A/N: The italicized paragraph toward the end is a flashback.
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The Alaskan sky was brilliant with the mid afternoon sunlight, the air a crisp cool as it wafted through the open window of the Hadley residence when a knock pealed against the chestnut door, drawing Clove Hadley's attention from the apple she stood peeling at the counter for the little boy, William, who sat scribbling on a page at the table.
She hardly thought anything of it; after all, it was probably one of their few neighbors coming to the door to ask for a favor. So she stepped out from around the table, her fingers curling around the door knob and tugging.
A tall young woman stood upon the cracking porch step, her straw blonde hair pulled up into a taut bun atop her head, a stone blue blazer clothing her arms, and a courteous expression poised upon her features.
"Good afternoon," her voice left her lips with a monotone lilt, her fingers folding together before her. "Mrs. Hadley, am I correct?"
"Yes," Clove positioned a hand on the frame of the door, stretching her brain to try to figure out who the woman before her could possibly be. "May I help you?"
"I was hoping perhaps I could come in and speak to you," The woman's pasty lips twitched into a tight smile. "I'm one of the new teachers at the school down the road...I was wondering if we could discuss your daughter, Brielle?"
Clove felt her stomach plunge almost to the floor, her placid countenance threatening to falter and expose her daughter's absence; she knew someone would eventually question it, but she just expected that her husband would be there to help her manage the dishonest explanation when they did.
"Is she here?" The woman lifted her eyes over Clove's shoulder, eyes scanning the sunlit kitchen. "I would love to include her in the discussion."
"She's actually off with her father," Clove forced a small smile, moving aside at the light push from the woman, who stepped through the threshold, shiny heels clicking against the floorboards. "She's considering taking an internship at his office, so he took her today to give her some tips. She is seventeen, after all, she'll be off on her own soon enough."
"Well, I can't help but have noticed that she's been absent from school for quite a while now," the woman narrowed her eyebrows at the recipient of her words. "You know, that puts her at a great risk of not finishing with the rest of her class next spring."
"I understand your concerns, but she's been sick quite a lot too, you know, the back and forth of the temperature, it messes with her sinuses," she tried to appear casual, leaning against a chair, her fingers raising to dust a few pieces of dark hair from William's forehead. "We're just trying to prepare her for the future, getting a job, providing for herself...we want to set her up well..."
"I understand Mrs. Hadley, but school is a very valuable aspect of raising a child right. Do you think she'll be returning soon?"
"I don't know," Clove bit the inside of her cheek, trying to conceal her unease at the subject of the question. "She really is quite busy here and I..."
"Mama?" William's tiny icy fingers tugged at the sleeve of Clove's shirt, his tone anxious and slight in the company of the unknown woman.
"Not right now, Will...I think it's more important for her to experience..."
"Mama..." His grasp became firmer, his tone growing urgent as he yanked her sleeve.
"What is it, William?" She sighed, diverting her attention to the little boy beside her, watching as his drowsy eyes lifted to hers, wide and declaring a fear that sent Clove into a spurt of confusion.
"Mama, I don't like guns,"
"Guns? Baby, we don't have..."
His gaze shifted once more, this time to a holster disguised carefully against the woman's hip, stifled beneath her blazer.
Clove's eyes widened as she followed his line of sight, her eyes soon lifting to the woman's face, whose lips began to form a smirk that read as almost devious at the fear forming upon the features of the two before her.
"I-I'm sorry but I don't remember you telling me your name," Clove skated her fingers down to William's wrist, clutching it in a tight clasp, ready to yank him up at the slightest movement of the woman before them.
"I don't think you have the right to ask me questions, Clove," the woman's eyebrows lifted at the tilt of her head, a maniacal little laugh rippling from between her lips. "I gave you the opportunity to tell me the truth but you instead chose to lie. You could have been left untouched if only you'd been forthcoming about your daughter's location, but now I'm afraid that you're too much of a hazard to be left unchecked."
Her finger lifted to her ear, the tip of it pressing against a small metallic device positioned within her ear canal.
"Operation generation one is a go,"
Clove barely had time to yank William from his chair and turn to the staircase before the aging door was heaved from its hinges, exposing about three heavily armed men on the other side.
"Take the mother and the boy, the father is absent, we'll be back later for him," her words waned as Clove stumbled up the stairs and through the doorway into the bedroom she shared with her husband, closing the door behind her.
There was no lock fastened to the wood, something Clove regretted as she hauled the desk chair to the door, fingers quivering as she wedged it beneath the handle, the sound of voices resounding up the stairwell.
"Mama..." Will's lips fluttered by her ear, his voice shivering with tears that had somewhere in the process begun to flee his vast baby eyes.
"It-it'll be ok, baby, mommy won't let anybody touch you," Clove whispered, voice quivering likewise as she nudged the dresser with her leg, leaving enough space to fit both herself and the tiny child behind its wooden drawers.
She tugged the landline from the port on the wall, fingers trembling furiously as she typed in the number that had become so familiar within her brain, stretching the line to its limitation as the phone tolled. Sinking to a crouch and clutching the boy to her chest, she pressed herself against the wall, sliding behind the piece of furniture, phone adhered to her hand as William whimpered against her chest, his face tunneling against her shirt.
"Shhh, it's ok...William, baby, please listen to me, you have to try to be as quiet as you can," her voice itself ascended hardly above a mumble as she grazed her lips to the top of his head, tensing her arms around his feeble quaking body, doing all she could to protect him against anything that could possibly break his fragile form. "Can you do that for me, baby?"
"Y-yes, mama," his words were quelled against her shirt, his crying muted as he pressed his face to her collar.
That moment, as the footsteps began up the stairs, approaching the door, and the mother and child huddled quietly behind the rigid bureau, the phone picked up, Clove's husband's voice echoing within the shell of her ear.
"Hey, Clo, what..."
"C-Cato, I love you," she pinched her eyes shut, trying to squelch the tears forming behind her eyelids, both for the slight child in her lap and the man on the other side of the phone.
"Clove?" His voice turned grave, serious at his wife's words.
"Th-they're here and-and...G-God, I-I don't know...I've g-got Will...w-we're behind the dr-dresser but...oh God, they're c-coming, Cato...you-you'd never make it back in t-time..."
"Clove, I can't understand you, what's going on, who's..."
"Th-they'll come for y-you too..."
The sound of the door slamming open and the voices of numerous men spilled into the phone as it sank to the floor, plied from Clove's fingers as gloved hands tore her from behind the furniture.
"Clove...Clove, are you still there?" Cato's voice rose, his alarm heightening as her voice resounded someplace far away.
"No! Stop! Don't touch him! Please...!" Hysteria laced her tone as William screamed, fingers clutching at Clove's shirt with a sudden desperation, almost tearing the fabric as he was ripped from her arms by forces much larger and stronger than the shaky woman and her child. "Please! Pl-please don't hurt him...! Don't hurt him...!"
One of the four men backed her into the wall, which she hit with a deafening crack, her body shoving against the chipping paint desperately as if she wished she could plunge right through the wall and run free, though she'd never truly be free anywhere, right? Her frail wrists were ripped roughly from behind her, clutched within gloved hands, and soon captured within thick metal links, bound together tightly, metal drilling against her fair skin.
"MAMA!"
William kicked and screamed, thrashing within the brutal grip of yet another masked sentry, his minuscule body doing nothing against layers of clothing and muscle. A large hand fastened over his mouth, his cries all but shushed against the suffocating material of a black glove as a third guard extracted from a briefcase a carefully swathed vial, and from a thin black case beside it, a large needle.
Clove's eyes blew wide, and she opened her mouth to scream but before she could even produce the slightest noise, she'd been gagged, mouth covered and speech of any sort frozen within her throat by the dense strip of fabric that had come from the folds of the same briefcase that bore the needles she had grown so terrified of. She could do nothing but scream against it, the noise muffled greatly, if even there at all as she flailed her shoulders, hands deemed powerless by their bound position, forced to watch as her son was gagged too, his wails transforming into hushed heaving and choking noises as the boy clawed at his face, the hands holding him, he wanted nothing but his mother. He could not have that.
"Clove?" Cato's voice spilled from the abandoned phone, dispatching silence around the room with the exception of the terror-stricken young boy. "Clove, are you there? Who's there?"
Five pairs of eyes, four narrowed, one wide with desperation, fell to the phone flung across the floor, cord dangling down from its port.
'Shut up, shut up, shut up...!' Clove wished she could scream at him, beg him to spare himself, and stop talking; he was only making it worse. 'They'll take you too, Cato, they'll find you! Stop talking and run! C'mon Cato, God...!"
"Cut the line," A whisper came deep from within the face mask. "Track the number."
It was at that moment when Clove was finally neared with the needle, the amber liquid within it a rich nauseating color.
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“P-please don’t…I-I don’t want to-to sleep…Please…” All she could do was beg; beg the nurse to spare her further pain, beg sleep to remain something unbeknownst to her, beg the demons to run away. "D-don't give it t-to me...P-please n-no..."
"It's for your own good," honey-sweet the voice of the nurse seemed so far away, so mislaid in the sea of all the others, lost but so close, so very very close. "It's ok, honey, you're sick, this'll make you feel better. You need to sleep."
"N-no...!"
Dad, Glimmer, Enobaria, Katniss, Mom, Marvel, Cato...Cato, Cato, Cato...Bloody dead Cato. No arm, no arm, no arm...
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Clove shook her head desperately, the needle a foot, an inch, a centimeter, from her arm, so close, too close, too too close…
She couldn't scream, call out to Cato to save her, it was too late, she was helpless as the needle pressed into her skin, poison slithering within her veins. It wasn't long, hardly a minute before the effects came swirling in, her gaze plunging, mind and body slipping into a murky dizzying fog. She held onto a sliver of cognizance, one more fleeting moment, to watch as the same needle corrupted her child's perfect skin, intoxicating his tiny sickly body in a moment of silence.
Just a second later she crumpled forward, legs going weak and body sagging as the guard dropped her to the floorboards, bracing her body against the wall beside her smaller male look-alike.
"We have the woman and child subdued, Visha; whenever..."
That was when the line died, and Cato Hadley almost had a heart attack.
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