The ceiling is randomly pocked with small divots. What could make those marks? I start to lift my hand toward it, but the wrist strap catches me. I frown slowly. Where am I? I try to take stock, but my thoughts are so jumbled, and my brain so chaotic, I can't make any sense of what's happening. run run run The whisper is low and steady, but less angry, more fearful. I fill my lungs with a deep, long breath of relief. The absence of the bloodthirst feels almost like the hiss is gone altogether.

Turning my head slowly, cautious not to provoke the whisper, I look around carefully. I'm in a smallish room, strapped to a bed. Two walls are banked with machines running various tubes and wires to me and the third has a large, wide mirror. I smirk and nod to the glass. Does that ever fool anyone? The question is, who is behind it? The spark of curiosity is so unfamiliar, it catches my attention. My thoughts no longer have the fuzzy, drifting quality they've had for so long. I feel clearer, but with that clarity comes a realization of how completely clueless I am about what's happening to me.

My jagged thoughts won't fit together properly, but I try to sort through the flashes and match the ones that make sense with my current situation. I remember being carried from my cell after watching Tihen be shot. What was he telling me? blood blood blood The whisper turns dark as I focus on the image of him on the floor and I quickly shift my thoughts to something else. Another uniformed man with a clipboard, but not Dr. Lichten. Was it Dr. Lichten? No, I don't think so. He was trying to control me with drugs the same way, though. hurt him jab him rip him

I shake my head, trying to rub my wrists against the manacles to focus, but they've been bandaged and the pain is only a dull ache. Where am I? What do they want from me? Who will they hurt if I don't give it to them?

I jump when the door swings softly open to admit a tall, dark man and shorter woman who walks with a definite air of authority. My befuddled mind fixates on her iron gray curtain of hair. It hangs in a straight sheet, so perfectly aligned it must be terrified into submission. Her frosty gray eyes are chips of ice and her angular, austere features seem chiseled from stone.

run run run run The whisper is rising to a shrill panic and my skin crawls as she studies me coldly from the doorway. I begin to tremble with the effort of keeping a lucid hold on my thoughts and my neck starts to twitch my chin forward.

"Is he completely done?" she asks in a clipped, flinty voice.

"Hard to tell," the man replies, his voice surprisingly gentle for how fierce he appears. "Aurelius says they used a drug therapy on him that's ruined his mind."

A cold pit opens in my stomach as my worst fears are confirmed. "His hearing is unimpaired, however," I offer tightly.

The woman's eyebrows lift and she turns to me appraisingly. "I apologize," she replies briskly. "That was inexcusable. How are you feeling, Peeta?"

tricks lies traps I watch her carefully before replying. "Better," I allow. "I appreciate not being comatose just for convenience's sake. How long was I out?"

"Almost three days," she tells me, watching me equally carefully. I fight to remain impassive at this news. It explains a lot, though. The dragging weight of exhaustion is conspicuously absent, and, while still scattered and discordant, my thoughts aren't syrupy anymore.

"Where are we, exactly?" I ask.

Her lips lift in a small, proud smile. "Welcome to the hospitality of District 13."

A tearing shriek, my body hauling against the restraints as I thrash and scream to reach her. Wide-eyed, she retreats quickly, my barrage of guttural threats and howls following her as I flail in the manacles, screaming until my throat gives out in the empty room she leaves behind.

I think an entire night has passed. My head aches throbbingly and my throat is raw. An echo rings in my ears of hours and hours of screaming but I can't remember who it was, or why. Was Johanna being hurt again? Or maybe Selt? I thrash fitfully against my manacles in the unfamiliar room. run run run run The whisper has a frantic edge, an urgency that makes my blood jitter. I almost miss the dull befuddlement of the drugs, this awareness without knowing anything that's happening fills me with an itching, buzzing anxiety. liars liars liars The whisper hisses angrily, stirring a boiling emptiness in my stomach, making me squirm.

The door swings open and two men in jumpsuits enter, one carrying a tray with a glass of water and a steaming bowl. He places it on a small table on the side while the other approaches me slowly and smiles an encouraging greeting.

"Good morning, Peeta," he begins. "How are you feeling?"

I stare at him blankly, the false cheer setting my teeth on edge.

"Are you hungry?" he continues. "We thought you might like to try some solid food this morning. Well," he chortles, "semi-solid."

I blink in response. idiot snake imbecile I clench my jaw against the hateful bile that wants to spill out over him. kill soft tear claw

He reaches back for the bowl, his eyes never leaving my face, and the second man places it in his hand. He brings it around and make a big deal of showing me what's in the bowl. "It's good, hot porridge. The cook made it specially for you."

My eyes narrow, but his infantile tone of voice makes me queasy, remembering what the other man had said about my mind. "Thank you," I reply coldly, and at my tone he looks nervously backward to his colleague. "Why are you all dressed the same?" I ask.

The question takes him off guard and his mouth opens and closes a few times before he replies, "It's our uniform."

"That's enough," the second man says in a low, warning voice. I turn my attention to him and realize he's the one from before, the one who was drugging me. He's staying conspicuously out of sight, trying to observe without engaging. tricks liar liar run The whisper pitches up and my wrists jerk against the restraints. Immediately, almost comically quickly, the men turn and leave.

I lie in the quiet after they've left. I can only guess how many people are behind that one-way glass, watching me, studying me, whispering about me. break smash splinter I don't even need the whisper. The urge to crash through that glass and shake one until they tell me what's going on is all me. I stare at the ceiling, my hands twitching, pulling, picking, never still. If they would only untie me, I could grab one of them and make them talk, I think bleakly. I'm tired of being kept in the dark, of not knowing. My lip curls as I flash back over all the secrets that have been kept from me. The whisper begins to hiss angrily and I immediately change my focus to the porridge the men brought in. I haven't had actual food in days, it would have been nice to swallow, I think regretfully. Even just gloppy porridge. The IV keeps me hydrated and nourished, but I miss –

The door swings open and my eyes dart nervously that way, and I pull a sharp breath. A girl enters, alone, dressed in the same drab jumpsuit I've seen on everyone lately. Then, her face strobes and flashes, overlaying bright red curls instead of the blond braid. Lavinia's face flickers over hers, a memory stirring deep in the recesses of my mind.

"Peeta?" Her voice is sweet, a tremulous joy threading through it that sparks a different memory. "It's Delly," she beams. "From home."

The words are like sunbeams breaking through storm clouds. I peer at her intently, unable to place her in this context. "Delly?" She lights up at my recognition, her smile spreading impossibly wider. "Delly. It's you." My mind spins away from this possibility. She is such a random and unexpected encounter, I can't quite get a grasp on how to react to her.

"Yes!" she exclaims, delighted. "How do you feel?"

"Awful," I admit, still trying to reconcile this bizarre meeting with a childhood friend. I can't understand how she's here. "Where are we? What's happened?"

"Well…we're in District Thirteen. We live here now." She watches me apprehensively.

"That's what those people have been saying," I agree, bewildered that she would confirm this outrageous statement with such complete nonchalance. "But it makes no sense. Why aren't we home?" I demand in confusion.

"There was…an accident," she replies hesitantly. burn burn burn The whisper reawakens and I feel a tingle of fear zip over my skin. A memory slips through my mind, just out of reach. "I miss home badly, too," she continues in a rush. "I was only just thinking about those chalk drawings we used to do on the paving stones. Yours were so wonderful. Remember when you made each one a different animal?"

Drawing. Brightly cheerful menageries on the walkway outside. Uri smearing his shoes through our work. The walkway an ashen ruin. "Yeah," I stumble, the whirl of images in my mind doesn't make sense. "Pigs and cats and things." A yowly yellow cat. A scorched doorway. "You said…about an accident?" I try to make meaning of the crowd of visions.

"It was bad. No one…could stay."

The brick bench. Blackened and stark against the smoldering backdrop of the town. Delly continues to prattle gaspingly and I stare unblinking, trying to separate her words from the rising tide of the whisper's fury. burned burned burned burned

"Why hasn't my family come to see me?" Why is this occurring to me only now?

"They can't," Delly chokes, her blue eyes shining with tears. "A lot of people didn't get out of Twelve. So we'll need to make a new life here." Her words echo meaninglessly, I can't grab hold of them and look at them clearly. Her lips move soundlessly until two words slice through my confusion like surgeon's scalpels, "your father."

Twelve. Ablaze. Ashes and ruin. "There was a fire," I cut in roughly, the vision coming into sudden, stark clarity.

"Yes," she whispers, wide eyed.

"Twelve burned down didn't it," I grind out. find her kill her burn her destroy her "Because of her. Because of Katniss." I can barely spit the words out.

"Oh, no, Peeta," Delly whimpers. "It wasn't her fault."

"Did she tell you that?" liar destroyer murderer The shriek of the whisper matches the fury of my own words. My family is ashes blowing among the destruction of my home. She did this!

"She didn't have to. I was – "

Delly doesn't know! She's living here with her and she doesn't know! "Because she's lying!" I scream. "She's a liar! You can't believe anything she says! She's some kind of mutt the Capitol created to use against the rest of us!"

She's backing away, toward the open doorway. I strain against the manacles, I have to get free. I have to warn them. They're sheltering her here and they don't know!

"No, Peeta. She's not a –"

She doesn't know! "Don't trust her, Delly!" I cry frantically. "I did, and she tried to kill me. She killed my friends. My family. Don't even go near her! She's a mutt!" A hand reaches in and snatches her backward, the door slamming shut, but I have to warn her. Warn all of them. "A mutt!" my scream pitches upward. "She's a stinking mutt!"

Howling and thrashing against the manacles, I roar my warning. The whisper wails alongside me, joyfully shrieking into oblivion until my vision begins to swim and I collapse back against the bed, chest heaving and throat ravaged. I'm failing again. More people will fall to her because I don't save them. My arms burn from straining against the shackles but I writhe and bellow, the whisper's hiss my entire existence. Mindlessly, I continue to scream and thrash, weeping hot tears of fury and desolation for my lost family and friends, for my vanished home, for my own hopeless, useless, existence.