Mockingjay

was. Did you also suffer mental confusion in the aftermath?” asks Beetee. “A sense of being unable to judge what was true and what was false? Most people who have been stung and lived to tell about it report something of the kind.”
    Yes. That encounter with Peeta. Even after I was clearheaded, I wasn’t sure if he had saved my life by taking on Cato or if I’d imagined it.
    “Recall is made more difficult because memories can be changed.” Beetee taps his forehead. “Brought to the forefront of your mind, altered, and saved again in the revised form. Now imagine that I ask you to remember something — either with a verbal suggestion or by making you watch a tape of the event — and while that experience is refreshed, I give you a dose of tracker jacker venom. Not enough to induce a three-day blackout. Just enough to infuse the memory with fear and doubt. And that’s what your brain puts in long-term storage.”
    I start to feel sick. Prim asks the question that’s in my mind. “Is that what they’ve done to Peeta? Taken his memories of Katniss and distorted them so they’re scary?”
    Beetee nods. “So scary that he’d see her as life-threatening. That he might try to kill her. Yes, that’s our current theory.”
    I cover my face with my arms because this isn’t happening. It isn’t possible. For someone to make Peeta forget he loves me . . . no one could do that.
    “But you can reverse it, right?” asks Prim.
    “Um . . . very little data on that,” says Plutarch. “None, really. If hijacking rehabilitation has been attempted before, we have no access to those records.”
    “Well, you’re going to try, aren’t you?” Prim persists. “You’re not just going to lock him up in some padded room and leave him to suffer?”
    “Of course, we’ll try, Prim,” says Beetee. “It’s just, we don’t know to what degree we’ll succeed. If any. My guess is that fearful events are the hardest to root out. They’re the ones we naturally remember the best, after all.”
    “And apart from his memories of Katniss, we don’t yet know what else has been tampered with,” says Plutarch. “We’re putting together a team of mental health and military professionals to come up with a counterattack. I, personally, feel optimistic that he’ll make a full recovery.”
    “Do you?” asks Prim caustically. “And what do you think, Haymitch?”
    I shift my arms slightly so I can see his expression through the crack. He’s exhausted and discouraged as he admits, “I think Peeta might get somewhat better. But . . . I don’t think he’ll ever be the same.” I snap my arms back together, closing the crack, shutting them all out.
    “At least he’s alive,” says Plutarch, as if he’s losing patience with the lot of us. “Snow executed Peeta’s stylist and his prep team on live television tonight. We’ve no idea what happened to Effie Trinket. Peeta’s damaged, but he’s here. With us. And that’s a definite improvement over his situation twelve hours ago. Let’s keep that in mind, all right?”
    Plutarch’s attempt to cheer me up — laced with the news of another four, possibly five, murders — somehow backfires. Portia. Peeta’s prep team. Effie. The effort to fight back tears makes my throat throb until I’m gasping again. Eventually, they have no choice but to sedate me.
    When I wake, I wonder if this will be the only way I sleep now, with drugs shot into my arm. I’m glad I’m not supposed to talk for the next few days, because there’s nothing I want to say. Or do. In fact, I’m a model patient, my lethargy taken for restraint, obedience to the doctors’ orders. I no longer feel like crying. In fact, I can only manage to hold on to one simple thought: an image of Snow’s face accompanied by the whisper in my head. I will kill you.
    My mother and Prim take turns nursing me, coaxing me to swallow bites of soft food. People come in periodically to give me updates on Peeta’s condition. The high levels of tracker jacker venom are working their way out of his body. He’s being treated only by strangers, natives of 13 — no one from home or the Capitol has been allowed to see him — to keep any dangerous memories from triggering. A team of specialists works long hours designing a strategy for his recovery.
    Gale’s not supposed to visit me, as he’s confined to bed with some kind of shoulder wound. But on the third night, after I’ve been medicated and the lights turned