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Preparing to leave the prison takes longer than Annie expects, mostly because Enobaria is obsessive over being prepared. Johanna sleeps again, and Annie resents her, a bit. She, too, wants to sleep, to tune out the reality of what is currently happening for hours at a time. There's a part of her that recognizes that this is unfair, that she is "lucky" she was mostly left alone after the first few days, but now that they're alone in the prison, she, too just wants to be left alone, to wait for rescue and not have to figure things out for herself.
"We need batteries, as many as you can find."
Peeta is already on a task for Enobaria, filling up water bottles in the sink of the breakroom, and so Annie hunts through the draws and cabinets and opens the backs of devices they weren't using for spare batteries. Meanwhile, Enobaria is stockpiling all of the food and first aid supplies from the break room, as well as a change of clothes for each of them. They keep the crank radio, even though they can't get it to find any stations. Annie thinks this is odd, since the guards wouldn't have kept it down here if it didn't receive any signal, but perhaps that rumbling, horrible noise disrupted regular broadcasts.
There's a shower in the back, in the guards' bathroom. Probably to wash off in case they got too bloody in interrogations. Annie wonders if they used it after they had their way with her, if they washed her off of them and forgot about the whole thing, while she'd been forced to wear them on her skin without more than the small sink in her cell to wash with for what was probably weeks.
"I'm going to wash, I'll just be a minute." she tells Enobaria. She knows Enobaria is irritated, that she wants to get moving, but surprisingly, Enobaria nods at her, a more understanding look than she was expecting.
The shower is nice. It's incredibly basic, akin to the shower she used in the mental hospital in District 4, and the water is almost too cold, but Annie is so filthy that none of this really matters. Even as gooseflesh appears on her skin, she doesn't focus on it - she just checks to make sure her skin is changing back from the off-putting dinginess of the gray-brown filth to her normal skin tone.
Her hair is a mess of its own - she can feel tangles that are closer to mats, really, and she wonders if there's any saving it, or if she'll just have to cut it off. But she scrubs it all the same with shampoo, determined to get the grime of the prison away from her scalp. She washes her face, and she scrubs under her nails. She takes particular care with her thighs and her privates. And once she is satisfied, she turns the water off, toweling herself dry and putting on a new set of the prison pants, along with a long-sleeved shirt she'd found in the break room. It felt nice to not be immediately identifiable as a prisoner.
Enobaria goes to shower next, and Annie finds a comb, which is not nearly as useful as a hairbrush, but she makes do and tries to untangle some of her hair as she waits.
"Want me to try?" Johanna is lit up with the flashlight such that Annie can only see the outline of her face, the short, peach-fuzz hair and the not the scars that still looked raw and painful. At least she'd washed the blood off her chin.
She moves to sit in a chair right in front of Johanna and hands her the comb, because truthfully, it's only been a minute and her arms are already tired. Her hair is long - almost to her waist - and she was given no warning before she was captured and taken to this prison, so it just hung loose, getting more and more tangled each day. Even Peeta's hair is somewhat shaggy now after what was probably close to a month in here. Enobaria had tight braids for the Games, though now they were loose and frizzy.
Johanna's fingers separate Annie's hair, and she begins working on the bottom few inches. It's uncomfortable, but not painful, and Annie remembers Johanna's hair before it was shorn - thick, just past her shoulders, probably something she had to detangle herself often. "Do you think it's a lost cause?" Annie asks.
"I think it'll take some time. There are scissors in the first aid kit, right? We might have to cut away pieces here and there."
Annie doesn't dare admit the rest of what she's thinking: that when she reunites with Finnick, she wants her hair to be long and flowing like the last time she saw him. She doesn't want to be missing part of herself, to be changed in some irrevocable way, because it will feel too much like they had changed while they were apart, and she is too afraid of returning to a Finnick she doesn't know, or of him finding her unknowable. And there's the other part, that Johanna was Finnick's other lover, and she's already changed, all skin and bone, shaved head, visible wounds. There's an aversion there that Annie doesn't want to think about too much, a fact that she has been competing with Johanna on some level for years, and this final time, she needs to win.
"They've taken you out before, do you know the way?"
Johanna asks Peeta this just before they open the door out of the prison, but he can only shake his head, because he absolutely does not know the way. "They blindfolded me," he says, but that was only the tip of it. They injected him with something, also, they made him turn this way and that, they shoved him against the hard walls of the corridors leading out of this place. He has no idea the way out because he was paralyzed with fear the whole time.
Even now, as Enobaria pulls the door open and they stare down a dark, terrifying hallway, he can feel the dread returning. He pictures the flashlights losing power, imagines them lost and starving in an underground cavern forever. And then the panic seems to trigger the other thing, the confusion, the rage. He can't help but think of Katniss again, feel anger at how she got him locked in this place, at the way she was out there, lying to everyone, messing up the entire country.
He saw the pictures and the videos of the bombing of District 12. He wonders if the rumbling, the shaking they had heard over their heads was bombing here in the Capitol as well.
At least he thinks they're still in the Capitol. He was taken from the Games to here. And he was taken out of here to be on television, with some of the same people from the Games. But he supposes he could be anywhere, really. "Are we still in the Capitol?" he asks, following the others into the abyss. Enobaria goes first, then Johanna, then Annie, and he is last. This doesn't help his paranoia, the feeling that someone could come up behind him.
"What do you mean?" Johanna asks. "Where else would we be?" Already she sounds out of breath.
He shrugs, even though no one can see him. He tries to imagine everywhere in Panem, places he's seen only once on his Victory Tour. "District 2, maybe?"
"This isn't District 2," Enobaria says. She provides no explanation as to why.
"It's the Capitol," Annie assures him. "They took me out once, too, though I think they sedated me in and out, since I don't remember the tunnels at all."
They come to the first intersection, the hallway they're on coming to an end, and the intersecting hall going left or right as far as they can see. Enobaria takes a marker from her pack and writes on a brick 'entrance straight ahead'. "Right or left?" she asks.
"Right, I think," Peeta says. He can't remember anything from leaving the prison, but he closes his eyes and tries to recreate the motions his body took, and it feels correct to move that way. The others shrug and they continue on. It's slow-going, each of them carrying a pack with food, water, and other supplies, except for Johanna, who only carried a flashlight, a walking stick fashioned from part of the shower curtain rod, and the first aid kit.
The tunnels are deadly quiet, without even insects or rats skittering about. They are mostly pounded dirt paths, with concrete walls, and they're plenty high enough to walk through, but there are inconsistencies. Some walls are brick, and some floors are finished. There are some numbers printed on the walls, like 5-1 and 6-8, but they are equivocal, Peeta thinking they were related to blocks of the Capitol above them, and Enobaria thinking they had more to do with the grid pattern of the corridors underground.
And each turn they make, Peeta's frustration grows. Was Katniss enjoying herself, while he was toiling away in this labyrinth? A mutt. She's a mutt. The reminder echoes in his head, sounding stupid, something he could dismiss if he hadn't been walking around in near-darkness for hours. But he has, and he can feel it starting to take hold. Because he had heard the stories, of the Capitol reanimating corpses, of them doing horrible experiments. Had they turned Katniss into a mutt? Was everyone just going along with this Katniss who was clearly no longer even human?
He's startled out of his thoughts by a shriek, and it takes him a moment to realize what's happened. Johanna has stumbled, and dropped the flashlight, and Annie crashed into her back, causing the noise. Enobaria turns around with the second flashlight, and Peeta wipes his brow, hoping she doesn't see how he's been sweating.
"Is everyone alright?" she asks. She's straight-backed like a soldier, and she is the oldest of all of them. It's only natural she takes command.
"I'm alright," Annie says, setting down her pack to take a break.
Enobaria crouches to see Johanna better, and Peeta retrieves the flashlight which has rolled towards him. "I'm fine," Johanna says, but even this sounds clipped and tense.
"Well, let's take a break, we ought to eat and drink something," Enobaria says.
There had been watches on the guards, but no one wanted to go get one off of the corpses. They knew the time when they left, from the wall clock, but still didn't know the date. And it was impossible to know how much time had passed, underground, in the dark, in endless hallways that all looked the same. They pass around the water and canned food, taking turns with the can opener, and Peeta feels a little better once he has a full stomach, and he's not thirsty, and he can pretend he's somewhere else, even.
But after, he takes a flashlight to go back around a corner to relieve himself, and he's by himself in the dark, and even though he knows the others are just a few meters away, logically, all he sees is the endless darkness of the corridor, and he imagines them taking the real Katniss and exchanging her for a mutt. When did it happen? Before their first Games? Before their second? Had he toured Panem with a mutt? He feels sweaty, sticky, gross, violated, and his hands are trembling as he sets the flashlight down to open his fly to pee.
After, he returns to the others and doesn't look over his shoulder, but he can feel something there, watching.
She needs to get above ground. She hasn't seen the sun in what? weeks? months? But she can barely stand. She'd stopped eating her meals soon after she'd arrived, so now as she eats the can of hash or chili or whatever Enobaria has passed her, it is difficult to even remember eating, and she does slowly, trying to coax the food down her throat, into her cramping stomach.
"Not too much," Annie says, even though Johanna doesn't think she can eat more than half the can anyways. "At the Academy they said that if you don't eat for a while, you have to start slowly. For your heart."
Johanna doesn't know if this is true or not, but they do have an actual hospital in District 4, so Annie is probably a better authority on this. Her heart had beat incorrectly just about every time they shocked her, she isn't prepared for this to happen again just from eating. But it feels like an impossible scenario: she's too weak to walk anywhere, and not able to eat more than a few bites to gain her strength back.
She thinks of the end of her first Games, when she was whisked to some magical Capitol infirmary and everything wrong with her was set right almost instantly, when she was made presentable for cameras and interviews in just hours. There is none of that here, and the burns on her face and chest ache, and there's a pain that seems to radiate from behind her eyes all the way down to the back of her thighs, and every step she takes through the corridors is on unsteady legs, but what choice does she have but to continue?
She passes the other half of her food to Peeta, who probably needed the extra, and he finishes it. He doesn't look well either, if she is telling the truth, his skin a little sallow and he looks a bit feverish, even in the dim light of the flashlights. Annie looks alright, but she has a persistent cough that she can't seem to clear, and she's kept up with the incessant tapping that drove Johanna mad during their imprisonment. Enobaria is the one to help Johanna back up.
Enobaria, who suffered for what? For surviving the Games? There are no rebel ties for Enobaria, and no one they were trying to bait into trading for her or rescuing her. She just happened to be alive at the end of the Quarter Quell, and for that she was punished by the Capitol all the same.
"Come on," Enobaria says, putting an arm around Johanna's waist.
It's easier to walk with Enobaria helping support her, but it's still exhausting. Johanna wishes they could find a ladder, a hatch, anything, but all they find is more hallways. "This is like my Games," Johanna says, thinking of the labyrinth of an arena she was dropped into. "Less death traps, so far, at least."
Enobaria laughs, a little, adjusting her grip on Johanna's waist. "Funny, I was thinking it was like my Games."
It's strange to speak to Enobaria without any venom. Johanna is so used to hating her, to disliking District 2 on principle, since Enobaria wouldn't ever get on board with any rebel plans, since she was loyal to a fault. But now they were on the same team, really, at least until they got out of these tunnels and saw what the world was like outside. And well, they had watched each other be tortured - had seen each other at what might have been their lowest. What hate does she have for Enobaria that can rival the hate she has for those guards? For Snow?
"We must have gone the wrong way," Enobaria says, annoyed. "I mean, there's no way those guards walked hours into and out of the prison every time."
"I may have been transported on a little cart, I think," Annie says.
Enobaria wracks her brain, trying to recall arriving at the prison. Had she been on foot? Or had there been a vehicle? It was hard to recall, and she feels bad then for blaming Peeta for not knowing the way out, when she didn't even remember how she got there. "There was nothing at the entrance."
"Maybe the relief staff arrives with it, and the staff leaving take it out," Annie suggests.
It's impossible to know, but she does know that they've been going the wrong way. It's been far too long without an exit, only doors that lead to further corridors. "Let's turn back," she says, frustrated with the lack of progress, but she isn't going to continue to nowhere when there has to be a shorter way to get aboveground.
She should leave them and go herself, because she can move faster than the rest of them. She should at least leave Johanna, who is by far the slowest, and can't even help carry the supplies. She has no reason to stay with them now that they're freed from the prison: they were all rebels or rebel associates and she was not, she was not friends with any of them before this, she owes them nothing. There would be no reason for her not to just take her share of the supplies and run, to try to fend for herself, aside from perhaps her conscience at the fact that the rest of them seem more or less useless at survival. But even this she can assuage with the rationale that they had all won Hunger Games, Annie by outlasting other Victors, Johanna in a labyrinthine arena, Peeta making it out with an unprecedented two Victors.
So as she turns back, her pack a little heavier than just her share, slowing down for Johanna's sake, she realizes that the reason she isn't going to cut and run is less about alliances and obligations, and more about the fact that she doesn't want to be alone. She has no idea what the situation is in Panem, no idea what is happening in her home district or if she can even make it back. She just murdered some of the most depraved men she's ever had the displeasure of meeting, and when the power cut her initial fear had been that they were coming back, that they were not finished having their way with her, holding her captive, using her as a motivator in interrogations. It's nice to just have other people around who mean her no harm.
And a second, stranger reason is there, one she doesn't really want to think more on. Out of all of them, she should leave Johanna behind - the biggest rebel supporter, the least helpful for escape - but out of all of them, she wants to leave Johanna the least. She's not sure if it's because Johanna was there with her as a Mentor in the Capitol before things all went to shit, and even if they weren't friends, they went through the same kind of bullshit back then, or if it's because they often got pulled into the interrogation room together, so she got to see Johanna at her worst, and Johanna got to see Enobaria at hers. That kind of vulnerability gave her a little more patience for Johanna's slow walking than it did for Peeta's mumbling.
She doesn't know if Johanna feels the same - perhaps Johanna is just too weak to cut and run off on her own - but it feels good to have at least someone a little familiar from before the Quarter Quell, from before everything changed impossibly quickly.
"Is someone there?"
Enobaria may have taken a wrong turn in the dark corridors as she was lost in her thoughts, and now a voice calls out to them from the inky blackness. It sounds like a woman, and it doesn't sound hostile, but they all pause, and Enobaria can feel a cold sweat break out. She can feel the others looking at her, for a sign to run away, or answer, or anything else. She switches the flashlight off and sees Johanna has already done so with the other.
"I know someone is there, are you lost?" The voice tries again, and it sounds gentle, but Enobaria pictures a woman luring them in, just to find Peacekeepers or bandits behind.
"We should see who it is," Annie suggests. "They might know the way out."
"They'll recognize us right away, we're in tabloids and television," she hisses. "They could be on the wrong side and turn us in."
"What side is that?" Johanna whispers.
"They won't recognize me," Annie says.
It's fair, she's not even wearing the prison shirt anymore, and she's never been a Mentor. She barely looks like she did in her Games anymore, five years older and much more haggard. Before they can discuss it further, she drops her pack and walks toward the voice, making Enobaria wonder if she has underestimated Annie Cresta, that she wasn't just the timid, crying girl she heard in the cell next to hers, but also a Victor. But she was also locked away in a mental hospital for years, or so she'd heard.
She and Peeta and Johanna press themselves against a wall and wait and listen, standing in the pitch-black emptiness of the underground corridor.
Annie doesn't exactly want to walk into the abyss, but it doesn't feel much different than the terror she's already experiencing. Walking the pitch-black tunnels with Peeta and Johanna and Enobaria for company isn't exactly comforting, especially when they seem no closer to escaping after hours and hours of searching. Plus, talking to anyone else might give her clues to finding Finnick.
She thought perhaps Enobaria would come with her, being the bravest among them, or Peeta, as he seems to have warmed up to her the most, but she walks alone, and that's fine - she's been more or less alone for years. Finnick was never truly hers, not as long as he belonged to the Capitol, and her parents never really recovered from her being sent to the Ward for Troubled Women. She wonders if they're doing alright, if there's fighting going on, and if it's reached District 4. No, she's always been alone, inside her head, and that's been fine. It's how she won her Games, and it's how she's stayed alive so far. She approaches the woman who called out to them.
"Hello, I think I need help," she says.
The woman has dirty blonde curls and looks like she might have been a fancy businesswoman, but now she looks haggard, with days-old makeup and a stained pink suit. "I know there are more of you," she says, an edge of fear in her voice as she tries to peer into the darkness beyond Annie. "Where are they?"
Annie tries to keep her expression calm, to not alarm the other woman. She can't see a weapon, but that doesn't mean there's no one in the dark behind this woman with a gun. "Please, my friends mean no harm. We're just trying to get to the surface."
She realizes she's called the others her friends a second after she says it, and wonders if they've heard her. She doubts they would say the same about her, but she brushes it off, waiting for the woman's response. The woman looks at her more closely, her flashlight blocking Annie's view of anything behind her. "Where did you come from?" she asks.
"The prison," she says, thinking the truth is better than a lie. She was not interrogated much in the prison, maybe 5 or 6 times, but she understood that it was best to stick to the truth until you couldn't avoid it. "I was taken from my District… District 4 and kept here for weeks. No one has told me why. But now… now I've been let out and I can't understand anything."
This is risky, of course, because the woman may want to know how Annie was let out, or who, exactly Annie was, but for some reason, the woman softens here. "You must have been let out after the bombings," she says. "It destroyed all the electricity. That's why we're down here. This is a shelter behind me. We've been instructed to stay here until we get the all clear. We just… didn't expect anyone coming from the tunnels behind the shelter."
So the rumbling was a bombing. That cleared one thing up in Annie's mind, at least. "Can we get to the surface from here?" she asks.
The woman nods, but looks concerned. "Of course, that's how we got down, but the latest report said it'll be at least 12 more hours before an all clear. It's bad up there."
Annie nods, but she has already made up her mind. She needs to see the sun, or the moon, or whatever sky is outside. She hasn't had fresh air in weeks, and now that she knows she's potentially minutes away from being back on the surface, she is queasy with anticipation. "Please tell the people inside that my friends and I mean them no harm. There are 4 of us, and we only wish to pass through and go to the surface."
The woman bites her lips, but nods after a moment and turns and enters the doorway behind her. Annie turns back to the others, her hands shaking with the thought of freedom.
Peeta climbs the ladder first. He had been last in the tunnels, following behind the others, enough so that he was certain someone was just over his shoulder, ready to take him out. But now they push him forward quickly, certain they are all recognizable except for Annie, but Peeta is the most recognizable, the alleged lover of the Mockingjay, the one on national television, the one they would all recognize in an instant.
He understands this, sort of, and also, he doesn't. Standing next to Katniss feels like something that happened to someone else, something he heard about in a story. Or the other thought that he's maybe able to convince himself of sometimes: that he and Katniss did grow up together, that they did win the 74th Games, or maybe just he did, and then Katniss was replaced with a mutt, and that imposter caused all the mess that happened since.
But he can't give it much thought as Enobaria shoves a towel over his head, and he is pushed past dozens of people huddled in an underground room, and up the ladder towards the surface. He struggles with the hatch for a moment, and he can feel the impatience of the others behind him - Enobaria, then Johanna, then Annie - but he eventually figures it out and pushes himself up into the outside.
It's evening, the sky a deep orange glow, but that's the only thing familiar about the scene. He can't tell where he is, even. He pulls the towel down from his head and pushes it across his nose and mouth, anything to keep himself from breathing in the silt that's blowing through the air. Enobaria pushes at his feet and he clears the hatch, and quickly she scrambles up behind him, and then the other two, and then they close it again, leaving the other people behind underground.
Johanna falls back in the ground, obviously exhausted just from climbing the ladder, and Annie pulls the little radio from the bag, trying to get a signal now that they're above ground. Enobaria looks around as horrified as Peeta feels, but Peeta sees recognition in her eyes, she knows where they are.
"What was here?" he asks her, his voice muffled through the towel. The area is razed, just rubble now, and they're at the epicenter of it: there's no buildings for at least a half mile around them, just dust in the air, smoke from small fires, and an absolute absence of sound. He can't even see rescue crews working.
"Everything," she says, her head turning, as if trying to convince herself she's not where she thinks she is. "The Council, the hotels, the clubs… Snow's Mansion… it was all here."
Peeta doesn't know the Capitol well enough to picture this, but he believes her. Enobaria has never lied to them so far. "Who would do this?" His eyes fall to Johanna, wondering if this was it, the true end of the rebel plans. But before either she or Enobaria can answer, the hatch creaks open again.
It's the same woman as before, with the curly hair, but in the light of golden hour, Peeta can see the blood and bruises on her face. She tosses him four respirators, and although he drops them with his clumsy, post-torture reflexes, he picks them up and passes them to the others. "Listen," she says. "We know who you are, or at least some of us do. You can't stay here."
"What?" Peeta asks.
She looks uncomfortable, like she wants to climb back down the hatch, away from them now. "We have guns, we will shoot you if you don't go."
Now Johanna sits up, her expression suspicious as usual. "What are you afraid of?"
The woman pauses for a moment to find her words. "I don't want any desperate situations," she says. "With you, or whoever is looking for you."
Enobaria nods at this, conceding a bit. Peeta knows Johanna and Enobaria killed several tributes in their Games, enough to probably make the Capitolites nervous. But himself and Annie? And whoever was looking for them? He had failed to imagine more guards, more Peacekeepers, simply because they hadn't run into any so far. He didn't particularly want to stay in that bunker, but it was nice to have the option if they needed to turn back. Rejection from the first person they'd met stung more than he'd anticipated.
"That's fine," Enobaria says. "We'll go. Thank you for saying it clearly. We would appreciate it if you act as if you never saw us."
The woman nods. Peeta appreciates the sentiment, but he thinks they're all thinking the same thing: there's over twenty people down there. Someone would tell an interrogator, if push came to shove. She disappears back down the hatch, twisting the lock, and they are once again alone.
Annie tunes the radio as they all adjust the respirators, and they listen, getting their bearings. "The state of emergency continues in the Capitol. Please remain in your homes if you are outside the containment zone, or in the bunkers if you are within it. The President is establishing the next course of action, and we will send that directive as soon as we have it. Thank you."
Annie changes the station to another, and this one is much more staticky, barely detectable, and Peeta strains his ears to hear the voice. "Now that the Capitol has fallen, —-Districts —— rebel control. We need to —— resources. It ——- time." The entire program fades then, despite Annie fiddling with the small antenna.
Peeta's heart is racing, and he can't help but be pulled along, rather than calm himself down. Who is in control? Who was lying? Was there a civil war? Who bombed the Capitol? His hands are shaking now.
"Come on, we said we'd leave this area," Enobaria says.
"Where are we going?" Annie asks.
Enobaria points to one of the last buildings still standing on the edge of the blast zone. But it does nothing to calm Peeta. "Training Center."