Mocking Jay

18
I throw myself into training with a vengeance. Eat, live, and breathe the workouts, drills, weapons practice,
lectures on tactics. A handful of us are moved into an additional class that gives me hope I may be a contender
for the actual war. The soldiers simply call it the Block, but the tattoo on my arm lists it as S.S.C., short for
Simulated Street Combat. Deep in 13, they've built an artificial Capitol city block. The instructor breaks us into
squads of eight and we attempt to carry out missions--gaining a position, destroying a target, searching a home-
-as if we were really fighting our way through the Capitol. The thing's rigged so that everything that can go wrong
for you does. A false step triggers a land mine, a sniper appears on a rooftop, your gun jams, a crying child
leads you into an ambush, your squadron leader--who's just a voice on the program--gets hit by a mortar and you
have to figure out what to do without orders. Part of you knows it's fake and that they're not going to kill you. If you
set off a land mine, you hear the explosion and have to pretend to fall over dead. But in other ways, it feels pretty
real in there--the enemy soldiers dressed in Peacekeepers' uniforms, the confusion of a smoke bomb. They
even gas us. Johanna and I are the only ones who get our masks on in time. The rest of our squad gets knocked
out for ten minutes. And the supposedly harmless gas I took a few lungfuls of gives me a wicked headache for
the rest of the day.
Cressida and her crew tape Johanna and me on the firing range. I know Gale and Finnick are being filmed
as well. It's part of a new propos series to show the rebels preparing for the Capitol invasion. On the whole,
things are going pretty well.
Then Peeta starts showing up for our morning workouts. The manacles are off, but he's still constantly
accompanied by a pair of guards. After lunch, I see him across the field, drilling with a group of beginners. I don't
know what they're thinking. If a spat with Delly can reduce him to arguing with himself, he's got no business
learning how to assemble a gun.
When I confront Plutarch, he assures me that it's all for the camera. They've got footage of Annie getting
married and Johanna hitting targets, but all of Panem is wondering about Peeta. They need to see he's fighting
for the rebels, not for Snow. And maybe if they could just get a couple of shots of the two of us, not kissing
necessarily, just looking happy to be back together--
I walk away from the conversation right then. That is not going to happen.
In my rare moments of downtime, I anxiously watch the preparations for the invasions. See equipment and
provisions readied, divisions assembled. You can tell when someone's received orders because they're given a
very short haircut, the mark of a person going into battle. There is much talk of the opening offensive, which will
be to secure the train tunnels that feed up into the Capitol.
Just a few days before the first troops are to move out, York unexpectedly tells Johanna and me she's
recommended us for the exam, and we're to report immediately. There are four parts: an obstacle course that
assesses your physical condition, a written tactics exam, a test of weapons proficiency, and a simulated combat
situation in the Block. I don't even have time to get nervous for the first three and do well, but there's a backlog at
the Block. Some kind of technical bug they're working out. A group of us exchanges information. This much
seems true. You go through alone. There's no predicting what situation you'll be thrown into. One boy says, under
his breath, that he's heard it's designed to target each individual's weaknesses.
My weaknesses? That's a door I don't even want to open. But I find a quiet spot and try to assess what they
might be. The length of the list depresses me. Lack of physical brute force. A bare minimum of training. And
somehow my stand-out status as the Mockingjay doesn't seem to be an advantage in a situation where they're
trying to get us to blend into a pack. They could nail me to the wall on any number of things.
Johanna's called three ahead of me, and I give her a nod of encouragement. I wish I had been at the top of
the list because now I'm really overthinking the whole thing. By the time my name's called, I don't know what my
strategy should be. Fortunately, once I'm in the Block, a certain amount of training does kick in. It's an ambush
situation. Peacekeepers appear almost instantly and I have to make my way to a rendezvous point to meet up
with my scattered squad. I slowly navigate the street, taking out Peacekeepers as I go. Two on the rooftop to my
left, another in the doorway up ahead. It's challenging, but not as hard as I was expecting. There's a nagging
feeling that if it's too simple, I must be missing the point. I'm within a couple of buildings from my goal when