I find Gale in the virtual shooting range, laying waste to a number of targets that appear around him in different directions. The technology is similar to the range in the Training Center, but the mechanics seem more advanced here in Thirteen. I wonder how the rest of Thirteen's arsenal compares to that of the Capitol's.
I wait until he's done, watching him hit target after target as they come at him, each faster than the last. He'll certainly do well in combat, if we see any today. He spots me waiting by the entrance and comes over, but doesn't say anything.
"Look," I mumble, staring at the floor, "What you saw. It's not, well, I mean—it was, but, I'm not really sure what, uh…"
I trail off. What am I even talking about?
I look up at Gale, pleadingly, hoping maybe he'll understand when I'm trying to say and let me off the hook. He's staring at me, mouth open, eyebrows raised.
"What I'm trying to say," I manage, "Is that…I didn't know. That you'd be there—in the hallway, I mean. I don't want…"
What is it exactly that I don't want? I can't exactly say I don't want Peeta, and I don't want to just come out and tell Gale that I don't feel the same way that he does. Who would want to say something like that? What I'd really like is if Gale and I could just stay friends like we were before, and Peeta and I could just keep up what we've been doing. Whatever that means.
In order to stay friends with Gale, I'm going to need to talk to him, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable it is. When I look back to Gale, he seems to be expecting something. I wonder how long I've been thinking.
"Sorry," I say, and take a deep breath. "I'm not doing a good job, but I want to talk to you about…what just happened. If that's okay, I mean—"
"Katniss, it's alright." he says. I look up at him and see that, while he's not smiling, he's not really frowning either.
"What's alright?" I ask. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.
"I've had my suspicions."
Well, that could mean several different things. I don't say anything, just wait.
"When you kissed him on the beach. In the games." he says uncomfortably, "You've never kissed me like that. But, I thought that it might've been for the cameras. This time, I know it wasn't. It was real."
Oof. Well, he has a point, I suppose. I've kissed Gale twice at this point, once in the woods when he confessed that he was in love with me, the second when he was sleeping on my mother's kitchen table. There was something that I occasionally felt when I kissed Peeta that I'd never felt when kissing Gale, but I'd never really thought about it like that. But if Gale sensed it too, then it must mean something, right? So far he seems calm, not angry with me at the very least, and that seems like a good sign. It's already going better than I expected.
"What I'm trying to say," he says, "Is that I'm gonna back off. You're my best friend. You've been through two Hunger Games. You're the face of the rebellion. You've got, you know, a lot going on."
I laugh in spite of myself, then clamp my mouth shut. To my amazement, he laughs too.
"I don't know what they're going to do with me. You saw my propo today," I say, rolling my eyes. "I thought they were going to fire me and make Peeta do the whole thing."
"Today was the first time I really started to understand why Haymitch went with the whole star-crossed lover plan in the first place," he says, grinning, "I had no idea how bad you were."
"I'm awful." I say seriously, and then sigh. "I hate being on camera."
"I know." Gale says, and puts his arm around me. Not in a romantic way, like old times. "But you heard them in there. You can do this. You have done this. We just have to get you out of that studio."
He then does a spot on impression of my line reading from the propo, his voice jerky and robotic like mine was.
"People—of Panem. We…fight! We…dare! To…end our hunger for…justice!"
I punch him.
"Don't worry," he says. "It's a bad line. A really bad line. It wasn't just you."
"Just partly me."
"Three-quarters you." he says, grinning.
I realize that if feels better between us. Less uncomfortable, more like before all of this had happened. Gale looks at me and for a second I think that he's going to tell me he loves me again. I start to say something but he cuts me off.
"You know what the worst part is?" he says, a sad smile on his face, "He's a good guy. I like him."
I swallow. We're back on Peeta again.
"At the very least, I trust him." he says, serious now. "And I hate to admit it, but his cheese rolls are…incredible."
"No one can hate the cheese rolls." I say.
Gale laughs, and then we're walking down the hall towards the hangar, talking and laughing like we used to in the woods.
Somehow, miraculously, I think I've both handled and avoided the situation, an outcome I didn't think possible, but that I certainly won't be complaining about.
When we get to the hangar, Peeta's already there. He waves to both of us, but continues chatting with the two burly camera men who are there with him. They have heavy mobile cameras encasing their bodies like insect shells, and stand with a woman with a shaved head tattooed with green vines who we're introduced to as Cressida, the director, and her assistant Messalla, a slim young man with several sets of earrings. They're all from the Capitol but left to fight for the rebellion. Both Gale and Peeta are wearing the grey military jumpsuits the rest of the Thirteen soldiers wear, and this strikes me somehow. But then, in Thirteen the age you begin serving in the military is fourteen, so by their standards they've been of soldier age for years. Even here, out of the reach of the Capitol, violence seems to find kids.
Boggs comes around the side of the Hovercraft while Peeta and Gale talk to the camera crew. He walks over to me and sees me staring up and around at the hangar, with all its different kinds of hovercraft.
"Thirteen is larger than I thought." I say to him.
"Can't take credit for much of it," says Boggs. "We basically inherited the place. It's been all we can do to keep it running."
"Did you inherit all these?" I ask.
"Some we manufactured. Some were part of the Capitol's air force. They've been updated of course." says Boggs.
I feel a twinge of hatred against Thirteen again. "So, you had all this, and you left the rest of the districts defenseless against the Capitol?"
"It's not that simple," he shoots back. "We were in no position to launch a counter-attack until recently. We could barely stay alive. After we'd overthrown and executed the Capitol's people only a handful of us even knew how to pilot."
I glare at him. They're here now. They're fighting now. Maybe that's what's important. But I don't know. It feels to me like Thirteen had been waiting until the right moment, when the other districts were ready to fight, so that they didn't have to do all the work themselves, even thought they were the ones with the weapons. There's no way that Twelve would have been able to amass any sort of weapons stockpile to rival the peacekeepers, and I doubt that the other districts are very different. But I suppose I'm about to find out just how one of the districts is doing.
Fulvia Cardew hustles over and makes a sound of frustration when she sees my clean face. "All of that work, down the drain. I'm not blaming you, Katniss. It's just that very few people are born with camera-ready faces. Like him," she snags Gale, who's in a conversation with Plutarch, and spins him toward us. "Isn't he handsome?"
Gale does look striking in uniform, I guess. I worry that this comment will be uncomfortable, given the conversation we just had, but he throws me a vacant, vapid smile, unfocusing his eyes a little so that he looks so much like a Capitol model I snort with laughter. Fulvia looks at him to see what's so funny, but Gale's already wiped the look off his face and replaced it with a serious, battle-ready one.
There's a warning of the upcoming takeoff and I strap myself in between Gale and Peeta, facing off with Haymitch and Plutarch. Peeta throws me an anxious grin, and I realize that I have no idea what we've to expect in District 8. Plutarch tries to give us the rundown, explaining that every district except Two is on our side and fighting against the Capitol.
"Our goal is to take over the districts one by one, ending with District Two, thus cutting off the Capitol's supply chain. Then we'll invade the Capitol." says Plutarch.
"If we win, who will end up in charge of the government?" Gale asks.
"Everyone," Plutarch tells him. "It's like what Katniss said, a free and democratic election where the people of the Capitol can elect their own representatives to be their vote in the centralized government. It's worked before."
"In books." Haymitch mutters.
"In history books." says Plutarch.
"And if we lose?" I ask.
"If we lose?" Plutarch looks out the window at the clouds, and an ironic smile twists his lips. "Then I would expect next years Hunger Games to be quite unforgettable. That reminds me." He takes a vial from his vest, shakes a few deep violet pills into his hand, and holds them out to us. "We named them nightlock in your honor, Katniss. The rebels can't afford for any of us to be captured now."
I take hold of the capsule, and Plutarch taps a spot on my shoulder at the front of my left sleeve. I examine it and find a tiny pocket that both holds and conceals the pill. Even if my hands were tied, I could lean forward and bite it free. The military uniforms from Thirteen, it seems, have these pockets built into their shoulders as well, because both Gale and Peeta slip their nightlock pills inside. Peeta and I exchange a look and I know he's thinking of all that time ago, when I held out the real nightlock berries to him. The moment that started this all.
Cinna, it seems, had thought of everything. I'm suddenly very sad, thinking about my friend and stylist, who's almost certainly dead because of his commitment to the rebel cause. I'm filled with dual parts terror and determination as I slip the pill into my own shoulder pocket, imagining horrific scenarios. Gale being held by Peacekeepers—a perfect time to swallow the pill— Peeta being chained up in some Capitol prison but remembering that he has easy access to a manufactured poisoned berry—But I hope it doesn't come to that. I can't let it come to that.
When we land, Boggs hustles us off the road towards a row of warehouses. When we emerge onto the street, it's like we've entered another world.
The wounded from this morning's bombing are being brought in. On homemade stretchers, in wheelbarrows, on carts, slung across shoulders, and clenched tight in arms. Bleeding, limbless, unconscious. Propelled by desperate people into a warehouse with a sloppily painted H above the doorway.
This is where they plan on filming me? I turn to Boggs. "This won't work," I say, "I won't be good here."
He must see the panic in my eyes, because he stops a moment and places a hand on my shoulder. "You will. Just let them see you. That will do more for them than any doctor could."
I doubt this very much, but don't have time to voice it before we're met by a woman with dark brown eyes and a bandage around her neck that should have been changed days ago. She introduces herself as Commander Paylor.
"You're alive then," she says to me and I sense accusation in her voice. "We weren't sure."
"I'm still not sure myself." I answer.
"Been in recovery," Boggs taps his head. "Bad concussion. Miscarriage." Paylor's eyes flit to Peeta, who's standing behind me. "But she insisted on coming to see your wounded."
Paylor leads us inside the building. Corpses lie side by side, white cloth concealing their faces. "We've got a mass grave started a few blocks west of here but I can't spare the manpower to move them yet," she says as she finds a slit in the curtain and opens it wide.
My fingers wrap around Peeta's wrist. "Stay by my side." I say under my breath.
"Always." he answers quietly, taking my hand in his. With Peeta by my side and Gale watching my back, I feel the smallest bit more confident.
I step through the curtain and all confidence is stripped away. My senses are assaulted. Rows and rows of cots filled with wounded, on pallets, on the floor because there are so many to claim the space. The drone of black flies, the moaning of people in pain.
"Katniss?" a voice creaks out from my left, breaking apart from the general din. "Katniss?" A hand reaches for me. I cling to it for support. Attached to the hand is a young woman with an injured leg. Her face reflects her pain, but something else that seems completely incongruous with the situation. "Is it really you?"
"Yeah, it's me." I say.
Joy. That's the expression on her face.
"You're alive! We didn't know! People said you were, but we didn't know!" She says excitedly. I kneel down next to her, still holding her hand.
"I got pretty banged up. But I got better." I say. "Just like you will."
I feel Peeta's hand squeeze my shoulder in support.
"I have to tell my brother!" she struggles to sit up and calls to someone a few beds down. "Eddy! Eddy! She's here! It's Katniss Everdeen!"
I hear our names rippling through the hot air, spreading out into the hospital. "Katniss Everdeen! Katniss Everdeen!" The sounds of pain and grief seem to recede, to be replaced by words of anticipation. Hungry fingers devour me as I try to touch every hand, look into each pair of eyes. People begin to notice Peeta and his name cascades though the warehouse too. People seem truly devastated to learn that I've lost the baby. They grasp our hands, touch our faces, tell us how much we mean to them. Peeta doesn't leave my side for a moment.
"We were so worried for you," an older man rasps from his cot, gesturing to his wife beside him. "We didn't think it would be possible for you both to make it out, not again. But you did. You did!"
I take the man's hand and he squeezes mine, giving me a pained but toothy smile.
I begin to fully understand the lengths to which people have gone to protect me. What I mean to the rebels. I was their Mockingjay long before I accepted the role.
A new sensation beings to germinate inside of me. But it takes until I am standing on a table, waving my final goodbyes to the hoarse chanting of my name, to define it. Power. I have a kind of power that I never knew I possessed.
When we get outside, I lean against the warehouse, catching my breath, accepting a canteen of water from Boggs. "You did great," he says.
Well, I didn't faint or throw up or run out screaming.
"We got some nice stuff in there," says Cressida.
Peeta is beaming at me. I can't help but grin back.
"Are all the districts like that?" I ask Boggs, referring to the conditions of the hospital. But he looks distracted by something in his earpiece.
"We're to get to the airstrip. Immediately." Boggs said, guiding me by the shoulder. "Incoming bombers. Let's move!"
We begin jogging through the buildings when the sirens begin to wail. Within seconds, a low-flying V-shaped formation of Capitol hovercrafts appear above us and the bombs begin to fall. I'm blown off my feet, into the front wall of the warehouse. I look around desperately for Peeta, and see him laying on his back, but alive. I spot Gale across the street, still standing. I try to get up but Boggs pins me down as bombs continue to fall, his body shielding me from the blast.
"Peeta!" I cry out, reaching out for him. He turns when he hears my voice, and gets on his hands and knees. He crawls towards Boggs and I. I clutch his hand from underneath Boggs's human shield.
"Katniss!" I'm startled by Haymitch's voice in my ear. "Listen to me, we can't land during the bombing but it's imperative that you're not spotted."
He tells me that intelligence doesn't think that the Capitol knows I'm there, and that there's a bunker three blocks down. Boggs says that he'll do his best to get us there. My bodyguards and crew are getting up, and it occurs to me that Haymitch must be in everyone's ear. Peeta helps me to my feet and we start down the street.
"You've got about forty seconds until the next wave." Plutarch says though the radio.
We run down the street and sure enough, the bombs begin again. This time it's Peeta who throws himself over me to provide me one more layer of protection against the bombing. It seems to go one longer this time, but we're farther away.
I shift onto my back and find myself looking directly into Peeta's eyes. For an instant the world recedes and there is just his face, his lips slightly parted as he tries to catch his breath. My heart starts pounding against my ribcage, which is saying something because it was already going pretty fast because of the bombs. When the air seems to clear again, Peeta pulls me to my feet. It strikes me how steady he seems, even under pressure like this. Gale runs towards us.
"Alright?" he asks us both. We nod. "They don't seem to be following us, looks like they've targeted something else."
All three of us look to the sky.
"There's nothing back there but—" the realization hits all three of us at the same time.
"The hospital." Peeta says it. Gale runs back to the others and starts shouting.
"They're targeting the hospital!" he says, waving his arms at them.
"Not your problem," Plutarch says over the radio. "Just get to the bunker."
"Katniss," I hear the warning note in Haymitch's voice. "Don't you even think about it."
But I've already ripped out my ear piece, letting it hang by its wire.
"Katniss, up there!" Peeta says, pointing to a rooftop where someone is standing with a machine gun, returning fire. Before I make my move, Peeta and I make eye contact. He has the same look on his face as he did right before I shot the forcefield. "Go!" he says, and I know we're thinking the same thing. I don't hesitate any longer. I turn and run towards the ladder leading up to the roof, gesturing for Gale to follow me.