Mockingjay: Prim [Completed]

Chapter 22: A Chapter Full of Deaths (Prim)

Primroseeeee.

The grace period is over. Snow has already sent people to look for our bodies. He probably was reassured by Boggs' corpse then realized that the rest of us are missing. Now he's releasing a pack of mutts to capture me.

Primroseeeee.

The sound is so proximate that it scares me. I realize it's Rory. The bullet's done a lot more damage than I originally thought. He shakes his head and tries to come to his own senses.

"Primrose! Get out of here! Run! Get out!" he screams desperately.

"Why, what is it!?"

"I'm not sure, but it wants to kill you!"

For a second his eyes grow large and malicious, then return to normal. "Run!"

Primroseeeee.

"It's after me...we might want to split up."

"No, we're your guards," Jackson says.

"And we're your crew," Cressida adds.

The crew has nothing but cameras and clipboards. Finnick has two guns so he gives one to Castor. I take Rory's gun, take out the blank cartridges and fill them with real ones. I give the charged gun to Pollux. Katniss and Gale have their special weapons so they hand their guns over to Messalla and Cressida. We're all armed. They don't know much but it's better than being defenseless. We leave the room without leaving anything behind but our scent. That may be the worse, as the mutts have some pretty great noses.

Out of room, the hissing is more definite and we know how far they are. Half a mile or so...Snow probably released them near Boggs' corpse. We should have a lead on them but they are faster.

Wolflike mutts in first area, monkeys in second...I wonder what it is this time. Probably what Snow thinks will scare me the most.

Pollux and I planned to get to Snow's mansion, and that's away from the mutts. Hopefully we can get there and Snow will stop them. We get about four more blocks away through an overflowing pipe when the screaming begins, bouncing off the tunnel walls...Guttural sounds, like an avox.

"Avoxes...That's what Lavinia sounded like during her torture," Rory confirms.

"The mutts probably got them," Cressida says, stating the obvious.

"So...they're not just after Prim?" Speckles asks.

"They'll probably kill anyone in the way until they get me," I speculate. I hate it when that happens. "I'll go alone and lead them away. I'll transfer prime security clearance to Jackson. The rest of you can finish the mission."

"No one will agree to that."

"Yeah, we're wasting time."

Primroseeeee.

I hear the hisses when the avox screams die out. The sounds come from both behind us and below us now. The smell of roses pours in and I gag.

"Masks on!" Jackson orders.

"No," I tell them. "It's just me...we're breathing the same air. It's the roses...it's...Snow."

We stumble onto the Transfer, full of tiled streets. I shoot up a pod of flesh eating rats and it explodes before we get there. Then we run to the next intersection, where if we step in the wrong place, the ground will disappear and let us drop into something marked as the MEAT GRINDER. I shout warnings to the rest as we skirt around the edges but there's another unmarked pod.

Katniss pulls me back. "Careful, Prim!"

Messalla is frozen in the golden shaft of light that runs from the ceiling to the floor. Head tilted back,mouth wide open. His flesh melts off like wax. We all stare in shock until Rory pushes us along.