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Johanna doesn't have much in common with Blight except that they are both victors from District 7. Blight likes ice fishing and he is actually good at cooking, while she spends most of the year outside of the Games watching shitty television or edging along on morphling. But he did mentor her to victory, and never admonishes her for any of her bad habits, so she finds him tolerable. He once told her that "they told me I'd never get a 7 victor, but I got you, so I can keep my hopes up for another." She can debate him on whether or not this is a good thing, but she lets it go.
The one tradition they share is hand-rolled cigarettes on the Training Center roof the day after both their tributes die. A generous take might be a debrief, a discussion of what they could improve upon for the next year, but really it was just a memorial service, and an hour to feel bad for themselves before they had to go face the families of the tributes they got killed.
"Did you arrange that? For Autumn? Amycus had no reason to kill her in the bloodbath, he would have known she's no threat."
She nods. "Enobaria did it for a few of these." She shakes her cigarette and he nods in understanding. And he watches her for too long, maybe trying to understand when she became the type to make deals with District 2.
"I thought Fount might do a bit better, but the arena would be a fucking desert."
"It'll be 10 or 2, I think. That's what it looks like there."
Blight steps closer and exhales, his smoke helping to obscure them a bit. "They won't allow for 10 to win twice in a row." His voice is barely audible. "Not with the border leaks."
She knows on some level, that Blight is a rebel. That Blight is old and has been playing this game for years. But he sinks into his bumbling, balding persona so well that she forgets it sometimes, until she drops a bomb like this. "What do you mean?" She tries to hold her composure.
"That fancy morphling, the zinger cigarettes going around. The coffee, the chocolate. We don't make that in Panem. No one wants it to stop because there's demand those things, but money is going out and things are coming in. And Snow's worried people might be going out, too."
Johanna never finished school, so her picture of Panem is muddled at best. There is water on the west and water on the east. The Wilds are to the north, and she just assumed that under District 10 there are more Wilds. But Blight is saying there's a southern border… with other people… another country?
When she gets back inside, there's an Avox waiting with a note. She hands it to Johanna and turns away, job completed.
Johanna Mason - Your presence is requested at City Hall at 7PM.
It's signed with a rose. Immediately, she feels bile in her throat. She has no idea what this is, but she wants so badly to go back to a few minutes ago, when she was just smoking with Blight. They were talking about dead fucking children, which was awful, but she always forgets how quickly things can become worse in the Capitol.
She shoves the note in her pocket in case Blight is following behind her. It's comforting that this was prepared before their discussion just now — that there's no way whatever this is has to do with Blight or her knowing about the imports over the southern border. But also, she can't help but think it has to do with Seneca Crane. That Snow thinks she murdered the fucking Gamemaker, or that maybe Snow murdered him and she was supposed to die too, that maybe that morphling was supposed to kill her and didn't, and now he's going to finish the job.
Yes, she has half an idea that the meeting that evening might be her death, but what can she do — refuse? That would also be death. So she calls for the car and is delivered on time, and Blight is none the wiser, probably thinking she has another party or another client or whatever other bullshit she usually has at night.
The City Hall is a stone building, lit up at night, with Peacekeepers stationed out front. The car pulls up over a gravel path to the steps at the front entrance, and she feels out of her element, wearing the pants and blouse she was styled in earlier, for being on television. But she shows the crumpled note to the guard at the door, and he takes it and leads her inside.
It's quiet, her heels echoing on the marble floors, all the counters and stations abandoned in the evening. The guard leads her to the back, to a private hall, and then he hands her a blindfold. "Put this on."
"What?"
"No one is allowed to know the way to where we are going. You can take it off when we arrive."
Of course. Of course there are secret fucking passageways through the Capitol. She puts the blindfold on, because he's holding a rifle. She doesn't bother asking where they're going, or if it's safe, because she knows he isn't obligated to answer those questions, and so he won't.
And then they walk. They go down stairs, which is awful when she can't see. They walk a ways and the temperature gets colder, and the air starts to smell dank. And then they go down more stairs. Then it's more halls, and the floor beneath her feet feels like packed dirt. The halls twist and turn, and she walks ahead of the guard, his hand on her shoulder directing her which way to go. Finally, he stops her, and punches a code into an electronic lock. It opens, and they step forward once more. "You can take off the blindfold."
She is in a prison. She shouldn't be surprised by a secret underground prison in Panem, but somehow, she never imagined such a thing, and so it does take her by surprise. There are several cells, and a few are occupied, huddled figures on cots barely raised off the ground. The guard walks her all the way down the line of cells to the end, where she is face to face with a woman with a badly bruised and swollen face. He hands her another letter. "I'll be at the entrance. Knock three times when you're ready to leave."
She wants to ask him several questions, like what is this place, and what the fuck, but she opens the wax seal on the letter and reads that instead.
This is Marta, a subversive agent. This is what happens to people who try to disrupt our peaceful life. I want you to understand this very clearly.
It's signed with the same stupid rose, and it even has the awful sweet smell. She puts it aside and stands closer to the bars. "Marta?"
The woman has wide doe eyes, like Alva's, and mousy brown hair, but it's tangled around her face and matted with blood in some places. Her face is bruised, and her right arm is sitting at a bad angle, possibly a dislocation or a broken bone. Her arms and legs are covered by the uniform they gave her, but her hands are purple from bruising as well. She has been watching Johanna, but now her expression is a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Johanna."
"Johanna." She repeats the name, saying it more like 'yo-hah-na'. It looks like even speaking is painful for her.
Johanna realizes this must be the woman who stole the plane. The pink flyers, the disruption at the parade: this was her. "I saw what you did. Everyone saw it," she says. "The papers flew everywhere, thousands of them."
She furrows her brow, doubtful. "Really?" Naturally, Snow and the guards lied, told her that it didn't work at all.
Johanna nods. "Really. It worked perfectly."
Marta shakes her head. "Not perfectly. My partner, my Leon, he died when they shot the plane down."
Oh. This hadn't been published. She hadn't known anyone had died. "Are you from the south?" She feels stupid asking it. She doesn't know anything about anything.
Marta shakes her head. "From the west. I don't think they'll come for me. We're not allowed to enter Panem."
"Why did you come, then?"
She looks up at Johanna, and she looks like perhaps she regrets coming after all. But she forces a small smile. "Because we hear about it. About the killing games, the poverty, the starvation, the slaves with their tongues cut out. No one else will help, no one will do anything. I thought, how could I live if I didn't even try to help?"
Johanna sighs. She doesn't know anything, she didn't even finish school. But she's had a lot of time to think about the rebellion. "I think… Panem is really big and all the districts are really far apart. People don't understand how bad things are, really, or how to make things change. I didn't understand anything before I won."
Marta looks at her, her mouth gaping open a bit. "You're one of them… the gladiators!"
"Gladiators?"
"You kill people, you have killed people!"
Johanna takes a step back at this abrupt change in conversation, but Marta stands up, hobbling forward off the cot, and coming to stand right in front of the bars. Johanna can see that her leg is injured too, from the way she moves, and she looks pale, like she's got an infection. "I don't-"
"Kill me, please!"
"I can't…"
"No one is coming to save me. Your guards will either torture me or rape me or let me die from my injuries. My partner is dead, please."
Johanna shakes her head, unable to even form words. She turns away from the cell, pounding on it three times to be released, breathing in the dank air of the tunnel to calm herself as the guard secures the blindfold back around her head.