It had been months since he had last seen these people. Antonius watched his witnesses mount the stand one by one, looking much diminished since the last time they had met. They were the directors of the Steelworks, the CFO, and various other high-ranking personnel. All of them were currently incarcerated in the same jail. The corporation itself was being torn apart by anti-trust proceedings. Antonius had never heard a more absurd idea in his life - they were punishing him for being successful!

Absurd or not, this was reality. For several days, Antonius listened closely to what the people who had once been his closest advisors said. Shaw's statement had been great, but it was clear that the judges would not be paying attention to that. The witnesses would be much more important. They did a magnificent job, telling everything exactly as it had happened and not trying to push all responsibility on him, like so many other witnesses. Under cross-examination, they stuck to their stories and refused to be budged.

As the last witness left the stand, there was still about half an hour remaining on the clock.

"Your Honours," Shaw said, "that is a satisfactory amount of time for me to begin the direct examination."

Antonius was a little bit irritated, but he could not be too angry. One more night would not have changed anything, and at this point, he just wanted to be done with it. As a few people whispered encouragement, Antonius picked up his folder and made his way to the middle of the dock, where a guard had opened a little door for him.

The carpet muffled his footsteps as he walked towards the witness stand. He was across the well from the prosecutor's lectern, but the courtroom was so crammed, the distance was still very small and he could see Briscoe perfectly, sitting at one of the counsel tables and preparing to take notes. He was a small man, dark, balding, and with a furtive air that reminded Antonius of a squirrel. Antonius told himself to not be deceived by appearances. Cheapness of the suit aside, this was someone who had worked pro bono in a place where that brought a lawyer no money. Those elegant hands had once handled a pick on the construction of a Hunger Games Arena. Going immediately after Talvian and her outrageous justifications, Antonius would have a slight advantage, and he would need every gram of it to stay afloat.

Step one was done - witnesses that testified in his favour. Now, it was time for step two - the direct examination. Antonius answered a few questions about his background, glancing at the clock every so often.

"As an adolescent, you worked in a factory yourself?" Shaw prompted.

Antonius wanted to gnash his teeth - he had known these questions would be asked, but that did not make them any more pleasant. "I did," he conceded.

"How did you find the working conditions to be?"

"Satisfactory."

"Did you ever see any mishandling of workers?"

"I saw some workers be punished for breaking the rules."

"Punished - how?"

Antonius remembered the adolescent twitching and jerking in the rope and suddenly felt like it was hard to breathe. Was that how he would end? "I saw whippings every so often," he said a beat too late, "and an execution several times."

"Later on in life, did you ever see any executions or whippings?"

"No. I was not shown them - the local bosses worried I would think the discipline was bad."

Shaw nodded. Antonius knew that she had an entire team working for her, but she looked so horribly alone standing at the lectern and going through her papers. "Now, when you were seventeen, you were injured at work, were you not?"

Antonius wanted to sink through the floor. "I was."

"How did that occur?"

"A piece of faulty equipment broke, and a metal bar flew out and hit me in the knee." Even though it was silent in the courtroom, he felt like everyone was laughing at him.

"What happened after that?"

"Nothing. I limped for a week or so and then recovered."

"Did you receive medical treatment?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I did not want my grandmother to know I was hurt." At that, some people did laugh, and Sanchez demanded silence.

"Why?"

"Typical adolescent stubbornness, I suppose," Antonius said. "I was worried she would yell at me for being careless or something of the sort." Over in the dock, several of his codefendants were failing to hide their smiles.

No matter how embarrassing this part of the direct examination was, Antonius recognized its importance - they needed to show to the judges that the work conditions had been an accepted part of life already when he was young and so he could not be blamed for implementing them.

The session was over soon. Sighing with relief, Antonius picked up his folder and left the witness stand, heading towards the dock.

"Good start," Dovek said approvingly.

"Thank you."

"I'm so nervous," Blues, who was next, said to him. "Did it go alright?"

"It went according to plan." Whether that counted as alright or not remained to be seen.

"Finally," Marcellus muttered, "someone who uses their brain." He went through the math test, quickly drawing checkmarks against every question and setting it aside. "I think maybe I'll give Tyrone a special reward for saving my sanity."

Leon sank deeper into the couch cushions, relieved - it was tiring to listen to his brother complain about how lazy everyone in his class was. It hadn't been like that before. Last year, he had sympathized with the kids over their interrupted education, and even before that, he had been sad when someone did poorly, not caustic. "Is he a good student?" he asked, eager to get his brother talking about something more positive.

"Yeah. He's shy, so he doesn't raise his hand much, but if I call on him, he knows the answer."

"That's nice."

Marcellus looked at another test and clapped a hand to his face. "Dammit, Melanie, we only went over this ten times!" He wrote something on the paper with his red pen and flipped through the test. "Hmm, not too horrible. Maybe that was just a silly mistake." He put the test aside and looked at the next. He marked tests by looking at every question 1 first, then question 2, and so on, unless someone had gotten perfect. It meant he didn't have to look at the answer key as often.

"Anything interesting happen today?"

Marcellus clenched his pen so tightly, Leon worried it would break. "Some kid threw a paper bag of water at Kieran." That was a grade six teacher. "Drenched his phone, which he needs to talk to his parents. If I find out who it was, I'll break a ruler over their knuckles." That was an idle threat, Marcellus never beat his students. "Kieran's too soft, he can't even get them to stop talking."

Leon winced. Usually, he had been well-behaved enough to avoid getting a ruler to the knuckles or to any other body part. In grade four, however, he had had a particularly cruel teacher, Mr. Miller - Leon still wanted to puke when he heard the admittedly common name or saw someone with green eyes. Mr. Miller had hit kids on the neck with a steel ruler, which Leon had fortunately avoided, and he had also hit everyone on the knuckles after a test - the best-scoring student once, the second one twice, and so on. In elementary school, Leon had been around fourth or fifth in the class, and he suspected he would never forget it. The worst students had often skipped the day after the test, which just made Mr. Miller hit them even more. Their hands would be swollen and purple for days.

"Ugh," Marcellus said, looking at another test. "If I had the authority to expel people, I'd do it."

"It's just a test," Leon told him.

"Just wasting hours of my life on nonsense," Marcellus hissed, writing something doubtless uncomplimentary on the test. "Why did I even go into teaching?"

Leon had no idea what had gotten into his brother. "You used to love it before," he said. "Why are you so angry this year?"

"Because I've got District trash in my class!"

It was a pity Mom had gone out to queue for rations - she wouldn't have stood for such blatant hatred. "Come on, you can't say that," Leon said, trying to find a good approach. "Are the District students really doing that much worse?"

Marcellus shook his head. "The ones who go to school don't. But most can't write their name."

"What does that have to do with your class? They're not in there."

"It's the principle of the thing. I don't like seeing District kids mixing with Capitol kids."

"But why?"

"It's just not proper!"

"Yeah, well, it's how things are now, so get used to it," Leon replied harshly.

Marcellus shook his head. "At least back then, everyone knew their place."

"Back then, you needed a permit to leave the Capitol proper! We queued for hours to be allowed to visit Aunt Mei-Lin! Are you crazy?"

"You know, I think the old government did one thing right - District people need to be apart from us."

Leon leapt to his feet, furious. "You're insulting some of my friends!"

Marcellus shrugged.

"You're a terrible teacher," Leon said. "A teacher can't hate their students because of what accent they speak in. You should quit and go shovel rubble. That's all a hateful piece of trash like you can do."

Marcellus snarled wordlessly and threw his pen at Leon, hitting him right in the face.

"Goodbye," Leon said, marching over to the door and pulling on his shoes and light jacket. "I'll go hang out with my District friends. Seriously, Marcellus, you're going to be thirty soon, you can't keep on acting like a child!" Before his brother could say anything, Leon left, so that he would have the last word.

In the corridor, Aunt Charlotte was discussing the meat ration with Uncle Zion from the fourth floor. Leon swept past them, ran down the stairs, and went outside through the side door. It was early evening, and the sun was starting to set. Leon checked his phone - the battery was still full, so he could stay out as long as he wanted. Not like he wanted to stay out long, though, the only place in the greater area that was safe at night was a small radius around the Lodgepole Justice Building and the staff billets.

Now where? Leon remembered that Sebastian sold on the black market in the evenings and decided to go there. He was able to find his friend relatively fast.

"Oh, hey, Leon," he said. "You interested in CDs?"

Leon shook his head, smiling. "Sold my player long ago."

"Oh, yeah, you told me." Sebastian gestured him over. "You here to hang out or what?"

Leon sat down next to him. "Had a fight with my brother, need to unwind somewhere." He explained what happened, Sebastian nodding along.

"Weird your brother's like that when he's so young. My great-uncle's friends are like that, but they remember the civil war, so at least it makes sense. I remember I always told them they could always move to the big country if they like it so much." He laughed softly.

"He's getting worse," Leon said, tapping his fingers against the tall stacks of cases. "He's just becoming angrier and angrier by the day. Before, he was just unhappy that he has to teach so many people. Now he's complaining about the presence of District people. You'd think that he, who had to put up with all that nonsense in college because of his class, would know better."

Sebastian nodded and took a sip from a bottle of beer. "Looking for convenient scapegoats, I guess. Most everyone internalized some sort of propaganda, and it comes out at some point. And it's easy to think that you don't deserve it, but others do. Beer?"

"Thanks." Leon took a small sip. "But they're his students - practically his kids. I can't believe he hates them."

Sebastian nodded and was about to say something but then got distracted by a customer approaching and haggling for five CDs. It took a while. Eventually, they both nodded, and the customer pocketed the cases and Sebastian - the money. Unlike before, people were now exchanging things for money instead of bartering, but precious few music shops still stood.

"Fucking sucks," Sebastian said, elbows on his knees. "Didn't you say he hated the old regime?"

"Yeah. Always was the one to tell jokes, our parents had to tell him to be careful." Leon zipped up his jacket against the evening chill. He was dreading winter - not for his own sake, but because he knew it would be terrible for the entire country. "I guess he's just a firebrand. Odd quality in an elementary-school teacher."

Sebastian chuckled. "Yeah. When you told me your brother's a teacher, I still pictured an irritable old man even though that makes no sense."

Next to Leon, a person covering her face with her hands was sitting behind a bundle of household goods. So many people sold, it seemed strange that there was anyone left to buy. Aside from the soldiers, of course. There were two walking up ahead and trying to buy a smartphone, and further off in the distance, a fifteen-year-old soldier was strolling with a prostitute of the same age. Horrible sight.

"What did you think of the trial today?" Sebastian asked.

"Alright, I suppose. Chaterhan had some well-coached witnesses. I think he's just lucky he's after Talvian."

Sebastian nodded grimly. "Just watch that bastard slip out of the noose. He's got, what, forty lawyers? Just look at Shaw and look at Briscoe, it's obvious who the judges will believe."

"Aren't they from the same background?"

"They are?" Sebastian asked, surprised. "I heard something about Briscoe being a forced labourer."

"Had he been from that kind of background, how would he have become a lawyer? He's from a well-off family like the rest of them. He was just crazy enough to work pro bono and volunteer for forced labour in place of someone."

"Huh." Sebastian took his hat out of his pocket and put it on. Leon realized his ears were cold and put up his hood. "Bet the authorities hated him."

"I think they had bigger priorities than a crazy lawyer."

"True, true."

The sun was starting to set. Leon wished he didn't have to go home. "What are you thinking about?" he asked Sebastian, who was staring off into space.

"Nothing. You?"

Lucky man. "I don't want to go home."

"Then don't - you're twenty-five years old with a job, you can do whatever you want."

That was a drastic way of approaching the problem. Leon and Marcellus had both always thought they'd live at home until marriage, which, in Leon's case, would happen approximately never. "But where would l live?"

"Nilofar's already got two roommates, there's room for another."

Leon thought about it. The thought was tantalizing - not being constantly bombarded with texts asking him when he was coming home, no more arguments with Marcellus, no more tiptoeing around in the mornings so as to not wake up Dad. But he also really didn't want to go against his original plan. It felt almost like giving up.

Which one would make him happy? Either way, he'd be doing everyone's laundry, queuing for rations, and having a long commute to work. And what about after the trials ended and he needed a permanent job? Where he lived wouldn't make finding one any easier.

There was only one difference - live with his family or live with a coworker plus two of her acquaintances? Maybe it was delayed teenage rebellion, but Leon wanted out. He took out his phone and texted Nilofar if she would be willing to have him move in.

"I guess I'll try," he said. "Though I'm worried about my parents' reaction."

Sebastian laughed. "What, you're worried they'll think you just want to party?"

"I don't think they're aware of the concept of partying. It's just that it was almost assumed I'd stay at home until marriage."

"Did they ever forbid you from moving out?"

"No, but they didn't encourage it, either."

"Did Marcellus ever try?"

Leon shook his head. "He considered going to a more distant college and moving out for that but in the end decided he wanted to stay with people he could freely tell political jokes to." He looked at the stack of CDs in front of him, studying the labels. "I don't understand him. First he thought the trial is a good thing, now he thinks it's a bad thing."

"My landlords are like that. They thought it'd be a quick thing and they'd be able to blame everything on the twenty-four key defendants, but that entire thing with Depuration makes them feel like they're being accused of propping up the regime. Vengeful Districts, all that rot."

"What'd they get?"

"They didn't need to submit questionnaires."

Odd - there was nothing better than having to go through Depuration to make you hate the entire idea and everyone connected to it. "To be fair," Leon said, "all of us in the big country did prop up the regime with our inaction." He hadn't wanted to admit it, but the parade of witnesses had forced him to face the fact that he could have done quite a lot, had he wanted to. The fact that he was far from the only one didn't make him feel any better. Most people refused to admit they had done anything wrong, so Leon was in an odd position where he publicly insisted that he had been a bad person and everyone tried to tell him he wasn't one.

"Yeah, because you feared for your lives. I don't see how some village notary in Eleven could have done anything."

"The person who tried to assassinate Snow also feared for her life."

Sebastian shuffled around. "I guess. It's just - how are we supposed to deal with this? The more time passes, the less anyone wants to think about anything. Your brother, my landlords - that's why we got into this mess to begin with. It's not any better back home. Everyone acts like they're just better than people here, and you all have a slave mentality and want to have a dictator."

"I just don't get why my brother is like this!" Leon said, not wanting to contemplate the remark about the slave mentality. "I don't think the Districts are inferior. Mom and Dad don't think so, either. Why him?"

"I thought it'd be obvious," Sebastian replied. "He's an elementary-school teacher. He's spent years beating propaganda into the heads of kids, some of it had to stick to him. Just 'cause he thought the Games or the movement restrictions or whatever else were wrong doesn't mean he views the Districts as equals."

That made a frightening amount of sense. "Before, I didn't notice it, because I was too busy telling him to hush when he complained about the NCIA," Leon realized. "The frame of reference has changed."

"Honestly, it's the same with mine." Sebastian pulled out his phone and grimaced. "Ugh. Spam text. Anyway, had we lived here, we'd have all been loyal, including me - all of my political beliefs are from them. It's only in the past year that we started to diverge. I can't look past the documents, they can. We still all support the Social Democrats, because we agree on everything else, but they keep on muttering about how the platform is too vengeful."

Leon could only laugh at that - the Social Democrats were the least vengeful party ever. "But they're in favour of stopping Depuration!"

"Mine think that the rank-and-file Peacekeepers were victims of the elites and it's wrong to try them at Lodgepole or anywhere. Of all the people to consider victims!"

At least Marcellus had adopted middle-class values and thus unlikely to start saying that. "Bright, Thread, Krechet, and Verdant grew up poor, too."

"They're class traitors."

"You actually think that?"

"Of course! They were from poor backgrounds, knew what life is like, and rose to positions where they oppressed people just like them. Had they just wanted out, they wouldn't have been so cruel. That goes for every Peacekeeper, in my opinion, no matter what rank."

"But what if they were cruel because they were afraid of getting kicked out for disobedience?"

Sebastian shook his head. "There's no shortage of those who weren't cruel. It's not like only one person ever refused to participate in an execution."

"How do you say no when you're being given a task in front of the entire platoon?"

"Not my problem if they would rather whip someone to death than have their platoon laugh at them for the next year."

Harsh, but fair. Leon often felt like he couldn't judge someone in that position, but there were some things that were plainly wrong. Nobody was ever ordered to throw a baby in the air and catch it on their bayonet.

Leon's phone chimed. Unfortunately, it was Mom asking him when he would be home. Impulsively, he replied with My friend invited me to stay the night. He wasn't ready to face Marcellus yet.

Mom: But you don't have any clean clothes for tomorrow!

Leon: We're the same size - I'll borrow his.

M: What are you going to eat?

L: I'm on the black market right now - I'll get some potatoes or rice or something.

M: Text me how you're doing, alright?

L: Alright. :)

M: :)

Leon put his phone away. "Actually, do you mind if I crash at your place? I promise I'll get my own food."

"Of course not - why, what is it?"

"Just need some time away from it all," Leon replied with a shrug. The sun was beginning to set in earnest now. Evenings were so much nicer when you didn't have to be home by a certain time.

Dora was surprised to see Daniel, and not surprised to see that he was in a wheelchair. Her colleague was talking to a journalist.

"Will you be alright?" the journalist asked sympathetically.

"Just a flare-up in my hips. Should be alright in a few days."

"Is this connected to-"

Dora decided to put an end to this. "Good morning, Mr. Chatterjee," she said, approaching him. "Would you like me to push you?"

"Oh- yes, please, I overestimated my hand strength."

Fortunately, their conference room was on the first floor, as was the courtroom. Dora wheeled Daniel into their room and to his customary place, Brutus pushing his usual chair aside. "You going to be alright?" he asked.

"Hopefully."

"You know, you could have just-"

"If I can get out of bed, I can get to the courtroom," Daniel said in a tone that allowed for no arguments.

Dora didn't think so, but that was none of her business. She sat down and reviewed her notes from the prosecution case against Chaterhan as everyone trickled in, followed by one of the assistants with the drinks. The cup looked different today. Instead of plain white, there was blocky lettering proclaiming 'Roll up the Rim to Win'.

"No," Raymond said, wide smile spreading over his face. "They did not." He dropped his head in his hands. "Less than a year after a civil war, and already there's Roll up the Rim season."

"Is this a Capitol thing?" Rose asked.

Raymond laughed merrily. "It is the middle-class Capitol thing. Every year around this time, this chain of coffee shops ran - or I suppose runs - a promotion where you can roll up the rim on your cup and see if you win a prize. It was probably the only lottery you could win in the entire country, if winning a free coffee counts as winning the lottery."

Free coffee? Dora took the lid off her chicory and noticed a little black arrow pointing to a part of the rim. She tried to unroll it, but the paper held firm.

"How do you do this?" Cora asked, also trying the same thing.

"You use your teeth," Raymond explained. "Officially, the odds of winning a food prize are one in six, so we should ideally get two. Though probability is weird - one year, I won eight free coffees in a row."

Careful to not spill the drink, Dora managed to bite the rim into unravelling. Unfortunately, all she got was 'Sorry! Please try again'. Moira won ten assorted donut holes, and Sean and Rosalinda - a medium drink.

"We beat the odds," Sean said triumphantly, putting his lid back on. "Do we just give it to the cashier next time?"

"Once you're done, tear off that bit of the rim," Raymond said.

Dora drank her chicory and continued to revise until Raymond told them to get ready. They put on their robes, grabbed their things, and filed out, Rosa pushing Daniel. Dora was still worried that carrying paper cups of coffee was unprofessional, but Raymond was probably correct when he said that everyone was so bored at this point, they could walk in wearing tracksuits and with newspaper cones of sunflower seeds in their hands and nobody would bat an eye.

The first and only order of business was Chaterhan's direct examination. Dora noticed him shooting glances at Daniel throughout the entire process. Chaterhan himself did not cut a particularly fine figure. His expensive suit was by now several sizes too large on him, and weight loss had made him look older. He spoke with conviction, but his convictions were so beyond the pale, he came across as cold and remorseless.

The other night, Ashley had called to tell Dora jokes that were spreading on the Web after Chaterhan's brief testimony the other day.

If you ever feel like you're slumming it, remember that Chaterhan worked in a factory as a teen.

Even Chaterhan was afraid of being accused of sabotage.

You think your coworker is bad? Someone had to work in the same crew as Chaterhan!

Your boss may be strict, but at least they don't report to your grandma.

Dora was not particularly amused by the jokes, but she was glad that people were paying attention to the trial.

"Did you ever visit the Arena construction sites?" Shaw asked.

"No," Chaterhan lied.

The problem with Chaterhan's defense was that he had broken laws he could not have not known about. Charges of embezzlement and bribery - and even of mistreating workers - had been commonly used to dispose of those who lost in backroom intrigues. Despite that, he insisted that he had simply done things as everyone else did, and had the temerity to say that since worker protection laws hadn't been followed for decades, that meant they were not valid anymore. Dora thought of Jack and the long shifts he had worked before meeting her. She then tried to banish that mental image - it was unprofessional.

At lunch, Daniel looked worn out, both physically and mentally. "You know," he said as he ate his noodle soup, "this tastes like what they fed us at the construction sites. I've heard of PTSD causing visual and aural hallucinations, but not taste ones."

The noodle soup was delicious. Dora twirled some noodles around her chopsticks and ate them.

"You can go rest," Raymond offered.

"I can't miss the session!" Daniel tried to pick up his spoon but his fingers were too clumsy and it fell with a clatter. "Aah!"

"Here you go," Raymond said, picking it up. "Are you sure?"

Daniel tried to take the spoon again but his hand wasn't working and it fell again. "Of course I'm sure!" he snapped, tears in his eyes. "I can't look like I can't take it - what will people think of me passing judgement on him?"

"That's what they say about me," Moira pointed out. "What they think is irrelevant. You just got to do your job-"

Gnashing his teeth with fury, Daniel swept his bowl off the table. "I fucking know it's irrelevant!" he shouted as the bowl hit the ground with a clang and rolled towards the wall. "Can you just leave me the fuck alone?" He dropped his head in his hands and began to cry.

"Hey, Rosa, I've been meaning to ask you - how did your son do in that squirrel-hunting competition?" Dora immediately asked. Daniel's behaviour reminded her of the breakdowns Ashley had had well into her adolescence - if the person was not a risk to themselves or others, better to give them space if that was what they asked for.

"Oh, alright," Rosa said a beat late. "He's not a master hunter or anything. The winners can consistently get the damn things right through the eye, it's insane. And my husbands were just happy about the free barbecue they had with the squirrels at the end."

Dora sometimes forgot just how rural her colleague was, and then she remembered something like this. She had always thought of squirrel hunting as the sort of thing a poor farmer might do with the gun their grandparent had used in the Dark Days. "I'm sure. Though it makes sense - squirrels are small, even if you use small bullets, if you hit the body, not much is going to be left."

"Back when I was clerking for this one judge, he invited me to hunt bear," Taylor said. "But he only wanted the head. Do you know how long it takes to eat a bear?" Dora did. In her opinion, anyone who ever got into their head to go trophy hunting and throw out the meat should have seen her pantry after that one time her boss had gone deer hunting out of season. That had been after she had met Jack. His family would have killed for the food just being thrown out. "I gave meat and organs to so many relatives. And don't get me started on the circles of Hell I had to cross to find someone who knew what to do with the skin, because that idiot judge already had one and didn't bother dealing with it."

"Grizzly or black?" Rosa asked.

"We only have black bears in our parts."

"Those are small," Drexel said. "Aren't they?"

"They are," Dora said, "for bears. Still fairly hefty." Nobody said anything for a second. Daniel sniffled. "So, what does everyone think about the renaming of McCollum Avenue?"

"Long overdue," Sean said. "Fifth Avenue is a bit uncreative, but better that than McCollum."

Every single village had had a street named after McCollum. Good thing Snow had preferred not to name things after himself, because that would have been absolutely unbearable.

"I remember I once spray-painted a statue of McCollum," Moira said, looking a bit awkward. For a second, Dora wondered if she had misheard, but no - her colleague had been just that reckless. "Shame I wasn't there to knock it down."

The Great De-Statuefication, as Ashley (and Jack) tended to call it, had happened very quickly in their parts. Dora had only found out about the statue being removed from the square after it happened.

"It's the secret fourth part to the plan for Panem," Brutus joked. "Democratization, Depuration, demonopolization, and de-statuefication."

"Hey-Raymond?" Rose asked, eating her noodles with a fork. "Is Roll up the Rim season in honour of McCollum's birthday or something?"

Raymond nearly dropped his tea. "You were born under McCollum," he said with mock-reproach, "how can you not know that his birthday was March 16? Don't you know that's the most important birthday to know, more important even than your own?" The judges laughed. All of them being old enough to have been adults under McCollum, they remembered him well. Dora still recalled his dry voice, faintly tinged with an accent nobody spoke anymore, struggling to read a prepared speech from the papers in his shaking hands.

"I remember my daughter was four when he died," Juan reminisced. "I told her that we'd be going to a ceremony for his funeral. She asked - Daddy, how are they going to bury McCollum in all the Districts at once?"

When McCollum died, her youngest children had been around that age. "My son thought they were going to bury him, dig him up, and then bury him in the next District," Dora said. Wesley had always been on the creative side.

"That's actually less morbid than my son," Cora said, barely choking back laughter. "He thought they were going to cut him up into pieces and give each town a piece to bury!"

"They would have needed a lot of pieces!" Sean said, laughing into his noodles.

Dora recalled something from the prosecution case. "Hey, Rosalinda, did you read that report?" A large investigation had been published recently about the famine of 31-32, so it was on her mind.

"Brought me back - I was just starting university when the famine hit," Rosalinda said. "There were people just dying in the streets. But we did fine. I only found out how bad it had been this past year."

Dora remembered only that some foods had become much more expensive. She hadn't even batted an eye, continuing to shop as before and ignoring the refugees crowding the streets.

"That's how it went," Raymond said quietly. "That's how we lived."

Going home after work, Leon found himself wishing he could be going back to Sebastian's place, not home. Despite the crammed conditions, he had found the company there much more bearable. It felt like an oasis of normality amidst the constant nonsense.

Leon passed by two pensioners who watched him go and began to whisper to each other. Coming up with theories to explain his absence, no doubt. He wouldn't be amazed if they got it right. He made his way to his apartment, where Marcellus was grading homework at the dinner table and Mom was working with headphones on. "I'm back."

"There you are!" Mom said, spinning around and taking off her headphones. "How was that?"

"Great." Leon took off his shoes and put them on the mat. "I liked it."

"That's good."

"My friend actually wants me to move in with her," Leon said, cutting straight to the chase.

"And you want to move in with her?"

Leon nodded.

"Does she live alone?" Mom asked, ill-concealed hope in her voice.

"No, there's two others. I know them both," Leon lied, "we get along." He had actually never met Nilofar's roommates, but she had told him about them, and there didn't seem to be anything Leon would hate. Neither of them listened to loud music or refused to do chores.

Mom shook her head slightly. "You shouldn't be paying for utilities if you don't have to. You need to save up."

"I'm already paying for utilities. Plus, now you won't have to pay for my showers."

"That is not a problem!" Mom wrung her hands, looking at the floor. "If you really want to move out, go ahead. You have a stable job, you don't have to live with us if you don't want to. We were hoping you'd stay with us until you could buy your own apartment, though." Given the housing situation right now, that would be approximately never. Leon said as much, and got a shrug in return. "When do you want to move out?"

"Might take a few weeks to get everything set up."

"Where does your friend live?" Leon told her the neighbourhood. "Well, that's not too bad. How much will it cost?"

"About as much as I'm paying right now."

"Alright. Dinner's on the stove, by the way." She wandered back to the computer. Leon went to get food, slightly surprised by how easy that had been. He had expected arguments, but instead, he was going to be moving out soon.

"You know," Olivia Harris said to Briscoe, "I think maybe you picked the wrong defendant."

Briscoe chuckled. "I was before her time. When I was in the pit, she was procrastinating studying for exams."

Rye didn't want to think about the defendants doing normal things. Chaterhan had just finished his direct examination, and it had certainly been something. His stubborn insistences that murderous working conditions were a normal part of running a business would have been enough to make anyone a dedicated Communist. Now, it remained to be seen what tune he would sing with Briscoe poking holes in his claims to have never seen or heard of certain atrocities.

"Good luck," she said to Briscoe.

"Oh, I'll need it."

The judges filed in, everyone stood up and then sat down, and the day began. Briscoe walked up to the lectern, climbing onto a box to make it possible for him to see over it. There was nothing particularly earthshattering in his cross-examination. Since Chaterhan was choosing to justify his crimes instead of denying his responsibility, Briscoe simply had to show examples of such actions being considered wrong. "In 68 by the old style, a plant manager in the Flick cartel was given twenty years for mistreating workers. Were you aware of this?"

"I assumed it was politics as always," Chaterhan replied coolly.

"So you were aware that there existed laws against mistreating workers?"

"There were also laws against crossing the street when the light is red," Chaterhan shot back. "If nobody respects a law, then the one time when someone is punished for breaking it is either bad luck or pure politics."

"That is not what I am asking you, defendant," Briscoe said. "Were you aware that there was a law against mistreating workers and that it was possible to be punished according to it, whatever the reason may be?"

"To that, I have to answer affirmatively."

As the cross-examination continued, Rye felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She took it out and checked it. Barrow had texted her.

Have you seen that investigation? Horrible.

I did.

Having been born a year after the famine ended, Rye had not known of its existence for the longest time. It was only as an adolescent that she was able to understand what those meaningful glances and 'at least it's not like before' meant, and it was only thanks to the research she and the rest of the team had done that she knew the details.

In the meanwhile, Chaterhan had moved on to pushing the responsibility for forced labour onto someone else. Perhaps to a supporter he would have sounded convincing, but to Rye, it was just headache-inducing.

It was with great relief that Antonius left the witness stand once his cross-examination was over. He took his seat in the dock, wishing that he could have said this or that differently. "How was that?" he whispered to Shaw.

"As well as it could be under the circumstances."

A very lawyerly answer.

"At least you're done now," Talvian said sympathetically.

"At least there is that." Antonius looked at the clock. Lunch would be in forty-five minutes.

Blues leaned over towards him. "Thanks for saying that about me," she whispered in a voice too quiet for anyone except him to hear.

"You are very welcome." So much of her case was tied up with the forced labourers, it would not have done to push the responsibility for them on her.

Her lawyer, Fisher, took the lectern and began to read his statement. Within five minutes, the entire courtroom was dozing. Antonius had to struggle to not fall asleep. Fisher spoke in a droning monotone, words running into each other. Antonius was already exhausted from his three and a half days on the stand, and this was making him even sleepier.

Not having anything better to do, he read the newspaper that had been given to him that morning. Antonius had noticed a trend that if the newspaper was given to him in the morning, there was nothing important in there, and if it was not, then there was something important he would be upset to have not known about for a full day. Today, the trend held, and there was nothing of particular interest.

Antonius read an investigation into rural poverty in northern District Seven. The circumstances described were nothing short of horrific - an entire village had forgotten how to live. In a community of 300, there were six to eight deaths per year, with two or three being suicides. It was as if the entire village suffered from depression and was constantly on the brink of snapping and taking their own lives. Children as young as eight killed themselves. The majority of people over twelve suffered from alcoholism. They eked a miserable existence from the land, going to a bigger town deeper inland to sell fish and furs and buy alcohol with the money. There was no school, no hospital, not even a paramedic-midwife station.

That was not all. About fifty kilometres away, across the border, there was another village, where everything was almost the complete opposite. No suicides, no alcoholism, no misery. There was a school and a clinic staffed with locals who had studied in big cities and returned, with severely ill people being airlifted to a hospital by hovercraft. And not only that, but millenia-old traditions were alive and flourishing in that village, unlike in IV-203. The article blamed Snow for various policies that had destroyed the soul of these communities. As he read, Antonius became more and more shocked. He had to stop himself from shooting glances at Pollman - having been the deputy Minister of District Affairs, this was partially on him. The prosecution had read into evidence documents about how bad things had been in the remote areas, but Antonius had not thought to pay attention.

He studied the photographs of the village. The houses and boats were dilapidated and collapsing, but the people looked completely normal. In their worn boots and coats, they resembled the rural poor from anywhere else in Panem, though the startling homogeneity of the inhabitants was a stark reminder of how separated from the rest of the world these people were. Feeling vaguely troubled, Antonius put away the newspaper and tried to re-focus on the proceedings.

Fortunately, Fisher stopped talking about an hour into the afternoon session and began to call witnesses. Watching them, Antonius thought there was something strange to the entire process. It was almost as if Fisher was holding back. Not only was he dull and unconvincing, but he made frequent mistakes and slip-ups in the oddest places.

Blues' witnesses were not nearly as good as his, but Fisher had been hampered by the suicides of those who could have been of more use. It was, however, clear to Antonius that his neighbour was one of the most blameless in the dock. Hopefully she would not accidentally sabotage herself - like Cotillion, she was an apolitical professional, but Antonius did not think she had her patience and cool calmness.

Stephen had heard rumours that Blues had been planning on taking responsibility, but there was none of that in her direct examination. She twisted and turned, dodging blame and making herself out to have been completely unaware of anything. And it was extremely convincing - if Stephen had been told to take the first row, acquit one, and hang the rest, he would have picked Blues.

As he watched her testify, he couldn't help but compare her to Chaterhan. Blues was middle-class, Chaterhan - upper-class. Blues had not found the diet here to be much of a change and was still overweight, while Chaterhan was much diminished. Blues was a professional, Chaterhan was a businessperson. Blues did an excellent job of pretending to be a scatter-brained engineer, Chaterhan always appeared to be aware of everything. Blues was the slavedriver, Chaterhan the provider of the human material.

Just like Bright, Blues was prodded into admitting partial responsibility while under cross-examination. In the case of Bright, Stephen was reasonably sure that had been a sincere outburst, but Blues seemed to be more calculating. The way she phrased her admission was certainly very careful, admitting to as little as possible. Having been the Head Engineer of the Hunger Games, it would have been a stretch to continue totally denying responsibility for the deaths of the children forced into them, and it was obvious to all that she would be found guilty of that.

The prosecutor, Jurchenko of Four, tried to prod at that admission, but only got Blues to backtrack and resume blaming subordinates for everything. Unlike some others, she didn't try to defend anyone, instead listing off everyone's crimes. Most of these subordinates were conveniently dead on top of that. In what seemed to Stephen a rather blatant act of ingratitude, Blues blamed Chaterhan for the forced labourers after he had covered up for her. Jurchenko was not a very forceful prosecutor, which made it easy for Blues to stonewall him.

Twelve down (almost), twelve to go. Thumeka sat in the press room and ate lunch with Mikola and Jiao. The latter was showing off a poll she had done in the neighbourhood. "As you can see," she explained, "people who don't follow the trial much think everyone's going to be hanged, and people who do, think there will be a life sentence or two."

There was a large corkboard in the press room where people were laying bets on what would happen to which defendant. All of the trials were represented, making for a very crowded corkboard indeed. Thumeka had bet a dollar on a couple of defendants not being executed. Among them were Oldsmith, Bright, and Best. She was considering adding Blues to that list.

"Only one or two?" Mikola asked, lightly touching his bandaged nose. The other day, he had gotten into an argument with a street vendor selling the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' - and had been beaten up by the fervent believer in Mikola being personally at fault for everything from the crucifixion of Christ to the Cataclysm to the price of potatoes. He now had a broken nose and his wrist was bandaged. Poor Mikola wasn't used to living in a place where people just fought in the streets at the drop of a hat. "I think there's a solid chunk of us betting on half the front row not being executed."

Thumeka nodded. "On one hand, I can't imagine them sparing the lives of so many of the key defendants, but on the other hand, so far, this has been the least political political trial I've ever seen. I do wonder if they'll finish with the so-called Peacekeepers before them, though. That would be interesting, sentences-wise."

Jiao nodded. "They've let a few people live at Redcreek, but they were way more junior than the ones here." If no specific acts of murder could be proven, the guards could only be found guilty of conspiracy to murder, which was punishable with up to life imprisonment.

"I think they're going to have to acquit," Mikola said. "I read the entire transcript of the case against Delaire and her defense, I can't see how this is anything but mistaken identity." Thumeka had flipped through it - every single one of the witnesses brought against her had been unable to give conclusive proof that it was her who committed those crimes and eventually conceded that it was possible that it had not been Delaire.

Thumeka was not so optimistic. Having been in England after the civil war, she knew that the desire to get even was more important than justice. On the other hand, there had been no war crimes trials there. If Panem had one thing, why not go all the way and hope they would also have the other? "We'll see what the judges think. By the way, Jiao, aren't you worried we'll steal your poll?"

Jiao smiled. "Just sent off that article to the agency."

"Nice," Mikola said. He picked up a falafel and ate it in one bite. "Huh. Doesn't really taste like chickpeas." Today, lunch for the press consisted of noodles, falafel, and the omnipresent mixed canned fruit. The poor version of cosmopolitan. "I never thought I'd like Middle Eastern food."

"Ah, so you are planning on making aliyah," Thumeka joked. "Already getting used to the food in advance. That vendor yesterday didn't know what she was unleashing."

Mikola shook his head fervently. "Thirty-five degrees in the summer is bad enough, I won't survive living in a place that has heatwaves in the winter."

"And I can't imagine living in a place where the temperature jumps all over the thermometer," Thumeka said mournfully. "This place has good weather for two weeks in a year."

Jiao and Mikola laughed at her misfortune.

"So," Jiao said, "any of you going to bet on Chaterhan? I think way too many people think he'll be spared."

"You think he won't be?" Mikola asked. "I just don't see these judges deciding to hang an industrialist."

Jiao nodded. "Look, where I'm from, we've got our own Chaterhans. But if it got out that the government was using slave labourers supplied by a private corporation, there would have been an explosion."

"Because you have free press and fair elections," Thumeka reminded her. "I'm worried the judges will believe his claims that subordinates were at fault."

"There is no way they'll ignore all those documents," Jiao shot back, adroitly twirling some noodles around her chopsticks. "They deliberately picked judges known for their integrity. And if a judge in a dictatorship has integrity, that means that there is no force in the world that will make them stray from the letter of the law."

Mikola sighed, staring at his noodles as if they had personally offended him. "Chatterjee was a good puppet until he was pushed too far. So was Clemens. Mendez only ignored the telephone if the defendant was a rapist soldier. I don't even know why they picked Sprecher. Smith and Xia were picked because they fought, not because they were good judges."

"Not to mention that they were all very well-off people in an extremely rigid class system," Thumeka pointed out. "They're unlikely to show sympathy for some homeless person who was forced into digging tunnels."

Jiao shook her head, tapping her chopsticks against the table in a frantic rhythm. "I was looking at the collaborator trials out in the provinces. Even generally pliable judges turn out to be pretty good once the pressure is removed. It's the difference between going along with the flow and actually worming your way into the system."

That was the biggest problem plaguing Depuration efforts. Who would be able to thrive in a democracy and who would just poison it from the inside? So far, it seemed that people who had once applauded Snow now voted in elections and wrote letters to newspapers if they didn't like something - not something to make one optimistic about human nature. Adapting to a democracy after a dictatorship was apparently as easy as the other way around.

"But still, local functionaries are not remote industrialists," Thumeka said. "One is a petty nuisance, the other is a pillar of society or however the propaganda had it."

"I guess," Jiao said sadly, biting off a small piece of a noodle. "Thumeka, how's that book you were looking forward to reading?"

It was a book on North American society during the successor state period. Titled Outlived their Use: The Disappearance of Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia from the Former United States - And What Replaced Them, it was probably the best history of the era Thumeka had ever read. While it had an ostensibly narrow focus on specific prejudices, this lens allowed for many different facets of society to be covered, from law to diplomacy to religion. "Already finished it. It's amazing. This is going to be the definitive text on the time period for decades yet."

"Maybe you'll write the definitive text on Snow's regime," Jiao teased her.

Thumeka shrugged. She was a journalist, not a historian. Her job was to write the primary sources that would later be cited in academic books.

"So," Miroslav said. "Are you satisfied with what you said?"

Blues shrugged. "I suppose I am."

Privately, Miroslav was not too impressed, but it was much better than nothing. "What effect do you think this will have?"

"I don't know." Blues fidgeted with the hem of her sweater. "I said what I had to say. Let them do what they think is right."

"You admitted responsibility for-"

"-the Hunger Games. Yes." She sighed. "I can't dodge that one."

An amusing slip of the tongue - with everything else, there was someone who could be blamed, but there was no getting around the fact that she had enjoyed a very high position in the industry. "Why did you admit it on cross-examination, instead of doing it in a more controlled way under direct examination?" He had already asked that of Bright - the former general had not planned to admit anything but had cracked under the cross-examination.

"I backed out at the last moment," Blues said with a self-deprecating smile. "I saw my chance to present myself the way I wanted, and I was too worried an admission of responsibility would harm me. But then, under cross-examination, I realized that a blanket denial would be a lie."

"You seemed to back off a little bit after that."

"Of course. Jurchenko tried to tie everything in the world to me." Her face fell. "I don't want to die, Doctor. But I guess there's no avoiding that."

Miroslav remembered that she was younger than him, if only by a few years. "You think you're going to die?"

Blues nodded. "That was my plan. Say everything about that den of snakes and be what may. But now that I'm done, it's like I'm on a slow train going towards a cliff and can't jump off. I'm scared, Doctor." She clutched the collar of her sweater. "I don't want to die."

Miroslav had gotten quite a bit of practice in the past months of consoling someone who was going to die soon. He suspected he would get even more in the next few months.

"I will not vote for Blues' death, and that's that," Juan declared, dumping a pinch of saccharine into his chicory. "You really think that her position automatically makes her guilty?"

"Of conspiracy to commit murder, yes. Add in the aggravating circumstances of her presence at various planning conference and active participation in coming up with the design of the Arenas, as well as the fact that she's not on trial for conspiracy to commit murder but for conspiring to carry out and carrying out the Hunger Games, and I don't see how I can vote for anything but death."

Juan shook his head and pushed his laptop aside to sit more comfortably. They were sitting on the living room couch. Blues had finished her cross-examination with several hours remaining in the day, but Raymond had wanted to give Lark's defense team extra time to prepare, and privately, all the judges needed a break. "By those standards, anyone who worked on the Games can be executed."

"They're not on trial here. Blues is."

"The prosecution barely mentioned the Games. It was all the forced labourers, and I'm not convinced by their case there."

"Me neither," Dora had to admit as she leafed through the transcript. There had been no photographic or convincing witness evidence of Blues with the workers, which gave her plausible deniability when it came to knowledge of the conditions. Her claims that underlings had dealt with those sorts of issues were hard to dismiss with so little evidence to the contrary. The one thing they could definitely pin on her was the knowledge that the workers were slaves. Slave labour was a crime against humanity. But would the other judges agree to hang her for that? "Would you agree to hang on Count Four alone?"

Juan shook his head. "She only used the forced labourers that had been given to her."

"We are not re-arguing that one again." The one time there was a solid precedent, and it was a topic of contention in legal circles.

"No, really," Juan insisted, putting his cup on the side table. "If anything, it's the reverse. Chaterhan, the all-powerful industrialist, lends the middle-class upstart Blues some slaves."

"As one does," Dora said sarcastically.

Juan laughed. "Welcome to Panem. In any case, Chaterhan was more powerful than Blues. She couldn't order him around or tell him to pay the workers. She didn't make her own decisions, only carried out the decisions of others."

"That is not true," Dora said. "Had she wanted to, the workers would have been paid in practice, not just in theory. She was the one with supreme authority on the construction sites." She picked up her cup of tea and took a sip. It tasted very good. "What do you want for her?"

"Term of years."

Dora didn't bother trying to hide her shock. "Only a term of years?"

Juan drank some chicory to gain a few extra seconds to think. "I know. She's only thirty-seven - she could get out even if given fifty years."

"You can't base your decisions off age," Dora warned him.

"Oh yes I can," Juan shot back. "If I think that two people deserve to spend half their life in prison and one's twenty and the other's sixty, I'm not going to give both of them forty years. If someone is eighty and I don't want to give them life, I'll err on the side of a shorter sentence."

"In what context were the sentencing guidelines so loose?"

"In many. Not all of us saw 'up to life imprisonment' and interpreted it as automatic life."

He was right, as much as it galled Dora to admit it. "So, what do you want to achieve with Blues?"

"I don't know," Juan admitted. "I think life imprisonment is too much, but I can't imagine her being allowed to walk free." He took a deep breath. "Though that's just my disdain of her showing. I think that she deserves twenty years."

Twenty years? Even the two of them could still be alive in twenty years. "You really think that her guilt for the Games is so small?"

Juan spread out his arms. "We're not using regular categories of killing because of how poorly they apply to the Hunger Games. Every comparison we make is going to be like pulling an owl onto a globe." Dora chuckled at the simile. "All she did was build the slaughterhouse-"

Dora looked up suddenly, realizing a precedent they could use. "-and that can be a capital crime." She desperately tried to remember which trial it had been. "It's not a perfect one-to-one analogy, but Bruno Tesch was executed for, basically, that." Granted, the case of the seller of Zyklon B had been the rare exception.

"You think that's a good precedent?" Juan said, making a face - he knew what she was referring to. "That's a very different kind of human slaughterhouse."

"Actually," Dora said, "if anything, Blues can't claim she had no idea what the Arenas were for."

Juan nearly spat chicory onto the expensive carpet. "I guess," he said uneasily. "But I think that the situations are too different."

"We'll have to see what the others think," Dora said, drinking her tea. It was getting colder and colder.

"Oh, that'll be fun." Juan was looking up the case she had referred to on his laptop. "I can't wait. Do you think Rosalinda will finally open her mouth? A kilo of chocolate on her staying silent."

Dora laughed - the judge from Nine did tend towards taciturnity and seldom spoke, to the point where Dora barely knew the woman. "Well, that's something to look forward to, at least."

"Fun," Juan said again.

Dora had always made her decisions alone. She wasn't looking forward to arguing with the others over whether someone deserved to live or die. "I wouldn't call it fun." This was already the longest trial she had ever presided over. Like it or not, she could not help but feel like she knew the defendants. The press would be shocked to find out that it would take her effort to vote to hang.

A/N: 'Roll Up the Rim' is an actual thing done by a major chain of coffee shops in Canada. Alas, they have switched to QR codes you have to scan instead of having the result on the inside of the rim.

The endless McCollum streets are inspired by the Lenin streets in every single Belarusian village. At time of writing, there is a giant statue of Lenin on Minsk's central square.