The tower was no longer guarded.
The Peacekeepers had vanished—retreated or reassigned the moment the hovercraft went down. A gap in command. A crack in the system.
Exactly what Goo had been waiting for.
He moved fast, silent, steps unhurried but precise.
The Spire's lower level was a maze of stairs and vents, humming with unused energy. It smelled like coolant and ozone—technology layered over jungle decay. He passed through shadows and low-lit corridors, ducking under cables, scanning for sensors.
Halfway up, he found a terminal.
Locked.
Capitol-standard encryption.
He crouched, fingers hovering over the interface.
Not to hack it.
But to trace it.
The terminal buzzed in response—powerful, but not isolated. It was networked, probably linked to Arena systems.
He pressed a single key.
A soft click echoed through the metal bones of the tower.
Doors opened above him.
Rue was at the top, behind glass.
A room designed like a medical bay, sterile and brightly lit, flanked by screens showing manufactured skies.
She sat on a bench, knees to her chest, staring at the floor.
The moment she saw him, she bolted to the glass.
"Goo!"
Her voice cracked.
He walked to the reinforced window. Calm. Observing.
"Did they hurt you?" he asked.
"No," she said, breathless. "But they watched everything. Made me say those lines. The message wasn't mine."
"I know."
"I left the whisper," she added quickly. "I—"
"You did good."
She blinked. "You're not… angry?"
"I'm focused."
He moved to the side, inspecting the terminal outside her room.
"They used you. Which means you're valuable. And if you're valuable…"
He trailed off, pulling open a panel.
"…you're a bargaining chip."
Rue stepped closer to the glass. "You're not leaving me in here, right?"
He looked at her.
And for once, his voice softened.
"No."
The door unlocked with a hiss.
Rue ran to him without hesitation. She didn't cry. She didn't break.
She just stood beside him—small, breathing fast, ready.
He looked down at her.
"You still want to survive?"
She nodded.
"Then stay with me. We burn it from the inside now."
They didn't leave the Spire.
Not immediately.
Instead, Goo took her to the control hub two levels down—a room not meant for tributes, full of screens, blinking lights, and raw Arena feeds.
Rue gasped.
All the zones—displayed in real time.
The traps. The remaining tributes. Even Cassia, curled beside a small fire, nursing a wound on her leg.
"This is how they watch us," she whispered.
Goo said nothing.
He studied every feed.
He was learning the rhythm now—how the cameras shifted, how the zones cycled, how the Gamemakers predicted.
He turned to Rue.
"Do you want to see how we become ghosts?"
She stared at him.
Then nodded.
And Goo began switching the cameras.
Redirecting feeds. Looping footage.
One by one, he erased their presence from the Arena map.
The Capitol couldn't track them now.
The system couldn't see them.
They weren't tributes anymore.
They were errors.
That night, no cannon fired.
No deaths.
Just silence.
An unnatural quiet that stretched over Panem like a held breath.
And in the Capitol's highest rooms, men and women in gold-threaded suits began to panic.