A/N: I have an excuse, I swear. Don't shoot!

I wrote a novel. Those of you who've been with me for a year or more might remember last November, when I said I'd do NaNoWriMo and then I quit after two days. Well, this year I finished, and it left just enough time for me to do homework, eat, and sleep. This is the first time I've touched a computer since I finished; I wrote this chapter longhand and typed it all out.

So, anyways, I hope you guys still read this and you aren't too mad at me...

Enjoy!

Chapter 37: Deadline

"This was in your house," Beetee murmurs, rolling the little camera-and-microphone device between his forefinger and thumb. "In you house."

"Yes," I say, a little impatiently. It's been ten minutes and the District 3 engineer hasn't told me anything I don't already know. He's only repeated—

"Hmm… Your house…" I'm about to ask outright if he knows anything helpful, anything at all, when his eyes widen. "I've thought of something—there are probably more than one of these things, of course, but I think there might be a way to find and access the information on the drive. It might not work," he warns me, "but I'll try."

"Great," I say. "Thanks a lot."

Beetee sighs. "The thing is, I don't know what this will tell us, if anything. I mean, it's just a camera. All I can imagine is snippets of your conversation, shots of your legs." I know he'll hear other things, too: the screams as I wake nightly from my nightmares. But I don't tell him that. "I'll have to have someone conduct another search of the premises, see if they find anything but my guess is, nothing will be terribly significant."

"Okay." I nod. "But it'll be something, right?"

Beetee purses his lips. "I hope so, Peeta."

Out in the hall, I suppress the urge to kick the wall, which could probably do some serious damage given my new, inhuman toes. I know that it's not Beetee's vagueness that irritates me, it's my own uncertainty. I don't know anything about the state of things, as secluded as I've been these past few weeks in my hospital room.

Footsteps make me look around. As always, the blonde hair and blue eyes send me back to the arena, but this time I recover quickly. I smile. "Madge." I haven't seen her since that last day in the Training Center, and then on the screen in the Sponsor Center, but I've thought about her. I assumed she was busy doing… something. That she was too busy to visit, or even that she didn't know I was in a position to be visited.

Now, the expression on her face makes it clear that she's been deliberately staying away.

Her eyes are hard, and she stops a few feet away from me. "Peeta," she says stonily. I guess the doctors fixed her hearing. I'd nearly forgotten, as horrible as it sounds.

"How… how are you?" I ask, and immediately want to slap myself. Madge looks as though she'd like that, too.

She ignores my question. "Why didn't you tell us?" she demands.

"What?" There are a number of things, and I don't know to which one she's referring.

"The plan to get us tributes out of the arena." Her voice is as cold and hard as steel.

"I was under orders."

"Oh, right!" She snorts derisively, whatever fragile control she held over her emotions breaking completely. "Of course, do what they tell you. But you knew, you knew, and you didn't say anything! And now Fritz is dead!"

I try to explain. "But I had to—"

"If you'd told me, or Fritz, or both of us, we could have stayed safe—we'd have stayed put and waited." Her eyes are sparkling dangerously. "You didn't, though… and he died… which means that it's your fault."

I wonder how many times I'll have to hear someone blame me for a death? The problem is that the accuser is always correct. It is my fault, and there's nothing I can do. "I'm sorry. Really." I sound so pathetic.

Madge glares at me. "I hope you win this war," she says bitterly. "That way, you'll have to live with what you've done for years." She turns and stalks away.

"Was that her only reason for coming down here?" I ask the empty air.

"Most likely," says Beetee, stepping out into the corridor. "She's the Undersee girl, right? Your female tribute for the Quell?"

I nod. "Her cousin was Reaped with her."

"It was cruel to put that envelope in the box. Even for the Capitol, that's reaching a new level of atrocity."

My communicuff beeps. I look down at my wrist. "Plutarch wants to see me in—" I check the screen—"the debriefing room?" My uncertainty turns the statement into a question. "Do you know where that is?"

"Just scan your cuff," advises Beetee. I can do that? "The debriefing room is the third on the left from where the elevator will let you off, on the far side of the hall."

With a word of thanks, I set off for the elevator. Why I've never noticed the sensor embedded in the wall, I can't say, but when I pass my communicuff in front of it, there's a beeping noise and the elevator begins to move immediately.

As instructed, I cross the hall and take the third door on the left. When I step inside, Plutarch looks up from the papers on the table before him.

"Ah! Peeta! So glad you could make it."

I know it's just a habit left over from his time as Gamemaker, but the customary phrase bothers me. So glad you could make it. I don't really have a choice here, now, do I? "What's going on?"

A woman with impeccably cut silvery-gray hair walks out of the corner she's been standing in. I hadn't noticed her. "Hello, Soldier Mellark."

I still have to get used to the way that everyone over fourteen is addressed as "soldier." More particularly, I have to get used to hearing my own name in that context. "…Hello," I say in return. Plutarch winces, but I have no clue what I've done wrong. I don't even know who this woman is, for crying out loud. Nevertheless, I shake the hand she offers me.

"Have a seat," invites Plutarch. "The president was just telling me her plans." The meaningful look he throws in my direction is not wasted on me. I know that I've just met Alma Coin, the President of District 13. I can't help thinking that it's about time.

I sit between the two of them, so that we form a kind of triangle. "What plans, exactly?"

Coin clasps her hands on the table. I notice that her eyes are gray, like Katniss's, but they have no emotion in them. Not so much like Katniss, after all. For all that she tries to wear a mask, her eyes give away glimmers of what she feels. This woman, though, has perfected her poker face. She begins to speak. "In a month's time, we'll be sending a few squads of soldiers to an outlying part of District One, where the rebel commanders will deploy the troops as they see fit. As the Mockingjay, it is crucial that we obtain footage of you in action."

Despite the bloodshed that I know I'll be party to, I can't help feeling excited at the prospect of going somewhere, doing something. The trip to Twelve is the only time I've left Thirteen, and that was far from productive, as far as I'm concerned. "All right," I say. "I'm game." It occurs to me that maybe Coin wasn't looking for my consent.

She doesn't nod, doesn't even blink. "In order for you to be cleared for duty, you'll need to finish your training before the month is up. Plutarch tells me that you have progressed sufficiently to be able to meet this requirement."

I catch Plutarch's wink out of the corner of my eye, but Coin is watching me to the exclusion of all else. I'm not so surprised that I can't say, with only a moment's hesitation, "…That's right."

Coin stands. "Plutarch, I'll see you tomorrow." She just barely inclines her head in my direction. "Soldier Mellark." Then she goes to the door, and then she's gone.

Plutarch rises as well, but I ask him to wait. "Why did you tell her I can finish my training in a month?"

He shrugs. "You'll finish. Trust me."

"But what makes you so sure?"

Plutarch raises his eyebrows. "Are you going to let them down, all those people out there?" He waves his arm in an expansive gesture, indicating the rest of the world. "They're fighting for you; Are you the kind of person who'd let that go unrewarded, even if it means going into the thick of things yourself?"

I can only stare at him. I barely know him, but he seems to understand exactly what's going on in my mind.

Plutarch winks again, tapping the side of his head with his index finger. "Gamemaker, remember?"

A/N: All I can picture for that line is Johnny Depp telling Orlando Bloom, "Pirate," in his smug Captain-Jack-voice :) Review, please! It really will make my day. 100th reviewer gets a character/one-shot or something similar.