaves his hand and flies into Saige's chest, and in the blink of an eye, they're both on the ground. Bleeding out.
The overview of the gorge takes a dull, brown tone and starts wildly shaking. Red and yellow arrows reappear on screen. We are back in the eyes of the crow, as it flies away with a yellow arrow labeled "11" facing forward. Thresh is on top of the ice shelf, inside the crow's field of view. His annotation is placed right on top of him, and his arrow moves fast as the crow flies past. The crow is heading back to its former master.
Something shakes, and some of the machines break apart as the gargantuan creation comes to life and takes flight. Out it bursts from the remains of the factory, into the desolate, charred ruins all around it. With a thunderous roar and breath of fire, the lumbering, winged monstrosity takes flight. It has exactly one goal in its form of mind.
AN: First of all, I'd like to wish Katniss a happy birthday today (May 8th), and I'd like all your ideas on a decent birthday present for when we catch up to that in the story.
Second, we are almost done with the Spring chapters, and as such almost done with the 74th Hunger Games. As of now, we are caught up to the flashforwards that began in chapter 3. There will be a brief interlude between now and the next chapter. Just a collection of all the flashforward introductions.
I hope you like Mr. Undersee and Peacekeeper Cray's names.
Status of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games: 17 deaths; career alliance dissolved; two victor rule in effect (allows Rue & Thresh, Saige & Peeta); Saige and Marvel wounded; Peeta climbing the cliff; Thresh sighted by the crow; Clove, Rue, and one other tribute unaccounted for
One last chance to sway the victor(s) of the 74th games, guys!
