Sejanus gave him a thumbs-up at Dr. Gaul’s absence, and he was about to return it when he noticed a figure in a clearing deeper in the woods. A woman in a lab coat stood motionless, her back to them, head tipped sideways as she listened to the cacophony of birdsong. The other scientists waited respectfully until she finished and made her way back through the trees. As she pushed a branch aside, Coriolanus got a clear look at her face, which might have been forgettable had it not been for the large, pink glasses perched on her nose. He recognized her at once. She was the one who’d chewed him out for upsetting her birds when he’d been flailing around, trying to escape the lab after watching Clemensia collapse in a rainbow of pus. The question was, would she remember him? He slouched down even farther behind Smiley’s back and developed a fascination with his bird trap.
The rosily bespectacled woman, who one of the scientists affectionately introduced as “Our Dr. Kay,” greeted them in a friendly manner, explaining their mission — to collect fifty each of the jabberjays and mockingjays — and laying out the plan for achieving it. They were to help seed the forest with the traps, which would be baited with food, water, and decoy birds to draw in the prey. The traps would be open for two days so that the birds could freely come and go. On Wednesday, they would return, refresh the bait, and set the traps to capture the birds.
Eager to please, the recruits divided into five groups of four, each of which followed one of the scientists into a different part of the woods. Coriolanus swerved into a clump with the man who’d introduced Dr. Kay and concealed himself in the foliage as soon as possible. In addition to the traps, they carried backpacks containing various types of bait. They hiked a hundred yards until they reached a red mark on one of the trunks indicating their ground zero. Under the scientist’s direction, they spread out concentrically from the spot, working in teams of two to bait the traps and position them high in the trees.
Coriolanus found himself paired with Bug, who turned out to be a first-class climber, having been raised in District 11, where the children helped to tend the orchards. They spent a sweaty but productive couple of hours working, with Coriolanus baiting and Bug hauling the traps into the branches. When they reconvened, Coriolanus ducked out and sat on the truck bed, examining his multiple bug bites until they’d put some distance between him and Dr. Kay. She had paid him no special attention at all. Don’t be paranoid, he thought. She doesn’t remember you.
Tuesday was back to business as usual, though Coriolanus reviewed for the test over meals and in the brief time before lights-out. He was itching to get back to Lucy Gray, and she kept drifting into his thoughts, but he did his best to push her out, promising himself he could revel in daydreams when the test was over. On Wednesday, he muscled his way through the morning workout, sat alone during lunch with the manual for a final cram, and then went over to the classroom in which they did their tactical lessons. Two other Peacekeepers had signed up, one in his late twenties who claimed to have taken the test five times already and another who must have been pushing fifty, which seemed ancient for a life change.
Test-taking ranked among Coriolanus’s greatest talents, and he felt the familiar rush of excitement as he opened the cover of his booklet. He loved the challenge, and his obsessive nature meant almost instant absorption into the mental obstacle course. Three hours later, sweat-soaked, exhausted, and happy, he handed in his booklet and went to the mess hall for ice. He sat in the strip of shade his barrack provided, rubbing the cubes over his body and reviewing the questions in his head. The ache of losing his university career returned briefly, but he pushed it away with thoughts of becoming a legendary military leader like his father. Maybe this had been his destiny all along.
The rest of his squad was still out with the Citadel scientists, climbing trees and activating the traps, so he wandered over to collect the mail for his room. Two giant boxes from Ma Plinth greeted him, promising another wild night at the Hob. He carried them back but decided to wait to open them until the others returned. Ma had also sent him a separate letter, thanking him for all he had done for Sejanus and asking him to continue to keep an eye on her boy.
Coriolanus put down the letter and sighed at the thought of being Sejanus’s keeper. Escaping the Capitol may have temporarily relieved his torment, but he’d already worked himself into a state about the rebels. Conspiring with Billy Taupe. Agonizing over the girl in the guardhouse. How long would it be before he pulled another stunt like sneaking into the arena? Then, once again, people would look to Coriolanus to get him out of the mess.
The thing was, he didn’t believe Sejanus would ever really change. Perhaps he was incapable of it, but, more to the point, he didn’t want to. Already he had rejected what the Peacekeeping life offered: pretending he couldn’t shoot, refusing to take the officer candidate test, making it clear he had no desire to excel on behalf of the Capitol. District 2 would always be home. District people would always be family. District rebels would always have a just cause on their side . . . and it would be Sejanus’s moral duty to help them.
Coriolanus felt a new sense of threat rising up inside him. He’d tried to shrug off Sejanus’s misguided behavior in the Capitol, but here it was different. Here he was viewed as an adult, and the consequences of his actions could be life or death. If he helped the rebels, he could find himself in front of a firing squad. What was going on in Sejanus’s head anyway?
On impulse, Coriolanus opened Sejanus’s locker, removed his box, and slid the contents onto the floor carefully. They included a stack of mementos, a pack of gum, and three medicine bottles prescribed by a Capitol doctor. Two appeared to be sleeping capsules and the third a bottle of morphling with a dropper built into the lid, much like the one he’d seen Dean Highbottom use on occasion. He knew Sejanus had been medicated during his breakdown, Ma had told him as much, but why had he brought these here? Had Ma slipped them in as a precaution? He flipped through the rest of the contents. A scrap of fabric, stationery, pens, a small chunk of marble crudely carved into something that might be a heart, and a pile of photos. The Plinths had annual portraits taken, and he could map Sejanus’s growth from infant to this past new year. All the pictures were of family, except an old photo of a group of schoolchildren. Coriolanus took it to be one of their class, but no one looked familiar, and a lot of the kids were dressed in rather ill-fitting, shabby clothing. He spotted Sejanus, in a neat suit, smiling pensively from the second row. Behind him towered a boy who he took to be much older. On closer inspection, though, the pieces fell together. It was Marcus. In a school photo from Sejanus’s last year in District 2. There was no record of his Capitol classmates at all, not even Coriolanus. For some reason, this seemed the greatest confirmation of where Sejanus’s loyalties lay.
At the bottom of the pile, he found a thick silver frame holding, of all things, Sejanus’s diploma. It had been removed from its fine leather folder and transferred to the frame, as if for display. But why? Sejanus would not in a million years hang it on the wall, even if he had a wall to hang it on. Coriolanus fingered the frame, tracing the tarnished metal, and flipped it over. The back panel seemed slightly askew, and a tiny corner of pale green paper peeked from the side. That’s not just paper, he thought grimly, and slid the fasteners to free the panel. As it popped off, a stack of freshly minted bills spilled to the floor.
Money. And quite a lot of it. Why would Sejanus have brought so much cash to his new life as a Peacekeeper? Would Ma have insisted? No, not Ma. She seemed to feel money was at the root of their misery. Strabo, then? Thinking that whatever his son encountered, the money would shield him from harm? Possibly, but Strabo usually handled the payoffs himself. Was it something Sejanus had done on his own, without his parents’ knowledge? That was more worrisome to think of. Was this a lifetime of allowances carefully squirreled away for a rainy day? Withdrawn from the bank the day before his departure and hidden in his picture frame? Sejanus always complained about his father’s habit of buying his way out of trouble, but had it been ingrained from birth? The Plinth method of solving problems. Passed down from father to son. Distasteful but efficient.
Coriolanus scooped up the cash, tapped it into a neat stack, and flipped through the bills. There were hundreds, thousands of dollars here. But what use would it be in District 12, where there was nothing to buy? Nothing, anyway, that a Peacekeeper’s salary wouldn’t cover. Most of the recruits were sending half their paychecks home, as the Capitol provided almost everything they needed, short of stationery and a night at the Hob. He supposed the Hob had the black market, but he hadn’t seen much to tempt a Peacekeeper once the booze had been bought. They didn’t need dead rabbits, or shoelaces, or homemade soap. And even if they did, they could easily afford it. Of course, there were other things you could buy. Like information, and access, and silence. There were bribes. There was power.
Coriolanus heard the voices of his returning squad. He swiftly concealed the cash in the silver frame, being careful to leave one tiny corner of green visible. He repacked the box and stored it in Sejanus’s locker. By the time his bunkmates rolled in, he was standing over Ma’s boxes with his arms spread wide, wearing a big grin and asking, “Who’s free on Saturday?”
As Smiley, Beanpole, and Bug tore open the boxes and unpacked the treasures within, Sejanus sat on a bed and watched with amusement.
Coriolanus leaned on the bunk above him. “Thank goodness for your ma. Otherwise we’d all be flat broke.”
“Yes, not a penny between us,” Sejanus agreed.
The one thing Coriolanus had never questioned was Sejanus’s honesty. If anything, he’d have welcomed a little less of it. But this was a bald-faced lie, delivered as naturally as the truth. Which meant that now anything he said was suspect.
CHAPTER 26
Sejanus smacked himself on the forehead. “Oh! How did the test go?”
“We’ll see, I guess,” said Coriolanus. “They’re sending it to the Capitol for grading. They said it could take awhile before I get the results.”
“You’ll pass,” Sejanus assured him. “You deserve to.”
So supportive. So duplicitous. So self-destructive. Like a moth to a flame. Coriolanus started a bit, remembering Pluribus’s letter. Wasn’t that what Dean Highbottom had kept muttering after his fight with Coriolanus’s father all those years ago? Almost. He’d used the plural. “Like moths to a flame.” As if an entire flock of moths were flying straight into an inferno. A whole group bent on self-destruction. Who was he referring to? Oh, who cared? Drugged, hate-fueled, old High-as-a-Kite-Bottom. Better not to even wonder.
After dinner, Coriolanus put in his first hour of guard duty at an air hangar on the far side of the base. Paired with an old-timer who immediately dozed off after instructing him to keep an eye out, he found his thoughts fixating on Lucy Gray, wishing he could see her, or at least talk to her. It seemed a waste to be on guard, where clearly nothing ever happened, when he could be holding her in his arms. He felt trapped here on base, while she could freely roam the night. In some ways, it had been better to have her locked up in the Capitol, where he always had a general idea of what she was doing. For all he knew, Billy Taupe was trying to worm his way back into her heart at this very moment. Why pretend he wasn’t at least a little jealous? Perhaps he should have had him arrested after all. . . .
Back in the barrack, he penned a quick note to Ma, praising the treats, and another to Pluribus to thank him for his help, then to ask him about getting strings for Lucy Gray. His brain tired from the test, Coriolanus slept deeply and awoke already sweating in the hot August morning. When did the weather break? September? October? By lunchtime, the line from the ice machine extended halfway around the mess hall. Slated for kitchen detail, Coriolanus braced himself for the worst but found that he’d been upgraded from dishes to chopping. This would’ve been a welcome change had he not been assigned the onions. The tears he could live with, but he became increasingly concerned about the smell that radiated from his hands. Even after an evening of mopping, it still drew comment in the barrack, and no amount of scrubbing erased it. Would he be reeking when he saw Lucy Gray again?
Friday morning, despite the heat and his unease around the Citadel scientists, he felt a certain relief that he’d be dealing with birds that afternoon. Though unlikable, they left no noticeable odor. When Beanpole collapsed during drills, the sergeant had his bunkmates haul him to the clinic, where Coriolanus took the opportunity to get a metal can of powder for a heat rash that extended across his chest and under his right arm. “Keep it dry,” the medic advised. He had to suppress the impulse to roll his eyes. He’d not been dry, not one moment, since he’d arrived in the steam bath of District 12.
After a lunch of cold meat-spread sandwiches, they bounced along in the truck to the woods, where the scientists, still sporting their white lab coats, awaited them. Just as they teamed up, Coriolanus learned that Bug, lacking a partner on Wednesday, had been working in tandem with Dr. Kay. She’d been so impressed with his agility in the branches, she’d requested him again. It was too late to switch partners, so Coriolanus followed her group into the trees, hanging as far back as he could.
It was no use. As he watched Bug carry a newly baited cage up into the first tree and swap it with one holding a captured jabberjay, Dr. Kay came up behind him. “So, what do you think of the districts, Private Snow?”
He was trapped like a bird. Trapped like the tributes in the zoo. Fleeing into the trees was not an option. He remembered Lucy Gray’s advice that had saved him in the monkey house. Own it.
He turned to her with a smile sheepish enough to acknowledge her nailing him but amused enough to show he didn’t care. “You know, I think I learned more about Panem in one day as a Peacekeeper than I did in thirteen years of school.”
Dr. Kay laughed. “Yes. There’s a world of education to be had out here. I was assigned to Twelve during the war. Lived on your base. Worked in these woods.”
“You were part of the jabberjay project, then?” asked Coriolanus. At least they’d both had public failures.
“I headed it,” said Dr. Kay significantly.
A major public failure. Coriolanus felt more comfortable. He’d only embarrassed himself in the Hunger Games, not a nationwide war. Perhaps she would be sympathetic and give a favorable report to Dr. Gaul on her return if he made a good impression. Making an effort to engage her might pay off. He remembered that the jabberjays were all male and couldn’t reproduce with one another. “So these jabberjays, they were the actual birds you used for surveillance during the war?”
“Mm-hmm. These were my babies. Never thought I’d see them again. The general consensus was they wouldn’t last the winter. The genetically engineered often struggle in the wild. But they were strong, my birds, and nature has a mind of its own,” she said.
Bug reached the lowest branch and handed down the cage holding the jabberjay. “We should leave them in the traps for now.” It wasn’t a question, just a remark.
“Yes. It may help reduce the stress of the transition,” agreed Dr. Kay.
Bug nodded, slid to the ground, and accepted another fresh trap from Coriolanus. Without asking, he made for a second tree. Dr. Kay watched approvingly. “Some people just understand birds.”
Coriolanus felt, unequivocally, that he would never be one of those people, but surely he could pretend to be for a few hours. He squatted down beside the trap and examined the jabberjay, which chattered away. “You know, I never quite grasped how these worked.” Not that he’d made any effort to find out. “I know they recorded conversations, but how did you control them?”
“They’re trained to respond to audio commands. If we’re lucky, I can show you.” Dr. Kay pulled a small rectangular device from her pocket. Several colored buttons protruded from it, none of which were marked, but maybe age and use had worn the markings away. She knelt down across the cage from him and studied the bird with more affection than Coriolanus felt befitted a scientist. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
Coriolanus tried to sound convincing. “Very.”
“So, what you hear now, this chatter, it’s his own. He can mimic the other birds, or us, or say whatever he likes. He’s in neutral,” she said.
“In neutral?” Coriolanus asked.
“In neutral?”He heard his voice echo from the bird’s beak. “In neutral?”
Even creepier when it’s your own voice, he thought, but he gave a delighted laugh. “That was me!”
“That was me!”the jabberjay said in his voice, and then began to mimic a nearby bird.
“It was indeed,” said Dr. Kay. “But in neutral, he’ll move on to something else quickly. Another voice. Usually, just a short phrase. Or a snatch of birdsong. Whatever catches his fancy. For surveillance, we needed to put him in record mode. Fingers crossed.” She pressed one of the buttons on her remote control.
Coriolanus heard nothing. “Oh, no. I guess it’s too old.”
Dr. Kay’s face, however, wore a smile. “Not necessarily. The command tones are inaudible to human beings but easily registered by the birds. Notice how quiet he is?”
The jabberjay had fallen silent. It hopped around in its trap, cocking its head, pecking at things, the same in all ways except its verbalizing.
“Is it working?” asked Coriolanus.
“We’ll see.” Dr. Kay hit another button on her control, and the bird resumed its normal chirping. “Neutral again. Now let’s see what he’s retained.” She pressed a third button.
After a brief pause, the bird began to speak.
“Oh, no. I guess it’s too old.”
“Not necessarily. The command tones are inaudible to human beings but easily registered by the birds. Notice how quiet he is?”
“Is it working?”
“We’ll see.”