Thank you for all of the feedback! Please do continue! Sorry it took me a little while to update. Don't worry - I plan on finishing this story! I'm just on the road a lot right now and find it hard to squeeze in a moment to write. Your comments motivate me a lot, so keep them coming!

"They're lying."

I didn't get a chance to ask what Johanna meant. The moment those words left her mouth a couple of Peacekeepers swarmed the cell and dragged her out into the center. As one Peacekeeper held her cuffed arms by the elbows, she drew her legs up and delivered a powerful kick to the chest of another, knocking him back. I guess that's why they had restrained all of her limbs. She was a fighter. The one who had been holding her threw her down in the center of the room and kicked her in the stomach. Johanna laughed in between gasps for air, looking defiantly up at her assailant.

"Stop it!" I shouted, beating against the door to my cell as I watched. Why were they being so much rougher with her? If only I could break this door open, I could rush the Peacekeepers and tackle the other to the ground.

"Enough!" Thread had entered the room amidst the clamor. He stood over Johanna with a look of determined disgust. "Put her in the collar," he ordered, and then glanced over at me.

The Peacekeeper that Johanna had kicked had been wielding something when he entered the room. It looked like a collar attached to the end of a long pole, like I've seen used on feral animals before. I could barely stand to watch. He thrust the collar around Johanna's neck and tightened it, holding her away from them at the end of the pole, her limbs still bound. Thread was still watching me. He looked like he was calculating something.

Thread motioned to the soldier. "Get her up."

The Peacekeeper raised Johanna up forcefully by the neck. She struggled to keep up with the pace while her limbs were bound, shakily pushing herself up on her feet with what must have taken a lot of core strength. The Peacekeeper held her neck up a little too high, forcing her to sway unsteadily on her toes.

Thread nodded approvingly at his colleague and began the questioning. "Tell me what you know."

Johanna somehow managed to spit pretty far, and although she didn't hit anyone, the insolence wasn't appreciated. Thread produced a taser. "That's two strikes, tribute." He get close to her face, hovering the taser close to her neck, which she unfortunately could not move away with the other Peacekeeper holding her fast. "I heard what you said to Mellark. You have information that I'm going to get. You can either give it to me, or I can take it from you."

Johanna growled. "You've already taken everything from me. There's nothing left."

Thread shoved the taser into her neck, and Johanna trembled violently in the electric current. "NOOOO!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, thrusting my shoulder into the door in an attempt to break it down. It wouldn't budge. Threads eyes slid back over to me, and he removed the taser. Johanna began to crumple to the floor, but the collar device and the Peacekeeper holding it forced her to stay up.

"Let's try that again," Thread said loudly and turned his eyes back to Johanna. "Tell me who was in on the rebel plot."

Rebels?

Johanna grimaced, but didn't answer. This continued for a few more rounds. Thread demanded information, but Johanna refused every time. She was smart. She didn't taunt or boast about her wealth of information, nor did she deny that she had any. She seemed to realize that she was going to be a punching bag whether she delivered or not. Maybe this was the fastest way to make it stop.

I hated to watch her be tortured, especially because Thread seemed to watch me most of the time. I hated that part of me wanted Johanna to break so that she would tell us all what she knew. My insatiable desire to know whether or not Katniss was truly dead stirred in me, and I found myself unable to reconcile the fact that I wanted Thread to get what he wanted. If he got information, so did I.

But there was guilt. Johanna had tried to comfort me as I nearly lost my mind, and in this moment of weakness she had revealed too much. Johanna had no one that she cared about – she had made that clear multiple times. But she was holding secrets that might keep my loved ones alive.

"Get the boy," Thread barked at the Peacekeeper who wasn't holding Johanna. The white soldier stormed toward my cell, drawing a pattern on the keypad rapidly, my door finally sliding open. I charged at him, aiming to tackle him, but he had a taser also. He shoved it into my stomach, and I instantly lost my ability to think.

"He doesn't know anything!" I heard Johanna exclaim as I was dragged by the back of my wetsuit from my cell. I was shoved down on my knees in front of a whipping post. My limbs felt limp from the taser and I could barely fight back as my wrists were secured to the side. I felt the upper half of my wetsuit being ripped open to expose my back.

I searched the room to see that I was facing Johanna and the other Peacekeepers. There were still holding her in the collar. Her neck was screaming red from the taser.

"I warned you about your skin," Thread's voice murmured close to my right ear as he circled behind me. "Alright, tribute," his voice directed toward Johanna's direction. "Tell me what you know, or it'll cost him his skin." He emphasized his point by resting the end of a flogger on my shoulder, the tails hanging down so that I could see the leather. It was strange to me that, with all of the technology available in the Capitol, Thread was utilizing such an arcane form of torture. The flogger was red, a striking contrast to the white pole I was strapped to.

Johanna's voice held strong. "I told you – he doesn't know anything."

"Yes, tribute, so then how do you know that?" I could hear in his voice that he was smiling. "You wouldn't be so sure if you weren't involved."

The first blow to my back was explosive. Even though I knew that the flogger was only but so big, the pain radiated up my spine in a hot, terrible wave. I couldn't stop myself from crying out in the surprise of the attack, my wrists cutting into the cuffs as I pulled involuntarily at the pole. Thread repeated the gesture twice more.

Johanna screamed at Thread. "Peeta was only there to save Katniss. You saw him volunteer at the reaping."

"Johanna, stop," I forced past my teeth. "He isn't going to believe you."

Thread laughed shortly. "You two need to get your story straight or I'll skin you both." I felt the flogger dragging along my back over injured flesh and winced as he dug in. "I'll break you sooner or later." Thread's voice was back at my ear as he leaned in close. "I'm hoping it's later."

Next, I heard his voice bark behind me. "Let's start with 20. But I want you to count, sweetie, because he owes you for them." I'm sure that was directed at Johanna.

Somewhere around 10 the pain reminded me of the poison fog, in the Quarter Quell; how it felt sizzling against my back. My memory flashed back to that moment. Katniss begging me to keep moving forward. She was in front of me, her olive eyes staring into mine. "Please Peeta, run! Peeta, please! Stay with me!"

And then she vanished.

I was hanging my head, wincing against the pole with each strike. I opened my eyes to see sprays of red on the floor. I could hear Johanna screaming and heard the unmistakable sound of the taser. It seemed to go on forever.

My chin was roughly grabbed and forced upward. My eyes snapped open to see Thread staring into my face, as intense as he had been in the room full of videos. He had this measured way of gazing, peering past my eyes into my thoughts. "You'll have to finish the count," he said matter-of-factly.

What do you think happens next? Let me know your thoughts in the reviews, please! They are highly motivating for me to keep going :)