Things weren't going well.
No one had ever thought it'd be easy, but—
Things weren't going well.
So many dead already, and they'd only just entered District 12, were still miles and miles away from the District 13 border.
Another jet buzzed overhead, but it seemed to be headed straight to that border—their train had apparently become a secondary target.
They threw the dead bodies off the train.
It was callous, cruel, evil—
But necessary.
There were too many, and staring at the bodies…
So they threw them out.
It didn't help much.
Another jet flew overhead.
The train trundled on.
After some time, long enough for the survivors to strip off their blood-stained clothes, distribute what tools they had remaining.
They exited the train in time to see a fleet—seven planes, flying in a vee—cross the border, and immediately get shot down.
"Shit." Ron said.
Oliver had to agree.
There were some warehouses nearby, at the end of the line. Oliver gestured to the closest one—a place to regroup, to monitor the wildfire beyond the fence.
They trundled closer.
The door creaked open, a man with a knife slotting himself between the door and the wall.
"Who are—oh. Um, come in."
"Who is it?" Another voice, deeper inside, called.
"The Alliance."
They entered.
The room was full, what looked to be people from multiple districts all clumped together.
It took a few minutes to tell their story, to get a story in return; when the jets started being shot out of the sky it was no longer safe to cross to District 13, and so for now they—and those in the other warehouses up and down the border—were waiting it out.
Oliver itched, desperate to act.
He glanced at Harry, who was ashen-faced and staring through the gap of the ajar door.
The jets kept coming, surprisingly few at a time, and the jets kept being shot down.
"What next?"
"We need—" Harry said, then stopped. "I don't know."
"You don't know?" He was, after all, the one that could speak to Death.
"It's not up to us, anymore. We've incited a rebellion, and now—"
"We can't do nothing!"
"If you have an idea—!"
Shouting.
Shouting from outside—
Screams—
"Gas! Gas!"
"Shit."
In seconds they were sprinting out, out towards the fence and woods and possible salvation.
They couldn't see any smoke behind them, but the gasping bodies spoke for themselves.
The Peacekeepers, clad in head-to-toe suits and with massive contraptions in their arms, spoke for themselves too.
One of them dropped their—whatever it was—and picked up a gun instead.
They tried to run faster.
He opened fire when the first of them crashed past the fallen fence—long destroyed by the first escapers.
One body fell.
Another.
Three.
Four.
Five.
A mother's body.
A grandfather's.
A child's.
Oliver's.