"That's enough, my friends!" A calm voice cooed from behind, causing the Tribute to stiffen, dropping his rock with a muffled boom against the dirt beside Katniss's leg. Deeming it safer to let Thresh leave her sight, Katniss turned her head to find Finnick gliding her way. Panicking, she scrambled up, backing away from both he and Thresh, bow in hand.
"What do you want?" She growled.
"What do you want, Katniss?" That terrifying smile had returned to Finnick's perfect features.
"I want Peeta back! Whatever that creature did to him, it…"
"He belongs with us, now," the Victor calmly explained. "There is nothing you can do to keep him chained to this miserable world anymore."
"What if I killed your little pet?" Katniss threatened, nocking an arrow to prove her seriousness.
"You mean to kill the very embodiment of rage? The one you mortal wretches simply labeled, The Rake?" Something behind Finnick moved through the darkness. It appeared to be some kind of thick, black tentacle. Katniss immediately thought of the small cords she had found attached to the corpses' bodies.
"You…" Katniss was still putting the pieces together in her head. "You're controlling them all, aren't you?"
Finnick laughed tonelessly, his shining eyes staring aimlessly skyward. "You're so slow to catch on," he remarked. Then his confident voice turned to something of a hiss. "No wonder all those Capitol goons adored it so when you played their Games. And your situation is just so ironic. One moment you promised to feign love for your district partner, Peeta, in exchange for Gale's life…and the now, you're here to kill him, after he attacked your…husband."
"How would you know about that, Finnick?! That was between me and…and…Snow."
And then that nagging voice in Katniss's head finally rang true. This thing is not Finnick. This is something…someone, else.
Katniss drew her bow and let the arrow sail past her fingers, aimed directly for her foe's heart. It missed her mark just slightly, instead impaling the lapel of Finnick's suit.
"Uh…" He took a staggering step back, gripping the length of the arrow in his thin hand. Katniss expected him to pull it out and maybe even resume his taunting of her. Yet he hesitated, a strange look in his eyes as they stared into hers. Katniss was drawn away from his stare as she noticed something fading into visibility. Pinned between her arrow and the folds of Finnick's suit was a fully blooming, genetically enhanced white rose; the favorite of old President Snow. It had been hidden from mortal vision until the fateful moment she'd shot it.
"Katniss…I'm so sorry…" Finnick's voice held a depth and truth to it that it hadn't all this time before.
"Finnick?" Katniss stepped forward. Despite the rose's appearance, she felt, for the first time, that she wasn't being deceived. Now she saw the real Finnick; the one she still vaguely remembered. His previous confidence had been that same act he had used to intimidate his fellow tributes. His empty smile had been the same emotionless mask he had displayed to his Capitol clients.
"Oh, god, Katniss…!" Finnick's trembling voice was cut off, as if a great force had vacuumed the breath from his body. Katniss glanced to her side to find Thresh staring at her with an equally lost expression. He too whispered out her name, as if seeing her for the first time. Others stepped shakily towards her from the darkness of the forest; Seeder, Darius, Cecelia and Woof, Glimmer and Marvel, even her dear friend Cinna, himself.
"Katniss," they all whispered to her, genuine sorrow in each and every pair of eyes she looked to.
"No! No!" Finnick's cries suddenly broke the surreal moment and he clutched his face in his hands, struggling as if to evade some unseen attacker. "I can't hold it back anymore! I can't keep him in!"
"No!" Katniss ran forward, determined to help her friend.
A horrific cacophony of ripping and popping made Katniss halt in frozen terror. Black blood spewed in all directions as Finnick's hands ripped his own head from his body.
But were those hands really Finnick's?
A flurry of black tentacles exploded from his body and Katniss was thrown back through the dark forest. Blood and fire and old friends whipped by her in a dark whirlwind of destruction, and then her vision was cut off.
Suddenly she was looking up at a silver parachute floating down to the arena.
This is…just like the moment Finnick died. Katniss's memory was drawn to that strange vision she had experience the instant her friend had been decapitated by lizard muttations. But there was something quite different about the vision this time around.
Katniss looked down from the parachute in the sky to find a hulking, furious tribute charging towards her, through a forest of snowy pines, spear in hand, howling with wordless rage.
Then an entirely different picture greeted her. Katniss stared out not at a view of the vast District Four seas, but of the nighttime Capitol skyline from behind a thick pane of glass. Then a long nailed hand grabbed her around the wrist and yanked her had from the smooth surface; a former sponsor's voice explaining just how much she was owed after saving the tribute's life.
Now a vision of another hostile arena greeted her, this one flooded with poisonous mist. An old woman ran past her faster than she could stop her and plunged into the thick gasses, crumpling into a twitching heap in an instant.
And then there was Annie, beaming with joy, practically floating like an angel in her elegant wedding gown. Leaning forward, their lips were about to touch, when suddenly their surroundings turned dark. They are trapped in a damp, shadowy sewer. And at that moment, Annie's pale, lovely face morphs into a scaly monstrosity with slitted pupils and razor teeth that sink through flesh and bone in one horrific instant. The kiss of death.
I killed for you! A lonely, miserable voice rang out in Katniss's head, I won your Games! I did ten years of your dirtiest work! I endured it all! And yet…you outlived me, Snow. You remained in a world that, no matter how wretched, still bore my dear Annie. And now even in DEATH you will give me no peace!
The once clear words devolved into an incomprehensible roar that filled Katniss's senses and shook her to the bone.
At last all noise ceased and she opened her eyes. What remained of Finnick's existence was seemingly destroyed, along with all of the puppets that had been attached to him.
And there in his place stood a smiling Coriolanus Snow.
I'm sure you all knew he was coming :)
Prim and Rue have a part in the next chapter, so keep reading!