Chapter Seventeen

*Update*

A high-pitched beep wakes me. Groggy, I try to reach out and smother the noise, but my hands are shackled together and I'm lying down on them, so there's nothing I can do.

"It's all right! It's just an emergency broadcast! Every Capitol television is automatically activated for it."

I shift my head slightly toward the sound of the voice, and I can see, directly across from me, a very large TV, mounted to the ceiling, and the semi-circle of people staring up at it expectantly. As per normal, I see myself on the screen.

"...our cameras caught the rebels moving on 134th Street and Naples Avenue, but they were soon trapped by our hidden defense systems. Here you see a bomb has been set off and this group, which includes rebels Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark and Finnick Odair, are further caught in the path of a poisonous wall of gel. Something interesting here …." And then I lose track of the voice as I see myself grab on to Katniss and yank her backward, then slam the gun down, just missing her as she dodges me. Mitchell lunges for me and knocks me down, but I kick him off of me and he flies right into some spiky netting that both traps and impales him as it flies up in the air between two power poles. Castor and Pollux grab my arms and drag me between them to an apartment building as a black wave starts licking at our ankles. Gale starts shooting at the netting and then blackness covers the screen.

"There's no aerial footage," whispers Castor. "Boggs must have been right about their hovercraft capacity."

And the camera feed comes abruptly back up, panning hastily from some reporter's startled face over to the building we were just seen entering and I wince as I see the small tanks lined up outside it. The building is shelled, repeatedly, until it collapses in on itself and a fire breaks out.

Then the screen says 'live' and the reporter is back, looking more prepared this time. She seems to be standing on a roof, with the building on fire behind her. "I'm hearing - yes - that the rebels in this intersection have been pronounced dead. Yes," she continues, "the names of the deceased are Gale Hawthorne, recently of District 12, Commander Boggs, a rebel leader, Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, Finnick Odair and Cressida Boyle, late of the Capitol.

My exhausted brain - which feels like it has been used as the ball in a soccer match - briefly wonders why the afterlife is so uncomfortable. One would have hoped death would have brought a measure of peace and the dissolution of guilt.

"Finally a bit of luck," says Homes.

"My father," says Leeg 1, brokenly. "He just lost my sister, and now …."

Then I understand that I am still alive, and know how little I deserve to be. As if to reassure me that I did not misunderstand it the first time, the video feed starts playing on a loop - everything that happened after my mind snapped, recalling Darius' death - the torturer's work on me finally reaching full bloom. Whatever I used to be - a boy who shrunk from killing so determinedly that he avoided it even in the Hunger Games, where to kill meant to live - I'm a killing machine now. Like any other benign creature the Capitol has taken, mutated, and turned against children. No wonder I can't see myself when I look in the mirror; whoever I think I'm looking for, he's gone.

I missed their target this time, but only barely.

The Capitol TV begins playing a packaged piece - their forte. They show the rise of the Mockingjay, from the moment she appeared on stage, in Cinna's dress, to her destruction of the arena, her attack on hovercraft, her part in the destruction of the Nut in District 2. But I'm primed to see through their editing, and despite the fact that she is carefully shown, at all times, as a killing machine herself - I just look into her eyes and can see there her pain and despair. That her actions are also out of her own hands - I know this, I watched the announcement where she sold herself to 13 to guarantee my safety, and I suddenly understand the enormity of it.

Gale's voice cuts into my thoughts. Even he was not able to protect her from me. It was Mitchell - who had been just days out of 13, a friendly and open young man - and for that …. "So, now that we're dead, what's our next move?"

"Isn't it obvious?" I answer him. Everyone turns to me and I struggle to sit up on the sofa I've been set on. I feel Katniss' gaze on me, but I can't - I can't look at her. This girl I always just wanted to save; and that impulse has been frightfully warped. I look to Gale. To give him one more chance to protect her in my place. "Our next move … is to kill me."

"Don't be ridiculous," says Jackson.

"I just murdered a member of our squad!" I yell.

Finnick stirs. "You pushed him off you. You couldn't have known he would trigger the net at that exact spot."

I feel tears - not warm, but cold like rain - start to spill over my eyes. "Who cares? He's dead isn't he?" I fight to retain my breath as I force the confession out of me. "I didn't know. I've never seen myself like that before. Katniss is right. I'm the monster. I'm the mutt. I'm the one Snow has turned into a weapon!"

"It's not your fault, Peeta," says Finnick, and the kindness in his voice hurts me.

"You can't take me with you. It's only a matter of time before I kill someone else." Gale's face registers nothing, so I look around at the rest of them. Besides Boggs and Mitchell, the rest of the unit and the camera crew are all still here. "Maybe you think it's kinder to just dump me somewhere. Let me take my chances. But that's the same thing as handing me over to the Capitol. Do you think you'd be doing me a favor by sending me back to Snow?" And this time, I do look at Katniss, because I know she will appreciate this. Maybe it's been hard for her - accepting that the Peeta she left in the arena never did come back. Even after the first time I tried to kill her. Even after all the hateful things I said. But now she really must confront this; it's always been my life or hers, and we've been putting it off long enough.

"I'll kill you before that happens," says Gale. "I promise."

Something moves in Katniss' expression at these words, and I look over to him, frowning. Again - he wasn't the one who protected her from me before. Not just once, but twice. I shake my head. "It's no good. What if you're not there to do it?" I pause. "I want one of those poison pills like the rest of you have."

Katniss steps forward, conflict on her face. There's a hardness in the line of her mouth, but it is not matched by the anguish in her eyes. I've never seen her look so bleak, not during the cold, long night on the cornucopia - not during the long, desperate days of the Victory Tour. And the look in her eyes is exactly how I feel.

"It's not about you," she says. "We're on a mission. And you're necessary to it." She turns away from me, leaving me puzzled. I've clearly missed something - mission? Where are we going? What are we doing now that our commander is dead? "Think we might find some food here?"

The camera crew helps Katniss hunt for food, while the rest stay with me, trying to look like they are concentrating on the television and not keeping an eye on me. As if, handcuffs and all, I plan to make a break for it.

Katniss and the others return with a couple of dozen tin cans and several boxes of cookies. We all gather together in the middle of the living room. Despite myself, I am hungry. The 13 soldiers frown at the pile of food.

"Isn't this illegal?" asks Leeg 1. Of course - in 13, you're not even allowed to have a scrap of food of your own - nothing allowed to leave the common rooms.

"On the contrary," says Mesalla. "Even before the Quarter Quell, people were starting to stock up on scarce supplies."

"While others went without," says Leeg 1.

I can't help but smile, and catch a similar bemused expression on Finnick's face. The 13 soldiers and the Capitol dissidents - such strange bedfellows for a revolution.

"Right, that's how it works here," replies Mesalla, gently.

"Fortunately, or we wouldn't have dinner," says Gale, cutting short the debate. "Everybody grab a can."

I assume I'm going to wait until everyone else has chosen and someone gives me whatever's left, but one of the cans has rolled over near my feet, and as I pick it up, I see that it is lamb stew. Automatically - not even waiting for the flood of memories - I hand it out towards Katniss, who has actually sat down next to me. "Here."

She takes it, then stares down at it, as if I've handed her a bomb. Then she presses her lips together and looks up at me, straining, I know, to find us again in my eyes - that boy and girl, hiding out from the games, finding comfort together even in our common hunger - in each other's arms, in our kisses, our confidences. Real, almost. Happy, almost. Laughing in delight at the appearance of a picnic basket. "Thanks," she says at last. She trades me whatever can she had grabbed first, and pops the top off the lamb stew. "It even has dried plums." She bends the lid of the can into a spoon and starts eating, with gusto. I had forgotten what a pleasure it is to watch the pleasure with which she eats.

Eventually, I remember to open my own can; a fish soup, I think. I'm so hungry, it kind of slides right down my throat, barely touching my tongue.

After the meal, we share a box of cookies - if you want to call them that. They are dry sandwich cookies, filled with a gritty cream filling that tastes like sugary wax. While we're eating, that horrible beeping sound starts again and the television lights up with the seal of Panem and the sound of the anthem. Finnick laughs. But it's not a jest - everything about the Capitol is pre-packaged and micromanaged, so that even their pageantry tends to look fussy, once you're used to it - even stale. In that sense - maybe it is laughable. Our pictures - those of us known to the Capitol by name, anyway - are aired over the sound of the pounding drum and trumpet chorus, just like the tributes' pictures are shown at the appointed time in the arena, and in a particular order. From the Capitol - Cressida, Messalla, Castor and Pollux. From the Rebellion - Boggs and Gale. From District 4 - Finnick. From District 12 - Me and Katniss.

Then I jump, startling Katniss, when President Snow appears as soon as Katniss' picture fades away. He's sitting behind a desk, wearing a dark suit with a white rose at his lapel. The flag of Panem, with its vaguely eagle-like silhouette, over a red background, is draped on the wall behind him. It's all very solemn. "Welcome, citizens, again, to a very special update on the state of the civil unrest. As you have seen tonight, our Peacekeepers have achieved a significant victory, for which they are to be congratulated. They have rid the country of the menace her followers called the Mockingjay. With her death, there will assuredly be a turn in the tide in the current conflict. Without their symbol, the rebels will have no one left to follow - no cause to unite them in their disparate concerns.

"And what was she, really? A poor, unstable girl, with a small talent with the bow and arrow. Not a great thinker, certainly not a mastermind of the rebellion, merely a face plucked from the rabble because she had caught the Nation's attention with her antics in the Games. But - as insignificant as she was, she was so very necessary to the rebellion, because, without her, they have no one who even passes as a real leader …."

The picture breaks up and diagonal lines crawl up the screen until it clarifies again and we see President Coin, now. In contrast to Snow, she's dressed in the military garb of 13, sitting in front of her impressive banks of monitors that have been carefully calibrated to show, in the background, videos of the districts - the battles; the raising of the rebels' flag, stamped with the mockingjay symbol; tear- and blood-stained faces of men, women and children, embracing each other. Her severe face has been touched up with makeup and has also been carefully calibrated with a smile. "Good evening, Panem, especially our Capitol brethren who have yet to have heard of me. I am Alma Coin, President of the Free District 13; I am the leader of the rebellion - the rebellion that has successfully freed every District of Panem from the tyrannical reign of President Snow, and is now on your very doorstep - no, in your front room - ready to free the Capitol, as well. There is no tide to turn - the wave of rebellion has already washed in and there is no turning it.

"But my sad duty tonight is to meet the tyrant's mischaracterizations of the Mockingjay with the truth about the young woman who is among the most admired people in the history of Panem. Katniss Everdeen was born into poverty in one of the poorest districts in Panem. She survived starvation and hardship, only to see her young sister Reaped into the Hunger Games. But Miss Everdeen refused to play by the Capitol's rules, not once, not twice, but many times over, starting from the moment she volunteered to take her sister's place in the Games - not through some misbegotten grab for glory, but simply to protect her family from the cruelty of the tyrant. Her survival with honor - despite all odds - inspired a nation and turned a country of slaves into an army of freedom fighters.

"Dead or alive, Katniss Everdeen will remain the face of this rebellion. If ever you waver in your resolve, think of the Mockingjay, and in her you will find the strength you need to rid Panem of its oppressors."

"I had no idea how much I meant to her," says Katniss sarcastically, drawing a laugh from Gale.

Coin's broadcast ends with a stylized picture of Katniss in her mockingjay outfit, standing in front of some wall of flames.

The feed returns to the Capitol, and we are again looking at Snow, whose stone-faced expression somehow conveys the enormity of his fury even better than if he was screaming obscenities. After a brief pause, he says, "Tomorrow morning, when we pull Katniss Everdeen's body from the ashes, we will see exactly who the Mockingjay is. A dead girl who could save no one, not even herself."

"Except that you won't find her," says Finnick, as the screen fades out.

"We can get a head start on them, at least," says Katniss wearily. She rubs her eyes, then pulls out the electronic map device that Boggs had. She asks Jackson to instruct her on how to use it. I try to follow along with what is going on here, as the projected map shows street intersections crowded with small dots, but what really fascinates me is that Katniss seems to suddenly be in command of the group and that we seem to be heading deeper into the Capitol and not looking for a way back to the train station and camp. Where my pills are, I think nervously - the anti-depressants and mood stabilizers. Not that they had helped.

I think about what Johanna said, about Katniss' true intentions in the Capitol, and I'm wondering, why? Why, with an army amassing on all sides of Snow, would Katniss think it is her job to finish him? Why walk deliberately back into the arena, where every loss - like Boggs - will hurt even more because it will feel so specifically the same as losing allies like Rue or Wiress? Haymitch - was right, I think, and now I understand that Katniss has also been changed. Perhaps not as dramatically as I have been, but still, deep down and perhaps irrevocably. The girl who fought so hard against death in the first arena is long gone. There's no desire for life left in her, even though her family is intact and waiting for her back - well, not back home; which is part of the problem, isn't it? Haymitch thinks it's me - that I was lost - and maybe that's part of it, as well; but it's mostly 12. It's 12 that she and I both let down, and the weight of the dead there is so much stronger than any individual death could be, now. Something never to be borne, never to be lived with.

But first - and I understand it now - Snow must go. There would be no rest for her in death if she didn't take him with her.

"We're surrounded by them," she says suddenly, cutting into my thoughts. "Any ideas?"

"Why don't we start by ruling out possibilities," replies Finnick. "The street is not a possibility."

"The rooftops are just as bad as the street," adds Leeg 1.

"We still might have a chance to withdraw, go back the way we came," says Homes. "But that would mean a failed mission."

"It was never intended for all of us to go forward," says Katniss swiftly. "You just had the misfortune to be with me."

"Well, that's a moot point," replies Jackson. "We're here with you now. So we can't stay put. We can't move up. We can't move laterally. I think that leaves just one option."

"Underground," says Gale, quietly.

"Can the Holo show underground levels?" asks Katniss, poking at the map device.

"Yes." Jackson shows her how to adjust the coordinates to show the subterranean levels, which are less grid-like, but also cleaner than the street levels. I've gathered that the dots on the map represent some form of random danger - I guess like the explosions and the net and black goo we ran into before.

"How do we get down there?"

Mesalla says, "There's a maintenance tube in this building - you can see it right here, two apartments down from us. They go down to the Transfer, the main underground route. We can get to that apartment through the maintenance shaft, which should be accessible upstairs."

Katniss stands up. "OK, then. Let's make it look like we've never been here."

The room is then cleaned - empty cans thrown away, the bloody sofa cushions flipped around, floor swept and wiped. Watching them, I sit back down on the sofa, pull my knees up, wrap my handcuffed hands around them and come to a resolution. When everyone is gathered together, ready to head upstairs, and Katniss finally turns to me with a quizzical look, I just stare at my fingers. "I'm not going. I'll either disclose your position or hurt someone else."

"Snow's people will find you," says Finnick.

"Then leave me a pill." I look up at Katniss. "I'll only take it if I have to."

Jackson - the consummate mother and soldier - barks, "That's not an option. Come along."

But I'm an orphan, and not a soldier. "Or you'll what?" I challenge her. "Shoot me?"

"We'll knock you out and drag you with us," says Homes. "Which will both slow us down and endanger us."

"Stop being noble! I don't care if I die!" I address Katniss. It's never worked with her before, but it's different now - I'm such a danger to her in ways I would never have believed before today. "Katniss, please. Don't you see, I want to be out of this?"

She returns my look, slightly parting her lips, and I wish - I wish - I wish I could remember where I've seen it before. It's not love, not pity, not anger - not even sadness. It's stubbornness, yes. And something else - like I've asked her to cut off her own arm and she can't believe I'd ask her to do anything that impossible. But I don't remember.

"We're wasting time," she says. "Are you coming voluntarily or do we knock you out?"

I put my face down on my knees and fight back despair. What do I do? Obviously, no one is going to carry me. So - if I go, how do I keep her safe - from me? How will I be able to tell?

I sigh and rise.

"Should we free his hands?" asks Leeg 1.

"No!" I snarl, pulling my hands into my chest, protectively. It's the one safeguard.

"No," says Katniss. "But I want the key."

Upstairs, we go into a large bedroom closet and Homes pries open the narrow metal door at the back of it. At this point, both Castor and Pollux have to abandon their backpack camera kits, which are too bulky to fit, and they detach the mobile part of them and leave the bulky backpacks behind in the closet, under a bundle of fur coats.

We squeeze ourselves through this narrow hallway in between the walls and pass another similar door, then come to a second, which we break through. In this apartment, there is, instead of a second bathroom, a room labelled "Utility," inside of which is an electric panel and a metal-rung ladder heading straight down.

They make me go second, in between Homes and Leeg 1, although with my awkward grip on the rungs, I'm fairly slow. But it's not far. Soon we're gathered at the bottom, in a wide concrete tunnel lit dimly by narrow strips of fluorescent lights. Pollux is the last to descend and, once he's down here, his brother crosses to him and pats his back. Pollux looks ill and sways a little before catching on to Castor's wrist.

"My brother worked down here after he became an Avox," explains Castor. "Took five years before we were able to buy his way up to ground level. He didn't see the sun once."

I try to imagine this horror, expand out the weeks and months I spent locked in a cell or a hospital room to five years of my life without the sun, but it's impossible to imagine, unreasonable to try to pretend that I understand - just as I don't expect anyone, but maybe Johanna, to understand what I've been through.

But nobody is saying anything, and something must be said, so I look at him. The one thing I do know is that you can't undo torture, so you just have to try to make the best of it, when you can. "Well, then, you just became our most valuable asset."

Castor laughs and Pollux smiles a little.

"Let's go," says Katniss.

Pollux goes to the front now, with Katniss, to help direct her. Jackson orders me to walk between her and Gale. Homes and Leeg 1 take up the rear, with the rest of the camera crew and Finnick sprinkled in between.

The tunnel where we are, wide and shadowy, and relatively free of traps, would be ideal except for the periodic appearance of the small cargo trains that use it to haul goods from place to place, and the sporadically-placed cameras. But Pollux knows where to find side-tunnels and pipes to avoid both, and knows or guesses well how to avoid maintenance workers. We've travelled for hours, running into no trouble, when Katniss suddenly calls a rest for the day.

"It's 3am," she says, her voice hoarse. "I figure we still have a few hours before they are able to go through the rubble and figure out we're not there."

Pollux takes us to a small utility room, lined with pipes and machines with levers and dials. He holds up four fingers and Castor explains that means we have to be out in four hours - when the day shift begins. Jackson works out a guard schedule - just 30 minutes each, so everyone can maximize their sleeping - and we tuck ourselves in snugly against each other. I find myself straining my wrists against the cuffs - not trying to break them, but deliberately inviting them to chafe my skin. The pain functions as sort of the opposite of the morphling on which I had been practically living all the time I was in 13 - but with hopefully a similar result. Instead of dulling my thoughts, the pain forces me to concentrate, to be focused. This makes it hard to sleep, but I'm not really that tired, anyway.

I glance over occasionally at Jackson as she props herself up against a wall - her severe profile watchful, even in sleep. She's not unlike Coin in looks, but she seems more real to me. Her uniform fits her like a glove; she genuinely enjoys it - watching over her troops - in that no-nonsense 13 way. In this sense, she reminds me of Portia, who at first glance would seem to have nothing in common with her, except for her dedication to her own career.

Pollux is on watch first, and I also glance over at him, occasionally. Wonder how he's managed to survive everything he was put through. Five years. And I don't know how long since then he's been free - only to come back here, deliberately, to help in this cause.

After blinking a couple of times, I wake to Jackson's voice. She's rousing Katniss and telling her it's six am. "Keep an eye on Pollux. He's been up all night. He can't sleep here."

Katniss moves over to take up a place near the door, next to Pollux and fairly close to me. I listen to her engage him in conversation, go over the Holo with him and figure out where we are, and how soon we will be able to emerge from the tunnels. After a while, she just hands the Holo to him and lets him study it, then leans back against the wall. I rub my eyes, and she looks up with a start.

"Have you eaten?" she asks me.

I shake my head no and she opens up and hands me a can of soup. I sit up and grab it with both hands, tipping it back with as much grace as I can muster with the cuffs. They strain on me, hurting the blisters that I have started making on myself, but it's a good feeling - painful just like real life. And I feel as clear-headed as I have in months.

"Peeta," she says, softly, in that voice that caresses my name. "When you asked about what happened to Darius and Lavinia, and Boggs told you it was real - you said you thought so. Because there was nothing shiny about it. What did you mean?"

"Oh." I squint at her, suddenly glad she asked and hoping that I can possibly manage an answer. "I don't know exactly how to explain it. In the beginning, everything was just complete confusion. Now I can sort certain things out. I think there's a pattern emerging. The memories they altered with the tracker jacker venom have this strange quality about them. Like they're too intense. Or the images aren't stable. You remember what it was like when we were stung?"

She nods, and I think of my own first experiences with the venom - the shiny, tilting sky, the snake-like vines in the woods. "Trees shattered," she says. "There were giant colored butterflies. I fell in a pit of orange bubbles. Shiny orange bubbles."

"Right. But nothing about Darius or Lavinia was like that. I don't think they'd given me any venom, yet."

"Well, that's good, isn't it? If you can separate the two, then you can figure out what's true."

At first I think she's teasing me - then I realize, not only does she really not understand how messy and complicated the hijacking was, she desperately wants it to be simple. She's still waiting for me to come back. "Yes," I say hollowly. "And if I could grow wings, I could fly. Only, people can't grow wings." (Or can they? What can't be mutated, transformed, evolved - really?) "Real or not real?"

"Real," she says, with quiet urgency. "But people don't need wings to survive."

"Mockingjays do," I reply. I finish the soup and hand the can back to her. She stashes it behind one of the pipes running up the room. Her urgency for closeness is starting to terrify me, on many levels, the most rational of which is because I know that, in the end, I will disappoint her by being unable to return to her the way that I was. And I am not the only one who has been changed.

"There's still time," she says. "You should sleep."

I lie back down and stare up at one of the gauges directly above me. It's some sort of pressure gauge, I guess, for the gas or water lines that surround us. The needle lurches from side to side, out of rhythm, like an irregular heartbeat. I catch a movement out of the corner of my eye and see that Katniss is reaching out to me, very tentatively. My body goes still, and my breath stops for a moment as I wait for the touch of her hand - equally fearful and excited.

I recognize the specific look on her face, which rings a familiar bell inside of me. She approaches the mutt - the wild animal who both repels and fascinates - the untamed, unfamiliar being residing in the form of a person she once knew. She's watching me carefully for my reaction, but I can't help thinking how brave she is, still reaching for me after I've tried to kill her twice. Brave - but also compelled. Trying to figure it out: can that moment - whenever it was - can that moment of transformation be recrossed and reversed? I'm almost angry - almost sad for her - as I clear-headedly remind myself that such a reversal is not possible. Once it is ash, something can never again not be burned. (And it doesn't even have to be that dramatic. There is a moment, in the fire, when the loaf can no longer be sold as bread, when it has been seared into toast.) Once evolved, the line cannot go backward - any changes moving forward are all a product of the mutation.

Even when the product is beautiful. As the mockingjay.

She just lightly touches me as she brushes a wisp of hair off of my forehead. Her fingers linger there and my eyes lock on hers. And then I breathe. And she continues to smooth back my hair, stroking it gently.

"You're still trying to protect me," I say, and my voice sounds like it's been buried in the earth for three days. "Real or not real."

"Real," she says, her expression opening. "Because that's what you and I do. Protect each other."

Are we supposed to hold hands this year?

Her voice ignites my dream, and when I turn to look at her, she is wreathed in flames, some sort of creature made entirely of fire. And I look down at myself and see that I am her mate - my whole body seems to consist of flames.

I guess they left it up to us.

I can see that look in her eyes again as they hold on to mine, trying to tell me everything without words.

Katniss. It's no use pretending we don't know what the other one is trying to do. Katniss ….

Katniss …

Katniss …

The voice is no longer mine. It hisses like a leaky pipe, echoing around in this dark room inside my head where I've left her standing, waiting for me to finish what I was trying to tell her. It rises from below me, snaking up out of the bubbling sand.

"Katniss!" I bolt awake, sitting up. The sound from my dreams is all around me in the little room - the sound of her name. The rest of the squad has jumped up and are standing around me. I seek her out, see that she is already armed. "Katniss!" I choke out. "Get out of here!"

"Why?" she demands. "What's making that sound?"

Because that's what you and I do …. "I don't know. Only that it has to kill you. Run! Get out! Go!"