The television crew is busy as squad 451 gathers. The woman in charge is a striking, no-nonsense type with green vine tattoos winding over her shaved head. Definitely a citizen of the Capitol. I wonder how she ended up here. Did Plutarch bring her? If so, can she be trusted? She shoots quick orders to her crew, assisted by a slight, younger man who makes my throat clench over the knot rising in it. The way he carries himself, lightly, as though barely touching the ground. The sun glinting off his many piercings. The fire in his eyes. He is the spitting image of Selt. My heart aches and the whisper chitters with gleeful viciousness at my distress. Messalla, she calls him. I feel reality tip and sway as I reach back into my memory, trying to bring the name to mind, searching for any reference Selt may have made. The effort brings me close to passing out and I fight for air, fight to bring my body under control.
Clenching my fists, I battle the tremble in my hands and focus on the strangely insect-like appearance of the cameramen. They carry the gear strapped to their bodies in suits reminiscent of a shell. Obviously brothers, they share sandy red hair and beards, twinkling blue eyes and lips that seem always to be waiting to curve to a smile. One is garrulous and makes jokes and keeps up a constant stream of chatter. His brother, though quick to grin and with busy, expressive hands, doesn't get a word in edgewise.
you did this you did this you did this
The whisper is a low, oily creep of blame. My vision begins to shudder as I watch the cameraman's mouth, unable to tear my eyes away. Something about his throat, the way he holds his jaw. Boggs marches up and hands me back the gun he took when I first arrived, eyes holding mine firmly.
"I've reloaded it with blanks," his voice carries clearly to the rest of squad.
I shrug, distracted by the hiss of the whisper. "I'm not much of a shot anyway."
Flashes of the table, Darius screaming in muted agony as his body is mutilated and torn so I will see it happen. His throat working as he swallows mouthfuls of his own blood.
A shudder runs up my spine and I clench my teeth against the scream that rages to burst free. The whisper is a high-pitched squeal that threatens to shatter my skull.
"You're an Avox, aren't you?" I gasp, and the cameraman turns startled eyes to me. The words scrape over my tongue, burning as if in retribution for his lack of one. "I can tell by the way you swallow," I continue, feeling the stares of the squad and knowing my words are worrying them, but the images surge over my head and threaten to pull me under. The crimson floods of his blood, the way her body arched against the restraints and smoked and jerked.
"There were two Avoxes with me in prison," my words are a rush, fighting to stem the visions shrieking with the scream's triumphant roar. "Darius and Lavinia, but the guards mostly called them the redheads. They'd been our servants in the Training Center, so they arrested them, too." My nails cut into my palms as I try to steady my voice, try not to let the darkness swallow me. "I watched them being tortured to death. She was lucky. They used too much voltage and her heart stopped right off. It took days to finish him off. Beating, cutting off parts. They kept asking him questions, but he couldn't speak, he just made these horrible animal sounds."
The cameraman watches me in sympathetic dismay, his brother's hand on his shoulder. I stare into his eyes, but I see Darius. See him wishing and waiting and hoping to die. "They didn't want information, you know?" My voice strains against the horror of it, the blurring frenzy of hope that this couldn't have happened. That humans couldn't do that to one another. "They wanted me to see it." I can't look at Katniss, can't contemplate why they wanted me to watch an innocent man die slowly and terribly.
The horror is reflected in the eyes of each person staring at me, I feel their insidious revulsion, feel them watch me as if I were something else they don't know how to deal with. "Real or not real?" I ask wretchedly, but they just stare at me. "Real or not real?!" I beg.
"Real." Boggs is quiet, stricken. "At least, to the best of my knowledge…real."
The hope that they manufactured it, that Darius could be walking the halls of the Capitol right now, drains out of me. "I thought so," I whisper, defeated. "There was nothing…shiny about it." Unable to bear their repulsed pity, I move away, running through the images in my mind, whispering apologies to Darius and Lavinia, asking their forgiveness in the empty air.
Moving out, we make our way through the empty streets, littered with the shards of glass the propo team has been shattering for the film makers. The shining debris and gaping windows remind me of being strapped to the chair, watching Darius scream on the other side of the glass. My vision pops and swirls as I fight to bring the chaos under control, and I bite my lip until I taste blood.
"Mitchell," I murmur quietly. My guard turns to me curiously. "Do you have any handcuffs on you?" I try to ask casually.
"No, but Leeg does," he answers. "Why?" His honest eyes are clouded with concern.
"No reason," I shake my head, unwilling to worry him. "Just wondering." I try to look engaged as Boggs activates his Holo and lays out his plans. Mitchell turns toward him eagerly, but I clench my jaw, trying to quiet the scream in my head.
Through the ringing I can make out their voices like they're muffled underwater. The camera crew sets up for the proper angles and I shiver as it brings to mind all the ways the Capitol manipulates reality and perception. "It's not the same," I mutter under my breath.
"What's not the same?" Homes asks.
"None of it," I reply, trying to hide my gritted teeth. "It's not like Snow."
He blinks at me for a moment before shaking his head. "It's exactly the same," he says in a low voice. "But an idea isn't a bad one just because a bad person uses it."
"When does lying to people to change their perception to the one you want them to have not make you a bad person?" I ask hollowly, not wanting to insult him, but the question burning in my throat.
"When it will save their lives," he answers steadily.
Smoke charges crack behind him and the air fills with the acrid, choking fumes. "Action!" The director's voice calls through the billows and suddenly the scream of gunfire is everywhere. Shattering glass rains down on us and bullets ping off walls and lamp posts. Mitchell pulls me flat against a building and I hunch my shoulders against the hail of ammo.
Then the pod is hit and bullets zip through the air as the squad rushes for cover. I crouch with my hands over my ears, but the pound of guns is nothing compared to the panicked scream in my head. The screams of the monkeys in the jungle had the same pitch and I feel lost in the images crashing through my skull. Jaws and talons and flying bodies. Desperation that I would miss one, that one would find Katniss and those snapping jaws would close on her. My heart is racing and my blood pounds in my ears.
Boggs shouts something and Homes nudges me forward. My feet move automatically, my vision filled with a steaming jungle and gripping claws reaching for me, ripping and grasping. tear claw bite destroy kill
I shake my head, trying to clear it, but unable to make sense of what is happening around me. The squad is falling to the ground, crashing into walls, diving for cover, but I can't find the threat they are reacting to. And they are writhing with over-dramatic grimaces, rolling their eyes and gnashing their teeth while the others howl and shake with laughter.
The confusion winds the panic even higher, my brain battling the images clamoring their chaotic roar while the people around me thrash and laugh to an invisible provocation. Boggs sternly commands them to pull themselves together, but even he is trying not to smile. Smiling as he tries to tip the Holo through the smoke to get a better view. Smiling as he steps backward onto the mine that blows him apart in a spray of blood and screams.
My vision blanks and I stand, swaying and staring blindly, before my knees buckle and I drop to the ground. Homes rushes forward, pulling a medic kit from his pack in frantic haste. Katniss is scrambling in the street, looking for something and Finnick is working over the director's assistant, knocked unconscious when he was blasted back into a brick wall.
Finnick's hunched back and quick hands send a cascade of visions through my head, accompanied by the whisper's chanting thrum of rage and fury and destruction. blood wreckage chaos destroy kill pain crave blood destroy kill kill kill When he had bent over me, trying similarly to revive an unresponsive body. Boggs' bloody stumps where his legs used to be making my own leg throb with phantom memories of pain and loss. An arena closing its net around us as we fall, one by one, to the howling maw of the audience who watches with ravenous delight.
Finnick's voice is screaming behind us and I force my head up, turn to see the new threat. From the end of the street, a surging wave of oily black sludge is crashing between the walls, blocking out the sun as it gushes down the corridor, barricading us from any return the way we came. die blood death danger tear claw kill kill kill kill kill kill kill
Flapping in the light breeze are the tattered edges of a line of posters someone pasted to the ruined walls. From the shredded remains, Coin stares implacably down upon the destruction heaving below her, reminding me. I have to keep Katniss alive. Pulling myself to my feet, I grope my way toward Boggs, shoving the screaming rage of the whisper down and clenching my fists into trembling knots. My stomach heaves and bucks at the spreading pool of blood around him as he mumbles, glassy-eyed to the Holo before handing it to Katniss. She speaks her name, voice trembling, and then a green light flashes out, transfixing her. I throw myself toward her as gunfire erupts up the street, spinning to hold my weapon uselessly pointing at the danger. It's Gale and Leeg, spraying the street with bullets, trying to find hidden pods.
I turn back to Katniss and Boggs, reaching to help. A crashing explosion and a gaping hole opens in the street, the concussion knocking me sideways. My vision flashes and flares, battling the images of a swooping, screaming Katniss, raining fiery destruction on the fleeing, terrified citizens of District Twelve. The buildings surrounding us morph into the streets of home, burning and screaming fills the air. I grind my teeth and force my lungs to breathe, to pull air against their frozen shock and horror. I reach again, to help Katniss and Homes pull Boggs away from the open street.
The roiling blackness lifts behind us, crashing toward our panicked and chaotic group, bringing unimagined horror with it. We have to get out of here. And then Boggs, dragged by the two soldiers, begins to cry out. Lost in pain, he begs for them to stop, to stop hurting him. My muscles lock in rigid immobility and I nearly bite my tongue in two as my jaw clamps together, fighting the sudden scream of the whisper as Darius slams into view in front of me. Begging, pleading, bleeding, crying. My own voice screaming along with his. Powerless, beseeching them to stop. To stop hurting him.
But I'm just as powerless now. I feel myself slip beyond the shrieking din of the whisper. The cold, empty blackness closes over me and I am lost.