Katniss is stung by Gale’s claim that she will choose the person she “can’t survive without,” because it makes her feelings sound purely practical after both the Capitol and the rebels have exploited her emotions for so long. The next morning, the group watches Beetee’s hacked broadcast from Tigris’s shop and learns that rebels are clearing routes into the Capitol by sending abandoned cars through pod-filled streets. Katniss studies the shifting battle lines on her map while refugees from newly occupied blocks stream toward the city center, and she becomes convinced that hiding in the cellar is only delaying her chance to reach President Snow.

Tigris spends the day gathering information and returns with food and news that the Capitol is forcing residents to take in refugees, while Snow has announced that part of his mansion will shelter civilians. Because that policy could expose Tigris’s shop and trap them underground, Katniss decides to leave at dawn and try to reach the mansion. Gale agrees to go with Katniss, while Peeta calmly accepts that his instability makes him dangerous to the group and proposes going separately to create a diversion if needed. Gale gives Peeta a nightlock pill, and after a restless night Tigris disguises Katniss, Gale, Peeta, Cressida, and Pollux as ordinary Capitol refugees.

The five leave in staggered groups and merge into the crowd heading inward through snow and confusion. Cressida and Pollux move ahead as guides, Katniss and Gale follow, and Peeta trails behind. Their plan collapses almost immediately when rooftop gunfire tears into the refugees, killing civilians indiscriminately. Katniss and Gale avoid revealing themselves with their bows, take cover, then steal guns from Peacekeepers and continue forward by posing as desperate Capitol citizens. As they push toward Snow’s mansion, they enter a chaotic battlefield where rebels, Peacekeepers, civilians, and pods are all killing one another.

Katniss and Gale survive multiple horrors in rapid succession: a steam pod that scalds victims to death, a purple-lit weapon that makes people bleed from every opening, and finally a street pod that splits open and drops people into a corpse-stinking pit below. Katniss claws her way back to the surface and sees that Gale has survived by clinging near a doorway. Katniss shoots the lock so Gale can get inside, but Peacekeepers seize him the moment the door opens. Gale shouts for Katniss to go, and only after she flees does Katniss realize that Gale had been mouthing for her to shoot him rather than let him be captured alive.

Alone and grief-stricken, Katniss forces herself onward because she believes Snow must die before the Capitol can break Gale or save itself. She reverses her cloak to stay hidden, blends into the crowd, and reaches the City Circle in front of Snow’s mansion. There she discovers that children have been penned behind barricades as a human shield. When rebels break into the Circle, a hovercraft marked with the Capitol’s seal drops silver parachutes over the children; many explode moments later, shredding them. Rebel medics rush in to help the wounded, and Katniss is stunned to recognize Prim among them. Katniss runs toward her sister, and Prim appears to see Katniss just before the remaining parachutes detonate.