The Hunger Games: Uprising!

Chapter 28

We trudge back to Command with Peeta carrying Buttercup and me carrying our holdall over my shoulder. The conference room is packed, with everyone involved with their own conversations waiting for the briefing to start. I look around to see Gale, Lyme and Gibbs amongst them, Plutarch sits at the table engrosed in some paperwork but I can see he looks broken. As if he's been beaten by a better opponent. I walk over and sit next to him.

"Hello Plutarch"

"Oh Katniss, you still here" he says breaking from his concentration.

"Haymitch, told us as we were about to leave. We thought we'd come back to find out what's happening" I put my hand on his shoulder to try to comfort him. I can see the torment in his eyes.

Paylor walks in the room and everyone hushes and takes their seats. Peeta sits next to me with Haymitch next to him. I see Gale and Joel across from me. Plutarch gets up to speak.

He takes a deep breath "Okay, as you've been told the Nut has now fallen into the hands of the militants. At the moment we're not sure how they did it but it appears that they've managed to hack into the security systems and deactivate them. How they managed this I'm not sure"

"What was left behind in the mountain, I thought that we'd cleared out most of the sensitive equipment" asks Gale.

"You're right, we cleared out all the hovercraft and the experimental weapons that were built there. But there are some larger items that can't be moved from the mountain. These have to be destroyed"

"How do we do that" I ask

Plutarch looks to Paylor and sits down.

Paylor gets up to address the room. "Since the end of the war we've been busy building extra security options for us to use in the event of something like this happening. All the military installations have a destruct option available to us which we can activate now. This is why I called you all here, you are the most senior members of the original rebellion against the Capitol. From this room I can destroy the Nut and everything and everyone inside it. We've already shut down the computer network from our end so 13 is in no danger from a cyber attack from the Nut but I wanted you all to know what our options are as we're going to make this decision as a group"

She pauses to let the news sink in. To take in the fact that to destroy the Nut would result in killing all inside, the soldiers and the peacekeepers. Of course we'd be taking out a large number of Wolfe's people and Mutts, but Mutts can be grown.

"Why didnt we get them out?" asks Peeta

"We had to keep them there to defend the hover craft when we evacuated the scientists. Without them the hovercraft would of been shot down. After that Wolfe had the whole area sewn up. All we could do was bomb the Mutts from further out"

"Did everyone in the Nut know it was rigged to be blown up?"  asks Joel

"Everyone who worked or stationed there knew about the destruct option" she nods toward Gale and Lyme and they both nod in return, confirming that they were told when they were based there.

"Whats the other option" asks Beetee standing at the back.

"We leave it and try to take it back, but we're on the back foot. Losing the nut has caused us huge problems. Over half of our military might was based there and it'd be suicide to try to take it back  losing what few soldiers we have left here"

Lyndon speaks up "What we need is to unite the people to fight with us, like we saw in District 12 when Peeta was shot. My squad didn't do anything, the people rose up against Wolfe's men on their own. If we could do that, brew up enough anger against the Militants we could have an army of unbelievable power" I feel him put his hand on my shoulder.