Mockingjay(32)
I have a strange thought that if we were in the arena together, I would pick them as allies. Cressida, Messalla, and—and—“I have to stop calling you ‘the insects,’” I blurt out to the cameramen. I explain how I didn’t know their names, but their suits suggested the shelled creatures. The comparison doesn’t seem to bother them. Even without the camera shells, they strongly resemble each other. Same sandy hair, red beards, and blue eyes. The one with close-bitten nails introduces himself as Castor and the other, who’s his brother, as Pollux. I wait for Pollux to say hello, but he just nods. At first I think he’s shy or a man of few words. But something tugs on me—the position of his lips, the extra effort he takes to swallow—and I know before Castor tells me. Pollux is an Avox. They have cut out his tongue and he will never speak again. And I no longer have to wonder what made him risk everything to help bring down the Capitol.
As the room fills, I brace myself for a less congenial reception. But the only people who register any kind of negativity are Haymitch, who’s always out of sorts, and a sour-faced Fulvia Cardew. Boggs wears a flesh-colored plastic mask from his upper lip to his brow—I was right about the broken nose—so his expression’s hard to read. Coin and Gale are in the midst of some exchange that seems positively chummy.
When Gale slides into the seat next to my wheelchair, I say, “Making new friends?”
His eyes flicker to the president and back. “Well, one of us has to be accessible.” He touches my temple gently. “How do you feel?”
They must have served stewed garlic and squash for the breakfast vegetable. The more people who gather, the stronger the fumes are. My stomach turns and the lights suddenly seem too bright. “Kind of rocky,” I say. “How are you?”
“Fine. They dug out a couple of pieces of shrapnel. No big deal,” he says.
Coin calls the meeting to order. “Our Airtime Assault has officially launched. For any of you who missed yesterday’s twenty-hundred broadcast of our first propo—or the seventeen reruns Beetee has managed to air since—we will begin by replaying it.” Replaying it? So they not only got usable footage, they’ve already slapped together a propo and aired it repeatedly. My palms grow moist in anticipation of seeing myself on television. What if I’m still awful? What if I’m as stiff and pointless as I was in the studio and they’ve just given up on getting anything better? Individual screens slide up from the table, the lights dim slightly, and a hush falls over the room.
At first, my screen is black. Then a tiny spark flickers in the center. It blossoms, spreads, silently eating up the blackness until the entire frame is ablaze with a fire so real and intense, I imagine I feel the heat emanating from it. The image of my mockingjay pin emerges, glowing red-gold. The deep, resonant voice that haunts my dreams begins to speak. Claudius Templesmith, the official announcer of the Hunger Games, says, “Katniss Everdeen, the girl who was on fire, burns on.”
Suddenly, there I am, replacing the mockingjay, standing before the real flames and smoke of District 8. “I want to tell the rebels that I am alive. That I’m right here in District Eight, where the Capitol has just bombed a hospital full of unarmed men, women, and children. There will be no survivors.” Cut to the hospital collapsing in on itself, the desperation of the onlookers as I continue in voice-over. “I want to tell people that if you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly if there’s a cease-fire, you’re deluding yourself. Because you know who they are and what they do.” Back to me now, my hands lifting up to indicate the outrage around me. “This is what they do! And we must fight back!” Now comes a truly fantastic montage of the battle. The initial bombs falling, us running, being blown to the ground—a close-up of my wound, which looks good and bloody—scaling the roof, diving into the nests, and then some amazing shots of the rebels, Gale, and mostly me, me, me knocking those planes out of the sky. Smash-cut back to me moving in on the camera. “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?” We’re with the camera, tracking to the planes burning on the roof of the warehouse. Tight on the Capitol seal on a wing, which melts back into the image of my face, shouting at the president. “Fire is catching! And if we burn, you burn with us!” Flames engulf the screen again. Superimposed on them in black, solid letters are the words:
IF WE BURN YOU