Hijacked

Power and Pain

The air smelled of death.

Stepping down onto the gravel road, I tried not to make a face as several men and women began marching our way. They looked a little healthier than the people we had encountered in District 11 but not by much. "Glad to see you land safely Mr. Mellark." A man said coming forward, getting ready to shake my hand.

"It's.. A pleasure to be here." He laughed a little, smiling at me with stained teeth.

"A pleasure huh? No need to be so formal. We can all smell it in the air, don't try to hide your disgust. The cattle, there's a disease running through them. They're goin flippin mad."

"A mad cow disease?" Katniss asked in disbelief.

"Of the sorts. The Capitol usually gives them antibiotics to keep the meat pure but.. No antibiotics. No meat. Less food for them." The women speaks up, smiling. "Hello everyone. I'm Luna Connel this is former mayor Luis Connel." The man who shook my hand salutes us jokingly. "Welcome to District 10."

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Is the only sound I hear as we begin to move further into District 10. They're telling us about the battles they have fought in trying to do their part for the war effort. It began with refusing to go to work but people died that way. Then they began to contaminate the meat which only made the Capitol angrier.

"Eventually, we had to amass a full scale rebellion to keep the Peacekeepers out and keep the civilians in this District safe." Luna sighs. "It wasn't easy though." It never is.

"What have you been doing since?" Gale asked.

"Waiting for orders from District 13. We're not a fighting District. We have weapons sure but none of us know how to use them. Our previous Victor isn't much help either.." She shrugs. "We honestly don't know where to go from here and the people are scared that the Peacekeepers will come back." They might.. Who knows. If they could prevent even just one of the District's from rising up with us, it could collapse the whole system. War is a fragile thing.

"So how is today going to go down then?" I asked, looking back at Cressida.

"Well, we have maybe a few lines we can use from Luna.. There's a couple of things we can work up with the cattle dying maybe.." She paused. "Today we'll probably just focus on you connecting with the people, like last time."

"Last time wasn't planned." Cressida shrugged.

"Either way, you're good with people. Just talk to them, get their stories. We'll handle the rest." I sighed. Sounded easy enough.

Cressida and her crew fell back to film us walking into District 10 and Katniss moved closer to me, looking around at the District in wonder. "I've always wondered what the other District's looked like.. But this was never how I wanted to see them you know? In ruin.."

"They looked about the same during the Victory Tour sadly.. The only real nice District's are the ones closer to the Capitol, where the Capitol people actually visit." She nodded her head slowly.

"Still.. I didn't expect things to look as bad as home." I almost reminded her that we didn't have a home anymore.. But I stopped myself. I couldn't bring that up right now. We continued to walk through the District, the stench of dead animals hung thick in the air as we drew closer to the barns. Luna said it was alright for us to go through as long as we didn't touch anything and frankly, I didn't want to.