"So," asked Li as they sat down on their benches, "how much reading have you two done recently?" He picked up his half-finished sweater and began to untangle the yarn. "I, for one, still don't quite get it."

"Get what?" Strata asked.

Theodosius tried to find the correct end of his blanket. "We're doing some reading about democracy," he explained as he struggled to untangle the large project. "If not the present, then hopefully the past will explain something."

The prohibition on reading about certain topics was extremely grating. Practically everything written in the last seventy-five years was off-limits, as few books written in or about Panem didn't mention the Games.

"Explain what?" asked Strata. "The current political situation?" Donna and Theodosius nodded.

"Huh," said Katz. "You think it will still apply?"

"So far," Donna said, "I've seen quite a few parallels." She resumed work on her blanket, carefully making the stitches. She was using the waffle stitch, which was much trickier than just simply single or double crochet all the way through. It was more fun, though. "There's always an outpouring of idealism when a repressive regime is toppled. People start thinking that anything is possible."

Katz shrugged slightly, ignoring the barb about repressive regimes. "I've done some reading, too," she said. "Democracy is fragile. Very fragile, especially at the beginning. Even once it's established, people still rush to extremes when things go badly wrong. You can't have political bickering in a crisis."

"Yes," said Theodosius, "but once the crisis passes, people want to kick out their leaders if they dealt with it poorly. Imagine if you had been able to get rid of your corrupt mayor and not have to deal with his thieving for decades."

"But wouldn't anyone become corrupt in power?" Li asked. "Far as I can tell, that's exactly what happens. People pick their leaders, their leaders turn out to not be as good as promised, so they pick someone else next, and the cycle continues."

Donna had noticed the same thing. In some places, the people constantly swung between extremes, and nothing got done in the long run. In others, nothing really changed even if the names did. "I guess it comes back to it being better than the alternative. If a mayor knew that corruption would get them voted out, they'd cut it back, try to hide it. The least corrupt countries are all democratic."

"Doesn't really seem like a choice, does it, though?" Katz said as her ball of yarn ran out. "If you're just picking between bad and worse."

"Better than being stuck with bad." Donna could feel the debate shifting to a fight.

Strata butted in, eager to start the spat. "Well, it all depends on what you define as bad, right? I've read that when McCollum came to power, he got overwhelming support."

Donna had also read about the last years before the First Rebellion, when he had come to power. His predecessors had all been democratically elected, but the last one had slowly gathered more and more power until she had refused to step down. When she finally died, McCollum, her deputy, had assumed power. The people hoped that he would be better, but instead, he tightened the screws further and further, creating the modern economic system as well as the modern surveillance state, albeit with the relatively limited technology of the time. "Yes," she said, "but just a decade later, the nation rose in rebellion. Support can erode."

There had been no true support for McCollum, not after the show trials and the introduction of the Hunger Games. He ruled for another forty-three years, starting out relatively soft on the Capitolians and allowing some dissent there, and ending with the first purges. When he died for reasons that were still debated, nobody dared hope Snow would be better.

Theodosius rushed to defuse the argument, not raising his eyes from the triple crochet stitch he was halfway through. "It's a thought experiment," he said. "Think about it in general terms."

"Yes," muttered Li. "I just wanted to talk about democracy." His fingers flashed as he began to shape a sleeve. "What do you think motivates people to keep it up? I think it's the promise of accountability and being able to choose."

"That's what I think, too," Theodosius said. "It makes people feel like they can choose their own fate by picking a leader to represent their interests."

Weiss leaned over towards them. "Will we be allowed to vote in the next elections?"

"Given that we weren't allowed to vote in the last ones? I doubt it," Theodosius said.

"But why?" Li asked. "Isn't the point of elections that everyone votes?"

"I think they're just messing with us," Katz said.

Donna disagreed. "I think they have a good-sounding reason for it. Imagine what the press will say."

Bunching the blanket in her lap to work on the corner, Katz dropped her yarn and re-positioned it around her hand. "But you always say the press doesn't care about us," she pointed out as she tried to get a firmer grip on the yarn.

"It doesn't care in general," Donna explained, "but if something happens, we'll be front-page news again."

Strata was unimpressed by that logic. "I don't think we'll be aware of it if it happens," she pointed out. "It's not like we have newspapers. Do you really think they care about what's said about us?"

"We may not know," Donna said, "but the administration will. If they sit tight and give the press no excuses, nobody will pause to think about us. But if someone manages to kick up a fuss, the federal government might get involved, and they don't want that." She spread out the short blanket on her lap, trying to warm up. It simply wasn't fair. Why did the temperature almost always drop when it rained? It would have been so nice to stay inside and be nice and warm, but no. Staying inside meant cold. Donna flexed her hands, feeling the tips of her fingers touch her palms. They were freezing. She blew on her hands for warmth.

Noticing the gesture, Theodosius wondered out loud what the temperature was. "I wonder if it's actually cold," he said, "or just cold relative to how hot it was before."

"The latter," Katz said. "I doubt it's below twenty degrees in here."

"But my fingers feel cold!" Donna protested. "How can it be twenty degrees?"

Katz shrugged, not raising her eyes from her crochet. "Maybe your fingers numb easily," she said. "Try crocheting more intensively."

Donna sighed and resumed work. "But that's the thing, they don't numb that easily!"

"Maybe you're ill?" Katz suggested.

"I don't feel sick," Donna pointed out. "Just cold-fingered."

"Maybe it's a sign you're falling ill," Katz said. "I once served with someone who always got cold extremities just before he actually fell ill. Has that happened to you before?"

"What, getting sick?" Donna didn't understand the question. "Of course."

"I used to serve with someone who never got sick," Li chimed in. "She never got as much as a cold, could eat rancid food without batting an eye. We'd always ask her if the IGR had edited her genome a bit."

Strata lowered her hands onto her lap, leaning forward. "Rancid food?" she asked, sounding utterly shocked. "But - how? I remember I got sick once from eating sushi that still had several days to go before expiring!"

Li chuckled. "That was when you served in Five, right?" Strata nodded. "I guarantee you there was a transport issue, and it wasn't refrigerated properly."

"Oh." Strata resumed crocheting. "That explains it. Shame, though, the sushi was delicious. Only time I ever tried it." That said a lot about the life of a Peacekeeper. Even on location, it had been possible for Donna to get takeout.

"A reward, huh?" Katz asked. "I remember on my first tour, we were given alcohol after particularly difficult tasks. Not...sushi." She nearly tripped over the unfamiliar word.

"You missed out. It was really good. I loved the spicy mayonnaise."

"Wait, really?" Theodosius said. "I always hated it."

"How can you hate spicy mayo?" Li asked. "It's the best thing ever."

"I just don't like mayonnaise in general," Theodosius shrugged. "Or spice."

Li looked outraged at that. "How can you not like spice?"

"Gives me heartburn if I eat too much of it, and I err on the side of caution." Theodosius tried to untangle the yarn from around the blanket, and failed. Instead, he simply pulled on it harder to get a longer tail her could work with, but the yarn was too tightly wound around the project. Donna reached over and helped him untangle it. "Thanks," he said, re-adjusting the yarn.

Katz spoke up. "Could someone please explain to me what sushi is?" she asked.

Li rushed to enlighten her. "There's a whole bunch of types, but the most common is sticky rice rolled into a roll with something inside. It can be filled with a whole bunch of things, vegetables and fish mostly. The really expensive kind is with raw fish."

"Raw fish?" Katz asked incredulously. "No wonder you got sick," she told Strata, who shrugged. "Five's on the other side of the country from Four!."

"Actually," Theodosius said, "there's some salmon fishing in Seven. Low-scale, they only really sent crab to the Capitol, but I'm willing to bet that's where your sushi was made. It was mostly for the local market, for Seven's upper class, but it would have been easy as anything for them to fulfill an order made in Five."

"That's still quite far, isn't it?" As a Head Peacekeeper, Katz would only have been familiar with accurate maps of Nine's surroundings, the rest of the country a complete blank to her.

Theodosius shook his head, explaining the basic geography of Panem to her. Strata also looked fascinated at information Donna had learned in elementary school. She doubted that the trials of the former Peacekeepers would have brought up that Three was between Five and Seven, but it was always a shock to find out just how little the people from the Districts had known about Panem. And even now, Katz and Strata weren't allowed to read books about geography, because there were "forbidden topics" mentioned!

"Huh," said Katz. "Fascinating. I never went beyond the outer boundary, you know."

"Not even as Head?" Donna asked. Katz shook her head. The ball of yarn toppled off her lap, and she bent down to pick it up.

"The closest I got was when we were chasing a person of the Wilds during my second tour," she explained in a strained voice, searching for the yarn under the bench. "We were ordered to capture if possible, but they were better in the terrain than us." Katz sat up, readjusting her cap. "We were deep in the boundary by that point, had to run at half-speed because otherwise, we couldn't read the map fast enough to avoid stepping on a tracker jacker nest or panicked when they saw that we were still there, forgot the path, and stepped on an explosive pod." She shrugged weakly, resuming her crocheting.

The people of the Wilds who had lived between the Districts, small nomadic and semi-nomadic groups nearly all, had never been a nuisance for Donna. The only time she had seen them was when the occasional daredevil tried to trade with the on-location teams. A bigger issue had been the towns and villages up north. Huge swathes of land had been unusable for the Games because of their presence. Despite the fact that the relatively small populated areas could have been effortlessly wiped out by a single task force, neither McCollum nor Snow ever tried it. The Wilds were never patrolled beyond when railroad repair was done or around an Arena, and the people living there stayed in touch with each other and the outside world despite how difficult it was for them to get their hands on technology. They had an uneasy truce with the Capitol. If not left alone, they threatened to blow up the railroads and assault any teams sent out, no matter how heavy the reprisals. And the northeastern coast hadn't been patrolled at all. They could have easily imported weapons instead of solar panels if they had wanted. Only the fear of losing what they did have prevented organized guerilla warfare.

"We had a run-in with the people of the Wilds on location once," Donna said. "I wasn't there myself at the time, though. Several youths blew up the bridge that was the only rail access. They got caught, though. Them and several workers who helped them." She didn't need to explain what their fate had been. It was a good thing she hadn't been there at the time, as no doubt the prosecution would have pinned it on her somehow.

Katz looked up. "That was in 71, right? I remember that. We were ordered to be on high alert, Command told us to prepare for attacks. Nothing happened, of course. Found out months later it was just an isolated incident."

"That it was," Donna said. "On location, everyone started shooting on sight, but then someone accidentally shot a Capitol worker in the stomach, and then they stopped again."

"As always," Theodosius grumbled. "Messed up transportation for a while, with all those security measures." It had always happened in waves. There would be a raid or attack, security measures would be implemented, and then they would discontinued either because they made life too difficult or because someone from the Capitol or an important District person got caught in the crossfire. "Flick yelled at me for hours. As if the transport collapse was my fault." Flick had been one of the directors of the Steelworks conglomerate and got executed for his many crimes, from slave labour to the seizure of plants from local businesspeople.

Chuckling slightly, Li undid a small section of a sleeve and began to re-do it. "He complained to Stonesmith about you, too."

Theodosius ran his hand through his hair. "Well, that explains why I was ordered to walk for hours through a snowstorm after my train mysteriously had a malfunction," he said caustically. "Bit incompetent for her, I'd say. The person who walked me there didn't even try to lead me to the middle of the forest."

Li shook his head. "She refused to take the hint, actually. You were in too much favour. That's why I even found out about it - because it didn't happen."

"I suddenly feel better about having been so isolated from everything," Strata said. "I don't think takeout is worth having to constantly worry about your deputy poisoning you."

Theodosius sighed. "I miss takeout so much. Seems an odd thing to miss, but I'm sick and tired of having the same three things to eat day after day."

"Actually, I'm eating much better now than I ever had before my arrest," Strata said. Katz nodded sympathetically.

"When I became Head, I immediately hired a local to cook for me. Peacekeeper rations were atrocious, and the previous Head had punished anyone who went down to the market to buy as much as a slice of bread," she reminisced.

"I only saw the Head once in Five," Strata said. "He turned up completely drunk to the town I was stationed in and started going on about saboteurs and wreckers. Then, he hopped into his car and rode off, firing his gun into the air. He got executed by the Rebellion." The Head of Five had shared that fate with nearly all of Heads.

Katz shook her head disapprovingly. "And then he wondered why the people were so undisciplined, I bet. You need to give out carrots as well as sticks. A cycle of reprisals just makes people feel like they have nothing to lose. If you take hostages and demand the impossible, they'll blow you up with the hostages, because they're dead anyway."

What would the people of Nine think of this analysis of the situation? Katz had indeed been less cruel than the vast majority of Heads, as evidenced by the fact that Nine, alone, had judged her and sentenced her to life, but it still had been a terrible place to live.

"That's true," said Theodosius. "It's something I always tried to explain to Snow. People need to see their hopes fulfilled from time to time, or they get fed up, and- well." He gestured at the gym they were sitting in, at the handful of guards crocheting or reading.

Donna remembered the constant difficulties with the District workers. Theodosius' predecessor had bragged that not even five percent came voluntarily, but that wasn't something to brag about. Motivating the workers to put in effort had been virtually impossible, as news of harsh reprisals always leaked back to the Districts and resulted in even less enthusiastic workers. At the trial, Donna had been horrified to find out about the levels that the hostage-taking had sunk to. She had been aware that an entire family could find themselves with a black mark opposite their names for the actions of one on-location worker, but she had only sensed vaguely that the workers had been scared of more than unemployment.

For a while, their little group was silent. Donna could hear Holder talking to Salperin, Gold, and Netter. He was complaining about the food. The three former Peacekeepers sounded utterly exhausted, the typical reaction to having to listen to Holder. On the back benches, the former industrialists whispered to each other in voices too quiet for Donna to hear. Closer to her, Westfield and Groat were complaining about some former coworker of theirs who not only had been found not guilty, but had managed to get himself categorized as a minor offender. Westfield's main issue was that he would get to keep his house and savings, while she would have neither one nor the other upon release, which was less than four years away. None of the Gamemaker assistants had gotten more than fifteen years.

Li held up the sleeve in front of him. "I'm tired of making sweaters," he complained to Theodosius in a whisper.

"You should tell them that," he said. "Maybe they'd let you make something else."

"I already did. The administration wants sweaters."

Donna was taken aback by that, and so was Theodosius. "But I thought they just wanted to keep us busy!" he said.

Li shrugged. "Well, they also want sweaters." He inspected the cabling running down the sleeve. "By the way, you made a mistake a few rows back." He pointed at the end of one of the rows. Donna realized that she had accidentally decreased it in length.

Now what? Undo the six rows and do it again? Or keep on going? It was just a tiny decrease, but the more Donna looked at it, the more obvious it seemed to her until it was clear that leaving the mistake in would result in the blanket looking horrible. Kicking herself for not noticing the mistake sooner, she began to frog the blanket, undoing her work.

"Did you make a mistake?" Theodosius asked. Donna pointed it out. "Doesn't look so bad to me."

"I've got all the time in the world," she answered with a shrug. "Might as well make it perfect." The yarn piled up in Donna's lap, crinkly and taking up lots of room. Hopefully it wouldn't end up tangled. She finished frogging the rows, inserted her hook into the loop, and made it bigger, so she wouldn't accidentally undo more than she intended. Then, she re-wound the yarn into a ball. The grey material was soft against her fingers, but it also stripped the oil from them. When Donna rubbed her fingertips together, she felt the dryness.

Once the ball was done, she re-positioned the blanket in her lap and put the ball on top. Then, she resumed crocheting, making sure that the new row was being started correctly. It was irritating to lose so much work, but after all, she did have all the time in the world.

"It's barely drizzling," Theodosius complained. "Why can't we work outside?"

"I wish we could," Donna said, stretching out her hand to feel if any drops were falling. The drizzle was more of a fine mist that left everything damp, and her sweater and warm shoes were adequate protection from it, as there was no wind to blow it in their faces. Gardening would have been nice, although muddy. "This is probably the best weather we've had in a week or so."

"Bit chilly, though." Theodosius' hands were firmly shoved inside his pockets. "Digging up the potatoes would warm us right up," he joked. It was still weeks before the potatoes would be fully mature, but they were already quite grown, and Theodosius was desperate to dig them up already and behold the hopefully bounteous harvest.

"You think sitting on the damp ground would warm us up?" Donna asked sceptically, trying to distract him from the potatoes. "I think walking is actually better for that."

Theodosius looked around himself. "Well, then, let's walk!" he said. "Might as well get out of here for a while."

"Where are you?" Donna asked. "Still around Two?"

"Yes," said Theodosius, staring off into nothing. "I'm in the mountains. They took down the fence and deactivated the pods. Now, there's just signposts that say 'You are now entering District Two'. The occasional border guard walks by, but since I'm not trying to go inside, they don't stop me." Donna wasn't sure if he was pretending for his own benefit or for hers. She imagined the mountain paths, the signposts, the occasional pothole where a pod had been.

"Must have been difficult, to remove all those pods in hard-to-reach places," she said. "Remember what Wreath said? The harder it is for a person to reach somewhere, the more pods were placed." Wreath had been a Peacekeeper in the Coast Guard division, as well as a lawyer. He had been helping the Rebellion forces clear ocean pods when he was called to the Capitol to defend Best, and then proceeded to turn up to the first court session in dress uniform, horrifying nearly everyone and impressing the defendants. Due to his previous experiences, he knew exactly whom to call as a witness, and when. Best and Verdant had a lot to thank him for.

"That's true." Theodosius was staring into space. "I'll have to try and figure out if there's going to be patrols in such unreachable places."

"Pity you can't ask Wreath," Donna said. "Or anyone, really." They were only allowed to send letters to family and their own lawyer, and letters to the latter had to be strictly on topic.

Theodosius nodded. "I don't like the thought of being inaccurate. I want my trip to be as close to reality as possible. Otherwise, it's not really a trip around the world, is it?"

The drizzle seemed to be fading, but it was still overcast. "True. Maybe once you're in South America, they'll let you take out books about it. How are you even going to get there?"

"I heard there's a ferry working now," Theodosius said, trying to hide his face from the breeze that picked up suddenly. "Ugh, it's freezing. Anyway, I thought I could just hop on. It'll be harder to go to Africa from there, though. Maybe I'll get a fake ID and catch a hovercraft."

"Sounds like a plan," Donna said cheerfully. "I bet-" she cut off as she saw Li. The man was walking on his hands. "What is he doing?"

"Walking on his hands?"

"I noticed that," Donna said in an exasperated tone. "But why?"

"No idea." Li stopped suddenly. As Donna watched, open-mouthed, he removed one hand from the ground. "Maybe he should have joined the circus instead of the Death Squad," Theodosius said incredulously. "How is he not falling over?"

Li proceeded to bend his elbow until the top of his head touched the ground. He then straightened back up and switched hands.

"I don't think the Death Squad taught its recruits this kind of stuff," Donna pointed out. The two of them stopped to watch Li. On two hands now, he slowly lowered himself into a plank position, but with feet off the ground. Then, he straightened back up into a handstand. "Maybe I should start working out in my cell," she said as they resumed walking.

Theodosius was running his hand through his hair, cap pushed to the back of his head. "Every time I think he's reached the limit, he comes up with something else. He'll start running on walls next."

Donna chuckled. "I don't think even he can defy gravity."

"It's not quite that," Theodosius said. "If you run really fast, you can take a few steps against a wall. You can even use it to jump higher. Li would probably set records."

"You should ask him to try, then," she said, stepping around a particularly slippery patch of mud. The ground was damp, and Donna stepped as lightly as possible to avoid getting too much mud on her shoes.

They were just a few metres from Li now, who was using the meadow as a workout space. He and a few other former Peacekeepers had asked the administration for permission to spar, but their request was refused. They were stuck with katas and whatever Li's workout routine was. By now, he was doing his more familiar two-finger pushups. Maybe in a few months, he'd be doing two-finger handstands.

When she suggested that to Theodosius, he agreed. "One-finger handstands, at this rate. All I'm doing is roaming around, and he's pushing the limits of the possible." He shook his head in disbelief. "Honestly, it's a shame nobody will ever find out about this. Li's skill demands respect."

"I'm sure some guard or other will take a video at some point," Donna pointed out. A few times, she had noticed the guards in the towers holding phones or cameras.

Theodosius shook his head as they walked away from Li and his gymnastics. "You think any of them will actually be leaked to the public?"

"Eventually, maybe." Donna was certain that any leak would cause a scandal that would immediately be described to them. So far, nothing like that had happened.

"I suppose we'll wait, then." Theodosius smiled sadly.