As usual, Stephen didn't have much time to think about the new developments before he had a new crisis to deal with. In fact, there were three. One of the detainees needed heart surgery, another was pregnant, and one of the criminals from his 'wanted' long-list had surrendered, pulling up to a random Justice Building in a luxury automobile and claiming she had information the IDC would be interested in.

When Cotillion was brought over to him, a new crisis he had to deal with was discovered. The former head of the IGR was reliant on sleeping medications that were known to cause memory problems. Since that would cause massive issues when she was tried, Stephen made it the psychiatrists' first order of business to get her off them using any means possible.

The heart surgery was dealt with relatively quickly. By now, there was enough room in hospitals for doing the surgeries themselves, and he could recover in the centre's infirmary. The pregnancy was also not too much of a hassle, even if Stephen wanted to go and throttle the former deputy minister and her husband for their terrible sense of timing.

Just as Stephen was congratulating himself on being so quick at problem-solving, it was time for movie night. Since the last one had been about mass executions, he picked an interview with a teenager from a slum in District Seven whose younger sibling had died from diabetes a few years ago. He strode into the large room where the detainees were sitting on fold-out chairs. Quite a few of the younger ones were perched on the floor, due to the lack of space.

"Good evening, boys and girls and everyone in between!" Stephen said as if nothing was amiss. It was hard to remain cheery after watching that interview, but treating the detainees like children was the only way to get through their skulls that they were not important anymore. "We've got a very interesting movie for you to watch tonight. I hope you find it as informative as I did." With that, he slid the tape into the slot and got it to play.

Finally, some time to think. Stephen sat facing the detainees, as did the mental health team, who kept tabs on how everyone reacted. Reactions ranged from burning defiance to sincere remorse. The detainees grouped themselves into clusters like adolescents and glared at each other across mess tables and in the yard. The more hard-core criminals were brought in, the worse it got.

As the interview began, Stephen finally let himself think about the events of the past few days. His charges had been very happy, thinking that this meant that they would be let go. Stephen had hastened to disappoint them, carefully keeping the routine the exact same. They were still convinced that it would all fall apart within the next few days, and there was nothing that Stephen could do when he himself was afraid of it all falling apart. All he could do was go vote tomorrow and hope that somehow, it would all be alright in the end.

Janie sat down on a concrete block, feeling like something was trying to gnaw its way out of her stomach. That was the only disadvantage of a cushy life - now that she wasn't running around like crazy, her periods were back. Janie rubbed at her stomach and firmly told herself that the pain would go away in an hour or so, as it always did. She didn't stand up, though, because she didn't need to.

Hold on. That cart looked suspicious. Forgetting about the cramps for now, Janie stood up and swaggered towards the middle-aged man pulling it. "What's in there?" she asked, shoving her armband in his face.

"Old clothes."

"Sure there are," Janie snorted and began to dig in it. Sure enough, the clothes turned out to be just the top layer. Below that were cans of condensed milk, large bars of chocolate, and a box of tobacco cigarettes. "Alright, uncle, here's a deal for you. Twenty cans and five bars of chocolate, and I won't haul you in to my superiors."

The man looked unimpressed. "Even your superiors won't fleece me that much. Five cans. At most."

"You want to get arrested for black-market activity?" Janie threatened him. "Who'll fence the stolen goods, then? What will your family think?"

"Fifteen cans," he immediately replied, desperation on his face. Janie could have probably haggled half the cart from him, but it was best not to alienate the population.

"Let's settle for ten," she offered, all nice-like.

Gratefully, the man agreed, and the condensed milk and chocolate went into Janie's bag that she carried just for these purposes. Janie sat back down, suddenly aware again of the gnawing pain, and began to plan.

It was annoying that they were just refusing to demob her. But that was just her shit luck. The points system was biased against her. Married? No. Kids? No. Primary breadwinner? No. Combat veteran? Yes, but not more than most. Wounded? No. Decorations? Only patches for having participated in this battle or that. She had been made into an MP because most of those had been older people with families who had gotten to demob, and it was looking like she'd be stuck here until the Capitol was under civilian administration, which would happen approximately never.

Until then, at least she could send her family treats. They had bought a new apartment with the money she had gotten at the Chaterhans', and her family members were all thrilled with the gifts. Her little siblings would love the condensed milk. Janie decided to send eight cans home and re-sell two. As for the chocolate, three would go home, one would be for Tav, and one - for her and her squadmates. It was good to have the reputation of a generous person. Janie made sure to share when she had something tasty, so everyone got along with her, even if her only real friend was Dusk. She just didn't have the energy to really get to know people when they were all being moved around and reassigned all the time. Eventually, she or Dusk would also leave, and then she'd need to find someone else.

As she watched people walk down the street, Janie felt better and better. The pain went away, and all that remained was the uncomfortable feeling of sitting on a slightly scratchy piece of thick absorbent cloth. Janie was willing to bet that the officers and important administrators weren't using this shit, but rank had its privileges, even when it came to menstruation.

More than that, it irritated Janie that the officers were constantly popping back home to visit their families while she was stuck with letters. She hadn't seen anyone from home for months now. In their last letter, Mom and Dad had written that repairs were going well. They were actually pretty well off - the town had been liberated without much of a fight, the steel mill had been blown up before that. They were also looking forward to the elections, even if they weren't sure if they could learn the emblems of the parties so quickly. For the presidential candidates, they would be indicated by their initials, so you just had to memorize how the two letters looked.

Janie checked her watch, wondering what to write to her family next. She actually wrote her own letters now, but she had to get someone else to fix the spelling and then copy the correct version. It was annoying that words were said and written differently. Janie wished she could wake up one day and write perfectly, like the officers did. She wished she had gotten to learn as a little kid like Tav. The knowledge that most people in Panem were illiterate (which was why that entire thing with the party emblems in the ballots was happening in the first place) didn't really help.

For the tenth time, Jaine wondered if maybe this was the time to tell her family about Tav before, once again, discarding it. Her grandparents believed wholeheartedly that scaremongering about how people in the Capitol were not to be trusted and that the attractive young ones all had STDs. Her parents said they didn't believe that stuff, but Janie hadn't exactly understood the Capitol before arriving here in any case. There was no way her parents did.

Like most people, Mom and Dad were just annoyed that the Capitol was getting off too easy. Sure, a bunch of officials and Peacekeepers had been arrested or fired, but everyone else just rolled over and started playing by the new rules as if nothing had happened. It wasn't fair that people would get away with everything. Though it wasn't any better back home, with the overseers and corrupt officials and the District mayor Keith "Yacht" Yao acting like nothing had ever happened, so if Janie was being honest with herself, there was no difference between the Capitol and her town or Six in general in that regard.

Janie had hoped that maybe now everyone would get what they deserved, but it was looking like the same people who had cheered on the Games would get to live their own lives and forget that ever happened when Janie still felt a stab of panic sometimes when she remembered that her siblings still had some years to go before they aged out of the Reapings and it took her a few seconds to remember would never happen again.

But that idea of Coin's, those 'final Hunger Games'. For some reason, the thought made Janie want to throw up. Shouldn't she have wanted the Capitol to feel the same thing as they had? But then again, the entire point of rising up was that they were better than them. Why take out your anger on a bunch of random kids when you can punish the really guilty people instead? Not to mention that workers like Tav had been as oppressed as anyone else. And Janie wanted to live in a normal country, not one where Hunger Games could happen.

No, she wasn't going to freak out everyone with that. She'd probably just write the same old stuff. Food's good. Getting enough sleep. Dressing warmly. Here's the gifts. She wouldn't bother writing about politics. Janie just wanted someone to be in charge already. It was freaky, how Coin had just been offed. The fuck had the Mockingjay been thinking? There were a bunch of theories about her, none of which made sense. And it was a total mindscrew when Janie remembered that Everdeen was actually two years younger than her.

When her shift ended, Dusk dragged Janie to a salon to get their makeup done before going to visit the squeezes. In Janie's opinion it was a waste of canned goods, but she did look prettier, so that was cool, and Dusk was delighted at having his acne covered up. Janie took her bag and made her way to Tav's apartment. Her boyfriend kissed her as soon as they walked in, but they broke apart after a few seconds. "What's in that bag?" he asked. "Wait, did you get your eyebrows done?"

"Yeah," Janie said. She took out a bar of chocolate and handed it to him.

"Woah," he said, eyes comically wide. "All for me?"

Janie kissed him again, this time - on the cheek. "Sweets for the sweet," she said.

For some reason, Tav raised his eyebrows in surprise before sitting down on the couch and carefully tearing off some of the paper. He broke off a small piece and ate it with a blissful expression.

"So, what do you want to do today?" Janie asked. "I'm on my period, so I don't really want to have sex." She sat down next to Tav and cuddled closer to him. So warm.

"I'm actually not in the mood, either," Tav admitted. "The stuff with the elections is freaking me out too much."

The idea of not being in the mood because of politics seemed crazy to Janie, but she didn't say that. "Why?" she asked. "I mean, I'm also pretty freaked out. We went through all that, and now this."

"Yeah," Tav said, stretching out his legs and eating another piece of chocolate. "Why can't things just be normal?"

"But that's the thing," Janie pointed out, "what's normal? Nobody knows what normal is, except the really old people." Not like life had been good back then, but at least the pre-Games McCollum era had apparently been pretty normal by dictatorship standards.

Tav sighed and lay down, draping himself across Janie's lap. He was average height but somehow seemed longer, like a cat. His muscled legs went on forever. "I guess," he said, eating more chocolate. "This is really great. Where did you get it?"

"Generous black-marketer," Janie joked.

Tav giggled. "My friends are all so jealous that I'm with an MP." He had told her about his friends, and she had done likewise. Janie wrote letters to them, and they dictated replies to the post clerk. "Do you have any single buddies?"

"Everyone who saw you would say that they're single."

Tav rolled his eyes. He didn't get that he was seriously the hottest man Janie had seen in her life. Even the way he ate chocolate was a turn-on. "And I still couldn't get a date before you."

"You were waiting for the right person," Janie said. "Obviously."

Several hours of cuddling, chocolate, and worrying about politics later, Janie was back at the barracks just in time. It was a small, rectangular corridor with five bunk beds running along both sides. On his cot opposite hers, Dusk was sitting cross-legged and darning a sock over a lightbulb. "How's the man?" he asked. He was currently going out with a woman missing half her face. She was, according to Dusk, the hottest woman in the world.

"Appreciated my generous gift." Janie took out another bar of chocolate and put it on the table where they kept shared snacks. Then, she got ready to sleep. They were quartered by shifts, so that having them all wake up was easier. That also meant going to bed was easier. Janie lay under her blanket just a metre away from Dusk. They could pass things to each other if they wanted.

"You going to vote?" Dusk mouthed, face barely visible in the dim light.

Janie nodded. She wasn't sure what was the point of it, but if it was her civic duty, she'd do it.

Decius placed the third checkmark, hand trembling as he drew the vertical line, identifying which party he wanted to see in Congress. When he removed his pen from the piece of paper, he was grinning like a maniac. He had just voted. Panem was having elections. It was a veritable dream come true.

Carefully, he folded the ballot and stepped out from the booth. Still smiling, he dropped the three pieces of paper in their respective boxes - green for president, white for Congress, blue for municipal council - as the staff looked on. Decius had no idea where these people had come from. He still didn't quite understand where these brilliant local organizers and community leaders had been before. Maybe they had sprung, Athena-like, fully formed out of the rubble of their neighbourhoods.

No matter. Chee was already standing there, waiting for him, and now Latreya emerged, followed by her wife. The queue to the polling place went around the block, and it had opened just minutes ago.

"Well," Latreya said cheerfully, "first elections in decades. I wonder if anyone's still around who voted in the last ones." She fell silent, doing the calculations as they stepped into the cold morning air, wrapping their scarves around their faces. "They were falsified in any case. The last fair elections were over a hundred and thirty years ago, but anyone who's over eighty was around when ballots were being cast. So anyone ninety-nine and up has voted before."

"So few?" Georgina asked.

"That's what we get for sitting on our asses for three-quarters of a century," Chee said in a light voice.

Felix and Miryam emerged next, and the six of them set off. They walked past two old women who looked like they had voted before. They were talking about how much they hoped the Communists would win. Decius didn't agree with them at all (a surprising amount of left-wingers thought Thirteen was the model to strive for, which it most definitely was not), but seeing people openly supporting once-repressed movements brought a smile to his face. Another elderly person was explaining to their grandchild how proportional representation worked, and the young man was nodding along, perplexed.

It was a gloomy overcast morning, the wind biting at the exposed part of their faces, but even that couldn't ruin Decius' good mood.

"It'll be interesting to see what happens once we've got a civilian government," Chee said.

Decius shook his head. "MIlitary government won't go anywhere. They'll just promote someone else if Paylor gets chosen." Sloppily conducted polls said that she would. The other candidates didn't have nearly as much to offer - and in any case, she would be more of a figurehead with no real power. No more strong presidents for Panem. Still, how would that work? Would Paylor be president and someone else - the military governor of the Capitol? How had Douglas MacArthur worked together with the civilian government? Was that even halfway relevant as a comparison? Decius decided to do some extra reading on that.

"As long as things don't fall apart, I don't care," Miryam said fervently, squeezing Decius' hand in hers.

Chee nodded. "They froze that trial for a month. Not that I blame them. I just worry it won't start up again. I was re-reading some of my books - the fact that it happened at all is some sort of miracle."

Latreya guffawed. "Still more probable than-"

"How is the book going?" Georgina asked hastily, clearly not interested in yet another monologue about the 1474 Breisach trial. "Has Ankara responded?"

Immediately, Latreya launched into a monologue about how she was talking to another historian and they were so helpful. Latreya could read Turkish flawlessly, in the antiquated Ottoman Turkish as well as Latin script, but her speech was clumsy. Decius was at the same level in Japanese and was currently trying to learn Mandarin without much success, and Chee was capable of reading books and documents in German, Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, French, Polish, Ladino, and Serbo-Croatian. As if that wasn't enough, they seemed to be intent on learning more languages that had once been spoken by European Jews. Decius half-expected them to announce any day now that they were transferring to the history department, because their most recent research had very little to do with law.

More than anything, Decius couldn't wait for foreigners to arrive so he could dazzle them with his ability to say 'good day' and 'that's too expensive'. If someone arrived from Turkey they would be immediately kidnapped by Latreya so that they could teach her to speak properly, and Chee would baffle the Israelis by speaking the languages of their ancestors.

By the time they were approaching the archive, Latreya had finished describing someone's paper about the trial and execution of Behramzade Nusret. Decius doubted that would be of any use to the IDC, but the more precedents, the better. Now if only they would turn out to be needed. Decius thought about how the pen had glided over the cheap paper and smiled to himself.

Dora had not given much thought to the elections, but when Coin was killed by the little girl she had tried to turn into a symbol, out of idle curiosity, Dora had used the computer in her office to check the ' ', a recent Panem adaptation of a popular international Webpage. After answering the fifty questions, she found out, much to her shock, that her political opinions aligned with the Social Democrats. And after asking around in her circle, she found out she was just as alone there as she was in her choice of spouse.

Jack, for his part, turned out to be a Communist, and so diametrically opposed to the agrarian Farmers' Party, it was funny. Her kids would be voting for the left-wing liberal Liberals, her siblings and other relatives for the reactionary Nationalists, and Jonathan, her only adult grandchild, refused to tell others his political opinions.

Dora ended up casting the ballot for the Social Democrats in the national elections, even though when she read their program, it sounded far too radical for her tastes. She had to admit, though, that while the party didn't favour people like her, it also wasn't going to disadvantage her. Being a judge, even the Communists wouldn't do that - she simply thought their ideas on the economy were idiotic, even if they claimed they would support people like Jack's family.

For president, the choice was easy - the debates had shown Paylor to be the strongest candidate by far, whatever her siblings said. And for the local legislature, she went with the Social Democrats again. Since election day was a paid holiday (the less said about what was happening to pay packets, the better), Dora and Jack got home, idly turned on the television - and were instantly hooked.

The coverage was the most exciting thing she had seen in her life. Announcers discussed exit-polls, fretted over low turnout in rural areas with high illiteracy rates, and speculated on what that meant for parties who mainly appealed to the illiterate. Dora had thought that the rural majority would result in a definite victory for the Communists (who appealed to the itinerants) and the Farmers' Party (which appealed to tenants and independent farmers), but if most people in this category had not been convinced to cast their ballots, then who knew?

And it wasn't even the illiteracy per se - there were two or three democratic countries out there with large illiterate populations, and city people seemed to be voting quite enthusiastically. Experts argued on live television - was the problem the fact that there was little access to media in rural regions? Did the relative isolation lead them to not care about seemingly distant issues like politics, even though the elections could easily end up influencing the price of crops? A lack of trust in 'urban elites'? Something else?

Next, a replay of a debate on how the hyperinflation ought to be stopped was shown. Dora cheered on the person she agreed with, wishing she had paid more attention to the run-up. That was replaced with exit polls from the East Coast, which was several hours away. The industrial cities were casting their ballots for those appealing to the urban working class, but the anchors warned that once they hit the agrarian Midwest, the farmers would be showing up en masse.

Panem was one of the world's biggest countries, with four time zones. Centre was at UTC -6. Once the polls in Centre closed at 20:00, it would be another hour until they closed on the West Coast, and the votes for president and Congress would be counted. Parts of Ten were in fact in UTC -5, so it was they who would be waiting for Centre to finish voting before the District legislature could be chosen.

As Jack did housework and Dora idly did some reading on the couch, unwilling to miss any new developments, the elections went on. Exit polls became collated into comprehensive predictions that were endlessly compared with pre-election predictions Dora was sorry to have missed. For several days, everything had hung in the balance, as if frozen, but now, the frenetic activity on the screen was a sign of a thaw surer than that of the snow melting in the spring. Dora felt like she had come alive, or woken up after a very long sleep. A brief description on the history of democracy in North America was shown multiple times - it was interesting that none of the three pre-Cataclysm countries had had the political system that was being attempted today, that was something of several successor states that had lasted for only a few decades before being conquered by the authoritarian Panem.

20:00 on the East Coast. On the screen, urns were unsealed and ballots tumbled out, and Dora realized that something was here that she had never known she had missed. Her parents had never talked about democracy, they had always been in favour of a strong leader's strong hand - so much the worse for them.

The real excitement began. Not feeling any tiredness from the late hour, Dora was glued to the screen as election results came in. First, it was announced that the Farmers' Party gained a sliver of a majority in Ten's legislature, followed by the right-liberal Conservatives and the Nationalists. Jack cursed and threw his washrag against the wall. The national ballots were counted - five percent of total ballots, fifty, seventy-five…

"At this point, it can be reasonably said that Paylor will most likely become president already after the first round, having sixty-five percent of the vote with seventy-five percent of ballots counted," an anchor said, looking at their computer screen.

"It must be considered," the other anchor added, "that the role of president will be much diminished as Panem transitions to a parliamentary republic. The prime minister will have to countersign any of the president's decrees, and..."

"God bless Thirteen," Jack suddenly said.

"Why?"

"You think we'd have the slightest idea how to get all this set up after seventy-five years of Snow?" He waved at the television. "It's all thanks to them."

The columns of red and blue and yellow and green and black stopped changing so much, and eventually stabilized. The agrarian interests may have won in Ten, but the problem of low rural turnout had proven fatal, and they ended up winning only a narrow second nationwide. Social Democrats - 22.6%. Farmers' Party - 20.2%. Conservatives - 19.8%. Liberals - 12.6%. Nationalists - 10.5%. Communists - 9.5%, with 4.8% going to various splinter and regional parties, none of which broke the three-percent barrier.

The commentator predicted that in future elections with more time to prepare and gather resources, local groups not modeled off pre-existing Thirteen groups would be able to win more. Then the feed changed to the heads of parties discussing the results, but the implications of who was willing to be in a coalition with whom went over Dora's head, who went to bed soon after that.

In the morning, Dora decided to not waste electricity and waited for the newspaper, which announced that following an all-nighter of coalition talks, President Paylor (63% of the vote) gave Nereida Bensoussan, the leader of the Social Democrats and a returning defector to Thirteen of twenty-five years, the mandate to form a government, which she did with the Conservatives and Liberals (coalition with 55% of the vote). That was a relief - while perhaps Dora did align with the Social Democrats, they had a tendency towards a flag-waving radicalism she disliked that would now be tempered by having to compromise with the Conservatives.

"And?" Jack asked, leaning out of the kitchen with knife in one hand and black-market apple - in another.

"Social democrats, Conservatives, and Liberals with fifty-five percent, list of who gets what portfolio here," Dora said holding up the newspaper as if parties being democratically elected wasn't something she was still getting used to.

A mousy smile appeared on Jack's face. "I'm still mad about the agrarians winning in Ten, though."

"Of course you are." Dora headed to the kitchen, where she sat down to read the paper as Jack prepared breakfast.

Nothing new, aside from the elections. Several people had written several different opinions about what this meant, and Dora simmered with fury as she read the ones she disagreed with. She did agree that this coalition was almost oxymoronic and could only exist in an agrarian country like Panem, as the free-trade pro-business Liberals and the pro-urban working class Social Democrats only made sense as a grouping if the opposition was the protectionist Farmers' Party, and the presence of the Conservatives and their preference for the existing class hierarchy and paternalistic welfare systems made it even more contradictory. The Liberals wanted less government spending on social programs, the Social Democrats wanted the eight-hour workday, and the Conservatives wanted less social mobility, even if they didn't come out and say it.

Newspapers could now write whatever they wanted, and they made full use of this opportunity. Since this was a Ten newspaper, it focused mainly on District news. Updates on repairs, government decisions, the opening of new classes for illiterate adolescents and adults, and a small article about how all POWs with children would be sent home within the month. A smart move - none of the real career Peacekeepers had had children, only the last-ditch volunteers and conscripts would be going home now.

The paper threatened to fall apart at the touch and the ink smeared, but at least this was an independent newspaper. Dora read it cover-to-cover, setting the page with the puzzles aside for later. Breakfast was ready. Cornmeal with cheese and black-market fresh sweet peppers - delicious. Dora and Jack then split the apple and drank a cup of chicory each. It didn't wake her up like coffee did, but she wasn't allowed it anymore because of her blood pressure.

"So," Jack asked, nibbling on his apple half, "what's the plan?"

The plan was the same as always, even if Dora was feeling like she had fallen into a parallel world. How lucky the grandkids were that this was where they would grow up in! "Go to work, try collaborators."

"I meant, what about that trial they want you for?"

Dora shrugged and took a sip of chicory. "I can call Sanchez and ask him if he has updates." Without any official decision, the defector had become their leader. "But I doubt it's anything new." After that odd trip to Thirteen, they hadn't met in person, but Dora had spoken to Juan Mendez and Brutus Smith a few times. They were on a first-name basis by now, and it was a relief to be able to talk to a colleague who understood her so well.

"That's good," Jack said. "I-"

The phone rang in the living room. Dora went to get it. "Hello?"

"Mom?" It was Ashley. "Guess what? I saw the ISS last night!"

"How nice," Dora said, grateful that Ashley hadn't tried to call immediately after the sighting. Ashley was one of the many people who had become obsessed with the wider world in an attempt to compensate for their previous isolation.

The ISS - the international space station. Dora was still unsure what exactly that was about. When she had first read international news, it had seemed like endless wars and catastrophes to her, but there was also a space station floating above it all.

Dora was fairly sure that she had seen the ISS once. She had looked up at the night sky and noticed that one of the stars was moving slowly across the horizon. Not having been taught anything about the wider world, Dora had assumed that she was seeing things. But it had been a hunk of metal with several people inside, flying by as if borders didn't exist.

"Yeah!" Ashley said. "It was really great. I got a bunch of books about space from the library. Did you know that there are six people in space right now?"

"Good for them." Dora tried to imagine hurtling through space. It didn't work. She had never been on a hovercraft before, so she didn't know what it was like to fly. "Is anyone else as interested in this as you are?"

As always, Ashley misinterpreted that completely. "Well, of course," she said. "A bunch of my colleagues also think it's interesting."

Dora had given up on hoping that her youngest daughter would settle down. Thirty-one and having never shown any sign of interest in anyone, or even of awareness that such interest existed, it was unlikely she'd suddenly become normal. A paralegal, Ashley seemed to be content to spend her life leafing through books in the law library. Nevertheless, Dora hoped for more for her daughter. Being alone was never good.

"That's nice. Have you read the papers this morning?"

In response, Ashley launched into a monologue about the benefits and drawbacks of proportional representation. What had been endearing in a child was simply irritating in an adult. "Ashley?"

The rant paused. "Yes?"

"Can you please ask your siblings to call? I haven't seen your niblings in months!"

"Sure!"

Dora smiled to herself. Bull, Keisha, and Wesley wouldn't know what hit them.

Antonius was not sure what he had expected. In hindsight, it was obvious that nothing would have changed. He had known the truth all along, and if they acted as if that did not change anything - well, he had known that they were hypocrites all along, too.

For a glorious fraction of a second, he had thought that the trial would never happen and he would be freed. He could see how fragile the entire system was, and had thought that a shock like that would shatter it for sure. But the delicate rods holding it together had turned out to be made not of glass, but of silicone. It wobbled and then stilled, looking for all intents and purposes as if nothing had happened.

So a sweatshop worker was president now but the person in charge was actually a civil servant with the charisma of boiled turnips and the charm of boiled beets, the country was being ruled by a complicated coalition that spent most of its time arguing within itself, and more detainees were arriving at the centre almost every day. And Antonius was standing up as Vance and two guards walked into his cell for the daily inspection.

"Sloppy," was the first thing that Vance said. "How is it possible to be so sloppy with so little?"

Antonius said nothing. Warden Vance did not like excuses.

"Search him."

Antonius undressed and tossed his clothes down in a pile. He stood in a corner of the cell, eyes facing the wall, face burning. One of the guards searched him, finding nothing. The other day, he had tried to hide a small piece of bent wire in his cheek, but it had been found. Everything he tried to hide was found.

"Detainee, turn around!"

Antonius turned around. Vance was holding up a paper sachet of sugar in one hand. Antonius had hidden it in the lining of his trousers.

"Please explain to me, using as many words as you deem necessary, why you believe you are entitled to sugar."

Maybe someone else would have been able to fire back at him, but Antonius could not. "I am not, Warden."

"Then why do you have this?"

Antonius shrugged.

"Are you aware that I have the authority to put you on water and nutrient bars?" He had not been shaken down like this for the wire, or for the pencil, or the pen cartridge. Maybe hiding food for later had not been such a good idea.

"Yes, Warden."

"Get dressed."

Antonius did as ordered.

"Come on. You have an interrogation."

Antonius followed along, wondering if this nightmare would ever end.

A/N: I apologize to any Europeans who must be scratching their heads at why Panem is now governed by a coalition of member parties from the EPP, S&D, and Renew groups.

The reason why the coalition talks were so short is that with the stress of the past week, everyone was very willing to compromise because they wanted to form a government as fast as possible. The result is the intra-coalition bickering Antonius finds out about. The parties are not direct analogues of real-life current and historical European parties to the point where you can imagine a similar coalition in your home country and be horrified (are the Social Democrats the SPD circa 1910? 1930? 1949? 2021? Who knows?) but you can imagine them as being basically for similar things, with some notable differences where Panem's unique issues come to the forefront. For example, the Nationalists currently are in support of the existing class structure (but, unlike the Conservatives, are not interested in paternalistic welfare systems and making everyone's 'rightful place' a comfortable one), but they aren't racist, because the paradigm has shifted to the point where it wouldn't enter anyone's head to discriminate based on appearance. Also note that they are not Capitol-supremacist. Those views will take some time to come back to politics.

The 'elect-o-metre' is a shoutout to the German 'wahl-o-meter', a survey that shows you what party your views align with. The domain name '.pn' in reality belongs to the Pitcairn islands, but since it was used as a joke for promotional materials when the HG movies were being released, I think I can go on a limb and say that the Pitcairn islands are now underwater, leaving Panem with the domain name. Don't worry, the islanders all moved away.

Here is a picture of Janie visiting Tav post-salon drawn by u/happy_clover on reddit: imgur dot com slash a slash UFJ4I4u Usually, of course, she looks much scruffier.

Just in case this has to be said: the characters' political opinions do not necessarily correspond to the author's, so please do not comment with rants about how something is obviously right or wrong in real life :)