In my nightmares, the things I try so hard to escape in my waking hours come pounding towards me. They're not held back by the restraints of consciousness. No, they're free to roam, free to attack me and hold me down. And I can never wake up from them, so I'm trapped until someone else wrestles me awake or my brain just can't sleep any more.
The wolf mutts in the arena, whispering her name over and over again.
The monkeys.
The jabberjays.
Katniss.
Katniss.
Monsters I've never seen before, calling her name, calling to me.
Katniss.
Their voices reach into my mind and escape through my lips, the hisses making my tongue tingle.
That one word, echoing through the tunnels of the underground network and drilling itself into my brain.
Kill. Katniss.
Kill. Katniss.
My eyes snap open and I sit up, searching for Katniss. I find her behind me, her bow raised, pointing at me. "Katniss!" She lowers her bow a little as she sees the startled look in my eyes, hears the urgency of my voice. "Katniss! Get out of here!"Surely she must see this I care, that the whispering was not me!
"Why? What's making that sound?"
"I don't know. Only that it has to kill you. Run! Get out! Go!" She relaxes her bow string and turns away from me to face the rest of the squad. It's just like in the first arena, all over again. Me telling her to run, trying to save her, and she hesitates! Cato could just come around that corner right now and stab me in the leg again. Would she care?
"Whatever it is, it's after me. It might be a good time to split up." She says, looking around at the crew. Whatever she's doing, she's wasting time.
"But we're your guard," protests Jackson, slinging her gun over her shoulder. For someone so against venturing into the city early she's certainly very willing to risk her life now.
"And your crew," adds Cressida, holding her clipboard to her chest.
"I'm not leaving you." Gale says, his gun held tight in his hands. Suddenly I realise how important it is that I'm still alive- if they'd killed me when I told them to they wouldn't have had any warning about the monsters snaking their way through the pipes to kill us. I also see the determination in his grey seam eyes. Maybe he is made for Katniss.
Katniss looks around at the crew, her eyes filled with sadness as she takes into account how many of these people will die protecting her. She takes one of Finnick's guns and hands it to Castor, takes my gun from the floor beside it and loads it with a real cartridge before handing it to Pollux. Gale and Katniss give their guns to Cressida and Messalla and show them how to pull the trigger- all they'll need to know at close quarters. And then it's just me without a weapon, just me taking my chances with whatever mutts Snow has set on us. Just me who isn't trusted enough to protect them, to protect myself. Katniss picks up the cans and quickly sweeps the floor with her eyes for any other evidence we may have been here, then nods to Pollux to lead us out again. Before she leaves, she sticks the cans behind one of the machines. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but a lot better than carrying them with us.
As I step through the door, I think about what we could be about to face.
Snow. Mutts. Katniss. Me. Monkeys. Wolves. The various atrocities conjured up to murder tributes in other games.
We could be up against anything- though most likely whatever Snow thinks will scare Katniss most. So really, just about anything.
We cover three more blocks in good time before the screams start. Animal noises, choked and agonising, bouncing off the walls and engulfing us as we trudge through knee-high water in a drainage pipe.
"Avoxes." I blurt out, the instance the sound hits my ears. "That's what Darius sounded like when they tortured him."
I look over at Pollux and see his face pale. Of course. He knows that that's what he'll sound like too. That's what Castor will have to hear if he dies. We press onwards.
Cressida says something, but I'm not really listening. Leeg and Gale join in the conversation, discussing something about them not really wanting Katniss, just anyone they come across. They're probably right. My mind zooms back into focus as Katniss says something about going to lead them off, but not because of her speech- because of something else, something sinister.
"Listen." I murmur. Nobody hears me, still arguing about wasting time, in itself wasting time and giving off hints as to our location.
"Listen!" I whisper again, harsher this time. They shut up and look around them as they hear what I am hearing. Fear slowly emerges on each of their faces, realisation dawning on each of them. The screams have stopped, replaced by the constant, louder hissing of "Katniss" over and over again, all around us. Above us, behind us, below us and to the left and right. And even ahead of us, though not as loud, not as close.
Katniss nudges Pollux and as a single entity, we begin to run, our feet pounding on the damp concrete tiles. A sweet smell rises up from a stairwell on the left and Katniss begins gagging. "Masks on!" Jackson yells, but nobody raises their masks- there is no need for them. I know that smell, after all the time spent with Snow it's impossible not to know it. Roses.
That's her weakness. Not monsters, but that delicate flower. Like in Snow's rose garden, like the one he always wears in his lapel. But of course- Katniss has a connection with flowers. From Rue and Prim right through to Snow's roses. Always with the threat of death, and while death itself doesn't scare Katniss, it's leaving behind her family and people she cares for that does.
She swerves away from the smell and stumbles onto the Transfer. As she runs across the pastel cobbles, she uses her bow to shoot at the first pod, and it explodes with the odour of smoking rat flesh. When she reaches the next intersection, she pauses and shouts at us all to stay with her. Our location is known anyway, we just have to outrun them.
"Katniss!" Finnick shouts, and she turns around. Gale shoots two arrows at a wide shaft of golden light, inside of which floats Messalla. Even as we watch, his flesh starts to melt from his bones like the wax of a candle, dripping into a pool on the floor. My insides rise up and threaten to spew out of my mouth as I start shoving people forward.
"Can't help him!" I scream, pushing Gale in the small of his back. "Can't!" Katniss is right in front of me, staring horrified at the skeleton hanging in the light, even the bones now starting to melt. I touch her shoulder and she seems to come back to her senses, sprinting after the others to the intersection. The amount of people I have seen die in the past few years is too great, too many. There can't be any more. Not if I can help it.
Gunfire brings down plaster from the ceiling and Katniss looks about for a pod- not yet seeing the army of Peacekeepers sprinting down the Transfer towards us. Blossoms of red stain their pristine white uniforms as the star squad fire back, and I stand hopeless waiting for the horror to end. Almost all the Peacekeepers have fallen to the floor when more pour in from the sides and my mind cripples. We've lost. We're going to die.