hunger games weapons genius

The Arena was cracking.

Not just in steel or code—but in meaning.

What once felt omnipotent now felt human. Flawed. Rushed.

And Goo could feel it with every breath of static-laced air.

They were close.

He and Rue moved through the jungle in silence.

Not like prey.

Like stormfronts.

They walked without crouching, didn't bother to hide their steps. Cameras were fried. Peacekeepers scattered. Sweepers gone silent after the Spire collapse.

Every now and then, Rue looked up.

The sky was dull. No anthem. No deaths.

Just emptiness.

It was the Capitol's worst nightmare.

A broadcast with nothing to show.

They reached a clearing Goo had passed on day two—unremarkable at first glance. But it was high ground. A flat space. And exposed.

Perfect.

Rue watched as Goo pulled the emergency beacon transmitter from his belt.

"Will they see it?" she asked.

"No," he said. "Not them."

He attached a spark strip to the base, primed the coil, then struck the core with his knife.

The beacon lit.

Not a fire.

A flare.

Orange. Bright. Controlled.

It shot up, high above the jungle canopy—too precise to be a natural fire, too low to be a hovercraft drop.

It was a message.

And someone, somewhere, was watching for exactly this kind of signal.

Cassia saw it first.

She was three kilometers south, wrapping her leg with makeshift gauze, when the flare split the sky.

Her eyes narrowed.

Not a Capitol drop.

Not a trap.

She didn't smile. But she did stand.

Because now, she wasn't chasing victory.

She was chasing the only two tributes who had made the Capitol bleed.

Far to the east, the girl from District 5 paused beneath a dead tree, watching the same flare.

She reached into her coat.

Pulled a handmade receiver from her pocket.

One blinking light.

Then two.

Then a third.

She exhaled.

And whispered, "It's starting."

In the Capitol, chaos reigned.

The Gamemakers had lost the Arena.

Feeding footage into empty screens. Spinning lies into the silence.

President Snow demanded answers.

He got excuses.

But amid the scrambling, one monitor blinked quietly in the corner of a forgotten control room.

A coded message.

Unmarked.

Simple.

D13 acknowledges.