The Life of A Victor || Finnick Odair

CHAPTER 59

Time passed slowly until the next afternoon, when the squad was notified to stage a somewhat complicated propo. As Peeta and Dove had said days before, Coin and Plutarch didn't seem pleased by the footage until then. A special block with a few pods that had been set aside for filming.

The first pod over there was a spray of gunfire. The other was a simple net pod, which would keep the enemy alive until the capturers decided what to do with them. Interrogation, torture, execution. Any could happen.

Just as the time to depart approached, everyone was told to suit up in the heavy protective gear, even the crew. Those with special weapons were allowed to bring them along.

"You two can have the gun back, but it only has blanks," Boggs said loudly enough for everyone to hear.

"I'm not much of a shot anyway," Peeta shrugged, glancing from Boggs to Dove, who shook her head.

"Yeah, me neither. I haven't had a single shot in my life. Zero out of twenty-four all the time . . . I think." Dove muttered, slowly drifting off the conversation to continue mumbling to herself.

"OK, give them each a gun filled with blanks, but at least let Dove carry her trident. If something does happen, having to take care of two people with no way of defending themselves will be tiresome," Johanna commented, resting her hand on her hips as if what she had just said was the most basic thing in the world.

Boggs complied in the end after a few interventions from Melo and Finnick, saying they would watch over her at all times so they could take the trident away from her in case it was really needed. Peeta suddenly got all the attention back to him as he started talking to Pollux, an Avox.

"You're an Avox, aren't you? I can tell by the way you swallow. There were two Avoxes with Dove and me in prison. Darius and Lavinia, but the guards mostly called them the redheads. They'd been our servants in the Training Centre, so they arrested them, too. We watched them being tortured to death. She was lucky. They used too much voltage and her heart stopped right off. It took days to finish him off. Beating, cutting off parts. They kept asking him questions, but he couldn't speak. He just made these horrible animal sounds. They didn't want information, you know? They wanted us to see it."

He looked around at everyone's stunned faces, except Dove, who kept her eyes glued to the ground, hoping the memories would be over soon. "Real or not real?" he asked towards anyone, but the lack of reply made him turn to Dove for the answer. "Dove, real or not real?"

She stood in silence, nodding her head while she hugged herself. "Real," she managed to whisper.

"I thought so. There was nothing . . . shiny about it." He muttered before walking away from the group, mumbling about things Dove tried hard not to listen to.

"Dove, how are you feeling?" Finnick asked, taking Dove away from the group as well, being closely followed by Johanna and Melo, who sat in front of them on the ground to hear Dove's whispers.

"It was horrible. The poor guy . . . He was right in front of Peeta. He could see him being tortured while I only heard the screams. It was just like he said. Animal sounds, not even proper screams . . . I hoped . . . I kept hoping they were Jabberjays. But it didn't make sense. Peeta himself didn't cry anyone's name, so it couldn't be that," Dove explained in a whispering tone.

However, there wasn't enough time to recover from Peeta's words as they were meant to keep going forward. When they arrived, everyone gathered around Boggs to examine the Holo projection of the street.

The gunfire pod was positioned not very far away, just above a flat awning. It was quickly decided it would be triggered by simply firing bullets in its direction. The net pod, however, was far away, almost in the next corner. It would be required someone to set off the body sensor mechanism, which caused everyone to volunteer except Peeta and Dove, who didn't catch up to what was happening.