The Districts were trying to pull apart at the seams, Foreign Minister Heiko Laur was practically getting to his knees to beg for more humanitarian aid, and, worst of all, Latreya was struggling to write the chapter of her Talaat Pasha biography that dealt with the outbreak of World War 1. For some reason, Chee decided that going to the theatre was a great idea.

This was yet another eerily relevant play. In fact, the lead actor had been arrested and imprisoned shortly after Decius' defection - for performing this very play. The NCIA had disapproved of that iconic line from Hamlet, and they had disapproved even more of the ensuing standing ovation. Decius wondered how many in the audience had been there at that ill-fated performance. He tried to remember what it had been like when what had been allowed yesterday was suddenly punishable today or vice versa, but his mind had erased it.

Chee was rubbing their hands together - they had a bouquet of flowers in their lap, ready for throwing. Latreya seemed to be in 1914 Turkey. Decius was trying to get settled into the Capitol theatre atmosphere. Even though he had only spent six years in Thirteen, he had gotten accustomed to the relative peacefulness, compared to this. The audience was shouting advice and laughing uproariously at completely inappropriate moments.

Suddenly, everyone hushed. The line was about to be said. The lead actor turned to face the audience, a small smile on his face.

"Denmark," he said with a tinge of irony, "is a prison."

"You're a bloody hero!" Chee announced, jumping to their feet and throwing the flowers with perfect aim at the actor's face. Decius climbed to his feet and joined in the ovation, the actor bowing over and over. He was quite young - mid-twenties at the latest - but his hair was completely white and his face was deeply lined. Five years in prison over an amateur play. Decius had gotten away easy.

Eventually, the applause faded away. Stage hands took away the flowers and the play resumed. Decius tried to focus on what was happening on the stage, but his mind was elsewhere. Districts Seven, Two, and Nine were all locked in a bitter border dispute with each other, their northern neighbours, and the nomadic and semi-nomadic groups that had gone down to the Wilds, the strips of land between Districts, to hunt and trade. The Foreign and Internal ministries were at wits' end trying to regulate the dispute. Most of the senior staff in the Ministry of Internal Affairs had been promoted to dizzying heights to replace those arrested and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been built up from nothing, so it was a struggle for the civil servants to do their jobs properly.

Where would the borders between Districts be drawn? Nobody knew. The fences were being removed and pods - dug up, but there were still regular news about someone stepping on a landmine or tracker jacker nest.

A rather amusing tongue-in-cheek 'investigation' had been on the front pages of The Star, a right-leaning national newspaper. Someone had managed to take photographs of the houses where the ministers lived, and the nation was now having a chuckle about how the new ministers lived in tiny apartments with whitewashed walls. That investigation had also featured photographs from the Minister of Resources' wedding. The fifty-year-old civil servant from Three had finally managed to find love at his relatively advanced age, and he and his husband made it official in a very unministerly modest ceremony with twenty guests. When Decius had gotten married to Miryam, he had twice that number of just her relatives show up.

In District Eleven, there was a smallpox outbreak, and it was threatening to spread further. Decius, having been vaccinated as a child like most Capitolians, was not afraid for himself, but the fact that vaccinations had cost money in the Districts was an outrage. One of the prosecutors had told him about how their entire class had brought in money on vaccination days, but the vast majority of people in Panem had not attended school, and they had been unable to afford vaccinations. His hand went up to his left shoulder, where his shirt concealed the small round scar. So unfair, that he had that little life-preserving bump and so many didn't. One of the indicted key criminals was the former Minister of Health - what did Carolus Lee think about this outbreak?

The medical industry was lying in ruins - would other countries send in vaccines as well? Poor Heiko Laur. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was the butt of every joke, even as nobody in the country starved for the first time in a century thanks to him. Granted, now, there was a good reason for that - the ministry spokesperson. The other night, Demeter Chung, a former Capitol civil servant found a fellow traveller, had gone on social media and posted a bizarre, semi-coherent rant about how much she loved the countries that were providing Panem with humanitarian aid. The only comparison Decius could make was to when you didn't snack at a party and spent the night confessing your undying love to the person who had tutored you in first-year chemistry.

Decius was still annoyed that law and society majors needed to take a natural sciences course.

Another ministry was doing much better. Gaia Able was still being feted for stabilizing the dollar and making trade deals possible - not like anyone was queueing up to trade with Panem when an estimated ninety percent of industry was destroyed. To many people's disappointment, currency reform would not be a panacea.

Someone must have said something impressive on the stage. Decius clapped along, still lost in his thoughts. In a month, he was going to be a professor again. The university was lying in ruins, but there had never been much in the way of heating or air conditioning in the lecture halls, so that, at least, wouldn't be much of a difference. Would any of the students he had taught before still be around? Probably. Six years wasn't that much.

The funny thing was, there was barely any difference between lecture halls in the Capitol and Thirteen. In fact, Thirteen had had the excuse of being underground, while in the Capitol, the total absence of windows had no good explanation. As an undergrad, Decius had hated it. Not only had there been no natural light, there had also been no clocks, making it impossible to tell night from day. Thirteen had actually been better in that regard. At least there had been clocks. And the seats had been more comfortable.

Miryam claimed she was dreading the start of term, but Decius suspected she was anxious about national politics. Not like he could blame her - yesterday, Decius had gone to church to pray for peace and stability, and he wasn't even religious. He was just out of ideas. Nobody wanted his advice anymore, he was just yet another professor craving normality. Decius wasn't sure if he should be glad he would be able to live a normal life or be annoyed he wasn't as involved with things as he had been during the planning stage.

Decius realized he was applauding, and the actors were taking bows on the stage. The play was over.

"That was nice," he said.

Chee raised an eyebrow. "You spent the entire time in 1940 China."

Had he really dozed off so blatantly? "I was just thinking about politics."

Latreya stretched out her back. "We went here specifically to not think about politics."

"You were also in 1914 Turkey," Decius pointed out.

"That's not politics, that's history."

Chee shoved their hands in their pockets. "What was your favourite part of the play?" they asked challengingly as the three headed for the exit.

"The part where you hit the lead actor right in the face with the flowers," Decius said immediately. "Great aim. You should take up baseball."

"What, like that survivor of the Games who ended up in Siberia?" That was probably the strangest bit of news published that entire week. Josh Dirik, the survivor of the Seventy-Second Hunger Games, who had been presumed dead this entire time, had turned out to have defected to Siberia. At the moment, he was in Japan, playing minor-league baseball.

Latreya chuckled. "Sometimes, I wonder when the world stopped making sense. And then I remember about the Hagenbach trial."

Decius agreed. The world had never made any sense. It was just that when it was in the past, it was easy to fit it into the narrative, but when it was happening right now, nobody knew what would happen tomorrow, so it was all a surprise. "What should we do next?"

Chee tapped their chin. "We should go on a triple date so that our spouses don't decide we're all cheating on them with each other."

"A triple date?" Latreya asked, adjusting her hat to protect her from the bright sun. "What even is out there that the three of us, an accountant, a statistician, and a mathematician would all be willing to watch?"

"I think this was good," Decius suggested. "Maybe we could go to the opera, for maximum classiness."

His friends laughed at that one. "Maybe once we're all getting professorial salaries," Latreya said. "The opera's rather pricy. Let's wait a while for that. Delay our gratification, as our Chief of Counsel would have it."

Decius tripped and nearly fell, barely catching himself in time. He may have been asexual, but he saw the hilarity in having half the world know what the person who was for all intents and purposes his boss enjoyed in bed.

"I don't want to be a professor!" Chee exclaimed. "I haven't been in the classroom for ten years! How did I get hired?"

"A shortage of qualified cadres caused by half the staff being fired and half - moving to the Districts?" Decius offered.

"I guess."

Decius smiled.

"Funny thing is," Dusk said, "I never really considered myself to be somehow oppressed."

"Because you spent your time with only people like you?" Janie guessed. She took a swig from a bottle of vodka labelled '19+' (Janie understood that the black-marketers wanted to avoid charges of selling to the underage, but these labels were the most Capitol thing ever) and passed it back to Dusk.

"Pretty much, yeah. It was just…life, I guess." Janie wasn't sure how the conversation had gotten to that point. The two of them were officially supposed to be observing the surroundings from the roof, which in practice meant doing anything but that. "I wasn't formally registered until I was ten and sick and had to be taken to the paramedic-midwife station, and the bribe to have them overlook it was too much. Most people in the place weren't at all."

"So they weren't in the Reapings?"

Dusk shrugged. "Nobody ever thought about the Reapings. Sure, we had a radio, but the officially free batteries never arrived. The Reapings were a holiday for me. I got to see half the District from the train, visit the outskirts of Centre."

Janie was jealous. "You didn't think you could be picked?"

"Nah. Someone was Reaped in our parts at the very beginning, and you know the saying - lightning doesn't strike the same place twice." Dusk stared at the bottle, tracing the letters with a finger. "Funny how everyone attaches these labels here. Back home, people mostly distilled their own and grew tobacco and cannabis. Nobody got up in arms over whether someone was a day underage."

"I guess some niceties have to be observed even by black-marketers. Er, have you ever tried anything beyond the mild stuff?"

"Nah. The local Peacekeeper spent most of his salary on opiates at the pharmacy, and it was a pathetic sight. You?"

"Me neither. First it was too expensive, now I have stuff I need to buy for Tav."

"And then you try to insist you're not whipped. He's got you wrapped around his little finger. What are you going to get him next? A car?"

Janie was unable to hold back a chuckle - that was one of the things she had in mind. "Hey, look, there's our replacement."

"Thank God."

Back in the barracks, there was someone on Dusk's cot. "There you are," Kimmel Shokrai, who had been waiting for them to get back so that they could go negotiate a deal for a truckload of fresh apples, said, putting down their magazine.

"Is that reliable source of yours planning to show their face already?" Janie demanded. "Didn't they say they'd be here by yesterday?" She had wanted to make them wait, so that they knew who was in charge.

Shokrai took out their phone. It was sleek and shiny - the older person was way more involved in that semi-legal stuff than Janie and Dusk. "Ten minutes."

So half an hour. Janie flopped down on her cot and reached for a magazine.

"This is bullshit," someone loudly said not too far away. "Why should the Capitol pay reparations? My family's gonna move here soon."

A plan for reparations had been proposed, resulting in endless controversy. "Then who should?" the person's friend argued back.

"They should use the money they get from depurated people," the person offered. "Not like there'll be a shortage of that once the industrialists are dealt with!"

Janie agreed there. Chaterhan's currently frozen accounts could probably finance rebuilding half the country.

"You really think they'll do anything to them?" someone else asked cynically. "New government's got an army and needs industry. They're not gonna alienate them."

"They're not gonna- what them?"

"Push them away."

"That's true," Janie mused out loud. "Chaterhan thinks he'll be released soon."

Dusk shrugged, leafing through a magazine of his own. "One day he thinks he'll be released, the next- he's certain he's gonna be shot any day now."

"None of this makes any sense," Shokrai said with a shrug. "Me, I thought we'd finally show the Capitol who's boss, but we're just being buddy-buddy with them."

Janie gnashed her teeth. "That's bullshit," she said. "You're just buying into those slogans about how the Capitol and the Districts are different. We're all the same. Workers are workers, accountants are accountants. They didn't like Snow any more than we did."

Shokrai looked down at Janie from the height of their twenty-six years. "What, you hook up with one whore, and now you're an expert?"

"Tav's no whore," Janie shot back, standing up and clenching her fists. "You want to repeat that?" Shokrai's smug face seemed to taunt her. Maybe they couldn't find anyone without first offering a heap of money, but that didn't mean everyone else was like that!

Behind her, Dusk laughed. "It's true love!" he stage-whispered to Shokrai.

"Of course," they said sarcastically.

"Fuck off." Janie flopped back down and took out the letter she was working on. Ricky was now officially taller than her, which really wasn't fair. He was also annoyed he had missed out on fighting. Somehow, when Janie wrote about how much her job sucked, he thought it was really cool.

I bet youre happy about bein taller than me. Im still older than you so dont get too exsited. Enjoy bein the oldest wile you can haha.

Janie looked down at what she had written and sighed. It looked really wrong, but she had no idea what was wrong. Writing was hard. She read the papers every day and even got some books from the library, but reading the words didn't make her write them properly.

Next to her, someone from Eleven and someone from Four began fighting over who did some useless patch of land belong to. Janie sighed inwardly and tried to block them out. Before she finished the letter, the black marketer finally arrived.

"Fucking finally," Janie hissed to Dusk.

The black marketer turned out to be an older woman missing a leg. She arrived in a nice car driven by a man around her age. "Don't mind the hubby," she said, patting him on the arm. "He can keep his mouth shut." The man smiled softly at her, and Janie wondered if Tav would look at her like that when they were an old married couple.

Wait - when? She was really thinking like that? No wonder Dusk was making fun of her.

Shokrai proceeded to haggle with the black marketer, Janie and Dusk looming over their shoulders like undersized bodyguards. Eventually, they agreed on a price that both of them thought was an insult. Now, it would be the job of Janie and Dusk to bring in their people to buy individual crates, and they'd go sell apples on the street.

By that point, it was quite late. As they passed by a kiosk on the way back, Janie bought a newspaper. On the very front page was a group photo that must have been taken when the key criminals had still been in a detention centre.

Great. As if Lieutenant Vance needed another reason to be pissed off.

The article itself was about the filing of the indictment of the Peacekeepers, and the defendants in the picture were circled. In a large group, they looked even more pathetic than they did in their cells. They looked like a bunch of homeless people staying in a shelter, with those buzz-cuts and often shabby clothes. Were those really generals? They could have passed for someone's aunt or uncle, the one you were always warned of ending up like.

Janie read through the list of names, recognizing none. Everyone who had been Head in Six had offed themselves, and there hadn't been anyone infamous enough to end up on this list in her town. There were seven names with the number '6' in brackets next to them. Janie read through their ranks. One must have terrorized a Six town decades ago before moving on to greener pastures in a One secret prison. One moved on to being a task force commander. And with the rest, it wasn't really clear where they had raised the most hell, Six or somewhere else.

'You recognize anyone?" Janie asked Dusk.

Dusk scanned through the list. "No. Well, I know them now, but our county was pretty much left untouched, and the Peacekeeper we had garrisoned there before was more interested in getting high every day of his life." He squinted at the photograph. "I refuse to believe that's Cotillion."

"Why?"

"She looks like a student who just stayed up all night to finish a paper. And then forgot to iron her shirt before leaving."

Once, Cotillion had been that. And Janie had been illiterate. "And? Dovek looks like your annoying great-uncle who always tells made-up stories." Janie looked at the paper in his hands. "Lux looks like he was just told his promotion got cancelled."

"This is a really weird photo. It's like a group photo at a wedding, but everyone's dressed like they're homeless." He paused. "You know, there's a person I know around here that sells food laced with weed. I wonder if the relaxation will give me the ability to deal with the lieutenant's bullshit."

"Sounds like a terrible idea to me."

"What could go wrong?"

Stephen finished chewing out Dusko Brown for turning up for duty in a mind-altered state. The nineteen-year-old guard stared straight ahead, pretending he wasn't affected by any of it.

"Dismissed," Stephen said.

Brown fled.

The guards, like the rest of the country, were going to pieces. There had already been several fistfights over matters of District pride. Stephen was struggling to keep them disciplined when they were on duty. Already, the prisoners were whispering to each other that they just had to wait a little bit longer and there would be another war. Stephen doubted it would go that far, but if the IDC fell apart, there would be no trials.

In light of that, a guard showing up for duty in the witness wing slightly intoxicated was an easy problem to solve. Stephen checked his watch. Right on cue, the psychiatrist walked in. "Good afternoon, Dr. Mallow."

"Good afternoon." Her accent was becoming a little bit more Capitol. Not surprising, given that several of the key criminals had thought she was Capitol - and gone on anti-District rants at her.

"What is the interesting observation you wish to share with me?"

Dr. Mallow smiled slightly. "I thought you might be interested to know that several of the key criminals report having nightmares about you."

That was hardly surprising. They were under a lot of stress, and Stephen knew full well that many of them did not like him at all and blamed him for the conditions. "Which ones?"

"Oldsmith, Cotillion, Krechet, Chaterhan, Ledge, Brack, Kirji, and Lee."

That wasn't several - that was a full third of the key criminals! "That explains why the newspapers call me the Lodgepole Monster," Stephen tried for a joke. Obligingly, Dr. Mallow laughed. "Have you asked your subordinates about those held in the other wings?"

She nodded. "You're not there nearly as often, so they don't associate you with their incarceration."

An odd way to receive confirmation that he was being stretched too thin. Stephen was curious what exactly these nightmares were like, but that would break confidentiality, scarce as it was in this jail. "Good to know."

"Also, when I asked Slice if she was perhaps having nightmares about you, she looked at me like I was speaking nonsense and asked why in the world would she have nightmares about you."

If not for Holder's existence, Stephen would have thought that Slice was faking her niceness to earn favour with him. The former propagandist sincerely thought that Stephen was kind. Everyone shared their contraband candy with the mental health experts, but Slice was the most persistent about it. Thanks to the carefully measured diet, Slice had remained at a very low weight, giving her an adolescent appearance she deployed to make guards like her without even being aware of it. But Holder was not faking his obsequious obedience and inability to cope with irritants, and neither was Slice.

A person with ASD working in the media. It seemed strange that someone who struggled with social interaction almost by definition would want to work in a job where social interaction was everything. But then again, neurodivergent people had tended to be victims of the Peacekeepers, not Peacekeepers victimizing others. One couldn't look only at the diagnosis and not at what people managed to do despite it - good or bad.

"It does not do credit to the warden to be praised by the prisoner," Stephen said.

"I suppose not." Dr. Mallow flipped through her files. "Anothing thing I need to notify you of - one of the witnesses is being switched to another antidepressant."

Stephen was the one signing off on the order forms, so he had to be alerted to even things that were outside his purview. "Which one?"

"Cyril Lampert."

A former civil servant from Five implicated in various atrocities who was willing to tell all, most likely so that he could blame anyone but himself. "I will keep that in mind."

After a brief discussion about the mental health of the lesser criminals, Stephen had to go to the key criminal wing. Tiller ran past him in the corridor, clutching a bouquet of flowers and candy for her TA. As the joke went, officers first took locals to dinner and then slept with them, but the enlisted ranks did it the other way around. Second Lieutenant Tiller was clearly more interested in dinner and what came next than her job, given how she was running.

Stephen entered the wing while the last notes of the song they had been listening to still echoed in the corridor. None of the guards were leaning against the doors or whispering to each other or the prisoners. The twenty-four people were standing up straight, the taller ones leaning down slightly to be able to see properly through the square holes in the doors.

"How is it going?" Stephen asked the staff sergeant standing by the gate. The radio was nowhere to be seen, but Stephen knew it was under the folders on the table.

"Everything is fine, sir. Dinner is soon." The staff sergeant shot a longing glance at the gate.

"That is precisely why I am here."

Stephen stood in the corridor for a few minutes, feeling the irritation radiate from the guards. They ought to have been used to it by now. They hadn't been brought here to have sex with locals and get rich.

The soft sound of rubber wheels on smooth floor alerted everyone that the dinner tray was coming. Stephen kept an eye on who got which tray. No mix-ups occurred.

"Warden Vance?" That was Ledge.

"Yes, prisoner?" Stephen gestured at the guard to open the door.

Ledge was standing at a sloppy imitation of attention. At least he was trying now. "Warden Vance, this isn't enough food." He gestured at his tray.

In his first mugshot, Ledge had been on the fleshy side. He looked healthier now that he was eating good food and not drinking to excess, but he still had plenty of weight he could afford to lose. "This portion has been measured out to fit your caloric needs," Stephen said calmly. "You have been told this again and again. I myself eat similarly measured-out portions."

"Yes, warden," Ledge said glumly. He was on the older side, white-haired and balding.

Stephen stayed in the corridor for another half hour, observing the shift change, and then popped into the lounge, where everyone nearly exploded from irritation when they saw him. After taking note of fourteen places where contraband was hidden, he could go back to his office and do paperwork.

The key criminals were a chatty bunch. That was good. Not only did it make it easier for Miroslav to take note of anything the administration needed to be kept aware of, but he simply enjoyed listening to the life stories of his patients, even ones who had committed terrible crimes.

"So you never thought about the Tributes any other way?" he asked Toplak, who was doodling on a piece of paper.

"I suppose not," the former deputy head of the 'Training Centre' replied. Privately, Miroslav agreed that she hadn't done anything worse than aid and abet the Hunger Games, but he was willing to wait for the evidence to be argued in open court to make his final decision. "I never interacted with them. I never saw them except on television."

"Of course." During her interrogations, Toplak had made it clear that she had spent her time in an office doing routine paperwork. "How did you feel about your job?"

Toplak shrugged. She was wearing a scuffed knit sweater and a pair of trousers a size too big for her. Her hair was only tinged with grey despite her being several years older than Miroslav. "How does anyone feel about their job? It was a normal desk job. I was glad to have such a privileged position."

"And how do you feel about it now?"

"You can't expect me to change my opinions so radically in just a few months," she replied, almost apologetically. "I thought they were the only way to guarantee stability. I did my job. I grew up watching the Games - how could I think they were wrong?"

There was one argument against that that never failed to get an interesting reaction. "And what of those who did decide they were wrong?"

"They must have been told otherwise by someone," Toplak said instantly.

Miroslav nodded, as if lost in thought. "Some said they figured it out on their own," he offered.

"Then they are mistaken." Toplak's voice was steel. "They heard their parents whispering about it in the kitchen, or someone let slip an incautious word in the yard. It's impossible to think 'no' when one grows up hearing only 'yes.'"

Definitely interesting. "So you never heard anyone speak out against the Games?"

"Maybe once or twice, at a family gathering." She drew some circles stacked on top of each other. "I never paid it any mind."

"Then why did the others?"

Toplak looked up and put down her pencil. "Doctor, are you here to interrogate me or to help me?"

"Everything you say here is confidential."

"Please, Doctor, I'm not stupid."

Miroslav looked her in the eyes. "Everything you say here, I will not publish before you give consent or before you die."

"I suppose I won't be able to protest once they string me up," Toplak mused. She didn't actually mean that - deep down, she thought she was going to be released. But they had already gone over that, so Miroslav didn't probe further.

"Why do you think other people became Rebels?" Miroslav asked again, this time more pointedly.

Toplak picked up her pen and resumed doodling. "I assume they were from different families."

"But here's the thing," Miroslav said. "They weren't. People from all backgrounds became Rebels. I just want to understand why. Why does one person decide one way and another - in the other?"

Toplak tapped her pen against the bed. Due to fears of suicide, the only pens they got were flexible ones. "Maybe there's something wrong with them," she offered.

That could be part of the answer. Often, people willing to stand up to a forming dictatorship had always been the sort to lash out against any authority, parental or governmental. More relevant to modern Panem was the hypothesis that perhaps something about the personalities of these people made them fight back instead of hunkering down once a certain line was crossed. "What do you think that something is?"

"The same as any other facet of a person's personality - a combination of nature and nurture that leads them to respond to things in a certain way."

Miroslav knew that much without Toplak, but it was interesting that she was thinking along the same lines. "So you think you lacked that?"

"I suppose."

Had Miroslav grown up in the Capitol, he wouldn't have even thought of rebellion - he had no illusions about that. But there was a difference between a lack of heroism and being able to work at such a high level in the machinery of repression. So why Toplak? Why not her brother, who was only two years older and had been raised in the same way? What was the difference between the two siblings that led one to be an insignificant judge in a small-claims court and the other - to the second-highest post in the 'Training Centre'?

Perhaps that difference in two years had been enough. Perhaps the older and younger child had been treated differently, if in a subtle way that Toplak was unable to recall decades down the line. But what, then, explained Thread and his twin brother? Thread claimed that his brother and him had been so alike, only their parents were able to tell them apart. But one brother enlisted, and the other hadn't. What were those tiny differences that led them to make that choice differently already at twelve years of age?

"But there's a difference between passively accepting things and a job such as yours, don't you think?"

Toplak shook her head. "Absolutely not. My job was just my job. I aimed for something prestigious, worked my way up to the top. It was just like any other job."

Her job had been to manage the 'Training Centre'. During the Hunger Games, she had kept it running smoothly, and during the rest of the year, she had worked preparing for the next ones, though given the vast amount of overlapping agencies, investigators were still struggling to untangle who exactly had done what.

"So, to put it crudely - the annual deaths of twenty-three children did not bother you."

Toplak looked at him like he was an idiot. "Some countries have public executions, and the average person there thinks little of it. That was just how the world worked."

"Interesting."

Her fellow alleged mere paper-pusher did not have to be prodded so much. "I did some thinking about what you asked last time, Doctor," Pollman said. "If you'll forgive me for indulging in a spot of self-psychoanalysis?"

"Go right ahead."

Pollman nodded. The second-oldest defendant at sixty-seven, his completely hairless cheeks and full head of grey hair did a lot to compensate for the evidence of age around his eyes. "Thinking about my family dynamic, I wondered if we were so atypical or if the common representation of such families is inaccurate. Yes, my older brother was the favourite, but already in middle school, I pitied him, not envied him."

"Because of the pressure?"

"Indeed. He was belted for anything below an A+. I confess I caned my children a time or two in elementary school when they failed a test or misbehaved and could raise my voice over a C when they were teens, but it never even entered my mind that a B is something to be disappointed about." Miroslav wasn't sure what to do with the casual reference to hitting children with a stick. "Yes, he was told he was smart and would succeed while I was ignored and often dismissed. He got lavish rewards for perfect report cards, anything I did elicited only shrugs. But he bore the brunt of the punishments. With me, my parents didn't care. Failed a test? Whatever. Got an A+? Great, but whatever. Yes, he was told he needed to do better because he was not me, but I was not belittled for not being him."

"Were you upset by the lack of attention?" Miroslav couldn't imagine his academic successes taking place in a family atmosphere where his joys weren't celebrated. Having been a needy teen, he would have given up on a pursuit that brought no validation.

"As a small child, yes, but as I told you, when I was twelve years old, I realized that was the better option. It's very fortunate I didn't get into any kind of trouble, being left to my devices like that. As it was, my school results were competent and unremarkable, and I spent my free time wandering around alone or reading novels in the library. In hindsight, Doctor, I blame my solitariness on my parents. My brother wasn't allowed to do anything, so it didn't enter my mind to venture into the yard on my own, and by the time I got to school, I was too used to being alone."

"Interesting observation."

"Hold on, I wrote this down somewhere." Pollman reached for a piece of paper. "Ah. My brother and I were like a shuffled-around version of the golden child-scapegoat dynamic. He got the rewards and praise - and the brutal punishments. I got the permission to do whatever - and the complete disregard of my achievements."

Both would have been horrific ways to live as a teenager. Pollman was lucky he hadn't sunk into apathy or drifted into something far more dangerous than roaming around alone. "I believe your brother was a neurosurgeon before his retirement?"

"And professor - he's come out of retirement to teach again, now that they're trying to stick a hospital into every village." Pollman smiled sadly. "You want to know how he fared. The truth is - if he struggled, I do not know. The total control over every second of his day, the demands to do this and not that, the harsh punishments for stepping even for a second out of line - given the adult he became, I suspect it was outweighed by the rewards he got for pleasing our parents. The love, the adoration, the way they treated him like an equal, the material goods." Now that was eerily close to an oversimplified portrait of the entire nation, or at least the part that had approved of conditions.

"And when he was in university?"

"For the first two years, it was the same thing - perfection and only perfection. He became, if anything, even more pathologically eager to please. I don't recall him ever doing anything that upset our parents in that time. It was a seemingly happy time in the household, nobody was screaming or hitting, but it was so horribly tense. The slightest thing he did wrong would upset it, and he knew it. After that I finished highschool, got a job, and moved out, so I could not see what was going on at home as much."

Miroslav could not imagine being Eric Pollman. Panem households were multigenerational, a single working young adult moving out the first chance they got was atypical in the highest, and Eric had remained stuck in that atmosphere. "And what about medical school?"

"Same thing. I know it's crazy, but anything a hair less than perfection set them off. They had bought into their own story of the perfect child. I only saw it a few times, but even then, he just sat and took it. Once he began to get paid, he got his own place and only went home for New Year's."

To think that Rody's parents had been considered unreasonably strict for constantly inquiring after her marks and asking if they were above or below average. "Does he have a family of his own?"

"I'll answer your next question, Doctor - my niblings are all completely inept academically. He treated them as he was treated but none of them withstood the pressure. After all, why bother trying to pass at all if your best, an A-, will get you caned as surely as an F? With difficulty, they got through highschool, he pushed them into university through connections, but they moved out and quit the first chance they got. My poor niece, Eric's eldest - she bore the main weight of expectations. My other niece told me when she was in first year, he told Julia to her face he'd have to pull strings to get her into medical school and she'd become an inept doctor who got her patients killed. She killed herself that night."

"He was that set on having a child follow in his footsteps, to the point where he was aware it was a terrible idea but still wanted it to happen?"

"Yes." Pollman wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "My own children may not be stars in anything, but where they are, they're happy. They told me where they wanted to go, I pointed out the best road there."

A subtle form of nepotism, but a powerful one nonetheless. "What-"

Pollman didn't let Miroslav inquire further about his children. "Being a grandfather now, I wonder what made my parents the way they were. There weren't any academic extremes in the family that I know of, no great successes, no hushed-up catastrophes. We weren't social climbers, we were established, we did not require a dazzling professional to elevate our status. My mother was an officer of all things, one would think extreme pressure to put on the white would have been likelier than what happened."

"They did not want you to join up?"

"I mentioned it once, they shrugged, as always. They never gave me any kind of advice. I only got my job because that family friend of ours offered, I was too passive to go out and apply. My switch to the civil service came when that friend had a friend who needed an aide, and I don't think I hunted for promotions a day in my life. Even now, my lawyer decides what to do, and I nod along even if I don't understand it."

Passivity. Generally not considered a good trait, but only sometimes did it mean drifting into horrible crimes because you simply couldn't be bothered to look for another job.

When the black square on the computer turned into Mitch's face, Rye was surprised to see her son holding a striped kitten.

"Hi!" Mitch said happily. "Look who we got!" He held up the kitten to the camera. It was very cute, a little tan blob with thick black stripes.

"You got a cat without even telling me?" Rye asked, confused. That wasn't like Barrow at all.

Mitch shrugged, putting the kitten in the crook of one arm and petting it. "There's this new person on the street, and they have a cat, Dumpling. Dumpling had kittens a while back, so they gave the kittens away to people on the street. This is Bao. She has two siblings - Patty and Cheburek."

Rye scratched her head. "Dad knows how to take care of a cat?" She had last videocalled a week ago!

"Yeah! Hold on, let me get him."

Rye mentally rehearsed exactly what she wanted to tell her husband, but that all disappeared when she saw his face for the first time in a week. "How's my devil's advocate?" she asked instead, noticing how tired he looked. No surprise there - without her to do half the chores, he must have been running himself ragged. "I see you've increased the family without asking me."

Barrow tried his winning smile, but Rye raised her eyebrows. "Neighbour put up notices," he explained sheepishly. "Free cat, as long as you can afford to take care of it. We can."

"Please don't tell me you're feeding it out of your meat ration."

"Oh, no, no. Pet owners can get a few scraps for our animal friends." Bao meowed in the background. "Since they're so good for morale and all," Barrow added, turning around. Mitch ran over and handed the kitten to Barrow.

"On the topic of pets, how's Tiny?"

"Turns out his old owner died. Someone took him in and started feeding him properly."

Bao wriggled out of Barrow's hands and climbed onto the table. "No, Bao, don't write the defense for me!" Barrow jokingly complained. "I don't think the colonel will appreciate it."

Barrow had often taken the most complicated cases, not out of any desire to defend bandits but because he was interested in the challenge of defending the indefensible. Had he been from the Capitol, he'd have been rushing to sign up for an IDMT trial. "Colonel?" she asked.

"Yeah. Secret-prison commander."

"Good luck," Rye said sincerely. Her job was to prosecute people like that, but before, many an impecunious defendant had gone completely unrepresented. Even secret-prison commanders did not deserve that, especially in a death penalty case. If a defendant didn't have a lawyer, they'd have had the same chance if they actually got Bao to write the defense.

"I'll need it," Barrow grumbled as he tried to remove the kitten from the table. Bao meowed and stepped on the keyboard. "If I have to plead military necessity one more time, I'll start to believe it myself. None of them want to take a plea deal, not a single one. They're absolutely convinced they did nothing wrong. It's so bizarre to argue their viewpoints."

There were a few people like that opposing Rye. She had never talked to any of the defense lawyers personally, but she had read about them. A few believed in what they were doing. Others were like Barrow, defense lawyers who liked a challenge, were contrary, or sincerely believed that everyone deserved the best defense. The vast majority just wanted food and shelter and would defend the devil himself if that was what it took. A few had once been political lawyers, but those would be the worst of them all. After a lifetime of playing by certain unspoken rules, they would be unable to adapt to a situation where they were actually allowed to give their all.

"Maybe you should come here and help the defense," Rye said wistfully.

Barrow laughed. "That'd be a conflict of interest. And I don't think I can trust Mitch with Bao."

"Hey!" Mitch's voice cracked as he complained.

"He tried to throw the poor kitty in the air," Barrow explained.

"Mitch!" That little ball of fur looked far too delicate for those sorts of amusements.

"What?" Mitch said defensively. "She liked it."

"Which is why she ran away as soon as you set her down. And hid under the couch," Barrow said seriously.

Rye ran a hand over her face. She missed her children, but she had to admit there was some relief in not having to deal with this. "Where's Flora?"

"In her room, doing homework. Flora!"

Footsteps thundered as her youngest ran into the room. "Hi," she said, petting Bao.

"How are you doing?"

"Alright."

"How's school?"

"Alright." She picked up the kitten and went off, Mitch chasing after her.

That was typical. "And?" she prompted her husband.

He shrugged. "They're alright." Rye would have been annoyed if she didn't say the same to him. But weren't small children supposed to be chatty? All of hers had been on the taciturn side. Even in elementary school, everything had always been 'alright.' "Wait, Rye, is that a suit?"

"It is," Rye said, running a hand down her jacket. "Some important person is hosting a party for the prosecution. Rakesh got invited - and a plus-one. His husband is in Nine, of course, and Anna Goldfield isn't feeling well, so I got the nod." She and Carver had the same position, but Rye was older, so she had literal seniority.

Barrow chuckled. "Did they forget that the occupation staff is forbidden to bring spouses?"

"I knew we should have made a prosecutor out of you," Rye joked. "The Goldfields seem to be doing well."

"What, and leave the kids with your sister? Have mercy on Delilah."

"I heard that!" Mitch called out.

Barrow leaned out of the frame and emerged with Bao in his hands. She curled up into a tiny ball on the table. "How's your trial going?"

"They picked a date for the start. May twenty-six. Peacekeepers will go on about a month after that."

"Wow." Barrow patted Bao absently. "What are you working on right now?"

"Writing the presentations, picking out the right documents, things like that." She ran her hand through her hair. "The witnesses are a headache and a half."

"I can imagine." He paused. "But I envy you. At least you have witnesses. Everyone I call turns on a dime and starts pushing all of their crimes on the defendant."

Rye nodded sympathetically. "We're worried about that, too."

Barrow snorted. "Why worry? It's perfect for you."

Bao stood up and stretched, folding herself like an accordion before stalking over to sniff Barrow's hand. Satisfied with the findings, she lay down again. At least someone was getting to sleep these days.

A/N: The windowless clockless lecture halls Decius hated can be found in my university. I hated them.