The Hunger Games - Peeta Mellark (1)

}26{ - Checkmate

Livia's mother wore the same look on her face.

Now was the time to run away to the woods, to hide in the trees until the patient was long gone and in another part of town the hammers make the coffin.

But Livia was held there both by the hovercraft walls and the same force that held the loved ones of the dying.

How often she had seen them, ringed around their kitchen table and she thought, Why don't they leave?

Why do they stay to watch?

And now she knew.

It was because you had no choice.

She startled when she caught someone staring at her from only a few inches away and then realize it was her own face reflecting back in the glass.

Wild eyes, hollow cheeks, her hair in a tangled mat.

Rabid. Feral. Mad.

No wonder everyone was keeping a safe distance from her.

The next thing she knew they had landed back on the roof of the Training Center and they were taking Peeta but leaving Livia behind the door.

She started hurling herself against the glass, shrieking and she thought she just caught a glimpse of pink hair when the needle jabbed her from behind.

When she woke, she was afraid to move at first.

The entire ceiling glowed with a soft yellow light allowing her to see that she was in a room containing just her bed.

No doors, no windows were visible.

The air smelled of something sharp and antiseptic.

Her right arm had several tubes that extended into the wall behind her.

She was naked, but the bedclothes were soothing against her skin.

She tentatively lifted her left hand above the cover.

Not only had it been scrubbed clean, the nails were filed in perfect ovals.

She touched her cheek, her lips, the puckered scar above her eyebrow, and was just running her fingers through her silken hair when she froze.

Apprehensively she ruffled the hair by her left ear.

No, it wasn't an illusion.

She could hear again.

She tried to sit up, but some sort of wide restraining bound around her waist kept her from rising more than a few inches.

The physical confinement made her panic and she was trying to pull herself up and wriggle her hips through the band when a portion of the wall slid open and in stepped a redheaded Avox girl carrying a tray.

The sight of her calmed Livia and she stopped trying to escape.

She wanted to ask a million questions.

They girl set the tray across Livia's thighs and pressed something that raised Livia to a sitting position.

While she adjusts Livia's pillows, Livia risked one question.