When the bag was removed from my head, I was nearly blinded by the brightness of the room. I squeezed my eyes shut involuntarily and felt myself be shoved forward. I stumbled, my arms still cuffed behind me, stopping myself from tripping by letting the wall catch me. The sound of compressed air was followed by the sound of a keypad, and finally a bolt. I forced myself to open my eyes and blink past the black spots in my vision in order to see what the hell was going on.

Like Peacekeeper uniforms and President Snow's signature color, everything was white. The lights were so bright on their own, and reflecting off of the walls made everything seem whiter. I was standing in a small room, maybe three by five feet, with all glass walls that reached up to the ceiling. It was a really small, completely exposing cell. I'm assuming that the blinding lights was to prevent anyone here from getting much sleep.

This cell was part of a larger room. The room was a square, and there was one cell in each corner, surrounding a much larger, open space. Like a mini arena, I thought darkly.

I could see Johanna in the cell to my left, slumped on the floor. "Johanna!" I called, wishing my hands were free so that I could knock on the glass to draw more attention to myself. "Johanna!"

She looked up at me with a shrewd grimace. "Going to accuse me of killing your fiancée?" She rolled her eyes and looked away. "You know what? Fuck it. I don't care at this point."

"Seriously, Johanna, please." I pleaded. "Is she alive?"

Johanna's eyes moved around the room, checking for surveillance. There were several blinking red lights along the ceiling, probably indicating cameras. She simply looked at me but did not indicate any answer. I desperately wanted to push her, but knew I would get nothing out of her at this point. She didn't think it was safe to confide anything. During the games it was clear that our allies had been keeping secrets from us. Apparently that wasn't over, even outside of the arena.

"Do you know where we are?" I asked, figuring that nothing bad could come of that answer.

Johanna glared at me, clearly annoyed. "Not really. But I'm guessing that those straps behind you aren't for kinky bedroom fun." It occurred to me that I hadn't even turned around, so I looked behind me to see the straps Johanna was talking about. There were a few sets of them attached to the wall behind me, clearly intended to wrap around wrists.

I took a deep breath and a shiver ran through me.

Turning back to Johanna I asked, "What happened to the arena?" Her eyes were looking around the room again, slowly. She seemed completely calm.

"Boom," she said, eyes drifting back to me. "That's the simple way to put it."

"Did you see it? Why would the Capitol do that?"

Johanna rolled her eyes again. "Look. Any minute now, Peacekeepers are going to come ask the same questions. And I'm going to tell them the same thing I'm telling you – I. Don't. Know."

"I don't believe you."

"They won't either," she muttered, staring down at her feet, which were cuffed. I briefly wondered why they had tied off both her wrists and ankles.

I arched my back in an attempt to relieve my shoulders, sore from my shoulder blades pinching together as my wrists were still cuffed together behind my back. I swallowed hard against my sandpaper throat, dry from hours without water and also from screaming Katniss's name.

We waited for what felt like several hours. I paced my tiny cell, looking around for any signs of where we were. I guessed it was in the Capitol, but I really had no way to be sure. Johanna shut her eyes and seemed to doze off for a while. I remembered what she said in the arena. They can't hurt me anymore.

I, on the other hand, had a lot of people to protect.

The transparent door across the room slid open and in marched four Peacekeepers. They walked straight through the center of the room, clearly approaching my cell. When they reached the door, one of them commanded, "Against the wall, tribute." I obliged, taking a few steps back.

The Peacekeeper placed his hand in front of the keypad and seemed to trace a design, causing that compressed air sound and my door to slide open. "Step out of the cell."

When I hesitantly walked forward into the center of the room, two Peacekeepers grabbed me, one on each arm. The third Peacekeeper turned to lead us out of the room, while the final Peacekeeper followed me. "Where are you taking me?" I asked, but was only given a shove forward from the Peacekeeper behind me. I anxiously looked over my shoulder at Johanna before they pushed me through the door. She was watching with a grave expression.

They walked me down a long, white hallway before turning into a new room. One of the walls was entirely made up of screens, underneath which there was a long panel of buttons and switches being operated by men and women in white uniforms. My eyes quickly scanned all of the screens, anxiously taking in what I saw. Districts on fire, the view of from the dashboard of Capitol Hovercrafts, citizens in the Capitol hurrying around in little crowds while waving their hands animatedly, and finally, of course, several feeds from the arena.

Thread, the Peacekeeper who had been stationed in District 12 right before the Quarter Quell's Reaping, looked up from a small group who seemed to be in the middle of discussing something. He waved them away, and then came over.

"This is your chance to save your skin. And I mean every word of that," Thread said, his eyes searching me up and down. "Get him a prisoner's uniform," he barked to an Avox in the corner. Turning back to me he continued, "Who was in on it?"

"In on what?" Smack. Thread had punched me across the jaw. My head whipped sideways as I caught my breath.

"Don't be cute."

I turned back slowly. "I don't know what you're talking about." Smack. His fist again. I tasted blood.

"Cue up the footage," he ordered someone at the desk as he grabbed me by the throat and directed me head toward a screen. "Now watch this, loverboy, to jog your memory." And I immediately forgot about where I was or what was happening because she was on the screen.

Katniss was pointing an arrow at Finnick, ready to shoot. "Katniss," Finnick pleaded, his hands raised in surrender. "Remember who the real enemy is." After a long minute of staring, Katniss began to lower her arrow.

But thunder growled, and Katniss and Finnick both jerked their heads up to see clouds forming above the tree. "Katniss..." Finnick looked terrified. "Get away from that tree!" But she was wrapping Beatee's gold coil around her arrow and aiming up at the sky. She looked right at the camera and fired her arrow just as lightning struck the tree. Katniss screamed as she was blown back and the feed went dark.

Tears were streaming down my face as a stared at the screen in shock. Thread had not released my throat and had not stopped staring directly into my face the entire time. "What did Odair mean?" he barked, bringing my attention away from the dark screen and back to him.

"Is she dead?" I choked out.

Thread squeezed my throat menacingly and shook me. He lifted me off of the ground. I could feel myself running out of air. "What did Odair mean?"

"IS SHE DEAD?!" I screamed through the strangulation with some hidden strength that I summoned from deep inside. "IS KATNISS DEAD?!"

Thread's lip curled and he threw me down. The other Peacekeepers caught me and kept me on my feet. "Yes, loverboy. The girl on fire burned up."

It's a good thing that Peacekeepers were holding me, because I felt my legs give out. I couldn't see where I was anymore...I went somewhere dark, all voices and noises becoming vague and foggy. I felt like I was underwater, everything blurred and muffled.

"He's done today. Get him back in his cell."

They dragged me back down the hall to the white room, and before locking me back into my cell they unlocked my wrists. "Put this on," one instructed, shoving a simple pair of pants and a shirt into my arms. Then they pushed me inside, where I immediately dropped it all.

"What happened?" Johanna asked from her cell across the room. When I didn't answer, she pressed. "Hey. Bread boy. What happened in there?"

I stared down at the clothes on my floor, seeing them lose shape as tears filled my eyes. "She's dead," I barely whispered.

"How do you know?"

"They showed me."

"Peeta..."

Rage enveloped me. I began beating on the walls, screaming nonsense, and ripping at my own hair, skin. "GODDAMNIT!" I yelled, slingly a tray of food that had been left into the door of my cell. "I'LL KILL YOU, SNOW!" I bellowed at the closest blinking red light I could find.

"Don't be stupid!" Johanna screamed over at me. "They're lying."

"I SAW IT!"

"Peeta..." Johanna said more quietly. "Don't be stupid," she said again more suggestively. "They're lying."