“Peeta…” I whisper. I so wanted to protect him. Am still resolved to. Since I have failed to keep him safe in life, I must find him, kill him now before the Capitol gets to choose the agonizing means of his death. I slide my legs off the table and look around for a weapon. There are a few syringes sealed in sterile plastic on a table near Beetee’s bed. Perfect. All I’ll need is air and a clear shot at one of his veins.
I pause for a moment, consider killing Beetee. But if I do, the monitors will start beeping and I’ll be caught before I get to Peeta. I make a silent promise to return and finish him off if I can.
I’m naked except for a thin nightgown, so I slip the syringe under the bandage that covers the wound on my arm. There are no guards at the door. No doubt I’m miles beneath the Training Center or in some Capitol stronghold, and the possibility of my escape is nonexistent. It doesn’t matter. I’m not escaping, just finishing a job.
I creep down a narrow hallway to a metal door that stands slightly ajar. Someone is behind it. I take out the syringe and grip it in my hand. Flattening myself against the wall, I listen to the voices inside.
“Communications are down in Seven, Ten, and Twelve. But Eleven has control of transportation now, so there’s at least a hope of them getting some food out.”
Plutarch Heavensbee. I think. Although I’ve only really spoken with him once. A hoarse voice asks a question.
“No, I’m sorry. There’s no way I can get you to Four. But I’ve given special orders for her retrieval if possible. It’s the best I can do, Finnick.”
Finnick. My mind struggles to make sense of the conversation, of the fact that it’s taking place between Plutarch Heavensbee and Finnick. Is he so near and dear to the Capitol that he’ll be excused his crimes? Or did he really have no idea what Beetee intended? He croaks out something else. Something heavy with despair.
“Don’t be stupid. That’s the worst thing you could do. Get her killed for sure. As long as you’re alive, they’ll keep her alive for bait,” says Haymitch.
Says Haymitch! I bang through the door and stumble into the room. Haymitch, Plutarch, and a very beat-up Finnick sit around a table laid with a meal no one is eating. Daylight streams in the curved windows, and in the distance I see the top of a forest of trees. We are flying.
“Done knocking yourself out, sweetheart?” says Haymitch, the annoyance clear in his voice. But as I careen forward he steps up and catches my wrists, steadying me. He looks at my hand. “So it’s you and a syringe against the Capitol? See, this is why no one lets you make the plans.” I stare at him uncomprehendingly. “Drop it.” I feel the pressure increase on my right wrist until my hand is forced to open and I release the syringe. He settles me in a chair next to Finnick.
Plutarch puts a bowl of broth in front of me. A roll. Slips a spoon into my hand. “Eat,” he says in a much kinder voice than Haymitch used.
Haymitch sits directly in front of me. “Katniss, I’m going to explain what happened. I don’t want you to ask any questions until I’m through. Do you understand?”
I nod numbly. And this is what he tells me.
There was a plan to break us out of the arena from the moment the Quell was announced. The victor tributes from 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 11 had varying degrees of knowledge about it. Plutarch Heavensbee has been, for several years, part of an undercover group aiming to overthrow the Capitol. He made sure the wire was among the weapons. Beetee was in charge of blowing a hole in the force field. The bread we received in the arena was code for the time of the rescue. The district where the bread originated indicated the day. Three. The number of rolls the hour. Twenty-four. The hovercraft belongs to District 13. Bonnie and Twill, the women I met in the woods from 8, were right about its existence and its defense capabilities. We are currently on a very roundabout journey to District 13. Meanwhile, most of the districts in Panem are in full-scale rebellion.
Haymitch stops to see if I am following. Or maybe he is done for the moment.
It’s an awful lot to take in, this elaborate plan in which I was a piece, just as I was meant to be a piece in the Hunger Games. Used without consent, without knowledge. At least in the Hunger Games, I knew I was being played with.
My supposed friends have been a lot more secretive.
“You didn’t tell me.” My voice is as ragged as Finnick’s.
“Neither you nor Peeta were told. We couldn’t risk it,” says Plutarch. “I was even worried you might mention my indiscretion with the watch during the Games.” He pulls out his pocket watch and runs his thumb across the crystal, lighting up the mockingjay. “Of course, when I showed you this, I was merely tipping you off about the arena. As a mentor. I thought it might be a first step toward gaining your trust. I never dreamed you’d be a tribute again.”
“I still don’t understand why Peeta and I weren’t let in on the plan,” I say.
“Because once the force field blew, you’d be the first ones they’d try to capture, and the less you knew, the better,” says Haymitch.
“The first ones? Why?” I say, trying to hang on to the train of thought.
“For the same reason the rest of us agreed to die to keep you alive,” says Finnick.
“No, Johanna tried to kill me,” I say.
“Johanna knocked you out to cut the tracker from your arm and lead Brutus and Enobaria away from you,” says Haymitch.
“What?” My head aches so and I want them to stop talking in circles. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“We had to save you because you’re the mockingjay, Katniss,” says Plutarch. “While you live, the revolution lives.”
The bird, the pin, the song, the berries, the watch, the cracker, the dress that burst into flames. I am the mockingjay. The one that survived despite the Capitol’s plans. The symbol of the rebellion.
It’s what I suspected in the woods when I found Bonnie and Twill escaping. Though I never really understood the magnitude. But then, I wasn’t meant to understand. I think of Haymitch’s sneering at my plans to flee District 12, start my own uprising, even the very notion that District 13 could exist. Subterfuges and deceptions. And if he could do that, behind his mask of sarcasm and drunkenness, so convincingly and for so long, what else has he lied about? I know what else.
“Peeta,” I whisper, my heart sinking.
“The others kept Peeta alive because if he died, we knew there’d be no keeping you in an alliance,” says Haymitch. “And we couldn’t risk leaving you unprotected.” His words are matter-of-fact, his expression unchanged, but he can’t hide the tinge of gray that colors his face.
“Where is Peeta?” I hiss at him.
“He was picked up by the Capitol along with Johanna and Enobaria,” says Haymitch. And finally he has the decency to drop his gaze.
Technically, I am unarmed. But no one should ever underestimate the harm that fingernails can do, especially if the target is unprepared. I lunge across the table and rake mine down Haymitch’s face, causing blood to flow and damage to one eye. Then we are both screaming terrible, terrible things at each other, and Finnick is trying to drag me out, and I know it’s all Haymitch can do not to rip me apart, but I’m the mockingjay. I’m the mockingjay and it’s too hard keeping me alive as it is.
Other hands help Finnick and I’m back on my table, my body restrained, my wrists tied down, so I slam my head in fury again and again against the table. A needle pokes my arm and my head hurts so badly I stop fighting and simply wail in a horrible, dying-animal way, until my voice gives out.
The drug causes sedation, not sleep, so I am trapped in fuzzy, dully aching misery for what seems like always. They reinsert their tubes and talk to me in soothing voices that never reach me. All I can think of is Peeta, lying on a similar table somewhere, while they try to break him for information he doesn’t even have.
“Katniss. Katniss, I’m sorry.” Finnick’s voice comes from the bed next to me and slips into my consciousness. Perhaps because we’re in the same kind of pain.
“I wanted to go back for him and Johanna, but I couldn’t move.”
I don’t answer. Finnick Odair’s good intentions mean less than nothing.
“It’s better for him than Johanna. They’ll figure out he doesn’t know anything pretty fast. And they won’t kill him if they think they can use him against you,” says Finnick.
“Like bait?” I say to the ceiling. “Like how they’ll use Annie for bait, Finnick?”
I can hear him weeping but I don’t care. They probably won’t even bother to question her, she’s so far gone. Gone right off the deep end years ago in her Games. There’s a good chance I’m headed in the same direction. Maybe I’m already going crazy and no one has the heart to tell me. I feel crazy enough.
“I wish she was dead,” he says. “I wish they were all dead and we were, too. It would be best.”
Well, there’s no good response to that. I can hardly dispute it since I was walking around with a syringe to kill Peeta when I found them. Do I really want him dead? What I want…what I want is to have him back. But I’ll never get him back now. Even if the rebel forces could somehow overthrow the Capitol, you can be sure President Snow’s last act would be to cut Peeta’s throat. No. I will never get him back. So then dead is best.
But will Peeta know that or will he keep fighting? He’s so strong and such a good liar. Does he think he has a chance of surviving? Does he even care if he does? He wasn’t planning on it, anyway. He had already signed off on life. Maybe, if he knows I was rescued, he’s even happy. Feels he fulfilled his mission to keep me alive.
I think I hate him even more than I do Haymitch.
I give up. Stop speaking, responding, refuse food and water. They can pump whatever they want into my arm, but it takes more than that to keep a person going once she’s lost the will to live. I even have a funny notion that if I do die, maybe Peeta will be allowed to live. Not as a free person but as an Avox or something, waiting on the future tributes of District 12. Then maybe he could find some way to escape. My death could, in fact, still save him.
If it can’t, no matter. It’s enough to die of spite. To punish Haymitch, who, of all the people in this rotting world, has turned Peeta and me into pieces in his Games. I trusted him. I put what was precious in Haymitch’s hands. And he has betrayed me.
“See, this is why no one lets you make the plans,” he said.
That’s true. No one in their right mind would let me make the plans. Because I obviously can’t tell a friend from an enemy.
A lot of people come by to talk to me, but I make all their words sound like the clicking of the insects in the jungle. Meaningless and distant. Dangerous, but only if approached. Whenever the words start to become distinct, I moan until they give me more painkiller and that fixes things right up.
Until one time, I open my eyes and find someone I cannot block out looking down at me. Someone who will not plead, or explain, or think he can alter my design with entreaties, because he alone really knows how I operate.
“Gale,” I whisper.
“Hey, Catnip.” He reaches down and pushes a strand of hair out of my eyes. One side of his face has been burned fairly recently. His arm is in a sling, and I can see bandages under his miner’s shirt. What has happened to him? How is he even here? Something very bad has happened back home.
It is not so much a question of forgetting Peeta as remembering the others. All it takes is one look at Gale and they come surging into the present, demanding to be acknowledged.
“Prim?” I gasp.
“She’s alive. So is your mother. I got them out in time,” he says.
“They’re not in District Twelve?” I ask.
“After the Games, they sent in planes. Dropped firebombs.” He hesitates. “Well, you know what happened to the Hob.”
I do know. I saw it go up. That old warehouse embedded with coal dust. The whole district’s covered with the stuff. A new kind of horror begins to rise up inside me as I imagine firebombs hitting the Seam.
“They’re not in District Twelve?” I repeat. As if saying it will somehow fend off the truth.
“Katniss,” Gale says softly.
I recognize that voice. It’s the same one he uses to approach wounded animals before he delivers a deathblow. I instinctively raise my hand to block his words but he catches it and holds on tightly.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
But Gale is not one to keep secrets from me. “Katniss, there is no District Twelve.”
END OF BOOK TWO
About the Author
SUZANNE COLLINS is the author of the bestselling Underland Chronicles series, which started with Gregor the Overlander. The first novel in the Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games, was a New York Times bestseller, garnered numerous starred reviews, and received wide praise and accolades. Suzanne lives with her family in Connecticut. You can find her online at www.suzannecollinsbooks.com.
www.scholastic.com/thehungergames
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Suzanne Collins
Jacket art © 2009 by Tim O’Brien
Jacket design by Elizabeth B. Parisi
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. scholastic, scholastic press, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Collins, Suzanne.
Catching fire / Suzanne Collins. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (The Hunger Games trilogy; bk. 2)
Summary: By winning the annual Hunger Games, District 12 tributes Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark have secured a life of safety and plenty for themselves and their families, but because they won by defying the rules, they unwittingly become the faces of an impending rebellion.
[1. Insurgency — Fiction. 2. Survival — Fiction. 3. Television programs — Fiction. 4. Interpersonal relations — Fiction. 5. Contests — Fiction. 6. Science fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.C6837Cat 2009
[Fic] — dc22
2008050493
First edition, September 2009
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
E-ISBN 978-0-545-22724-7
Hunger Games 02 - Catching Fire Page 30