At first Emil Hago had leaned his head on the window of the train, watching as the scenery went by in one undistinguishable blur. The glass had cooled and calmed the bruises that decorated his face. The world beyond that glass very soon grew dull, though; it was just the same scene repeating itself over and over. Smoldering remains buildings, burned plants, bomb craters, and among all of it, grimy district citizens toiling away to build a new world from this rubble. For every little cluster of citizens, there was a Peacekeeper, clad in protective gear and armed to the teeth.
The Rebellion was over. It had been flattened when District 13 went down in a brilliant flash of nuclear light. Game over. You lose. And yet, what troubled Emil's mind as the train sped him back to District 12 — or whatever was left of District 12 — was not the end of the Rebellion.
It was the fact that he didn't care that they had lost.
He cared that he had been arrested. He cared that they had beaten him unconscious, and then revived him just so they could get a few more hits in. He cared that he had been thrown in a dank, low-roofed prison cell with a group of strangers. He cared that on his way to the prison cell, he had seen his sister for the first time since the Rebellion began — and had caused her to be arrested too, just because she was his sister, just because he had let slip that she was connected to him.
But he simply couldn't care that the Rebellion was over. He wasn't angry. He wasn't anguished. He wasn't even relieved. He just felt blank. So it was over. So what?
He glanced at his sister. He couldn't see any bruises on her body, so he assumed she hadn't been handled as he had. That by no means meant she was alright, though. He scarcely recognized her, though. The general shape of her face, the set of her eyes, the tone of her voice, that was all unmistakably hers. But the Lyra he knew was gone. In her place was this disturbed, trembling, wild-eyed girl, crouching on her seat, rocking back and forth, hugging her knees to her chin. It was as if she was trying to make herself small, trying to disappear into herself.
"We'll be home soon, Lyra," Emil said, though he had no idea if it was true. He just couldn't stand the silence any longer. His sister glared at him with wide-eyes.
"Home?" Her tone was harsh. "You think there's a home left?"
Emil couldn't answer that. He had seen so many buildings get blown up, and it left him with little confidence. Besides, it wasn't like she was talking about a building. "Home." The two of them had grown up with a roof over their heads, for the most part, but he still felt like he was homeless. At least, he had, now and then, before the Rebellion started. It seemed trivial now, childish even. "Home is where the heart is" was such a whimsical, silly little phrase. His heart was in his chest, and as long as it was still pumping blood, he really couldn't be bothered with much else.
"Hey Emm... Will Mum and Dad be there?" Lyra spoke softly this time, barely willing to meet Emil's eyes for this question. He looked back at the window, face devoid of any expression. His mind had travelled back to the last time he had seen his mother and father.
It couldn't have been more than a month or so ago. Unarmed, out of supplies, and disconnected from the other rebels, they had just waited. Emil was never sure what the shack they were in was originally for. The roof was just a bit too low to stand at proper height. The foundation was old and strong — perhaps it was some ancient remnant left over from long ago, before the floods and the fires, before the nation of Panem. He would just lie on his back, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling, daydreaming about what other strange people had done the very same, centuries before he had been there. His parents would go out in search of food, or news, or anything, really. They probably would've been happy to find a jabberjay at that point. They would never admit it to him, but he was fairly sure they had no idea where in the world they were. They had been on the offensive for so long, that when they were finally forced to flee on the defensive, they had no clue as to where to go.
So they had ended up in the middle of nowhere.
That day had been precisely like any other. When the hunger pang in his stomach finally roused him from sleep, the shack was empty. He stared up into nothing, waiting for the familiar rustling of his parents feet as they returned.
He practically hit his head on the ceiling scrambling to his feet when the door swung open, slamming against the wall as his parents fell over themselves to get inside. Their faces were utterly drained — of color, of energy, of hope. That keen hunger that he could always see in the set of their jaw or the crease of their eyebrows was also gone.
It had taken him a few moments to realize what it was: his parents looked defeated.
"What?" he asked, a sinking knot forming in the pit of his throat. "What is it?"
His parents looked at each other, and his mother nodded. Without saying a word, his father slowly took a gun out from his back pocket and began loading it. Emil raised an eyebrow. "... where did you get that?"
Ignoring his question, his mother spoke, her voice hardly audible over the clinking of the bullets going into the gun. "We're done, Emil. There's no coming back from this. It's unwinnable."
"What do you mean?" Emil kept his eyes on the bullets his father was putting into the gun.
"District 13's gone. Annihilated. They bombed it to oblivion," his mother went on. "We've lost. And now they're coming for us."
The words didn't immediately sink in. Emil wasn't sure if they ever quite sunk in. He had just blinked a few times, bewildered, looking from the now fully loaded gun, his mother's downcast eyes, and his father's sullen face.
"So we're going to fight them off with that pistol...?" he asked cautiously. His parents cast each other a look.
"Not exactly," his mother said. His father raised the gun, aiming it at Emil's head. The knot in his throat sunk to the pit of his stomach.
"What are you doing?" His voice was trembling.
"They'd torture you if they caught you," his father said. The gun clicked.
"It's better this way," his mother was saying. But her words were lost in the air as Emil dropped flat to the floor. He felt a searing pain in his shoulder as the deafening bang of the gun reverberated throughout the room. Emil rolled back up to his feet, stumbling as the pain in his shoulder made his stomach lurch.
"Are you insane?" he yelled, staring with disbelief at his parents.
"We—" his father started to say, but Emil didn't wait this time. He gave his father a hard kick, making him double over in pain. Emil didn't wait another instant. He tore away, running.
"Emil, wait!" His mother's voice sounded faintly behind him. He didn't look back. After the Peacemaker's arrested him, he heard from someone that his parents had stayed hiding in that shack until they were surrounded on all sides by oncoming Capitol fighters. Then, they had detonated an improvised bomb. He had no idea where they had gotten the materials for it. They'd probably collected them over those many days they claimed to be looking for food. They blew themselves up, and took a couple of Capitolites out with them. Thus had ended the pathetic reign of terror the Hago family had waged against the Capitol. A double suicide.
Emil could easily imagine them doing it. They had probably smiled right before they detonated the bomb, smiled in knowing they were taking just a couple others down with them. It made him sick to his stomach.
"No," he said at length, turning back to his sister. "Mum and Dad won't be there."
x/x/x/x/x/x
The other twenty-three people — children, really, they were all children — had been cleared out of the prison cell hours ago, and still nobody came to take her away. Jonah Rouen sighed, picking at the fingernails on her left hand. They had gone blunt. Mark had laughed at her when he saw her sharpening them. "Going to scratch the eyes off of them or something?" he asked.
She had smiled. "You can never be too prepared."
Jonah wasn't sure what had happened to Mark. He was probably dead. That was her default for anyone whose whereabouts she wasn't sure of. Her parents were probably dead. Her comrades-in-arms she had been separated from were probably dead. Truth be told, she wasn't really sure of where she herself was right now, but that sounded about right: she was probably soon to be dead.
The others had been lead away in pairs of two. First to go had been a girl and a boy called Amethyst and Peridot; the ridiculous names suggested they lived in District 1. The next boy-girl pair had been unfamiliar in any way, but the third boy-girl pair had made her look up. The Capitolites had called the boy "Eric Branson." It couldn't possibly have been that Eric, could it? Eric Branson, the District 3 boy who figured out how to dissipate smoke to sedate entire fields of tracker jackers? The one who modified that same system to use the Capitol's tear gas against them? He was a rebel hero.
The children kept on being led away two by two, until they got to what would've been the District 5 — her district. That time, a boy was led away by himself, the Peacekeepers looking over their shoulder at her as they walked away.
A number of the kids' names had been familiar, but they had all been thrown from her mind when she heard the surname of the last boy-girl pair.
"Emil and Lyra Hago, come with us."
Twelve pairs of kids led away in order of district, and the twelfth had the surname Hago. Jonah had heard of a Hago family from District 12. A half-crazy couple who had orchestrated coal mine cave-ins before the Rebellion had even begun, just to cause the Peacekeepers trouble and to keep coal from getting to the Capitol. The Hago family, which hadn't cared if a few District citizens had to die, if it meant they could score one against the capitol. Jonah had never thought a couple like that would have children. Maybe there was another "Hago" family in District 12. Somehow, Jonah doubted it.
She sighed, sinking down so that she was sitting. It was the only way she could stretch her legs out to their full length. She shut her eyes. Maybe at least in her dreams, she could escape this place.
x/x/x/x/x/x
The train pulled into the District 12 station with an unsteady lurch. Emil and Lyra didn't move, waiting for the same four Peacekeepers who had escorted them out of the prison cell to come and get them. Sure enough they came, two carrying guns, the other two, handcuffs. They were each cuffed wrist-to-wrist with a Peacekeeper, and the other two pointed the guns at their backs.
"Let's go," one of the Peacekeepers, a man with one marble eye, said. Emil didn't need any encouragement, but Lyra was dragging her feet. Every time she started to slow up, the Peacekeeper behind her nudged her along with the end of his gun.
They were led down the streets of District 12 in this fashion — or at least, whatever was left of the streets of District 12. It was as if they were in a hollowed out shell of a town, the crumbling frames of buildings being the only remains of what had been before the Rebellion. All over the place, little make-shift plywood shacks had sprung up, presumably the temporary shelter for the citizens while they rebuilt the District.
As they walked, some of the citizens glanced up at them, before the Peacekeepers surveying them barked for them to get back to work. Here, like in all the other Districts, everyone was just building. Rebuilding. Going back to square one.
Their escort troop of Peacekeepers finally came to a halt at a plywood shack that looked exactly like every other they had passed. Inside, there were two thin mattresses, each with one blanket, and a dirt floor. Nothing else.
"This will henceforth be your home for the next two weeks," said the marble-eyed Peacekeeper as Emil and Lyra were un-handcuffed, "and you are henceforth under house arrest. All sanitary and nutritional necessities will be provided for you by the Capitol."
What a liar. Emil couldn't help a wry grin spreading over his face.
"If you go more than five feet out of your home in any direction, you will be promptly executed via firing squad. A detail will be on constantly patrol outside your home," the Peacekeeper continued.
Emil just laughed. Well, at least he's not lying about everything.
"What happens after two weeks?" Lyra asked, looking up at the four Peacekeepers who were making their way out of the shack. The marble-eyed man smiled, his lips curling back in a manner that was wholly unnatural.
"Nothing to worry yourself over," he said, "just a little game.