no choice, the people begin to push out into the square, choking but defiantly waving their guns. My eyes dart around the rooftops that ring the square. Every one of them has been fortified with rebel-manned machine gun nests. Moonlight glints off oiled barrels.
A young man staggers out from the station, one hand pressed against a bloody cloth at his cheek, the other dragging a gun. When he trips and falls to his face, I see the scorch marks down the back of his shirt, the red flesh beneath. And suddenly, he’s just another burn victim from a mine accident.
My feet fly down the steps and I take off running for him. „Stop!“ I yell at the rebels. „Hold your fire!“ The words echo around the square and beyond as the mike amplifies my voice. „Stop!“ I’m nearing the young man, reaching down to help him, when he drags himself up to his knees and trains his gun on my head.
I instinctively back up a few steps, raise my bow over my head to show my intention was harmless. Now that he has both hands on his gun, I notice the ragged hole in his cheek where something—falling stone maybe— punctured the flesh. He smells of burning things, hair and meat and fuel. His eyes are crazed with pain and fear.
„Freeze,“ Haymitch’s voice whispers in my ear. I follow his order, realizing that this is what all of District 2, all of Panem maybe, must be seeing at the moment. The Mockingjay at the mercy of a man with nothing to lose.
His garbled speech is barely comprehensible. „Give me one reason I shouldn’t shoot you.“
The rest of the world recedes. There’s only me looking into the wretched eyes of the man from the Nut who asks for one reason. Surely I should be able to come up with thousands. But the words that make it to my lips are „I can’t.“
Logically, the next thing that should happen is the man pulling the trigger. But he’s perplexed, trying to make sense of my words. I experience my own confusion as I realize what I’ve said is entirely true, and the noble impulse that carried me across the square is replaced by despair. „I can’t. That’s the problem, isn’t it?“ I lower my bow. „We blew up your mine. You burned my district to the ground. We’ve got every reason to kill each other. So do it. Make the Capitol happy. I’m done killing their slaves for them.“ I drop my bow on the ground and give it a nudge with my boot. It slides across the stone and comes to rest at his knees.
„I’m not their slave,“ the man mutters.
„I am,“ I say. „That’s why I killed Cato…and he killed Thresh…and he killed Clove…and she tried to kill me. It just goes around and around, and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always the Capitol. But I’m tired of being a piece in their Games.“
Peeta. On the rooftop the night before our first Hunger Games. He understood it all before we’d even set foot in the arena. I hope he’s watching now, that he remembers that night as it happened, and maybe forgives me when I die.
„Keep talking. Tell them about watching the mountain go down,“ Haymitch insists.
„When I saw that mountain fall tonight, I thought…they’ve done it again. Got me to kill you—the people in the districts. But why did I do it? District Twelve and District Two have no fight except the one the Capitol gave us.“ The young man blinks at me uncomprehendingly. I sink on my knees before him, my voice low and urgent. „And why are you fighting with the rebels on the rooftops? With Lyme, who was your victor? With people who were your neighbors, maybe even your family?“
„I don’t know,“ says the man. But he doesn’t take his gun off me.
I rise and turn slowly in a circle, addressing the machine guns. „And you up there? I come from a mining town. Since when do miners condemn other miners to that kind of death, and then stand by to kill whoever manages to crawl from the rubble?“
„Who is the enemy?“ whispers Haymitch.
„These people“—I indicate the wounded bodies on the square—“ are not your enemy!» I whip back around to the train station. «The rebels are not your enemy! We all have one enemy, and it’s the Capitol! This is our chance to put an end to their power, but we need every district person to do it!»
The cameras are tight on me as I reach out my hands to the man, to the wounded, to the reluctant rebels across Panem. «Please! Join us!»
My words hang in the air. I look to the screen, hoping to see them recording some wave of reconciliation going through the crowd.
Instead I watch myself get shot on television.
16
«Always.»
In the twilight of morphling, Peeta whispers the word and I go searching for him. It’s a gauzy, violet-tinted world, with no hard edges, and many places to hide. I push through cloud banks, follow faint tracks, catch the scent of cinnamon, of dill. Once I feel his hand on my cheek and try to trap it, but it dissolves like mist through my fingers.
When I finally begin to surface into the sterile hospital room in 13, I remember. I was under the influence of sleep syrup. My heel had been injured after I’d climbed out on a branch over the electric fence and dropped back into 12. Peeta had put me to bed and I had asked him to stay with me as I was drifting off. He had whispered something I couldn’t quite catch. But some part of my brain had trapped his single word of reply and let it swim up through my dreams to taunt me now. «Always.»
Morphling dulls the extremes of all emotions, so instead of a stab of sorrow, I merely feel emptiness. A hollow of dead brush where flowers used to bloom. Unfortunately, there’s not enough of the drug left in my veins for me to ignore the pain in the left side of my body. That’s where the bullet hit. My hands fumble over the thick bandages encasing my ribs and I wonder what I’m still doing here.
It wasn’t him, the man kneeling before me on the square, the burned one from the Nut. He didn’t pull the trigger. It was someone farther back in the crowd. There was less a sense of penetration than the feeling that I’d been struck with a sledgehammer. Everything after the moment of impact is confusion riddled with gunfire. I try to sit up, but the only thing I manage is a moan.
The white curtain that divides my bed from the next patient’s whips back, and Johanna Mason stares down at me. At first I feel threatened, because she attacked me in the arena. I have to remind myself that she did it to save my life. It was part of the rebel plot. But still, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t despise me. Maybe her treatment of me was all an act for the Capitol?
«I’m alive,» I say rustily.
«No kidding, brainless.» Johanna walks over and plunks down on my bed, sending spikes of pain shooting across my chest. When she grins at my discomfort, I know we’re not in for some warm reunion scene. «Still a little sore?» With an expert hand, she quickly detaches the morphling drip from my arm and plugs it into a socket taped into the crook of her own. «They started cutting back my supply a few days ago. Afraid I’m going to turn into one of those freaks from Six. I’ve had to borrow from you when the coast was clear. Didn’t think you’d mind.»
Mind? How can I mind when she was almost tortured to death by Snow after the Quarter Quell? I have no right to mind, and she knows it.
Johanna sighs as the morphling enters her bloodstream. «Maybe they were onto something in Six. Drug yourself out and paint flowers on your body. Not such a bad life. Seemed happier than the rest of us, anyway.»
In the weeks since I left 13, she’s gained some weight back. A soft down of hair has sprouted on her shaved head, helping to hide some of the scars. But if she’s siphoning off my morphling, she’s struggling.
«They’ve got this head doctor who comes around every day. Supposed to be helping me recover. Like some guy who’s spent his life in this rabbit warren’s going to fix me up. Complete idiot. At least twenty times a session he reminds me that I’m totally safe.» I manage a smile. It’s a truly stupid thing to say, especially to a victor. As if such a state of being ever existed, anywhere, for anyone. «How about you, Mockingjay? You feel totally safe?»
«Oh, yeah. Right up until I got shot,» I say.
«Please. That bullet never even touched you. Cinna saw to that,» she says.
