in a supposed democracy

Snow's death is announced on television the day after it happens. The announcer speaks of "sudden illness".

There are going to be emergency elections to replace him in three days. Without advance notice and the standard scheduling of elections, they're going to be setting up polling places in the Capitol at a limited number of sites. Some outlying neighborhoods will be served by schools and the like. But most of the city will be congregating at the Memorial Dome to cast their votes for the next president.

(There follow thirty solid minutes of campaign ads. The district imports comptroller, the chairman of the traffic control commission and former Gamemaker, the deceased Snow's personal assistant, and a handful of lesser individuals are running. Bell hates them all.)

"Suppose the Memorial Dome caught fire," she says to Sherlock and Tony, frowning at the TV.

at the memorial dome

Shell Bell tries not to think too hard about Tony's sketchy Capitol friends or why they'd send him a train. She stows away for the short trip. She wears her godawful stupid dress. She paints triangles over her eyes and her cheeks, and squares around them, and she irons ringlets into her carefully divided hair, pins it up, and attaches the hat to the heap of white and blue.

She tucks her amulet under her neckline - the chain is fine enough to look like some more conventional piece of jewelry.

She holds her stick in her hand and stuffs her hand in her pocket.

It's early when they get there, barely dawn. The poll workers are setting up, but voters haven't accumulated yet.

She scopes out a starting place.

Leaning on a wall of a building across the street, pretending to be bored, forgetting not to chew her lip and tasting makeup - she finds one.

There are decorative torches, here and there, and that one has a bit of the Panem flag dangling quite near it in the calm. The flag has a cord. The cord touches the arch of the dome. From there she can get everything.

She waits for Sherlock to find where they'll duck when the panic starts. And when she gets the nod...

She assumes control of the torch. Yes, it's real fire, that's useful.

It flickers, it sways, it leaps.

It touches the flag, and maybe it wouldn't have caught, normally, but she makes it catch. The flag goes up in smoke; the cord catches and burns.

She sends the fire a quarter of the way around the circle at the base of the domed roof, first, before letting it climb any higher. She can still see all of the borders of the fire, but it's going to be implausible for her to keep it that way much longer.

People have started to notice - a poll worker, someone walking her dog. They don't seem to know what to do about it.

"Time to duck out of sight?" she murmurs to Sherlock in her best imitation of a Capitol accent.