Out the door, up the stairs, down the hall to one of those multidirectional elevators, and finally we arrive at Special Defense. Nothing along our route has been damaged, but we are still very deep.
Boggs ushers us into a room virtually identical to Command. Coin, Plutarch, Haymitch, Cressida, and everybody else around the table looks exhausted. Someone has finally broken out the coffee—although I’m sure it’s viewed only as an emergency stimulant—and Plutarch has both hands wrapped tightly around his cup as if at any moment it might be taken away.
There’s no small talk. “We need all four of you suited up and aboveground,” says the president. “You have two hours to get footage showing the damage from the bombing, establish that Thirteen’s military unit remains not only functional but dominant, and, most important, that the Mockingjay is still alive. Any questions?”
“Can we have a coffee?” asks Finnick.
Steaming cups are handed out. I stare distastefully at the shiny black liquid, never having been much of a fan of the stuff, but thinking it might help me stay on my feet. Finnick sloshes some cream in my cup and reaches into the sugar bowl. “Want a sugar cube?” he asks in his old seductive voice. That’s how we met, with Finnick offering me sugar. Surrounded by horses and chariots, costumed and painted for the crowds, before we were allies. Before I had any idea what made him tick. The memory actually coaxes a smile out of me. “Here, it improves the taste,” he says in his real voice, plunking three cubes in my cup.
As I turn to go suit up as the Mockingjay, I catch Gale watching me and Finnick unhappily. What now? Does he actually think something’s going on between us? Maybe he saw me go to Finnick’s last night. I would’ve passed the Hawthornes’ space to get there. I guess that probably rubbed him the wrong way. Me seeking out Finnick’s company instead of his. Well, fine. I’ve got rope burn on my fingers, I can barely hold my eyes open, and a camera crew’s waiting for me to do something brilliant. And Snow’s got Peeta. Gale can think whatever he wants.
In my new Remake Room in Special Defense, my prep team slaps me into my Mockingjay suit, arranges my hair, and applies minimal makeup before my coffee’s even cooled. In ten minutes, the cast and crew of the next propos are making the circuitous trek to the outside. I slurp my coffee as we travel, finding that the cream and sugar greatly enhance its flavor. As I knock back the dregs that have settled to the bottom of the cup, I feel a slight buzz start to run through my veins.
After climbing a final ladder, Boggs hits a lever that opens a trapdoor. Fresh air rushes in. I take big gulps and for the first time allow myself to feel how much I hated the bunker. We emerge into the woods, and my hands run through the leaves overhead. Some are just starting to turn. “What day is it?” I ask no one in particular. Boggs tells me September begins next week.
September. That means Snow has had Peeta in his clutches for five, maybe six weeks. I examine a leaf on my palm and see I’m shaking. I can’t will myself to stop. I blame the coffee and try to focus on slowing my breathing, which is far too rapid for my pace.
Debris begins to litter the forest floor. We come to our first crater, thirty yards wide and I can’t tell how deep. Very. Boggs says anyone on the first ten levels would likely have been killed. We skirt the pit and continue on.
“Can you rebuild it?” Gale asks.
“Not anytime soon. That one didn’t get much. A few backup generators and a poultry farm,” says Boggs. “We’ll just seal it off.”
The trees disappear as we enter the area inside the fence. The craters are ringed with a mixture of old and new rubble. Before the bombing, very little of the current 13 was aboveground. A few guard stations. The training area. About a foot of the top floor of our building—where Buttercup’s window jutted out—with several feet of steel on top of it. Even that was never meant to withstand more than a superficial attack.
“How much of an edge did the boy’s warning give you?” asks Haymitch.
“About ten minutes before our own systems would’ve detected the missiles,” says Boggs.