The squad is silent. Moving swiftly, we make our way through a maintenance shaft, past another apartment, into a second and down the hall to a tiny utility closet. Messalla deftly unlatches a metal cover, exposing a wide ladder leading deep into the blackness under the city. We all stare down wordlessly, the dim light strips beckoning and a nasty fug simmering up from below.
Pollux, the Avox cameraman, looks sick and grips his brother's arm tightly. "My brother worked down here after he became an Avox," Castor explains, his hand covering his brother's reassuringly. "Took five years before we were able to buy his way up to ground level. Didn't see the sun once."
His voice is bitter and grim, his brother's eyes reflecting the remembered horror. Another victim of the Capitol who will carry the scars forever. Another citizen who feels they are worth less because of their past.
"Well," I tell him gratefully, "then you just became our most valuable asset." Pollux returns the effort with a weak smile and takes a deep breath before beginning his way down the clammy rungs of the ladder.
He's about ten times braver than I am. It takes a questioning look from Gale before I'm able to force my feet to move toward the yawning pit. Every step down increases my feeling of being buried alive, of returning to the underground cells where I've been kept, molded and formed to be used to another's purpose. Every step down increases the insane jitter of the whisper's call for blood and destruction. I twist my wrists against the cold metal of the shackles, the familiar cold bite helping me focus and fight against the screaming demand.
Pollux proves invaluable as a guide. He knows the life of the sewers like Gale knows the life of the mines. He keeps us from physical threats like live wires or enormous rats, and from insidious dangers like cargo trains and camera eyes. We slog through the tunnels with single-minded determination until I lose track of how long we've been walking, only the press of the earth above me and the hatred of the whisper within me are real.
Lost in my efforts to muffle the whisper, I don't hear the call to halt and I bump up against Jackson. Mumbling my apologies, I go where she points me, a small workroom humming with machine sounds and stuffy with warmth. Everyone presses inside and shuffles around, some readying for sleep, but two unfortunates keeping eyes pried open on guard duty. I lie down against the wall facing the door and almost immediately I'm lost to a troubled sleep.
My heart pounding from a dream I don't remember, I gasp awake in the tiny, humid room. I grind my wrists against the cuffs, trying to still the clamoring din in my head. On top of the claustrophobic pressure of being buried under the city, on top of the chant of the whisper's rage, on top of the burning guilt and frantic fear I'll hurt someone else, on top of the miserable helplessness of being forced yet again into someone else's plan, hums a new hissing prod. I bite my lip until I taste blood, tear my skin with the bite of the manacles, squeeze my eyes tight trying to block it out, but I can't escape it. Like gravity, I feel myself driven by a force beyond my control. From deep in my chest, our precarious position calls a response I'm powerless to resist. Something buried inside me insists that I protect Katniss Everdeen.
I don't know how this mission started out, if she knew she was being set up by Coin, if she was ever supposed to make it beyond that booby-trapped street. But she has assigned herself to a new mission. She isn't communicating with Thirteen, and the squad is following her without question. She is moving us steadily into the heart of the Capitol, and it is clear she has one objective in mind. She's after Snow.
I came here to thwart Coin. I'm convinced whatever she has in mind, it won't be any better than having Snow in control. If her plan needed Katniss dead, I was going to keep her alive. But these last few hours in the tunnels, hunted and hiding, our lives depending on us depending on each other, something has awakened in me. A dark familiarity of purpose, the demand of a promise I don't remember making. Pressing my forehead against the cold concrete floor, I try to follow it to its source, but the flaring demon always screams across my vision and I lose the trail.
Trying it from another angle, I ignore the memories of Katniss. I think instead of my father, I search for moments the Capitol couldn't have poisoned. Under the stars in the Victors' Village, staring up at the wide, brilliant expanse of sky after the announcement of the Quarter Quell. Going back to my warm kitchen and finding my father there with Jasper and Lila, knowing they understood completely that I had to go back to the arena, even if it wasn't my name that was reaped.
I think of my studio in the back of my house, the endless hours painting and sketching and drawing, trying to exorcise the painful ache of longing, to reconcile the empty heartbreak, finally coming to peace with the idea that all I want is happiness for her.
With a heavy sigh, I lightly thump my head on the solid floor. The whisper screams its fury against the gentler call, but the softer tone remains, refusing to retreat this time. I'm certain I will die down here, buried in the stinking bowels of the glittering city. But before I do, I will do everything I can to protect Katniss Everdeen.
The object of my thoughts slides down the wall to sit next to where my head rests. She and Pollux click around on the Holo for a while, until it becomes too much and she hands it over to him, settling wearily against the dank wall and sighing.
"Have you eaten?"
I'm surprised by the tenderness in her voice. Not trusting myself to speak, I shake my head. I hear her rustle around and the pop and swish of a can opening. She slides the chicken soup toward me, holding onto the lid. I smile wryly, but haul myself up and tilt the can at my lips, the greasy, cold mess sliding down my throat. I close my eyes and swallow, trying not to think about the slippery mass and just get it down.
"Peeta," she asks curiously. "When you asked about what happened to Darius and Lavinia, and Boggs told you it was real, you said you thought so. Because there was nothing shiny about it. What did you mean?"
I'm caught off-guard by her tone. It sounds completely different than any I've heard from her since I was brought back from the Capitol. She doesn't sound angry or defiant, isn't forcing gentleness. She just sounds like someone talking about something of interest. It twangs backward through my mind, through my heart, and I stutter uncertainly for a moment, unable to focus around the vertigo.
"Oh. I don't know exactly how to explain it," I stammer. "In the beginning, everything was just complete confusion. Now I can sort certain things out. I think there's a pattern emerging." I realize I'm speaking to her just like I would to Cilla or Lef and Dils. Unguarded, not trying to analyze and second guess every glance, every inflection. Just talking to her. "The memories they altered with the tracker jacker venom have this strange quality about them. Like they're too intense or the images aren't stable." She is watching me intently, trying to understand. "You remember what it was like when we were stung?" She nods, but my heart skips oddly.
"Trees shattered. There were giant colored butterflies. I fell in a pit of orange bubbles. Shiny orange bubbles," she recalls.
She is beginning to see what I mean, but I'm caught on how the word "we" tugged through my chest. How her recollection brings a swelling of the urge to protect her. I faced off against Cato, crazed by the venom, to keep her safe. I want to keep her safe now.
I pull my attention from the warm throb in my chest, force my lungs to work against the pressing fizz in my blood. I take a chug of the soup to buy some time and steady my voice. "Right," I nod. "But nothing about Darius or Lavinia was like that. I don't think they'd given me any venom yet." Amazingly, I can speak of it without being overwhelmed by visions.
"Well, that's good, isn't?" she asks. "If you can separate the two, then you can figure out what's true." She looks at me hopefully.
"Yes. And if I could grow wings I could fly," I reply, thinking of the hours I've spent trying to sift through my own brain. The words trigger a blazing, screeching, demon image of her, fiery arrows lighting my home to burn everyone I love. "Only people can't grow wings. Real or not real?" I ask, looking at her against the image that sprouts talons and fangs.
"Real," she says. "But people don't need wings to survive."
I watch her for a moment, the image twinkling and falling apart at the edges when I hold it in my mind. In the dark cave of a workroom, I see her fighting to keep me alive. To keep all of us alive. "Mockingjays do," I reply softly, emptying the last of the soup and handing back the can.
"There's still time," her voice is disarmingly gentle. "You should sleep."
I lie back down, images of Twelve swirling through my head. Every walkway, every shop, every home, all are colored by their relationship to her. The route she walks home from school, the merchants where she trades her hunts, the houses where she has friends. My memories belong to her.
A familiar lump in my chest, an echo of a realization I had before. She is not indifferent. She doesn't love me, but she is not indifferent. And a returning call. I am not indifferent. I no longer love her, but I am not indifferent.
In the dimly lit room, buzzing with machinery and heavy with the deep breathing of our sleeping allies, I feel her cool fingers brush my hair back from my forehead. The whisper screeches insanely and my muscles lock against the urge to strike at her. But the gentle hum is low in the background and I cling to it, fighting my way back, using it as a guide until I can unclench my jaw and my thoughts are my own again. Her gentle touch pulls another memory forward, our need for each other in other dark caves, on other dangerous nights. Our promise to each other to keep the other safe.
"You're still trying to protect me." It's not a question, it's a truth. "Real or not real?"
"Real," she answers, though I already knew. "Because that's what you and I do. Protect each other." With her soft hand on my head, with her watching over me, my eyes droop closed and I sleep.
The jungle steams and clicks around me. I move silently through the dim light, careful not to bring attention with an unexpected sound, or a tell-tale hiss. My brothers are all around me, but they don't know what I know. I know what to look for. I know what to avoid. I follow my instincts until I pick up a scent. There.
Sliding through the trees, I move closer. Following the scent that is hers, I know how to find her. The others can't feel her like I can. I can feel her under my skin, in my blood. I can find her. Low to the ground, out of sight, I glide toward her.
As I get closer, the buzz in my blood increases its pitch until I can feel it vibrate through my bones. I'm close, I can feel her. Like smoke, I drift silently behind a tree and peer around the trunk. It's as though she glows golden in the dark. A beacon, a call, a target. She sleeps, oblivious and helpless. Head pillowed on a hand on the spongy jungle floor, cheeks flushed with sleep.
My lips curl back from my teeth in a hungry grin. My blood screams for hers, my hands itch for her soft, weak skin. I can taste her sweat and her fear and her screams. A glow of pride that I'm the first to find her. I'll be rewarded. I'll be praised.
But what's this? Her light dims, her scent falters. Like a dark shield coming down around her, she fades from my sight. I stand straighter, searching for the intruder. There. I see it. Golden curls gleam in the moonlight, blue flame blazes in defiance from the eyes. I shudder away, I can't look at it. Hiding myself behind the tree, I pant, waiting until the sick clamminess recedes. He's watching over her.
No matter. I can still have her. I can still take her. I call to her.
"Katnisssssss…."