Sometimes, Leon was ready to curse the government for having preserved so much evidence of their crimes. He was in a room of the archives full to the brim with shelves and shelves of loose papers and boxes of files that needed to be sorted somehow, and fast.
He was currently going through boxes of loose records found in a back room of the NCIA headquarters. Lists, mostly. Lists of dead people, lists of people lucky to be alive. Orders written in opaque bureaucratic jargon that could be summarized as 'have them shot', signed by Talvian, or direct instructions by Talvian to 'have them shot'. Just a couple of the sheets of paper in Leon's hands were enough to have her hanged. And this wasn't even particularly incriminating, as captured documents went! The prosecution was lucky the archivists would have rather eviscerated themselves than destroyed their troves as commanded.
Leon set aside the papers and walked over to a corner table where he had a thermos full of coffee. He helped out Meersten with his little business from time to time, and in return got a share of the loot. Unfortunately, it didn't look like he would find anything today. Meersten, Snow's onetime personal photographer and media expert, was mostly interested in photographs of Snow in his rose garden or with his granddaughter or doing any other normal thing, photographs he could print off on a printer he had acquired somewhere and sell to soldiers.
As the only person who knew how the presidential photographic archives were arranged, Meersten was the one the prosecution went to to get photos of potential defendants in a secret prison, or at an execution in the Districts, or standing next to Snow and preferably smiling. Chime, the most knowledgeable archivist willing to cooperate with the prosecution, peddled many of the photographs on the steps of the Justice Building in between digging up documents for the prosecution.
After drinking some black-market coffee, Leon went back to his workstation. The documents currently in his hands would be very useful to the prosecution. The boxes yielded file upon file of NCIA execution records, but in the back of one of them was a thin photo album. Eagerly, Leon opened it, hoping for something he could sell.
"More photos from a party?" a voice asked. Nilofar Kara-Murza, another archivist. She was from One, a few years older than Leon, and had been a small-town clerk before the Rebellion. She thought it was hilarious that Leon had been hired despite only ever having used the library to read books.
"No," Leon said. "A team of torturers goofing off - next to their victim."
Nilofar swooped over, giant cup of coffee in her hand. Before, she had seldom gotten to taste coffee despite living in a coffee plantation. Even for a clerk, it had been a luxury in southern One. "How graphic is it?" she asked.
Leon flipped through the photos. There were only five of them. Someone must have printed them off as a joke to gift as a colleague. The back of one of the photos was labelled 'DK, SM, AL, QS 25/11/71', and the insignia of the young NCIA officers was clearly visible. The victim was lying face-first on the floor in clean clothing. "Not very," he said. "See? No wounds or anything, and this photo is just them eating cake. Meersten might be interested."
"Fun," Nilofar said skeptically. "Did you see that supposed smoking gun about the firebombing of Twelve?"
"No - I didn't read the papers this morning. What is it?" While the documentary evidence was overwhelming, there were no 'smoking guns'.
"Minutes of a conference where high-ranking government officials plotted to firebomb Twelve if an armed uprising began - several years before the Rebellion actually started. Thing is, half the Capitol's going to start on with that tu quoque nonsense."
It took some time to figure out how the two were connected. A lot of people in the Capitol - Leon wasn't one of them - thought that the bombings, especially that final false-flag attack, had been as bad if not worse as the atrocities that had been done to the Districts. Leon hadn't been able to be angry at the targeting of non-combatants, even if Coin's manipulativeness at killing her own medics was hard to comprehend at times. The Peacekeepers and NCIA had been much worse, after all. Finding out that there were laws regulating warfare had confused Leon to no end.
"Huh," Leon said. "But did they know it was illegal?"
Nilofar nodded. "Peacekeepers' handbook said not to touch non-combatants. There was an article about that a while back."
"Huh," Leon said again. He sat back in the uncomfortable chair and flipped through the album again. It was a bit of a surreal sight. The four young officers were so happy. Leon called the phenomenon 'the smiling killer'. It unnerved him to see happy NCIA officers. He himself had never put a toe out of line, but he had heard the stories of what happened to those who did. He had cringed when seeing that distinctive uniform on the street. But it had been worn by people who liked to laugh and eat cake.
Had they known that what they had been doing was wrong? Leon had never given a second thought to the Hunger Games, or to how underfed most of the Tributes had been. He had watched them as if it was all happening in a parallel universe. He had known that the food he was eating and the electricity he was using had been the result of cruelty and mistreatment, but he had done nothing, thinking that nothing could be done. He had winced at the arrests of rebels, thinking them idiots who would never achieve anything.
And now, here he was. Helping the new government put the old one on trial. Leon put the records in order and placed them in the boxes, which he labelled with a marker.
"I guess I'll clock out, then," he said, looking at the clock.
"Yeah, me too."
Leon put the album and thermos into his backpack, slung it onto his shoulder, grabbed the boxes, and went upstairs. He left the boxes with another archivist who would put them onto the appropriate shelf and headed out of the archives after signing out for the day.
It was cold outside. Leon shoved his hands in his pockets and headed for the side entrance where he knew Chime would be.
"Good day," he told Chime, who was squatting by the steps with a box of prints. An enterprising soldier was selling autographed photos of the key criminals next to her, and further to the side was a vendor with a large pot of soup. This was a decently popular place for the soldiers. "Is Meersten in?"
Chime nodded. "In his office."
Leon walked up the steps and went inside. Meersten had been given a small room in a different wing of the building to use as his office. Leon walked up the dust-covered staircase and made his way to Meersten's office where the sign 'Will open in half an hour' hung on the handle. When that half-hour had begun was not indicated. Leon knocked.
The door opened, and Meersten leaned his head out. "What are you here for?" he asked around the stick of candy dangling from his mouth.
"I've got a photo you might be interested in."
Meersten's demeanor changed, but he still looked unsure. "Come on in, then," he said, opening the door wider to let Leon enter. The office was a scene of chaos, with shelves full of boxes and binders everywhere. "What is it?" he asked, sitting down on a corner of a desk taken up with two computer screens and stacks of paper.
Leon took out the album and showed him. "Junior officers, and you can see their insignia, faces, and initials. Might help you with that NCIA database."
"Doubt it," Meersten said, flipping through the photos. "Too small a fry. Nobody cares about these kids." He took the stick of candy out of his mouth, bit off a piece, and chewed. "Though I'll take it, identify them. Maybe one of them's important enough by now to have been detained." He put the stick back in his mouth. "And the one with the cake is funny. Press might pay me for it."
"So-"
Meersten snorted. "What, you want an advance?" He walked behind his desk and opened up a safe mounted into the wall. It contained expensive non-perishable food - candy, coffee, tea, fine tinned meat, chocolate, jars of various preserves. Inflation escalated with every passing day, only actual things had value now. "I got good money for that photo of Snow's daughter. Gotta pay my sources, or else you'll all run off, and how will I fund my lifestyle then?" He laughed and took out a box of expensive tea. "Here you go."
"I saw that photo in the papers," Leon fired back. "It's worth more, since it was such a major publication."
Meersten snorted again. He took the candy stick out of his mouth and jabbed it at Leon. "What do you want?"
"Candy."
"Sure." Meersten bent down and took out two candy bars. "For your brother?" He put the candy back in his mouth.
How Meersten knew that Leon had a brother was a mystery, but given his old job, it made sense that he could remember details. "Yeah." Leon put the tea and candy bars into his bag. "He's been complaining that he hadn't had anything sweet since the fighting began."
"Most people haven't." Meersten moved the candy stick from one corner of his mouth to another. "Not unless you have something nice to offer our occupants." He plopped down onto his cushioned chair and carefully took the photographs out of the album. "You want the album?" Leon shook his head. "I'll have Chime sell it, then."
Once, Chime had lived in a nice apartment and worn expensive clothing Leon's family could only have dreamed about. "I can give it to her," Leon offered.
"Go ahead," Meersten said, opening up something on his computer - probably solitaire. "I'll see you around."
"Goodbye." Leon grabbed the album and left the office, outside which two young guards were standing.
"Is it-"
"Only if you're selling."
The guards wilted as Leon walked past. It was getting late. Since there was plenty of time until his commuter train would arrive, he decided to pop over to the black market.
"From Meersten," he told Chime, who was still crouched on the steps. Leon had no idea when she managed to find the time to work. "Here." He handed her the album.
Chime spat on the ground, an odd act from someone with her accent. "Am I his black-market peddler now? He can sell his rubbish himself, if he really needs the extra cash." She took it and shoved it into a pocket of her trousers. The small book fit easily inside. "I really need to get going back before my toes freeze off," she complained. "Irons wants me researching that conference about the bombing of Twelve. Those minutes are really going to freak a lot of people out." Leon realized she meant the minutes Nilofar had been talking about.
"Yeah," he said vaguely. "I'll see you around." He went off down the street in the direction of the black market. Most Capitolians couldn't afford to buy much, but well-paid occupation staff and soldiers eager to buy some things to send to their families in the Districts made up for it.
The black market looked like any other market. Illuminated by the glow of streetlamps, vendors stood at stalls or squatted on the ground. MPs tried to patrol it, but MPs at a black market were more likely to be buying than raiding.
"Hey, cutie," a voice said next to him. Inwardly wincing, Leon turned around.
"Uh, hello," he said awkwardly. The speaker was a soldier his age, and she was flanked by two buddies. "Do you need something?"
"Do you need something?" The soldier in the middle leered openly at him.
All around him, people were passing by, carefully not noticing what was going on. "No," he said. "I'm here to buy stuff."
The two other soldiers laughed as Leon walked away.
"I heard that there's documents out there that prove Twelve was supposed to have been destroyed from the onset," Janie said as she re-read a paragraph of her letter home. "Like, it had been agreed on for years."
"Maybe." Dusk chewed on a pretzel stick, courtesy of a black-marketer. "What I don't get is why everyone's so up in arms about Twelve when every other District lost more than a measly ten thousand people to bombings. I mean, I get that they lost ninety percent of the population, but that's what you get when the place is so tiny." He took another pretzel stick from the paper packet.
Janie had actually heard about that, too. "It's called aggressive warfare," she said, pretending that she knew what that was. She and Dusk were sitting next to each other at the table, trying to write letters home. Janie had thought it was annoying how long it took letters to reach her family, but Dusk was from a farm in the middle of nowhere, so it took even longer for him. "Basically, they started it, and they started it there. Sort of how if someone punches you in the face, you start fighting, and they punch you even harder, you'll mostly be pissed off about that first punch."
"Huh. I heard someone say that Twelve is so small because it was supposed to be a special testing ground."
"I heard that it was so small because before the Dark Days, as the coal was all used up, people moved away to other places, and in the end only a bunch of semi-abandoned little towns were left in the entire District. And then all the old people died, so it was just the small core left in the former District capital."
"That makes more sense."
They sat in silence for a few seconds, Janie writing down a few more sentences and carefully going over them. She had been given a manual to study that explained that some words sounded the same but were spelled differently, which was a pain in the ass to figure out. Yeah, it's not like her family could read in any case, but it was the principle of the thing. Tav had written better at the age of six.
"How's that new squeeze of yours doing?" Janie asked once she ran out of things to write.
Dusk grinned around a mouthful of pretzel stick. "Great. Best lay of my life. I'm still annoyed you lucked out into that boy of yours on the first try."
Janie took a stick and bit off a piece. It was crunchy and very salty. "Experience paid off - I knew what I needed."
Dusk rolled his eyes. "Hard to date around when there are five people your age in the area." He looked down at his letter. "Can you shorten 'there are'?"
"No. You can shorten 'there is', though. It's weird. Just sound it out."
"Yeah, but then I feel like an idiot."
Janie also felt like an idiot when she had to sound out words. It was either that or screw everything up. "An idiot, but an idiot who can read." She wrote a few lines about how the weather seemed to be warming up a bit. "Are you really an idiot if you can read?"
Dusk scratched his chin, thinking. "Won't it depend? Any six-year-old in the Capitol can read, and there's still idiots here."
"Then what does it mean to be an idiot?"
"No idea," Dusk said with a snort. "More pretzel sticks? Oh, and by the way, I've been meaning to tell you that there are these people who sell funny pictures of ministers and senators and stuff. Saw them when I was picking up a letter. Everyone's trying to buy a pic to send to their families, or re-sell them. Some are even signed."
That sounded interesting. "Who's doing the selling?" Janie asked, taking the offered sticks.
"Some archivist. Only one from the presidential archives to work for us. She's got Snow's personal photographer working for her."
How were they supposed to find defense lawyers, and in the required numbers? They had already had several applications, only for the applicants to be rejected or arrested themselves, pending Depuration. Dr. Lee had written up a memo explaining why District lawyers could be used, but Mary had rejected that proposal. If they did that, they would be awash in young glory-seekers and those who would deliberately sabotage their own clients.
That same risk existed with the Capitol lawyers, of course. Freed from their prisons, the onetime dissidents could potentially try to get even. Most of Mary's colleagues were worried about revanchism in the courtroom, but that could be struck down. Nothing could be done when a lawyer was not doing their job properly except getting a new one. At the Gamemakers' trial, the average lawyerly performance could barely be classified as 'mediocre'. That trial was still in recess, and nobody knew when it would resume.
Mary was sitting at her desk and watching Joe type up a notice asking for lawyers. Since many were still living in holes in the ground with no running water or electricity, they would require the most low-tech methods of communication to reach everyone. The Capitol rumour mill, of course, could be counted on to do the rest. When tens of millions of people were packed into such a small space, rumours went from one end to another with an astonishing speed, though nothing was as fast as the Thirteen rumour mill.
"Isabella told me there's someone at the door who wants to see you," Joe suddenly said. "I just remembered."
That was strange. "I'll go see what that's about."
At the door, there were indeed two people standing there, offering themselves as witnesses. Witnesses, too, were being gathered. While the prosecution would be mostly based off documents, there were some things that had never been put to paper. Mary had picked almost at random a former mansion to house them for as long as necessary. Hopefully, they would not have to leave before they were needed in the courtroom. Most potential witnesses had been identified among POWs, some of whom were still being detained awaiting their own trials. Some civilians, though, were also showing interest without needing to be chased down.
Mary directed the two witnesses, middle-aged people who had had minor positions in government, to the Witness House and went back in. Back in her office, Joe looked up when she entered. "Who was it?"
"Potential witnesses, from the government. We'll have to make it more clear that they shouldn't be going to me personally. I don't have time for this." Mary looked at the list of things she had to do today. "Joe, refresh my mind - what is 'B9 34 forest discuss'?"
Joe's eyebrows met his hairline. "May I see?" After a few seconds of contemplation, he nodded to himself. "Forest cache of documents pertaining to the Ministry of Resources and the Abdelkarim estates. District Nine. Someone who helped bury them came forward to dig them up."
Lawyers, witnesses, documents - so much that needed to be found and dealt with. Another note reminded her of a discussion of whether military lawyers would be allowed to work in their trials. Mary was of the opinion that they could, as long as they were depurated and did not have anything too incriminating in their records.
It often felt like Mary was running in place, putting in so much effort but achieving nothing. They had finally started working on some preliminary drafts of the indictment, which wasn't very helpful when the list of defendants still hadn't been officially formalized, even though they were reasonably sure that no changes would happen. Negotiations were ongoing to secure the transfer of those held in Thirteen, because the local government claimed it was currently getting important information. Other local governments were too busy trying to stop inflation from wrecking the economy completely to cooperate. And Mary had started drafting an opening statement, if only to remind herself of the goal in sight.
"How is that flyer going?" Mary asked Joe.
"Good. How did that meeting about splitting the cases go?"
Suddenly remembering that she had forgotten to do something, Mary reached for the telephone and her phonebook. She dialed the number of Rakesh Kantaria, the Nine chief prosecutor. He, Robert Wu from Eleven, and the still-hospitalized Trevor Hall of Eight were the only ones who had not yet arrived to the Capitol. Someone had to update them on every meeting held - and today, Mary had said she'd do it personally.
Today, they had formally delineated who would be in charge of what. When it came to Counts Three and Four - war crimes and crimes against humanity - each District would handle its own case, with Thirteen taking over the Capitol because of the heavy presence of defectors on the team making it appropriate, and also taking over Twelve because it had the human power necessary to deal with it.
The other three had been split rather simply - for now. Mary knew better than to think this would be followed exactly. Districts One through Four would focus on the conspiracy charge - Isabella was irritated, as she still did not support such sweeping charges, but she was the best person to untangle the government structures and explain who had been in charge of what. Five through Eight would deal with the implementation of the Hunger Games, and Nine through Thirteen got aggression - very conveniently for Mary, who needed this opportunity to explain how the entire regime had been the result of an aggressive war resulting in occupation.
"Rakesh Kantaria speaking."
"Hello, Rakesh," Mary said, careful to pronounce his name correctly. According to him, rendering it as 'rakish' was a joke that had been beaten into the ground by his husband before they were even married. "This is Mary. I am here with an update."
There was an intake of breath on the other end. "Can't you call Rye with this? I have to be in the courtroom in five minutes."
Rye was a highly competent attorney, but she was not Nine's Chief Prosecutor. The chain of command had to be respected. It took Mary only three minutes to explain the meeting to Rakesh as he listened closely.
"So I'll still report to you," he said with a tinge of amusement. "I'm sorry about this mess. We were short-staffed even before, and even though we re-hired everyone we could, nobody can be spared. When I submitted my team list to my boss, I thought they'd drop dead from horror."
Robert had the same problem. He'd only be able to bring along one attorney and a tiny team of paralegals and clerks. He claimed he'd be able to handle himself nevertheless. Mary was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. "As long as you can be here before the trial starts, it will be fine."
"That's about the one thing I can guarantee," Rakesh said sadly.
Had Antonius had any delusions about what was going to happen to him, they would have disappeared by the tenth time he demanded a lawyer and was told it would happen 'later'. It was evident that they were planning on shooting him as soon as he outlived his use, whenever that may be.
Rumour had it the Districts were falling out with each other, over politics or because of the inflation. That gave Antonius hope. If they fell out, they would have to release him and forget about that crazy idea of holding a trial.
"Get over here," the guard said. Antonius stood up from his typewriter and approached him. "Sign this." He handed him a stack of expensively printed photographs of Antonius standing at a pneumatic drill, as well as a permanent marker. Obligingly, Antonius signed, even though the photograph was horrendously unflattering. He received a large handful of candies in return.
"Thank you, guard."
The guard said nothing. Antonius sat back down and resumed typing up the required information about the details of steel production. It galled him to give away company secrets, but he could not afford to be uncooperative. Antonius ate the candies as he worked. They had a fruity flavour. Antonius had not had any fresh fruits in a long time.
A while later, the guard and Warden Vance came into the cell. "Why are your lips blue?" the warden asked in a threatening tone.
"I am cold," Antonius said. That was the first thing that came to mind.
Warden Vance looked like he was going to have an aneurysm. "Hands." Antonius complied. "They are not nearly cold enough for your lips to be blue. How dare you insult us like that? What makes you think we would put you in conditions where you would turn blue from the cold?"
Antonius shrugged, hunching his shoulders. He stared at the ground.
"No," Warden Vance said. "Your lips are blue because you've been eating blue candy just now. Now undress." As the guard searched him, finding a small piece of metal jammed into the peeling sole of one of his shoes, he continued to complain. "What's the matter with you, Antonius? Why are you like this, always hamstering away this or that? Do you not know how to follow the most basic rules? Don't you understand that the more you steal, the more often we'll search you?"
Glad the warden could not see his face, Antonius said nothing.
"You are, quite possibly, the biggest pilferer out of all of you. Nobody else is so convinced they're smarter than the guards." Antonius wanted to say that maybe he was the only one being caught, but the words stuck in his mouth. "What is it that you lack, Antonius? Why must you manipulate my guards in exchange for petty nonsense?" As if they needed to be manipulated! The warden sighed, sounding like a disappointed parent. "Turn around and get dressed. It's time for your shower."
Showers meant more humiliating searches. The water was freezing, the soap was rough, and a prisoner orderly was on hand to shave his head and face. It was a relief to be free of the stubble, but every time his hair was buzzed into virtual nonexistence, it just served to remind him, over and over, of his position.
"When am I going to get a lawyer?" he demanded of the warden when he was about to leave to pick up his next victim.
"Has anything happened to you that makes you feel you need a lawyer?" Warden Vance fired back, all icy calm.
"I've been interrogated," Antonius said weakly. "And I was promised one."
Warden Vance turned around fully to face him. "You agreed to be interrogated without the presence of a lawyer, so kindly do not start with this now."
Antonius wanted to scream at the warden, to tell him that he had tricked him and was not giving him what had been promised. But he could not talk back to Warden Vance. His momentary impulsiveness was gone, replaced with only a sickening fear of something he could not define. "I am sorry," he said.
"Don't worry, Antonius," Warden Vance said softly. "I promise you'll have plenty of time to talk to your lawyer before the trial starts. But there is still a lot of time before that happens. Now, let's get you back to your cell. I'm sure you have plenty of cleaning to do."
On leaden feet, Antonius walked.