Splinters and Embers

The shriek of the blade was the only music Johanna Mason tolerated anymore. It was a clean, sharp sound, a high-pitched scream of steel biting into the heartwood of a fifty-year-old pine. It sliced through the humid air of the mill, a constant, grinding testament to progress. Five years. Five years since the bombs stopped falling and the screaming had been replaced by this. Sometimes, she wasn’t sure which was worse.

From her perch on the supervisor’s catwalk, she could see the entire operation spread below her like a dissected animal. Men and women, sinewy and grim-faced, moved with a practiced rhythm, guiding logs onto conveyors, stripping bark, feeding the great, roaring saws. Sawdust hung in the air, a golden haze that coated everything in a fine, gritty powder. It was in her hair, the lines of her face, the back of her throat. The scent of it—sharp, resinous, and clean—was the smell of her home, her prison, and her purpose.

Her eyes, sharp as axe heads, scanned the floor. They missed nothing. A loader taking too long to secure a chain. A slight wobble in the main conveyor belt. A stack of finished two-by-fours leaning a few degrees too far to the west. Her gaze snagged on a young man, barely twenty, fumbling with the clamp on the debarking machine. His movements were hesitant, inefficient. Wasted motion. Wasted time.

Johanna was down the steel stairs in seconds, her steel-toed boots clanging with each sharp step. The noise on the floor was a physical force, a wall of sound she moved through without flinching. She didn’t raise her voice, didn’t need to. She simply appeared at the young man’s elbow, her presence radiating a cold fury that cut through the din more effectively than any shout.

“You’re fighting it, Barden,” she clipped out, her voice a low rasp.

The boy jumped, his face flushing. “Supervisor. I… the grain’s twisted on this one.”

“The grain is always twisted,” Johanna snapped, shoving him aside with a firm hand on his shoulder. Her own hands, gloved and calloused, moved with a brutal efficiency. She slammed the release, repositioned the log with a jarring shove of her hip, and locked the clamps back in place in one fluid, violent motion. The entire process took less than three seconds. “It’s a tree, not a goddamn Capitol pillar. It grew crooked. You work with it. You don’t ask it to be something it’s not.” She stared him down, her pale eyes boring into his. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Supervisor,” he mumbled, avoiding her gaze.

“Good. Because if this machine goes down, the whole line stops. If the line stops, we miss our shipment quota to District 4. If we miss the quota, Panem thinks 7 is still on its knees.” Her lips twisted into something that might have been a smile on another woman’s face. On hers, it was a threat. “And I don’t like being on my knees. Not anymore.”

She turned and walked away without waiting for a response, the boy’s fear a satisfying tang in the air behind her. She was a bitch. She knew it. She’d heard the whispers. Harder than the wood she cuts. Mason’s got splinters in her soul. Let them whisper. Softness got you killed. Softness got your friends killed. Softness got your entire world burned to ash. Hardness built mills. Hardness cut lumber. Hardness would drag District 7, kicking and screaming if it had to, back into the light. This was her arena now, and the only victor would be survival.

Back in her office—a cramped metal box overlooking the chaos she orchestrated—Johanna slammed the door, the flimsy frame rattling in protest. The noise of the mill was a dull roar through the single pane of glass, a constant reminder of the precarious machine she was trying to keep running. She kicked off her boots, grabbed a tin cup, and poured herself a measure of the harsh, pine-tar liquor they distilled locally. It burned a familiar path down her throat, a welcome fire against the cold knot in her stomach.

She was halfway through the cup when the knock came. It was soft, hesitant. Not one of her crew. She barked, “What?” without turning around.

The door creaked open. It was Thom, the newly elected mayor of 7. A man whose hands were soft, whose face was perpetually creased with a politician’s practiced concern. He looked as out of place in her gritty sanctuary as a Capitol fop.

“Johanna,” he began, his voice placating. “Just got a message from President Paylor’s office. Good news regarding the mill.”

Johanna snorted, turning slowly to face him. She leaned back against her scarred wooden desk, crossing her arms over her chest. “The only good news is a full shipment and no breakdowns. What does the Capitol want?”

Thom gave a nervous smile. “They see the value in what you’re building here. The strategic importance. They’ve noted the… minor security incidents we’ve had. The tampered fuel lines last month, the missing tools.”

“Kids and scavengers,” Johanna dismissed with a wave of her hand. “I’ve dealt with them.”

“Perhaps. But they want to be proactive. They’ve assigned a top consultant to oversee a full security overhaul. Someone with extensive experience in… unconventional warfare and tactical defense.” He was trying to sell it, his tone dripping with false enthusiasm.

Johanna’s eyes narrowed. The liquor wasn't making her drunk, only sharpening the edges of her suspicion. “Spit it out, Thom. What lapdog are they sending me?”

He cleared his throat, his gaze flickering away from hers. “It’s Gale Hawthorne.”

The name landed in the small office with the force of a physical blow. For a second, Johanna didn’t move, didn’t breathe. The roar of the mill outside seemed to fade to a distant hum. Then, a raw, guttural sound tore from her throat, a noise somewhere between a laugh and a snarl. She slammed her tin cup down on the desk, the liquor sloshing over the metal surface.

“No.” The word was flat, absolute.

“Johanna, his work in District 2 has been exemplary—”

“I don’t give a flying fuck if he can turn rocks into bread,” she snarled, her voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl. She advanced on Thom, who took an involuntary step back, his hand reaching for the doorknob. “You want to bring him here? The Bomber? The man who designed the death traps that blew up children? The man who broke the one person who actually won the goddamn war for us?”

Her voice cracked on the last words, a sliver of old pain she couldn’t hide. The image of Katniss, hollowed-out and vacant in the final days, flashed behind her eyes. The ghost that walked the halls of the Victor’s Village. A ghost Gale Hawthorne had helped create.

“He is a hero of the rebellion,” Thom stammered, his political platitudes sounding pathetic and thin.

“He is a fucking ghoul,” Johanna spat, jabbing a finger at his chest. “And he is not setting one foot in my district. Not on my project. I will burn this mill to the ground myself before I let him walk through that gate. Are we clear?” Her rage was a living thing in the room, hot and suffocating. It was the rage of the arena, the fury of the Capitol, the helpless anger of watching her friends, her world, get torn apart.

“The decision is already made, Johanna. He’s already on a transport. Paylor feels—”

“I don’t care what Paylor feels!” she roared, her control finally snapping. She swept a stack of shipping manifests off her desk, the papers fluttering to the floor like dead leaves. “Get out. Tell the Capitol to send their monster somewhere else. We handle our own problems here.”

Thom practically scrambled out, the door clicking shut behind him, leaving Johanna alone with the tremors of her own fury. She stood panting in the center of the small room, her hands clenched into fists, knuckles white. The name echoed in the space, Gale Hawthorne, a foul taste on her tongue. It was a name synonymous with righteous fire and unintended slaughter, a name that belonged to the ghosts of the war, not the fragile present she was trying to hammer into shape. She kicked at the scattered papers, the gesture feeling hollow and childish. Her rage had no target here, just the phantom of a man she hadn't seen in five years and the spineless politician who was rolling out the welcome mat for him.

The familiar, rhythmic scream of the main saw outside was a grounding force, the heartbeat of her world. As long as that blade spun, they were alive. As long as it bit into wood, they were rebuilding. She closed her eyes, forcing herself to breathe in the pine-scented air, trying to push the image of Katniss’s dead eyes out of her mind. He’s not coming, she told herself. I won’t let him.

That’s when the sound changed.

It wasn’t just a change; it was a violation. The high-pitched, steady shriek of the saw didn’t just stop. It was murdered. There was a deafening crack, a sound of metal under impossible stress, followed by a percussive BOOM that shook the very foundations of the mill. Her tin cup rattled off the desk and hit the floor with a clang. The single pane of glass in her window spiderwebbed with fractures. For a terrifying half-second, she was back in the Capitol, the sky raining fire, the ground heaving beneath her feet.

Then instinct took over. The same instinct that had kept her alive in two arenas. Before the last echo of the explosion had faded, she was out the door and vaulting down the metal stairs, taking them three at a time.

The scene on the mill floor was chaos frozen in a tableau of horror. The constant motion had ceased. Workers were frozen in place or scrambling away from the center of the mill, their faces pale with shock under a layer of sawdust. A thick, acrid smoke, smelling of burnt oil and ozone, coiled towards the high rafters, mixing with the familiar haze of cut wood. It was a smell of deliberate destruction.

Her eyes cut through the smoke to the source. The heart of her operation. The massive, custom-built head rig saw, the single most expensive and crucial piece of equipment in the entire district, was a mangled wreck. The ten-foot circular blade, forged in District 3 from the finest steel, was gone. Not broken, not bent. Gone. In its place was a jagged hole ripped through the two-inch-thick steel housing. The massive drive shaft, thick as a man’s torso, was snapped in two, the ends twisted and blackened like charred bone. Gears and shrapnel were embedded in the surrounding walls and floor like deadly buckshot. A nearby conveyor belt was shredded, and a heavy log had been thrown twenty feet, crushing a stack of finished lumber.

This was no mechanical failure. This was an execution.

Johanna walked towards the wreckage, a dead calm settling over her. The workers parted before her, their fearful whispers dying as she passed. She stopped at the edge of the destruction, her boots crunching on shattered metal. She knelt, ignoring the grease and grime, and ran a gloved finger along the edge of the hole blown through the housing. The metal was peeled back, warped outwards from an internal blast. It was precise. The charge had been placed on the main arbor, the single point of failure that would not just disable the machine but annihilate it. It was expert work. Military.

“Supervisor…” Barden, the boy she’d berated earlier, was at her elbow, his face ashen. “What happened?”

Johanna didn’t look at him. Her gaze was fixed on the ruin of her mill, the silence that now screamed louder than any saw. The shipments to 4 would stop. The contracts with 2 and 6 for rail ties and building materials would be void. The pay for every man and woman standing here would dry up. The hope that had been so painstakingly kindled over five years had just been doused in filth and fire.

The pressure landed on her shoulders like a physical weight, a yoke of failure. All her hardness, all her fury, all her driving will, and this had happened on her watch. She had dismissed the warnings as kids and scavengers. She had been a fool.

And in the suffocating silence of her dead mill, Thom’s words came back to her, insidious and undeniable. Someone with extensive experience in… unconventional warfare and tactical defense.

She rose to her feet, the cold dread in her stomach a solid, sickening knot. Her rage from before was a pale, impotent thing compared to the ice flooding her veins now. She had a choice. She could let her pride and her hatred burn the rest of District 7’s future to the ground, or she could swallow the bile rising in her throat and fight fire with fire. And President Paylor was sending her the one man who knew more about fire than anyone else alive.

She turned away from the wreck, her face a mask of stone. She saw Thom hovering near the office stairs, his expression a mixture of fear and pity. She stalked towards him, each step deliberate, crunching on the debris underfoot. The choice wasn't a choice at all. It was an ultimatum delivered by an unknown enemy.

“Get him,” she said, her voice devoid of the earlier fire, now just cold, hard ash.

Thom blinked. “Get who?”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she snapped, the venom returning. “Hawthorne. Get him. Bring him here. Now.”

She didn’t wait for a reply. She turned and walked back to the carcass of the head rig, positioning herself beside it like a sentinel guarding a tomb. She was marking her territory, making it clear that this disaster was hers, and he was walking into her space. She crossed her arms, the posture both defensive and defiant, and waited. The minutes stretched into an eternity, filled only by the nervous murmurs of the crew and the distant, mocking chirp of birds in the forest.

She saw him before he saw her. He came through the main gate, Thom scurrying at his side like a nervous rodent. He wasn’t the lanky, hungry-looking boy she remembered from the training center in 13. Five years had hardened him, filled him out. He was broader in the shoulders, his frame solid and imposing. He wore simple, practical clothes—dark trousers and a grey henley that strained across his chest. He moved with a quiet, predatory economy, his eyes sweeping over the mill, taking in the layout, the exits, the vantage points. The soldier. The hunter.

His gaze finally landed on the ruined heart of the mill, and then on her. He stopped. For a long moment, they just stared at each other across the fifty yards of sawdust-strewn ground. His face was granite, carved with lines that hadn’t been there before. But it was his eyes that held her. They were the same stormy grey, but the fire was gone, banked down to embers. What was left was a deep, profound exhaustion. A haunted look she knew all too well. She had seen it in the mirror. She had seen it in Katniss’s face every day for a year. The sight of it on him didn’t stir empathy; it fanned the flames of her hatred. He had no right to that look. His ghosts were of his own making.

He approached, his stride measured, stopping a few feet away. The air between them was so thick with unspoken history it felt like it might combust. The smell of ozone and burnt metal from the bomb mingled with the scent of pine and his sweat.

“Mason,” he said. His voice was deeper than she remembered, rougher. It was a statement, not a greeting.

“Hawthorne,” she bit back, the name tasting like poison. “Enjoying the view? You’ve got a real talent for breaking things.”

A muscle worked in his jaw, the only sign that her words had landed. His eyes flickered from her face to the mangled steel beside her. He took a step closer to the wreckage, his gaze sharp and analytical now, the haunted look replaced by a cold professionalism that was somehow even more infuriating.

“Who was on duty?” he asked, his voice low and calm.

“What the fuck does it matter to you?”

He finally turned his full attention back to her, and for the first time, she saw a flicker of the old fire. Not anger, but an unyielding intensity. “It matters because the person who did this knew the shift change schedule. They knew this machine’s schematics. They knew exactly where to place a charge for maximum damage with minimal explosive yield. This wasn’t random. This was an expert.” He crouched down, his fingers tracing the warped edge of the steel housing, his touch precise, detached. “I need access to all personnel files, shift rosters for the last month, and blueprints for the entire facility.”

It wasn’t a request. It was a command. He was taking over. The sheer fucking arrogance of it stole her breath. He was the saboteur’s mirror image, two sides of the same destructive coin, and he was standing in the ruins of her life’s work telling her what he needed.

Johanna let out a harsh, bitter laugh. “You walk in here, the king of bombs and broken girls, and start giving orders?” She leaned in, her voice a low, vicious whisper. “You will get nothing from me until I get something from you. You want to see files? You earn it. Find them. Catch the bastard who did this.” Her finger jabbed towards the wreckage. “Prove you’re better at catching bombers than you are at being one.”