Chapter Twenty-Three
What is Freedom?—ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well—
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Masque of Anarchy"
When Katniss woke that morning, she was shocked that she had even been to sleep. It had been a journey absolutely lacking in comfort. Not counting her blacked-out trip to District Thirteen in the hovercraft, Katniss had never before traveled by any other means than her own feet. And that had posed the first problem: what her companions told her was "motion sickness," a deep-down nausea from the rocking of the van over horrifyingly poor roads. She had vomited during the first rest stop and still felt sick and dizzy.
She tumbled gratefully out of the vehicle and saw that they had driven through the entire night - the sun was now rising over the faraway hills they had left at dusk. Among her companions, Cinna was the only familiar face; the rest were a mix of Plutarch's crew and Coin's. They were Cressida, a director underling of Plutarch's, Castor, a cameraman, Korin, the driver and tech, and Lucien, a beefy young soldier who served as their sole bodyguard.
"The first stop," she had been told, "shouldn't give you too much trouble. Paylor is the district leader; she has a very loyal following, including many of the Peacekeepers."
Katniss wondered. She was not a hundred percent convinced of the plan, and that, she knew, would put her own performance in as much jeopardy of falsity as it was in District 13's soundstage.
While her companions started pulling foodstuffs out of the van and pulling breakfast together, Katniss took a couple of deep breaths and a look at her surroundings. They were out of the trees, now, parked on a road next to train tracks that cut through long yellow grass. She thought she heard the drip of water nearby - a stream, or something. Ahead of them on the road was an enormous concrete wall, easily thirty feet high and topped with razor-toothed wire.
She sat on the ground, pulled a map out of her backpack and stared at it a while in fascination. She had glanced at it last night, but the darkness had closed in on her before she could take in the details. She had never seen Panem and its thirteen districts laid out like this - maps like this were forbidden in the districts. It was such a wild, jagged looking country, top-heavy, almost like a deformed heart. Its vast northern lands filled the top half of the map and narrowed down a curly-cue resolution at its southern tip. Much of this land - both its bulky top and spindly lower third - seemed unoccupied, with just one label in each section: "Arenas."
She was surprised to see that District Twelve sat on a peninsula, with the nearby mountains forming a wall against the swollen seas to the east and vast inlets to the north and south. District Thirteen was just north of this peninsula. The rest of Panem was laid out quite neatly, with the agricultural districts of Nine, Ten and Eleven occupying the southern midsection of the country; the factories, technology and transportation districts the northern midsection; Districts Four and Seven crawled up the west coast and One, Two, Three and Five clustered around the Capitol in the western mountains.
Aside from District Twelve - Katniss touched its spot on the map with intense heartache - District Eight was the closest to Thirteen. It had been a long journey - they had left Thirteen nearly twelve hours ago. But flights were high risk, sure to be tracked by the Capitol, especially in the wake of the battle over District Twelve. In fact, as they had taken off from Thirteen, despite the darkness - and the quiet electric engine of the van - Katniss had eyed the sky warily and wished that the trees around them were more dense. Now, there were not even trees.
"Breakfast?" Cressida called over to her. She was not hungry in the slightest, but she was well aware of the value of taking your meals when you can get them, so she joined the others.
After eating, they got back into the van and rolled slowly and anxiously toward the District Eight gates. Only Cressida - who seemed to have full confidence in Plutarch's abilities and plans - seemed calm. Certainly, he had provided them with adequate paperwork - their fake IDs were checked and passed by the guards at the gate, who accepted that they were Capitol inspection agents without any fuss.
Katniss met with Paylor, the head of District Eight, in her offices. She was not called "mayor," but Chief Counsel, or Chief; a middle aged woman who wore a dark blue uniform with a distinctive logo (three nested gears), she impressed Katniss immediately with both her no-nonsense behavior and a deep cynicism for which she had a fellow feeling. Cressida explained the plans that Plutarch and company had so carefully constructed and Paylor deconstructed every point, questioning both the purpose and the potential effectiveness. At the end of the discussion, she sat back in her chair and looked directly at Katniss.
"The bottom line," she said quietly. "Is that this is the tipping point. There is no going back after this. My rebel forces are anonymous - if forced to act against the Peacekeepers, that will never not be the case again. This is not a light thing you are planning."
Cressida cleared her throat. "One district is already gone - obliterated. Eleven is in active civil war. If this does not happen now - collectively - it will never happen again."
After a long pause, Paylor gave one, brief nod.
From there, Paylor left to meet with her underground forces and Katniss' team was set up in a dusty supply room on the other side of the District Eight square. She was helped into her 'mockingjay' outfit and Cinna made up her hair and, lightly, her makeup, in this close room, while Katniss became more and more a prey to quiet panic.
The plan was only as complicated as a day's quick preparation would allow. Essentially, they were to recreate Katniss' performance in District Twelve on Reaping Day, but with more polish, and a background film that had been cobbled together from their aborted work earlier. This was to give the context to her sudden appearance in Eight, and the message that she brought with her. A lot - well, everything really - depended on the joint efforts of Plutarch and Beetee to disrupt the Capitol broadcast - the mandatory viewing hour in the late afternoon, which would force large numbers of eyeballs to the television screens. They had some hopes of a two-way disruption - both District Eight's and the Capitol's feeds disrupted - but needed at least the former to work before Katniss could even do her part.
It was rather funny to Katniss, the formal process of retracing her steps from that day, but this time with a stylist, a small camera crew and an armed guard to escort her and her flag safely to one of the District Eight rooftops. Her sense of humor left her when she got to the destination and was able to take a good look around. Below her was the town square - a near copy of her district's, with government-shaped buildings and some businesses overlooking a brick quad with a statue in the middle of it. Beyond that, District Eight was a vast and incomprehensible jungle of metal and smoke. She pivoted around to look, and everywhere - everywhere - there were chimneys rising around her, and columns of slow, gray smoke rising into the gray sky. Depressing, she thought glumly. And no doubt unhealthy.
Below them, the square started filling up for the mandatory viewing. Screens were unfurled in front of the Justice Building, and the Capitol's camera crews waited - Peacekeepers surrounding them - at different corners of the square, the better to capture the enjoyment of the crowd. The folks in the crowd were, more often than not, dressed in drab jumpsuits, mostly gray or brown; though some wore blue of the same shade as Paylor's uniform. Some wore their work goggles or hard hats. Few children were in evidence, to her relief and surprise - but this was such a large Distirct, she reasoned, that there must be other sites - neighborhoods or schools - where other screens were set up for communal viewing. This crowd could only reflect a ridiculously small portion of the District Eight population.
At 3pm on the dot, the screens lit up with the Capitol logos and the familiar anthem - Panem's battle hymn - that marked Hunger Games programming. There was something wrong with the audio - and Katniss bit her finger anxiously while waiting for it to resolve. Some of the Game commentators - she didn't recognize them from her childhood viewing of the Games - were speaking at their desk, and then starting to play a recap of the previous day's games - Day 1 in the training center. The audio resolved itself just in time.
She watched, eyes wide, as both Peeta and Thalia were featured rather heavily in this recap. They were among the younger and less alarming of the contestants. They had taken separate tacks during training, Peeta heading over to the camouflage station and Thalia going to play with knives. Katniss found herself - as she had habitually done with Gale, back in the day - summing up the different contestants and trying to rank them in her mind - when the screen suddenly switched to black.
The crowd below them let out a collective gasp, and Katniss swayed a little. Castor reached out absently to steady her. She could feel the fear and alarm of the people below her, and for just a second she felt it, too.
Then she saw District Twelve - on the screens, larger than life. Plutarch and Beetee had pulled the Capitol's recording of the Reaping, and she watched as Peeta walked up to the stage. Then, her face appeared - against the green screen in District Thirteen's sound stage. "This was District Twelve, about a week ago. This is Peeta Mellark, made a tribute of the games because he knew too much about what you all suspect - that they are rigged."
[Some quick shots of various reapings appeared behind her voice.]
"Used as punishment by the government and the Peacekeepers. To keep us down. To keep us enslaved."
And then the scene went back to District Twelve, and the moment caught - the exact moment that Peeta looked up to see her from the stage at the reaping.
"Revolution! Revolution!"
A quick shot of her flag fluttering to the ground.
"But this is not what District Twelve looks like now."
And here, Katniss gasped along with the crowd as footage from the bombing of Twelve abruptly burst onto the screens. Taken from the District Thirteen cameras, much of the damage shown was already done - but incredible footage regardless, of bombs falling and hovercraft shooting each other. Someone even managed to tape the moment she was picked up by the hovercraft herself, helpless in its claws. And then a final shot of District Twelve, the sun setting on its destruction. Breathtaking, really.
"District Twelve has been destroyed. And you are next. Revolution!" All this was part of the filmed sequence they didn't end up using, and it is definitely not as convincing as the montage of destruction. Nonetheless, this was her cue. She stepped toward the lip of the building, and waited for Cressida's go-ahead.
Then the flag was unfurled again and her voice cried out - bouncing back to her from the screens that suddenly showed her on the building ledge, dressed in her black armor - "Revolution! Revolution!"
Below her, amidst the stunned immobility of the crowd, rebels in blue began their coordinated movements toward the stage. And shots rang out.