If she could feel anything at all, Emma is sure it would be horror. But she is just numb; she might fall down where she stands but if she did, she supposes distantly, she wouldn't feel it anyway.

Paul is dead. Her big sister told her that. She wouldn't have lied; she must have made a mistake, seen things wrong. But she had been so sure.

Paul is alive and he's looking everywhere but the camera. There is a large, ugly bruise above his right eye and the tremors wracking his body are visible even on screen. He is just there.

People in the canteen around her are muttering, some in confusion and some clearly frustrated at the interruption. Not all of them know who he is, but most do. They all fall silent when he starts speaking.

His voice is hoarse and quiet, and Emma throws a hand out towards Pete, who mercifully grabs hold and gives it a squeeze, also having some kind of crisis at the sight of his brother's dead friend.

"I, um, I have a message from the Capitol for the tributes of the 75th Hunger Games." He cringes as he says it, but that could be from the content or the way that talking seems to tug at the wounds on his face. "I... I helped them cheat, but it could not have been done without Stephanie Lauter, Peter Spankoffski, Grace Chastity and Hannah Foster. My insubordination-" The word is clunky, and he coughs. "-is being dealt with. The consequences of my actions and those of the other rebels of Panem are yet to be fully seen..." He chokes on his next inhale and hesitates in reading the words clearly being fed to him. His eyes catch on something off screen and he cries out. "Please, I'm trying!"

Pete almost breaks Emma's fingers, but she uses the pain of his tight grip to anchor her. On screen, Paul is shaking his head frantically. The picture shudders and cuts out for a tense twenty seconds, and the length of the pause is what finally convinces Emma that this is real. Fake means polished in the Capitol, and this is anything but. When it returns it is to a different frame, still with the same white, featureless background but now with more figures on set, having been dragged into view. Paul kneels next to a short girl with wild curly hair, propping her up against his left side. She's bleeding onto the pristine white floor and a little bit onto the girl on her other side, who scowls at the camera with dark eyes as she braces herself against the ground with both hands tied in front of her.

Pete calls out to Ruth at the same time Hannah cries Lex's name.

"Ruth Fleming and Richard Lipshitz take the punishment for the crimes of Peter Spankoffski. Ethan Green and Lex Foster take the punishment for the crimes of Hannah Foster. Stephanie Lauter and Grace Chastity have succeeded in evading the Capitol for now, but given time, their punishments will come also." Paul is shaking his head again as he forces the words out, seemingly without even realising it.

There is a long pause in which he tries several times to speak the next sentence, and has to take a steadying breath. Then, something happens. His eyes narrow and he squeezes Ruth's shoulder; she nods ever so subtly and Lex tenses, shifting in closer to the smaller girl. His next words come out all in a rush, in his own voice not that of the Capitol.

"You're not safe there, they know where you are and they're coming, soon. We're ok, we'll be ok, but you have-"

A peacekeeper snatches Ruth away from him and he shouts in panic as he loses his grip; Lex kicks out at a different peacekeeper and then a third smacks Paul hard enough that he drops to the ground and the footage ends.

The static returns and Emma's legs finally do give out. She drags Pete down with her, and the two of them sit on the floor of the District 13 dining hall listening to the sound of static.

...

When feeling begins to return to Emma, she notices three things at once.

Firstly, she sees Pete's face. He is wide eyed and shaking, and Steph is sat across from him murmuring calming things that she can't make out over the buzzing in her ears.

Next, Emma sees that there is general chaos in the room around her. People are arguing over what the message meant, whether it was real or a set up; whether Paul's warning was legitimate. His warning, of course - the video feed must have been live, or that would have been edited out. What will they do to him now? He could be dead already.

The final thing she notices is Hannah, standing above it all. She is shrugging Grace off with a dazed look in her eyes, moving slowly past them all towards the door. Emma thinks she should check on the girl, who has just seen her sister is alive after all and being held captive. But then she thinks about her own sister, and try as she might, thoughts of Hannah evaporate.

Emma stands up, and as she rises from the floor, a siren begins to blare. "Shit." She breathes as the world begins to filter back in. She knows what that sound means, as they had all been taught when they first came here: take cover. There are bomb shelters deep beneath the main body of the base, with beds and supplies for weeks; people are already heading that way, streaming towards the stairwells in small groups.

"Come on." She beckons to Pete and Steph. Hannah and Grace are gone already.

"You lied to us!" Pete shouts at her over the noise.

"I didn't know!" The boy must see something in her face as she yells, because his own face softens. "Paul, he tried to warn us. We have to listen to him, we have to go now!"

The kids stagger to their feet and follow after her as she jogs into the corridors, gesturing for the stragglers from the canteen to come too. There is a steady flow of people walking briskly to the stairs; as soon as they get into the stairwell, things become more precarious. People are moving more urgently here, and there is the sound of a baby crying echoing up into the steep and narrow space. A man pushes between Steph and Pete, and they grab hands so as not to be separated. Steph takes Emma's hand too, and they move as a unit down the concrete steps, spiralling deeper and deeper into the dark. There are only occasional fluorescent lights guiding the way, and then the whole world seems to shake with a groan, and the lights shudder out altogether.

The terrible moment of pitch darkness lasts only for a few seconds, and then with a whirr the emergency generators must kick in because the place is filled with a red glow. A handful of screams avalanche into full blown panic, and now people are running down the steps, slipping, shoving.

"Hey!" Emma shouts when a girl starts pushing her way back up the stairs in the wrong direction. She catches her arm and leans in to tell her she needs to take cover, when she sees who it is. "Grace?"

"I lost Hannah." She gasps. "I didn't see her, she slipped away when it went dark..."

"Woah, slow down." They've stopped dead now and are very clearly in everybody's way. "I'm sure she carried on going down, to the shelter-"

"No, no she said she was going back, Webby told her to go back up there!"

Ice shoots down Emma's back. The kid is gonna get herself killed. "Carry on going!" She shouts to Steph and Pete, who shake their heads in unison. "Look, if she did carry on, or if she slipped and fell, she's going to be down there by herself. I need you to go and look in the shelter and see if you can find her."

There's a beat of hesitation before the pair nod and let go of her, darting off into the shadows calling Hannah's name. Grace pulls away and continues sprinting upwards; the flow of people is thinning out now and there are only handfuls of individuals that they have to dodge. Some of them try to stop and help, but Grace and Emma run straight past, not even calling out as they move as fast as they can.

They have only just reached the top of the stairwell and broken through into the corridor again when they hear it.

The screaming carries so far in the empty corridors that its hard to tell which direction its coming from. All Emma knows at first is that its the voice of a young girl, and it is filled with fear. As her senses hone, the acrid smell of smoke fills her nose and her throat scratches with the sensation.

"This way." Grace gasps, and they sprint off to the right, towards the thicker smoke lit only by the dim emergency lighting. Emma doesn't ask how she can tell where the cries are coming from, realises that its probably a skill she should be glad she doesn't possess. The air gets warmer as they move into the darkness - something must be on fire, somewhere, although she can't hear the flames from here - and the shouts get louder. Suddenly, abruptly, there is a voice in the gloom.

"I can't, I can't Hannah-" The girl is crying. "I want to go home."

"No time, Alice. Come and find your dad, come on." The second voice is unmistakably Hannah, and Grace shouts out her name. It strikes Emma that nobody had thought to ask after Bill's daughter Alice, forever slinking off with her new District 13 friends these days. Nobody except Hannah, it seems.

"Grace?" She replies, and it becomes clear that the girls are behind a door to their left.

"Its me, we're coming Hannah."

"No!" Alice again, and then the sound of a slap.

"Lexie might die for this, Alice! Paul and Ruth are hurting so you need to get up and be strong for them, or its all for nothing." Her voice is surprisingly sure.

By the time Emma and Grace have burst into the bedroom, Hannah is on her feet and moving towards them, with the older girl's arm in a vice grip as she drags them both to the door.

Wasting no time, Emma grabs Alice's other arm and Grace turns on her heels and darts back out into the corridor to check that its still clear. Deeming that it is, they make their careful way back to the stairwell they emerged from what feels like hours ago. Glimpses through the smoke reveal Alice's tearstained but otherwise unharmed face. She limps a little but can still walk; when the floor shudders beneath them again she cries out but the three of them manage to keep upright, with Grace only falling to brace herself on the wall before righting herself again.

Finally, finally, they reach the concrete stairs, and they all tighten their grips because although the stairwell is now almost completely empty, if one of them was to fall now they'd all be in trouble. Hannah doesn't so much as wobble as she guides her friend to safety, muttering reassurance and motivation all the way. She shrugs off the voice she calls Webby only twice, as they near the bottom of the steps.

"We have to hurry." She says a split second before a new alarm starts blaring and the large double doors at the end of the room start to wind closed.

Wordlessly, the four of them break into a dead run, even Alice with it enough now to realise the urgency. "Wait!" Emma screams, but there's nobody to appeal to; its all automatic down here and there's nothing that can stop those doors shutting now they have begun.

Grace slips through first, reaching an arm through the gap for Hannah. The girl makes it through the two foot wide gap with ease, and Grace tugs her out of the way so that Emma can shove Alice through. Only a foot or so wide now, Emma turns sideways to slip through, snapping her trailing left hand to her torso as the mechanical doors grind shut behind her, inches away. In her haste, she tumbles to the floor, panting.

She and the three girls she almost lost just breathe, and listen to the thunderous sounds above, and try not to notice the dust from the high ceiling above raining down on them with each rumble. Then Grace throws herself at Hannah, and even as they wrap their arms around each other she scolds the girl.

"How could you be so reckless? You could have died, and we would have died looking for you!"

Hannah sniffs, burying her head in Grace's shoulder. "Webby sent me to save Alice. She was scared and she didn't know where to go. They destroyed her home like this."

Emma remembers the absolute wreck that is District 3 after the Capitol sent bombers to erase it from Panem altogether, and Alice's hysteria suddenly makes horrible sense. She gathers Alice in her arms and shushes her gently as Grace does the same to Hannah.

"You're ok now." She pulls back carefully, surveying her and not noting any injuries.

"I am." Hannah agrees, and she smiles. "Lex is alive."

...