Chained Hearts

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Katniss sat stiffly in the chair in Madge's makeshift office. She'd awoken ten minutes previous to shouting and racket. As soon as her eyes had opened, the blonde girl had grabbed her hand and dragged her her into the room she used as an office. Her head was spinning and she felt nauseated but Madge didn't seem to care.

"You are now the voice," she said. "You have to lead the movement."

Katniss looked at her stiffly. "Why me?" she asked, her voice rough from sleep.

"Because we don't have Mellark anymore," Madge answered. "You're all we have now. The girl who helped the slave to his feet. Believe me, we'd rather have your slave than you."

Katniss balled her fists and gritted her teeth. "He's not my slave," she said. "I thought someone like you would know that. His name is Peeta. If I hear you call him slave one more time then I refuse to help you or your cause."

Madge pursed her lips. "I apologize," she said. Katniss didn't want to accept the apology because her words were full of acid but she decided it was the best she was going to get. 

"What are Jackson and Harper going to do with him?" Katniss asked. 

"Why does it matter?"

"Because I want to know."

The blonde laughed and shook her head. "No, you really don't." 

The answer worried Katniss. She didn't like it. Why wouldn't she want to know what they were going to do with Peeta in the Capitol? Surely they were just going to put him back into the Compound until things were fixed, right? If Madge thought Katniss didn't want to know what was going to happen up there . . . what were they going to do to him?

"How do we stop them from hurting him?" she asked.

"Depends on whether you're going to help us or not," Madge said. Katniss scowled and crossed her arms.

"Depends on what you want me to do," she said.

Madge leaned forward so her elbows rested on the mahogany desk that sat between them. "When we called upon you and . . . Peeta, we were looking for someone with the voice to bring everyone to the realization of our wrongs. But we don't have that anymore. Mr. Mellark could have helped us end this within a month with the words he could string together out of nothing."

That had to be an exaggeration, surely.

"In the Capitol Compound he managed to upstart a revolt in his sector," Madge continued. "They all just . . . stopped. When Jackson had taken Peeta off into the P&P floor with the duct tape on his mouth-"

"How do you know about that?" Katniss asked. Madge smiled and gestured to the shelves of files on the wall to their left.

"Justice Building records," she said. "Anyway, when Jackson bumped him up a level simply for standing up for his friend who was dying, the slaves in his old sector revolted. They stopped working and began reciting phrases that they'd heard Mr. Mellark say in the past."

"What happened? To them, I mean," Katniss asked.

"What happened?" Madge repeated. "75% of them died. Well, were killed for their disobedience. The other 25% were tortured for the defiance. I believe Mr. Mellark still holds those people's lives in his conscience."

"He never told me about that," Katniss said.

Madge frowned. "Would you?"

How much more hadn't he told her? How much of Peeta's past had he hidden from her?  How had she never thought to ask more? Why had she never thought to try and discover more? How hard must it be to have the lives of hundreds of slaves on your mind everyday?