Chapter 17: Nightmares and Family Meetings
He awakens in room with a dim light coming from the bare bulb above him. He looks around; there is no one in the room with him. He hears sounds coming from the other side of the door. Or maybe from somewhere beyond the door.
He slowly tries to sit up, checking for any injuries. He finds no obvious ones, although his muscles feel a little weak. He tries to stand up but ends up on his knees. He slowly crawls over to the door to listen. He can hear voices, female ones, familiar ones. One sounds like Annie. She’s crying softly for Finnick in a sad, broken way. The next voice sounds like Johanna. She’s begging someone to keep the water away from her. The third voice is familiar to him as well. It sounds a lot like Enobaria. She’s telling someone that she has no idea who took Finnick, Beetee, and Katniss from the arena or where they could’ve gone. It’s a strange thing to be saying as Finnick and Beetee were never in the arena as far as he could remember. Neither was Johanna, Annie, or Enobaria for that matter.
He crawls back to the cot he was on when he awoke. He’s really confused now. He’s fairly certain there were no mentors in the arena with him, but he can’t remember any of it. It’s beginning to give him a headache, trying to remember the arena and who was there with him.
As he gets back on the cot to lie back down, he hears footsteps walking in the hall outside his door. He hears a voice saying that they need to get the boy, that President Snow has plans for him. Does the voice mean him? What could Snow have planned for him? The footsteps stop outside his door and he can hear keys being rattled. He hears a key being put into the lock. He watches as the doorknob turns and the door is thrown open. He watches as four figures dressed in peacekeeper uniforms walk in. As they walk over to him, he thinks he recognizes one of them. It looks like Leonitus. Surely he’ll help him, tell him what’s going to happen.
“On your feet boy!” one of the other peacekeepers says. “President Snow wants to show you something.”
When he doesn’t get up fast enough, two of the men pull him up. They grab his arms when they realize his legs are about to give out, unable to support his weight. He looks at Leonitus, hoping for him to do something, say anything to give him an idea of what’s going to happen.
Leonitus doesn’t say anything; he just leads the way to the door. The two peacekeepers holding him drag him along behind Leonitus. The fourth peacekeeper follows behind them all. They walk down a long hallway, passing several doors. He wonders who or what are behind them. He’s led to the last door at the very end of the hallway. The door opens and the go in.
It’s a fairly large room. There’s a couple chains connected to the ceiling with handcuffs attached to them with more on the ground just under the ones hanging. A drain hole is there as well and a hose attached to the wall a couple feet away. There’s also something hidden underneath a sheet nearby the chains. He doesn’t even want to know what’s under the sheet. He sees a stretcher with straps on it next to a chair that is bolted to the ground. On the chair are also restraints. He’s led to the chair and strapped in by his ankles and wrists. He begins to get a really bad feeling about this room. As his head is strapped, he notices a TV screen in front of him. The four peacekeepers, including Leonitus, go stand against the wall on the other side of the stretcher. Moments later, President Snow walks in.
“Hello my boy!” he says in a sickly sweet voice. “Glad you could join me. There’s a video I want you to see.” The smell coming from the president – blood and roses – makes him want to puke.
He sees the President turn on the TV and watches as images of bombs going off, destroying what looks like a village. It could be one of the districts but he can’t be sure. As he watches, he feels like he should recognize this place but doesn’t. Then something catches his eye in the video, a blonde figure running from the bombs. He stares at the figure, knowing he recognizes it but can’t place who it is or why he knows them. He searches his memory but comes up empty, only increasing his headache. He forgets everything as he watches the blonde fly through the air, flames licking the backside of the person. A scream escapes his lips, “NO!”
