The interrogation lasted until dinner. Antonius missed his walk because he was forced to explain, over and over, the influence he had had with Snow. In truth, he had not had any - Snow had made all of his decisions himself, unlike Bensoussan, who openly admitted that she relied on advisors. But the interrogators still had not believed him.

For dinner, there was something new for a change - buckwheat with rehydrated vegetables.

"Is it tasty?" the guard asked.

The buckwheat, at least, was perfectly normal, if undersalted. "Perfectly satisfactory," Antonius lied.

"I can't wait for dinner," the boy said. "I'm so hungry."

A normal state for a boy that age. "When do you get off duty?"

The boy looked at him suspiciously. "You're just trying to make me like you," he said. "Make me let my guard down."

"I am truly not."

The boy said nothing.

After dinner, the orderly dropped off evening medications and promised to bring him a needle and thread. The guards switched, and Antonius was now being watched over by a man who was at least in his mid-thirties. Every bit of the guard's bearing made him look like a gangster.

Antonius' contemplations of what the guard was selling were cut short by one of his favourite songs playing on the radio. As soon as the first notes sounded, he was on his feet, eager to move around and warm up in the freezing cell. He and Octavia had danced this song together in university, and he still knew the choreography by heart. During the intro, he had been the one walking onto the stage as she waited, dancing, but there was no room to stroll in the cell, so he did the moves Octavia had done, hoping he was not messing them up.

Unexpectedly, the lyrics were in a different language, but Antonius did not let that distract him as he launched into the complicated choreography, trying to make the fine hand movements with robotic precision and human grace. Octavia had always been jealous of his hands - his long, slender fingers, according to her, looked much better when doing the moves than her own short fingers and stub thumbs. Antonius thought she looked perfectly wonderful, but she had never quite believed it.

Before long, Antonius was sweating despite the cold. The moves were not quite as acrobatic as the ones for the song they had played two days ago, where the full-rotation jumps had sent him headfirst into the wall to the delight of the adolescent guard, but they still wore him out, and as soon as the song ended, he flopped onto his cot.

"That's not the right choreo," the guard said, putting away his phone. He must have recorded him dancing.

"Perhaps I forgot a few moves over the years," Antonius conceded.

"No. It's completely different. And how do you know the moves to this ancient-ass song?"

"The movie came out when we were adolescents, it is hardly ancient," Antonius said, wiping his forehead and getting up to drink some water from the tap.

"No, it's eighty years old. And in Telugu."

Ah, that explained it. "Then I must have watched the remake." Antonius sat back down on his cot.

"That explains the squat-kicks - that's an Eastern European move."

Antonius was hardly an expert in that. "Interesting."

At that moment, the orderly came back and gave Antonius a needle and a tiny spool of thread wrapped around a piece of cardboard. "Hand it back before he goes off," the orderly warned.

"Of course, orderly."

Now, how to fix his shirt? Antonius set aside the needle and thread on top of a book and took off his shirt, shivering in the cold. He grabbed his glasses to see better and found the rip. He would need to join two bits of cloth together. But how?

"Guard?" Antonius asked. "How do I sew?"

Fortunately, the guard's friendliness persisted. "First, take a piece of thread, stick it in the needle, and knot the ends together."

He had nothing to cut with, so Antonius measured out a length of thread as long as his arms spread out and tore it off with some difficulty, the thin thread biting painfully into his fingers. He used the undamaged end to thread the needle, which was easier than he had expected, and tied the ends together. Then, he spread out the twisted string and ended up with something that looked right. "Now what, guard?"

"Turn your shirt inside-out or you'll have an ugly seam." Antonius complied. "Pull the two ends together and stick in the needle maybe half a centimetre down from the edge, starting before the rip." Antonius carefully pushed in the needle a few centimetres before the rip began and drew it out. "Now, insert it in the same side as before half a centimetre down. Draw it through the loop you end up with." There was now a black line on top of the red cloth. "Now keep on going until a few centimetres after the rip."

Antonius inserted the needle again, drawing it through the loop. Sewing his own clothing - Grandma would have been horrified had she found out, but then again, hardly worse than dancing for a gangster's amusement. The stitches were uneven, but they seemed alright. "Now what?"

"Make another stitch, but this time, wrap the thread around the needle three times, not one."

Unsure of what that would do, Antonius complied.

"Now, you have to cut it off - I use my teeth, but that's tricky. Here." He handed Antonius a small knife. Antonius quickly cut the thread and handed everything back to the guard, tense from fear that Warden Vance would show up. "Can I see?" Antonius got his shirt and showed the fixed part to the guard. On the outside, there was a little indent in the fabric. "Well, that's not too bad, for your first time."

"Thank you." Antonius put his shirt back on, shivering. It was freezing in the cell and the radio was blasting a talk-show loud enough to hurt his ears with the guest's insistence that the new minister of finance would not have any more luck with stopping hyperinflation than his three predecessors. Antonius would need to complain again that conditions in here were intolerable.

"I can't imagine myself trying Grass," Juan said. "It's absurd. As if I was any better, when push came to shove." He switched his umbrella to his other hand. A light rain was falling, but it was pleasantly warm, perfect for a walk.

"Surely you don't actually think so," Dora tried to console him.

Juan snorted. "Thanks to me, innocent people lost their businesses, their freedoms, and their lives. Alright, I tried to make it so nobody had to go through what I did. But where was my empathy?"

As hard as it was to think that one's life had been a waste, even that was possible with someone who could relate. "You're telling this to me."

"I never convicted a single person of bribery without having previously been told to do so," Juan said morosely. "Most cases didn't even reach trial, so it's not like I would have been sentencing someone the people in power didn't want sentenced."

That was the main issue weighing on Dora's mind. She had never stopped to think that for a case to reach trial at all, it had to be approved. Far from punishing those who deserved it, she had only been able to reach those the District Attorney's office had sent to her. Every single criminal that had ever appeared before her had been out of favour in one way or another. It had taken a violent revolution to get at the favoured ones. How could she claim to have done justice when justice had started out with such a massive handicap?

Every day, she read about one corrupt civil servant or another finally taking their deserved place in the dock. Before, that had been unimaginable. How could Dora be proud of having worked in a system where the real criminals could never be touched? It was like only being allowed to pluck the smallest and sourest berries off a bush and then bragging about how cleanly one had picked the plant.

"You're right," Dora admitted. "I was like a guard dog that had her teeth torn out." And she was expected to pronounce a judgment that would stand before the highest of all appeal courts - the bar of history!

Juan sighed. The rain began to slow slightly, colliding with the thin fabric of the umbrellas admin had managed to dig up for them. Dora was still stuck living on a fold-out cot in the Justice Building, but at least they had access to little luxuries such as these. Wisely, their assistants had elected to not arrive yet, for the most part. All three of Dora's assistants were still in Ten.

"Me, judging Grass," Juan said, running a hand through his hair. He wore his white hair in elaborate box braids, trying to brag to the world that at least he wasn't going bald. "What a bad joke. Cora, Sean, Rosa - as if any of us did a single thing before the real heroes finally stood up and said 'enough'. I swear Moira hates us all secretly. And Daniel? Every time I talk to him, I have to remind myself that he's a deeply ill person. I'd go crazy with guilt otherwise."

Dora nodded. "To go outside and proclaim exactly what you think of everything - like something out of a daydream."

Juan had nothing to say to that. Neither did Dora. They walked on down the smooth street in silence. The pavement had been fixed here, and fixed well. The new government wasn't interested in the endless re-laying of asphalt and cobblestones for corruption purposes.

The soft drizzle muffled sounds, softening the usual hustle and bustle of the city. Here, buildings ranged from having a few bullet holes to being burn-out husks. Most of the rubble had been cleared away, leaving the most broken buildings standing on the repaired road like lightning-struck trees in an alley. But no alley could be misfortunate enough to be struck by lightning so many times.

A few metres ahead, a person was sleeping under a bench. They had placed cardboard on the bench to serve as a makeshift roof and were fully covered up with a blanket. As they walked closer, Dora realized she couldn't let this person lie here in this cold and damp.

"Excuse me?" she said.

A head poked out of the blanket. A man of thirty or so, with short stubble on his head and face. "What do you want?" he said irritably, not leaving the relative dryness of under the bench.

"We can get you a better place to stay," Dora offered.

The man snorted. "What, in your bed? Not interested."

Dora's mouth fell open at the audacity. "First off, boy, you are far too young for me. Second, I am simply offering to buy you a place to stay for a few days." She let the insult go. Living on the streets, he must have heard even less savoury propositions. "And something to eat."

"That would be very welcome," the man said, crawling out from under the bench. He was in socks, with dress shoes hanging around his neck, and he was wearing a suit and tie. As Dora and Juan watched, he put on his shoes, brushed off his suit jacket, and ended up looking quite respectable, if not for his unshaven state. No wonder he had reacted so harshly to her.

"What do you do?" Juan asked, confusion evident in his voice.

The man draped himself in his blanket and took his cardboard under one arm. "Used to be a judges' assistant. I've been clearing rubble to be eligible for rations, but the shelters fill up in the blink of an eye. My home's gone." He paused. "And my relatives already have too many people staying with them.."

Now that he had spoken at length, Dora could tell that he had an upper-middle-class accent. "What's your name?" she asked. What a place to find a colleague!

"Robert Varb."

"I'm Dora Rescu and this is Juan Mendez."

Varb's bushy eyebrows climbed up to his forehead. "You're the IDMT judges!"

"Is that a good thing?" Dorra asked.

Varb nodded eagerly. "I've been meaning to apply to work on the trial, but I haven't been able to screw up the courage yet." He dug a piece of paper out of his pocket. "See? Exonerated person. Even gave me a special citation for the guerrilla group I organized."

Dora scanned through the paper, surprised at how much Varb had given in support of the Rebellion. As a teenager, he had been involved with an underground Communist group, scattering leaflets and eventually receiving a year in jail. After getting out, he somehow managed to continue his legal studies, while simultaneously participating in initiatives ranging from spying for Thirteen to blackmailing his colleagues into following the law to even more leafleting. And when the Rebellion had gone open, he had led a few coworkers in a clandestine group, sabotaging various installations.

"Well," Dora said half-seriously, "you certainly did a good deal more than both of us put together."

"Not at all!" the man said, hiding his paper in an inner pocket. "I've read about both of you. How you went against instructions."

"If they were on trial, then the government was a priori not particularly concerned about their fate," Juan pointed out.

Varb shook his head. "Show acquittals were as real as show convictions. Take a criminal the entire municipality is complaining about, acquit them, and use that as an excuse to arrest people for complaining further."

"You can't compare the two," Dora said. "Judges were fired for acquitting the wrong person. I was, at most, told to not be so zealous."

"I suppose," Varb conceded. "Now, where are we going?"

"When does your shift start?" Dora asked.

Varb dug out of his shirt a watch attached to a piece of string. "Hour and a half."

"We're going to Raymond Sanchez and asking him to hire you."

"Oh." He looked surprised. "I was going to apply to work with documents, you know."

"You're a judge's assistant," Juan said. "You deserve a good job. You put us all to shame. While we were hiding out at home and telling ourselves we were neutral, you blew up a transformer station."

Varb shrugged demurely. "I was always a bit crazy."

If that was crazy, then sanity was overrated. Dora shifted her umbrella from one hand to another as the light rain continued falling. The heavy grey clouds appeared to be swollen with water, like an abscess being drained through a pinprick. Trying to shake off that unpleasant mental image, Dora walked over damp concrete, wondering why it was that some people were heroes, and others - mice.

Rye wasn't sure what she had expected from the Capitol. As a small child, she had watched television with a sense of wonder, amazed by the grand buildings that appeared on the screen. But that had been a trick, just like everything else. The Capitol was just yet another city, with the sole difference being that its grey shabbiness had been half-covered with a coat of bright paint.

Now, Lodgepole Municipality was a pile of ruins. Rye passed by work crews cleaning bricks for reuse and breaking up concrete before throwing it into truck beds. Ironically, the Capitol was the most-destroyed city in the country. When it came to the villages, though, it was the other way around. Capitolian villages had rushed to surrender first, but in the Districts, it was impossible to count how many had been razed to the ground.

Rye stepped around a small puddle in which worms were wriggling around. It was cool, but the wind had an unpleasant bite to it. Up ahead was the street where they were billeted. Rye hadn't risked going beyond that one turn, afraid of getting lost.

Back in her billet, she took off her shoes and jacket and went to the room she shared with Tina Hudson. Tina had also decided to go for a walk, but she wasn't back yet. Good. Rye took out her cell phone and called Barrow.

A few seconds of ringing later, he picked up. "Hello," he said.

"Barrow?"

"Oh, hey, Rye!" he said cheerfully. "How are you doing? How's the Capitol?"

"Like Centre, but if it was all a pile of rubble."

Barrow chuckled. "The advantages to living in a small city. I sent the kids to Delilah's, by the way. Shame you can't be here with me."

"What did my sister do to deserve such a fate?" Rye joked. Her husband's voice sounded different on the phone, but there was no mistaking his warm tones. "What are you even going to do all alone?"

"Well, you did leave these lovely photographs for me."

Rye rolled her eyes, even if he couldn't see it. "You're going to spend the day looking at photos of me naked?"

Of course, at that moment, Rye looked up to see Hudson standing in the room. "Nice," her roommate said before retreating out of the room and closing the door.

"If I can't have you on my day off, I'll have the next best thing," Barrow said flirtily, unaware of the interruption.

Rye ran a hand over her face. "I still think that your imagination is good enough to not need photos."

"No imagination can do justice to your reality."

"We've only been apart for a few days, and you're already getting sentimental?"

"Of course." Barrow paused. "Also, for your information, there is currently not a stitch of clothing on me." He said that as if announcing that the defense was now reading into evidence exhibit #32.

"Enjoy your bath."

"Oh, I will. Won't be as good as the one we took last week, though."

Rye silently wished a permanent loss of libido on whoever had decreed that no spouses could be brought. Hearing Barrow's voice distorted through the connection was a constant, grating reminder that she was here and he was there. She slept alone on her futon instead of pressed up against his back. Several times during her walk she had turned around to point something out to Barrow before realizing that he was not there.

"I miss you," she said.

"So do I."

They exchanged a few more pleasantries before there was a knock on the door. "I'll call you and the kids tomorrow same time," Rye promised.

"Sure thing." He made kissing sounds, which Rye returned.

"Bye!"

"Bye."

With a heavy heart, Rye put her phone in her pocket and went to answer the door. It was Carver.

"Do we have a meeting now?" Rye asked, confused.

"Not at all," Carver said, shaking her head. "I'm going shopping but my orderly isn't feeling too well, so I need someone to haul me out of potholes if I get stuck. I hope I didn't interrupt anything," she said with a smile.

Rye scratched her neck. "Nothing to interrupt. Just my husband already missing me." She stepped into the corridor and closed the door behind her.

"Mine's the same," Carver said. "I woke up to ten texts. Good thing I turned the volume off." She tapped at something on her screen. "Also, my parents fretting, but they always fret when I leave the town. I think they're afraid my wheelchair will implode or something. They're promising to mail me extra batteries." The wheelchair was small enough for Rye to pick up and lift. It was as powerful as an expensive lawn mower and couldn't go any faster than an average person's brisk walk, but rural lawyers hadn't been able to get anything more powerful, and in any case, given the condition of the roads, Carver had needed something portable.

"Aren't we the ones who should be mailing them batteries?"

"That's what I said. Parental paranoia knows no bounds."

"I'm not paranoid."

"Your kids don't have to worry about being unable to cross a road because of potholes." Carver shrugged almost imperceptibly. Rye had no idea how much of her muscles were capable of movement. "If my child was in a wheelchair, I'd also worry about them going to a new place." They descended on the lift.

"Oh, you can have children?"

Carver nodded. "I could have biological kids if I really wanted, but it'd be a high-risk pregnancy. Before, it wasn't worth the risk, now, I just don't want to. We're signed up to adopt, and the department gives parents with disabilities kids with the same disabilities, so that they already know how to make life easier for the kid."

"Interesting."

In the living room, a few of the lawyers were sitting at laptops. Still others were missing, busy at a meeting or gathering materials. The archive and witness house were decently close to the entire setup, but it was still a trip.

The house was shared by six attorneys from Nine and ten - from Two. According to the latter, this was still more roomy than the one house the prosecution had had for months. Even Jinwe the chief prosecutor had been forced to share a bed with two others. She was sitting in an armchair now, learning Braille. She wanted to be a speed-reader by the time the trial began so that she could run her hand over a page in the same way she had previously glanced down at her notes.

The entry corridor was neater than it should have been, thanks to Jinwe's tendency to trip over everything moved even a millimeter. Rye put on her shoes and jacket and helped Carver get dressed. Outside, it was pleasantly cool.

"What do you need to buy?" Rye asked.

"Gift for my husband for our anniversary. I forgot last time and he was pissed."

Rye tried to remember when her anniversary was. "I don't think we've celebrated our anniversary for years now. I wonder if my husband even knows when it is. I know I don't."

Carver laughed.

They set off towards the nearest market, a known haven for black-marketers. Rye's usefulness soon became apparent - there was a pothole in the road Carver would only have been able to get over if her wheelchair got a hovercraft engine installed. Carefully, Rye tipped the younger prosecutor down and then out of the hole.

"Back in my town," Carver said, "I was the one everyone went to complain about potholes. If they went to the government, they'd be told to shove off, but when I complained, they couldn't afford to annoy a lawyer who'd need to learn to teleport if the roads weren't fixed. Not to mention that my parents had been able to leverage their connections to get me one of the world's most expensive medications, so they knew it was best not to mess with me."

"I was just thinking that you'd need to install a hovercraft engine into your wheelchair to get over this hole."

Carver tilted her head, thinking about that. "Also an option. Pity they can't shrink those engines." That was a major inconvenience in hovercraft design. "Imagine if everyone in a wheelchair could fly. I'd pay good money for that."

"You won't have to pay money for accessibility things anymore." Her older brother Vadim had long resigned himself to slowly going deaf, and the unexpected promise of free hearing aids within the foreseeable future had been a massive shock.

"Even better."

They managed to reach the market, Rye having to help out Carver a few more times. On the approach to the market, the ramp overlaid over the stairs was just two metal rails far too steep for her to drive up independently. Rye pushed her up, glad that the stairs were short. By the time they reached the top, Carver was already writing a complaint to the municipality on her phone.

Rye was taken aback by the sight. A part of her still thought that complaining was an excellent way to end up on a list somewhere. Maybe she was too old to switch over to living in the new world, where local representatives and city councillors were only there precisely to solve problems such as inaccessible stairs and drafty walls in buildings. Or maybe it was simply because Carver's problems tended to be more serious.

"How old are you?" Rye asked.

"Thirty-two. You?"

"Forty-two." So they were exactly a decade apart. "How long have you been married for?"

"Six years."

When Rye had been thirty-two, she had been married for eight years with Billie already nine and Mitch - three. "Too busy for kids?" she guessed.

"Something like that. I was worried we wouldn't have the time for them. But I suppose that's true of everyone."

"My husband and I were still in school when our first was born," Rye reminisced as they made their way between rows of pinched-looking people squatting or sitting on the ground and peddling all sorts of things. "We used to bring her to class with us. Both of us were out-of-towners, so there wasn't much choice. We joke that of course she's going into law, she's been doing it since she was a newborn."

"What did the professors think?" Carver sent off her complaint with a tap of the finger. Rye was still not used to the technological marvels of the modern world.

"Most thought she was adorable, but there was one who always hissed at us for being so lower-class." Rye and Barrow had only stopped using protection after deciding for certain that they wanted to get married. They hadn't expected that Billie would insist on existing so fast. Usually, the biannual shots took some time to wear off fully.

Carver nodded, glancing around in search of something. "I'm just imagining you sitting in class with a toddler on your lap."

"We tried to set our schedules to minimize that, but it did happen. There was one time we couldn't afford to pay for a babysitter and anyone who did it for free was busy, so Barrow had to write an exam with her sitting on his lap."

"Aww."

"Barrow didn't think so when she tried to steal his pencil and doodle all over the exam."

"That's still adorable. Oh, there they are!" She made her way to a person selling electronic devices. Given the age and bearing of the person, Rye suspected that they were a deserter selling loot. "Hey, Rye, you should get you and your husband smartphones." She wagged her eyebrows.

What, so they could videocall naked? "No, thanks," Rye said with a chuckle. "I'll save my money."

"Was he your first?" Carver asked after a brief pause to study the goods on display.

"No, not at all. I got around back then."

Carver managed to haggle down the price of some spare parts to a small piece of gold jewelry Rye had to take out of her pocket. "Thanks."

"It's no issue," Rye said as they set off along the rows of people selling everything imaginable.

"Some people feel strange helping me," Carver said, looking around. "When I was a teen, it was hard to date my able-bodied peers, because they couldn't imagine being both a helper and an equal partner. My first significant other was a profoundly quadriplegic girl I met at the nearby city's hospital when going in for some sort of checkup, I don't even remember what for."

"Everyone deserves to have the sort of personal life they want," Rye said, unsure of what to say. "How did it go with the girl?"

Carver chuckled. "Nice enough, I guess. She couldn't move anything below her neck and had no feeling there, and I can't do much with my lower body, either. We'd ask staff to set us down on blankets so that I could hug her head, and once they left, I'd pull myself over by my hands so that a different body part was close to her face - the physios were surprised that I suddenly gained the ability to remove and put on my trousers." Rye laughed at that. "Yeah, goes to show how proper motivation goes a long way. In any case, her parents once walked in on me fondling her ears, so that was awkward."

"Ears?"

"She had no sensitivity below the neck, so that compensated for it."

"Ah." So like when her ex's grandfather had walked in on him massaging her breasts. Rye had been able to leap off the third-floor balcony, but Carver hadn't even had that option. "I've been there."

"Fun times," Carver said lightly. "What time is it?"

Rye checked her watch. "Time for us to go work on that presentation Rakesh assigned."

Janie was awoken from a weird dream about Tav and the stand mixer she had bought for her grandparents by someone screaming. Instinctively, she rolled right off and under the cot and covered her head, heart hammering. The lights went on. Janie stood up, rubbing at her eyes and wondering what the hell had happened.

"Is everyone alive?" one of the NCOs asked.

Someone was crying. One of the fifteen-year-olds a few cots down from Janie. "I woke up and I was bleeding," she said.

"So what?" another fifteen-year-old demanded. "That happens to me all the time, and I don't start screaming like a little kid."

Now extremely annoyed, Janie flopped back onto her cot and pulled her blanket over her head. She had duty in the witness wing tomorrow, or today, or whatever.

The girl was still sobbing. "Is this normal?" she asked, sounding shocked.

"Didn't you hear the women complain about periods, like, all the time?" one of the older men asked.

"I don't know what that is!"

How could someone be fifteen years old and not know how their body worked? Janie had gotten her first period at around the same time, but she had known for years how that happened. She had just shrugged and gone to tear up some old cloths for rags. They hadn't been able to afford proper pads back then.

At least ten people rushed to explain to the girl what was going on. Their voices blended into a cacophony. Janie focused on falling asleep.

The next morning, she barely remembered the interruption. Janie got ready for duty, making sure that her uniform was ironed and her shoes - polished. Everyone was always coming and going in the witness wing, so it was best to look perfect, even if Warden Vance didn't show his face much there.

After breakfast, Janie reported for duty. For the next two hours, she had to cycle between four cells, making sure that their inhabitants weren't trying to kill themselves. In this wing were criminals who'd probably go on trial at some point eventually. It was hard to tell what was the difference between them and the 'lesser criminals' who had two wings of their own. The four people she was looking over right now were three lower-ranking Peacekeepers and a government official. None of the Peacekeepers were on the list of those being tried in their separate Peacekeepers' Trial, so maybe that was the difference.

Nothing happened during the first shift, so Janie happily went off to the lounge to relax for an hour. One of the fourteen-year-olds was showing off the stack of photos they got Dovek to sign. Foreigners loved these pictures, they bought them up fast as anything. Janie was making bank from passing the pictures on to Chime, which was how she had been able to get that stand mixer for her grandparents. By now, people only used foreign currency to buy stuff, or they bartered.

Next shift. Janie had to take her charges out to the yard and watch over them as they walked around in the rain that kept on stopping and starting. They were all wearing the same jumpsuits prisoners had worn at this jail before, grey and baggy. The key criminals were the only ones who didn't wear the jumpsuits, probably to make them more noticeable.

The detained witnesses were an odd bunch. A few of them were barely of age - rank-and-file Peacekeepers who had managed to raise such hell, one District or another wanted to put them on trial. Others were very old - long-retired civil servants who probably wouldn't ever reach trial, but the people up there were afraid of them running away to hide at their cottage or something. There was also the odd underage or child soldier who didn't have anywhere else to go. They kept on befriending the underage guards.

One of the younger witnesses walked past Janie. She was her age. Would Janie have been like that if she had grown up in Two or the Capitol? It wasn't something she liked to think about. She was the kind of person who went along with things, so if everyone was raping and murdering, she'd probably have joined in.

The walk ended, and the batch of witnesses was replaced with another. Janie continued her endless pacing around the corridor. If not for the top-notch money this was getting her, she'd have demobbed long ago. As it was, the money was top-notch, so she wasn't going anywhere.

Two more hours, break. Two more hours, break to eat lunch. Then two more hours. And then, finally, she was done. Janie signed out and hurried over to Tav's place, gifts barely fitting in her pockets.

Her boyfriend had also just returned from work. His boots were standing neatly by the door, and he was eating dinner with his parents. Janie had gotten these boots for him. Before, he had worn one pair for years on end. Clothing, especially shoes, had been expensive everywhere, and the good Capitol income was more than eaten up by the expensive Capitol rent.

"Good evening," Janie said, taking off her own shoes.

"Good evening," Tav's parents echoed. They were a bit old to have just a nineteen-year-old child - they were both around fifty.

"I have gifts for you." Janie took out of her pockets bits of pilfered everything. A small bag of sugar, two cans of salmon, a packet of razor blades, sticks of gum, and a signed photograph of Prima Dijksterhuis.

Tav's mother looked confused. "Who's that?" she asked, pointing at the photo.

"Dijksterhuis." Two blank stares. They had never cared about politics and did not do so now. Tav only knew this stuff because Janie told him all the funny stories. "You know, the former economics minister?" Tav's parents just looked even more confused. "Well, in any case, you can sell that to foreigners for good money." People were starting to come to Panem for fun. Janie wasn't sure what fun could be had here. And it's not like there was a shortage of bombed-out cities in the world, so why specifically the Capitol?

"Well, thank you very much, Janie," Tav's father said, putting the goods away. The photograph ended up attached to the fridge by a magnet. Janie really wanted to get her family a fridge, but anything not portable was the biggest pain in the ass to transport. "Why don't you join us?"

The three of them were still in their factory overalls, with the company logo drawn on the side of the chest. Their jackets hung in the corridor, with 'Highcreek Munitions Works' and the Steelworks logo stamped across the back. They looked literally just like anyone from home. Tav's parents were better-fed than Mom and Dad had been, but workers with only one child had been better-off back home, too. Janie had once wondered why anyone had kids when it was so expensive. She understood now why people wanted to have kids, but still, why so many? Couldn't they just not have sex that way once they had the kids they wanted?

Things had been different in the Capitol with the free birth control and all, but Janie knew that Tav hadn't been intended to be the only child. Something was wrong with Tav's father, something that even Capitol medicine couldn't fix. As Janie piled rice and vegetables onto her plate, she wondered if Tav had inherited that problem. She then kicked herself for thinking about it. A couple of months was way too early to start thinking about kids, and in any case, there were so many orphans in the country, they could probably adopt more than Janie could ever give birth to, and it still wouldn't make a dent in the overcrowded Community Homes.

"This is great," Janie said, munching on the perfectly cooked rice.

"We added that sauce you gave us," Tav's mother said. "Where did you get it?" Tav's parents, like anyone else in the Capitol, knew their way around the black market.

"This one person who works in the kitchens."

"Ah."

The conversation shifted to plans for the weekend. Before, Janie had had two days off a month. They had had one day off a week. Some people had worked with zero days off, except New Year's and the Reapings. The more the people up there gave a shit about what you thought, the more time off you had.

Tav and his parents used their weekends to work in reconstruction, to earn a bit extra. Who didn't work didn't eat, unless they had a really iron-clad excuse like being quadriplegic, and even they were being put to work now.

"So," Tav's father said as the rice was polished off, "anything new up there?"

Janie had never thought that she would ever be involved with 'up there'. "Not really. Indictment's done, apparently."

"They're actually going to try them?" Tav's father asked incredulously.

"I guess."

"That is insane."

"I guess."

After dinner, they sat down on the couch to drink weak tea made from leaves already used three times and watch television. Tav's parents were hugging on one end of the couch, so Janie used that as an excuse for some cuddles with Tav. Not like they'd be able to do more today - his parents were really annoying about not letting the two of them be in his room alone.

It was time for the evening news on the channel Tav's parents watched. First was the usual update on reconstruction. Then, news from the fields. Then, a bunch of complicated stuff about the economy. Janie ended up not sure if the price of potatoes needed to go up or down. Then, some apocalyptic news about what the dollar had sunk to now - Janie had never known that the names for such big numbers were real and not a joke. Then, there was a brief segment of foreign news that was basically footage of something like five different wars. The general impression Janie got was that everything was terrible.

Heiko Laur appeared on screen. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was endlessly drawn in newspaper cartoons as a beggar running around the world asking for humanitarian aid. He seemed to be doing just that right now. The minister was sitting with his Kenyan counterpart, both of them with earpieces in so that the words of the interpreters were transmitted directly into their ears. The English translation of what the Kenyan minister was saying was read out loud so that viewers could understand what she was saying. She was basically patting Laur on the head and telling him that for the magic tricks he had performed, he could have an extra cent.

"We are very grateful for any support you can give us," Laur said. His Seven accent was noticeable, not like someone from Kenya could tell the difference. "Our recovery is only possible thanks to your aid."

After ten more minutes of Laur being treated like a child beggar too small and cute to just shove away, the television showed a program where people argued about politics. Today's topic of discussion was humanitarian aid, and did Laur really have to travel the world making himself look like an idiot.

Before, there was no arguing on television, just someone telling people what to think. Janie thought of Lark sitting in his cell. The onetime 'evening loudmouth', as people in the Capitol had called him, was nice and quiet now, except for when he was complaining. Other propagandists had offed themselves. Slice was still in Thirteen, but Tav's parents said Slice hadn't been too bad for a propagandist, which said a lot. Granted, they had believed that 'if not Snow, then who?' stuff.

"Who even is this Heiko Laur?" Tav's father asked. "It's like one day he was in a sawmill, and the next, he's travelling the world!"

Janie actually knew the answer. "He was a big-city civil servant spying for Thirteen. He was picked to represent Seven in the IDC, and got the post of minister because someone noticed he was good at talking to foreigners."

"Civil servant?" Tav's mother repeated. "Of course."

"What about your local representative?" Janie could get behind that 'workers of the world, unite!' stuff, but you couldn't just put down an actual spy like that no matter how rich he had been.

"You can't compare the two."

Tav was silent, pressed up against her like a heater. "My parents' coworkers are trying to unionize," Janie said, changing the topic. "Maybe we can all be in the same union. Under the wise leadership of Louise James." James had to be at least seventy-five, and she had spent her entire life in the same factory as an overseer. She wasn't much of an organizer - her real skills lay in arguing with bosses. Billy Reuter, her slightly younger deputy who had been on the shopfloor since the age of twelve, was the one dealing with that stuff.

Tav's parents chuckled obligingly. Outside, it began to rain. Janie snuggled closer to Tav, who wrapped her in his arms and lay his head on her shoulder. How lucky she was. She'd have to not tell Ricky about any of this, or he'd be sad that he missed his chance.