Return of the Mockingjay

Chapter 48

We make our way round the lake shore to where we first saw the spider, it was searching for something in the shallows, what was it looking for?
When we get closer my stomach turns at the gory sight of body parts, an arm, a leg, shreds of clothing floating in the muddy water.

"Who is it?" I ask holding a hand over my nose and mouth to try to avoid the stench.

"Difficult to know exactly" he says as he pulls a severed arm from the mud and examines it. I turn away in disgust at how unfeeling he is to the poor tribute who no doubt had a terrible death. Cato senses my revulsion.

"Katniss it was a Mutt, remember?" He says as he drops the arm back into the mud.

"Yeah I know, so you keep telling me"

"It was Beetee" he says looking round at the other body parts.

"How do you know that, I know the real Beetee and I couldn't tell"

"Look, I'll show you" he extends his right arm to me and shows the underside of his wrist, in faded grey  etched into his skin is a barcode, not unlike the ones we used to have printed onto our wrists in District 13, below each barcode is a number.
"The first two numbers show the district origin, in Beetee's case it showed 03, mine is 01 for District 1 whereas Peeta would have 12 on his wrist"

"What do the other numbers and letters mean?" I ask, my interest now building.

"They're all to do with what farm we came from and what batch, and at the end is my hatch date"

"Hatch date?"

"It's just a term the scientists use, mutts are grown in test tubes and then when we're big enough we're moved into man size glass containers called Mutt tubes, they're filled with an oxygen infused fluid which allows us to breath and grow"

"Then what happens?" I ask as we head off into the forest.

"Then when we're grown to the required age we leave the farm and start our learning, it's pretty intense but we're conditioned to learn quickly"

"What do you mean by 'required age'?

"When we're in the Mutt tube we grow pretty quickly but it stops the second were taken out. As you see me now I look about 18 years old but my body and features will never change, I'll always look like this right until I die"

"So Rue would of been taken from her tube earlier, so she looked younger?"

"Yep, that's it"

"Cato, what farm did you come from, is it near the arena?"

Cato looks at me as if I should already know. "It's here Katniss, right above our heads, I thought you knew?"

I gaze up at the blue sky and try to imagine what's up there, this arena which is really just an enormous television studio, with a Mutt farm just the other side of that false sky.

"We must be underground then?" I ask.

"That's right, this whole arena is buried under the surface, we're in District 1. I guess they didn't tell you much at all did they?"

"No, obviously not"

"It's an old arena that was built by Snow years ago" he continues.

"I thought the rebels destroyed all the arena's, to try to forget the Games and what they stood for"

"It looks like they missed this one. Not surprising really with it being underground"