In the woods outside District 12, Katniss recognizes the mockingjay stamped on a cracker that an armed stranger offers and keeps her bow trained on the woman. A second fugitive emerges on a crutch, and Katniss learns they are Twill and Bonnie from District 8, not Peacekeepers. After taking their weapon, Katniss brings them into the abandoned house, realizes they are freezing and starving, and gives them food and hot pine-needle tea.

Once Twill and Bonnie recover enough to talk, they explain that unrest had been building in District 8 ever since Katniss and Peeta's Games. Because factory noise let rebels whisper safely, people organized in secret for months, assigning targets such as the Justice Building, the Communication Center, the granary, the power station, and the armory. The revolt began on the night of Katniss and Peeta's televised Capitol engagement because the broadcast gave people a reason to gather publicly after dark.

Twill and Bonnie say the rebels first overwhelmed the local Peacekeepers and seized several important sites, which briefly made success seem possible. Then the Capitol answered with massive reinforcements and hovercraft bombings, crushing the uprising in less than two days. After a weeklong lockdown and public hangings, Twill and Bonnie were late to their factory shift because bomb damage blocked the road, and that delay saved them when the factory exploded, killing Twill's husband and Bonnie's family. They fled in stolen Peacekeeper uniforms, hid on a train, and walked to District 12.

Twill and Bonnie reveal that the mockingjay cracker means they are "on Katniss's side," and they say people in District 8 believe the Capitol keeps reusing old footage of District 13 because the district still survives underground. Their evidence is the same brief shot of a mockingjay appearing in the broadcast footage every time. Katniss is tempted by the possibility of a real refuge and angers herself by imagining District 13 doing nothing while other districts suffer, but she ultimately assumes Twill and Bonnie are clinging to hope. Even so, Katniss helps them by giving them food, teaching Twill basic hunting, making Bonnie a better crutch, and showing them how to build a proper fire. She also tells them how brutal life in District 12 has become under Romulus Thread.

On the walk home, Katniss reinterprets recent events. Twill and Bonnie's story convinces Katniss that President Snow's demand that she perform love for Peeta was never going to stop rebellion in District 8 and was mainly meant to distract and contain her. Katniss also realizes the mockingjay may have become a symbol of resistance centered on her, whether she chose that role or not. When Katniss reaches the fence and moves to slip back into District 12, she hears the dangerous hum of current and discovers that the fence has been electrified again.