A rumble of deep thumps shakes me into consciousness. My back aches with stiffness and my legs feel weak and spent. The room spins and tilts around me, I can't get my bearings and my throat freezes over the instant panic of confusion. The heavy weight of cuffs around my wrists is juxtaposed against a soft, plush cushion under my head. Am I on a sofa?
There are voices murmuring around me, but I can't make out what they're saying through the confused screaming panic of the whisper as it rages and squeals in my ears. The room is unfamiliar, comfortably furnished with mid-rate chairs and rugs, a giant television screen, and a couple bedrooms visible down the hall. Where am I?
The light is odd, a filtered, dusty dimness. I make out Jackson, standing with her gun trained on me, but her eyes on the kitchen behind us. I'm about to call her name, but the television blares a squealing beep all of a sudden, the screen popping to life and everyone leaping nervously at the sound.
"It's alright," the director reassures them. "It's just an emergency broadcast. Every Capitol television is automatically activated for it."
My eyes are glued to the screen as memory floods back over me. The street is in chaos, smoke filtering through the dim light as the wave of black goo blocks out the sun. Boggs is sprawled in a glistening pool of blood, the ragged stumps of his legs pumping more into its ever increasing width. Crashing gunfire and screaming soldiers in the pandemonium of the squad's efforts to regain control fade to the outer edges of my vision as I watch one black-clad monster launch himself at Katniss. Blond waves gleaming through the dim, smoky light, he snarls and grabs her, ripping her backward, away from Boggs to throw her to the ground. Teeth grinding and eyes wild, he raises his gun over his head and sends it crashing down to smash her skull. She barely flinches out of the way in time and a flying tackle whips the killer to the ground, Mitchell pinning the straining, flailing assassin with his own body.
My vision strobes between the television screen and images from my own memory, the rapid shifts in perspective making me nauseous and I see Mitchell pressed over me, screaming my name and trying to break through to me. But I was an expert wrestler, I only ever lost three matches. With a lithe twist, I get my feet under his body and, my legs pistoning up, I launch him away from me. He flies backward to crash against the pavement, but instead of flopping there, a sharp pop and he's swept upward in the hidden net. Trembling, I watch as the blood pours immediately from the razor sharp wire trapping him.
Screaming and thrashing, I'm hauled along by two soldiers as the squad breaks into an apartment, fleeing the wave of oily black death. Everyone rushes inside. Everyone except Gale. He stands alone in the turmoil, facing the oncoming tide as he fires desperately at the cables suspending a moaning, bloody jumble of boots and arms. And then the view is swallowed by the ooze.
I watch in numb horror, unable to process what I just witnessed. That couldn't have been me, it was more like an animal. There was no reason in the eyes, the face a twisted mask of hatred and violence. A violent shudder runs over me. I've finally seen the face of the whisper.
The reporter drones on, an unaccountably normal voice against the nightmarish vision on the screen. Candy colored houses looking dipped in glossy poison, Peacekeepers in a stern line along a rooftop as the report lists us by name and narrows focus to the house we've huddled in. A hollow, aching hope in my chest as the soldiers fire a volley of shells into the apartment, only to give way to grief-stricken despair when the building on the screen shudders and collapses, the roof over my own miserable head remaining stubbornly aloft.
A hot ache behind my eyes as they replay the massacre on the street over and over. The whisper is a buzz of triumphant rage, a high, squealing ecstasy of ferocity. My chest burns with a roiling sickness of guilt and shame, my brain searching dully for a way out.
"So, now that we're dead, what's our next move?" Gale is ready to act. Ready to move again. Brave, heroic, single-minded Gale. His black and white vision of the world is clear. I can count on him.
"Isn't it obvious?" I ask, my voice startling the squad as they turn abruptly to me. I watch their eyes when they see I'm awake. Revulsion. Disgust. Blame. None of it can touch what I think of myself. I haul myself into a sitting position, he won't agree if he thinks of me as an invalid. I meet his gray Seam eyes and search for what I need to see there. Understanding of the threat I pose, his responsibility to keep the others safe. I see it. "Our next move," I tell him, confident he knows it too, "is to kill me."
An awkward hush falls over the group. Gale tightens his grip on his weapon and I sit straighter, thankful he understands.
"Don't be ridiculous," Jackson spits, and Gale's eyes flash to her. Doubt flickers over his stony features and he releases his hold on the gun, stepping back a little. Agony sears through me.
"I just murdered a member of our squad!" I scream at him.
"You pushed him off you," Finnick is all calm comfort. He puts himself between Gale and I as he tries to reason with me. "You couldn't have known he would trigger the net at that exact spot."
Finnick doesn't understand. It wasn't a mistake, it wasn't a plan gone wrong. I had no idea what I was doing. If Mitchell hadn't torn me off Katniss, Coin would have gotten exactly what she sent me here for. Who knows how many others I would have taken down with her? My mind spins in frantic bedlam. I am exactly what Snow and Coin planned for me to be. I am a piece in their game, no matter how hard I try, I cannot break free of their control. There is only one way to stop me from completing their objective for them. Surely, everyone knows this?
"Who cares?" I demand. "He's dead isn't he?" I can feel the hot slide of tears down my cheeks, but my mind is wheeling and crashing away from it, I can't let this happen.
"I didn't know," I plead. "I've never seen myself like that before. Katniss is right." I choke on the truth of the words. "I'm the monster. I'm the mutt. I'm the one Snow has turned into a weapon!"
"It's not your fault, Peeta." Finnick's voice is soothing reason and I can see Gale has lost the conviction from before. I'm losing my chance.
"You can't take me with you," I grind out, switching tacks quickly. "It's only a matter of time before I kill someone else." This hits some of them the way I want, but I can see them mentally shuffling their feet. They can't do it, they can't look me in the face and pull the trigger. I need to push them into action. "Maybe you think it's kinder to just dump me somewhere. Let me take my chances. But that's the same thing as handing me over to the Capitol." I press harder on the kindness keeping them from what needs to be done. "Do you think you'd be doing me a favor by sending me back to Snow?"
I know they get it, the way their bodies tense up and they look away, unable to meet my eyes.
"I'll kill you before that happens," Gale's eyes are hooded. He knows he's letting me down. "I promise." It's not enough.
I search desperately for another angle. They won't give me a gun now, not after what just happened. Can I get in front of the Peacekeepers without disclosing the squad's position? I'm being watched carefully, I won't be able to get close enough to anything I could use to – an idea comes.
"It's no good," I tell Gale firmly. "What if you're not there to do it? I want one of those poison pills like the rest of you have."
But I can see the doubt vanish from Katniss' eyes. The name, nightlock, must have brought back the memory of the first arena. The guilt wins out.
"It's not about you," she says decisively. "We're on a mission. And you're necessary to it." Her eyes sweep the squad, each has stepped back away from me and I know I've lost the battle for now. Pushing more will just make it harder. I have to wait. Grinding my teeth, I clench my fists and try not to scream back at the wailing siren in my head.
They split up, some guarding me as though I could leap for them at any moment. Though really, who am I to say I won't? Mesalla leads them through the apartment, it replicates one he lived in before and he points out where extra food could be hidden. They come back to the living room, dumping a pile of cans on the floor and beginning to root through them. Jackson nudges me off the sofa toward the food and I'm too numb to argue. I stand quietly while the others tumble cans over, looking for something that appeals to them.
One can rolls to my feet and stops there, label up. My breath catches in my throat and my vision wavers. The cave, Katniss wrapped in my arms in the sleeping bag, pressed tight against my chest. I could feel her heart beat against mine as she dozed contentedly, our bellies full of the hot lamb stew sent in by parachute just when we needed it most. It only lasts a split second before the winged harpy blooms across the image, but it's too late. I felt it.
"Here." I hold out the can and she reaches for it gingerly, not wanting to be impolite. Her hand freezes for a second, and I feel the faintest twinge in my chest, a bare stirring between us, a connection lost long ago.
"Thanks," she says nonchalantly, prying back the lid. "It even has dried plums." Her words echo and ring and I stand like an idiot, watching her eat with the lid as a spoon. Images crash and glitter in my head as I remember my fierce determination to keep her safe. The stew is a reminder of how hungry we were, how much we depended on each other to stay fed, to stay alive. I back away, the tremors starting in my hands as the whisper pitches ragefully against the gentler emotion. Standing away from the group, I watch them wearily as they hand around a box of cookies, sharing companionably. I came here with one clear objective, to keep Katniss safe from Coin. There is only one way for me to do that.
A sharp beeping from the television and the image of the seal fills the screen, the strains of the anthem rising behind it. Just like the sky of the other arenas, the faces of the fallen come next, everyone except Mitchell, Leeg and Jackson. There are no tributes from Thirteen.
An office, a desk, a flag on the wall behind. Snow is seated commandingly and surrounded by symbols of power. Though, he doesn't look well. I'm surprised by how dispassionately I'm able to evaluate him. He looks as though he's been ill, or had work done? His voice is stentorian, he's ditched the gentle patriarch act. He commends the soldiers for their part in the demise of the Mockingjay, going on to deride her as an empty symbol, a trumped up fairy story because the rebellion has no actual leader of note. Victory will be swift, and merciless.
A flicker, and Snow is replaced by the cold visage of Coin. They are literally interchangeable. She announces herself as the leader of the rebellion, and urges the fighters to carry on in the name of the martyred Mockingjay. She looks stonily triumphant until an image of Katniss, beautiful in her fierce determination and lit by dancing flames behind her, burns across the screen. It's a powerful message, exactly what Coin had in mind. Now she can make Katniss be anything she wants her to be, without the troublesome real person to deal with. A rallying point, a martyr, a rebel cry. My lips twist in disgust as the screen pops back to Snow, looking like he's swallowed nightlock himself. He grinds out a threat that when they drag Katniss' body from the rubble, the world will see her for the useless little girl she is and the seal glows over the anthem before the screen hums into blackness again.
"Except that you won't find her," Finnick murmurs, green eyes locked on the screen. What he says is true. Once they dig through the smoking pile of the building they bombed, they'll know we escaped their clutches. The Capitol will be after the squad with vengeful ferocity, and I have no doubt Coin will do her best to ensure no one ever finds out the Mockingjay is less of a martyr than she would hope.
They are making plans to flee, even though Katniss looks ready to drop from exhaustion. The Holo shows an impossible number of blinking markers over pods clustered in the streets and her shoulders droop despondently. After a quick conversation, it's decided that underground is the best option open to them. I shudder involuntarily.
Moving swiftly, we make the apartment look as though no one was there, at least as well as we can. Katniss slides a bolt through the hasp on the door and turns to stare at me with grim determination.
"I'm not going," I tell her firmly. She has to see the logic in this. "I'll either disclose your position or hurt someone else."
"Snow's people will find you," Finnick urges.
"Then leave me a pill. I'll only take it if I have to." It's obvious everyone sees through the lie.
"That's not an option." Jackson shakes her head. "Come along."
"Or you'll what? Shoot me?"
Homes plants himself in front of me and crosses his arms over his chest. "We'll knock you out and drag you with us," he threatens grimly. "Which will both slow us down and endanger us."
"Stop being noble!" I cry desperately. "I don't care if I die!" The truth of the words rings in the heavy silence between us. There is no other way to stop myself from spiraling even further away from the person I was. The person I can never be again. The person who wasn't a threat to others, a ticking bomb just waiting to detonate and spread destruction and horror.
"Katniss, please." I beg brokenly. "Don't you see I want to be out of this?" The whisper is a squealing pitch of hate and frantic threats, my mind a crashing jumble of images of horror and blood and pain. I ache with guilt and shame and I lift my pleading gaze to hers.
Her eyes are gray steel, and my heart breaks. She knows, she understands what she owes me. But she won't do it. She won't let Snow have that victory, no matter what it costs me. As ever, Katniss takes from me what she needs, regardless of the agony it causes me.
"We're wasting time," she says shortly, her voice low with the knowledge of what she's doing to me. "Are you coming voluntarily or do we knock you out?"
I drop my face into my hands, the whisper's relieved shriek of bloodlust chanting its hate and filth into the hollow emptiness of my chest. Black despair washes over me as I feel buried under the weight of it all. The endless, torturous, agonizing existence as a piece in someone else's game. Haymitch. Snow. Coin. Katniss.
Wearily, as though pushing against the weight of the entire world, I rise to my feet in defeat. Leeg suggests freeing my hands, but I snap at her, cradling them to my chest in the weighty metal cuffs. Katniss takes the key and slips it into her pocket. Moving through a fog of anguished misery, we continue our journey into the heart of the Capitol.