A week of abuse later, the Peacekeepers finally came for the disposal Rex had ordered.
Sam shivered in her cold, barren cell as two white uniforms grabbed her under her armpits. She didn't even manage a whimper as the Peacekeepers dragged her out. Their gloved fingers tore roughly at her shredded gray prison shirt, scratching her skin and inflaming an ugly purple bruise on her shoulder. Sam closed her eyes tight as the Peacekeepers muttered to each other, passing quiet, angry words at a rapid pace. Bits of words came to her out of the blur.
"…where will that be?" the burly Peacekeeper to the right, a nasty scar tearing from his eyelid to his chin, asked his companion roughly.
"Dunno," his lanky, bony fellow to the left replied succinctly, his voice sporting a scratchy undertone. "He just said we were taking the-"
A splitting pain hit Sam's forehead unexpectedly, forcing her to shake her head in a vain attempt to clear it. As she blinked away the sharp jolt, the burly Peacekeeper's voice returned in fragments.
"…do that?" Scar-face said. "Why not just off 'em here? Seems like they wanna play rough with these cockroaches."
"I don't make the rules. Just follow 'em," Scratchy answered, irritated. "Let's just hurry this one up. I have other things to do."
The two quieted down as they dragged Sam along a sterile array of hallways that blended together as a great gray-and-white marsh. Sam let her head hang down, lolling to the side with each heavy footfall of her Peacekeeper captors. She didn't have the energy to fight now – to try and put up a last, futile struggle against whatever method of killing her they had. No point.
A burst of sunlight forced her eyes to squint against the glare. They had to take her outside to do this? Would she be filmed on national television while they killed her off?
How embarrassing. Ugh.
Sam forced her head up, nearly recoiling at what was before her. Rather than any gallows or firing squad, a gleaming, bullet-shaped hovercraft stood before her atop stunted landing struts. Sunlight gleamed off its polished surface, shining like a beacon in her eye. One white-garbed Capitol doctor stood outside a boarding ramp, a large needle in his hand as the Peacekeepers pushed Sam towards him. She stumbled on wobbly legs, appraising the doctor with a mix of curiosity and dread.
"Hello, Samantha," the doctor said brightly, his chipper voice missing the mark completely with the bedraggled girl. "I'm going to need your arm."
Sam simply looked at him without comprehension, forcing the doctor to grab her left arm with a small, sterile hand and jab his syringe deep into a vein.
"Just a tracker," he remarked. "You should be familiar with them by now."
What? Sam thought. Are they chucking us in an arena or something?
Something didn't feel right about the "tracker." She squirmed at the needle, wondering what it was he was actually jabbing in her arm.
"Alrighty, then," the doctor replied with a fake smile. "Up you go."
The Peacekeepers shoved her forward as Sam set an uneasy foot on the ramp. She caught her breath, taking another step – and another. Sam forced herself up the ramp, stepping into an all-familiar world – with some surprising changes.
The passenger hold of the smallish hovercraft mirrored the ones that had ferried her in two Hunger Games to a tee. The same rows of jump seats lined each wall, twelve to a side. A silver ceiling hung over the hold, bathing the bay in cold, silver light. The only thing out of place was the standard tributes. No, Sam recognized these faces all too well.
Johanna. Persephone. Jetty. Haymitch. Finnick. Annie. River. Lily. Firth – and several others, all familiar. It wasn't quite twenty-four like in the Games, but too many faces still looked up at the last arrival.
Sam only just kept herself from gasping as the doctor forced her down gently. She half-sat, half-fell into a vacant seat, between Rory Hawthorne of District 12 and Locust, Johanna Mason's brawny, tree trunk-thick fellow victor from District 7. Two crimson-armored Inquisitors appraised the group coldly from the front of the passenger hold, leaving the captives unrestrained but toting two chilling assault rifles that made their presence very clear. They'd stop any attempt at escape very quickly with the pull of a trigger.
"Your arm," Locust turned towards Sam, his long, unclean, black hair falling about his Neanderthal face. "What is the mark?"
Sam looked down at the indentation the needle had made, quickly picking up that she had been selected individually for the honor.
"It's a tracker," she replied quietly. "Like…in the Games, I guess."
"Just you, then," he confirmed her fear, his voice dark and staccato. "Huh."
Before she could say anything else, the boarding door sealed up with a hiss and the hovering thrusters of the airship fired. The craft lurched up, shaking Sam in her seat as it jolted forward as if thrown off its landing struts. She held on as the initial acceleration kicked in, forcing her against the side of her jump seat with the g-forces.
As the hovercraft steadied in flight and things settled down, Sam noticed River curled up as tight as she could in her seat. The girl looked miserable, her wavy brown hair falling in bedraggled clumps around her tight face. River held onto her knees with a death grip, seemingly afraid they would promptly get up and walk away.
"River?" Sam piped up. "Are you okay? It's gonna be fine."
River grabbed her knees tighter as Firth cut Sam off: "Sam, leave it for later."
She took the hint. The Peacekeepers had hurt her friend badly – far beyond just the skin. Something in her head had been set loose, cut and broken by the Capitol's sadistic methods.
Putting all the pieces back together wouldn't be easy.
The others didn't look anywhere near as talkative. Finnick and Haymitch tossed looks back and forth, their eyes meeting for quick fractions of a second before breaking off. While Sam hadn't seen them sharing a cell when Nihlus had taken her before the cameras in the Capitol, they shared some sort of connection. Both understood a plan of action that Sam could only speculate on.
Thirty long, quiet minutes passed – then an hour. The atmosphere aboard the hovercraft grew tenser with each moment, broken only by a momentary hyperventilation courtesy of Annie Cresta about fifteen minutes in. Finnick had quickly grabbed her hand, whispering quiet reassurances in her ear as one of the Inquisitors twitched his trigger finger. Wherever the hovercraft was taking them, Sam figured this trip wouldn't have a very happy ending.
Just after an hour had passed, however, the flight hit an unexpected bout of turbulence.
"Hey!" the pilot of the hovercraft shouted back at the Inquisitors. "Were we supposed to have company?"
The taller of the two elite soldiers grunted at his companion, signaling for him to fix the trouble and raising his weapon to dissuade his captives of any ideas. His fellow Inquisitor trotted up to the cockpit, out of sight from Sam's cramped seat. She craned her neck for a look, trying to get the slightest grip on the situation.
Instead, she get the Inquisitor's very loud call of surprise: "Oh Shit! Levius!"
"What?!" the Inquisitor with his weapon trained on Sam barked, his gaze fixed on his targets.
"It's Nihlus! He's gonna blow us out of the sky!"
The soldier turned around on instinct at the news – giving Finnick and Haymitch the split second they needed. With no eyes watching, Haymitch exploded out of his seat like a wound coil. He hit the Inquisitor in the torso, driving the soldier into the hold's wall as Finnick went for the gun. The two men might have aged significantly since their Hunger Games primes, but each still knew how to move and fight with surprising swiftness.
Locust and Rory sprung out of their seats before anyone else could bat an eyelash, swarming the Inquisitor before his fellow could return. The burly man from District 7 pulled the rifle away, swinging the weapon with stunning skill and grinding the barrel against the soldier's forehead.
Sam didn't even have to wait for the bang!
"Someone get up there!" Rory snapped as he kicked away the body, leaping back as the second Inquisitor sprinted back at the gunshot.
Sam didn't waste time. As the Inquisitor connected a quick parry into Finnick's chest to avoid his charge, she and Firth dashed towards the cockpit. Sam turned her head for a split second, catching a glimpse of Johanna ripping something from the wall and leaping at the shocked Capitol doctor before she focused on her duty.
Pow! A bullet narrowly missed her neck, connecting with a loud ricochet against the metal wall. Firth dodged to the side as the hovercraft pilot fired again with a handgun, missing badly as he struggled to maintain control of his craft with divided attention. The man couldn't fight at fly at once, and failed trying to do both: Firth snaked his way into the nervous pilot, punching his gun arm and knocking away the pistol with a quick snap of his wrist. The pilot yelled in pain, flailing with an elbow at Firth.
Sam slid into the vacant copilot seat nearby, not bothering to wonder why the craft lacked said copilot. As Firth ground a knee into their attacker's stomach, Sam grabbed the station's piloting stick and tried to make sense of the situation.
Far below, crystal-blue water stretched as far as the eye could see, layering the horizon with a soothing sapphire glow. Dots of land studded the ocean miles down, breaking up the sea with small rafts of white sand among the waves. Sam had no idea where they were – the bright blue ocean didn't resemble District 4's deep blue waters at all, and besides the small islets that jutted out from the blue, she could see no real land.
No route to get home – or anywhere recognizable. She didn't even know if they were near Panem anymore.
A grunting cry of pain beside her signaled Firth's dispatching of the pilot. He jumped into the man's former seat, quickly sizing up the situation.
"I'm not gonna guess you know how to fly this," he said through gritted teeth.
"No! I've never even…done this," Sam argued. "What am I supposed to do?"
"Why are you asking me?"
"Great. That was a nice 'I'm happy to see you,' Firth. I'm glad to see you, too."
"I'll say sorry when we're not flying a hovercraft," he replied with a snark. "But this isn't the time for a friendly debate, Sam! We –"
Firth didn't get the chance to finish his thought. Like a spectral demon looming down from the heavens, a black, phantasmal shape roared low over the hovercraft's cockpit. The nightmarish beast hummed forward on two bright red engines, its angular, gun-studded wings and countless weapon pods sending a chilling shock through Sam's gut.
Of course it was Nihlus's personal craft. No one else would design a phantom like that.
"Hello, Miss Parker," the radio in the cockpit suddenly sprung to life with Nihlus's gritty voice. "I see you've managed to reach the cockpit. As I figured; you always do end up getting your hands dirty when you shouldn't. One day you might want to slow down."
Sam wasn't in the mood to play games, grabbing the radio as she held the piloting stick level: "What do you want? And how do you know I'm up here?"
"Oh, Miss Parker. I know everything. But it's not what I want, per se…I did say you would need to see what I once saw, did I not?"
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"So impatient. You'll quickly find out…can't keep your curiosity out, can you? But I can't let you keep flying along like a drunken duck. No, it's time for you to take a wrong turn."
Nihlus's spectral gunship rotated on its axis before Sam, swinging around a demonic front that boasted too many weapon spikes to count. Out of the hexagonal, black cockpit of the raven-like hovercraft emerged a small, bulbous stud. It swung its sharpened end right at Sam and the commandeered ship, glowing blue for a half-second before shooting a hot, cerulean projectile straight into the cockpit.
Bzow! Lightning splashed across the windscreen, dancing through the glass and spreading about the computers and consoles of the cockpit. Sam flung herself back, terrified of the electricity as it tore up sparks and dashes of smoke. Control lights flickered out in the cockpit; electrical systems powering down as everything came to a sudden and dread-inducing halt.
Then the hovercraft began to nose down.
"Firth!" Finnick shouted, running forward. "What did you do?!"
"I don't know! He shot us!"
"Wh-"
"No time!" Haymitch came up, grabbing Finnick's arm and yanking him back towards the hold. "EMP! You two kids strap yourself in; it's about to get bumpy."
Nihlus's raven ship zipped away into a puffy cloud as Sam grabbed at her seat's protective webbing. She grunted in frustration as the hovercraft continued to dive, picking up speed as it dipped into a steeper descent. Sam yanked on a pair of straps securing her shoulders to the seat, gritting her teeth in fear and anxiousness with each passing moment.
"Firth!" she panted after securing herself. "Are you okay!"
"Better be," he replied shakily. "You good?"
"Yeah."
"We're gonna be fine. Just hang on, okay?"
Sam wished she could have believed Firth's words, but the hovercraft hit an updraft of air and began tumbling. Without engines or any electrical systems, the craft rolled into an intoxicated spin. Sam felt her insides pressed against her backbone, blood rushing to her brain as she clung to consciousness. G-forces pressed down like a lead weight as the hovercraft accelerated faster and faster, plummeting towards the ocean below.
Sam caught a brief glimpse of a sandy speck of land, rapidly growing as the hovercraft lurched towards it. She held tight to her chair, hoping beyond hope that things wouldn't end here.
With a tremendous crash, the hovercraft plowed into the ground at breakneck speed, enveloping Sam in darkness.
A/N: You want faster plot, here we go. Yeah, that was an Al Pacino reference up there early...not gonna hide it.