Nine years. The prosecution had asked for ten. Irma glared at the jury. Who had decided that District people could sit in a jury of her peers, anyway? One of them glared back at her, and Irma dropped her eyes. A guard cuffed her and led her back to her cell. "You will be moved in a few hours," she said, and left, slamming the door behind her.

Nine years. Almost a decade. Less than half than her luckiest co-defendants, and she would be serving it in the regular prison system, so at least there was that. Irma had no idea how prisons worked, aside from her own experiences and the testimony she had heard during the trial. Would she be kept locked up all day, like in Thirteen? She'd go insane if that happened. What would the food be like? The guards? Would she be allowed to be visited by family?

Her musings were broken off by the door opening. Irma was handcuffed and led to a minivan, where she was shackled to the floor and several other women. Soon, there were six of them, all younger than her, though it was Irma who felt like a fish out of water. They sat on the uncomfortable bench and fidgeted around as the cuffs bit into skin.

"Well," one of them said, "at least we're going to prison now." She looked to be no older than twenty or twenty-two, with pale skin and brown hair.

Irma was taken aback. "What?" she asked. Wasn't prison supposed to be worse?

"Have you never been to prison before?" the young woman asked sympathetically.

"Well, technically I was, but that's because Thirteen doesn't really differentiate between jail and prison," Irma explained. Were these women common criminals or Games criminals like her?

Another woman, only a little bit older and with darker skin and hair, spoke up. "Well, it's much nicer in prison, you'll see. Especially with the reforms now." The van began to move.

"I can't wait to get my hair properly done," said a thirty-something woman with hair like Irma's, but much longer.

"You can get your hair done in prison?" Irma asked incredulously. "During my trial, they just buzz-cut it every once in a while."

"How long was your trial?" asked the first woman.

"Well, the one that got me convicted was a day long, but my first one was nine months long, not counting the time I spent behind bars here and in Thirteen," Irma explained. "Can you really watch television in prison? That's awesome. When I was in Thirteen, they just kept me in this coffin-sized cell for weeks, twenty-four hours a day."

The women looked shocked. "Did you steal food?" one of them asked with a distinct Thirteen accent. "I stole food a few times, but they just beat me for a day or so and then assigned me to the worst jobs."

Irma shook her head. "No, it's because I'm the most senior surviving propagandist."

Everyone stared at her. Probably not Games criminals, then. The woman from Thirteen leaned back slightly, as if trying to get farther away from her. "It's illegal to be a propagandist?" the pale young woman asked.

"No," Irma explained, "they found me guilty of carrying out the Hunger Games, even though I just explained what was going on."

"Huh," the pale young woman said. "I had a cousin who was a political. He was smart, not like me."

The ride became bumpier, and Irma grimaced as the cuffs bit deeper into her skin. It was impossible to hold on to the bench, and the only thing stopping her from falling off were the cuffs. She pushed up a cuff, and realized that she was bleeding. One of the women, light-skinned and with narrow eyes, looked down at the floor and sighed loudly. Fortunately, the ride was soon over. The six women were unshackled from the floor and led into a small, grey room, where they were photographed and made to sign a bunch of papers. Irma was pleasantly surprised to discover that they would be strip-searched separately, and not in front of each other. She was even happier when the woman performing the search handed her a small cup of delousing shampoo and told her to shower.

This was already shaping up to be much better than the trial. Irma quickly washed herself with the hot water, which stung her bloody wrists. She was then bandaged and allowed to get dressed in the provided clothes. Underwear, a long-sleeved shirt, thin trousers, and slip-on shoes, all of it light-grey and stamped with 'Woodheights Corrections Institution', the name of the prison she was in. It certainly sounded a lot better than 'Inter-District Supermaximum Security Prison', where eight of her co-defendants were now residing. The photograph of her on her ID badge, which was clipped to her chest, made her look about fourteen years old.

The six women were handed a stack of spare clothes, a towel, a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, and a comb (everyone got one suited for their hair texture; prison was shaping up to be downright chill), as well as a blue armband for some reason. Another prisoner, a woman around Irma's age, came in to explain the rules. They would all be staying in the minimum security wing, which meant they would be able to work and earn money and also attend classes.

The punishments for various infractions sounded very mild. Before, Irma had heard all sorts of jokes about being beaten in prison, but there was none of that here. Irma decided that she didn't want to think about the conditions in the Supermax.

There were a variety of jobs they could do. Inside the prison they could clean, work in the cafeteria or the workshops, or teach classes, and outside they could work in reconstruction. Unskilled indoor work paid minimum wage and outdoor - a dollar more, but if you worked as a teacher or in admin that improved your chances at early release much more. They could sign up for classes after two months with no rule-breaking.

Then, the rules were finally explained, though they were mostly common sense. No fighting, no screaming at each other or the guards, no smuggling things in and out, no paying each other to do anything, no skipping work or class, no sex with the guards, no stealing, no drugs, no loud music or television playing, and a whole bunch of other stuff that Irma simply couldn't keep in her mind. They were helpfully given a large document containing all the rules and regulations. "That armband means you've been here for less than two weeks, so that if you go to the wrong place or at the wrong time the guards will be more lenient."

Irma flipped through the large document, taking it all in. She had been a Literature TA for a semester back in university. Maybe she could teach again here. Before that, though, maybe she could sign up for a reconstruction detail and earn some money. Her parents were pensioners, they'd appreciate it. "You can do pretty much whatever you want with your money." Four of the other women grinned as they looked at each other, but the one from Thirteen just looked confused. "You can put it in a savings account - they'll set one up for you - you can send it to family, and, of course, you can buy things at the commissary." Irma looked at the brief list of things. Things were more expensive than they had been before, but not having to worry about rent or food really freed up her finances.

After the presentation was over, the six women were taken to their new cells with a reminder that their caseworker would meet with them in the next few days. As they walked, Irma stared around herself with awe. After Thirteen and the trial, it was hard to believe that normal prison was so...normal. Irma was pointed to cell MNS019, which already contained a woman about her age. She walked inside, awkwardly waving a greeting. "This cell is massive!" she exclaimed, taking it all in. There were real blankets on the two cots, there were two little cupboards and a stand for the television which was currently playing a rerun of an old show, and the toilet/sink had a curtain. Irma put her things on the free cot and stared around. Maybe prison wouldn't be so bad after all.

"Hello, new roommate," the other woman said. "I'm Kia. Where were you before this?" She had light skin and hair only a little bit more curly than Irma's, but it was trimmed into a neat puff with a small braid at the front preventing it from getting in her face.

"I'm Irma. I've been all over. First I was in a basement in the suburbs, then I was in a torture cell in Thirteen, then I was in a Justice Building in the suburbs, then I was in lockup for a brief while, and now I'm here." Now that she was saying it, it sounded completely crazy, even to her own ears.

Kia blinked. "Are you one of the Games people?" she asked.

"Uh, yes. I'm Irma Slice. You might have seen me on the television."

"That explains it." Noticing how Irma was staring at everything she added, "There've been reforms since the fighting ended - this place used to be maximum security, actually. Now, we're paid minimum wage instead of being Chaterhan's personal property, the guards don't beat us up every chance they get, we take useful classes instead of having to listen to propaganda while doing work in our cells, and nobody's dying of TB or typhus. Though if you like the conditions here, you must have been in the pits of hell before."

Irma shrugged. "In Thirteen, I was kept in a cell so small, I could touch all of the walls simultaneously. The light was impossibly bright. During the trial, I had to sleep with my hands above my blankets even though it was freezing cold because the warden was paranoid about suicide. We were watched every second."

"Well," Kia said, "you're here now. You can turn off the lights whenever you want - I personally like to watch television until twenty or twenty-one, but if you want, I can keep it muted."

"That's very nice of you," Irma said. "Um, I was wondering, what am I supposed to do today?"

"We're going for dinner soon, and then there will be two hours of rec time if you want. Were you explained how things work here?"

Irma held up the packet of rules and regulations. "Yeah," she said, "but I bet there's tons of stuff they didn't include."

"You bet," Kia said with a laugh. "First thing - as soon as you can, buy flip-flops for the shower and conditioner. Where are you planning on working?"

"Outside for now, and then I was thinking about teaching. I was a TA back in university when I was working on my Master's," Irma explained.

Kia nodded appreciatively. "A TA? We'll have to look into having you teach one of the advanced academic classes. Not that many people in here with a Master's. When are you going to see your caseworker?"

"Soon, whatever that means."

"Well, just keep in mind that the caseworkers are busy as fuck securing the release of those of us unjustly convicted under Snow. If yours doesn't fall asleep halfway through the session, consider yourself lucky."

Irma had never heard about that, though in hindsight, it made sense. Ninety percent of those convicted on some sort of property-damage charges had simply drawn an anti-Games slogan somewhere. "That makes sense. There were so many political prisoners, after all."

"Not just political," Kia said. "I was sent here after I killed a man who tried to rape me. Since I was poor and he was rich, here I am, twenty-five years later. I get out in sixteen days." She sighed, lacing her fingers together.

"Yeah, that's how it worked back then," Irma said awkwardly. Connections had been everything under Snow. "So, uh, any more advice?"

"Don't mess with anyone, but if they mess with you, don't take any of their shit. Otherwise, they'll harass you for forever. Most people here are chill, but you never know." Irma gulped. She had wrestled back in highschool, but that had been more than twenty years ago. "Do you know anything about fighting?"

"Why would people want to fight me?" she asked. "Is it because I was a journalist with the government?"

"Partially," Kia said. "All of the clear-cut politicals are out of here by now, but there's plenty of people in here because of the regime"

"Is everyone going to know me?"

"Not on sight, but you were on the television constantly, and it's probably all over the place that one of the key criminals is here." Kia sat down on her cot, and Irma did likewise.

"I was found not guilty," Irma grumbled. "And in any case, they took phrases out of context. I wasn't some sort of firebrand agitator, burning with hate. That was Lark!" Kia said nothing.

"Um, what do you do here?" she asked, changing the topic.

Kia raised an eyebrow but still answered the question. "I work in the administration, running the classes. I got the afternoon off to help you get settled in. Also, it's time for dinner."

As they walked down the corridors, Irma felt more and more nervous. Would someone try to fight her? She tried to assume a self-assured pose, back straight, head up, hands by her sides. In the queue for dinner, a bunch of women waved at Kia. Clearly, she was quite popular here.

"A new roomie just weeks before release?" asked a pale woman in her mid-thirties with braids of the sort Irma had used to wear, though her hair was light-brown.

Kia smiled. "I'll show her the ropes before peacing out. Irma, this is Katia. Katia, Irma."

"I used to have braids like that," Irma told Katia. She touched her messy short hair self-consciously. "If you want, you can sign up to have your hair done. We've got professionals here. Something about teaching people useful skills." Irma remembered the woman in the van who was planning to have her hair done here. The idea of a hair salon in a prison still seemed strange, but Irma wasn't complaining. "The wait list is two weeks long, though."

"That sounds nice." Before, Irma had pulled strings to let her family skip queues and wait lists. Two weeks had been several times shorter than anything they had had to deal with.

The queue slowly crept forward. Eventually, Irma was given a portion of vegetable stew (with sauce!), a wedge of loaf bread, a handful of canned fruit, and a cup of water. The stew turned out to taste infinitely better than during the trial, though the portion was still quite small, due to rationing. Irma sat at a long table with Kia, Katia, and a few others. Everyone knew who she was, and demanded stories.

"What were the guards like?"

"Not professional," Irma said as she ate the stew. "They were all very young and swapped chocolate for autographs. Also, they blasted Don't Lock Me Away at insane hours of the night, chatted with us constantly, and only stopped messing around when the warden was there."

"We followed the trial on the television," Katia said. "You deserved to be found not guilty. Why were you even there in the first place?"

"Because everyone more higher-ranking than me offed themselves, and Lark could only represent Lark, because he was Lark."

Everyone laughed at that. Prison was shaping up to be easier than highschool.

The next day, Kia went to work and walked Irma to the meeting with the caseworker at the same time. The caseworker turned out to be an exhausted middle-aged pale man blankly staring at a computer screen. When he noticed her, though, it was as if someone flipped a switch. "Good morning!" he said enthusiastically. "Come on in and sit down!" Irma sat. "Now, you're Irma Slice?" Irma nodded. "I'm Charlie, your caseworker. Are you aware of the opportunities you have here?"

"Yeah," Irma said. "I can work and stuff. It's honestly kind of awesome."

Charlie looked at her strangely. "I forgot," he said, shaking his head slightly, and the expression disappeared from his face. "Yes, you can work. Where would you like to work?"

"I was thinking outside, and then teach. My roommate says I'm qualified to teach anything academic. I guess I'd also want to take some, uh, non-academic classes."

"Sounds good to me," Charlie said, typing something in on his laptop. "I'll get you signed up for reconstruction detail. Keep in mind that you need to stay out of trouble for two months before you can teach or take classes."

"I never had any disciplinary problems or anything since middle school. I think I can stay out of trouble."

"Since middle school?" Charlie asked, frowning. "There's no record of you ever being suspended or expelled."

"When I was little, I used to steal things all the time, and sometimes I got caught," Irma explained. "It ended when I got caught going through a teacher's purse in grade eight. I was in state school at the time, my parents had gone into huge debt to pay for it, so admin told me I'd be expelled if anything else happened. That scared me into following the rules."

"You were incredibly lucky they didn't expel you then and there," Charlie said, shaking his head. "I've heard of kids getting sent to closed institutions for less."

"It was state school, not public school. They wanted that final tuition check any way they could."

"That makes sense, I suppose." Charlie took a sip of his hot water. "Now, I know it's been a long time since then, but I'm still going to warn you. This place can bring out the worst in anyone."

"I've never had a slip-up since I was thirteen," Irma said with a sigh. Why had she even brought up middle school? That had been decades ago. "I'm sure I can keep it up."

"Excellent! Now, who do you want on your list of visitors? Three names for now. Same goes for phone calls." One half-hour phone call a week was free, more cost fifty cents per minute, unless there was documentation proving that it was an emergency, and Irma didn't even want to think about how much of a hassle it would be to get that documentation.

Three names? "Well, I guess my parents and uncle." Irma gave their names. She had last seen them a few days before being acquitted at the trial of the key criminals. It must have been so hard for them, to be given hope and then have it be snatched away.

After the meeting was over, Irma was directed to the library, which was apparently also a new addition, and took out a few books before going back to her cell. For the rest of the day, she read and watched the television. She'd need to ask Kia about where she could work out in here.

Irma woke up at her usual time, which was convenient, as it was also the wake-up time for the reconstruction detail. She quickly brushed her teeth with her toothbrush and Kia's toothpaste, pulled on the warm sweater, and stepped out into the corridor. The women were fitted with tracking anklets and led to buses. They weren't shackled, but a guard pulled aside several women including Irma and warned them of the consequences of trying to run away. Irma gulped, and nodded.

The bus was quite large, with moderately comfortable seats and papered-over windows. Irma found herself sitting next to another inmate with the blue armband, a young woman with dark skin and long straight hair. "I know you," the young woman said.

"I know," Irma replied with a smile. "During the trial I faded into the background, but now, I'm a celebrity all of a sudden."

It turned out that the young woman's name was Alyssa, she had just turned nineteen, and she had sold drugs with her boyfriend. Under Snow she would have been in prison for life, but now, she was only looking at five years. "I can't believe we'll be earning actual minimum wage," Irma said. "When I was in highschool I worked in retail, and we earned three dollars an hour."

"You worked in retail?" Alyssa asked. "I've actually never worked before," she added with a strange inflection in her voice.

Irma had no idea how to react. "Well, you'll be making good money," she said.

"That's the hope." Alyssa glanced at her. "Do you know why they're called Inter-District Military Tribunals when there are barely any military people on them?"

"Sorry, no." Only the judge from Thirteen had been in uniform.

"What was it like?"

"What was what like?"

"The trial. I saw bits and pieces on the television. It looked very different from a normal political trial."

Irma wasn't sure how to summarize the past year and a half. "It's a long story," she said, running a hand over her hair.

"We've got plenty of time," Alyssa replied in an upbeat voice. Irma nodded, and began to talk.

"It was an entirely different world," Irma said with a sigh. "It wasn't even a political trial in the strict sense of the word, because it was far too fair for that. Sometimes I felt like I was in a particularly absurd tragicomedy."

"Why?"

Alyssa's curiosity made her smile. "Have you ever heard of political trials with defendants of such a calibre that ended in an acquittal?"

"Well, no.." Alyssa fidgeted with her armband. "What was it like to sit next to all those people?"

"It seemed normal at the time." Irma thought back to the trial, which was already feeling like an eternity ago. "Sometimes, though, I realized just how out of place I was, and then it felt downright surreal."

The bus reached its destination with only a brief pause as someone needed to go to the bathroom. Even in this, prison was way better than the trial. There, the guards had all acted like the defendants were trying to mess with them on purpose, but here, the driver stopped and a guard stood up from her place without a word of complaint. When they arrived, they were counted, checked against a list, and only then led out into a scene of devastation. Irma had seen similar scenery from the windows, but actually standing in the Capitol's most destroyed neighbourhood was an entirely different thing.

Even now, years after the fighting, a few of the neighbourhoods were completely unlivable, and little effort was being put into fixing them. Irma saw buildings missing an entire wall, craters in the ground, and piles of rubble that still concealed bodies. She could smell the sharp stench of disinfectant. The overpowering odour made her want to cry.

All around milled civilian workers. Whenever their gazes fell on one of the women, they immediately looked away. Irma's face felt hot, and she looked at the ground. Trying to distract herself, she followed the lead of everyone else and began to sort through piles of brick looking for ones that could still be used. Others sat on the ground and cleaned cement off them. Irma approached a man who was stacking clean bricks onto a pallet, but he took one glance at her and fled. Was it because he had recognized her or because of the uniform? Feeling very awkward, Irma took over his job and continued stacking bricks.

It was monotonous but at least she was outside, and the lunch they got was a much bigger portion than yesterday. It still didn't look like enough to regain the weight she had lost since her initial arrest, but at least it was something.

"You shouldn't eat so fast," one of the women told her. "The slower you eat, the less time you have to spend working."

Irma shrugged. "I've always eaten like this." She had no idea what had made her eat like her food would soon be taken away.

"Slow down. You have half an hour of break, use it."

"Uh, alright." Irma tried to eat her potatoes, beans, and microscopic bits of chicken more slowly.

The next week, Irma got paid. Seven hundred and twenty-eight dollars, a huge sum for someone who didn't need to pay rent. Irma bought herself flip-flops for the shower, which varied from spotless to atrocious depending on the time of day, as well as hair products and snacks. Due to rationing there wasn't much besides very old canned goods and snack cakes and the prices were exorbitant (thirty dollars for a stale piece of chocolate the size of her pinky?!), but even though Irma sent half her money to her parents and put a quarter into her savings account, she still ended up with extra. She left it on her day-to-day account, so she could buy a television once Kia was released. Maybe she could even buy a nice television.

Hair more-or-less properly washed (she couldn't wait to get it properly done), Irma sat down on her cot and leaned back against her moderately soft pillow to watch the news with Kia.

"Hello, class!" Irma said. Fifteen women stared back at her. One was cuffed to the desk and the floor. "I'll be taking over from Lina. Could you please introduce yourselves? I don't know all of you." She would never remember any of them, of course, but it was the sort of thing instructors were supposed to do.

After that was finished, Irma asked, "What exactly were you on?"

"Chapter five," someone called out. "We literally just finished discussing chapter four yesterday."

Irma would have preferred tutoring university students, as that was what she was actually qualified to do, but one exam and two training sessions later, she was assigned to teach highschool Lit. Irma herself had never read that specific book before, as it had been banned, but she had read it and the other two books they'd cover later during the past week and passed the exam with flying colours. The idea of leading discussions felt strange, as discussion had not been allowed when she had been in highschool, or for that matter university, but hopefully she'd do alright. "Alright," she said. "Can I have a volunteer to read?" she asked, finding the right page in her copy of The Grapes of Wrath, which was held together with tape. The prison library, one of the reforms, was made up of donations.

Nobody raised a hand. "Uh, don't you want participation marks?"

Everyone raised their hand. "Alright, how about we all go around the room." The first woman began to read, and then the next. As soon as they reached a place Irma had highlighted, she paused them and asked the question. They were the best class she had ever seen, all willing and eager to participate, to the point where half the class was just them talking and sharing. One of them, wrists cuffed to the desk in such a way that turning a page or holding a pencil was hard, had to gesture with her head instead of raising her head. A few days ago, she had punched another inmate who had allegedly stolen her conditioner.

When the clock signalled the end of class, Irma called a halt and wrote two questions on the board. "Alright, for homework, read the rest of the chapter and answer these questions." The guard unlocked the shackled woman from the desk and led her off. The others also filed out. Irma sagged against the board. How could talking about a book be so exhausting?

Irma noticed the words splashed across the cover of the magazine, and immediately went to snatch it up. She sat down on the overstuffed couch, desperate to know anything about her former co-defendants. Life in the Supermax! the cover proclaimed. Irma flipped to the right page. Noticing her intensity, a few of her friends drifted away from their table tennis game (playing without a net and with broken paddles was hard, but doable) and sat down next to her, reading over her shoulder.

Key criminals reap what they had sown! went the byline. "Wow," Katia said. "You sure got lucky they didn't try to send you there. That's almost as bad as what we had before."

The good people of Panem can rest easy knowing that the key criminals and other malefactors of the old regime are being subjected to the strictest letter of the law. According to several guards and wardens, the conditions the currently forty-two inmates live in are nothing less than harsh. They live in solitary confinement, with lights that never go off, not even at night. They do not have as much as a television to provide them with entertainment, though they are allowed to get a few books from a very limited selection. Their days are spent performing heavy labour in the yard, and they aren't allowed to speak to each other at all. The slightest infraction can be punished with up to a month of total solitary, a punishment so cruel it has been banned in the ordinary prison system.

Each prisoner is referred to by only their number, which is painted on their back and knees. Using names is strictly forbidden, even in intra-prison communications. Prisoners must ask permission before speaking to a warden (they may not talk to anyone else), and they must take off their caps whenever a warden or guard approaches. They are allowed to write one short letter weekly, and it is very heavily censored to prevent any secret communications. No phone calls are allowed, though they are allowed one half-hour visit from one person every two months, which is strictly monitored to prevent prisoners from talking about the recent past or prison conditions. Prisoners are always separated from their visitor by a pane of bulletproof glass. Parcels are likewise banned, and their food intake is very limited. For as long as they perform the hard manual work required of them, the women eat 1800 and the men - 2200 calories a day, but the amount will shrink by 400 for those incapable of doing so.

All of the staff who interact with the prisoners have been carefully trained to prevent them from feeling any possible sympathy. Four orderlies monitor the prisoners' health and watch out for dangerous levels of weight loss, and a staff of doctors is always on standby. None of the Supermaxers will be able to take the easy way out. They will remain in their tiny cells until they reach the end of their natural lifespan or their sentence is up.

"The article uses loaded words," Irma said. "It's not as bad as it appears."

"Really?" Katia asked. "They're not allowed to talk to each other, it says so right there."

"And total solitary?" Emmy added. She was a short woman in her fifties who never spoke about the past. "I had to go through that a few times. I don't know how I survived." Total solitary meant never being allowed out of your cell and not being allowed to read books or watch television.

"It's bad," Irma admitted, "but not as bad as it appears. 'Up to' a month of solitary confinement, and if the guards are anything like at my trial, they're not going to actually enforce the rules. Remember, these aren't professionals. Ours were also drilled about how to treat the so-called 'key criminals', and they were swapping autographs for candy the next day." She looked at the illustration, a pencil sketch of a woman whose back was turned. The back of her shirt showed a prominent '9', her practically shaven head was bowed, and she was holding her cap under one arm. "I mean, if max is twenty-three hours in your cell, then this doesn't really sound like supermax."

Emmy leaned back against the couch. "I bet it's because of the heavy labour," she said. "If they don't work, then they stay in their cell twenty-four hours a day. Without a television, without even being able to shout at each other through the grille."

"Well, they are the key criminals," Gretel said. She was the woman from Thirteen Irma had been brought here with. "And Peacekeepers, and Gamemakers. If you ask me, the whole pack of them can rot." She looked back at the newspaper she was reading. "They should consider themselves lucky they weren't strung up from the nearest lamppost."

"Still," Emmy said, "this is way out there. But I guess they should be grateful they aren't being beaten." While the ordinary Capitolians didn't exactly care about the former elites, given the stark inequality that had reigned supreme under Snow, the former Rebels were much more vehement. Irma considered herself lucky that Gretel was willing to be friends with her, but then again, she had been found not guilty at the trial. Most of the other Games criminals tended to shun her, as if afraid her status as an indicted key criminal would rub off on them somehow. They had all been tried directly by the Depuration courts. While those found guilty at an Inter-District Committee trial went into the regular system if their sentences were less than five years long, they were for some reason gathered at a different prison, maybe in an attempt to keep them all in one place. They were also joined by the majority of those in Irma's situation. "Hey, Irma, what are you thinking about?"

Irma snapped out of her thoughts. "Oh, just wondering why I'm here and not at Townhome."

"Because the bureaucracy is too dumb to tell you were tried by an IDC trial at one point," Kia explained.

"Well, probably." The trial had never had any issues with paperwork, but then again, maybe they had spent so much effort on it, they didn't have any energy remaining for anything else.

Irma had literally just turned on her television when the door opened, and a woman wearing a blue armband shuffled in. "Good morning," Irma said, but the woman flopped onto her cot without answering. "Um, what's wrong?"

"Wrong meds again," the woman grunted. She was very pale, with limp brown hair gathered into a shoulder-length ponytail. "I'm Cyn, by the way."

"That's terrible," Irma said. "Should I mute the television so you can sleep? I have to go to work soon, anyway. Oh, and I'm Irma."

"Nah," said Cyn, turning over. "I'm not really tired, I just feel like I'm gonna puke." She sat up against the wall. "Last month, though, that was when I just slept all day. Ended up sleeping through my hearing."

"That's terrible," Irma said again.

"Yeah, yeah. I've been here before, spare me the lecture. I like your braids."

Irma twirled a braid around her finger. "Thanks. I got my hair done yesterday."

Cyn said nothing after that, blankly watching the morning news. "There's gotta be something more interesting than this," she grunted after the morning trial coverage began.

"You got a favourite channel?" Irma asked, reluctantly getting up and walking to the television. She wanted to know what was going on at the Ministers' Trial, but she also wanted to do something nice for Cyn.

"Echo-Net."

"Alright," Irma said, adjusting the dial to the Echo Network, which played reruns of old series and nothing else. Right now, it was playing a soap opera that had been dated when Irma had been young. "If you want, I've got some snacks here. Crackers and stuff." She also had a pack of dried noodles, which has cost her a mind-boggling seventy dollars instead of the one (maybe three or four, but that was the high-end stuff) that it should have, but she was saving that for her birthday next month.

"Nah," Cyn said, and fell silent.

The television began to show a concert. Irma hummed along to the song until she realized what the lyrics were.

Oh, give me land, lots of land, and the starry skies above

Don't fence me in

Let me ride through the wide open country that I love

Don't fence me in

Let me be by myself in the evening breeze

And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees

Send me off forever but I ask you please

Don't fence me in

"Ouch," Irma said as the song continued. "That's as bad as Don't Lock Me Away." Cyn said nothing, continuing to stare at the screen blankly.

Cyn didn't get up when it was time for breakfast, but Irma hadn't expected her to. Fortunately, the television in the cafeteria was playing the news. Apparently, someone at an IDC trial had punched the person sitting next to them, but she didn't catch any more details than that, unfortunately.

If someone had punched Lark, or at least Dovek, that would have made everyone's year, or maybe even life. Irma giggled silently at the mental image of Chaterhan, the prim and proper industrialist, snapping and decking the loathsome propagandist Lark, and dug into her macaroni and cheese, which was very skimpy on the cheese, and indeed on the macaroni as well. There seemed to be no end to rationing, despite huge shipments of humanitarian aid from abroad.

After breakfast, Irma went to her carpentry class. She would have preferred to teach Lit full-time instead, but even a single class left her utterly drained (and in any case nobody would ever let her teach after she left here), so carpentry, cooking, and law it was. She also had to take a special class once a week. Since she had been convicted of hate speech and incitement, Irma had to sit with a bunch of women, who were mostly very minor Games criminals, and discuss the importance of inclusion, equity, and social justice. She felt completely out of place there, and the inmate who led it was either delusional or thought too highly of humanity. Carpentry, or even cooking, was much easier.

Irma hoped to become an actual carpenter. According to Charlie, nobody would prohibit her from that, and a carpenter made way more money than a coffee shop cashier or something, even if it would take her a year of perfect behaviour until she could join a work release program as an apprentice and actually start earning money, and four more years of apprenticeship after that.

As she sat in the classroom and breezed through the assigned calculations, she wondered what her parents would think of that. They had been so proud when she had gotten into state school and then into university. They had bragged for years about their successful journalist daughter. Would they be disappointed that she was working with her hands now, just like Mom had? Irma wondered how to present that to them.

At the end of the day, her resume would either end up saying 'Nine years as a food court worker at a government institution' or 'Journeyperson carpenter, four years' experience with a government institution.' Nothing else really struck her as something she wanted to do. Cooking was just a useful skill, especially since she wouldn't be allowed into a position of responsibility outside (ironically, the politicals were once again worse off than the criminals, who were only barred from certain types of work and often temporarily), and everyone took some sort of law class here. At least she didn't have to take classes on financial literacy and how to find a job, as she already knew all that stuff. Not that such phrasing would make her parents happy, of course.

After the class, she had to go to the cafeteria and prepare lunch. Irma dutifully wrote down that there were a few specks of black mold on the wall by an oven. The administration, being complaint- and inmate death-fearing, had declared a holy war on the nuisance, but it was a pain to get rid of. The ventilation needed replacing, but there was only space in the budget for it the following year, so disinfectant it was.

Irma chopped sad-looking vegetables and tossed them into large pots. At least there was the opportunity to sneak food here, though some of the guards didn't look the other way and tended to write up the women who tried. Since the one supervising her right now was chill, Irma snuck a piece of bread, which had come from the freezer and tasted like cardboard.

Once lunch was over, Irma had to clean up. The hot water was terrible for her skin, but that was what hand cream was for. She rubbed it into her hands as she walked back to her cell to pick up her things for the Lit class, remembering how once, she had applied cream to her aching hands after a long session of rock climbing. The calluses forming on her hands now were in different places than before, though. How could her own hands feel strange to her?

When she got to the classroom, one of her students wasn't there. Irma suspected Velia was not sick but was suffering from the effects of tainted drugs. Suspicious sickness aside, the lesson went well, though Irma had to sit down for a few minutes and let her students discuss among themselves. Leading a discussion was utterly exhausting. Fortunately, the class soon ended, and after more math (she had never realized how much math was involved in carpentry) and dinner, Irma queued at the commissary with the twenty-one dollars she had left over from that week, after sending a chunk to her parents and depositing another into her savings account.

It sucked to have so little money, especially after how much she had earned during the first two months, but in a few years, she would be earning fifteen dollars an hour, and working outside the prison to boot. Irma bought a large bottle of her favourite conditioner for twenty dollars. When she got her braids re-done, they never had the conditioner she preferred, so bringing her own was easier. A dollar extra was left in her day-to-day account. All in all, not too bad.

Irma dropped off the conditioner in her cell next to Cyn's (good thing they had such different hair; someone was always getting punched over accusations of stealing beauty products), carefully laying out all her hair things. It was nice to have properly done hair again, even if her braids were still quite short. As she walked to the gym, Irma fidgeted with her braids. Her old habit was back with a vengeance.

At the gym, several extremely buff shirtless women nodded to Irma as she went through her stretches and dumbbell exercises. One spotted her when she moved on to the bench press, lifting the bar Irma had failed to bench even once with seemingly no effort. Irma ran through her routine, moving on to bodyweight exercises and wrestling moves. She wished she could join one of the martial arts classes, but you needed two years without being written up for fighting even once to get into that, for obvious reasons.

She then jogged around the yard, putting the shoes her parents had sent her to good use. The ones the prison had issued her would have been terrible for that. It was nice and cool outside, and Irma savoured the breeze as she ran. She wished she could do the exercises that didn't need equipment outside, but mats weren't allowed, and Irma didn't fancy falling onto the closely cut grass. There was a pull-up bar, though, and whenever she passed by it, she did as many pullups as she could. After a year of being too depressed to do as much as a pushup in her cell she could barely do a single one, but it was still progress. She also did finger hangs, missing the finger boards at the gym.

As she passed by one of the basketball games, Irma waved at Katia and Arina, a short woman about her age with tan skin, narrow eyes, and cornrows. She played basketball with her friends on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays she did her routine - today was Sunday - and on Mondays she spent her time in the rec room playing board games and losing endless imaginary money at cards (she wasn't quite willing to actually gamble, as Emmy's skills were terrifying), only doing her stretching routine in the morning and evening. While this wouldn't help her regain her climbing skills, hopefully she'd be able to relearn that quickly thanks to being in good shape. Exercise also gave her goals to set and meet, and kept her mind off things, if only for a little while. And Irma had to admit that she liked the idea of actually looking good again.

Before even taking a seat at the table in the visitors' hall, Mom reached out and hugged her. Irma had always hated hugs, but tolerated it this time to make Mom feel better. "Hi," Irma said. "It's nice to see you again." Mom reached up to touch Irma's braids. She forced herself not to flinch back at the touch. "I get them done here," she said.

"So you told me," Mom said, sounding like she was struggling not to cry. Her hair was as curly as Irma's, and was cut into a neat puff. Before, she had dyed it, but now it was snow-white. "You look very nice."

"Thanks. I've been working out. How's everyone?"

"We're well." Mom wiped at her eyes. Irma felt her face heat up at watching her mother suffer. "You don't have to send us the money, you know."

"There's a limit to how many packs of noodles I can buy, even if they're seventy dollars a pop," Irma said with a weak smile. "I might as well help you out."

Mom shook her head, reaching out to pat her on the arm. This time, Irma couldn't take it and withdrew it, crossing her arms on the table. The silence stretched, and Irma felt very uncomfortable. How often must her parents have feared during her childhood that she would end up right there? Irma had gifted them twenty years of pride in their only child before snatching it away when she should have been entering the best years of her career.

For the first time, Irma regretted what she had done. After all, she had known full well what she was supporting in her broadcasts. Couldn't she have done something else, or at least been less ambitious? Anything to make is so Mom didn't have to look at her like that. Irma sighed. She was forty-five years old, and still the thing she feared most was disappointing her parents. "No, really, it's fine," she insisted. "And once I start my carpentry apprenticeship, I'll be earning good money soon enough."

"A skilled worker?" Mom said sadly. "Well, that's still more than I ever achieved."

"It's not that bad," Irma said, trying to hide her desperation. "I never liked being a media personality, anyway," she added, trying for a joke.

Mom sighed. "I always knew you weren't cut out for such a public job. You always found it hard to deal with people. To tell you the truth, I don't know how you coped."

Irma didn't want to explain and sound like she tended to dissociate, even though that was the best way to describe it. "It was like riding a bicycle with no tires, only rims," she said, using an analogy Charlie had told her. "It's doable, and it will get you places, but it's insanely difficult and uncomfortable."

"You told me you're also a teacher."

"Only one class. It's hard. I don't know how I managed to do it in university."

Mom smiled softly. "You were always so ambitious. I worried for a while you'd break under the weight of your own expectations."

"Well, that clearly wasn't the problem here," Irma snarked.

"I can't believe they scapegoated you like that!" Mom said indignantly. "Dr. Baer told me she's working on getting you released early."

Irma was fully aware of that, but she didn't let herself hope.

Irma was about to head out the door when Cyn turned over abruptly. "Happy birthday," she whispered.

"Thank you," Irma said, feeling unexpectedly touched.

The librarian proffered a small book at Irma. "I think you'll like this," the stocky woman said.

Irma read the title. The Sword in the Scales. She had never seen it before. The author's name told her nothing either, and the cover was blank fabric. "What's it about?"

"You."

"Wait, what?" Irma asked. "It's about the trial?" She had read the book by Aurelius and Mallow, and hadn't liked it much. It had barely even mentioned her and made too much of Blues' and Coll's responsibility nonsense.

The librarian grinned. "No, it's about a different trial, and a different person. Check out the introduction."

Irma flipped through it. This was a pre-Cataclysm book! The author had apparently had a job similar to hers in a regime even worse than Snow's. Like her, he had been a third-rate propagandist who had surrendered to the enemy, been tortured, and then tried as a key criminal instead of the actual responsible person, who had killed himself. Found not guilty, he was then retried, just like her, sentenced to nine years, just like her, and released early, hopefully just like her too but Irma wasn't holding her breath. Irma wondered why the historians hadn't told her about this.

After the introduction, there was a photo of him sitting in his cell. He looked like Coll, though with less curly hair. Irma wondered for a while what her former co-defendant was doing before beginning to read the book. She was a little bit confused by some of the references he made, but understood enough to tell that this Hans Fritzsche would have understood her perfectly.

"I'm taking this out," she said.

The librarian took out the card from the back and filled in Irma's name. Irma was fairly sure that nowhere else in Panem did they still use those cards. A little receipt with the due date printed on it was handed to her, and Irma went off to read. Back in her cell, she asked Cyn to turn down the volume on the television a little bit and submerged herself in this strange world. Everything must have been different back then. It took her half the chapter to realize that there were practically no women in the book. What was going on there? Had women not done things back then? She decided to ask someone who knew their pre-Cataclysm history.

"What's that book about?" Cyn asked quietly. Now that she was finally on meds that worked, she was quite friendly, though shy.

"It's about a man who was just like me, but hundreds of years ago," Irma explained, trying to make sense of what had been the background of his trial. She vaguely remembered it being referenced at her own trial, and a few of the historians' references were starting to make more sense. A few details about his life in jail were also eerily reminiscent of the regime she had endured. Irma wondered if Vance and Tiller had studied the book to get ideas.

"Like you how?"

"He had the same job and went through the same stuff after the regime he served was destroyed."

"That's cool."

"Listen to this. 'At first I could not recognize a single one of the weirdly-clad men who strolled around in groups always keeping a little distance from the wall. They seemed to have dressed themselves in strangely assorted selections from the uniforms of every army under the sun.'" Irma remembered that day when she had seen her co-defendants for the first time. "Even in the little things, I suppose the prosecution was right. There was nothing unique about us or the crimes. It's just the details that were sometimes different."

"Interesting." Cyn nibbled on a chip.

"Though I still do not understand how the Games happened." Logically, Irma knew that in the decades before the Dark Days, dangerous sports such as rock-climbing without a harness or fighting with sharp bladed weapons had been popular. As the country slipped further and further into dictatorship, people who fell afoul of the regime were sometimes pressured into participating in them, ostensibly as a way to regain honour.

Chief of these proto-Games had been fights that could theoretically end with death, and sometimes minors had been forced to participate, with more and more outrages happening every year. In such a context, the Hunger Games made sense as a brutal punishment for real and imagined crimes, but it still boggled Irma's mind sometimes that it had gone on for so long.

"You told me you had good news?" Dad asked, fidgeting with his braids.

The previous day, Irma had called her parents and told them that, providing no details. "Yes," she said, struggling to hold back a smile. "I'm going to start working outside next month."

"That's nice," Dad said, smiling. "Will you continue teaching?"

Irma shook her head. "I'll finish out this term, and then I'll quit." The more time passed, the more difficult teaching became for some reason. Even her students could tell that she was struggling.

Dad nodded. "It's not for you. I always knew that. You're not like me, you can't work with people." He clasped his hands together.

Irma suppressed her desire to be contrary and simply nodded.

As Irma sat in the back of the pickup and ate her sandwich, she noticed a familiar word on the cover of one of the magazines in the nearby kiosk. Without thinking, she swallowed the last bits and leapt for the magazine.

"Hands off!" the cashier snapped. "Aren't you supposed to be working?"

This happened far too often for Irma's liking. "I'm on lunch break," she explained, "and I have money." She was allowed to take small sums of cash with her outside as a reward for not breaking any rules, though she did have to return all of the unspent money to her account and present a receipt for anything bought, as well as the thing that had been bought. She unbuttoned her shirt pocket and took out the ten-dollar bill, holding it out to the cashier. "Could I please have that magazine?" she asked, pointing to it.

The cashier took the bill from her with two fingers and handed her the magazine, as well as her change. Irma asked for the receipt, and the cashier complied with an audible sigh. Not wanting to bring down more insults on her head, Irma hastily beat a retreat to the pickup. The others were all sitting in a circle a small distance away. She got along with them individually, but as a group, they were simply too much.

In any case, this magazine promised exclusive photos from inside the Supermax, which was more important. She had read rumours before (ranging from the merely inane to the completely insane) and seen the occasional blurry photo taken by sentries, but this was unprecedented. Irma eagerly flipped to the right page, and was immediately hit by a wave of memories as she recognized her co-defendants. Were that seriously Blues and Coll, kneeling in the grass under a tree and offering apples to guards? At the trial, they had definitely seemed to be the boot-licking type, but this went beyond boot-licking.

Irma realized that they both had strands of grey in their hair, and their sun-darkened faces were more lined than before. Well, her own hair wasn't exactly black anymore. They were all growing older. Irma saw a photo of Best, and winced. He looked like a little old gentleman out for a stroll, though the number '16' painted on his knees slightly ruined the impression.

She studied all the photos carefully before reading the text, and only got partway through the article before her break was over. Irma wished she could continue reading, but she didn't want to appear to be shirking. She had spent years on her best behaviour to get this chance, and she didn't want to waste it. Reluctantly, Irma folded up the magazine, tossed it inside the car through the open window, and walked towards the house.

There was nothing for Irma to pack. The clothes she was wearing did not belong to her, and she didn't want to deal with all of her hair products, giving them instead to one of her friends. The television was garbage in any case, the snacks had all been eaten, and the stationary she was leaving for Cyn. Irma approached the exit wearing donated clothing and clutching her copy of The Sword in the Scales and a manila folder with family photos, official documents, and a credit and debit card.

Irma paused by the door, feeling unsure.

"What are you waiting for?" a guard asked with a smile. "Get out!"

Irma pushed open the door, heart hammering away. She stepped into a parking lot, but before she could take more than a few steps, her parents embraced her in a crushing hug that she tolerated for their sakes. "Please stop choking me," she said, laughter bubbling up inside of her. She was free!

Mom and Dad took a step back. They had tears in their eyes, and Irma looked down, not willing to see the expressions with which they were looking at her. "I'm going to need to get an actual ID," she said, feeling anxiety bubble up inside her. How was she supposed to deal with all the stuff she had to deal with? "The one they gave me expires in a month. And I need new clothes. And I'm going to have to get in touch with my firm to say that I'm out now so they can rehire me. And-"

"We will get you whatever you need." Dad took the envelope from her, as if it was a heavy load she couldn't carry. As they walked towards the car Irma had gifted them more than ten years ago, Mom and Dad stayed on her sides, half-hugging her. "What's this book about?" Dad asked, looking at the cover. "He certainly looks happy, not like the other guy." On the dust jacket was a photo of Fritzsche after his acquittal, where he was grinning from ear to ear. It must have been painful to be arrested all over again after that.

"It's the book I told you about a while back," Irma explained. "It's about the man who would have understood me perfectly."

"It's nice you have something like that," Mom said. "Did you know that someone is writing a book about your trial? They called me and asked for an interview."

Irma didn't want to think about her trial. She looked at the sky instead. The clouds were the same as any other time she had seen them. Were her surviving co-defendants also looking at them right now as they worked the ground of their prison yard? "Well," she said, "tell them that I'm now available for an interview, too."