A couple more things to introduce this chapter: I debated mentioning before that I have chosen to use "hob" in this story in its traditional sense of a fairy or spirit. I also thought up a name for Romulus's shovel mk. 2, the "hoe-apick", and I was happy to introduce if as an example of the "junkyard tech" look I usually favor in my stories.

Every door on the main corridor was blocked by a force field. Romulus, Haymitch, Victoria, Peeta and Prim could only back away from the figure that strode inside. Little Rosanna, perched in Prim's arms, pointed and said, "Mama?"

Peeta stared at the perfect likeness of Katniss Everdeen, in a simple hunting jacket. "No," he said. "She's not your mama, and that's not her."

Victoria drew closer to Haymitch. "I remember us talking, sometime for some reason, about a raccoon with a can," she said. "We're the raccoons, and we're in the can."

"Mutt! Mutt!" Romulus shouted. He swung his weaponized shovel, driving the downturned and heavily sharpened blade deep into Katniss's skull. She dropped without a cry, but two more Katnisses followed, one wearing a stylized propo uniform and another in a bridal gown. The latter pushed back a veil, revealing a scaled Ophidian face.

"But I am Katniss," said the uniformed figure. "I am your Katniss, because you made me as I am. I wanted to be with Prim, but you would not let me go. Everything I am is yours." As she spoke, her face transformed into the Ophidian, and Prim placed Rosanna in Peeta's arms and walked with open arms toward the thing that had been her sister.

As the Ophidian's maw gaped for Prim's head, Romulus lunged in and hacked away half the distended lower jaw with the shovel head. The Ophidian gripped the shovel handle and jerked back, dragging Romulus toward the gowned Ophidian. He swung up and drove the knife blade into the roof of the Ophidian's mouth. The creature dropped, still gripping the shovel, while the bride passed by.

Romulus unwrapped the chain around his waist and lashed for the bride's skirts, entangling her and then jerking her off her feet. Peeta dragged Prim back, and Romulus jerked the shovel free of the dead claws. He caved in the back of the bride's skull with the flat of the shovel head as it rose, and turned to face the next comer. He froze: It was a woman of the Seam, with a child in her arms. "Mutt!" he screeched, brandishing the shovel. He lashed the chain. "Go back! Run! You could have run."

"To where?" she said hollowly. "To you? We would rather have burned." More followed, a solid wall of human misery. Some were horribly burned, but most had only the marks of grinding despair, and wide eyes that seemed frozen in looks of transcendent fear or resignation. "What will you do to us now? Kill us again?"

"No," Romulus said. "I did not do this. Even Snow would never have wanted this." His eyes fixed on one face, the scarred old miner from the platform. "You! You are not even dead!"

"Does it matter?" he answered. "You killed us all. You destroyed our homes. You took our hopes, even the smallest. You killed our spirits, as surely as the bombs killed us, and the bombs were kinder."

"Stand back," Haymitch warned, raising his knife. Victoria pressed against him, and he withdrew to the force field with the knife pressed to her throat. "Come any closer, and we'll do it!"

The mob halted halfway down the corridor. Prim moved forward, into their midst. "This is what you would give, to the others in this place," she said. "You would take them back to the ashes of their homes and the bones of the dead. You would make them remember. Do you truly think they will be better off here than there?"

Peeta set down Rosanna, and the crowd parted for him as he followed Prim. "You are not like these others," he said. "They are not real, and I don't think anyone was ever meant to think they were real. But you seem like you could really be Prim. If you really are, then you are my friend."

He put a brotherly arm around her. "Do you remember the times I walked you home from school? The other boys teased me. Once, my mother beat me because of it. They didn't understand. I loved Katniss, but she was like a hob-queen to me. I was too scared to try even being friends with her, and I didn't think I deserved it. But I could talk to you, and getting to know you was like getting to know her.

So if you are Prim, or even understand Prim, tell me: If Katniss was out there, where would you want her to be?"

Prim took his hand, and led him to the door of the utility room. At her touch, a force field crackled and dematerialized, long enough to open the door and guide him through. Behind them, the Mutt mob pressed against the field. Prim bent down beside a great, thrumming machine, and traced a pattern in the concrete floor. Where she touched, a little access panel appeared. The entire mob screamed in unison as she pried it up.

Prim clutched her abdomen, but smiled. "I give you," she said, "the can opener." Beneath the panel was one golden lever. Smoke was rising from between Prim's fingers. The field went down, and a dozen Mutts swarmed in. Peeta had just enough time to pull up the lever before he was seized. Then reaching arms suddenly withdrew, and he followed with a cry of anguish, shielding his eyes as Prim burst into flames.