Mary went to watch Snow's execution, feeling nothing but a reluctant acceptance. The trial had been closed to the end, and despite it having taken two weeks, it had still run at a break-neck pace. Snow hadn't admitted to a single thing. According to Quash, all he had done was defend the Games as a necessary evil. Nothing else had been asked about.
"What a crowd," Joe said, disapproval evident in his voice. Her secretary was widely alleged to be her lover. Rithvik claimed that he had never heard a more absurd proposition in his life - which made sense, given the sort of things she whispered to him over the telephone.
"Can you really blame them?" Mary asked, though in her opinion, public executions were an atavism and a danger to public order. She supposed the IDC had to consider itself lucky the trial of the Gamemakers hadn't been conducted with such haste and, in fact, had barely begun. Mary wished Coin had simply handed over all of the trials to the IDC, but she knew it was futile to dream. All she could do was take what she had and stand firm against Coin's demands.
Joe scratched his chin. "I don't see why anyone wants to see Snow die. Me, the less I see of him, the better." Joe's previous attitudes were a mystery to Mary. As long as he did not say anything apologetic, she was willing to give her secretary the benefit of the doubt.
"You don't have to be here," Mary reminded him.
Joe shrugged. "I guess I'm morbidly curious. As are they."
Mary wasn't. Her siblings had demanded an eyewitness account, so she had agreed to attend. When Mom had been diagnosed with cancer, she had remarked that it was a pity she would never live in a world without Snow. Well, that world was about to be reality, but Mary didn't think Mom and Dad would have been as happy as they always claimed they would be when reunification happened. But who knew? They had died nine and seven years ago, Mom from brain cancer and Dad from cardiac amyloidosis, at a time when everyone had thought Snow's downfall was just around the corner. They would never actually get to react to the death of Snow. So many people never would, either because they had died in the fighting or the rebellion had taken too long to begin.
It took some elbow work to get close to the front of the crowd lining the wide avenue. Some VIP's were standing up ahead on a platform, but many of the new government's leaders weren't very happy with the entire idea of a trial of military and government leaders. Mary supposed that it was only logical for generals to disapprove of war crimes trials. Still, though, it chafed to be pushed aside.
Mary was decently tall, so even from the third row, she could see enough. Snow was brought in and cuffed to a post ten metres or so away. He appeared to be completely self-assured. According to a few of her colleagues, his composure had not cracked during the trial at all. A malicious part of Mary wanted to wipe that calm expression from his face, but she kept it in check. Around her, though, the crowd shouted insults.
"I remember my great-aunt telling me this joke," Joe said wistfully.
"What is it?" Even the sincere Games supporters had cracked jokes about odious politicians, so that didn't say much about his family.
"So Snow is talking to himself - things aren't going so well, I'm worried they'll remove me. The portrait on the wall replies - no, I'll be removed, you'll be hung up."
Mary chuckled, and something suddenly felt bright and clear and open, as if every single path was open to her, like when she had been accepted into law school. The illusion disappeared after a few seconds. Perhaps all of their dreams had come true at once, but there was so much they all had to do.
Then, Everdeen appeared in her line of sight, walking down the path with a bow in her hand. Mary watched the girl take her position. It was odd, how Coin had made such a symbol out of a random child. She couldn't think of any precedents for a living symbol of the revolution who had no true power. The historians probably could.
"You can't turn an execution into a circus," Joe sighed as Everdeen fired. The arrow hit Coin. "Wait, what?"
Mary stood frozen for a few seconds. This was the end. Now what? There would be chaos. She could see everything she had worked so hard for crumbling to pieces around her. Then, the crowd surged forward, and she ran with it, not keen on becoming trampled. A few seconds later, some of her reading came back to her, and she maneuvered sideways, making her way out of the rush. Mary realized that she was holding on to Joe's sleeve as if he was a small child.
"I apologize," she said, letting go of his jacket. Her heart was bearing away madly.
Joe shook his head. "No issue," he said, wiping his forehead. "I'd have gotten lost in there. Or trampled."
They were so far away now, it was impossible to see what was happening. "Let's go back to base and do damage control," Mary said, wanting to sit down and start crying. What had the girl been thinking there? "Salvage what we can."
At the IDC headquarters, Paylor was furiously typing away on her laptop. "Good day," Mary said. "How are you managing?"
The de facto governor of the Capitol looked up. "I'm going to make a speech calling for elections to be moved up to a few days from now." She ran a hand over her short hair.
"Are you still going to run for president?"
"Of course."
Of all people, Paylor was the person Mary wanted to see in that position the most. At the endless IDC meetings, she had been the representative Mary had been most impressed with. "I'll vote for you," she said, feeling a little bit better about the situation. If she was being honest with herself, had Coin dropped dead from a brain aneurysm, Mary would have sighed with relief. It was the bizarre nature of this assassination that was likely to cause unrest. Most people didn't know the real Coin, only the leader who had led them to reunification.
Paylor looked up and smiled slightly. "I'm glad to hear it. You want to look through my speech?" she offered.
"Of course." Mary took the laptop and quickly skimmed through the text. "A bit too close to plagiarism," she pointed out, noticing a certain phrase.
"I rephrased it," Paylor said defensively. There was a pause. "And nobody will get the reference in any case," she added. "The ones that do will probably like it, anyway."
Mary handed back the laptop. "I suppose you're right on both counts," she conceded. "Do you think it will work?" The entire country, maybe the entire world, was holding its breath. When it released it, absolutely anything could happen.
Paylor smiled again, wider this time. "It's a good phrase," she said.
A good phrase. But what would happen now that Coin had been publicly shot dead by an adolescent? Would the trials go ahead? Would the IDC stay together?
"On the basis of what you've told us," the judge said, "I see no reason to not label you a fellow traveller."
Leon sighed with relief. "Thank you," he said, not bothering to hide his lower-class accent. The more the judge considered him as dumb as a pile of rocks, the less they would be able to consider him capable of doing something bad. He took the scrap of paper from the judge and put it in his backpack. "May I go now?"
"Yes."
Well, that was one thing over and done with. Feeling much better about himself, Leon walked out of the small office which served as a courtroom, nodding sympathetically to the person who came in. For far too long, he had waited for his hearing, and it had lasted an hour. Some bored clerk had half-heartedly cross-examined him about his sympathies for the old regime, and that was all. Now, he could finally apply to the IDC.
As he walked down the corridor, he overheard snatches of odd conversation.
-shot her instead-
"What's going on?" he asked two people who were standing by a window and gossiping furiously. "Did something happen?" Wasn't Snow's execution supposed to have been just now?
One of the people nodded. "Mockingjay shot Coin instead." Leon was so shocked, he didn't feel anything. "Snow got torn to pieces by the mob. And then that Victor from Two, what's her face, said that Coin had made them vote on having a Hunger Games with kids from the Capitol."
"I'm sorry, but what the fuck?"
"And that's not even the worst," the person said, leaning in closely. "Remember how Snow bombed those kids from the hovercraft? It was all an inside job. Coin did it."
Leon had heard all of these rumours and more. "So, now what?" he asked, unsure of why he was talking like this with a stranger but needing reassurance, no matter who it came from. Maybe Marcellus had been right to be skeptical.
The person shrugged. "Who knows. Hopefully they won't start fighting again."
As Leon walked to the streetcar and then home, he calmed down somewhat. Nobody was killing each other, the rubble was still there, the few shops that sold for money had price tags that were enough to give you a heart attack, the pensioners were fighting over scraps from the garbage like they had for Leon's entire life. There was an undercurrent of tension in the streets, but they were Capitolians. Keep your head down, breathe, and get through it.
At home, his parents and Marcellus were of a similar opinion. "We knew they were rotten to the core," Marcellus said with a shrug as he stirred the rice. "Now we just have confirmation. You still going to apply?" he asked Leon.
Leon shrugged. "I spent weeks trying to be found a fellow traveller. Why waste it?"
"What does that mean?" Mom asked, looking up from her computer - the local library had begun to loan out laptops. She was now practicing for her licencing exam.
Leon took out his paper from his pocket. "I need to do some sort of community service, but I've already spent more than that cleaning rubble. So nothing."
Dad wandered into the kitchen. "That's good," he said. "Did you hear that speech Paylor made?"
"What speech?"
"Guess not, then." Dad was working in that fancy restaurant again, but now, the customers were mostly officers and the like who didn't know good food when it was right on their plate.
Or was that not a very nice thing to think? Leon knew that middle-class people said similar things about people like him. He felt bad all of a sudden.
"It was rather unexpected," Dad continued ruefully, sitting down at the table and rubbing Mom's shoulder. "Paylor said that all of the rumours about Coin are true, she just wanted to seize power through terror. Then, she said that we only have this one chance to build a real democracy and announced elections have been moved up to a few days from now. There was also something about staying the hand of vengeance."
Staying the hand of vengeance? That was not a sentiment Leon was familiar with.
"She really thinks things can be different?" Marcellus asked, stirring the rice. "Isn't she lower-class? She should know that Panem's just a pile of trash."
Mom was typing away, eyes focused only on the screen. Now that the firewall was down, she had access to a ton of programming knowledge. Leon didn't care about that. He had bigger things to worry about. Marcellus' school still wasn't reopened, so his brother was forced to spend the entire day clearing rubble. Leon, at least, now would have the distraction of actually applying.
"Honey-bun?" Dad asked Mom. "Why don't you pull up that speech?" Mom was as skinny as a stick because of her tendency to forget to eat and had nothing in common with a soft honey bun. Leon wasn't sure how Grandpa Two had come up with that nickname when Mom had been even skinnier as a child, but Dad had run with it after finding out.
Mom nodded absently and opened up a Web browser. She had been shocked to find out that Panem had been years behind the rest of the world in terms of that. Even in equally poor countries, most people had cell phones, and in richer countries, people like them had smartphones for each member of the family. "Here you go," she said, fingers flying over the keyboard.
"Wait," Leon said, "why would she confirm all these horrible rumours?"
"Pandering to the electorate?" Marcellus suggested. "No. That would push away more people than it drew in. I guess she's just desperate to prove she's not Coin."
"Here it is," Mom said. They all crowded around to look.
"Fears about what awaits us in the future are circulating, and the humiliations of the decades of dictatorship we endured have their repercussions. Walls between Districts may be knocked down, but the ones in our heads are harder to remove.
"I beg you - do not let the knowledge that you were given a rough deal express itself in apathy or anger. Let it be compensated for by the feeling that it is never too late to make the best of what we have. We do not have to fall just because we tripped. We must go ahead and deal with the aftermath of the old system of rule, legally and in as fair a manner as possible. Speaking from my experience as a mere factory worker, at the mercy of the whims of the ones who had power over me, I can say that we must draw a line between those who committed terrible crimes and used the system to enrich themselves and those who drifted with the current harmlessly, or gave a bribe or two to get by. Democracy will not forbid them the chance to join our society and prove themselves.
"I would like to add this - we all know the compromises we had to make with our consciences to get by in a criminal system that lived and breathed corruption. Not many could be heroes in a country where the NCIA ruled supreme. We have the chance now to build a country where nobody will ever have to be a hero.
"In the aftermath of this shocking event, there is only one thing I ask for - peace. Twice, the country that was here before anyone knew the name 'Panem' was rent by civil war, and its scars never healed. Let us do better this time around. The task of building bridges between the Districts where there were once only walls will be a difficult task, and one that will take a long time, but it is one that needs doing.
"Our nation waits, frozen, silent. Let its first words not be a curse. Let us not drop what we have only just picked up! Let us not fall prey to our basest desires! Let us stay the hand of vengeance, and instead, stretch out the hand of justice!"
Leon was confused. How had Paylor even learned all of these things if she was just a factory worker? He had at least gone to school, and he couldn't talk like that.
Marcellus was just unimpressed. He knew his history. "She's really comparing this to Reconstruction?" he asked nobody in particular. "Didn't that one end with terrorists roaming the countryside and murdering people?"
"What's Reconstruction?" Mom made the mistake of asking.
At that, Marcellus snapped to alertness. "In 1865-" he began, loud enough for the neighbours to also be able to hear. Leon sighed and got up to stir the rice, listening with one ear.
Leon held his hands over the pot of rice, enjoying the warmth. The heating was still spotty, and the cold wind got through the cardboard in the windows. Leon supposed they were lucky they had somewhere with any sort of heating. The IDC was putting in tons of effort, but they were focusing on the least fortunate first. Leon didn't want to imagine what it was like to be less fortunate than him.
Would that continue now, or would everything fall apart? Leon couldn't think of anyone who could step up. He had never really heard of any of the presidential candidates including Paylor before - aside from being de facto mayor of the Capitol, she represented Eight in the IDC - but if she could keep the country from falling to pieces, who would? Leon realized that she was right. They had this one chance to build democracy. If Paylor did not measure up to expectations, they'd all be screwed.
After dinner, Leon made his way outside, intent on handing in his application for the trial. Before he could make more than a few steps, though, someone climbed out of a pile of rubble and walked towards him.
"Where are my siblings?" they asked in a wheezy voice. No, not they - despite having small breasts on her emaciated frame, the girl was completely shirtless, wearing only a torn pair of uniform trousers. She was covered in grime and blood and stared blankly ahead.
Hostilities had been over for weeks, and still people like this were around. It had been worse before, during the last days of the fighting, when hospitals had been completely overflowing and walking wounded had roamed the streets like ghosts.
"What's your name?" Leon asked.
The girl turned blank eyes at him. Some sort of weak recognition stirred. "Sir, where are my siblings?" she asked, stumbling towards him on bloodied feet. "I need to protect them."
"Girl, how old are you?"
The girl looked confused. "My siblings. Where are my siblings? Davy? Billy? Katie?" she called out. "Where are you?"
"How long have you been out here?"
"Do you know where my siblings are?"
Leon looked around. Some people were passing by, looking glad that they didn't have to deal with the girl. Irritated at having his plans delayed, Leon decided to take her to the hospital. He gave her his coat to wear, but there was nothing he could do about her lacerated feet.
Fortunately, having someone to talk to made the girl speak more coherently. By the time they arrived, Leon was reasonably sure that he understood what had happened. During the last phase of the fighting, her parents had started acting strange. One day, they had given the children some sort of unfamiliar medication. The girl didn't want to take it, but she had been forced to. Back in her room, she had jumped out the window and tried to run away, but ended up becoming extremely drowsy and passed out. After that, she remembered only flashes of roaming the streets and looking for her siblings.
"I'm the eldest," the girl said. "I need to be like Mom and Dad for them."
Leon didn't tell her that her siblings were dead, and so were her parents. Many people had killed their entire families like that, drugging their children with sleeping medication first before shoving poison down their throats. And what for?
That was one of the many reasons why Leon was glad Snow was dead. He was the reason why people had thought that murdering their own children was an acceptable choice.
Miroslav was supposed to be in the courtroom already, but instead, he was standing in a bathroom and trying to make himself throw up. He knew he shouldn't have eaten so much at breakfast. After a lifetime in Thirteen, he did not know how to control his food intake - that much, he had known since that conference in Iqaluit a few years back. Miroslav had thought he'd be able to do better now. But he couldn't. When he saw food, he ate until his plate was empty, and if he tried to take small portions, he'd just get up and grab more.
The food inside him felt like a rock inside his stomach, heavy and unpleasant. Why couldn't he have just not eaten that extra helping of porridge? Feeling like a pathetic waste of space, Miroslav finally made himself vomit. Taking deep breaths, he flushed the toilet and went to rinse his mouth. Damaged teeth were the least of his worries, but there was nothing he could do about the damage to his esophagus that could easily kill him if this went on.
Miroslav glared at himself in the mirror. In the few weeks he had spent in the Capitol, he had gained a noticeable amount of weight, and his face looked different now. Was he, a forty-two-year-old psychologist, really acting like a troubled teenager? What was wrong with him? Why couldn't he be like a normal person? He really was disgusting. Eating all that food only to waste it.
Splashing some cold water on his face, Miroslav firmly told himself that such thoughts were not helpful. He only knew about binge-eating from literature and his experiences at the conference, because such things were impossible in the tightly-regulated Thirteen, but if he was suffering from bulimia, he was on firmer ground. Still, though, the root cause - the inability to stop eating - was not something he had ever seen personally.
The inside of his mouth still tasted like vomit. Before, he had eaten until he made himself sick several times a week, but never this. Had this desire to be rid of the food been brought on by stress? He was going to be arguing that Katniss Everdeen could not be tried for her killing of Coin because she was not fit to stand trial. If so, that was very dangerous, given how difficult his job was.
Even as he tried to think logically and without judgement, as if planning the treatment of a patient, his brain still hurled insults at him. What kind of a psychologist can't stop himself from having an eating disorder? What a big fake. Even though his papers had been published internationally and he had been asked by Coin personally to treat Peeta Mellark, Miroslav suddenly felt like a massive fraud. He imagined his wife Rody making fun of him for gaining weight and winced.
Miroslav stared in the mirror again. His skin looked strange, pink and shiny, like that of a pig. And he had thought he'd like having longer hair, but the floppy waves of dark-brown and grey suddenly looked disgusting to him even though he had carefully combed it just an hour ago.
Ironic, that he had spent half his life helping teenagers and now he was acting like one himself.
He still felt disgusting, but at least his stomach was empty, and he felt a bizarre, almost sexual, satisfaction from that. Miroslav rinsed out his mouth with soap, wondering what in the world was going on in his brain. Maybe he needed help. He certainly had no shortage of colleagues here in the Capitol, and many of them had already noticed that something was wrong with him. No, not maybe, definitely.
But first, the competency hearing. Miroslav took his briefcase from the floor and walked out of the bathroom. He had tried to talk to Everdeen, but that had not been allowed and he had been forced to settle for observation. Today, he would be arguing that he needed to perform a proper examination before any decisions could be made.
The courtroom was the same one that Snow had been tried in, ironically enough. It was still mostly empty, with just a handful of people present. As the formalities went underway, Miroslav reviewed what he knew about bulimia. It usually affected adolescents and young adults - he was atypical there. Media portrayals of an 'ideal' body figure were widely cited as a contributing factor - that was unlikely to be the case with him, but his current deviation from the Thirteen standard was certainly affecting him negatively. About half of patients eventually recovered fully - that was a good sign. It was often comorbid with other diseases such as depression - he hadn't seen any signs in himself, but he'd have to ask the others if they had noticed any.
What he needed to do was read up on people who had grown up with a very restricted food intake and been suddenly put in a situation where they could eat as much as they wanted. Plenty of other Thirteeners were exhibiting a tendency to overeat, but nobody so far had reported binging and purging.
Bulimia was one of the more lethal eating disorders, because of the risk of esophageal tearing ending fatally. Around twenty percent of the deaths were caused by suicide, however.
"Dr. Aurelius!"
Miroslav realized that everyone else had already testified and they were just waiting on him. "My apologies, Your Honour," he said. "I was distracted."
The judge just nodded. She didn't look very interested in the proceedings. The vast majority of people, even those from Thirteen, didn't care much about Coin. They were just scared of the chaos they were sure would ensue soon. Elections would be in two days, and before that, there would be nobody at the top of the executive. On top of that, the country had gone from a presidential republic where Coin would ostensibly replace Snow until the planned elections next year to one where parties would be elected to Congress and make the real decisions right now this instant, without that year to get the system planned out. The IDC was burning the midnight oil trying to glue together the shards of the country into a coherent whole.
Miroslav quickly repeated his findings. Everdeen's medical files from Thirteen showed that she had already been mentally ill back then, and being in active warfare would have only worsened that - whoever had sent her, a seventeen-year-old with PTSD, into combat deserved to be put on trial. Currently, she was reliant on opioid painkillers to remain more or less alert and had not been responsive when he had observed her. A proper examination was needed for a proper decision.
"Thank you, Dr. Aurelius. I believe I have enough information to make the decision now." That was a surprise. Miroslav listened attentively, feeling panicky and jittery. Would she have Everdeen executed, or something? He couldn't think straight. "Based on what I have just heard, I find Katniss Everdeen incapable of standing trial for reason of illness. We will reconvene in a month's time and I will announce my verdict then. Until then, she will be treated where she is now."
That was wrong in several ways, but the justice system of the new Panem was clunky, hesitant, and all too fond of improvising. What verdict, if she was incapable of standing trial? Miroslav glanced at his watch and picked up his briefcase. He had to go to a juvenile jail now. Everyone made too much of the fact that he was one of a tiny handful of Panem researchers who were internationally published, so he was being dragged from job to job.
Treating Everdeen would be just another one added on top of everything else. He was also working as a psychologist with the juvenile justice system and working on his paper. It was about adolescence in different demographics, and if it was accurate to talk about the concept of teenager-hood in individuals who had been working since the age of five or six. The psychological processes of maturation were the same, of course, but what were their social roles and what behaviour was expected of them? That was what Miroslav was studying.
So many things, so little time. Miroslav was supposed to help others, but how would he find the time to help himself?
Mary came back from the IDC meeting and immediately flopped down on the bed, not bothering to take her coat off. She was exhausted. The IDC had agreed to give the trials some space and let her decide when they were ready, which was a massive relief, but that left the matter of the Gamemakers' trial, which had been suspended in the air. The hapless chief prosecutor, an old acquaintance of Mary's, was now supposed to somehow keep it together. They were recessing for a month so that both prosecution and defense could get documents.
And what was happening in Thirteen defied understanding. After Paylor's open admission of Coin's crimes, several high-ranking administrators had taken it as a sign to toss the skeletons out on the street together with the closets, and disagreements long kept quiet by the need to get along and not fracture were bubbling to the surface. Generals were quitting before they could be fired, political parties held demonstrations, and Rithvik claimed that Coin's strongest supporters in the administration were also leaving their jobs. For once, her husband hadn't tried to impress her with his silky, seductive voice, instead explaining what in the world was going on at home - in that same erotic purr. Mary hadn't known whether to be turned on or to be horrified.
Mary also wasn't sure whether to be glad or annoyed that she was being firmly shunted aside to focus on just the trials. She knew full well that being Thirteen's representative in a provisional government would have taken too much energy, but it still stung that she had been told to focus on fetching air conditioning.
At least that distracted her from thinking about Coin's stunt with the Victors. Mary still couldn't believe that she had betrayed them all like that.
"Oh, you're back?" Reed asked as he and Isabella walked into the room. Mary raised her head.
"Yes," she grumbled. She didn't have to pretend with her roommates, not when she had to put up with their cold feet every night.
"Do you have any plans for the afternoon?"
That implied that they had plans at all. "Another meeting at four. And I need to decide what party to vote for." On one level, she craved the stability of Thirteen, but on the other, she knew that that had always hovered on the brink of dictatorship - and hadn't they always said that one day, they would be able to live like everyone else?
So what did she want? Strong social services, of course, she couldn't imagine life without them. Free speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly - all the freedoms she had expected of a post-unification Panem. But what about things like taxes? How much should the government support small businesses? Large businesses? Should railroads and banks confiscated from criminals be nationalized or auctioned off to private individuals? So many questions, and so many parties.
"Perfect," Isabella said. "My husband finally got something from my occupational therapist back home. You want to go play some hockey?"
There were plenty of rinks in the Capitol, and Mary had been taught to skate, more or less, by her colleagues. "You can play hockey?" Mary asked. She wasn't exactly surprised, not after Isabella had gotten her secretary to attach velcro to a chessboard so that she could play. "That's great."
Isabella nodded and took something out of her pocket. A small rubber disk - a hockey puck. "I told my OT a while back that I used to play hockey, soccer, and baseball. Soccer's gonna have to wait for spring and baseball might have to wait until I'm more comfortable moving around, but hockey should work." She put the puck back in her pocket. "It beeps, so I know where it is."
Playing sports was certainly better than lying on her bed feeling sorry for herself. "Sounds great," Mary said, standing up. "How was your meeting?"
"Someone found the Steelworks records buried in the middle of a field," Isabella said. "Chaterhan's not going to be pleased. They're highly incriminating and reveal a lot of detail about his influence on District and national politics." They walked down the corridor to the entrance, passing by prosecutors typing away or going through papers or simply staring off into space. In the kitchen, several secretaries were working with a Braille label-maker to label everything including the walls.
"How did you read them?" Mary asked out of curiosity.
Isabella snorted and pulled on one of her boots. Fortunately, nobody had moved them in the last minute or so. "Someone read bits to me."
Once they were all dressed, they set out into the chilly early afternoon. It felt a little bit strange, that everything could be so chaotic but the sun was still shining.
"How close are you to me?" Isabella asked.
"Behind you."
"A bit to the left."
She took out her collapsible cane from her pocket, pointed it down and forwards, and pressed the button to lengthen it. The knob at the end became potentially lethal when she did that. "Alright, I'm ready."
The sidewalks here were even and there were no sudden drop-offs when crossing the street at the correct place, but when doing so at the incorrect place, they had to step off a ten-centimetre curb. It was hard enough for Mary and Reed to adjust to a normal city, but at least they weren't in danger of tripping and falling constantly.
As they walked, Mary asked her colleagues for feedback on her ideas of what to charge the individual key criminals with. The charges against Snow had not been defined and the Gamemakers were only on trial for the Games, so she had had free reign to plan. The crux of her plan was that of the common plan or conspiracy. The defendants would be likened to a criminal gang that controlled every facet of life in a neighbourhood. They would be tried for having committed specific crimes, of course, but the conspiracy charge would be the thread tying it all together and the reason why the trial was a group one.
If someone joined a drug-smuggling operation, then they were guilty of smuggling drugs, even if they had not started it. Likewise, anyone working on the Games was guilty of them. Anyone who had joined the systems dedicated to pumping the Districts of everything of use. Anyone who had worked for the NCIA. Besides conspiracy, there were four more umbrella charges included in the Charter as crimes the Inter-District Military Tribunals would be able to prosecute - the implementation of the Hunger Games, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggressive war. The last was mostly because of Twelve, but the First Rebellion could also be approached from that angle.
The entire way to the rink, the three of them argued about whether that last bit was a stretch or not. Not only was it questionable whether it fit the definition or not, but what was the point when it had ended so long ago? Mary was of the opinion that the entire regime in the Districts had been that of occupation and that the two rebellions had been one large conflict separated by a long period of relative peace. Isabella disagreed. She had an intense dislike of sweeping charges and preferred more focused ones. Unfortunately, just as the debate was getting really good, the streetcar stopped.
"Let's go," Mary said. They stepped down into a rubble-strewn street, from where it was just minutes to a patch of ice surrounded by a sturdy fence. Due to the time of day, there were only a few people there. The three of them rented skates and sticks, paying with cans of food - Snow had printed money to finance the war and the new government now printed money to buy supplies abroad, with nobody knowing how to stop the dollar from ceasing to exist completely - and made their way onto the ice, Mary glad for the extra support the stick gave her.
Isabella took the puck out of her pocket and did something to it. It began to beep. She dropped it and turned her head this way and that, as if looking around. "Where are you?"
"Here!" Mary called out and tapped her stick. The puck sailed across the ice and landed perfectly in front of it.
"Wow," Reed breathed. "That's amazing."
Mary passed the puck to him with a great deal more clumsiness. She wondered if there was perhaps some sort of blind hockey club Isabella could join. The fighting had left millions of people scarred in body and mind, so there had to be no shortage of hockey lovers who had lost their eyesight.
Mary told herself to stop trying to organize everything, if only for a few minutes. She focused on passing the puck and staying on her feet. The rubber flew over the ice with a gentle beeping sound, Isabella catching and releasing it with a single sure motion of her stick. Suddenly, she stopped and took off her glasses. She wasn't wearing her eyes. "It's really sunny," she said, tilting her head up.
"It is," Reed agreed. "Where are your eyes?"
"Lost them again." She put her glasses back on. "Maybe I should stick a beeper to them, too."
After a few more minutes, they switched up to make the task more difficult for Isabella. It was rather funny that someone who had been blinded two months ago was better at the game than both Mary and Reed put together.
"Have you read the IGR files? The ones about the human experimentation," Reed said as he moved a metre to the left and launched the puck. Isabella still caught it, but Mary could see that her movements were less certain now. Mary also moved over and tapped her stick. The puck went towards her feet. Mary tried to catch it and toppled backwards.
Good thing she was used to falling by now. "Which ones?" Mary asked, climbing to her feet and getting the puck. "I just read the overviews." The Institute for Genetic Research had been dedicated to the creation of muttations, from drought-resistant plants to bizarre abominations meant for the Hunger Games. They had also created genetically modified humans, messing with the DNA to create children with specific characteristics than researchers would then experiment on. The scandal that had caused in the international genetics community showed no signs of abating. As if that wasn't bad enough, people who had nobody who cared about them - prison inmates and care home patients who were never visited, the homeless, and orphans - had also been subjected to cruel experiments there.
"I wish I could read," Isabella grumbled as she caught the puck Mary had clumsily sent towards her. "The dots just feel like a bumpy texture to me,"
"That's the interesting thing," Reed said. "Apparently, the IGR created a child with no eyes - and they learned to echolocate."
Isabella's eyebrows went up. "Humans can echolocate?" She clicked her tongue several times. "I don't hear anything."
"Maybe it takes lots of practice?" Reed suggested.
"Maybe."
They continued playing, Mary now thinking about the meeting she had just attended. There had been a massive debate about the educational system. Everyone was in favour of mandatory elementary education, but that would mean that children would be unable to earn money. Raising wages to a living level would help, but where to get the money? The hope was that getting rid of corruption would help, but the governmental systems were lying in ruins.
Watching Isabella catch and release the puck, Mary wondered how in the world could a system be set up to help children with disabilities. If a blind child was born in a village, would they have to move to a city to go to school? She couldn't imagine one going to a normal school. There were just too many accomodations needed that a rural county would never be able to afford.
"Isabella, I was just thinking - how do you read graphs?" Mary asked.
"I don't," she said simply. "Some audiobooks have better descriptions, some - worse. In some contexts, it might be possible to get tactile printouts, but I've never encountered one yet." With an easy movement of the arm, she stretched out and caught the beeping puck. "Those charts are gonna be a pain, though. Tamra swears she can type it up for me so I can read it, but Tamra's not going to be in the courtroom to point to everything on the big screen." Tamra was her secretary.
"You should do it yourself," Reed egged her on. "It'll be funny."
"We are not holding these trials for anyone's amusement." Mary remembered something else. She had just been talking to Lamont, and he had shown to her a collection of footage of various crimes. Would they need to create audio descriptions for them? There were thousands upon thousands of people out there who needed audio description to properly understand movies, Isabella being just one of them.
The movies were yet another thing to think about. And she needed to ask Mbida, who headed the team searching for potential defendants and keeping tabs on those in custody, for an update. Mbida had joked that she and Lamont had enough evidence to hang half the Capitol. Mary was of the opinion that twenty-four flawless convictions were the real goal to strive for.
A/N: Joe's joke is one I have heard the Belarusian version of (starring Lukashenko), but I'm sure there's variations on it in many countries.
Leon's remark about pensioners fighting over scraps is based on videos from Russia depicting exactly that.
Paylor's speech is heavily based off a real speech given by Willy Brandt when the Berlin Wall fell; given that in this 'verse, there was a nuclear apocalypse in 1985, I think I can get away with it :) The 'stay the hand of vengeance' line is from Robert Jackson's opening statement at the IMT in 1945 - I am going off the assumption that Paylor was correct in assuming that people who got the reference would just be glad about that.
Marcellus' knowledge of the US Civil War and its aftermath is quite accurate, as the regime was allergic to the concept of separatism and 'evil rebels who wanted to own people as property' fit perfectly into their propaganda.
Inflation often follows war, so Panem is not unique. The problem with Panem is that the trained economists who aren't criminals either have no experience at the highest levels or haven't lived in Panem at all for a long time, as Thirteen, being money-free, wasn't exactly a place where they could work in the field they were qualified for.
Tactile printouts of graphs are an actual thing, I once had someone in one of my courses who was given the printouts of the presentation before every lecture.