A Million Pieces - Hunger Games (Catching Fire & Mockingjay)

Chapter 39

The soldier orders me again. I feel dizzy, unsure on my feet. Am I still standing? I may collapse any moment. Think of them as Barrere. Think of them as the ones who took you away from District 4. Who took Talise away. Took Finnick. Took Caspian. The thought doesn't help, but it does ground me.

The voice in my ear comes again, more insistent this time. I raise my gun. One shot and I can escape. The gun goes off and the bullet hits the person right in the chest. The white Peacekeeping uniform splatters with red paint and the person pretends to collapse.

I run past them without looking, dropping my gun on the floor. I manage to compose myself enough to face the soldier who congratulates me and stamps my hand. She tells me to report to Command, but I go the opposite way. I find the nearest bathroom and throw up in the toilet. As I wash my face and hands, I look at myself in the mirror. It's as if flames still flicker in my amber eyes. The sound of the gunshot ricochets in my head.

This is it, I decide. This will be the last time I engage in combat. I do not want to do this. I barely left the Block sane, I would disintegrate in real battle. And I do not want to kill anybody. I don't. So they will find another way to make me useful.

But I'm intercepted as soon as I step out of the bathroom. Johanna. Her grubby hands grip my arms. There's something terribly wrong with her - her whole body is soaking wet, her eyes are blood red, she isn't trying to hide her anxious fidgeting, and it looks like she barely sees me. She definitely doesn't notice my own paleness.

"Did you pass?" she demands.

"Yes, but I-"

"I failed," she says. "They won't let me go to the Capitol."

"Oh, Johanna, I'm sorry. But I'll be-"

"When you're there, I need you to do something for me, because you're the only one of them who went through what I did." The look in her eyes is a deeply unsettling mix of wild and blank. I know that look. I spent weeks in the cell next door to that look. "You need to kill Barrere. You need to find him and kill him. Will you do it?"

"Johanna-"

"You said if I needed anything, I just had to ask. Right?" She manages to focus her eyes on me, and I wish she wouldn't. "Do this for me? For all of us. You, me, Peeta, Annie. Everyone that man has laid a finger on. Will you do it?"

And what can I say but yes? The second the word slips past my lips, Johanna's determination fails her and she collapses in my arms. I hold her tight. I hate her. But I will give myself up for her. She sobs loudly and my tears fall silently. Her dampness cools me and my fire warms her.

Ten minutes later, I am in Command, meeting the rest of my unit. Katniss grins giddily when she sees me. Gale and the five or six others that I don't know greet me politely. Only Caspian and Finnick watch me with worry, only they see the despair on my face. Plutarch has already started his presentation, gesturing over a holographic image of a Capitol block.

"Each light is a pod," he is saying. "It represents a different obstacle, designed to either trap or kill you. This program is our most recent information. The Capitol doesn't know we have it, but it's likely that new pods have been activated in the last few months. This is what you will face."

Katniss, Finnick, Caspian and I share a single thought. My hands reach for my hair. Caspian inhales sharply. Finnick tenses. Katniss breaks apart from the group, approaching the holograph. Finnick joins her, and he speaks quietly, "Ladies and gentlemen..."

Katniss's voice rings madly through the room. "Let the Seventy-sixth Hunger Games begin!"

"Are you sure you want to be here?" Caspian whispers to me. Finnick overhears and looks back at us.