A/N- I tried to get more action than romance in this chapter, and I hope that you all like it. Thank you for continuing to read this story, I really do apprecite it. Please read and review.
"He wanted power," the woman slurs. "He has always wanted power. But how would a paunchy, talent-less man get so much power?" Her shrieking laughter pierces the air. I kiss her forehead.
"Tell me," I say. Then she tells me the secret. The one that I know will lead to Snow's undoing.
"Poison," she giggles in my ear. "It was poison." I sit up a little straighter, but she's not going to notice. She was Snow's ex-wife (yeah, gross), and he ditched her for another chick, so she's pretty bitter. Not smart for Snow to let me have her, and now she is going to make him regret it.
"He started out on the bottom, but he was at the top within a year. I can't believe no one saw that, that no one noticed those who stood in front of him dying, and under the same conditions again and again." Her voice trails off towards the end, and I can tell that her thoughts are jumbled, but this is important. I need to know it, I have to.
"How did he hide it?" I urge.
"He'd drink out of the cup, to prove his innocence, and then the doctors…. The doctors made him antidotes, but they weren't perfect…." Then she shakes her head, and even though I press her for more, she's done talking. So I turn my brain off, and finish the job assigned to me by the President himself.
Then she's gone, and I'm left in my room all alone, with nothing but my thoughts. I should be analyzing what she told me about Snow, but instead I find myself thinking about Annie. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not doing my job. Like it matters anyway. When I go back and tell my little resistance group about Snow's rise to power, they'll act interested, but then they'll basically say that it won't help at all, that I can't help. They'll say that we need to wait longer, even though I don't know how much longer this nation can wait.
Besides, it's not like I'm going to forget what she said. Snow poisoned his way into office. It's not that hard to remember. Annie is more important to me right now. So instead of worrying about tomorrow, I think about Annie. I fall asleep, wishing that she was in my arms.
I'm woken up early the next morning by a rough knock on my door. I basically roll out of bed, then slowly make my way to the door, not in any hurry to see anyone. Whoever it is doesn't like this very much. They don't stop pounding on the door until I open it. When I do, I want to just shut it right away.
"What do you want?" I mumble, glaring at the Peacekeeper.
"Someone wants to speak to you."
"Who?"
"He does not want you to know," the Peacekeeper says, then he checks his watch. "It won't take long, but you should hurry."
"Do I need anything?"
"No, just hurry."
"Oh, yeah, huh." Then I shut the door and ramble around my room to find a shirt. It's not even late enough for the sun to have risen yet, and I don't want to turn a bright light on, so it takes a few minutes for me to find one. The Peacekeeper keeps knocking, but I don't hurry. I doubt any meeting can be that important, so I take my time, not getting ready for another ten minutes.
When I go back out into the hallway, I get a nasty look, but the Peacekeeper says nothing. They never do, not to me. I'm the Capitol's angel. Truthfully, I'm supposed to be the guy who shows the people of the districts how great the Capitol is, how amazing the people are, and how they're just like us. I can only imagine how anyone outside of the Capitol sees me now. I don't even want to know.
"Where are we going?" I ask the Peacekeeper.
"You're meeting someone for breakfast."
"What kind of place is open at five in the morning?" Not in the Capitol, where people get up at noon every day.
"There are places," he says. Then we travel in silence. He takes me to a car, then gets in the back seat beside me. Some other guy is already sitting in the driver's seat, ready to play chauffer.
I fidget in the soft leather seat, not comfortable at all. Usually, I go where I want in this city, as long as I do what Snow says. I'm not used to this. I really want to ask where we're going again, but that seems childish. Instead, I just try not to fidget.
The car stops in front of a little café with a glowing open sign on the front door. It seems to be empty from what I can see through the windows, other than a skinny waiter wiping off tables.
"Who am I meeting?" I ask the Peacekeeper again.
"Wait and see," he says, like he's talking to a three year old. Then he leans forward and whispers something to the chauffer before getting out of the vehicle, gesturing for me to follow.
"I'm not going to my death, are I?" I ask the chauffer before I leave. He just laughs. Not a good sign.
When the Peacekeeper takes me into the café, I don't feel a bit more safe. The waiter bows to me, but that's not surprising. It's a Capitol thing. The thing that scares the hell out of me is the dude I couldn't see before, the broad shouldered guy in the far corner of the café, drinking what looks a lot like some kind of whiskey. At five in the morning. I can't see who he is, though, because he's wearing a dark coat with his hood up.
"Him?" I ask the Peacekeeper. He nods, then leaves. I stare after him, then watch as the car zooms away, leaving me there to deal with whoever this is all by myself. I stare at the person in the corner, who doesn't even acknowledge that I'm there. The waiter watches me nervously. A clock ticks in the background, but everything else is quiet. It's early enough that the usually busy streets of the Capitol are empty.
I should do something. Snow probably wants me to, and if I don't do what he wants…. I take a step forward. Then another. The man keeps sipping his whiskey, not glancing in my direction. I glance back at the window, imaging seeing Snow's face, laughing at me. Then I hustle forward, sliding into the booth across from the guy, not looking directly at him.
"You wanted to talk to me," I say. He looks up. I'm met with naturally angry features. Dark, slightly curly hair peeks out from under the hood, and the man has a smarmy smile that makes it look like he's using the last of his patience to please a snobby child. But the thing that sticks out are his steely gray eyes. There's anger, hurt, depression, but most of all, there's overwhelming sadness. I immediately know that this man has gone through the Games, just by looking in his eyes. The face is vaguely familiar, but I can't come up with a name.
"This is gonna have to be quick," he says curtly. Then he leans across the table and puts his lips to my ear. His breath is tainted with liquor, and it makes me queasy, but I force myself to listen. "You're to meet with Plutarch Heavensbee, one of the assistant Gamemakers. He's the resistance group's biggest Capitol allies. He has important information that you need to deliver to District 4, a vague plan to start the fire.
He'll find you tonight, you have to do nothing, but he won't tell you anything unless you say, specifically say, "The President is out tonight." Only say this if Snow doesn't meet with you. If he finds out that you've met with me, he will keep tighter surveillance on your room and it won't be safe to exchange information. Remember that."
I start to open my mouth to tell him I'm in, but the man shakes his head. Then, without another word, the waiter comes over and hustles me out of the café through a back door. The driver is back, the Peacekeeper still in the back seat. Neither of them say a thing. Neither do I. My mind is too busy processing what I just heard.
Something big is happening, otherwise no one would've risked contacting me in the middle of the Capitol. It's obvious that the guy wasn't a spy or something, otherwise he would've waited for me to confirm that I knew what he was talking about, so that means there's information worth finding out. I just have to pray that Snow doesn't look into my little field trip more than he needs to. But seriously, that conversation has me pumped up. First, there's the fact that we actually have allies in the Capitol, and in high places too, which is unbelievable. I had no idea, and I'm pretty sure that the majority of the District 4 victors didn't either. That's enough to make me happy, but knowing that I'm going to learn something that's going to be so big in the war, that has me wanting to grin from ear to ear. I don't, though. I've been doing this for three years, and I'm not dumb enough to walk into the building smiling like I just got a huge present. I'm supposed to be miserable, and Snow knows it. So either I hang my head and look like I'm on my death bed, or I get brownie points by flirting with every girl I see.
So I just sit there, looking as pissed off as I can. To help keep the smile off my face, I quit thinking about the war efforts and try to place which victor that was. I have no idea, though. He was middle-aged, which may be one reason that his Games haven't been on tv lately. But they do still show old ones. I've seen Mags twice in just the last few weeks I've been watching the reruns with Annie. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he's just had a tough life. I don't know. But he looked so familiar. I may have seen him mentoring, I guess I haven't paid attention. Whatever, it doesn't matter. What matters is that this trip isn't going to end up being the hell that I anticipated.
Later that night, when I'm sitting in my room, waiting for someone to drag me out of there and tell me to do my work, there's another knock on the door. I open it, and this totally beautiful girl takes a step into my room.
"Can I help you?" I ask, even though I can only guess what she wants.
That is, before I notice why she's so beautiful to me. She's normal. No alterations at all. Maybe 25, she has long black hair in a braid to her waist. Her dark-chocolate colored skin is smooth as silk, making a perfect background for her extraordinarily unique emerald eyes. She's nearly as tall as I am, and has the most unbelievably graceful build that I have ever seen. I know this victory almost instantly. Chastity Friesz, from District 11. She won three years before I did, particularly brutally, if I remember right. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure that she was there the year where the only weapons the tributes got were these horrible clubs. She bludgeoned everyone to death.
"You should come to me room," she says in a naturally quiet, slightly accented voice. I follow immediately. I'm not sure if I trust her because she's another victor, or if I'm just transfixed by those strange eyes that captivated so many during her games, but I can't seem to think straight. It's not until I'm walking out of the building Snow has given me that I start to worry. I don't get to worry long, however, because Chastity just drags me to a building across the street.
She slowly opens the door, looks around, then takes my hand and hurries me through hallways after hallway until we stop in front of a door. She doesn't go through that, though.
"Maybe something more private," she says, not very convincingly at all. I have the offhand thought that I should give her lessons, then I wonder if she even has to go through what I do. Well, of course. All the beautiful ones do.
Chastity kneels on the ground in front of a wall, and I can tell that she's feeling for a hidden panel. I step in front of her, blocking the view of any stray security cameras that Snow would have decided to place in the house. She finds the panel eventually, and the piece of floor that we're standing on sinks into the ground.
The room we enter is small, and once the floor goes back into the ceiling, it's extremely dark, lit only by a dim light bulb. The walls and floor are all made of packed dirt, like it was handmade not too long ago. Standing just a few feet in front of me is a tall, thin man with features that are obviously Capitol. He walks over to me and shakes my hand.
"Finnick Odair," I say.
"Plutarch Heavensbee."
"The President is out tonight." He smiles.
"Well, then get comfortable, because I have stories to tell," he says, his voice rising with excitement. Then he breaks into a crazy grin. "This is going to turn into the best Games yet." He starts laughing then. Chastity looks at him like he's crazy, then glances at me. I shrug, but I'm on the brink of laughter myself. Eventually I join in, and even Chastity laughs softly. And why not? Right now, there's every reason to be happy.