Where was he? What were they doing to him?
"Dom!", Livia cried out, "Dominic!"
Only another agonized scream answered her.
How did he get there?
Why was he part of the Games?
"Dom!"
Vines cut into her face and arms, creepers grabbed her feet, but she was getting closer to him.
Closer- Very close.
Sweat poured down her face, stinging the healing acid wounds.
Livia panted, trying to get some use out of the warm, moist air that seemed empty of oxygen.
Dominic made a sound- such a lost, irretrievable sound- that she couldn't even imagine what they had done to evoke it.
"Dom!" She ripped through a wall of green into a small clearing and the sound repeated directly above her.
Above her?
Her head whipped back.
Did they have him up in the trees?
Livia desperately searched the branches but saw nothing.
"Dom?" She said pleadingly.
She could hear him but couldn't see him.
His next wail rung out, clear as a bell, and there was no mistaking the source.
It was coming from the mouth of a small, crested black bird perched on a branch about ten feet over her head.
And then she understood.
It was a jabberjay.
She'd never seen one before- she thought they no longer existed- and for a moment, as she leaned against the trunk of the tree, clutching the stitch in her side, she examined it.
The muttation, the forerunner, the father.
Livia pulled up a mental image of a mockingbird, fuse it with the jabberjay, and yes, she could see how they mated to make her mockingjay.
There was nothing about the bird that suggested it was a mutt.
Nothing except the horribly lifelike sounds of Dominic's voice streaming from its mouth.
Livia silenced it with an disc in its throat.
The bird fell to the ground and she removed her disc- wringing its neck for good measure.
Then she hurled the revolting thing into the jungle.
No degree of hunger would ever tempt her to eat it.
It wasn't real, she told herself.
The same way the muttation wolves last year weren't really the dead tributes.
It was just a sadistic trick of the Gamemakers.
Finnick crashed into the clearing to found her wiping her disc clean with some moss, "Livia?"
"It's okay. I'm okay", Livia muttered- although she didn't feel okay at all, "I thought I heard my brother but-"
The piercing shriek cut her off.
It's another voice, not Dom's, a young woman- Livia recognized it.
But not half as fast as Finnick did.
The color vanished from his face and she could actually see his pupils dilate in fear.
"Finnick, wait!" Livia started, reaching out to reassure him, but he bolted away. Gone off in pursuit of the victim, as mindlessly as she had perused Dom.
