The Hunger Games Trilogy Boxed Set (The Hunger Games)

I dread the Victory Tour. The sun drags me into a day I cannot escape, a performance I must give. My new house in the Victor's Village is a gilded cage, and the woods are my only solace, the only place I can be myself. But even that is spoiled now. The ease between me and Gale is gone, replaced by a painful silence born in the arena. He works in the mines, and I hunt for his family, a strange reversal of the life we once knew. We are rich, Peeta Mellark and I, but we are not free. We are stars of a show that must go on, forced to travel from district to district, to stand before the families of the children I killed, and to pretend I am madly in love with the boy whose life I saved.

Before the tour can even begin, I receive a visitor. Not a stylist or a reporter, but a man who smells of blood and roses. I'm staring into the snakelike eyes of President Snow, right here in my own study. He tells me there will be no lies between us. My trick with the berries in the arena was not seen by all as an act of love, but as an act of defiance. It has provided a spark, and if I do not quench it, that spark may grow into an inferno that destroys Panem. My task is simple and impossible: on this tour, I must prove my love for Peeta is real. Not just to the districts, but to him. "Convince me," he says, his fingers digging into my arm, and I know he is not a man who makes idle threats. He knows about the kiss with Gale. He knows everything.

The tour is a nightmare of forced smiles and cheering crowds whose faces burn with a secret fury. We begin in District 11, home of Rue and Thresh. Standing before their grieving families, Peeta makes a stunning, unscripted offer: one month of our winnings, every year for the rest of our lives, for each of their families. It is a perfect, generous gesture, and when I rise on my tiptoes to kiss him, it does not feel forced at all. But then I find my own voice, speaking of Rue's beauty and Thresh's strength. My words move the crowd, and a wizened old man whistles Rue's four-note mockingjay tune. In unison, every person in the crowd presses three fingers to their lips and extends them to me - the final good-bye I gave Rue in the arena. It is an act of dissent, exactly what I was meant to defuse. From the shade of the Justice Building, we see the price of that salute: a pair of Peacekeepers force the old man to his knees and put a bullet through his head.

The rest of the tour is a blur of rising tension. In District 8, in 4, in 3, there is a dangerous elation in the crowds that the Peacekeepers struggle to contain. We cling to each other, Peeta and I, playing our part, but it is too little, too late. In the Capitol, at a lavish party in President Snow's mansion, I dare to ask with my eyes if I have done enough. In answer, he gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head. All hope is lost. The next night, the president makes the announcement. It is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Hunger Games, a Quarter Quell. He reads from a yellowed card. “On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors.” District 12 has only three victors. Two male. One female. I am going back into the arena.

My world shatters. I flee, drink, and rage, but there is no escaping it. Haymitch's name is drawn at the reaping, but Peeta volunteers to take his place. There are no good-byes this time, no tearful farewells. We are rushed to the train, leaving our families behind forever. A new pact is forged between me and Haymitch: this time, we will do everything in our power to keep Peeta alive. We train like Careers, studying the other victors - brutal Brutus, cunning Johanna Mason, the beautiful and deadly Finnick Odair. In our private sessions, Peeta paints a haunting portrait of Rue covered in flowers. I hang a dummy with the name of the last Head Gamemaker, Seneca Crane, scrawled on its chest. We are each awarded a score of twelve, marking us as the ones to kill. On the night of the interviews, the victors unite in their outrage, but my stylist, Cinna, makes the boldest move. My wedding dress, which President Snow himself ordered me to wear, erupts in flames when I twirl, burning away to reveal the costume of a mockingjay. And then Peeta delivers the final blow. He tells the world we are already secretly married. And that I am pregnant.

I am in the launch tube, the glass cylinder closing around me, when the door bursts open. Peacekeepers drag Cinna in, beating him bloody before my eyes as I scream, helpless. The plate rises, and I ascend into the arena. It is a circle of water, a saltwater sea, with a golden Cornucopia on a central island, connected to a ring of jungle by twelve strips of land. This is no place for a girl on fire. I dive in, swimming for the horn, and come face-to-face with Finnick. An alliance is sealed not with words, but with the sight of a golden bangle on his wrist - a signal from Haymitch. We fight our way out of the bloodbath, joined by his elderly mentor, Mags, and collect Peeta, who cannot swim. But the arena is a clock, and its horrors are just beginning. Peeta's heart stops when he hits an invisible force field, and Finnick brings him back to life with his own breath.

The hours tick by, each one bringing a new terror. A poisonous fog descends, its acid droplets burning our skin and twisting our nerves. Mags walks into it, sacrificing herself so Finnick can carry a faltering Peeta. A troop of vicious monkey muttations attacks, and a quiet morphling addict from District 6 throws herself in front of Peeta, taking the fatal bite meant for him. We are joined by the volatile Johanna Mason and the brilliant but fragile inventors from District 3, Wiress and Beetee. It is Wiress, murmuring “Tick, tock,” who helps me understand the arena's design. But just as we unravel its secrets, the Careers attack, and she is killed before my eyes.

The psychological torture is the worst. At four o'clock, the jungle fills with jabberjays, muttation birds that perfectly mimic the screams of our loved ones. I hear my sister, Prim, crying out in agony, and run wildly to find her, only to discover a bird. Finnick hears the voice of his lost love, Annie. We are trapped in that wedge of jungle for an hour, forced to listen to the sounds of our families being tortured, knowing it is a trick but unable to quiet the terror in our hearts. We learn that even the strongest among us can be broken.

Beetee devises a plan. He gives me and Johanna a coil of his special wire. We are to run it from a great tree that is struck by lightning every day at noon and midnight, down to the water's edge. When the bolt hits, the electricity will travel down the wire, electrocuting anyone on the wet beach. But as we unwind the coil, the wire is severed. Johanna strikes me on the head, digging a knife into my arm to cut out my tracker. “Stay down!” she hisses, before Brutus and Enobaria, the last of the Careers, appear and she leads them away. Dazed and bleeding, I stumble back to the lightning tree to find Beetee unconscious. I know Peeta is out there, being hunted. I hear him calling my name.

My bow lifts. I can kill Enobaria, and maybe Finnick, who has just arrived. But Haymitch's last words to me echo in my head: *“You just remember who the enemy is.”* The real enemy is not in this arena. I wrap the wire around an arrow, aim not at a tribute but at the chink in the armor of the force field above, and let it fly. The lightning strikes. The world explodes in a shower of blue-white light, and the dome above us shatters and rains down in pieces. As the hovercraft claw descends to collect me, I see a star.

I awake in a haze of drugs and confusion, restrained on a table. Plutarch Heavensbee, the Head Gamemaker, is there. And Finnick. And Haymitch. They tell me everything. There was a plan, a rebellion simmering in the districts. I am their Mockingjay, the symbol of their revolution. Half the tributes were in on it, tasked with keeping me - and Peeta - alive. We are on our way to District 13, which was never destroyed. But the plan went wrong. Johanna and Peeta were not rescued. They were captured by the Capitol. I lunge for Haymitch, my nails raking his face, screaming my betrayal. He promised he would save Peeta. He promised. Sometime later, another face swims into view above me, one I thought I'd never see again. It is Gale, burned and bandaged. He tells me he got my mother and Prim out. "Out of where?" I wonder, a new horror dawning. He looks at me, his voice the same one he uses to put a wounded animal out of its misery. “Katniss,” he says, “there is no District Twelve.”