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How Come The World Won't Stop
Tigris owned a shop only a few blocks away ever since she had been removed from her position as stylist. She sold fur undergarments, which made a weird bit of sense.
My former stylist had always been very extravagant with her styling choices, especially on herself. For as long as I had known her, she had looked like she wanted to be a cat. Yet at some point in the last years, she had tattooed tiger stripes all over her body.
Her eyes narrowed when she noticed us entering, artificial whiskers bobbing nervously. Finnick once told me about a client with whiskers. He said it was the weirdest experience he ever had.
While I was caught up in the clenching of my heart - I could so well imagine Finnick with me, surely he would soon pop up next to me, making fun of whatever furry garment he would have found - Cressida had stepped forward and hurriedly explained why we were here.
Tigris moved forward in smooth, elegant movements and nodded at us. "You're not the first."
Katniss' eyes widened in panic and Gale, even though close to collapse, pulled out his weapon again while hurried steps pounded up the stairs to the cellar. The door flew open and while everyone else raised their guns, I let out a half-shriek, half-sob and rushed forward.
Nero had appeared in the door frame and we very nearly tumbled down the stairs again when I threw myself at him.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded after the first shock had passed.
He smiled nervously, looking over my shoulder to the sorry rest of my squad that slowly lowered their weapons. "I wanted to help," he said. "I came in with Peeta, but they refused to assign me with you guys... I ran away, and Enobaria pointed me to Tigris and... here I am."
My mind was spinning with this new knowledge and Nero took the chance to grab me by the arm and lead me down the stairs, the rest of our group following slowly. Enobaria was alive. She was somewhere in the Capitol, but safe if she did send Nero here. Nero was here! He should not be here, this was dangerous. Finnick had just died. Nero was not nearly the fighter Finnick had been.
He sat me down on a stack of furs and pointed out a drain to Katniss who rushed to get water. Soldier Gale Hawthorne ever the hero for our mockingjay, had held himself on his feet until now but his strength was gone, exhaustion and wounds tearing on him.
I flinched violently and found that Nero had crouched down in front of me and was inspecting my own wound on my upper arm. I had almost forgotten about in all the hectic, but it did not look too good. It was no deep cut, but the edges had already turned and angry red.
"What happened?" Nero asked worriedly, waving Katniss and the water over.
"Got thrown into a brick road by an explosion," I said. "Everyday stuff."
Finnick had been right there with me on the road. Bending down to inspect my injury like Nero was right now. I let out a shuddering breath and closed my eyes while Nero cleaned the wound.
Everyone slept after that, for everyone was exhausted. Sleep was a welcome reprieve from the haunting pain of consciousness and mercifully, I slept deep and dreamless though not very long.
I was the first to be awake, aside from Nero who had had the luck to sleep through the night. When he noticed me awake, he pointed to the stairs and I followed him as he climbed upwards into Tigris' shop. It was early afternoon, judging by the bit of light that came in through the windows.
Tigris was scuttling through the shop and, when she spotted me, pressed a warmed can of beef stew into my hand. I took it with the most earnest smile I could muster up in that moment.
"Thank you, Tigris," I said. "For everything."
"I'll get you some new clothes," she said. "No victor of mine will wear such rags."
I watched as she disappeared into the depth of her stock again and turned back to Nero who had hopped onto the counter, eating out of his own can. "How long have you been here?" I asked, approaching him slowly.
If anyone had walked into the shop right now, we would have gotten captured or more likely shot dead, but I did not really care. Besides, I doubted the Peacekeepers were interested in fur underwear.
"Two days," he said. "I thought you were dead for a while there. I wished I had been with you."
"I figured so much," I told him. "We accidently set off a few pods and Katniss made up some mission to assassinate Snow and we just kind of went along with it."
If only I had insisted that Finnick and I go off alone. We might have well made it through. We could have been safe and sound right now, hiding anywhere in the Capitol, or on our way to Snow without Katniss to hold us back. Katniss and the big target she had on her back.
"Right," he said. "About assassinating Snow - I kind of have a plan of my own."
I straightened up slightly. I should have told him to talk to Katniss about it, to just please leave me out of any plan that got anyone in trouble. Everyone around me died, anyway, there was no need to put anyone else in danger. "Tell me all about it."
Nero figured that the Capitol had one hovercraft left, meant to get Snow and other high officials to safety once the rebels got to close. Case in point, the rebels were very close. Nero therefore thought they would attempt to escape rather soon. And there was only one place left from where the hovercraft could start - the top of the Peacekeeper Tower. Which coincidentally had a secret backdoor that would be hardly surveilled in all the chaos and whose exact location was also known to Nero.
"How do you know?" I asked, earnestly amazed at all this new information.
He smiled sheepishly. "Agatha Stark," he said. "She came in yesterday, Tigris has been looking out for her a bit."
"I know the girl," I told him. "Why would she help us?"
"Well, she's pretty upset about her Dad," Nero said with a shrug.
"Who got shot by rebel soldiers," I shot back.
"Because he was forced to play torturer by Snow!" Nero said with a grim smile.
I raked a hand through my hair. This was absolute madness. Agatha Stark most certainly was not to be trusted. No Capitolite was to be trusted. And yet... obviously she was angry about her father's dead, even I was. If what Nero said was true, she had put the blame on Snow, even though she could have easily, rightfully blamed the rebels.
"We just need to get in and hide until Snow shows his face and then I suggest we shoot said face off," Nero said, his voice growing with excitement.
"Hold on, hold on!" I interrupted. "We? No way I'm bringing you into this."
His face fell and he frowned at me. "This was my idea!"
"I'm your mentor," I bit back. "And I refuse to let you walk into a death trap - again!"
Nero scowled at me until suddenly, a smile broke through his angry facade. "I'm your mentor, too."
I raised an eyebrow at him. "Nero-"
"I'm your mentor and you're my victor - a victor is a person that came out of the Hunger Games alive, right?" he said, his grin growing steadily. "So, you're just as much my responsibility as I'm yours. And I won't let you walk into the death trap alone."
I desperately searched for a more convincing argument, but there was none. Plus, if I was being completely honest, I did not want to go through with this alone. Of all the people I could have picked to go with me, Nero was by far my favourite. Besides, who was I to argue with that kind of determination?
"Fine," I said through gritted teeth. "We're in this together."
While Nero and I had been plotting, Katniss had finally come clean to the rest of the squad about her made-up mission. It did not come as much as a surprise to anyone. She felt guilty about everyone we had lost ever since we started with that stupid. As petty as it was, it made feel a little better to know that this was hard for the girl.
Once all of that was out of the way, they discussed their own plan. I felt the Nero's eyes on me the whole time, but I did not say a word of our own plan. They would not let us go if we fessed up and so I let them put us in as a distraction in their own scheme. My compliance might have been a little uncharacteristic, but the only person who would have noticed that had gotten eaten by mutts.
Tigris put us all into fancy robes and make-up, painting a Capitolite disguise if I had ever seen one. Katniss and Gale wanted to use the constant stream of refugees to get close to the President's mansion with the left members of our film crew as guides. Peeta would stay behind and try not to turn into the psycho-version of himself. Nero and I were supposed to cause some trouble and distract the Peacekeepers. We definitely would.
I watched as Katniss and Gale disappeared into the crowd, every few metres shooting a quick glance over their shoulders to see if we were still following. We did until we came across the next major intersection. Nero and I exchanged a quick look and I nodded to him. We ducked so Katniss and Gale would not see us moving and we pushed through the crowd as fast as we could down the next street.
"D'you think they noticed?" I asked, not daring to look behind us.
"And if they have?" Nero teased, but his smile was obviously forced.
"Then we have to shoot their faces off too," I retorted. "I'd rather not do that."
The Peacekeeper's headquarters had always been an ominous place, looming dark over all the bright buildings of the city. Now that we approached it with the full intent of breaking in, it was even more intimidating. We took a detour along a small sidestreet in the hopes of not being picked up the surveillance cameras.
The backdoor was not as easily reached as I would have thought. We had to climb a narrow ladder first, which led to an equally narrow pedestal in front of the door. I looked up, craning my head to see the door Nero pointed out.
"Are you sure this isn't surveilled?" I asked. What would they need such a door for, anyway? Did they sometimes throw their prisoners down from up there?
"Well, if it is," Nero answered. "We're on film now, anyway. Let's go."
We shredded the heavy fur cloaks and I climbed up first, keeping as tight a grip on the rails as possible on my way upwards. Behind me, Nero's climbing made the ladder shake and for a short moment I wondered if it was maybe designed to break.
Despite my worries, we reached the platform just fine, only to find that the door was predictably enough locked closed.
"Step back," Nero ordered. The moment I did, he fired a shot right into the lock. It crunched and smoked and when he pressed against the door, it swung open with little protest.
"Damn," I muttered. "That was pretty impressive."
He grinned back to me and then waved for me to follow. I did not have much orientation in the dark labyrinth that was Peacekeeper HQ, but we had to be around level Four of this twelve-floor-building. It was very quiet in the hallways, but then again, this was what the place always sounded like.
We passed the first few corridors on tip-toes, terrified that we would be found before it was time. But we did not encounter a single soul, which led me to believe that there had in fact not been any cameras.
After turning about five corners, we finally found a door labelled 'emergency staircase'. Nero pressed the handle down cautiously, but the door was neither locked nor secured. It opened without sound and we both slipped inside, closing the door again with equal care. Nero trailed a hand over his face to wipe away some sweat, and smeared most of Tigris' carefully applied make-up.
I nodded towards the stairs and we headed upstairs, only to exchange a panicked glance about one level up. Footsteps were bounding towards us at a running pace. Nero paled visibly and I held up two hands to indicate the number of attackers. We pressed against the walls while the bounded down the stairs.
They did not see us before it was too late. The first Peacekeeper gave an incoherent shout before one of Nero's bullets hit him right between the eyes. I hit the other one against the head with my own weapon, causing him to stagger. He tumbled down a set of stairs and his neck broke with a sickening crack.
Nero looked a little green instead of pale and I, too, had to swallow against the bile rising in my throat. But we could not linger here. I hissed his name to pull him away from the dead men. They had not deserved it more than anyone else, but right now, my arena instincts were kicking in. I could not afford mourning about the wrongness of my own doing when I could be shot dead any minute.
He tore his gaze away from the bodies and together we continued our way upstairs. I did not know where the men had come from, but I was well aware that at any given point, more could turn up. We needed to get out of this stairwell as soon as possible.
It ended on Level Ten, anyway, even though I was absolutely sure that there were more stories than that. Nero was shifting uncertainly while I peered into the hallway on the other side of the door.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Yes," I whispered back. "Stark always talked about his great office on Level Twelve..."
I waved for him to follow me and we snuck out of our hiding place and down the corridor. There were elevators going up, but I did not want to take the risk. There had to be another set of stairs, in case of a fire or something similar.
We were halfway down the corridor when there were boot-clad steps behind us. I pressed into a door frame and Nero did the same on the opposite side of the hallway. The Peacekeeper was a guy of about twenty, talking loud into his walkie-talkie.
"Copied," he announced. "I'm on my way. President Snow will have no trouble."
My stomach flipped. Snow was already here. He was trying to escape right now. We did not have much time, certainly not enough time to search for the steps. I exchanged a short glance with Nero and we both stepped into the man's way.
He froze, his walkie-talkie rose up to his mouth again, but before he could say anything, Nero had reached him and knocked the device out of his hand. The man punched him right in the chin and set to hit Nero yet again when my knife dug into his side.
"The staircase upwards," I said, pressing the tip in a little further while the man shivered. "You lead the way. And not a sound."
With shaking legs, he lead us along two corridors before he pointed out the right door. I knocked him out after that and he sunk unconscious to the floor.
There was no time to think of a plan before we bounded up the stairs, taking two at a time. The hovercraft looked ready to start when we arrived. President Snow was in the company of various Peacekeepers, all of whom whirled around when we threw open the door.
Nero shot one down at once, the boomerang knife I had left took another one out. Snow had ducked and ran for the hovercraft. I let out an enraged scream and rushed forward. One of the Peacekeepers fired at me and I jumped aside, only to hear a pain-filled yell behind me. I threw a glance over my shoulder to see Nero clutching his leg. I did not turn back.
I was suddenly tackled to the ground by yet another of Snow's bodyguards. I clawed and kicked, but his weight would not be removed. My fingers curled around my knife and I swung it upwards, only for the man to capture my wrist securely. He bent my hand back until the blade grazed my cheek, digging in deep and making the blood gush over my face, into my mouth and nose. I coughed, spitting the blood into his face. He cursed, while my other hand frantically searched for my second blade.
"You little bitch," he started until his voice turned into a terrified scream. My knife had sunken into his hand, cutting halfway through his flesh. He rolled off of me with a pained howl and I jumped to my feet at once.
Snow was still making a run for it and I bounded after him. I practically threw myself after him and we both tumbled on the ramp leading to the hovercraft. He coughed and spluttered while I turned him around.
"Miss Smitt," he spat.
"Did I not tell you," I retorted. "That I was coming for you?"
This story will be done next week, can you believe it? I most certainly can't!
We'll see how Nissa deals with the new world... what do you guys think she'll say concerning the Capitol Games? I'm very curious what you guys think ;) Until then, have yourself a lovely day!
