Chapter 29

(Madge POV)

I fidgit about, swiveling my chair from side to side anxiously until Haymitch reaches over and grabs hold of it, stilling me.

"Sorry. Just antsy." I apologize, not meeting his gaze because I'm certain it holds a glare.

I've been sitting here for the last hour trying to be patient as I listen in on the mission. The mission that Gale had gone out on without getting the chance to say goodbye to me first. I'd been a touch angry about it initially but Haymitch insisted that Gale wasn't given a choice. He swore to me that Gale was literally shoved onto the hovercraft moments before it took off. Deciding that Haymitch isn't the kind of person to say things that aren't true, I believe him and let my rising anger subside. And I've apparently replaced it with anxiety.

"Alpha Bravo Charlie 1, approaching zone, landing in .1." I hear a male's voice crackle through the speakers. I have no idea what it means other than it seems the craft is landing. A lot of what I've heard on here is a bunch of flight jargon that I can't understand. Wind speeds and coordinates, stuff like that. But the word landing is one I understand. Landing means that they've arrived in the woods outside of 12 and for the next hour Gale will be searching there for possible survivors. This is the point at which I'll be holding my breath. This is the part that scares me most. The part when he's out in the woods, totally alone and in my opinion, unprotected.

I focus my eyes on the clock hanging on the wall. It's 5:42 in the morning. I'm told that he has exactly one hour on the ground before they head back. All he has to do is make it back safely within the next hour and then they'll bring him straight back here to me. I watch as the second hand on the clock ticks in a painfully slow fashion. This is going to be one of the longest hours of my life.

But I suppose that it makes for good practice. Gale is so dead set on being a part of the mission to rescue my father and that mission will be increasingly more difficult and dangerous than the one he's on now. I should probably work on getting my head and heart ready to handle such a thing. If I feel anxious now, I'm certain I'll be a complete basket case while that mission is taking place.

"Runner active. Systems off 55 counting down." The crackling voice says.

"Systems off? What does that mean?" I ask Haymitch. I haven't been bothering him to give me explanations of what comes through the speakers but that one sounded as if they were shutting down the hovercraft.

"It's safer this way. Even though the Capitol satellites are down, we want our craft to power down while on the ground just in case their systems get up and running before we get out of there."

"So if the hovercraft systems are off, the Capitol can pick us up on their radar?"

"Nope. They only catch our signals when we're powered up or in movement."

"So they can see when we're flying? They can catch us midflight?" I ask in horror as images of Gale's hovercraft being shot down flash through my mind.

"They could. We've got special technology that scrambles our flight signals though so even if they identify an unauthorized aircraft on the radar, they won't be able to determine our coordinates or our flight path. By the time they could possibly unscramble the signals, we'd be off their radar again." Haymitch explains.

"Oh." Is all I manage to say in response. But then I have more questions. "But how do we know what's coming at us if our systems are down? And what if we needed to fly suddenly?"

"We can power up enough systems to fly out in just under 30 seconds if need be. And as for seeing what's coming at us, we do that third party, here in the Communications Bay."

"But that doesn't make any sense. Even if we saw a Capitol Hovercraft coming directly at ours, with the systems powered down we wouldn't be able to alert our people. All we could do is sit by and watch."

"Look Princess, you're really wearing on my headache here. I did your boy a favor by letting you sit in here but please, for the love, could stop with the panicky questions? Some of us are actually working here." Haymitch tells me with the most exasperated of sighs as he rubs his forehead, eyes squinted shut.

I shut up and try to make myself as invisible as possible. He pulls a small flask from his pocket and pours a clear liquid into his coffee mug. I can smell from here that it's moonshine. I remember it well from when Gale took to drinking it just before I was reaped. Haymitch has long since been known as a drunk. I figure the games are what did it to him, what drove him to it. That's partly why it worried me back when I first noticed Gale had begun drinking. I was afraid he'd take it to the extreme like Haymitch. Thankfully, he never let it get out of control and he dropped the habit altogether once we were reunited here in 13. Looking back on it all now though, it's a wonder he didn't drink more often while he patiently waited for my memory to return. It'd been awful for him. I know it was. And now that I have my memory back, all I want to do is make it up to him. To thank him for being so loving, so patient beyond belief. Yes, I definitely need to thank him in my own special way.

My daydreaming about Gale is interrupted by one of the workers. "Excuse me mam, I need to access that screen." He says politely while gesturing to the screen in front of my chair.

"Of course." I say as I hop out of the chair and move back to get out of his way. I watch as he touches the screen and it changes pulling up new images and data. His brow furrows and he touches a few more spots on the screen, making it zoom in on a blinking dot.

"We've got activity in sector F. Requesting identification of flight path." He says calmly into the headset that he's wearing. My heart rate quickens when I hear this. It sounds concerning even though his voice is calm as he speaks.

"Flight path showing as 3.55 and 88.92 with destination of 11. Registered flight on Capitol Roster." A woman's voice rings back through his headset but it's loud enough that I can hear it clearly.

"Requesting notification should that flight path change at any time." The man says back into the headset. He sits back and keeps the zoomed in section of the screen pulled up in front of him.

"Copy." The female voice says again.

I look over at Haymitch and see that he's busy reading over something that just printed out from the machine next to him. I'm literally dying to know what exactly is going on but hesitant to ask any more questions for fear that Haymitch will kick me out of here altogether. I begin to fidget with a loose thread on the hem of my shirt and shift my weight from one foot to the other then back again. My eyes turn to the clock on the wall again. 6:22. Almost finished. Only 20 more minutes and Gale will be safely back on the hovercraft and heading back to me.

The man with the headset must notice me fidgeting behind him because he turns around, glancing at me. I think I must be disturbing his concentration so I mouth the words "I'm sorry" to him and force myself to remain still, folding my arms over my chest tightly.

"It's okay. Here, pull up that chair and I'll explain what's going on. This is all pretty foreign to you." He says with a smile.

"Are you sure? I don't want to disturb you."

"It's no problem." He says as I take a seat. "Sawyer." He says holding out his hand to me.

"Madge Hawthorne." I say as I give his hand a shake.

He stifles a little laugh. "We all know who you are down here."

I blush a little, unsure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Has Gale been talking me up to his coworkers? What could he have said?

"I worked the communications for the mission that brought you here." He explains.

"Oh, I didn't know. Thank you. Thank you very much!" I tell him, feeling as if I should have known this about him.

He shrugs as if it were nothing. "So, what we have here is a screen of all of Panem. It's divided up into sectors and in each of those, we can zoom in and see all signal producing activity."

"Signal producing?" I ask, trying to understand what he means.

"Trains, hovercrafts, official vehicles. Anything like that."

I nod and he continues. "My job is to watch for movement near the areas of our own hovercrafts during a mission. If I see anything, I call up to Lucie, she works the database that taps into the Capitol's database, and she identifies for me what I see. That helps me determine if it's anything to be concerned about or not."

"And then what happens? If you're concerned, I mean."

"I call the information over to the team leader. He evaluates and gives direction from there."

"And what you saw earlier, it was nothing to be concerned about?" I ask.

"It's what I consider to be marginal. It's a registered flight which means it was pre-planned. That makes it highly unlikely that it's coming after our craft. But because it's in a reasonable range to our craft, I'm having Lucie keep an eye on it to see if it logs a change of course."

"Just how close is it to where Gale's at?"

He smiles and that puts me more at ease. "Close, but believe me, if it were something to be concerned about, we wouldn't be sitting here having a tutorial about how things work in the Communications Bay. I'd be far too busy for that."

"Of course. I just get nervous when he's out there is all." I explain, hoping that my anxiousness isn't annoying him.

"Understandable." He turns his attention back to the screen, zooming in on a few areas but then closing them back out when he doesn't see anything of concern. As I watch him work, I'm glad he was kind enough to explain the gist of things to me so that I could understand what's occurring. Well, moderately understand it anyway.

I glance at the clock again. 6:35. Gale should be back to the hovercraft very soon now. 7 minutes until he's back aboard and only 5 minutes until they power up the hovercraft again. I take a deep breath and try to relax. I'm being ridiculous. Gale's fine. He's in the woods of 12 for crying out loud. He knows that area inside and out. He's good at this. I'm a worried mess for nothing. I've got to learn how to better control this anxiety. Even the people in this room are relaxed and they know everything there is to know about the mission at hand. If they can be calm, I must learn how to be calm about this too.

"Alpha. Bravo. Charlie. Systems powering up. Preflight procedures in progress. Take off in 5." Crackles through the speaker.

"Total aboard?" A man just a few chairs down from me asks.

"2 currently aboard." The crackling voice confirms.

"Update total count prior to take off."

"Copy."

Only 2 aboard? That means Gale isn't back yet. Crap. I was really hoping he would already be back. Why isn't he back? Why would he cut it so damn close? All of a sudden I remember what he said would happen on his last mission if he didn't make it back to the hovercraft in time. They would leave him out there to fend for himself. He'd be stranded until they could come back for him. Oh please don't let that happen!

"He still has time to get back." Sawyer says in a quiet but reassuring voice. He must sense my uneasiness.

I inhale deeply and nod at him with a grateful smile. The next few minutes may as well be hours for as long as they feel. I do my best to keep the fidgeting to a minimum though I'm unsuccessful but if it bothers Sawyer, he doesn't show it. I'll have to be sure Gale knows how kind Sawyer has been to me this morning. I know he'd appreciate it.

"Alpha. Bravo. Charlie. Updated count of 6 aboard. Taking off in .1."

"Copy."

My whole body relaxes. The updated count means that Gale did make it back on time and that he also managed to find survivors! This is absolutely fantastic! Sawyer and I exchange smiles.

"Requesting change of flight path. Code 6."

"Standby by for new path coordinates."

"What's a code 6?" I whisper to Sawyer as panic begins to creep back over me.

"Means they've hit a patch of bad weather. Like a thunderstorm or something. They're just requesting to move around the storm instead of moving through it." He explains. His voice is still calm but I notice the muscles of his jaw look a little tighter. He touches his computer screen and zooms in over an area. "All clear for flight path change." He calls out to the other workers in the room.

"Approved for flight path change. New coordinates are 3.55 and 44.86."

"Copy. Proceeding with…" The speaker crackles and then there's a sound of feedback causing my hands to fly up and cover my ears.

"Alpha. Bravo. Charlie. Repeat last communication." A worker calls out.

And then we have nothing but silence. Dead silence. A silence so loud that I can hear my heart thudding in my ears. They aren't responding.

"Alpha. Bravo. Charlie. Repeat last communication." The worker repeats.

Again we wait for them to respond. It's complete silence. Erie silence throughout the entire room.

"What do we show on radar? Do we have their position?" Haymitch barks, springing into action.

"They have not changed flight paths according to what our system shows." Sawyer responds. "I don't show movement though."

He doesn't show movement? What the hell does that mean? What just happened? The entire room is now a flurry of commotion as everyone works furiously at whatever their task is. The one worker continues to ask for them to repeat their communications. Sawyer is busy touching all over his screen, searching and zooming in at different sectors. Someone is checking weather patterns. All I can do is panic silently and try to stay out of everyone's way.

(Gale POV)

The cold air hits me all the way to my bones as I jump out of the hovercraft. I'd forgotten just how cold winters got around here. Being underground for so long, you just tend to forget about that sort of thing. My feet slosh across the ground, mud splashing as I run. The storm that blew through here must have really been a big one because a lot of trees and branches are down and the ground is soaked through. One glance up at the sky and I can tell another storm is heading this way. All the clouds are heavy and grey.

I'm not really certain how to go about looking for survivors but I decide to make a perimeter loop around as big an area as I can in the time that I have. I'll work my way outward and then I'll spiral back inward towards where the hovercraft is. We've landed not far from the edge of 12. Or well, the remains of 12 anyway. Haymitch had been very specific about my not crossing the fence back into the district itself. I was to stay in the woods only. Because it's winter and the trees are mostly bare, I get just a glimpse of the very edge of 12 on the Seam side as I reach the outermost part of the loop I'm making. The fence is still there but it's destroyed and twisted in sections, obviously it wouldn't be on. There aren't any houses standing like they should be. Not that anyone could expect a Seam house to withstand the wrath of the Capitol. Much of the grass in the field between the treeline of the woods and the fence is blackened from having burned. I want more than anything to go, to walk through 12 and see it as it is now but I know I don't have time. And I know if I expect Haymitch to let me work the mission to save Madge's father, I'd better do exactly what he tells me to do on this mission.

As I move through the woods, I watch for things that show signs of life. The first half hour or so, I don't see anything but as I work my way back inward towards where I began, I notice lots of trees with lower branches missing. Only the lower, reachable branches. That tells me that someone broke them off. Likely for firewood or shelter. I slow my run and look more closely. The storm that ripped through has made it impossible to see any footprints or tracks. And while tracks would be easily spotted in the mud, the storm just happened and I doubt anyone would be out just yet. I don't smell smoke or fire but I doubt any fire that could have been burning would've survived the storm. Not an outdoor fire.

I keep walking, looking for anything that could lead me to people and come upon small stones laid one by one in a row with a little space between each one. A quick count tells me it's 13 stones. The ground is only muddy. No grass or leaves cover the ground around the stones like it does everywhere else. These were definitely placed intentionally. And somewhat recently. But why? Are they some sort of route marker? A signal of sorts? And then it hits me. They aren't route markers. These are grave markers. A sickening feeling rolls through me and I take a couple steps backward so I'm not standing on them. Someone is definitely alive out here. Or was recently. And my time is running out, I've got to hurry and find them because this is the only chance of rescue they're going to have.

My gut tells me to call out but at the same time I don't want too because I don't know who is out here. I doubt it's anyone Capitol related but whoever is out here, isn't expecting me to be here and I don't want to scare anyone off or panic anyone into attacking me. All I want is to find them and haul ass back to 13 as fast as I can. I have less than 10 minutes and I know I need to get back because they will leave me here if I don't return.

I scan around, desperate to see anything that would give away signs of life. Nothing. I'm making my way back to the hovercraft, eyes still peeled on my surroundings. Maybe I can convince them to pull another mission out here and I can come back and look again. Yes, that's what I'll have to do. I'll have to tell Haymitch what I found and beg him for a second chance at this.

I'm 7 minutes away from the craft when I spot it. The makeshift shelter amongst a cluster of trees. Branches wedged together and covered with leaves. I swallow. Do I call out? Do I go up to it? Who is in there? I cautiously approach and pause when I'm about 3 feet away from it.

"Hello? Is anyone there? I'm here to help you." I call out.

I hear a rustling noise from inside but no one answers. I call out a second time. "I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to help."

Again, no one responds. I have less than 6 minutes to get them out of here and back to the hovercraft. I don't have time for this. I go right up to the shelter and knock away some of the logs and branches. My eyes fall on a blanket of pine needles nearly knee high. Like some sort of giant nest. No people though. But I know I heard someone in here so I start brushing away the pine needles. They have to be buried under here, whoever they are. And then I find them. Three people. A woman and her two children. Her eyes are wide with absolute fear as soon as I uncover them but then her face relaxes. She recognizes me. I don't know her. They appear to be Seam people though.

"I'm Gale Hawthorne and I've come to rescue you all but you have to come with me right now or we'll all be stranded out here. I can explain later but for now, I just need you to come with me!" I tell her as calmly as my adrenaline filled body will let me.

She sits up and nods. She looks weak and the children even worse. "We've been waiting for so long." She says, her voice scratchy and dry.

"I need you to carry your smaller boy. I'll carry the older one. And we need to run. They will leave without us if we don't hurry." I tell her, urgently pulling her to her feet. I shove her smallest child into her hands and grab the other one into my own arms and begin to run. I glance back only once to see if she's following and keeping up. She is. She's struggling, but fear and desperation must be driving her because somehow, she's right behind me.

When the hovercraft is finally in sight, I see it's already powered up and ready to take off. We're literally cutting it seconds close again. I toss the boy I'm carrying through the door and then help hoist her and the smaller child up and in, throwing myself through just behind them.

I close the door just as we lift off and lean against it in total exhaustion. I hear the communicator give our passenger count to 13. I did it. I saved 3 lives today. I look over to where the woman is huddled on the floor with her two children and stare at them. They look almost wild. Dirty, matted hair. Skin so filthy there isn't a bare spot of flesh visible. Layers of tattered, mix-matched and ill fitting clothing on all of them. Probably clothing they pulled off of those they buried. A means of attempted survival against the bitter cold. They're frail and their faces gaunt. They're obviously starving.

I sit up, reaching for the first aid kit. I know it has water in it and it may have some sort of food or something. But as I reach for the kit the craft turns sharply and I have to brace myself. It's a turbulent ride, probably from the storm and I hear the request going out to change our flight path. I realize I should probably help get the woman and her kids strapped into seats.

"Let's get you guys buckled up. The storm's making our flight a little choppy." I say, hoping they aren't too scared right now. I remember my flight to 13 and how scared I'd been, not understanding what was going on.

"Where are we going?" The woman asks. Her voice still so dry and rough sounding. As soon as I get them settled into seats, I need to find that water for them.

"To safety. I promise everything is going to be okay now." I tell her knowing the full explanation of Underground 13 is too much to go into right now.

She seems to trust me but doesn't say anything else. Her hands holding tightly to each of her children. Just as I latch the last harness on them, the whole craft plummets and I fall backward, banging my back against a row of seats behind me.. We level off again and I pull myself to my feet. Stupid storm I think as I rub my now aching back. I decide the water will have to wait and that I need to get my own self strapped into a seat before I get really hurt. I'm untangling the harness when it happens. The whole craft shakes violently, knocking me out of the seat and onto the floor. I slide across the floor, hitting against equipment as I do. The shaking continues and the lights flicker off and on before they stay off altogether. It's completely dark. Can't see my hand in front of my own face. In the pitch darkness I hear a sizzling sound from the control panels, see a flash of blue sparks and then pitch blackness again. I hear the woman and her children crying out in fear and hear panic in the voices of the pilot and communicator as they try to fix whatever just happened. And all I can think is that Madge will never forgive me for this. I left without saying goodbye and if I don't make it back to her, if we crash, I can't…I can't even think about what this will do to her. I should have told her I was leaving. I should have told her I loved her.

A/N: Fanpire109, this is what you've been waiting for! Thanks for the idea and the patience while I put it all together. I hope to have the next chapter up soon!