Chapter 3: Peeta Mellark at the Door

The train stops for eleven minutes at the District 12 junction.

Maren knows it is coming because the velocity changes first — a gradual deceleration she feels in her sternum before she hears anything — and then the dining car's overhead lights flicker once, briefly, as though the train is deciding something. She does not look up from the window. There is nothing outside worth cataloguing: a platform, gray concrete, two Peacekeepers standing in the specific posture of men who have been standing too long in one place and have stopped noticing. A cargo container with a number stenciled on its side in red. The dark bulk of what might be a mine shaft or might be a warehouse, too far to read.

She knows Peeta Mellark will board here. She has known this since the Capitol's schedule was recited to them by Helice Vane in a voice that treated information like decoration — brightly, without weight. Their mentor, she had said, would join them at the District 12 junction, traveling from his victor's residence in preparation for the Games.