After Katniss destroys the arena’s force field, the jungle erupts in explosions, fire, and Capitol fireworks. Believing the Gamemakers may intend to kill every remaining tribute and deny the Quarter Quell any victor, Katniss fears she has doomed Peeta by rebelling. A hovercraft seizes Katniss, and when Katniss sees Plutarch Heavensbee aboard, Katniss assumes the Capitol has rescued her only to punish her publicly.

Katniss drifts in and out of consciousness in a medical room, badly wounded and restrained. Katniss tears out her IV tubes once, then later wakes more fully to find only Beetee still nearby on life support. Convinced the Capitol has captured the survivors, Katniss takes a syringe and leaves her bed intending to find Peeta and kill him before the Capitol can torture him.

Instead, Katniss overhears Plutarch, Finnick, and Haymitch speaking together aboard a flying craft. Haymitch stops Katniss and forces Katniss to listen while he explains the truth: from the moment the Quarter Quell was announced, there was a secret plan to break selected tributes out of the arena. Plutarch is part of an underground movement against the Capitol, Beetee was meant to destroy the force field, the bread gifts were coded rescue signals, the hovercraft belongs to District 13, and rebellions have spread across Panem.

Katniss then learns why so many victors protected Katniss in the arena. Haymitch and Plutarch reveal that Katniss, not Peeta, was the real target of the rescue because Katniss has become the Mockingjay, the living symbol of the rebellion. Johanna did not betray Katniss; Johanna cut out Katniss’s tracker and drew Brutus and Enobaria away. But the rescue failed to save everyone: the Capitol captured Peeta, Johanna, and Enobaria.

Enraged that Haymitch used Katniss and failed to save Peeta, Katniss attacks Haymitch and must be restrained and sedated. In the aftermath, Katniss sinks into grief, rejects food and comfort, and listens coldly as Finnick mourns Annie and admits he wishes all their loved ones were dead rather than in Capitol hands. Katniss loses the will to live until Gale appears, wounded but alive, and confirms that Prim and Katniss’s mother escaped the Capitol’s attack. Gale then delivers the final blow: after the Games, the Capitol firebombed District 12, and District 12 no longer exists.