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To begin with, I try to hang on. I can't say how long I manage to keep doing this. Time is completely arbitrary here. I have no windows. Even if I did, I wouldn't trust them. They could so easily speed up or slow down my timing. I don't know how often they knock me out, or how long it lasts each time. There is so much I don't know.
This is what I do know.
Beetie left me in the jungle. He got me safely out of the twelve o'clock segment of the clock arena, and said he had to go back to check on the trap. I waited for thirty heartbeats. Then I heard screaming. It wasn't her at first, but then it was her and it was nowhere near time for the mockingjays to start their cruel tricks. So I started running, as best I could, back to the trap. But the jungle seemed stacked against me. My prosthetic caught up in the undergrowth, weeds and thorns ripping at my skin as though trying to drag me back, away from her. "Katniss!" I shouted, as loud as I could. I should never have let her out of my sight, and now whatever they've done to her is my fault. "Katniss!"
When she returns my screamed, "Peeta!" I can tell she is so close. I will never know how close I was to taking hold of her, and never letting go.
That's when the lightning hit. But there was more than a bolt. There was an explosion that shattered the entire arena letting fresh clean air flood the jungle. More explosions and blinding lights - almost like fireworks. But the first bolt had knocked me to the ground.
There were hovercrafts, and I remember distantly wondering which of the tributes had died, if I was the last one left.
I might have passed out. Or they might have knocked me out. Because when I woke, I was here in the blinding white lab that looks like a hospital room, but definitely isn't.
So this is what I know: Someone in the arena betrayed me. Katniss tried to get to me but couldn't. It's not much, but they're trying so hard to push every concrete thing from me that I cling on to these two facts.
And this is what they've told me: There is full scale rebellion in the districts. District Thirteen was never destroyed, and they're backing up the rebels. Katniss has been one of them all along, and is fronting the rebellion. They say she intended to kill me when my usefulness petered out. Of these statements, I only really believe the part about District Thirteen. This is because they didn't tell me directly. I overheard it when they thought I was knocked out.
District Thirteen ... dead by morning.
I try very hard not to say these words out loud as they mine me for other information. It's the only thing of value I've collected, and I'm determined to cling onto it.
So far they haven't hurt me, not as such. I'm disoriented, and I'm tired of their questions, but not hurt. I know it will come, though. I can hear a woman screaming quite clearly, and her voice is familiar. For a long time (or a short time, I have no idea) I thought it was Katniss. But they wouldn't ask me so many questions about her if she's right next door, making the kind of noises that suggest she'll tell them anything.
Katniss. I try to hang on to Katniss, as well. They're telling me lies about her. At the moment they're not very persuasive. But they know it's hurting me, that I'm starting to get confused. It shouldn't be this easy. I think they're drugging me. Well, no, I know they're drugging me. I'm never hungry, but I never eat either. There's no pain, when I'm certain that there should be. Everything is too bright. I want to know what they're giving me.
To hold on to her, I tell myself stories. Except they're not stories - I don't think they're stories - they're real. I start with easy things, like giving her the burnt bread when we were little. From there I bring it forwards. The reaping, the interviews, the Hunger Games. Kissing her in the cave, deliriously happy because I was certain I would soon die. Lying in a warm bed with my arms wrapped around her. Touching her body.
This is where I sometimes wonder if it's just a story that I've made up in my head.
One day when I wake, there are no restraints, no tubes, and no wires. When they come in, the men in the long white coats, they're smiling genially. Like I'm a victor again. Like the past I-don't-know-how-long hasn't happened. They dress me in a suit that could only have come from Portia, and one of the tangents of my mind wonders whether she is still alive. My hair is made tidy. I'm not coated in makeup, but I am presentable. When I pass myself in a mirror, I see me and not the shadow of myself that I half expect.
We walk through white tiled hallways that twist and turn. I try to count each turn in an attempt to map the place where I am held, but I quickly lose track. By the time we reach an elevator, they could have taken me in an enormous circle and I wouldn't know. The elevator is also tiled in white. There are no buttons inside, just more shiny bright surfaces. So when the doors open, the colour of the rooms beyond is like an assault on my senses. It disorientates me further.
Crimson carpets, and black cameras like beetles with shiny telescopic eyes; Caesar Flickerman's bright blue hair and ridiculously artificial features. He's asking me questions, and the answers come out all on their own. I'm slightly puzzled. I feel like a puppet. I hear the questions, and puzzle out a way to respond - but before I can, an answer that I hadn't considered is spewing from my mouth. Is this some strange new programming? Or am I no longer in control of my own body? Am I even here? It occurs to me that the real me really is a wasted shadow, and the normal looking young man I saw in the mirror belongs entirely to the Capitol.
I'm very tempted to panic, but that doesn't seem to be an option either. I can feel the panic, but it's distant. It doesn't cause the normal elevated heartbeat or sweaty palms. So instead, I focus very carefully on proving that I am really still me.
My opportunity comes when Caesar asks me if I have a message for Katniss, if she's watching. I hear the Capitol's spiel come from my mouth, but concentrate hard on getting out the one thing of use that I know, the only thing that I have stolen since being here without their knowledge. Eventually - and I even manage to make it fit in with the Capitol's words - I manage to say it. "District Thirteen ... dead by morning."
I know I've done the right thing when all hell breaks loose. Someone hits me, I think. I hear a crack, and the ground flies up to meet me. But all I feel is a vague satisfaction. I'm not entirely theirs. Not yet, anyway.
When I wake up the room is black. I can feel the needles in the back of my hand, so I know I must be back in my white room. But I can't see anything. If I concentrate, I think I can hear something. Voices. The harder I listen, the more I focus on picking out the words, the clearer they become. Until I recognise the voice.
"You don't have any competition, anywhere."
Deprived of any other sensory stimulation, that voice floods my body. I remember so sharply the moment she said it. I can feel the pain in the leg that is no longer there, hear the rain pouring down outside. She is hungry and dirty and exhausted, but she is beautiful. Her dark eyes are looking at me from beneath long eyelashes. There's half a smile to her lips-
Her lips wrapped around the head of my cock, as her tongue presses against the sensitive flesh.
I frown, physically jerking my head to bring my mind back to the original train of thought. Confused, I try to remember if memories of her have always skipped so easily from one to another.
"I do. I need you."
Hot on the beach, so tired, her hair dry from the salt of the water where she was swimming earlier. Her skin is pale in the moonlight, it seems to gleam. Katniss' eyes are so sad, and she won't look at me properly as she leans in to kiss me-
Kissing her hard as our bodies meet, as I thrust inside of her. She's moaning into my mouth, urging me onwards, but I don't know how long I can last at this frantic pace. She feels so good, I never want it to end, never want to be anywhere but here, between her legs, kissing her.
No.
That never happened, it's not real. A fantasy?
I try to remember if I ever imagined that, ever had a fevered moment alone during which that flash existed in my head. I can't place it. Instead, I try focussing like I did during the interview. I take a memory which I know to be true, and hold on to it.
On the beach again, cracking open the shellfish Finnick brought up from the sea bed. A single gleaming pearl lies amongst the flesh. I pick it out, rolling it in my fingers. I smile, thinking of Katniss' slippery little pearl, how I have rolled that between my fingers to make her come.
Did I really think that? Concentrate on the things that are certain. Think about what happened, not what I thought about it.
I gave the pearl to Katniss, on the beach. She was smiling. She said something about Effie Trinket. Or one of us did. Or perhaps it was just another thing I thought but didn't say. I'm sure it has never been this difficult to separate my imagination from the concrete truth of my memory.
I gave the pearl to Katniss, on the beach, and she was pleased. I asked her to marry me. She was happy and giddy. She said she needed me. I lay between her thighs, pushing into her for the first time, and she held onto the pearl and whispered my name again and again against my lips until the word began to echo my heartbeat, but my heartbeat is irregular because I died and Finnick kissed me back to life.
Is any of this true?
This memory is whittled down and down, removing every part which makes me doubt myself, until I am left with nothing but the pearl between my finger and thumb, pressing it into Katniss' hand as she smiles. These two seconds of memory are the only thing I'm certain are even real. I want to panic, scream, cry, but I can't do anything. I try to make a sound, but no noise comes out. I find myself wishing that they would turn on the lights. If I just had something to look at, I could be certain that I am still real.
There's a loud clunk. A light flickers on. First it is only a small dot of white. But it then quickly expands, filling a flat square. It dimly lights the white room and, more importantly, I can see down my body – my chest, arms, stomach covered by a thin gown, my legs sticking out at the end, one ending abruptly and the other extending down to my foot. All of me is tightly strapped to the surface on which I'm lying, and I wonder why I couldn't feel the straps before. For some time, the square just shows a blank, flat light. Then the light flickers into life. It becomes darker, and the lights form images. It looks just like shades of grey, but when a face becomes clear I see that it is just filmed somewhere dark. The face has bright blue eyes. They are my eyes. That person is me.
A hiss and a crackle, and then the sound kicks in. The camera pulls out as I talk. I'm talking about a girl with two braids, standing on a stool in the middle of a classroom and singing the Valley Song. I remember that day. It makes me smile. And I know that the second figure on the film is Katniss. She's dirty and tired and scared, just the way I remember her. They have filtered out the sound of the downpour outside the cave, but I know that it should be there. I can almost feel the cold damp seeping into my skin, chilling me as I force myself to eat and stay awake as Katniss says I must.
"I don't have much competition here," the me on the screen says.
My lips move along to Katniss' reply.
"You don't have much competition, anywhere."
There is a strange cold sensation on the back of my hand. No, not on. In. I look down at the needle that protrudes from my skin. There is a strange green fluid sliding through the plastic tube which feeds into it. I have only a moment to frown, before a too-familiar sensation takes over. Terror. Absolute terror, for no discernible reason. Breathing heavily, I look back up at the screen as mine and Katniss' faces close together. The edges of the screen are sparkling, as though covered in a thousand drops of water, refracting the light. The me on the screen has closed his blue eyes. Katniss is smiling. Grinning. Her teeth are lengthening into fangs, as I close in on her, completely unaware that Katniss is about to rip my face open.
Now I can scream, and I do, until my throat is raw. Again and again, Katniss rips at my face. The me in front of me – or has it just been me all along? – doesn't run away from her. I just let her bite into me – too blinded to realise what she really is, what she's doing to me.
"SHE'S A MUTT!" I scream into the room. I can feel tears sliding down my face, or is it blood? "SHE'S A MUTT!" The words ring in my ears until I can't tell whether I screamed it out loud or in my head.
It is hours, days, months before I am lucky enough to black out.