"You're Dauntless too?" The soldier behind me inquires as we walk down hallway after hallway. I look back at him sharply. I don't understand the question. "Your tattoos." My tattoos? I don't have tattoos. They're such a frivolous, Capitol thing. I would never get one even if there existed a place in District Twelve where I could. There might have been a tattoo artist or two in District Thirteen, but I doubt they brought their tools for it when the fled the Capitol to join the rebel cause, and none of them were ever offering their services anyway.
"I don't have tattoos." I say coldly, bitterly, like he's lying.
"Um, yeah, you do. On your back. There's some sort of bird -- I can only see its beak above your dress." He says. I stop walking. I'm frozen, I'm terrified. I look at my reflection in the glass wall to my left, it's barely visible. I pull the gown open down the back, where patches of velcro hold it together, and reveal the bird. I can't see it very well in the glass reflection.
"Finnick," I say, and he's instantly behind me studying the tattoo.
"It's a Mockingjay, breaking free of some sort of metal ring. There are flames that seem to chase it; you don't remember getting this sweetheart?" He tells me. I slowly shake my head.
"A Mockingjay? Don't you mean Mockingbird?" One of the soldiers asks, confused. I shake my head.
Finnick explains. "Mockingjay. You've never heard of them? Capitol hybrid, Jabberjays were let loose to die, but they mated with Mockingbirds instead, forming the Mockingjay?" We stare at them while they show no signs of recognition. I'm at a loss for words. This place is not Panem, I realize, this place is nowhere near Panem. Where are we? The Wilds? Another country? I was hardly aware any of them even existed anymore. Wherever we are, we are far from home, and I don't want to say anything that could incriminate us or get us sent back. I only want Peeta, and then we'll leave. We'll find a place to live out in the woods. I know how to hunt, Peeta knows how to cook, we could build a house easy. Or at least a shelter, good enough to be a house. We can survive. Finnick can fish, if we find water. He and Annie and their son can live with us. I know we can do it. Oh, I remember with a pang of guilt. Finnick doesn't know he has a son. I smile slowly, wanting to tell him, but maybe I should let Annie do that. Maybe I should let Annie introduce them. Finnick patches my dress back up, and I know he's thinking of an inappropriate thing to say but he doesn't. He doesn't because there's just too much going on, there's no room for humor here.

We finally round one more corner, and the Dauntless explain that we're almost to the lobby of Erudite headquarters. We pass several others carrying guns or dragging people in blue clothes. Each time they stare at us, but continue in their path without a word. Finnick sticks close to me, and I don't think I'd want him anywhere else. I'm glad we ran into each other in the hall. I can't imagine what I'd be doing if I was alone. I probably wouldn't have gone with the Dauntless men, I probably wouldn't have listened to them. I probably would have done something I'd regret. With Finnick I feel safe, because I know he can fight like I can. I know that the second things go wrong I can count on him to help me fight our way out. His devotion to Annie is almost stronger than my devotion to Peeta, he and I will do anything to find them, and that's why I feel safer with him around.
A Dauntless soldier ahead of us joins our step, talking to the Dauntless in front of me. I barely hear a few words in their conversation, but it's nothing important. We stop at a door to a stairwell and the new Dauntless opens it. They step through, but stop in the middle of the stairs. Finnick and I can't see what they're doing, but we hear their voices. There's a girl on the stairs, who was apparently shot in the leg. I shudder. I didn't wake up from one war just to be thrust in the middle of another one. We have to find Peeta and Annie, and get out.
"Let's keep moving." The Dauntless behind me shouts. They do. One of them scoops the girl into his arms and we walk, down the flight of stairs, to the left, down another flight and into a lobby. It's busy here. Unlike the halls which were empty and silent. Here people come in and out, people stand around, people are shoved with guns to the backs of their heads to sit in a line in the middle of the room. Wounded lie everywhere, women in blue clothes administering drugs to them in order to make the pain stop. I curl up my nose at the stench of blood. I can barely breathe.
"Well, have a seat anywhere you like." One of our escorts instructs, gesturing to empty chairs and benches and couches. I feel heat rising to my cheeks. This is not what we asked for. We asked to be taken to our loved ones, not to sit in some make-shift hospital while Dauntless swarmed the building looking for more innocents to bring down to the pile.
"No." I say bluntly. The Dauntless looks stunned for a moment, as if wondering why I would defy him. "We were told you'd help us. This isn't help. We want to find Peeta and Annie." I can never forget Annie. Each time I crave to see Peeta, I remind myself Finnick craves to see Annie. I can't leave her out of our demands.
"Look, if they're here, someone will find them. If it's just like you said and Jeanine locked you guys in a simulation, then they'll be brought down as refugees. All you can do now is wait for them. Okay?"
I don't look at him. I look at the ground where a trail of blood smears to a back door, where a body was dragged and dumped out there. What if that was Peeta? What if the other Dauntless already found him, and shot him because they thought he was a threat? No, I force myself to stay calm, Peeta wouldn't let that happen. Peeta knows how to say things in order to grab people's attention, and make them listen. He knows how to use words as a weapon, he can say anything and they'll believe him. Right? He'll get himself out of this safely. He will.
I feel arms wrap around my shoulders and push me toward the far wall, to some chairs. They're Finnick's arms, and he's whispering in my ear.
"Don't worry Katniss, we'll wait for them here." I'm surprised he's so calm. Before, he'd been almost to breaking point, wanting to see Annie. Now he's calm, collected, and patient. I need to be that way. But I miss Peeta, so I can't be.
I sit and Finnick sits next to me, his arm draped around my shoulder. The gesture is comforting, even if to outsiders it seems romantic, between us, it's like saying you understand. Finnick understands my pain after going through it himself. He knows. He understands.
After awhile, I don't know how long exactly, I pull my knees up to my chest and hug them. I'm afraid of my surroundings. I'm afraid of what's happening, and how it will effect us. I'm afraid of asking questions, even to myself, because the answers terrify me all the more. I take a deep breath, and use a technique one of the doctors in Thirteen suggested. I start with the simplest things I know to be true, and work my way up to the more complicated. I begin the list in my head, whispering it to myself after I've gone through it a few times.
"My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District Twelve." I stop. That seems like a more wavering truth. I don't know if Panem is real, or if it was a simulation. I skip that part and move on. "Peeta." I breathe into my legs. No one can hear me, but the name sounds wobbly on my tongue. "Peeta is missing. I don't know where he is. I don't know where I am, except that they told me it's the Erudite Headquarters." That term -- erudite -- it tastes familiar on my tongue, but I don't want to dig through my memories to find it. I force the familiarity out and come back to listing truths. "Finnick is with me. Finnick is alive. I thought he was dead because of a simulation, but he is not. He is very much alive." A thought, so fragile and filled with such a sliver of hope I don't want to be crushed, occurs to me, and I stop rocking. I stare at a spot between my knees where the floor is visible. Prim. Prim could be alive too. If Finnick's death was just an illusion, Prim's death could be too. I'm stuck. The thought is almost too good to be true, but I can't do anything about it. I'm stuck staring at the floor because I don't want to believe that after all this time my sister whom I loved so much could be alive. What if she's not? I need to protect myself, to tell myself not to hope for it because then it won't be true, and then I'll be heartbroken all over again.
"Finnick," I say the name frantically, desperately, like it's a drug I've convinced myself I need.
"What?" he says, to my right.
"Prim." I say. "What if Prim is-is alive." He hesitates to answer. I shudder when I realise just how hesitant he is. He knows, he's smarter than I am, he won't raise his hopes for such a thing. But I remind myself over and over again that Finnick was dead, just like she was, and that she could be alive somewhere too.

It takes a long time before anything happens, but I am patient. Finnick took a shoelace he found on the floor and began tying, untying, and retying knots a few hours ago. Rocking with my knees pressed tightly against my chest evidently wasn't enough to calm my anxious mind. I resorted to counting heads and watching the people with guns awhile ago. Sometime as Finnick was tying a flimsy noose and I'd counted six men carrying weapons in one hallway alone, a girl was marched in and sat down across from me, by the entrance. She appeared to be a prisoner. At least, that's how it seemed, because several men in colorful clothes patched with other colorful material marched in beside her with guns, all pointed at her. They never lowered them, as if she was a danger. I couldn't see this girl being a danger, though. She seemed innocent and petite, like a child.
For a long time nothing happens. People wearing blue are brought in from various places, escorted by more men in dirty, patchy clothing with guns in their hands. I still stare at the guns, intrigued by how different they look from what I am used to, what the simulation made me believe was real. Still every time that thought passes through me I feel the need to squeeze my wrists together against my temples to block out the terrifying knowledge my mind is trying hard to process. I won't accept a new reality. What I had in there -- in the simulation -- was my reality, for however long, for whatever reason I was put in it, it was my reality. And I am stubbornly refusing to acknowledge a new one that might turn out just as horrific, if not more than Panem was. People swarm around me crying out for their loved ones, which I know are wounded but refuse to look at. There is a commotion with the girl prisoner, but I don't pay attention. Instead, I look at Finnick, who has stopped his rope tying and is focused on a wounded girl who was just brought in from outside. I don't look at her. I only look at Finnick, who is drawing similarities between this girl and Annie. I watch his face contort into pained expressions for a few minutes, and then bury my head in my knees again. Then I hear a shout. It sounds familiar, like the smell of fresh growth in the spring, or the cool breeze of autumn. I jump to my feet almost as quickly as Finnick does, and whirl around to see her head of long, red hair bouncing as she runs straight into his arms -- into Finnick's arms, and wraps hers around his neck. I stare at them for awhile. Anyone with two eyes of their own could see that they were in love. It was just that simple. No words of confirmation are needed, no signs from the two of them that a relationship stands, it's plain in their eyes that each one holds the value of the other above that of their own lives. That kind of love makes all other seem like nothing in comparison. That is the love I think Peeta once felt for me, before his hijacking. I suppose he gained some or most of it back, but the Peeta I once knew -- the boy with the bread, the dandelion in the spring, the one who was willing to die for me -- only a portion of him remains untouched. The rest had to be rebuilt, modified, made back into the person he was. I shudder. What if that Peeta is gone too? What if he wakes up somewhere from the simulation, and he's different? I don't want Peeta to be different. In the world I woke up in, the world where nothing makes any sense, I want one thing to stay the same, to make sense: Peeta. He has to. He has to ground me where the world is trying desperately to tear me apart. I need him to keep me sane.
"Annie!" I hear Finnick breathe on her neck. I turn my eyes off their spinning bodies and search the faces of those who accompanied Annie from down the hall. Peeta isn't one of them. I feel a rock sink to the pit of my stomach. The urge to run away comes over me again. To hide, to find a place where it's quiet and I can cry or scream or sleep away the horrible thing I've woken up to. I want to leave this place, to forget it ever existed, to dream of Peeta -- or not wake up at all.
I turn around, and people are swarming the room again. It's too crowded for me to get through, so I fall against the wall and hug my knees again. I think about sliding down the cold, blue wall, and about the tattoo on my back. It's by all accounts a beautiful piece of artwork, but it was requested by someone who was not me. Someone I am unfamiliar with, someone who should be me, who is me, but that I have no recollection of ever knowing, ever being. I wonder if Gale has woken up from the simulation, or if he was ever really in it. I wonder if I'll see him again. I wonder if he remembers designing the bombs that killed Prim in the simulation. I wonder if that still eats him up, still haunts him, still makes him feel a stab of guilt every time he looks at me or thinks of Prim. The thoughts that consume my mind are too much, and I pick myself up, wandering over to Finnick. He holds Annie close to his side, as if once he lets go, she'll blow away on a breeze and he'll lose her again. While Finnick's arms wrap closely around Annie, his eyes are fixed on something above the heads of everyone in the crowd. I notice it's thinned, but remains just crowded enough that I can't move ahead or go back. I know someone up front has just entered, capturing everyone's attention with her curt greeting.
A woman with long, dark hair and slanted eyes gives a wry smile, standing up but leaning all her weight to one foot. I am trained to recognise the injured, and she is most definitely one of them. A gun probably did that to her. It seems the only weapon anyone around here carries.
"I didn't know the leader of Amity would be so curt," she says and I have to plug my ears when the memories threaten to spill over the floodgates in my mind again. That word -- amity -- I am familiar with it. But again, I push the familiarity out of the way and force the memories to subside. I don't want to make sense of anything just yet. Panem is all I've known, Panem is enough to know for now.
Something touches my arm from behind. It's not Finnick, because he stands to my right. I tense up, but reach for the syringes in my pocket slowly and calmly. Before I have to use them a boy with darker skin than me, a nice bronze-brown color, steps up close to my ear and whispers something. I can't hear it. I'm deaf to his words because my mind races to clear away the guilt I feel for almost stabbing him in the neck with my syringe. I don't even know if what's in them will kill him or leave him paralyzed in a simulation. I shouldn't use them again until I know for sure.
"What?" I turn around and say. My words are like a hoarse whisper, just barely escaping the dryness of my throat.
He smiles. "I'm Zeke, I heard you were locked up in one of the simulation rooms. I'm here to help you." He says and I believe him. His face is far too kind to be anything but trustworthy.

The next minute we're walking. I don't know why I follow him, but I feel compelled to, maybe he knows where Peeta is or how to make sense of all of this. I'm lost, scared, and in desperate need of something that makes sense. Finnick stayed with Annie in the lobby to watch two women speaking back and forth. Their words made little to no sense to me, just noise swimming around in my head.
Zeke takes me through hallway after hallway until I forget which way we came, until I lose count and slowly lose confidence. I wrap my arms around myself to keep from falling apart. Zeke wears black clothes but doesn't have the blue arm band, like the prisoners. He doesn't have patches on his clothes either, like the ones who carry guns. His clothes are just plain, although his pants are a different shade of black than his jacket, and his shirt is a pale yellow. I wonder why so many different colors, but then maybe they don't have much else, like the poor back in Twelve.
I open my mouth to ask where I am, where we are going, but the words shrivel in my throat and die out, like a fire left unattended in the cold. I shrink back and hold myself tighter.
"What's your name?" He says casually. I feel like he knows the answer, or at least he's familiar with it, but refuses to say anything that might scare me off. And it would, if he knew me as the girl with the bird tattoo, as the person I don't remember being.
"Katniss." Hoarse. So hoarse I feel my throat shriveling up, in need of water, dry like leather. We stop. He looks at me to try and remember my face. I cower and look frightened.
"Katniss? Katniss Everdeen?" His words are shocked, like he can't believe it's really me.
"Yes." I mutter, terrified. "How do you know who I am?"
"Y-you mean you don't--?" He pauses, unfinished. But he turns on his heel and continues to walk down the hall. "You've been under that simulation way too long, Everdeen." He laughs. Laughs. Why? "You don't even remember me?" He walks backwards and studies me, smiling, grinning, amused. I can't answer that. I can't answer anything right now. My brain is a muddled mess, my heart feels like it's breaking apart, I can't think clearly enough. And I know what will fix it, who will fix it.
"Where's Peeta?" I say instead, and the words fall out sloppily, fragile, and weak. Zeke's grin turns into a sad frown almost immediately, and he furrows his brows.
"Who?" He inquires.
Screaming. The sound comes from my throat before I can stop it. I scream for Peeta, for him to be real, for his presence by my side, his soothing words to calm me down. I want him there when I have a nightmare, there to sit by me, hold me, and fight them away. He cannot be a product of the simulation, something my mind simply made up to keep me together for the duration of it. But then I think, and I know, he had to be. That is exactly what he was, it fits perfectly. Peeta was far too good for me, I didn't deserve him in reality. Peeta was the perfect boy, he gave me bread when I was starving, he helped me get through the first games even when it seemed like I was the one helping him, he volunteered to go with me in the second to sacrifice himself so I could go home, to protect me until that time came. And even after the Capitol stole him, hijacked his memories of me, and turned him against me, he came back. It shouldn't be possible for anyone to do that, and he did. I can't convince myself he was real.
"Katniss, Katniss!" I hear Zeke, faintly, like he's in a tunnel. I've fallen to the floor and hold my head between my hands, pressing the noises out of my ears. I want nothing to do with a reality that doesn't include Peeta.
"Katniss, please, we'll find him, whoever he is." Zeke tells me but I can't believe it, because it isn't true.
"No, Peeta isn't -- he isn't real." I whisper and my voice sounds better now, now that tears have laid trails along my face, and saliva gathered in my throat. I cough, and stand, my vision blurry.
"I want to go back now." I say firmly. But he tells me no. He denies me something I want, and that agitates me. But I don't argue, I'm far too tired for that. I just follow and let my arms hit me when I move. There is nothing left, is there? Nothing left of the life I tried so hard to make for myself. And maybe, that's a good thing. There are no Peacekeepers, no oppression, there's no president Snow or Coin, no Games, life could be good here. If I could just find my sister.
"Where is Prim?" I ask suddenly. Zeke glances at me but doesn't turn around to answer.
"After the Dauntless attack on Abnegation, she and your mother fled to the Amity compound. As far as anyone knows, she's still there." Relief. Relief floods me like a river, and I feel a great weight lift from my back. She's alive. Prim is alive.

There's a big metal door between us and the next room. I feel stiff. I don't want to find out what's behind it. Zeke pulls the silver handle and tells me to go in. I see tables, chairs, and cots brought in from elsewhere to accommodate all the people gathered here -- people I, for once, recognise. There's Foxface, sitting on a desk biting her nails, looking sharply at everyone else. There's Marvel, lying on his back staring at the ceiling. I see Thresh with his face buried in his hands, crying, probably. My eyes land on Cato and I remember what he did to Peeta, what he tried to do. I remember shooting him in the hand with an arrow when Peeta told me to, and watching him fall into a pile of mutts who devoured him. I remember shooting him with another arrow, out of mercy, to save him from the dogs. That single act was the kindest thing I could do for him at that time.
I flinch when Zeke touches my shoulder. "They were all under simulations. I'm not sure, but I think you were all in the same one." I nod. I don't move, but everyone still notices me. Foxface stares, Marvel studies me like prey, and Cato glares. Thresh is the only one who doesn't seem to know I'm here. I swallow whatever is in my throat, the lump, saliva, guilt for trampling over these people in order to secure my own victory, and turn back to Zeke.
"Why are they all in here?" I ask almost desperately.
"Because," he says. "None of them wanted to be anywhere else. Some of them remember, but most of them don't know who or where they are. Some are still stuck in the simulation, thinking they're somewhere called Pan-Panim--"
"Panem." I say. He nods slowly.
"And what do you remember?" He asks slowly, gently. I look at him. I don't recognise anything about him. I know I should, but I don't.
I look around the room one last time for Peeta, but he's not among them. But neither is Rue, Clove, Haymitch, Effie, and a thousand others I could list. Maybe he's with them, or alone. But I know he's not, because he wasn't real.
"Everything. Nothing." I say, and it confuses him. "I don't want to remember. It's too much, too soon. I see fragments of what this world is -- but for the past few days all I've known is Panem, the world created in a simulation." And Peeta, I want to add, but can't. Zeke wouldn't understand, no one would, the deep connection to a figment of my imagination I have. I shudder again because all I want is Peeta, and if that means I have to go back in the simulation to find him, so be it. The thought terrifies me. The idea that I want to live a lie, stuns me into terror. I don't want that. Anything but that.
"Katniss," Zeke says. I look at him. He looks very concerned, and places one hand on my shoulder to steady me, to hold me up while he delivers the news. "You weren't in there for just a few days." I can't accept that. It feels like waking up from a long dream. It couldn't be more than a few days, could it? In the simulation, it felt like years had been spent living in Panem. But I know that can't be right, could it? Could I have been gone for a whole seventeen years?
"How long then?" I ask.
He places the other hand on my other shoulder. "You were gone for a whole year." And I feel faint.