Hunger Games fic - Treading Water (33/34), PG-13
Title: Treading Water (Part III - The Arena)
Chapter Title: 'Neath the Gathering Cloud
Rating (this chapter): PG-13
Word count: 4,512
Betas: mrsdrjackson and pinkfinity (all mistakes and missteps are my own)
Focus: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair
Characters: Finnick Odair, Beetee, Johanna Mason, Annie Cresta, Haymitch Abernathy, Atala, Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, original characters
Summmary: The only sound is that of their footsteps as they move through the vines and trees, over the uneven ground, climbing higher and higher toward Beetee’s tree. Faster and faster toward the end of everything.
Warnings (this chapter): none
Author's note: Well, this was to be the last chapter, but it was already over 10,000 words long and still growing, so I decided to split it at a natural break point so the final chapter won't be quite so overwhelming from size alone. Thank you, Tumblr friends, for your help with that decision! The title for this chapter comes from Tom McRae's I Ain't Scared of Lightning, which you can enjoy on the fic soundtrack here. :)
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Chapter 33 - ‘Neath the Gathering Cloud
As the moon rises in the darkening sky, the anthem begins to play. Hunkered down on the sand beside Finnick, Beetee whispers, a staccato briefing in bursts timed to the music. Finnick doesn’t move, gives no indication he hears anything other than that martial tune, and as it fades Beetee rises with a cracking of joints and a low hiss of pain. He trudges away from the scattered group of allies, heading toward the jungle. A few yards away, Katniss divides her attention between Finnick where he still sits on the beach and Beetee’s retreating back.
“So what did Volts have to say?” Johanna asks, drawing Finnick’s attention away from Katniss.
Dropping down to the sand beside Finnick, Johanna folds her legs beneath her while she tears a chunk from the roll she holds in her hand. A light breeze ruffles the short strands of her hair as she offers the bit of bread to him, but Finnick shakes his head and returns to working knots on a length cut from Annie’s rope. He has no need to pay attention to what he’s doing; his fingers know. Even so he watches his hands when he gives Johanna an answer.
“We’re still on for midnight,” Finnick whispers. “We need to remove or disable the trackers before the lightning strike.”
“So that gives us… what? Four hours, give or take?” Johanna pops the piece of bread into her mouth.
Finnick nods and then covers the gesture with a neck pop. As recently as five minutes ago, Beetee was still advocating for a less bloody solution than the one Finnick had earlier mentioned. Finnick isn’t sure whether the man truly thinks shorting the things out is a better option, even after Finnick argued that they would have no way of knowing whether or not they were still transmitting, or if he’s worried about Finnick taking a knife to his arm. Finnick smiles grimly, fingers still dancing along the rope.
“We can’t do it too far in advance of the strike. There’s too much risk of giving ourselves away.” He looks over at Jo. “I have no idea what we’re going to do about Katniss, but hers is the most important one to get rid of.” At least with the others, he won’t have to come up with a cover story. Even Peeta, he can tell outright what’s going on, thanks to their talk the night before, but Katniss…
“We’ll figure something out,” Jo says. Having finished the last of her bread, she stretches her arms over her head and shoots Finnick a sly grin. “I could always hack off her arm.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” She shrugs and unfolds her legs, wiggling her toes. Johanna is the only one of their group whose jumpsuit is entirely intact - even Beetee’s has a gaping slash in the back - and although she doesn’t have it zipped all the way up, the only skin exposed to the night air is that of her face and neck, her hands and her bare feet.
Focusing on the zipper pull, limned by moonlight, Finnick tells Johanna, “We need to rig the tree with Beetee’s wire. Once that’s done, he wants to run some kind of tests, but he didn’t go into how he plans to do that.” As he speaks, another part of his brain chases down ideas for removing the trackers.
“But he does have a plan…?” Finnick glances over at her, stretched out beside him and leaning backward on her elbows. She stares back at him, dark brows twin arches over eyes made even darker by the moonlight. He shoots her a grin.
“Yeah, Jo, he has a plan. He wants me to help with the wiring while you take Katniss someplace a little safer than it’ll be near the tree.” Beetee is certain that they can bring down the force field with a decent chance of their own survival, had assured him that sending Katniss away was just a precaution, that no lasting harm will come to him or Peeta or Beetee himself, but even if Finnick were so inclined, he can’t let himself believe that until it’s all over and they’re still alive.
“He wants me to babysit?”
Reaching the end of the rope, Finnick pulls it taut, releasing the knot. Ignoring Johanna’s frustration, he continues, “We’ll meet up again at the tallest tree in the ten o’clock wedge sometime after midnight.”
“And then what?” Johanna asks as Finnick begins another, less complicated knot.
“And then we wait.” He can practically feel it when she rolls her eyes. He shrugs. “Beetee didn’t break it down for me.” He might have, had a suspicious Katniss not been watching them while the older man went over his mental notes with Finnick.
Finishing the new knot, rather than ripping it out and beginning again, Finnick flops onto his back next to Jo and rolls his head toward her. His lips barely move when he says, “There has to be something in place to get us out of here. If not, what’s the point in taking down the force field?”
Johanna snorts. “Maybe Heavensbee just wants to see the look on Snow’s face.”
Finnick blinks at his friend once and then again and then the laughter tears free, leaving him breathless.
xXx
Returning from a quick trip to the bathroom, Annie turns the knob on the control room door and pushes forward only to slam hard into the cold, flat surface. The impact of it knocks her headset askew and she takes a step back, staring stupidly at the knob for a moment before trying it again. Definitely locked. Frowning, Annie rights her headset and peers through the small window.
Inside the control room, standing nearer the door than to Haymitch and his District 12 monitors, are a man Annie has never seen before and a woman who looks vaguely familiar. The man, at least, can only be a Capitol citizen, given the presence of dark, iridescent scales in place of skin and hair. He holds a black box in his hands; a green light glows from the top of it, reflecting oddly off the scales of his chin. Annie doesn’t see Haymitch, but the sight of Martin, halfway between their station and the strangers, surprises her. He wasn’t here when she left.
She rattles the knob and when that doesn’t elicit a response from those on the other side of the door, she raps her knuckles against the window glass. Martin, Acer, and the scaled man look at her and then return their attention to the dark-skinned woman, who gestures with her hands as she speaks. No one makes a move to let Annie in.
Pounding on the door, Annie shouts Martin’s name, glaring at him through the glass as Finnick responds to something Johanna says, his voice too low for her to make out the words. Her eyes dart away from Martin toward their monitor, but the screen is too far away for her to see any details. “Martin, please!” she shouts.
He glances toward her, but then walks over to their console and picks up the other headset. A click sounds from her left earpiece followed by Martin’s voice. “Take a break, Annie. I’ve got things in here.”
Her gaze flies back to Martin and she tries to catch his eye as she once more rattles the door, but he refuses to meet her gaze. There’s another click and then a brief staticky hiss as Martin returns to the group near Haymitch’s station, slipping around behind the strange woman and putting his back toward Annie and the door. Annie pounds on it once more in frustration and then turns her own back to it, sliding down to sit on the floor. When someone opens it again, she’ll no doubt tumble into the room, but she doesn’t care.
The sight of Shale, sitting at the top of the stairs, leaning back against the railing and looking right at her, startles Annie. “Whatever it is, they don’t want us to hear it,” he says. “Lyme told me to take a break.”
“So did Martin,” Annie tells him, and is about to ask him why he’s sitting where he is rather than down in the lounge when she hears Martin’s voice again.
“- two hours by hovercraft, Atala?” Atala was the woman who briefed the tributes at the start of training the year of Annie’s Games. Distance from the microphone muffles Martin’s words and there’s a strange susurrus, rhythmic, as though he’s swinging his headset back and forth, back and forth. She doesn’t recall if he still had it when he walked away from their station.
Rae says something, her voice so faint Annie can’t understand her, but Martin laughs. “Chased by the damn Peacekeepers the entire way.” Annie’s breath catches in her throat as something clicks inside her brain and she recalls what Finnick said to his father the night before the reaping.
“My friends believe this Quarter Quell is the spark they need to ignite the districts. I don’t know any of the details, but I do know that when whatever it is happens, all of you need to be well out to sea….”
Over her headset, Haymitch’s voice, louder and clearer than Martin’s, brings her back. “You’re Gamemakers, for fuck’s sake. You want to explain to me why tributes inside the arena are the ones taking down that force field?” Annie pictures him leaning back in his chair, his head on a level with the headset Martin apparently thought he had turned off. His finger must have slipped on the switch.
Resting her head against the door, her heart pounding in her chest, Annie makes the conscious decision to turn up the volume on her headset, to listen in to what’s obviously a private conversation between co-conspirators. Victors. Gamemakers. And who knows who else? This is what Finnick has kept from her over the years, to keep her safe, yes, but maybe he couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t let something of it slip. Again her memory replays that night on the beach….
“Because the districts of Panem are a hair’s breadth from open rebellion.”
“We have a chance to stop the Games. To stop our children from being sent year after year to slaughter.”
Treason. Within the confines of the control room, Martin, Haymitch, and the others are talking treason. A crime the Capitol punishes by death. Annie lifts her hands to her ears, but as she presses her headset tighter, she only succeeds in blocking out background noise.
In Annie’s left ear, Atala pointedly answers Haymitch. “Because ever since the last Quarter Quell, control of the arena force fields has been in the hands of the Peacekeepers, not the Gamemakers.” In her right ear, Finnick begins to laugh.
xXx
“What the hell, Odair?” Johanna digs her heels into the sand as Finnick surges to his feet and pulls her toward the water.
“We’re going for a swim,” he tells her. “I want to show you something.” It’s the echo of a similar conversation with Katniss and he hopes those watching will hear it, too, and not look any deeper. When Johanna starts to protest again, he turns so that he’s running backward, splashing into the shallows. “Trust me. You’ll like it.” She closes her mouth and her eyes narrow.
“If I don’t, fish boy…” Her tone menacing, she leaves her threat unvoiced and Finnick mimes a kiss at her before turning again toward the water. When he’s waist-deep, he pulls her off her feet and starts swimming for the nearest land bridge, towing her along behind him. Giving in, Johanna stops fighting him and their pace increases until, almost to their destination, he slows and lets his body relax, releasing her hand.
“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” she asks, treading water a couple of feet out from the bridge.
Finnick shakes his head. “It’s a visual thing.”
“Oh, no. You’re not going to flash me, are you?” She drops her voice a little, makes it teasing and sexy. “Because you could have done that without getting me all wet.”
He rolls his eyes and then grins, playing it up for the cameras. Leering at her, he asks, “How long can you hold your breath?”
“This just keeps getting better and better.”
“Okay. Don’t answer.” Finnick grabs Johanna’s hand again and, taking a deep breath, giving her just enough time to do the same, he dives. They pass through a large school of luminous fish; there are so many of them they all but ignite the water in a bubble of light that, because of the angle, is barely visible from the surface.
During one of his earlier underwater forays, he’d explored the structure of one of the land bridges. Schools of these same fish had lingered near the bones of the bridge and lit the way for him, had followed him for a bit when he abandoned his explorations. Nothing in depth, he’d simply been curious and, too, thought there might be a time a little knowledge about the bridges could be useful.
Now he takes Johanna near one of the pilings and angles up until their heads break the surface into a pocket of air directly beneath the metal bottom of the bridge. The curious fish give off enough light to reveal the cameras in the corners of the structure. It’s just as he remembers: near the tops of the pilings, the cameras’ positioning is such that there’s a visual dead space and Finnick feels hope rise within him. Silently thanking Plutarch, he swims for the camera-free spot, Johanna in tow.
Once there, he anchors himself with his legs to an upright and unties the knife at his waist. “Push up your sleeve,” he tells Jo, nodding toward her left arm. Glancing at the knife, she floats in closer to Finnick and he holds her steady as she pushes her sleeve up past her elbow, no easy task, given the tightness of the suit. Once her sleeve is out of the way, Johanna holds herself steady with her right hand on Finnick’s shoulder.
“This will hurt,” he warns.
“Just do it.”
Placing the tip of the blade against her skin, just below the lump of her tracker, Finnick slices into Johanna’s arm. She hisses, but quickly bites it off, watching as he digs the tip of the knife under the lump and blood begins to flow, mingling with the saltwater clinging to her skin. He makes a frustrated sound low in his throat as the tracker eludes him, blood dripping from her arm into the water, dissipating in swirling tendrils illuminated by the curious and ever-present fish.
“This was a lot easier in that hotel room,” Finnick mutters as he and Johanna bob in the water. He deepens the cut just a little and then takes the knife between his teeth so he can use both hands to remove the tracker - one to stop the thing from retreating farther under her skin and the other to pull it out, being careful not to lose it. Once it’s free, working quickly, he wraps a strip of cloth cut from the bottom of his shirt tightly around Jo’s arm. The strip performs the dual purpose of acting as a bandage and holding the tracker in place on the opposite side from the cut. Pulling her sleeve back down to cover it all, Finnick ties the knife once more at his waist.
“Go,” he tells Johanna. “I’m right behind you.”
“What about yours?”
He shakes his head. “This took too long. I’ll wait until we’re in the trees. It’ll be easier to cover things up then, anyway.”
“Just don’t forget.” Pushing off from the bridge and Finnick, Johanna swims away amidst a radiant cloud of fish. Finnick watches her go, searching for any sign of blood in the water. Satisfied that the bandage is doing its job, he takes a deep breath and follows her.
A few minutes later, Johanna is off talking to Beetee with no visible indication that anything is different, and Finnick stares up at the sky, stretched out on his back in the sand. Making up his own constellations from the unfamiliar stars, he connects them with imaginary silver cords to turn them into outlines of crabs and sharks and mermaids. He doesn’t know how long he plays at that game when someone approaches him. From the faint hiss of confident footsteps in the sand, he’s not surprised when Katniss looms over him, her head blocking out the moon and the tailfin of his mermaid.
She drops into a crouch in front of Finnick, restoring his view of the stars and moon. “We should head out,” she says, tracing a pattern in the sand with one finger. Glancing up at the sky, she continues, “I judge it’s about nine.”
“I suppose we should go then,” he agrees, but they still have a good hour before their current stretch of beach becomes unsafe. Sitting up, Finnick turns toward Katniss but doesn’t stand, reluctant to set foot once more into the jungle, more than happy to delay that inevitability if only for a few minutes, a few seconds more. Just thinking about it sets birds’ voices to shrieking in his head; he can all but feel the wind of their beating wings. Damn it, Odair. You are the king of compartmentalization. Lock. This. Down. “I’m not looking forward to leaving the beach,” he observes aloud, his voice somehow steady as he continues to stare at the black line of trees, carefully not saying what he’s really thinking.
Following Finnick’s line of sight, Katniss hears it anyway. “The jabberjays are all asleep, Finnick. It’ll be hours before they come back out to play.”
Huffing out a breath, he glances toward her in time to catch a shiver, in spite of the lingering heat, and knows that she feels that same reluctance. “Too bad we can’t rig Beetee’s wire to fry the little fuckers.” That startles a laugh out of her. Rocking to his knees, Finnick rolls to his feet in one smooth motion, ending with a hand outstretched toward Katniss. “Shall we?” He’s a little surprised when she actually accepts his help.
xXx
“Wait a minute.” Annie opens her eyes at the sound of Shale’s voice, looks over at him where he still sits at the top of the stairs. “Are you eavesdropping?” he asks, dark eyes narrowing, focused on her headset. He pauses for a long beat and then asks, “What are they saying?”
Annie doesn’t give him an answer, just shakes her head and forces herself to lower her hands. Relatively sure that Martin sent her away for her own protection rather than because he doesn’t trust her, she doesn’t feel any less guilty about listening in. If anything, she feels more guilty. She knows she won’t say anything to anyone about what she’s hearing, but Lyme, who had no problem with Annie’s presence at another clandestine meeting only a few days before, sent Shale away. She can’t risk telling him anything, not if Lyme doesn’t already want him to know it.
“-be ready.” Focused on Shale, Annie missed the first part of what Atala said. Be ready for what?
“That doesn’t give us much time,” Rae observes.
“No, and I’m sorry for that. We tried to send a message, but every attempt was blocked. We can only hope that was by coincidence rather than design.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Haymitch scoffs. Finnick responds to something in the arena, but Annie missed that conversation, too. She doesn’t even know who he’s talking to. Partially visible from where she sits, the television in the lounge below shows Brutus and Enobaria, somewhere in the jungle. No help there.
“Thaniel here will come for you when the hovercraft is ready. You’ll go from here to the roof.” That’s Atala again.
“It was risky enough, the two of you showing up here now. How is he going to explain a second trip?” Martin asks.
A laugh and then a startlingly deep voice - Thaniel’s? - replies, “It’s to be expected that a junior Gamemaker, having left his notepad behind during a tour of the mentors’ control room, would retrieve it when the mistake is discovered.”
That statement seems to signal the end of their meeting; Annie hears rustling and then a loud burst of static in her left ear. Martin distinctly says “Shit” and then her left earpiece goes silent. Annie yanks off her headset and pushes away from the door just before it opens and Martin’s eyes find hers. She knows she looks as guilty as she feels, but there’s no point in trying to mask her expression, either from him or from those standing behind him in the doorway.
She can’t read Martin’s expression when he demands, “How much of that did you hear?”
xXx
There’s a buzzing in his brain as he surreptitiously draws the knife, still tied at his waist, across his arm just below the tracker. Words and phrases. Notes. Cadences, tones, and rhythms. They combine with the tempo of his pulse. When he feels the blood begin to well from the cut, Finnick releases the knife and pushes at the lump on his arm, forcing the tracker toward the opening in his skin. The knife is far more efficient than a shard of glass; it doesn’t take long before he has the tiny electronic device between his thumb and forefinger. He shoves the bloody thing into the folds of the bandage around his leg. As with Johanna, he’s careful to keep it away from the actual wound.
Moments later, restless fingers against his thigh tap out the beat that’s taken up residence in his brain, the sting of the wound there adding its own rhythm to the music that runs interference against the threatening darkness. But it’s a song that will never see the light of day.
Just like him?
Ten, fifteen minutes trudging upslope toward the lightning tree and he can’t shake the feeling that he’s walking to his end; that brief moment of hope when he removed Johanna’s tracker dissipated the moment they entered the jungle. The air is pregnant with tension as he leads the way toward their endgame and whatever might lie beyond it. The only sound is that of their footsteps as they move through the vines and trees, over the uneven ground, climbing higher and higher toward Beetee’s tree. Faster and faster toward the end of everything.
I’ll never see Annie again.
Finnick stumbles and he can’t even blame it on a rock or an exposed root. He recovers. Picks up the pace. The buzzing in his head grows louder, taking on the frenetic energy and the strident music of the jabberjays that tried so hard to destroy both him and Katniss from the inside.
“Did you say something, Finnick?” He takes a deep breath. Swallows the thick air along with the cacophony attempting to break free.
“No, Peeta. Sorry. I was just humming a song.” He’s surprised that his voice sounds so normal. Falling apart shouldn’t sound normal. Behind him, Peeta laughs and Finnick stifles the urge to join him, afraid that it will be just a little too close to hysterical.
“No need to apologize.” A moist sliding sound followed by a stifled grunt, a whiff of rotting vegetation, then he feels Peeta come in closer behind him. Finnick stiffens, the unwelcome reaction involuntary. Peeta is no threat. Not to him, at least. Not while he’s still actively protecting Katniss. “Go ahead and hum,” the younger man says, unaware of anything that might be wrong with Finnick. “It’s kind of a nice distraction.”
If only you knew. Finnick lets himself laugh then, and if there’s little of amusement in it, there’s also little of hysteria.
xXx
Ignoring Shale, Martin takes Annie by the arm, forcing her to stand. It’s so unlike the man she’s come to know these past few days that she’s more than a little frightened. Blinking rapidly to clear vision suddenly clouded by tears, Annie has no choice but to follow him as he jogs down the stairs. They only barely precede Atala and her fellow Gamemaker; Annie can feel them watching, though they say nothing. The control room door snicks closed at about the same time she and Martin reach the bottom of the stairs.
Still not speaking, he propels her toward the sleeping room off the lounge, pushing the door open so hard it hits the wall and bounces back, the crash of it loud enough to wake the dead. Catching it with the heel of his hand, he drags Annie with him into the room and switches on the lights before slamming the door shut. There is no one else in the room.
“Martin…” Still fighting tears, a little angry with herself for that, she drops down onto the nearest cot as this man she thought she knew locks the door and then leans back against it, closing his eyes. Annie watches him warily. He doesn’t look angry at all. “Martin?”
Opening his eyes again, Martin looks down at Annie. “Seriously, Annie. How much did you hear?”
“You’re not angry with me? For eavesdropping?”
“Not in the least.” He grins at her. “I was hoping you would.” Relaxing a little, feeling infinitely better at the sight of that grin, Annie pulls her legs up onto the cot, folding them in front of her and resting her elbows on her knees.
“I don’t understand,” she tells him. “Are you saying you meant to leave your headset open to mine?”
“It was easier than trying to convince the others to include you.” Pushing off from the door, Martin walks over to Annie’s cot and sits down beside her. He studies her for a moment, his face as serious as she’s ever seen it. “Annie, in a little while Thaniel Raymond, a junior Gamemaker, will return to the control room. When he does, we’ll follow him from here up to the roof and a waiting hovercraft that will take us to the arena.” His voice never rises above a whisper and his eyes never leave hers.
“To the arena?” Annie barely hears her own voice for the sudden pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. She’s glad she’s sitting, because she’s afraid if she were standing, she’d fall. Terror and hope are at war inside her. That night on the Training Center roof, with Finnick and his friends…
“Not if the plan is still to get as many of us out alive as possible.”
There were a couple of other things Finnick had said over the past couple of weeks, things that implied that not all that happened during these Games would be unexpected, that it would not be only the Gamemakers who would manipulate things in this arena. The hope inside her begins to break free from the shadow cast by the terror.
Chapter 34 - Double Dutch With a Hand Grenade
Chapter Title: 'Neath the Gathering Cloud
Rating (this chapter): PG-13
Word count: 4,512
Betas: mrsdrjackson and pinkfinity (all mistakes and missteps are my own)
Focus: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair
Characters: Finnick Odair, Beetee, Johanna Mason, Annie Cresta, Haymitch Abernathy, Atala, Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, original characters
Summmary: The only sound is that of their footsteps as they move through the vines and trees, over the uneven ground, climbing higher and higher toward Beetee’s tree. Faster and faster toward the end of everything.
Warnings (this chapter): none
Author's note: Well, this was to be the last chapter, but it was already over 10,000 words long and still growing, so I decided to split it at a natural break point so the final chapter won't be quite so overwhelming from size alone. Thank you, Tumblr friends, for your help with that decision! The title for this chapter comes from Tom McRae's I Ain't Scared of Lightning, which you can enjoy on the fic soundtrack here. :)
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Chapter 33 - ‘Neath the Gathering Cloud
As the moon rises in the darkening sky, the anthem begins to play. Hunkered down on the sand beside Finnick, Beetee whispers, a staccato briefing in bursts timed to the music. Finnick doesn’t move, gives no indication he hears anything other than that martial tune, and as it fades Beetee rises with a cracking of joints and a low hiss of pain. He trudges away from the scattered group of allies, heading toward the jungle. A few yards away, Katniss divides her attention between Finnick where he still sits on the beach and Beetee’s retreating back.
“So what did Volts have to say?” Johanna asks, drawing Finnick’s attention away from Katniss.
Dropping down to the sand beside Finnick, Johanna folds her legs beneath her while she tears a chunk from the roll she holds in her hand. A light breeze ruffles the short strands of her hair as she offers the bit of bread to him, but Finnick shakes his head and returns to working knots on a length cut from Annie’s rope. He has no need to pay attention to what he’s doing; his fingers know. Even so he watches his hands when he gives Johanna an answer.
“We’re still on for midnight,” Finnick whispers. “We need to remove or disable the trackers before the lightning strike.”
“So that gives us… what? Four hours, give or take?” Johanna pops the piece of bread into her mouth.
Finnick nods and then covers the gesture with a neck pop. As recently as five minutes ago, Beetee was still advocating for a less bloody solution than the one Finnick had earlier mentioned. Finnick isn’t sure whether the man truly thinks shorting the things out is a better option, even after Finnick argued that they would have no way of knowing whether or not they were still transmitting, or if he’s worried about Finnick taking a knife to his arm. Finnick smiles grimly, fingers still dancing along the rope.
“We can’t do it too far in advance of the strike. There’s too much risk of giving ourselves away.” He looks over at Jo. “I have no idea what we’re going to do about Katniss, but hers is the most important one to get rid of.” At least with the others, he won’t have to come up with a cover story. Even Peeta, he can tell outright what’s going on, thanks to their talk the night before, but Katniss…
“We’ll figure something out,” Jo says. Having finished the last of her bread, she stretches her arms over her head and shoots Finnick a sly grin. “I could always hack off her arm.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” She shrugs and unfolds her legs, wiggling her toes. Johanna is the only one of their group whose jumpsuit is entirely intact - even Beetee’s has a gaping slash in the back - and although she doesn’t have it zipped all the way up, the only skin exposed to the night air is that of her face and neck, her hands and her bare feet.
Focusing on the zipper pull, limned by moonlight, Finnick tells Johanna, “We need to rig the tree with Beetee’s wire. Once that’s done, he wants to run some kind of tests, but he didn’t go into how he plans to do that.” As he speaks, another part of his brain chases down ideas for removing the trackers.
“But he does have a plan…?” Finnick glances over at her, stretched out beside him and leaning backward on her elbows. She stares back at him, dark brows twin arches over eyes made even darker by the moonlight. He shoots her a grin.
“Yeah, Jo, he has a plan. He wants me to help with the wiring while you take Katniss someplace a little safer than it’ll be near the tree.” Beetee is certain that they can bring down the force field with a decent chance of their own survival, had assured him that sending Katniss away was just a precaution, that no lasting harm will come to him or Peeta or Beetee himself, but even if Finnick were so inclined, he can’t let himself believe that until it’s all over and they’re still alive.
“He wants me to babysit?”
Reaching the end of the rope, Finnick pulls it taut, releasing the knot. Ignoring Johanna’s frustration, he continues, “We’ll meet up again at the tallest tree in the ten o’clock wedge sometime after midnight.”
“And then what?” Johanna asks as Finnick begins another, less complicated knot.
“And then we wait.” He can practically feel it when she rolls her eyes. He shrugs. “Beetee didn’t break it down for me.” He might have, had a suspicious Katniss not been watching them while the older man went over his mental notes with Finnick.
Finishing the new knot, rather than ripping it out and beginning again, Finnick flops onto his back next to Jo and rolls his head toward her. His lips barely move when he says, “There has to be something in place to get us out of here. If not, what’s the point in taking down the force field?”
Johanna snorts. “Maybe Heavensbee just wants to see the look on Snow’s face.”
Finnick blinks at his friend once and then again and then the laughter tears free, leaving him breathless.
xXx
Returning from a quick trip to the bathroom, Annie turns the knob on the control room door and pushes forward only to slam hard into the cold, flat surface. The impact of it knocks her headset askew and she takes a step back, staring stupidly at the knob for a moment before trying it again. Definitely locked. Frowning, Annie rights her headset and peers through the small window.
Inside the control room, standing nearer the door than to Haymitch and his District 12 monitors, are a man Annie has never seen before and a woman who looks vaguely familiar. The man, at least, can only be a Capitol citizen, given the presence of dark, iridescent scales in place of skin and hair. He holds a black box in his hands; a green light glows from the top of it, reflecting oddly off the scales of his chin. Annie doesn’t see Haymitch, but the sight of Martin, halfway between their station and the strangers, surprises her. He wasn’t here when she left.
She rattles the knob and when that doesn’t elicit a response from those on the other side of the door, she raps her knuckles against the window glass. Martin, Acer, and the scaled man look at her and then return their attention to the dark-skinned woman, who gestures with her hands as she speaks. No one makes a move to let Annie in.
Pounding on the door, Annie shouts Martin’s name, glaring at him through the glass as Finnick responds to something Johanna says, his voice too low for her to make out the words. Her eyes dart away from Martin toward their monitor, but the screen is too far away for her to see any details. “Martin, please!” she shouts.
He glances toward her, but then walks over to their console and picks up the other headset. A click sounds from her left earpiece followed by Martin’s voice. “Take a break, Annie. I’ve got things in here.”
Her gaze flies back to Martin and she tries to catch his eye as she once more rattles the door, but he refuses to meet her gaze. There’s another click and then a brief staticky hiss as Martin returns to the group near Haymitch’s station, slipping around behind the strange woman and putting his back toward Annie and the door. Annie pounds on it once more in frustration and then turns her own back to it, sliding down to sit on the floor. When someone opens it again, she’ll no doubt tumble into the room, but she doesn’t care.
The sight of Shale, sitting at the top of the stairs, leaning back against the railing and looking right at her, startles Annie. “Whatever it is, they don’t want us to hear it,” he says. “Lyme told me to take a break.”
“So did Martin,” Annie tells him, and is about to ask him why he’s sitting where he is rather than down in the lounge when she hears Martin’s voice again.
“- two hours by hovercraft, Atala?” Atala was the woman who briefed the tributes at the start of training the year of Annie’s Games. Distance from the microphone muffles Martin’s words and there’s a strange susurrus, rhythmic, as though he’s swinging his headset back and forth, back and forth. She doesn’t recall if he still had it when he walked away from their station.
Rae says something, her voice so faint Annie can’t understand her, but Martin laughs. “Chased by the damn Peacekeepers the entire way.” Annie’s breath catches in her throat as something clicks inside her brain and she recalls what Finnick said to his father the night before the reaping.
“My friends believe this Quarter Quell is the spark they need to ignite the districts. I don’t know any of the details, but I do know that when whatever it is happens, all of you need to be well out to sea….”
Over her headset, Haymitch’s voice, louder and clearer than Martin’s, brings her back. “You’re Gamemakers, for fuck’s sake. You want to explain to me why tributes inside the arena are the ones taking down that force field?” Annie pictures him leaning back in his chair, his head on a level with the headset Martin apparently thought he had turned off. His finger must have slipped on the switch.
Resting her head against the door, her heart pounding in her chest, Annie makes the conscious decision to turn up the volume on her headset, to listen in to what’s obviously a private conversation between co-conspirators. Victors. Gamemakers. And who knows who else? This is what Finnick has kept from her over the years, to keep her safe, yes, but maybe he couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t let something of it slip. Again her memory replays that night on the beach….
“Because the districts of Panem are a hair’s breadth from open rebellion.”
“We have a chance to stop the Games. To stop our children from being sent year after year to slaughter.”
Treason. Within the confines of the control room, Martin, Haymitch, and the others are talking treason. A crime the Capitol punishes by death. Annie lifts her hands to her ears, but as she presses her headset tighter, she only succeeds in blocking out background noise.
In Annie’s left ear, Atala pointedly answers Haymitch. “Because ever since the last Quarter Quell, control of the arena force fields has been in the hands of the Peacekeepers, not the Gamemakers.” In her right ear, Finnick begins to laugh.
xXx
“What the hell, Odair?” Johanna digs her heels into the sand as Finnick surges to his feet and pulls her toward the water.
“We’re going for a swim,” he tells her. “I want to show you something.” It’s the echo of a similar conversation with Katniss and he hopes those watching will hear it, too, and not look any deeper. When Johanna starts to protest again, he turns so that he’s running backward, splashing into the shallows. “Trust me. You’ll like it.” She closes her mouth and her eyes narrow.
“If I don’t, fish boy…” Her tone menacing, she leaves her threat unvoiced and Finnick mimes a kiss at her before turning again toward the water. When he’s waist-deep, he pulls her off her feet and starts swimming for the nearest land bridge, towing her along behind him. Giving in, Johanna stops fighting him and their pace increases until, almost to their destination, he slows and lets his body relax, releasing her hand.
“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” she asks, treading water a couple of feet out from the bridge.
Finnick shakes his head. “It’s a visual thing.”
“Oh, no. You’re not going to flash me, are you?” She drops her voice a little, makes it teasing and sexy. “Because you could have done that without getting me all wet.”
He rolls his eyes and then grins, playing it up for the cameras. Leering at her, he asks, “How long can you hold your breath?”
“This just keeps getting better and better.”
“Okay. Don’t answer.” Finnick grabs Johanna’s hand again and, taking a deep breath, giving her just enough time to do the same, he dives. They pass through a large school of luminous fish; there are so many of them they all but ignite the water in a bubble of light that, because of the angle, is barely visible from the surface.
During one of his earlier underwater forays, he’d explored the structure of one of the land bridges. Schools of these same fish had lingered near the bones of the bridge and lit the way for him, had followed him for a bit when he abandoned his explorations. Nothing in depth, he’d simply been curious and, too, thought there might be a time a little knowledge about the bridges could be useful.
Now he takes Johanna near one of the pilings and angles up until their heads break the surface into a pocket of air directly beneath the metal bottom of the bridge. The curious fish give off enough light to reveal the cameras in the corners of the structure. It’s just as he remembers: near the tops of the pilings, the cameras’ positioning is such that there’s a visual dead space and Finnick feels hope rise within him. Silently thanking Plutarch, he swims for the camera-free spot, Johanna in tow.
Once there, he anchors himself with his legs to an upright and unties the knife at his waist. “Push up your sleeve,” he tells Jo, nodding toward her left arm. Glancing at the knife, she floats in closer to Finnick and he holds her steady as she pushes her sleeve up past her elbow, no easy task, given the tightness of the suit. Once her sleeve is out of the way, Johanna holds herself steady with her right hand on Finnick’s shoulder.
“This will hurt,” he warns.
“Just do it.”
Placing the tip of the blade against her skin, just below the lump of her tracker, Finnick slices into Johanna’s arm. She hisses, but quickly bites it off, watching as he digs the tip of the knife under the lump and blood begins to flow, mingling with the saltwater clinging to her skin. He makes a frustrated sound low in his throat as the tracker eludes him, blood dripping from her arm into the water, dissipating in swirling tendrils illuminated by the curious and ever-present fish.
“This was a lot easier in that hotel room,” Finnick mutters as he and Johanna bob in the water. He deepens the cut just a little and then takes the knife between his teeth so he can use both hands to remove the tracker - one to stop the thing from retreating farther under her skin and the other to pull it out, being careful not to lose it. Once it’s free, working quickly, he wraps a strip of cloth cut from the bottom of his shirt tightly around Jo’s arm. The strip performs the dual purpose of acting as a bandage and holding the tracker in place on the opposite side from the cut. Pulling her sleeve back down to cover it all, Finnick ties the knife once more at his waist.
“Go,” he tells Johanna. “I’m right behind you.”
“What about yours?”
He shakes his head. “This took too long. I’ll wait until we’re in the trees. It’ll be easier to cover things up then, anyway.”
“Just don’t forget.” Pushing off from the bridge and Finnick, Johanna swims away amidst a radiant cloud of fish. Finnick watches her go, searching for any sign of blood in the water. Satisfied that the bandage is doing its job, he takes a deep breath and follows her.
A few minutes later, Johanna is off talking to Beetee with no visible indication that anything is different, and Finnick stares up at the sky, stretched out on his back in the sand. Making up his own constellations from the unfamiliar stars, he connects them with imaginary silver cords to turn them into outlines of crabs and sharks and mermaids. He doesn’t know how long he plays at that game when someone approaches him. From the faint hiss of confident footsteps in the sand, he’s not surprised when Katniss looms over him, her head blocking out the moon and the tailfin of his mermaid.
She drops into a crouch in front of Finnick, restoring his view of the stars and moon. “We should head out,” she says, tracing a pattern in the sand with one finger. Glancing up at the sky, she continues, “I judge it’s about nine.”
“I suppose we should go then,” he agrees, but they still have a good hour before their current stretch of beach becomes unsafe. Sitting up, Finnick turns toward Katniss but doesn’t stand, reluctant to set foot once more into the jungle, more than happy to delay that inevitability if only for a few minutes, a few seconds more. Just thinking about it sets birds’ voices to shrieking in his head; he can all but feel the wind of their beating wings. Damn it, Odair. You are the king of compartmentalization. Lock. This. Down. “I’m not looking forward to leaving the beach,” he observes aloud, his voice somehow steady as he continues to stare at the black line of trees, carefully not saying what he’s really thinking.
Following Finnick’s line of sight, Katniss hears it anyway. “The jabberjays are all asleep, Finnick. It’ll be hours before they come back out to play.”
Huffing out a breath, he glances toward her in time to catch a shiver, in spite of the lingering heat, and knows that she feels that same reluctance. “Too bad we can’t rig Beetee’s wire to fry the little fuckers.” That startles a laugh out of her. Rocking to his knees, Finnick rolls to his feet in one smooth motion, ending with a hand outstretched toward Katniss. “Shall we?” He’s a little surprised when she actually accepts his help.
xXx
“Wait a minute.” Annie opens her eyes at the sound of Shale’s voice, looks over at him where he still sits at the top of the stairs. “Are you eavesdropping?” he asks, dark eyes narrowing, focused on her headset. He pauses for a long beat and then asks, “What are they saying?”
Annie doesn’t give him an answer, just shakes her head and forces herself to lower her hands. Relatively sure that Martin sent her away for her own protection rather than because he doesn’t trust her, she doesn’t feel any less guilty about listening in. If anything, she feels more guilty. She knows she won’t say anything to anyone about what she’s hearing, but Lyme, who had no problem with Annie’s presence at another clandestine meeting only a few days before, sent Shale away. She can’t risk telling him anything, not if Lyme doesn’t already want him to know it.
“-be ready.” Focused on Shale, Annie missed the first part of what Atala said. Be ready for what?
“That doesn’t give us much time,” Rae observes.
“No, and I’m sorry for that. We tried to send a message, but every attempt was blocked. We can only hope that was by coincidence rather than design.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Haymitch scoffs. Finnick responds to something in the arena, but Annie missed that conversation, too. She doesn’t even know who he’s talking to. Partially visible from where she sits, the television in the lounge below shows Brutus and Enobaria, somewhere in the jungle. No help there.
“Thaniel here will come for you when the hovercraft is ready. You’ll go from here to the roof.” That’s Atala again.
“It was risky enough, the two of you showing up here now. How is he going to explain a second trip?” Martin asks.
A laugh and then a startlingly deep voice - Thaniel’s? - replies, “It’s to be expected that a junior Gamemaker, having left his notepad behind during a tour of the mentors’ control room, would retrieve it when the mistake is discovered.”
That statement seems to signal the end of their meeting; Annie hears rustling and then a loud burst of static in her left ear. Martin distinctly says “Shit” and then her left earpiece goes silent. Annie yanks off her headset and pushes away from the door just before it opens and Martin’s eyes find hers. She knows she looks as guilty as she feels, but there’s no point in trying to mask her expression, either from him or from those standing behind him in the doorway.
She can’t read Martin’s expression when he demands, “How much of that did you hear?”
xXx
There’s a buzzing in his brain as he surreptitiously draws the knife, still tied at his waist, across his arm just below the tracker. Words and phrases. Notes. Cadences, tones, and rhythms. They combine with the tempo of his pulse. When he feels the blood begin to well from the cut, Finnick releases the knife and pushes at the lump on his arm, forcing the tracker toward the opening in his skin. The knife is far more efficient than a shard of glass; it doesn’t take long before he has the tiny electronic device between his thumb and forefinger. He shoves the bloody thing into the folds of the bandage around his leg. As with Johanna, he’s careful to keep it away from the actual wound.
Moments later, restless fingers against his thigh tap out the beat that’s taken up residence in his brain, the sting of the wound there adding its own rhythm to the music that runs interference against the threatening darkness. But it’s a song that will never see the light of day.
Just like him?
Ten, fifteen minutes trudging upslope toward the lightning tree and he can’t shake the feeling that he’s walking to his end; that brief moment of hope when he removed Johanna’s tracker dissipated the moment they entered the jungle. The air is pregnant with tension as he leads the way toward their endgame and whatever might lie beyond it. The only sound is that of their footsteps as they move through the vines and trees, over the uneven ground, climbing higher and higher toward Beetee’s tree. Faster and faster toward the end of everything.
I’ll never see Annie again.
Finnick stumbles and he can’t even blame it on a rock or an exposed root. He recovers. Picks up the pace. The buzzing in his head grows louder, taking on the frenetic energy and the strident music of the jabberjays that tried so hard to destroy both him and Katniss from the inside.
“Did you say something, Finnick?” He takes a deep breath. Swallows the thick air along with the cacophony attempting to break free.
“No, Peeta. Sorry. I was just humming a song.” He’s surprised that his voice sounds so normal. Falling apart shouldn’t sound normal. Behind him, Peeta laughs and Finnick stifles the urge to join him, afraid that it will be just a little too close to hysterical.
“No need to apologize.” A moist sliding sound followed by a stifled grunt, a whiff of rotting vegetation, then he feels Peeta come in closer behind him. Finnick stiffens, the unwelcome reaction involuntary. Peeta is no threat. Not to him, at least. Not while he’s still actively protecting Katniss. “Go ahead and hum,” the younger man says, unaware of anything that might be wrong with Finnick. “It’s kind of a nice distraction.”
If only you knew. Finnick lets himself laugh then, and if there’s little of amusement in it, there’s also little of hysteria.
xXx
Ignoring Shale, Martin takes Annie by the arm, forcing her to stand. It’s so unlike the man she’s come to know these past few days that she’s more than a little frightened. Blinking rapidly to clear vision suddenly clouded by tears, Annie has no choice but to follow him as he jogs down the stairs. They only barely precede Atala and her fellow Gamemaker; Annie can feel them watching, though they say nothing. The control room door snicks closed at about the same time she and Martin reach the bottom of the stairs.
Still not speaking, he propels her toward the sleeping room off the lounge, pushing the door open so hard it hits the wall and bounces back, the crash of it loud enough to wake the dead. Catching it with the heel of his hand, he drags Annie with him into the room and switches on the lights before slamming the door shut. There is no one else in the room.
“Martin…” Still fighting tears, a little angry with herself for that, she drops down onto the nearest cot as this man she thought she knew locks the door and then leans back against it, closing his eyes. Annie watches him warily. He doesn’t look angry at all. “Martin?”
Opening his eyes again, Martin looks down at Annie. “Seriously, Annie. How much did you hear?”
“You’re not angry with me? For eavesdropping?”
“Not in the least.” He grins at her. “I was hoping you would.” Relaxing a little, feeling infinitely better at the sight of that grin, Annie pulls her legs up onto the cot, folding them in front of her and resting her elbows on her knees.
“I don’t understand,” she tells him. “Are you saying you meant to leave your headset open to mine?”
“It was easier than trying to convince the others to include you.” Pushing off from the door, Martin walks over to Annie’s cot and sits down beside her. He studies her for a moment, his face as serious as she’s ever seen it. “Annie, in a little while Thaniel Raymond, a junior Gamemaker, will return to the control room. When he does, we’ll follow him from here up to the roof and a waiting hovercraft that will take us to the arena.” His voice never rises above a whisper and his eyes never leave hers.
“To the arena?” Annie barely hears her own voice for the sudden pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. She’s glad she’s sitting, because she’s afraid if she were standing, she’d fall. Terror and hope are at war inside her. That night on the Training Center roof, with Finnick and his friends…
“Not if the plan is still to get as many of us out alive as possible.”
There were a couple of other things Finnick had said over the past couple of weeks, things that implied that not all that happened during these Games would be unexpected, that it would not be only the Gamemakers who would manipulate things in this arena. The hope inside her begins to break free from the shadow cast by the terror.
Chapter 34 - Double Dutch With a Hand Grenade