The TECs react immediately, just as we hoped. The soldiers all assemble into trucks and fly out of the front gate to the north, leaving just a skeleton crew behind to guard the prisoners. Once they're gone, I give the signal for us to move.

We fly around the compound's perimeter till we are directly across from the fence outside of the barracks.

"Go, Ratchet. Go!" I scream. He pulls two bundles from off his back and charges straight for the fence. The TECs in the guard towers have their searchlights on, but they're all focused inside of the compound, making sure that no prisoners take advantage of the confusion of the explosion to make a break for it. Ratchet winds up and throws the two bundles at the base of the fence, exactly fifty yards between two of the towers. Once the packages have landed safely, he bolts back to us, makes a jump, and lands directly next to me. He pulls another detonator from his pocket.

"At your command, Sir."

"Blow it! Blow it!" I shout. Ratchet hits the button.

"BOOM!" A massive explosion rocks the fence and blows a twenty foot wide hole in the wire precisely where we wanted it.

"Let's rock!" Hatchet screams and we run straight at the breach in a full sprint. Hatchet is on the left and I am on the right. The guards in the towers were stunned by the blast. They are just climbing back to their feet as we pass below. Hatchet and I each fire a quick burst from our rifles, neutralizing both TECs and clearing our way inside the complex.

"Tiller, Ratchet!" Hatchet screams over her shoulder. "Take Doc and head for the barracks. Sir, you're with me!" The three of them head for the concrete buildings to our left. Several TEC guards appear from in between the structures, but are quick work for Tiller, Ratchet, and Doc's rifles. As Hatchet and I head for the factory, we hear the three of them begin to kick down the locked doors and run inside. Doc shouts in his thick District 12 accent to the prisoners.

"UDP Defense Force! We're here to get you out!"

Hatchet and I continue to run through the darkness. Suddenly, a burst of machine gun fire peppers the ground around us and we dive for cover behind a scrap metal cart that was left on the tracks when the day's work was done. Bullets ricochet off the heavy metal of the cart's frame as Hatchet quickly peers around the edge with her night vision glasses.

"TEC in a tower: about fifty yards."

"Right or left?" I shout back to her.

"Right, one o'clock."

"Cover me!" Hatchet sticks her rifle over the top of the cart and opens fire. Her bullets cause the TEC in the tower to pause just long enough for me to dive from behind the cart and run towards the factory. He sees me sprinting through the darkness, but before he can swing his machine gun onto my position, I have him in my sights. A quick pull of the trigger, and he falls backwards to the ground. The searchlight next to him explodes into a shower of sparks as bullets rip through its bulb.

Hatchet rolls from behind the cart and runs to join me. As we approach the factory, we see that the main door has been sealed, but there is a smaller service entrance right next to it. We run towards the door, but before we reach it, it flies open. A TEC guard stumbles out into the night holding a rifle. We both see that he has the leather strap used to beat the children earlier still attached to his hip. I fire a quick burst from my rifle and hit him in the shoulder. He collapses to his knees and throws his weapon to the ground before raising his arms in a gesture of surrender.

Hatchet runs up next to me and stares into his black visor.

"People from Panem seem a little scarier when they can actually fight back don't they?" she says as she pulls her pistol. She sticks the muzzle right against his helmet and pulls the trigger, splattering the factory wall with blood and brains. The guard falls forward to the ground and we continue running through the service entrance and into the factory. As we climb a short flight of stairs up into the main bay, we both pause in shock.

This facility is massive. Bright lights illuminate an assembly line that runs down the center of the bay. Both sides are lined with long pneumatic hoses and thick electrical wires that power the heavy equipment along the line. A huge cauldron filled with molten steel bubbles at the far end.

TECs appear from a doorway on the other side of the bay and Hatchet and I both open fire simultaneously. Half of the TECs fall, but the rest dive for cover behind a bay of equipment. As they return fire, we do the same. The sound of bullets ricocheting echoes off the steel walls around us.

"Sir, do you care about the equipment in here?" Hatchet screams over the noise.

"What do you think?" I shout back.

"Good," she reaches down onto her vest and pulls out a hand grenade. I do the same. We pull the pins at the same time and launch them across the assembly line. The two explosions send out waves of deadly shrapnel and make quick work of the remaining TECs. Slowly, we emerge from behind our cover and look around the assembly line. One project remains under construction in front of us. It is long and cylindrical, about fifty yards long and two yards wide. Fins were in the process of being welded to the aft portion when the day's work ceased.

"It looks like some kind of missile, but I've never seen one this big before," Hatchet says without taking her eyes off of the device.

"I've read about these…" I mutter back to her. "But they haven't existed in almost three hundred years."

"What?"

"It looks like an ICBM: Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile. There used to be thousands of them scattered across the globe until some idiot finally decided to use one and touched off a firestorm that killed half the planet."

"What does it do?"

"They're meant to carry heavy warheads up into space, and then they come screaming back down onto the other side of the globe and detonate over an enemy target."

"Nuclear?" Hatchet asks.

"Usually, but not always."

"Didn't the Capitol and District 13 get into a stand-off using these things after the Dark Days?"

"They did get into a nuclear stand-off, but all their missiles were low-powered and barely able to fire across Panem. No one could figure out how to build one that could push into space after the atmosphere was thinned-out by the Global War, but it looks like Ohm finally solved the problem."

"What are the TECs gonna use Nukes for?" Hatchet asks totally confused. "I thought they wanted our resources. If they irradiate the whole UDP, we'd be worthless to them."

"I have as much idea as you do right now…"

A burst of pistol fire slices through the air around us. A round finds Hatchet's right leg and she collapses next to me, screaming in pain. I dive for cover behind a control panel and pull her by her vest into safety with me.

"Hello there, God of War!" I hear Ohm scream from across the bay. "It is so good to see you again, old friend, and it seems that you brought a goddess with you this time as well! Shame, shame, Ares. Does Mrs. Snow know you're out gallivanting around the world with another woman while she stays at home with the little one?"

I look down at Hatchet's leg, bright crimson spews from a gaping hole in her thigh. I immediately pull the bandana from her head and wrap it tightly around the wound, trying to stem the flow of blood. Her long, blonde hair falls into a mess around her shoulders.

"Dammit," she screams in pain. "Not like this, not now!" she repeats to herself.

"You're gonna be fine, Hatchet….Damn you, Rikard!" I scream across the bay.

"Oh come now, Ares," his artificial voice shoots back at me. "You didn't think it would be that easy did you? I always love giving you choices, remember? The sexy lumberjack's life or the man who's sworn revenge against you? Tick tock, tick tock!" The maniacal laughter I have grown to hate more than anything else in the world echoes all around me. I look over the top of the control panel to see him disappear into a hallway behind a door marked, "Primary Agent Testing."

"Sir, he hit the artery," Hatchet says growing more and more pale by the second. "I'm a dead woman. Go, go and get him!" I look down to see the bandana has become loose because it is saturated with blood. I reach down, grip its ends, and pull as tight as I can. Hatchet screams in pain again.

"That hurts!"

"Good, that means it's working."

"Sir, please," she says reaching up and gripping my vest with a blood-covered hand. "When you get back to the others, can you tell Ratchet something that I haven't been brave enough to tell him? Can you tell him…that I love him?"

"C'mon, Hatch," I say looking straight into her eyes. "You're more of a man than I am. Reach down, grab your lady-balls, and tell him yourself." I leap up to my feet, grab Hatchet's arm, and pull her onto my back.

"What the hell are you doing, Sir? He's getting away!"

"Remember that whole thing you said about you and me being replaceable? Yeah, I think that's bull…." I say running back toward the outside.

"Sir, if Ohm gets away I'm gonna kick your ass!"

"Only when Doc gets that leg of yours working again." I run back out into the night and see that Ratchet, Tiller, and Doc have pulled off a miracle. The entire prisoner population of the camp is assembled and ready to move in front of the barracks. A few of them have even picked up weapons from the fallen TECs and help pull guard around the others. I see my team speaking with a few of the prisoners and sprint up to them.

"Olivia!" Ratchet screams when he sees Hatchet on my back. I put her down as gently as I can in front of them. She has already passed out from blood loss by the time Doc gets to work stabilizing her.

"Don't worry, Ratch," Doc says replacing my improvised tourniquet with a real one. "It's a clean wound and she's not in shock. I'll give her my own blood if I have to."

"Just don't let her go, Man! Don't let her go!"

"Sergeant Hightower!" I scream into his face. "She's going to be fine," I say trying to calm him down. "Trust me, you both will be fine," I flash him a glance and somehow he understands, "Now, are the rest of these people ready to move?"

"Yes Sir," Doc says without looking up from Hatchet's leg. He pulls out a syringe and sticks it into her arm. "Morphling mixed with antibiotics…she's gonna feel great when she wakes back up.

"I though you said you only used morphling as a last resort?" Ratchet says in a panic.

"Well, she's a friend. Thought I'd hook her up." Doc smiles at Ratchet who actually manages a little laugh. "We've found the mayors of the Districts and they've assembled their people into groups." He pulls an IV from his aide bag and starts a flow of saline into Hatchet's arm. "They're getting a roll call from everyone now, but there shouldn't be anyone missing because the factory shuts down at night. The TEC soldiers apparently like to drink themselves stupid after dark."

"Well, that explains a lot…Do we know of any prisoners that died in captivity?" The other three of them fall silent for a second.

"Yes Sir, Tiller says. Mayors were telling me that there were selections. Every few days, they'd pick a young healthy hostage and take them away into another part of the factory. None of them have been seen since."

"Alright then," I say feeling a burning rage rising inside me again. I pick myself up and turn back towards the factory.

"Where the hell you going, Sir?" Ratchet says to me.

"I'm going after Ohm. If the eagles arrive while I'm gone, leave me behind and get back to Britannia."

"Sir, at least let me go with you! I want payback for her."

"Don't worry, Ratchet, they'll be plenty of time for that later. This war's a long way from over…"