A disease has struck Panem. The Capitol has never faced such a terrible infliction, the disease is called the Flare. To survive and keep the Capitol standing, President Snow begins to work with a group called the World in Catastrophe Killzone Experiment Deparment, or WICKED. To find a cure, Snow uses the Hunger Games to help WICKED work for a cure. Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark are once again thrown into the Games, only this time they start their Games in a maze, away from the real arena. Katniss is paired with a boy named Thomas and is met with the decision of whether she should kill him in order to move on to the actual arena or keep him alive and enter the Games with an ally. WICKED had held Thomas for three or four weeks and he is unaware that WICKED plans to send him and his friends back into the Maze, all he knows is that his fourth Trial will involve a girl he doesn't know. Tris Prior and Dauntless in District 13 are putting in the work to get the subjects at WICKED out and save the tributes of the 75th Hunger Games. She frees a boy named Newt who has a strong bond with two of the boys that hadn't been saved, Thomas and Minho. Newt decides that he'll join Dauntless to get his friends out of trouble despite his injured ankle.