Mocking Jay

20
It's as if in an instant, a painted window shatters, revealing the ugly world behind it. Laughter changes to
screams, blood stains pastel stones, real smoke darkens the special effect stuff made for television.
A second explosion seems to split the air and leaves my ears ringing. But I can't make out where it came
from.
I reach Boggs first, try to make sense of the torn flesh, missing limbs, to find something to stem the red flow
from his body. Homes pushes me aside, wrenching open a first-aid kit. Boggs clutches my wrist. His face, gray
with dying and ash, seems to be receding. But his next words are an order. "The Holo."
The Holo. I scramble around, digging through chunks of tile slick with blood, shuddering when I encounter
bits of warm flesh. Find it rammed into a stairwell with one of Boggs's boots. Retrieve it, wiping it clean with bare
hands as I return it to my commander.
Homes has the stump of Boggs's left thigh cupped by some sort of compression bandage, but it's already
soaked through. He's trying to tourniquet the other above the existing knee. The rest of the squad has gathered
in a protective formation around the crew and us. Finnick's attempting to revive Messalla, who was thrown into a
wall by the explosion. Jackson's barking into a field communicator, trying unsuccessfully to alert the camp to
send medics, but I know it's too late. As a child, watching my mother work, I learned that once a pool of blood has
reached a certain size, there's no going back.
I kneel beside Boggs, prepared to repeat the role I played with Rue, with the morphling from 6, giving him
someone to hold on to as he's released from life. But Boggs has both hands working the Holo. He's typing in a
command, pressing his thumb to the screen for print recognition, speaking a string of letters and numbers in
response to a prompt. A green shaft of light bursts out of the Holo and illuminates his face. He says, "Unfit for
command. Transfer of prime security clearance to Squad Four-Five-One Soldier Katniss Everdeen." It's all he
can do to turn the Holo toward my face. "Say your name."
"Katniss Everdeen," I say into the green shaft. Suddenly, it has me trapped in its light. I can't move or even
blink as images flicker rapidly before me. Scanning me? Recording me? Blinding me? It vanishes, and I shake
my head to clear it. "What did you do?"
"Prepare to retreat!" Jackson hollers.
Finnick's yelling something back, gesturing to the end of the block where we entered. Black, oily matter
spouts like a geyser from the street, billowing between the buildings, creating an impenetrable wall of darkness.
It seems to be neither liquid nor gas, mechanical nor natural. Surely it's lethal. There's no heading back the way
we came.
Deafening gunfire as Gale and Leeg 1 begin to blast a path across the stones toward the far end of the
block. I don't know what they're doing until another bomb, ten yards away, detonates, opening a hole in the street.
Then I realize this is a rudimentary attempt at minesweeping. Homes and I latch on to Boggs and begin to drag
him after Gale. Agony takes over and he's crying out in pain and I want to stop, to find a better way, but the
blackness is rising above the buildings, swelling, rolling at us like a wave.
I'm yanked backward, lose my grip on Boggs, slam into the stones. Peeta looks down at me, gone, mad,
flashing back into the land of the hijacked, his gun raised over me, descending to crush my skull. I roll, hear the
butt slam into the street, catch the tumble of bodies out of the corner of my eye as Mitchell tackles Peeta and
pins him to the ground. But Peeta, always so powerful and now fueled by tracker jacker insanity, gets his feet
under Mitchell's belly and launches him farther down the block.
There's a loud snap of a trap as the pod triggers. Four cables, attached to tracks on the buildings, break
through the stones, dragging up the net that encases Mitchell. It makes no sense--how instantly bloodied he is--
until we see the barbs sticking from the wire that encases him. I know it immediately. It decorated the top of the
fence around 12. As I call to him not to move, I gag on the smell of the blackness, thick, tarlike. The wave has
crested and begun to fall.
Gale and Leeg 1 shoot through the front door lock of the corner building, then begin to fire at the cables
holding Mitchell's net. Others are restraining Peeta now. I lunge back to Boggs, and Homes and I drag him inside
the apartment, through someone's pink and white velvet living room, down a hallway hung with family photos,