Chapter Twenty-Seven

"True immortality is the immortality of childhood and adolescence, where you never think you will have to die one day. The phantasm of immortality is merely the price paid for the certainty of dying."

- Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004

"I guess we'll never know what our scores were."

Peeta didn't react to the sudden words in the darkness. He was on edge, and now that the Games themselves had been interrupted by a declaration of war, he expected at any moment to be eliminated, along with possibly all the tributes. Since he had threatened the Gamemakers with knowledge he shouldn't know, he knew he would be the first to go. But he felt so strangely disconnected from that eventuality. He had crossed some barrier of disassociation in the last couple of days and anxiety was simply no longer in him.

The top of a very tall building was not, he reflected, the best place for him to be in regard to preservation of his safety, force field or no. But the suite was unbearable and the night was warm and, from the rooftop at least, very serene. Serenity was what he needed now. Peace was out of the question, so ….

"What are you doing up here, Thalia?" He wouldn't turn around to look at her; he couldn't. It was just too unsettling.

"Do you know what she's doing? Katniss Everdeen? Besides getting herself killed?"

He shook his head. Why should she expect answers from him when she was so unwilling to return the favor? But information was the only thing left, now. The word needed to be spread - wherever, whenever. Time was running short. "Not really. Katniss has been living in District Thirteen, or near enough to be acquainted with its leaders. Some plan for a revolt was brewing there to be timed around Snow's death, I think, but her role in it … initially, at least, involved only District Twelve. That's all I know." He finally turned around. Her eyes were glowing, even in the dim light. He swallowed. "What about you? What are you doing?"

She seemed to understand his question, and, finally, her hard face softened by a fraction. "I wanted to win. I was chosen to win. I found a sponsor to help me. Give me an edge."

"So you let them turn you into a mutt?"

She scowled at him. "It's just a little bit better vision, a little speed and endurance. For now."

"For now?"

"They took some other samples, blood and stuff. After the Games, I was to help with some other experiments."

"The genetic cloning program?"

"How do you know about that?" she asked.

"I also met someone at the party."

"Did they offer to help you, too?"

Peeta laughed. "In the Games? No. Don't worry about that. If they do happen, I'm sure that your status as chosen victor is safe. Given the competition, I think it's a wise choice, on their part. Most of the tributes are - well -."

"Horrible," she shuddered. "So - what will they do to me? After the Games, as part of the program?"

"I don't know what they're planning, only what they've done and what they've failed at. Snow's son - Attius - he's a clone. An almost exact genetic duplicate of his father."

"That can't be. They don't look anything alike."

"Well, I don't understand this exactly, but even though they can clone a person, they can't clone all of the ways the chromosomes and genes develop in the clone. We all have some genetic traits that we've inherited from all of our ancestors, but only some of those traits develop in us. They can't control that part yet. They didn't want to, in this case. Attius wasn't meant to look like a clone, he was only meant to be a genetic match for his father, so his genetic material could be used to keep Snow alive …."

"Forever?"

Peeta shrugged. "For a long time. Which it did. But also, whatever they did - whatever mutations they forced on Attius' genetics to create him - also led to Snow's death. They used to regularly feed him a cocktail created from his clone's mutated genes, which was both preserving and endangering him. His immune system just couldn't handle the mutations. They kept on experimenting to find ways around this problem - then time ran out."

"So - Snow's gone. What does that mean for the program now?"

"Snow's not gone. He has a different face and a different name. Attius wasn't the first clone and he won't be the last. But why would they stop, anyway? They still need to solve the problem of creating immortality. It's just moved to the next generation. It already had. Nona? Her mother founded the muttation lab. She's been working with Snow since birth, practically. Met Cray there - he was a lab technician, once upon a time. And that is why he was both exiled and protected. He knew too much. He may even have known about some of the other clones, which would have complicated the presidential succession, at the very least. If any of them survived."

"Do you think they intend for me to - give birth to Snow's clones?"

"I don't know - maybe. Or maybe have you contribute to the genetic material, in some way. If you take to the mutations - if they don't kill you or turn you into a rabid monster - I guess that would be valuable to solving their problem."

"Are Attius' children clones? He only has the three daughters, right?"

"That's a good question," replied Peeta. "You seem - very calm about this."

Thalia laughed shortly. "About being a mutt? What was I before? Was I any better than a mutt? This seems like a fair trade-off for being able to stay alive - and leave the life I had in Twelve."

"There was nothing wrong with you before. The way to fix things is not to fix people, not like this. It's to fix the fact that they never gave you any good choices. This is pure hubris - it's evil! It's picking the most powerful, most despicable man alive and saying that we will bend everything, sacrifice everything, in order to keep him going on and on forever. And we will take what we want from the poor in order to do it. It's sick!"

"But if they solve it for one person - they could solve it for everyone."

"Oh, so we can all go on being slaves and Games-fodder for eternity, while a few rich people get fatter and more and more bored as their time stretches further and further out? No - this doesn't fix the real problem. Or any problems. A sick body does not get better by cloning it. Neither does a sick society."

She shrugged. "We're on the verge of either death in the arena or death in a war. Just try asking me to care."

"Oh, I don't blame you. I'm not even sure I believe anything of what I just told you. It all sounds like a conspiracy theory wrapped up in nightmare fuel to me."

"So, what happens next?"

Peeta turned back around and looked down at the city streets. They were quieter than usual. He imagined that the rebellion's broadcast had the news engine working overtime and everyone was at home, glued to their television sets. "If I know the Capitol," he replied, "they'll press on as if everything is normal. They'll announce the scores, we'll do our interviews. That's how Snow would have done it - and how he'll keep on doing it, I imagine."

Katniss was furious. She had been yanked back into another vehicle - back on another route to another district - as soon as she had finished her speech. Then she had watched the playback later and saw the extent of the danger in which Coin had placed her. She had not expected a war to be declared while she was in the middle of a town square, surrounded by Peacekeepers. She felt like the worm that had been thrown in as bait. No, that analogy wasn't quite right … but there was some sense in her of having been used.

So, Cinna sat with her in the back of the latest van and distracted her by telling her stories that piqued her interest in spite of herself.

"My father," he told her, "was a tribute. Not a victor. Just a tribute, killed early in his Games. I was born in the Capitol about nine months later, but my story, of course was not an open one and I did not know the truth for a long time. As a Capitol bastard of unknown origin, I didn't have the life you might imagine when you think of us in the Capitol. We were outsiders, my mother and I, and there was not much love for us in her family. In the Capitol, status is everything, and she and I were a bit of a wrench in theirs."

"What district was your father from?"

"That's not as important as the fact that there was, for a long time, a vacuum at the center of the story of my life. So, I came up with my own. My father had escaped the Capitol to found a new country where my mother and I could be safe."

"Where did you think he went?"

"Down south. To what used to be known as South America. There used to be a connecting land mass between Panem and that continent, but it is a sea now, so there is no easy way to know if there are survivors there. The big wars happened on the other side of the planet, and while South America was no less climate-vulnerable than us, there is no reason to believe that the people there did not survive like we did."

"Do you know about the big wars?" asked Katniss. "I mean - what really happened? We were told barely anything about them in school, and none of it was necessarily believable."

"There were big two wars," said Cinna. "One of them was a global conflict over water, and other resources - but mostly water. It wasn't so much a war as a series of mass migrations leading to governments collapsing and other governments - and some rogue players - coming in to fill the gaps. Some people felt that the only humane solution left was to try to decrease the population by some means other than war or genocide - keep birth rates down, limit life-extending medical treatments. But - you can't institute that sort of thing without strong dictatorships, and that is what led to the actual war. Amid the clambering for power, someone eventually took a threat too far - not here, overseas - and set off nukes, which automatically set off some other nukes. The survivors over there - if there were any - would have wrestled with related diseases and extreme famine, but at least the population issue was resolved. Over here, the fallout caused massive die-offs, and agriculture took another big hit - the climate crisis had already decimated the soil, and now there was nuclear winter and radiation to add to the crisis. That led to the collapse of the North American governments and the eventual founding of Panem."

"How did we survive?"

"Underground - in places like District Thirteen. That was one of the largest of the shelters, as it was designed to house one of the old governments. But there were many others, scattered around. Eventually - eventually - they coalesced, fought again, founded Panem and here we are. Birthed from violence, we reflect our own parentage, I suppose. As I reflect my own. My father and his family picked cotton and my mother designed costumes. And I have always been drawn to fabrics."

"Cinna - this is all very interesting, but - how exactly does this relate to what is going on now? What does that have to do with me and Coin - and Peeta?"

"It's what I've tried to explain to you before - about filling the vacuum of Panem with something to inspire. When the world is void of clarity, people follow narratives. They bury themselves in stories, trying to find the meaning of things. Snow cast a long shadow and he was the center of Panem's narrative for so long that we all froze around him, not quite knowing how to live without him. That is the power of stories. For instance - everything I told myself about my father, before I knew the truth. It was the story that made sense of his absence. But my fiction was the reality that you forged for yourself and your sister. For many years, I tried to find someone who embodied that spirit of freedom, someone who could be the competing narrative to Snow's. Someone who could break the center. I had hopes of Madam Coin, but …." Cinna shook his head.

"She doesn't wear the costume well," Katniss finished for him.

"No, she is cold like Snow, in her own way. She has the weapons, but you -."

"Yeah, I get it. But all this history you're telling me - no offense, Cinna, I know you're working with her, but it sounds just like history repeating - her reaching out into the vacuum to take power now that Snow is gone."

"Yes," he said. "I suppose it does. Except I don't believe we ever had a Mockingjay in the mix before. They didn't exist back then."

"I'm afraid I'm going to be a crippling disappointment to you, Cinna," Katniss said. "I think I might be only the illusion you are trying to make real. Wake me up when we get to District Two."

Peeta's eyes opened a fraction of a second before it happened, and his hands automatically went up in defense. The attackers were white-armored, their visors down and darkened. Peacekeepers. He flailed his arms wildly and struggled to find purchase on the slippery surface of the sheets. They had only brought two, but one already had his hands clamped on Peeta's left forearm and the other was moving to the other side of the bed to try and subdue him on the right side.

It was an eerily silent struggle. The Peacekeepers said nothing and Peeta knew it was no use to scream out for help.

He twisted his body enough to avoid the hands of the second Peacekeeper and managed a half-sitting position against the pillows. Bracing his feet against the side of the bed, he started punching at the hands restraining him. He had just managed to get one hand off of him when a thump on the back of his neck paralyzed him mid-fight. Another to his head had him seeing stars, and then ….