Chapter Twenty-Four
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos ...
- Darkness, George Gordon, Lord Byron
Peeta stayed in his room all morning, eating breakfast via the magical food machine. He watched 10am come and go - it was not until he was nearly thirty minutes late for training that there was a gentle knock on his door.
He answered it warily - it was his own mentor, Cassius, with whom he'd actually had very little interaction, so far. He wasn't completely sure that Cassius could speak in complete sentences, as all he'd heard from him so far was a grunt or two - but, to be fair, he was clearly a late replacement for the absent Haymitch. Who knew if he even served in this role before?
"This is such a joke," said Peeta out loud.
Cassius just looked behind him, as if looking for someone in his room. "Dining room," he was told.
It was just him, Effie and Nona around the table. Effie's presence was a bit of a relief - not that she was some unstoppable shield against any repercussions for the night before. But she was at least a mild buffer.
"So - we've decided to skip training, have we?" said Nona. "Bad idea. But we have worse problems."
He looked around, then something clicked. "Where's Thalia? She's not - already in the Training Center?"
"She caught the attention of a very prominent member of society last night." And Nona looked at him with glinting eyes. "Unlike you, she apparently was able to close the deal."
"What do you mean? She's - what - gone? Out of the Games?"
"She'll be returned to us in time, I am sure. No one except for someone exceptionally well-connected would have even dared to remove a Tribute from this place."
Peeta thought about the free movement of mentors like Finnick, and he wondered about that. But he only shook his head. "Well - so?"
"These Games have already been delayed once, thanks to District Twelve's little gadfly."
At this, Effie made a startled motion, but suppressed it.
"There are - additional problems, perhaps related. We can't afford any more irregularities, so we are going to put out a statement today that both of District Twelve's Tributes are ill - too much rich food, perhaps, nothing serious. The commentators will avoid mentioning you, as much as possible, but just in case it's noted …. So, you have the day off. Any preferences for how you would like to spend it?" She gave him a horrifying wink at that.
"A long nap," he said.
"Oh, I'd think twice about that. You could get a head start on deportment. Effie's quite a good tutor, in that regard, and you definitely need work."
"I'll see you tomorrow," he said, shrugging.
He left the table and went back to his room. He actually hoped he would meet some physical resistance from the women, or Cassius - he could fight off all of them, no question. And then some Peacekeepers would have to be called to drag him into some cell and out of this poisonous place. No joy, though. He was allowed to go back to his room with nary a word.
"District Twelve's little gadfly …"
He stretched all the way out on his bed and let out a long breath. It wasn't conclusive, sure, but it was something - a little something - that hinted that she was not only still alive but somehow still active.
He blinked a couple of times, sensing sleep coming. The dream started - he was back home, in the Seam, trying to persuade Melly not to leave the … but it wasn't Melly, it was Thalia, a yellow ribbon in her hair. "It's not safe out there," he said. "You have to be careful."
"People like me don't have the luxury of being careful."
He woke up abruptly, sat up in bed - his heart pounding. An alarm of some kind was going off in his ears. Fire …? He jumped up and ran to his door. There was commotion in the hallway, Effie and Nona running toward the stairwell door at the end of the hall, which Cassius was holding open. "What's going on? Is there a fire?"
Effie glanced backward. "What do we do with him?"
"Keep going," grunted Cassius. As Peeta approached him, he held up his palm. "You stay here. Lock yourself in your room. There's no fire. There was an attack in the fourth floor suite. Tribute went crazy, or something, and may still be on the loose."
Cassius abruptly closed the door in his face.
The stairwell door did not lock and Peeta ran up to it and opened it as soon as the others were gone. But he hesitated in the doorway. The male tribute from District Four was definitely a bit scary. If he was just trying to escape, he was no threat to Peeta, though. But what was most unsettling was that he was Finnick's tribute - and that this was the second disturbance in the Tribute Center in as many hours. Two missing tributes - one in the hands of some rich pervert or other, the other creating mayhem under the very shadow of the President's mansion. Or - was it something else?
Peeta walked through the stairwell door, but went up instead of down.
On the rooftop of the Tribute Center, he found the wide open sky. He was only vaguely surprised at how much he had missed being outside in the sun after only just a few days. The sunlight filled him with the same stupid hope that it always did every spring - that life-affirming energy that could only come from it. The way it illuminated the deep blue of the sky and glinted on every possible surface: in this case, the shining glass buildings of the Capitol.
He looked over the south ledge of the building, squinting. It was an impressive sight - the skyline of a place that was quite familiar to him, from television, seen from this unfamiliar angle. The encircling mountains hugged the city so closely - red, rocky, shaggy with scrubby green vegetation at their peaks. It was a natural defense - the wall that had defeated the rebellion eighty-five years ago. But it felt so comforting from inside - and it was also breathtaking in a way he did not quite understand. Maybe it was the ancient realness of them, the way they owned the earth the way no human city could ever do, no matter how impressive.
A breeze blew up the side of the Tribute Center and stirred his hair. As it did, a sound of wind chimes sounded quite close and he went hunting for the sound. It was around the other side of the stairwell - an astounding piece of magic in this place: a rooftop garden. It was maybe no more than six by six square, but bursting with flowers and with a flowering tree in each of the corners. Windchimes of different types and materials - brass, glass, wood - were hung from the trees. It was a still morning, in general, but the natural movements of the trees kept them tinkling gently. There was another push of wind and they erupted again in a riot of chiming.
"Ah," said a voice behind him. "I wasn't sure you'd figure it out."
Peeta whipped around, to see Finnick smiling at him. Dressed more plainly today in khaki and white - and sans makeup - he looked much more comfortable.
"I'm not sure that I have," argued Peeta. "It's been a weird morning - that's all I know."
"Yes."
"What went on downstairs?"
Finnick shrugged. "My tribute - who is very a proficient criminal, apparently - killed a Peacekeeper, took his gun and is attempting a breakout as we speak - I suppose." He yawned.
"Is this the normal sort of behind-the-scenes intrigue we never see on District television?"
"Oh no, oh no, this year is very different. Even in comparison to the Quarter Quell - the last time we had adults competing in the Games - we did not have this much trouble with Tributes."
Peeta shook his head, trying to remember. That had been the year after his brother had died in the Games; he didn't even watch the Quell and he had forgotten - only the children of Victors had been in the Tribute pool that year, which meant some adults were reaped among the teenagers. In District Twelve, and perhaps some of the other districts without a long tradition of producing Victors, an exception needed to be made to account for the fact that no Victors' children existed. He couldn't even remember what it had been.
"So, what's different about this year - aside, I guess, from the fact that we're all hardened criminals?"
"The difference this year is that the Capitol is losing control of the narrative. A very interesting thing happened this morning; someone managed to break through Capitol programming and air an incident in District Eight, live as it was happening."
"Katniss!"
Finnick cocked his head. "Is that her name? Who is she? Why is she working with District - uh …." he looked around, lowered his voice. "Thirteen?"
Peeta jumped as the wind picked suddenly up again and the chimes seemed to roar around them. "That I don't know. District Thirteen must have arrived on the scene after Twelve was destroyed. There was some kind of battle in the air - at least it looked that way. How do you know about Thirteen?"
Finnick only smiled. "Look - we don't have very long before the rest of the mentors come back into the building. You tell me - what is the information you wanted so badly from Nona?"
Peeta hesitated. "Cray - the Head Peacekeeper in Twelve - her ex-husband. He had secrets that … I don't know the nature of them, but they were enough to keep some people protected - and get other people killed."
"Why is it so important for you to know, now?"
Peeta shrugged. "I've got a live national audience in a couple of days, people to be moved to finally stand up for themselves and rebel. There's got to be more to it than the rigging of reapings. There's got to be."
"You think it's 'live,' do you? Look, it's a lot more complicated than you'll ever be able to convey on that stage. Uh - where do I start? At the end, I suppose." Finnick bit his lip and looked up at the sky for a moment. "The population of Panem - and, ergo, the planet - is hurtling toward a disastrous tipping point. There's been a net decrease in the population every year for the last fifty years, and lately the experts have realized the loss is on an exponential level."
"The planet?"
"Yeah, as far as anyone's aware.
"Do we know - what happened to the rest of the world?"
"Yes, I believe so, though I only know bits and pieces. Basically, the world was overpopulated and the resources were dwindling to the point of epic world-wide collapse of nations and eventual nuclear war. The specifics would take too long for me to go into right now, and I've heard competing theories about the actual events. What everyone in the Capitol does appear to agree on is that we quite rapidly and disastrously have flipped the switch in our population issues. Now, we're on the brink of extinction."
"And - killing children in the Hunger Games is some kind of - what? - project to accelerate our dying? Some kind of - suicide pact?"
"Now that's a wonderfully cynical idea, but - no. There's an old project - nearly a hundred years old - behind the scenes of the Hunger Games. The Games have always been bigger than the districts realize. I won't say they were a front, exactly, but damn well near - there was always a genetics project behind the Hunger Games, that for some people was the entire reason for their continued existence."
"Genetic - you mean, like - the mutts?" Peeta asked, shaking his head. This still wasn't making any sense. Mutating animals to more efficiently kill children and control the remaining population didn't seem like a fair trade-off to the end of civilization.
"Mutts were a part of it - but a by-product. The real purpose was to keep the genetics labs open for genetic experimentation on humans. The mutts just made for a good excuse - for the population. Most people recoil at the idea of genetic experiments on humans, but are more forgiving of the advances in science for the purpose of entertainment."
Peeta spit on the ground. "Maybe a suicide pact is the best thing for us."
"Maybe. I don't care. My life is a hellscape; slavery with pretty clothes and artificial flavoring. The smell of other people makes me sick."
"Finnick - ."
"But you want to know, so … basically, the antidote for a small population living in a world where the resources have been drained or destroyed? Longer lives - resistance to disease, hunger, thirst. This is what our scientists have been working on, at the highest levels, for generations. The highest levels. Snow - one of the earliest participants. Not as an experimenter - no, though I understand he dabbles in improving the genetics of roses. No, he was one of the earliest of the test subjects. Which is, of course, a state secret. No one knows." Finnick chuckled at that and even Peeta had to smile through the horror. "It certainly extended his life, helped his resistance to certain toxins: though, with some odd side effects. It did have some consequences, though, including - infertility."
"What are you talking about? He has - a son, grandkids…."
Finnick shook his head. "Not according to my sources. Look - uh -." Finnick's head snapped at a loud sound coming from far below them, a bang and some raised voices. "Come here," he whispered, gesturing, and they walked together to the edge of the building, Finnick carefully looking down. "Looks like they're getting ready to come back inside. Let's make this real quick…."
