My dreams are haunted by the girl who calls my name. I wake sweating and trembling, sometimes I can hear the echo of my cries still ringing in my ears. I can't understand why she terrifies me so desperately. She seems harmless in my dreams. I watch her from afar, I can't see her face, and she usually doesn't even notice I'm there. Sometimes she's tiny, in braids and pretty dresses, singing. Sometimes she's older, strong and confident in boots and leather jacket. Once, she was huddled in the rain. My heart races when I see her. But at some point every night, she turns her storm gray eyes to meet mine and calls out to me, "Peeta!" And her voice wakes me, shaking and gasping for air, my chest achingly hollow.
My waking hours are spent in nightmare. Guards beat and burn and shock me. I listen while they do the same and worse to others. I spend the days alone inside these four white walls. I use my time to plan. Eventually, they will slip. They will give me the opening I need, and I'll be gone. I will make it home and I will warn them, warn everyone that she's coming, the monster who wants to destroy everything and everyone in her flaming fury.
I'll need to be prepared. I didn't realize what she was before, she seems like a regular person on the outside. But she isn't. Not at all. She is treacherous, and devious, and hell-bent on destruction. They force me to watch tapes of her over and over. Dread and rage blaze through me as I watch her in the arena, at home, on the train, slavering for the violence and ruin she craves. I've seen her take flight on wide, blazing wings to incinerate an entire district. The Capitol created her to unleash on rebellious districts, but they lost control of her, and now she waits, plotting to destroy my home. I have to warn them she's coming.
President Snow is trying to find her as well, he wants her too. When she escaped the arena, leaving me to the captors, Dr. Lichten says she fled to District 13. Apparently that district has been lying in wait, biding their time to unleash nuclear weapons on the nation and decimate the remaining human population as revenge for the obliteration of their own. Katniss is using them as a base, making the rounds through the districts, inciting the citizens to war to satisfy her thirst for destruction. I have to get to her before Snow does. He wants to bring her back under his own power, but I can't let that happen. I have to destroy her before she ravages more lives.
I jerk back when I hear the keypad outside the door, but instead of eagerly armed Peacekeepers, Dr. Lichten steps into my cell. I see him less frequently now, since the interview a few days ago that went so terribly wrong.
"Good afternoon, Peeta," he says in a calm, friendly voice. I don't answer, keeping my eyes steadily on him, trying to be ready for whatever he brings with him. "You look well." I smirk at this, he really does need something from me.
"What can I do for you?" I ask, equally calm and polite, as though we were meeting over a cup of tea in my father's bakery.
"I think I can do something for you, actually," he replies brightly. "I would like to offer you the chance to talk to the districts again."
I laugh out loud. "Because that went so well last time," I scoff.
"Actually, it was very effective," Dr. Lichten says. "We cut the feed before you became…distressed, and public reaction was very positive. We noticed a marked decrease in violence by the insurgents. You saved lives, Peeta."
"So now they're causing Snow problems again and he wants me to get them back in line?"
The doctor cocks his head and considers me for a long moment. "Are you feeling better now that you aren't taking your medication any longer?" he asks conversationally.
"You mean, can I form two thoughts together now that you've stopped doping me?" I stare past his shoulder at the wall behind him. I have to be careful, if I seem to be a threat and he starts drugging me again I might miss my chance. "I can think more clearly, yes," I answer complacently. "I feel better."
"Good," he murmurs. "Good. Then you understand how important it is that you deliver this message? I know you don't agree with President Snow on everything," he intentionally ignores my snort of laughter, "but you both know how important this is. Katniss is out there pushing them to martyr themselves for her. They are causing irreparable damage to the infrastructure in their own districts in misguided attempts to sabotage the Capitol. Losing resources they depend upon, not to mention lives." My eyes are squeezed shut and my fists are clenched so that my trembling hands don't start to fly around by themselves. My head twitches sideways and I claw desperately at my control, staying in the present and not screaming out loud.
"Very good, Peeta," Dr. Lichten says as he watches me struggle. "You are doing marvelously. I am very proud of your progress."
My blazing glare meets his tepid, pale gaze and he flinches backward, his eyes flying to the manacles that chain me to the wall. Reassured, he smiles and continues, "I think this will go so well. I'll send the guards to clean and dress you."
He closes the door behind himself and I sit with my eyes closed, pulling my bloody wrists against the shackles so the metal bites into my skin, helping me focus. When the Peacekeepers haul me to the shower room, I'm calm enough that they don't need to wrestle me in. I breathe deeply, enduring the scrubbing while reminding myself that although I don't want to help Snow, if people will listen to me about putting an end to this war, I have to try. I have so many deaths to answer for, I have to try and stop this if I can.
Walking through the door to the familiar room where I will be dressed, I gag and my neck twitches my head over. There is no prep team, but memories bubble and seethe when I see the stranger standing with my outfit next to a makeup tray. Dr. Lichten anxiously asks if I want a sedative, but I refuse to compromise my concentration and I assure him I'm alright. As the dresser clucks and tsks at how the suit hangs on my bony frame, my hands clench and unclench spasmodically, my neck continually stretching my chin forward. I bite the inside of my cheek until I can taste blood, but I get my body under control. All except my hands, I've given up trying to stop their trembling. While the dresser works, Dr. Lichten briefs me on the events he would like to see me address. I listen carefully, concentrating and horrified to hear of the damage being done, the lives being sacrificed.
I'm taken to where the cameras are set up in a strange room this time. There is a high, imposing podium with the seal of the Capitol on the left of the staged area, and a large map of Panem projected on a screen to the rear. The director ushers me onto a tall stool next to the screen and I seat myself, hands balled in my lap and jaw clenched. A babble of voices and a group of people dressed severely in white enter the room. The smell hits me before I see him. The sickly scent of his toxic rose winds its tendrils into my brain and tries to take control of my body, like a puppet master and a marionette. My leg begins to jitter and my heart pounds erratically. I lock my teeth in a grimacing rictus and fight the sensation of being pulled underwater, struggle to remain in command of myself.
Snow smiles maliciously when he sees me. "My, my" he murmurs in his low, warm voice. "I see you're being well looked after." His gaze drags slowly from my throbbing head to my twitching feet, his eyes glittering. "This will do nicely."
I choke down the bile rising in my throat and dig my nails into my wrist until I force my rebelling body under control. I stare straight ahead and ask flatly, "Are we ready?" He stares for a moment longer, as though pleased with an accomplishment, before stepping behind the podium and the cameraman cues us in.
The strains of the anthem shiver up my spine and my vision begins to swim. Twin flashes of the arena battle in my mind. Katniss in the cave, devastated by the image of Thresh in the sky. But the next instant she laughs triumphantly to see him there. The dissonance of the two visions is making the room spin, I can't hear President Snow clearly as he greets the viewers in a welcoming, measured voice. My tongue is sandpaper when he introduces me and the bright lights pound down and my eyes won't focus. I begin to outline the damage the rebels are doing, trying to illustrate the danger to themselves, my mouth forming the words almost independently as my brain whirls and tries to gain traction on the thoughts battling in my head. Rue, covered in blood, covered in flowers, smiling down from the sky as the anthem plays. Katniss, heartbroken, singing her to her rest.
The playback screen suddenly scrambles and a new view pops up. Rubble. As far as the eye can see, destruction and death. But in the middle of the screen, something about the pile is hauntingly familiar. I'm unable to focus on it though, because standing amongst all the chaos, is Katniss. She looks years older and weary beyond words. "There's no one left to hear you," she intones blankly.
The image lasts only seconds, and then flicks back to my own face, staring befuddled at the camera. My recitation picks up automatically. My mind is so unreliable, I'm unable to believe if I really saw anything at all. The confusion is seeping into anger, the fury that takes me when I see her. And then the screen sparks again and Finnick is staring back at me, talking about the bravery and resourcefulness Rue showed in the arena. My brain feels like it's splintering, and my teeth begin to chatter.
The monitor crackles back and forth between our set and shots of Katniss, visions of her standing before smoldering ruins, shooting planes from the sky, walking through rooms full of wounded and dying. She paces among rubble and down streets littered with charred bodies.
Panic overwhelms me and l leap from my chair, a shriek bubbling up in my throat, but a guard is there immediately, arm tight around my neck and a fistful of my jacket slamming me back onto the stool and holding me there while I thrash maniacally. The Capitol seal fills the monitor and a piercing tone keens through my madness until I hear Snow's voice rise above the clamor.
"We have no choice! Send the bombers to Thirteen tonight!"
I freeze and my howling brain slams to a stop.
While pandemonium reigns the monitor fizzes to life and Snow is back on camera, assuring the audience the rebels are trying to shut down the broadcast for damaging their cause. I'm shaking like I'll fly apart, my teeth chattering and my hands clawing at my legs. Deep in my chest, a spark is crashing against my ribs, scrabbling its way up my lungs, scraping its way behind my eyes, until, when Snow asks if I have a final message for Katniss, it splinters my brain into a million jagged shards.
"Katniss…how do you think this will end? What will be left?" My throat closes over the spark, fighting it back, but it frantically tears its way free. "No one is safe. Not in the Capitol. Not in the districts. …" The black tides of fury and terror crash over me, the need to destroy her, but like a drowning man battling for a last gasp of air, the spark shrieks through my mind: protect her! "And you…in Thirteen…dead by morning!"
"End it!" Snow's voice snaps across the turmoil and the set is in chaos. I try to scream for Katniss to run, to flee, to find shelter, but three guards crash toward me and the first blow knocks me to the floor. By the fourth, the darkness has me.