Catching Fire Chapter 26 Summary

How It All Goes Down

  • It's night again. Usually there would be an announcement of the dead, but no one else has died since the previous day.
  • That evening, the allies put their plan into action. They have to go back across rough terrain to the tree where the lightning will strike. Beetee and Finnick put the wire around the tree. Beetee has a specific, complex vision of what form the wire should take.
  • He lays out the rest of the strategy. They have to split up. The men will stay behind while Katniss and Johanna run with the wire back to the beach and then get the heck out of there before the lightning strikes.
  • Peeta doesn't want to separate, and neither does Katniss, but they really have no choice.
  • They get going.
  • Johanna and Katniss have made it pretty far when they realize that the wire's been severed.
  • Katniss is hit in the head and blacks out. She comes to and realizes that Johanna is cutting into her arm severely. Johanna pushes Katniss down and rushes off.
  • Some of their enemies rush by.
  • Katniss definitely doesn't know whom to trust now, and she's seriously wounded.
  • She realizes she has to try to protect Peeta, but she doesn't know where he is.
  • She's still trying to strategize, although she doesn't know what's going on. She's sick to her stomach and in lots of pain.
  • She tries to get her arm wound under control, but she can't even tell how bad it is.
  • She keeps searching for Peeta, figuring that he's the only one left she can still trust.
  • Finnick's looking for her, and she hides from him.
  • She knows their time is running out.
  • An announcement comes from afar: someone else has died. She hopes it's not Peeta.
  • She gets caught in something and figures out it's Beetee's wire. She frees herself and keeps going.
  • She makes it back to the tree and only Beetee is still there. He's knocked out and wounded. She can't figure out what happened. It looks like he had some kind of plan involving the force field and more wire, because she can see both close by. But he kept the plan to himself and now he's out of commission.
  • Peeta yells for Katniss and she shouts back. She's hoping to save him and give herself up.
  • She sees Enobaria and Finnick coming.
  • Then another noise announcing that someone else has died. But who?
  • Peeta yells again, but Katniss is busy counting the odds. The numbers are shrinking, so if she bows out now, Peeta could still have a fair shot. It's painful, but she promised herself and Haymitch that he'd be the one to survive.
  • Just in the nick of time, Katniss has an epiphany. She thinks back to the advice Haymitch gave her right before they went into the arena, about who the enemy really is.
  • She knows who it is now, and what she has to do. She can finish what Beetee was trying to accomplish.
  • Katniss attaches her arrow to his wire and sends it shooting up into the force field. She aims for the weak spot she learned about during training.
  • She hits it and the world explodes into fire all around her.