Mockingjay(31)

I’m moving in toward the camera now, carried forward by my rage. “President Snow says he’s sending us a message? Well, I have one for him. You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?” One of the cameras follows as I point to the planes burning on the roof of the warehouse across from us. The Capitol seal on a wing glows clearly through the flames. “Fire is catching!” I am shouting now, determined that he will not miss a word. “And if we burn, you burn with us!”

My last words hang in the air. I feel suspended in time. Held aloft in a cloud of heat that generates not from my surroundings, but from my own being.

“Cut!” Cressida’s voice snaps me back to reality, extinguishes me. She gives me a nod of approval. “That’s a wrap.”





Boggs appears and gets a firm lock on my arm, but I’m not planning on running now. I look over at the hospital—just in time to see the rest of the structure give way—and the fight goes out of me. All those people, the hundreds of wounded, the relatives, the medics from 13, are no more. I turn back to Boggs, see the swelling on his face left by Gale’s boot. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure his nose is broken. His voice is more resigned than angry, though. “Back to the landing strip.” I obediently take a step forward and wince as I become aware of the pain behind my right knee. The adrenaline rush that overrode the sensation has passed and my body parts join in a chorus of complaints. I’m banged up and bloody and someone seems to be hammering on my left temple from inside my skull. Boggs quickly examines my face, then scoops me up and jogs for the runway. Halfway there, I puke on his bulletproof vest. It’s hard to tell because he’s short of breath, but I think he sighs.

A small hovercraft, different from the one that transported us here, waits on the runway. The second my team’s on board, we take off. No comfy seats and windows this time. We seem to be in some sort of cargo craft. Boggs does emergency first aid on people to hold them until we get back to 13. I want to take off my vest, since I got a fair amount of vomit on it as well, but it’s too cold to think about it. I lie on the floor with my head in Gale’s lap. The last thing I remember is Boggs spreading a couple of burlap sacks over me.

When I wake up, I’m warm and patched up in my old bed in the hospital. My mother’s there, checking my vital signs. “How do you feel?”

“A little beat-up, but all right,” I say.

“No one even told us you were going until you were gone,” she says.

I feel a pang of guilt. When your family’s had to send you off twice to the Hunger Games, this isn’t the kind of detail you should overlook. “I’m sorry. They weren’t expecting the attack. I was just supposed to be visiting the patients,” I explain. “Next time, I’ll have them clear it with you.”

“Katniss, no one clears anything with me,” she says.

It’s true. Even I don’t. Not since my father died. Why pretend? “Well, I’ll have them…notify you anyway.”

On the bedside table is a piece of shrapnel they removed from my leg. The doctors are more concerned with the damage my brain might have suffered from the explosions, since my concussion hadn’t fully healed to begin with. But I don’t have double vision or anything and I can think clearly enough. I’ve slept right through the late afternoon and night, and I’m starving. My breakfast is disappointingly small. Just a few cubes of bread soaking in warm milk. I’ve been called down to an early morning meeting at Command. I start to get up and then realize they plan to roll my hospital bed directly there. I want to walk, but that’s out, so I negotiate my way into a wheelchair. I feel fine, really. Except for my head, and my leg, and the soreness from the bruises, and the nausea that hit a couple minutes after I ate. Maybe the wheelchair’s a good idea.

As they wheel me down, I begin to get uneasy about what I will face. Gale and I directly disobeyed orders yesterday, and Boggs has the injury to prove it. Surely, there will be repercussions, but will they go so far as Coin annulling our agreement for the victors’ immunity? Have I stripped Peeta of what little protection I could give him?

When I get to Command, the only ones who’ve arrived are Cressida, Messalla, and the insects. Messalla beams and says, “There’s our little star!” and the others are smiling so genuinely that I can’t help but smile in return. They impressed me in 8, following me onto the roof during the bombing, making Plutarch back off so they could get the footage they wanted. They more than do their work, they take pride in it. Like Cinna.