Katniss was making small talk with Haymitch's identical daughters when a shovel broke a window. Johanna kicked open the already-unlocked door. "Listen up," she shouted. "I have a dozen knives in my jacket and a lunatic war criminal with a magic shovel outside. You're coming with me, Haymitch Abernathy, or I will kill every one of these girls in front of you. They're all the same girl, you know that, and you will get to see her die all over again, and over, and over, and over. This place will bring her back, but I'll make sure you remember."
Haymitch only gazed at her sadly. "What are you doing this for?" he said. "We have a good thing. Why not ride with it?"
"I'm real, you're real, and I need your help," Johanna said. "I'm doing whatever it takes to get out of here, if I can. If it helps, look at it this way: If I can't do this, and the odds certainly don't look good, all that happens to you is that you get put back here."
Haymitch looked to the four faces of his girl. "Please don't leave us," they all said in unison. "We love you. We are all you ever wanted."
Haymitch shook his head. "I can't let anything happen to you again," he said, rising with his hands up. Victoria came immediately to his side. "It's not going to work, anyway. You'll see."
Johanna was jarred when the old man broke into tears. "Now what?" she snapped.
The old man looked up at her with those pathetic friendly-dog eyes. "Do... do you hate me?" he said.
She sighed. "No. You aren't a bad man. I think you're a nice man. I think I could like it if you were my friennd. I might even like it if you were my grandfather. But I can't be your granddaughter, because my mother didn't know who her father was any more than she knew mine, and your only child died in the 50th Hunger Games."
"I know," he sobbed. Johanna knelt down.
"Listen. We wouldn't have been put together if you didn't want someone real, and I do like you. So I'm asking you, please, come with me." He stood up, still sobbing, and burst out the door.
Johanna turned to Gale. "And you! Do we have to go over this again?"
Gale looked to Katniss, and a tear ran down his cheek. "You aren't even like her," he said. "Katniss would never be like you. You're like somebody's dream of what Katniss would be."
Katniss only looked him in the eyes and said, "But it was your dream."
Gale looked to Johanna. "Are you going to make me kill her again?"
"Oh, no," Johanna answered. "We're taking her with us." She took Katniss by the arm, and pushed her out the door. "I think we might want her with us, when we get to Peeta's house."
Peeta Mellark hummed to himself as he finished his breakfast, eating with one hand. The other was wrapped around the little girl in his lap. "Thank you, Daddy," Rosanna said as he gave her the last bite of a cheese bun.
"You're welcome," he said, kissing her on the forehead. "I love you... so much..." He looked up as his wife entered. "I love you too..."
"We should clean this up," Katniss said. "My sister will be coming soon."
The procession followed the edge of the woods, with Gale in the lead Romulus in the rear. Gale and Johanna whirled around at the clang of the shovel, to see him stooping over a flattened squirrel. "Are you the Mutt?" he said loudly. "Have you seen the Mutt?" Gale and Johanna exchanged glances. The cold glare of hate was rising in his eyes. Johanna only shrugged.
"Here's what I'm thinking," Gale said. "The picture I get is 1,200 inhabitants, and it checks out. As far as the balance of us to them, Haymitch's house has got me thinking that they don't want it to be more than about two to one. Maybe they did experiments to find the right balance for the real people to hold up at all. But I think it's a safe bet there's at least one Mutt for every human. They would need that, just to give everyone someone to want to stay for. So, it comes out as somewhere between 400 and 600 survivors in here.
"There's another thing: As far as I'm concerned, we have to figure on running into security measures we haven't seen. That force field you told me about is a nice trick, but there's too much that can go wrong with fields for it to be reliable, and we have to assume they know it. What makes most sense is a special type of Mutt capable of fighting, like a soldier ant among the workers... pretty close to what Romulus says he's looking for. He's off the deep end, and he could just be chasing a hob, but the idea makes too much sense to ignore."
"Well, how about we just ask?" Johanna said. She smiled and put an arm around Katniss. "Do you know? What can you tell us? How much do they tell you? Or is there even a `you', or just a puppet with them pulling the strings?"
"I would suggest that there is a more important question to be asked," Victoria said. "Is there, in fact, a `they'?
"Your questions are a matter for management," Katniss said. Then she dropped to the ground. Everyone staggered with sudden disorientation, and when they recovered, there was no trace of Katniss.
"The cues in my head... They're gone," Gale said.
"Maybe they're putting us on a different script," Johanna said.
"Hello, Gale," a cheerful voice called out. It was Dilly Cartwright, coming from ahead. "Are you coming to see Peeta?" Johanna tossed a knife. There was a flash as the weapon broke against a force field.
Johanna stared. "Are you real?"
Dilly smiled. "You could say I am Management."