Theodosius only had to hold the plum with two fingers for it to break off the branch. He popped the small red fruit into his mouth, chewing eagerly.

"That's your tenth plum," Donna pointed out, looking around anxiously for any sign of guards looking in their direction. "You'll make yourself sick." She picked up a plum from the ground and inspected it for signs of rot. Finding none, she put it into the bucket with the good plums. The grass around the tree had been trimmed almost into nonexistence, which made finding the plums a very easy task. They were red and purple against the brown soil.

"Better me than those greedy bastards," he retorted, glaring at a nearby guard. The tree was indeed laden with much less fruit than it should have been. While some of that was thanks to the inmates, it was the guards who were the most enthusiastic eaters.

Donna picked up another plum, which turned out to be rotten on the side touching the ground. She tossed it into the garbage bucket. Plums fell down every day, and now that almost all of the fruit was ripe, the pace was increasing. The ones that weren't ripe yet would be picked off individually during the next week or so. "Those greedy bastards have the authority to lock you up all day long for theft," she said. It was an irrational fear, but she couldn't shake it.

"Relax," Theodosius said gently. "The only person getting locked up for anything is Zelenka for using slurs when two directors were standing behind her. I'm not planning on that." He picked another plum and put it into the bucket tied to his waist. "Is it unsettling you? Because you were also locked up not too long ago?"

It had been more than a year, but in the grand scheme of things, that was nothing. "It's unnerving. She didn't even bat an eye, but I know how hard it is."

"Eat a plum," Theodosius suggested.

Donna had already had two, but she got up and stood on tiptoe to reach a plum dangling from a branch. She ate it in one bite, sucking at the pit to get at the last bits of fruit, and spat the pit into the garbage bucket. "That didn't make me feel any better."

"Being miserable while eating plums is better than being miserable and sitting on the ground," Theodosius said airily. In a more serious tone he added, "Have you discussed this with Dr. Chu?"

"Of course." The psychologist still blamed herself for Donna's placement into total solitary. Donna had told her over and over that she didn't blame her (she did, of course, but she knew better than to say that), but the psychologist was still torn up inside. Since that day, Dr. Chu hadn't given Donna any forbidden books to read, which meant that she had to rely on other sources to get that information. "But even Dr. Chu can't magically cure me."

Theodosius climbed up the stepladder, leaning against the top rung with his knees. "That's true. Unfortunately." He finished filling his bucket with plums and climbed down. Kneeling down to empty his bucket into the bigger one, he added, "At least you've made progress."

"Thanks." She crouched back down to pick up another plum, but straightened back out when she saw Vartha stepping into the yard. He had been visited by his oldest son. "He's back," she said.

"That he is." Theodosius adjusted his bucket on his waist and climbed back up. Donna stayed standing, waiting for Vartha to arrive. As all of them did after a visit, he looked completely drained.

"Well," he said, folding his hands behind his back. "That was certainly informative."

"How's your son doing?"

Vartha tried to pick a plum, but he was too short to reach it and had to give up. "I had to talk him out of naming his next child after me, but otherwise, fine." Theodosius handed him a plum, and he ate it in one bite.

"I've come to the conclusion that naming your children after someone still alive is a terrible idea," Donna said. She wondered why Vartha's son would do such a thing. His was by no means a household name, but it still seemed like a bad idea to her.

"What was the information, then?" Theodosius asked.

"It's a bit of news deemed too unimportant to write about." Vartha spat out the pit and took a deep breath. "A team of researchers decided to replicate several well-known psychology experiments." His eldest son was a psychologist, so it made sense that he'd be up to date on important developments in the field. "One of them tested how well an individual obeyed orders."

Reflexively, Donna turned to look at Katz, who was picking cucumbers not too far away. "I'm sure our former Peacekeepers will be interested to read the results of that," she said wryly.

"That's the thing." Vartha pulled his cap lower. "It gets stranger from there. Basically, the subjects were first interviewed, to make sure that they were not aware of what the original experiment was. Then, they were introduced to someone who was ostensibly another subject, but in reality was in league with the experimenter. The subject was told that this was a study on how pain affects memory."

"I don't like the sound of that," Theodosius said.

"Neither do I."

"It's not what you think." Vartha flapped his hands dismissively. "The subject was told that they would have to read a sequence of words to the other person, who was out of sight behind a panel. Then, that person would repeat it, and if they made a mistake, the subject had to press a button to give them an electric shock."

"Isn't that illegal?" Theodosius asked.

"It wasn't an actual electric shock," Vartha explained. "The other person would then press a button to give a pre-recorded reply." Donna kicked herself mentally for thinking that such a thing could happen now. "As the experiment went on, the voltage increased, and the other person started to ostensibly scream in pain. If the subject said they wanted to stop, the experimenter told them to continue. The experiment stopped either once the subject refused four times in a row, or once they pressed the button to inflict the maximum voltage three times."

"And what happened?" Donna wanted to know. She doubted normal people would be willing to hurt someone who was begging them to stop.

Vartha shoved his hands in his pockets. "Despite the laboratory setting, the subjects believed they were actually hurting the other person. They displayed clear signs of distress, but all but one administered the 300-volt shock, and the majority went all the way to 450."

Donna wanted to point out that at least they had been in distress, but then she remembered the former Peacekeepers' stories about getting drunk after executions. She wondered who the people had been and where the experiment had taken place. Surely, the older generations knew better than that.

"Who was the one person who refused?" Theodosius asked.

"That's the thing," Vartha said. "The experiment was conducted in the Capitol on people of various ages. The subject and accomplice were always the same age. There was no significant difference when it came to age. But there was one thing they forgot to account for." He licked his lips, looking anxious. "What jobs the older ones had before. You won't believe it," he said, grinning, "but the only person who refused to administer the 300-volt shock, indeed, the only one who had to be prodded into giving the 15-volt shock and who stopped as soon as the other person asked for it to stop...was one Rence Holder."

As Donna tried to make sense of that, Vartha began to laugh hysterically, hands braced on his knees. The mental image of Holder refusing an order to hurt someone was utterly absurd. "His psychiatrist needs a raise," she said. "Did your son tell you any more details? And since when does Holder live in the Capitol?"

Vartha nodded, wiping the tears from his eyes. "Holder agreed to be de-anonymized and interviewed further, so it's all in the paper. Turns out that the man who once traumatized a prosecutor with his inability to understand that he was a human being who could make choices nearly got up and left as soon as he found out what the experiment was about." Theodosius took off his cap, ran a hand through his hair, and put it back on, over and over. "The other person had to convince him it was alright. After every shock, he got confirmation. As soon as they started to show signs of pain, he stopped and could not be budged." Vartha paused for dramatic effect, and Donna tried to imagine Holder in the lab. He must have felt like his greatest nightmare had come to life.

"Wait, but since when does Holder live in the Capitol?" Theodosius asked.

"Hold on, my son phrased in a really good way, and I'm trying to think of it." Theodosius put his cap back on. "The experimenter had four different prompts to use when the subject refused. The last one was 'You have no choice, you must go on', or something like that. Before, he had looked conflicted, but now it was as if his spine was replaced with a steel column, and for the first time in his life, Rence Holder said 'no.'" Vartha scratched his chin. "He's been living in the Capitol since pretty much his release - no idea why."

"Wow," Theodosius said. It was ironic that Holder of all people had had the mental strength to refuse, but on the other hand, he had spent fifteen years being worked on by a psychiatrist. Donna tried to imagine herself in the same situation. She doubted she'd have done nearly as well. "I think the phrasing of that last prompt was what really did it. At least the experimenter didn't try to tell him that orders are orders," he joked.

"Still, though, it must have been so hard for him. He had never disobeyed authority in his life before," Donna pointed out. "I can't even imagine what was going on in his mind."

Vartha nodded. "Actually, he later said that, had the prompts been more direct, he'd have stopped earlier. He said that he had often imagined himself refusing to obey his officers, and they weren't as oblique. With the experimenter, it took him a while to comprehend that this was a demand and he could refuse. Many of the subjects said that they hadn't wanted to throw off the experiment, but Holder was the only one who was able to push past it."

"That is the most ironic thing I have heard in my life." Theodosius leaned against the stepladder, tapping his fingers on the rim of his bucket. "It must have been so hard for him. Especially in an experimental setting, where there's an implicit trust in the person running the experiment. Did he think he was actually hurting the other person?"

"They were told that there would be no permanent damage, but the screams spoke for themselves."

Donna wasn't sure if the experiment was genius or sadistic. On one hand, the electrical shocks were fake, so nobody actually got hurt. On the other, though, she couldn't imagine the mental anguish it had caused those unwilling to speak up.

But at the end of the day, if they were willing to give random people what they thought was a potentially deadly electrical shock, it was their own fault if they ended up traumatized. Donna thought of how Holder had quickly become a remorseless killer in his youth. "This proves that you don't need ideological training to make people into killers," she realized. She wasn't sure what that meant for the world.

He had often imagined himself refusing to obey his officers...

Donna couldn't imagine how much anguish he must have been in, replaying his worst memories in his mind over and over. It was bad enough for her, but he had been the one pulling the trigger.

"Or that the ideological training was mostly useless," Theodosius said. "Sure, you had a hard core of willing executioners, but even the likes of Hope fell to pieces when first ordered to shoot civilians." To Vartha, he added, "I wonder how the experiment would have been different had the subject been able to see the other person."

"Probably not too different. More people would probably have refused quicker, but a succession of electrical shocks is different from shooting."

Katz walked up to them, holding a bucket of cucumbers. "What were you laughing about a while back?" she asked Vartha. Vartha quickly explained the situation. As he talked, Katz's face went from curiosity to shock to confusion to irritation.

"This is useless," she said confidently. "They thought they weren't inflicting permanent damage, just pain. That can't be compared to anything."

Donna snorted. "It wasn't supposed to be an experiment on why you shot the people you shot. It was just a replication of a famous study."

"If you think that's all that there was to it, you're hopelessly naive," Katz snapped. "I bet they're going to go out and say that they've figured out the real reason why Peacekeepers killed. Those experts always try to reduce complicated things to a few simple factors. Cucumber?" She held out the bucket.

They took a cucumber each and put them in their pockets for later, as they were covered with dirt. "Want some plums?" Vartha asked.

Shaking her head, Katz put the bucket on the ground. "I already had some this morning. The historians better not get their hands on this," she said, "though I can tell it's already too late. I bet my psychologist will come beating down the door any day now, thinking they've unlocked the secret to my mind."

Vartha looked up suddenly. "Let's talk to Koy," he said. "He's the expert on the twentieth century, he might know more about the original study."

Koy did not turn out to know more about the original study. "I'm willing to bet, though, that it was also done to figure out why people murder children, given the timing." He ignored Katz's glare. "Your son says that the findings were mostly confirmed?"

"Statistical significance," Vartha said with a nod. "Even an extreme outlier such as Holder didn't mess it up."

"Interesting." Koy scratched his chin, which was in need of a shave. "I'll need to do some reading on that."

"I suspect everyone will be doing reading on this," Theodosius pointed out. "I pity the libraries who will have to cough up twenty-eight copies of the same book."

When Dr. Chu walked into her cell, Donna immediately launched into a prepared statement. "No," she said, "I do not have any opinions about the study you want to tell me about. I would like to know more about how it is perceived in the psychological community before I make up my mind." On the surface, the study seemed to be an elegant explanation, but the former Peacekeepers' arguments to the contrary also made more sense than most of the things that they usually said.

Dr. Chu smiled. "I'm glad you're taking the time to think about such things before accepting them as fact. What do you want to know?"

Donna shrugged, taking the ball from her and starting to knead it. "Everything. What do the experts think? What is the study criticized for?"

"What do you already know about the study?" Dr. Chu asked, taking out her pen and clipboard. Donna quickly summarized everything Vartha had told her that day. "That's an accurate summary," she said. "Your former fellow inmate did cause quite a stir with his unexpected stubbornness. He later went on record to thank his psychiatrist, who I'm sure is very happy right now."

"I'm happy for him," Donna said. "Even if it was all fake, I'm glad he has something to be proud of now."

Dr. Chu nodded. "I was talking to his psychiatrist, and he pointed out that Holder got a rare opportunity for a criminal of his caliber - he was put in a position where he could have made the same choices as before. The fact that he chose differently this time means that he is now a changed person."

"That's great," Donna said insincerely, feeling the envy bubble up inside her. She kneaded the ball with more force than necessary. "I don't think I'll ever get such an opportunity, though."

"Out of curiosity, how do you think you would have done?"

That was a tough question. Donna tried to imagine giving someone electric shocks, and failed. "I don't know. I never hurt anyone personally, so it's hard to imagine myself ignoring screams of pain - but if normal people did, I for sure would have."

Dr. Chu wrote that down. "Now, you asked for the drawbacks of the study?" Donna nodded. "The main one is that it's unclear how many of the subjects actually believed that the pain they were inflicting was real. The intense reactions they showed can be explained similarly to the similar reactions people exhibit when watching fiction movies where someone is shown to be suffering." Donna hadn't even thought of that. "Beyond that, there are issues with applicability. The subjects were told that there would be no permanent damage, and inflicting extreme pain is still different than killing. On top of that, while the experiment seems to show that ideology is not necessary to cause pain, it does not account for ideologically-driven actions and the systematic dehumanization that was prevalent back then."

"Wait a second." Donna held up her hand. "You mentioned ideology. Does this mean that Holder was actually just following orders?"

Dr. Chu shook her head. "It's the other way around. He reported having an abstract but extreme loathing of the people he policed." That was news to Donna, but it made sense that Holder would have been ashamed of himself and not talked about it. "Others, though, may easily try to use this experiment as an explanation for their actions. After all, if it's in human nature to obey, how could they have been expected to act otherwise?" She wrote something down. "And there's the fact that the subjects had no idea what they were getting into and had no time to think - unlike the Peacekeepers of old. The only reason Holder was able to stop so early was because he was familiar with how the process worked, and had mentally rehearsed saying 'no' for sixteen years."

"So the others are right?" Donna asked, feeling disappointed. "The experiment is useless."

Dr. Chu shook her head. "Not necessarily. The main issues have to do with applicability, not the experiment itself. In general, we can conclude that people will cause severe pain to others if told to do so, no more and no less. Some of the subjects reported being sure that it was fake, others were certain that it was real. One of the subjects even went so far as to quit the police immediately afterwards, saying that he didn't trust himself with a position of power."

"Some people actually figured out it was fake?"

"Nobody called out the experimenter and said they knew it was fake, let's put it this way. Two said that the reason they quit relatively early was because they realized it was fake. The fact that nobody challenged the experimenter says a lot on its own, though."

"Maybe they should have had the other person get actual electric shocks right in front of the subject," Donna mused. "Then, they'd have been able to see if seeing someone twitching and suffering is enough to overpower the desire to comply."

Dr. Chu laughed. "No ethics board would have ever approved that."

"Why not? I'm sure that someone can do unethical experiments on themselves. One experimenter is in the electric chair, the other gives orders. They could switch back and forth."

"That's not what I meant. The mental anguish that would cause the subject would be extreme."

Donna snorted. "If they're willing to give someone powerful electric shocks despite seeing their suffering a metre away, they deserve it for having the moral fibre of Thread." She stretched the ball, imagining Thread as the subject of the experiment. It was a strange mental image. "Now I'm imagining Thread pressing the button with that solemn expression on his face. He'd have been in his mid-sixties now." But he had been executed, and so he would remain forever fifty-two.

"Since we're on the topic," Dr. Chu said, "I would like you to elaborate on what you think of your former co-defendants. I will warn you now, though, that a few of us are going to get together and discuss the results."

"Why now?"

Dr. Chu took a fresh sheet of paper from the back of her clipboard and put it into the front. She tapped her pen on the paper, eager to start writing. "We were having a bit of a discussion," she said vaguely, "so we decided it's time to see how your views have evolved."

"Alright," Donna said, unsure if this was the full truth. "Do I just start in the order we were named in the indictment?"

"Reverse order, actually," Dr. Chu replied with a small smile. "Poor Slice always gets forgotten. And try to keep it as brief as possible, I'll ask you for elaboration later."

Donna took a deep breath, picking at the thin rubber casing of the ball. "Slice shouldn't have been there at all," she began. "It's a shame she wasn't allowed to resume her old job. It's not fair that she had to suffer instead of any other journalist." Next up was Grass. "I might be biased from interacting so much with her, but she's a pretty good person, even if she refuses to accept that she was involved with crimes." Dr. Chu said nothing. The only sounds were the pen running over paper and the watery squishing of the ball in Donna's hands.

"I must say," she continued, "I'm a little bit exasperated at Theodosius for how he never actually said anything concrete. Still doesn't. But he's also my friend." After him were six functionaries that had begun to blend together in her mind. "Lee was nice enough, but boring. He was a great artist. Kirji was easy to talk to, but the way she tried to justify the Games was disgusting. There's no way she wasn't deeply involved with the trafficking of the Victors. The same went for Toplak. Frankly, all those Games functionaries were impossible to listen to without wincing."

For some reason, Dr. Chu smirked slightly. "What's so funny?" Donna asked.

"Nothing."

"There had to be something," Donna insisted. She needed some levity after having to think about her former codefendants.

"It's just something I saw in an article that I remembered when you mentioned Lee. Someone called the Ministry of Health the Ministry of Death."

"Apt." Donna didn't think it was funny, but then again, Dr. Chu had suffered under the regime. She probably needed to laugh about it to not go crazy.

Dr. Chu wrote something down. "Please continue. Who's next? Brack?"

"No, Pollman. He was practically a nonentity, strangely enough. I remember Theodosius blamed him for everything. And Dijksterhuis took the fall for Ledge and Blatt." Donna paused, squeezing the ball. "Brack was one of the more propagandistic ones, but as the trial wore on, she quieted down. Ledge was the same as he is now. Quiet, unassuming, but angry. Thread was sarcastic. Lark spewed his hateful epithets like he was in the studio instead of the dock." Summarizing them in just a sentence was surprisingly easy. "I think I've already told you what I think of myself."

"Still, though, I'm curious." Dr. Chu adjusted her bright-orange kerchief and looked at her with interest.

"I'm not sure what I did. I didn't speak too well, though. I guess I came across as authentic instead of polished." It was surprisingly hard to try to see herself from the point of view of someone else. "I can't think of anything else." She stared at her hands, rolling the ball back and forth between her palms.

Dr. Chu nodded. "Let's move on, then. Who's next?"

"Chaterhan. I think he was more offended than anything by the company he found himself in. Talvian was steely. Krechet pretended to be a brainless thug. Best and Verdant seethed with fury at the proceedings and each other. Blatt was always confident, even at the beginning. Cotillion was sincerely proud of her achievements. Lux was uptight and disciplined. Bright cracked and showed remorse. Oldsmith was sarcastic and biting, and Dovek was also sarcastic, but in a happier way." Donna exhaled in relief and dropped her hands by her sides.

She couldn't imagine their faces, but her memory was full of snippets of sentences they had said. In her mind's eye, Donna saw the dock, but those of them who ended up executed were faded and indistinct, as if they had already been ghosts by then. She remembered Oldsmith smiling as Dovek whispered a joke to him, but she didn't quite remember what Dovek had looked like. He had been a skinny dark man with narrow shoulders and long arms that had been draped over the back of the bench most of the time. But what had his face looked like?

And Chaterhan, her onetime neighbour. She remembered his lunchtime complaints, but of his appearance, only his well-tailored suit remained in her memory. I didn't do anything anyone else didn't, he had always insisted. I was just a businessperson. I ran a corporation. It's not my fault if some middle manager went too far.

"Interesting," Dr. Chu said. "Now, I'd like you to elaborate some more. With the benefit of hindsight, what do you think about Dovek's strategy?"

"I'd do it in a heartbeat," Aslanov said confidently and plucked a blackberry from a branch.

"Really?" Gold sounded disapproving. Donna hoped the two wouldn't start fighting. Melton and Xu were already at loggerheads over something one of them had said twenty years ago, and none of them needed more arguing in their lives. "Seems almost like selling out to me."

Aslanov shook his head. "Are you really so loyal to the old regime?"

That got Gold's attention. He stood up, face-to-face with Aslanov. Donna looked up from the branch she was stripping of berries. "I am loyal to any regime that repays my loyalty with gratitude," Gold snapped.

"As if Snow ever gave anything to you," Aslanov said dismissively. "Mr. Gold, I understand you're of a different generation and don't know what it was like to chafe under the yoke of the Games, but you have a far too rose-tinted view of the past." That sounded strange coming from Aslanov of all people, but then again, he was the most realistic about the past of all the former Peacekeepers when it came to Two.

"Do you expect me to apologize for having been born late enough to not have to fear the Reaping ball?" Gold asked acidly.

Aslanov's face fell. "By no means. I am glad - truly, I am - that you never walked into that field not knowing if you would walk out. But that is no reason to be stubbornly loyal to a regime that demanded we sacrifice our children to it."

"But it's still the regime we served! Would you really throw that away and work with our vanquishers?"

"I am a soldier," Aslanov said coolly, hands by his sides. "It matters not to me whether I swear to Snow or upon the Constitution. I serve the nation, not whoever happens to be in charge of it at any given moment." He reached out and plucked a berry.

Gold sat back down and reached his arm into the tangle of thorny branches. "I wonder how the armed forces are going to react to that experiment," he said. "I've heard they even have special sessions on how to think critically."

Donna had never heard of that, but that did sound like something the army and police would do. There were endless scandals reported in blacked-out articles - recruits got tattoos of the gold eagle, swore the old loyalty oath, and harassed fellows who were from the Districts - and the generals had to do something about it, even if the difference between them and Aslanov was that there was no proof of their crimes. "I'm sure they're very concerned," she said. "They probably thought all this time that obedience is a personal choice, and then it turns out we're wired to obey people we trust."

"Exactly," Aslanov tossed a handful of berries into a bucket. "I'm sure that throws off their calculations quite a bit." He sounded happy about that. Donna stared longingly at Theodosius, who was walking his laps. Joining him was beginning to seem like a better idea every second. "I remember we had these obedience drills," he reminisced. "Once, I was blindfolded, taken somewhere, and told to jump. Logically, I knew there would be a net at the bottom, but those seconds of free-fall were some of the most terrifying of my life." He popped a berry into his mouth. "When I was fifteen, a boy by the name of Cassius Aslan was Reaped. As the escort drawled the name, it felt just like that. As if I was falling, blind, and had no idea what I would land on or if I would land at all."

To that, Gold had no comeback. He spun around to face Donna. "How could you have worked in that?" he asked, pointing at Aslanov.

The accusation made zero sense coming from the mouth of someone like Gold, but Donna still gathered her thoughts and replied. "I was raised to think of the Games as a fun television show," she said. "And by the time I should have been old enough to know better, I was willfully blinded by ambition."

"But your family were mute objectors!" Aslanov exclaimed. "Why didn't you follow in their footsteps?" The label sounded harsh, but Donna had to admit it described her parents' behaviour perfectly.

"Because people tend to trust authority figures even when they can see with their own eyes that something is wrong," Donna fired back. "There was a very powerful culture of conformity in civilian life, too."

Gold scratched his head. "But then where did the dissidents come from?"

"That's like asking where Peacekeeper defectors came from," Donna pointed out. "Nobody knows. It's most likely a whole bunch of factors."

"They should do an experiment on that," Aslanov said. "Or a study, at least."

"I'm sure they already did several." Gold popped a blackberry into his mouth. His hand was covered with scratches from the thorns. "And I'm sure the results are highly unflattering for the likes of us."

"Don't sell yourselves short. If Holder of all people could stand up for himself-"

"Too late for me," Gold said with a wry grin. "Not unless the directors decide unanimously."

To that, Donna had no comeback.

A/N: The experiment mentioned here is inspired both in and out of universe by the Milgram experiment. Holder's defiance is not inspired by anything - I simply wondered what would happen if someone who had spent over a decade telling themselves 'I will not' ended up in such a situation.

The situation with the armed forces is inspired by that of the West German armed forces in the 50s-60s - nobody wants to join up because Uncle Hans went to war and now acts as if Ukraine and the year 1942 never existed, there's fights over whether someone deserves to have a barracks named after them (they don't), the generals are war criminals, and the enlisted ranks keep on being caught using the wrong salute.