And so ends…By Your Side. To those of you who have made it this far: thank you! I'll start posting the next fic ASAP and I hope you'll read that too

Storm rolls her eyes to the high heavens. "Oh, and that's a first."

"No, something really crazy." Even from fifty feet below, I can tell Turquoise's blue eyes are gleaming in a way that I find unsettling. She's always acted crazy, more or less, but this is the first time she's truly looked crazy. "In fact, you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me!" Nolan calls. Oddly enough, he seems amused by all this, whereas a deep-rooted fear has settled in my gut. I can tell just by looking that Peeta has frozen up as well.

"No, I think I'll just have to show you!" Turquoise calls back playfully. Of course she would goof around in a time like this- wait, what does that even mean? "…except they've probably stopped the cameras by now."

"GET DOWN AND STOP FUCKING AROUND!" Storm yells, cupping her hands around her mouth like a megaphone.

Turquoise continues as if nobody said a thing. "…you know, judging by the wolves."

I wonder now if the "crazy" we've all seen in Turquoise is actually a connection with a higher power. As soon as she finishes her sentence, a howl cuts through the icy air, proving that there are indeed wolves. Great. I reach for an arrow, but Turquoise cuts me off. "No- don't worry about it. They won't reach us in time. I just want to make sure everyone sees this."

Her tone is so serious, but she's digging around in her shirt the whole time she's talking, so I can't actually take it seriously. She pulls James out of her bra with a joyful squeal and holds him over her head. "Ah, my companion! Nightlock, nightlock, nightlock!"

I have no idea why she's yelling about poisonous plants, but suddenly, James springs to life. His legs stretch out then contract back under him, and then- oh no. Turquoise is throwing him. "Catch him, Katniss! And make him watch!"

I've never had much respect for authority, but I guess I don't want the innocent lizard to die on impact. I push H out of the way to catch the falling reptile, who is surprisingly heavy in my hands.

No, this is totally not a real lizard. I turn James around so I'm looking at his eyes, which are open now, but they're completely dead. Instead of pupils and iris, he has a mirror and bulb, like a television…no. Like a camera.

"Make him watch, Katniss!" Turquoise instructs again, and unsure of what else she could possibly mean, I point the small and definitely not real lizard at her perch in the tree. This seems to please her. She raises her crackling spear over her head and begins to yell, as if her goal is to make us as obvious as a target as possible. "Hi, thank you. People of Panem, you should all be listening by now- my lovely comrades in District Thirteen promised to hack the satellites for me, and they've never let me down before!"

Comrades? District Thirteen? What the fuck is she talking about? I hear Storm mutter her discontentment, but everyone else is listening, enraptured.

"Today, I'm going to show you that we don't have to do exactly what the Capitol orders us!" she declares, and fear sparks in my stomach, just like the sparks leaping off Lightning. That's rebel talk. Turquoise is crazy; she can say what she wants- but what she says right now affects all of us. "Today, I'm standing with the rebels!"

"Turquoise!" Thunder hisses. "What is going on?"

There's no point in the rest of us trying to keep quiet when she is yelling. She ignores him, anyway- ignores everything that is not part of her show. "Knives out, everyone!" she argues, drawing her arm back like she's ready to throw. "Tonight…we're going home."

Another wolf howls; is that what we need knives for? I scramble to pull mine from my belt as Turquoise launches her spear as hard as she can into the sky.

A useless show of strength, I assume…until it's not. Lightning hits an invisible blockade in the sky, producing the sound of a bolt of…well…lightning hitting the Justice Building. As the spear falls uselessly to the ground, cracks appear in the very sky like a pattern of veins, and suddenly those are falling too. Only they don't hit the ground. They almost evaporate, and that's when I realized what has happened. A force field- they have to keep us in here somehow, don't they? And Turquoise has shorted it out.

The scope of the illusion is quickly revealed; dismal gray sky turns to bright summery blue. The snow ends just twenty feet from where we're standing; there's a clear line where the arena ends and the real world begins. I look around and I see mountains, grass, and life, nothing like the cold gray world we've been trapped in thus far.

"I'll take that, thank you." Turquoise plucks James from my hands neatly. "Wouldn't want our escape to be recorded. Belladonna, belladonna, belladonna."

As suddenly as he came to life, the lizard spasms and its eyes shut again. But that's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried about her use of the word escape, and the sudden hundred-and-eighty degree flip our lives have just done. "Escape?" I repeat. I'm sure I'm not the only one confused. "Turquoise, where are we going?"

There's that gleam in her eye again. The one that had scared me before. "War, Katniss. We're going to war."

So…did anyone bet on Turquoise secretly being a rebel? Just curious.