Snow has stolen him from me, twisted him beyond recognition, and made me a present of him. Boggs, who came to 2 when I did, told me that even with all the plotting, it was a little too easy to rescue Peeta. He believes if 13 hadn’t made the effort, Peeta would’ve been delivered to me anyway. Dropped off in an actively warring district or perhaps 13 itself. Tied up with ribbons and tagged with my name. Programmed to murder me.
It’s only now that he’s been corrupted that I can fully appreciate the real Peeta. Even more than I would’ve if he’d died. The kindness, the steadiness, the warmth that had an unexpected heat behind it. Outside of Prim, my mother, and Gale, how many people in the world love me unconditionally? I think in my case, the answer may now be none. Sometimes when I’m alone, I take the pearl from where it lives in my pocket and try to remember the boy with the bread, the strong arms that warded off nightmares on the train, the kisses in the arena. To make myself put a name to the thing I’ve lost. But what’s the use? It’s gone. He’s gone. Whatever existed between us is gone. All that’s left is my promise to kill Snow. I tell myself this ten times a day.
Back in 13, Peeta’s rehabilitation continues. Even though I don’t ask, Plutarch gives me cheerful updates on the phone like “Good news, Katniss! I think we’ve almost got him convinced you’re not a mutt!” Or “Today he was allowed to feed himself pudding!”
When Haymitch gets on after, he admits Peeta’s no better. The only dubious ray of hope has come from my sister. “Prim came up with the idea of trying to hijack him back,” Haymitch tells me. “Bring up the distorted memories of you and then give him a big dose of a calming drug, like morphling. We’ve only tried it on one memory. The tape of the two of you in the cave, when you told him that story about getting Prim the goat.”
“Any improvement?” I ask.
“Well, if extreme confusion is an improvement over extreme terror, then yes,” says Haymitch. “But I’m not sure it is. He lost the ability to speak for several hours. Went into some sort of stupor. When he came out, the only thing he asked about was the goat.”
“Right,” I say.
“How’s it out there?” he asks.
“No forward motion,” I tell him.
“We’re sending out a team to help with the mountain. Beetee and some of the others,” he says. “You know, the brains.”
When the brains are selected, I’m not surprised to see Gale’s name on the list. I thought Beetee would bring him, not for his technological expertise, but in the hopes that he could somehow think of a way to ensnare a mountain. Originally, Gale offered to come with me to 2, but I could see I was tearing him away from his work with Beetee. I told him to sit tight and stay where he was most needed. I didn’t tell him his presence would make it even more difficult for me to mourn Peeta.
Gale finds me when they arrive late one afternoon. I’m sitting on a log at the edge of my current village, plucking a goose. A dozen or so of the birds are piled at my feet. Great flocks of them have been migrating through here since I’ve arrived, and the pickings are easy. Without a word, Gale settles beside me and begins to relieve a bird of its feathers. We’re through about half when he says, “Any chance we’ll get to eat these?”
“Yeah. Most go to the camp kitchen, but they expect me to give a couple to whoever I’m staying with tonight,” I say. “For keeping me.”
“Isn’t the honor of the thing enough?” he says.
“You’d think,” I reply. “But word’s gotten out that mockingjays are hazardous to your health.”
We pluck in silence for a while longer. Then he says, “I saw Peeta yesterday. Through the glass.”
“What’d you think?” I ask.
“Something selfish,” says Gale.
“That you don’t have to be jealous of him anymore?” My fingers give a yank, and a cloud of feathers floats down around us.
“No. Just the opposite.” Gale pulls a feather out of my hair. “I thought…I’ll never compete with that. No matter how much pain I’m in.” He spins the feather between his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t stand a chance if he doesn’t get better. You’ll never be able to let him go. You’ll always feel wrong about being with me.”
“The way I always felt wrong kissing him because of you,” I say.
Gale holds my gaze. “If I thought that was true, I could almost live with the rest of it.”
“It is true,” I admit. “But so is what you said about Peeta.”
Gale makes a sound of exasperation. Nonetheless, after we’ve dropped off the birds and volunteered to go back to the woods to gather kindling for the evening fire, I find myself wrapped in his arms. His lips brushing the faded bruises on my neck, working their way to my mouth. Despite what I feel for Peeta, this is when I accept deep down that he’ll never come back to me. Or I’ll never go back to him. I’ll stay in 2 until it falls, go to the Capitol and kill Snow, and then die for my trouble. And he’ll die insane and hating me. So in the fading light I shut my eyes and kiss Gale to make up for all the kisses I’ve withheld, and because it doesn’t matter anymore, and because I’m so desperately lonely I can’t stand it.
Gale’s touch and taste and heat remind me that at least my body’s still alive, and for the moment it’s a welcome feeling. I empty my mind and let the sensations run through my flesh, happy to lose myself. When Gale pulls away slightly, I move forward to close the gap, but I feel his hand under my chin. “Katniss,” he says. The instant I open my eyes, the world seems disjointed. This is not our woods or our mountains or our way. My hand automatically goes to the scar on my left temple, which I associate with confusion. “Now kiss me.” Bewildered, unblinking, I stand there while he leans in and presses his lips to mine briefly. He examines my face closely. “What’s going on in your head?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper back.
“Then it’s like kissing someone who’s drunk. It doesn’t count,” he says with a weak attempt at a laugh. He scoops up a pile of kindling and drops it in my empty arms, returning me to myself.
“How do you know?” I say, mostly to cover my embarrassment. “Have you kissed someone who’s drunk?” I guess Gale could’ve been kissing girls right and left back in 12. He certainly had enough takers. I never thought about it much before.
He just shakes his head. “No. But it’s not hard to imagine.”
“So, you never kissed any other girls?” I ask.
“I didn’t say that. You know, you were only twelve when we met. And a real pain besides. I did have a life outside of hunting with you,” he says, loading up with firewood.
Suddenly, I’m genuinely curious. “Who did you kiss? And where?”
“Too many to remember. Behind the school, on the slag heap, you name it,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “So when did I become so special? When they carted me off to the Capitol?”
“No. About six months before that. Right after New Year’s. We were in the Hob, eating some slop of Greasy Sae’s. And Darius was teasing you about trading a rabbit for one of his kisses. And I realized…I minded,” he tells me.
I remember that day. Bitter cold and dark by four in the afternoon. We’d been hunting, but a heavy snow had driven us back into town. The Hob was crowded with people looking for refuge from the weather. Greasy Sae’s soup, made with stock from the bones of a wild dog we’d shot a week earlier, was below her usual standards. Still, it was hot, and I was starving as I scooped it up, sitting cross-legged on her counter. Darius was leaning on the post of the stall, tickling my cheek with the end of my braid, while I smacked his hand away. He was explaining why one of his kisses merited a rabbit, or possibly two, since everyone knows redheaded men are the most virile. And Greasy Sae and I were laughing because he was so ridiculous and persistent and kept pointing out women around the Hob who he said had paid far more than a rabbit to enjoy his lips. “See? The one in the green muffler? Go ahead and ask her. If you need a reference.”
A million miles from here, a billion days ago,
this happened. “Darius was just joking around,” I say.
“Probably. Although you’d be the last to figure out if he wasn’t,” Gale tells me. “Take Peeta. Take me. Or even Finnick. I was starting to worry he had his eye on you, but he seems back on track now.”
“You don’t know Finnick if you think he’d love me,” I say.
Gale shrugs. “I know he was desperate. That makes people do all kinds of crazy things.”
I can’t help thinking that’s directed at me.
Bright and early the next morning, the brains assemble to take on the problem of the Nut. I’m asked to the meeting, although I don’t have much to contribute. I avoid the conference table and perch in the wide windowsill that has a view of the mountain in question. The commander from 2, a middle-aged woman named Lyme, takes us on a virtual tour of the Nut, its interior and fortifications, and recounts the failed attempts to seize it. I’ve crossed paths with her briefly a couple of times since my arrival, and was dogged by the feeling I’d met her before. She’s memorable enough, standing over six feet tall and heavily muscled. But it’s only when I see a clip of her in the field, leading a raid on the main entrance of the Nut, that something clicks and I realize I’m in the presence of another victor. Lyme, the tribute from District 2, who won her Hunger Games over a generation ago. Effie sent us her tape, among others, to prepare for the Quarter Quell. I’ve probably caught glimpses of her during the Games over the years, but she’s kept a low profile. With my newfound knowledge of Haymitch’s and Finnick’s treatment, all I can think is: What did the Capitol do to her after she won?
When Lyme finishes the presentation, the questions from the brains begin. Hours pass, and lunch comes and goes, as they try to come up with a realistic plan for taking the Nut. But while Beetee thinks he might be able to override certain computer systems, and there’s some discussion of putting the handful of internal spies to use, no one has any really innovative thoughts. As the afternoon wears on, talk keeps returning to a strategy that has been tried repeatedly—the storming of the entrances. I can see Lyme’s frustration building because so many variations of this plan have already failed, so many of her soldiers have been lost. Finally, she bursts out, “The next person who suggests we take the entrances better have a brilliant way to do it, because you’re going to be the one leading that mission!”
Gale, who is too restless to sit at the table for more than a few hours, has been alternating between pacing and sharing my windowsill. Early on, he seemed to accept Lyme’s assertion that the entrances couldn’t be taken, and dropped out of the conversation entirely. For the last hour or so, he’s sat quietly, his brow knitted in concentration, staring at the Nut through the window glass. In the silence that follows Lyme’s ultimatum, he speaks up. “Is it really so necessary that we take the Nut? Or would it be enough to disable it?”
“That would be a step in the right direction,” says Beetee. “What do you have in mind?”
“Think of it as a wild dog den,” Gale continues. “You’re not going to fight your way in. So you have two choices. Trap the dogs inside or flush them out.”
“We’ve tried bombing the entrances,” says Lyme. “They’re set too far inside the stone for any real damage to be done.”
“I wasn’t thinking of that,” says Gale. “I was thinking of using the mountain.” Beetee rises and joins Gale at the window, peering through his ill-fitting glasses. “See? Running down the sides?”
“Avalanche paths,” says Beetee under his breath. “It’d be tricky. We’d have to design the detonation sequence with great care, and once it’s in motion, we couldn’t hope to control it.”
“We don’t need to control it if we give up the idea that we have to possess the Nut,” says Gale. “Only shut it down.”
“So you’re suggesting we start avalanches and block the entrances?” asks Lyme.
“That’s it,” says Gale. “Trap the enemy inside, cut off from supplies. Make it impossible for them to send out their hovercraft.”
While everyone considers the plan, Boggs flips through a stack of blueprints of the Nut and frowns. “You risk killing everyone inside. Look at the ventilation system. It’s rudimentary at best. Nothing like what we have in Thirteen. It depends entirely on pumping in air from the mountainsides. Block those vents and you’ll suffocate whoever is trapped.”
“They could still escape through the train tunnel to the square,” says Beetee.
“Not if we blow it up,” says Gale brusquely. His intent, his full intent, becomes clear. Gale has no interest in preserving the lives of those in the Nut. No interest in caging the prey for later use.
This is one of his death traps.
15
The implications of what Gale is suggesting settle quietly around the room. You can see the reaction playing out on people’s faces. The expressions range from pleasure to distress, from sorrow to satisfaction.
“The majority of the workers are citizens from Two,” says Beetee neutrally.
“So what?” says Gale. “We’ll never be able to trust them again.”
“They should at least have a chance to surrender,” says Lyme.
“Well, that’s a luxury we weren’t given when they fire-bombed Twelve, but you’re all so much cozier with the Capitol here,” says Gale. By the look on Lyme’s face, I think she might shoot him, or at least take a swing. She’d probably have the upper hand, too, with all her training. But her anger only seems to infuriate him and he yells, “We watched children burn to death and there was nothing we could do!”
I have to close my eyes a minute, as the image rips through me. It has the desired effect. I want everyone in that mountain dead. Am about to say so. But then…I’m also a girl from District 12. Not President Snow. I can’t help it. I can’t condemn someone to the death he’s suggesting. “Gale,” I say, taking his arm and trying to speak in a reasonable tone. “The Nut’s an old mine. It’d be like causing a massive coal mining accident.” Surely the words are enough to make anyone from 12 think twice about the plan.
“But not so quick as the one that killed our fathers,” he retorts. “Is that everyone’s problem? That our enemies might have a few hours to reflect on the fact that they’re dying, instead of just being blown to bits?”
Back in the old days, when we were nothing more than a couple of kids hunting outside of 12, Gale said things like this and worse. But then they were just words. Here, put into practice, they become deeds that can never be reversed.
“You don’t know how those District Two people ended up in the Nut,” I say. “They may have been coerced. They may be held against their will. Some are our own spies. Will you kill them, too?”
“I would sacrifice a few, yes, to take out the rest of them,” he replies. “And if I were a spy in there, I’d say, ‘Bring on the avalanches!’”
I know he’s telling the truth. That Gale would sacrifice his life in this way for the cause—no one doubts it. Perhaps we’d all do the same if we were the spies and given the choice. I guess I would. But it’s a coldhearted decision to make for other people and those who love them.
“You said we had two choices,” Boggs tells him. “To trap them or to flush them out. I say we try to avalanche the mountain but leave the train tunnel alone. People can escape into the square, where we’ll be waiting for them.”
“Heavily armed, I hope,” says Gale. “You can be sure they’ll be.”
“Heavily armed. We’ll take them prisoner,” agrees Boggs.
“Let’s bring Thirteen into the loop now,” Beetee suggests. “Let President Coin weigh in.”
“She’ll want to block the tunnel,” says Gale with conviction.
“Yes, most likely. But you know, Peeta did have a point in his propos. About the dangers of killing ourselves off. I’ve been playing with some numbers. Factoring in the casualties and the wounded and…I think it’s at least worth a conversation,” says Beetee.
Only a handful of people are invited to be part of th
at conversation. Gale and I are released with the rest. I take him hunting so he can blow off some steam, but he’s not talking about it. Probably too angry with me for countering him.
The call does happen, a decision is made, and by evening I’m suited up in my Mockingjay outfit, with my bow slung over my shoulder and an earpiece that connects me to Haymitch in 13—just in case a good opportunity for a propo arises. We wait on the roof of the Justice Building with a clear view of our target.
Our hoverplanes are initially ignored by the commanders in the Nut, because in the past they’ve been little more trouble than flies buzzing around a honeypot. But after two rounds of bombings in the higher elevations of the mountain, the planes have their attention. By the time the Capitol’s antiaircraft weapons begin to fire, it’s already too late.
Gale’s plan exceeds anyone’s expectations. Beetee was right about being unable to control the avalanches once they’d been set in motion. The mountainsides are naturally unstable, but weakened by the explosions, they seem almost fluid. Whole sections of the Nut collapse before our eyes, obliterating any sign that human beings have ever set foot on the place. We stand speechless, tiny and insignificant, as waves of stone thunder down the mountain. Burying the entrances under tons of rock. Raising a cloud of dirt and debris that blackens the sky. Turning the Nut into a tomb.
I imagine the hell inside the mountain. Sirens wailing. Lights flickering into darkness. Stone dust choking the air. The shrieks of panicked, trapped beings stumbling madly for a way out, only to find the entrances, the launchpad, the ventilation shafts themselves clogged with earth and rock trying to force its way in. Live wires flung free, fires breaking out, rubble making a familiar path a maze. People slamming, shoving, scrambling like ants as the hill presses in, threatening to crush their fragile shells.
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