In the inimitable Capitol way Dora was very familiar with by now, the death of the submariners of the Seattle, and especially Snow's response, became a dark joke. Veterans were speaking out about the horrible conditions in which they had been forced to serve, and the deadpan 'It sank' was everywhere, endlessly parodied in every imaginable context.
What happened to the car? It crashed.
What happened to the marmalade? It got eaten.
What happened to the building? It burned.
Back in Ten, few people cared about the ill-fated submarine. Jack couldn't talk about anything that wasn't the agricultural productivity of their backyard and her colleagues called in with news from the fields, as if she couldn't find that out for herself. Even her children went on and on about oilcake production and by how much it needed to be increased last month. When Dora had asked them in a group videocall to talk about something else, Ashley had gone on a rant about some solar panel that needed expensive repairs. Dora suspected that the solar panel was in space.
Even statistics on soy production and Ashley's rambles were preferable to the trial. Dora felt as if she was being slowly bored to death. The newspapers wrote that the judges always looked attentive, but that was not how it seemed to Dora. As they sat down, Drexel already looked bored. His notepad was in reality full of drawings. The judge from Eleven was not a good artist, but he enjoyed drawing. On her other side, Rosalinda was clearly hungover. A few seats down from her, Daniel was scrawling something in his notebook. His hands had been badly damaged by his years in the mine, making his handwriting impossible to decipher.
The session began. The witness was brought in and began to testify in an excessively loud voice typical to all Peacekeeper officers. After the usual establishment of what Major Bethany Chiemeka (ret.) had been in charge of, she began to describe life in the Academy - eerily appropriate, given the timing.
"Administration didn't care about hazing," Chiemeka said. "Even twelve-year-olds could be woken up in the middle of the night to do push-ups. I was gang-raped by some older cadets when I was thirteen, and when I tried to complain, I was told it was normal."
Thirteen.
"Was sexual violence a common form of hazing?"
"Yes."
"When you were a senior cadet, did you see your peers sexually abusing younger cadets?"
"Yes. Once, I held down a twelve-year-old who had misbehaved as another cadet raped him with a broom handle."
"Did he complain?"
"Yes."
"What happened?"
"The instructor told him that he had deserved it for misbehaving."
Juan's face was perfectly blank and calm.
"You said earlier today that after graduating from the Academy, you attended military college and worked as a drill sergeant at boot camp for adult volunteers."
"Yes."
"Was there a similar level of hazing there?"
"Yes. We received instructions telling us to use physical violence on slackers." That explained a lot about Peacekeeper behaviour - treated with cruelty until they were sullen and angry and then let off the leash and told they could do anything, the results were predictable.
"Instructions from where?"
"They had been signed by the officer responsible for all places of training. At the time, it was General Lux - Defendant Lux."
"Traitor!" Lux shouted from the dock. "How much did they have to pay you to dance to their tune, you pig, you dog? Or did you sell out so you wouldn't have to share the dock with your honourable fellows?"
"Silence!" Raymond said, tapping his gavel. Chiemeka ran her hand down her civilian suit and sat even straighter. Dora got the impression that she was proud of herself.
"You said before that you later worked on the defendant Lux's staff?"
"Yes."
A recital of crimes Dora had not expected to hear in this courtroom then began. Chiemeka, who had served as a staff officer in Two for decades before being promoted to the Capitol with Lux, testified about how the highest-ranking officers had gotten together to plan drug deals and the like. Dora had known that Peacekeeper officers had often controlled businesses, especially semi-legal or illegal ones, but she had not suspected that Lux had been a drug lord and a trafficker of sex slaves. The former Commander-in-Chief looked ready to implode as he was revealed as what he really had been - a gangster.
This would pose a problem. Did this count as a conspiracy to commit crimes against humanity? Lux wasn't on trial for selling drugs or extorting business owners, so it would have to be dealt with under that count. Doihara Kenji been executed for doing just that, but his actions had been deemed war crimes, and it remained to be decided if the seventy-five years of the 'Games regime', as some had taken to calling it, were a time of war or a time of peace, or something else entirely.
By the time Chiemeka's testimony was over, the former Peacekeepers looked ready to explode. Best and Verdant were already in bad moods because of the Seattle, the abandonment of which was on Verdant, and this was yet another nail in the coffin.
Rye breathed a sigh of relief when the retired officer marched off, several pairs of eyes in the dock glaring at her retreating back. Count One was finally over. It had taken over a month of eight-hour days. Now, time for Count Two, which Rye had worked on. Rowan Waschmann from Seven stepped up to begin their overview of the Hunger Games. It repeated what Irons had said in her opening statement somewhat, but Waschmann let themselves get more emotional. It was a compelling speech - even if the audience was laughing at their accent.
Waschmann had explained their background to the others. Born in a small village in District Seven, they had been very lucky to have had a school to attend at all, even luckier that their family had allowed them to board in a bigger town for middle- and high school, and the luckiest of all that the quality of education allowed them to get into university. Abandoning their accent, however, had not been as easy as studying law, and they were still in debt up to the ears and had had an extremely low quality of life due to so much of their salary going to loan repayment. 'Incorrigible' debtors had often been forced to repay their debts with forced labour for fourteen to sixteen hours a day
"For seventy-five years, children were torn from their families and taken hostage. This-" Waschmann stopped as the giggles in the gallery became clearly audible. The defendants, too, were chuckling. The prosecutor looked at Sanchez for help, but all was quiet now. "This, however, had nothing in common with the usual-"
The mangling of the last word set off another flurry of giggles. Rye could hear Dovek whisper to Oldsmith, "Look! It thinks it's a lawyer!" Her mouth nearly fell open at the cruelty of the phrase. His usual joviality had made her forget that he, like the rest of the defendants, was extremely prejudiced against the Districts and the lower classes, and especially lower-class District people.
"The defendants will be silent," Sanchez said.
Dovek made a 'who, me?' gesture before leaning back against the bench and motioning for Waschmann to continue. The back-benchers looked rather uncomfortable.
Waschmann ran an unsteady hand through their hair. "The Reapings had little in common with the hostage-taking operations that will be dealt with under Counts Three and Four aside from the element of deliberate terror." The defendants were still giggling about their accent, but the audience wasn't amused anymore. In the middle front row, Krechet was grimacing openly - his own accent was far from impeccable. "Every single year, two children were randomly picked from each District. Sometimes they were tiny twelve-year-olds, at other times - fully grown near-adults of eighteen. But it was almost always random. The Prosecution will bring forth witnesses to testify about the rare cases when it was not."
When Rye had been a teenager, she had thought she would never have children because the Reapings had terrified her so much. Once she became older, however, she realized that the numbers were in her favour. By the time she was dating Barrow, Rye was more worried about the fact that one of her uncles had died from brain cancer as a teenager than about the Games. Nobody she knew had ever been picked. The Districts, except for Twelve, were massive. The point had been to terrorize the population, to make them wonder if perhaps this would be the year they lost someone in such a public and brutal way. And going by the attitudes of people in her circle, they had completely failed in that regard.
After going on along the same lines, Waschmann approached it from a different angle. "The Hunger Games were already touched on during the presentation of materials on Count One, a common plan or conspiracy, but I stress that the Games themselves were a conspiracy. A conspiracy to set the Districts against the Capitol and each other. McCollum and later Snow used the public spectacle of forcing hostages to kill each other and then broadcasting cheering crowds to make the people of the Districts hate the Capitol, making it psychologically difficult for resistance groups to reach out to their fellows in the Capitol. Class solidarity between groups in different Districts-"
"Great," Dovek muttered just loudly enough for Rye to be able to hear, "they've got Karl Marx prosecuting us."
"Exactly," Oldsmith whispered back. "Though wasn't Marx educated?"
Waschmann didn't even look at them. "-was likewise made much more difficult. The Games were an artificial division of the country into multiple interlocking groupings of 'them' and 'us'."
"Welcome to Sociology 100," Lark whispered. None of them had been nearly so vicious with anyone else. The unfortunate Waschmann was being targeted because they couldn't code-switch. Rye resolved to do her presentations in her native accent. Her parents had raised her to speak upper-class northern Nine, which the defendants wouldn't be able to tell from what the beggars spoke in the far south.
"What was I supposed to do about that bloody submarine?" Verdant demanded. He was sitting propped up against several blankets, left leg in a brace. "It wasn't the only catastrophic accident. I myself started out as a submariner. We all knew that it was dangerous."
Miroslav nodded. "Why did you want to be a submariner?" Verdant had taken the same path as Bright and Thread - a lacking early education followed by a Peacekeeper Academy and then military college.
Verdant thought for a few seconds, his light eyes unfocused. "I have always liked small spaces. Even in here, I don't feel cramped. That's an advantage for a submariner - there's barely any room to turn around in there. Or here." He refocused on Miroslav. "You must understand, Doctor, being from Thirteen and all."
"I suppose," Miroslav said neutrally - in hindsight, he had hated that underground warren. "Small places can be cozy."
"That's not what I meant," Verdant said. "In a big, open space, you have no idea what's coming at you. But in a submarine, what you go down with is what you have until you surface again. There's no surprises."
"Forgive me for the digression, but was it really so cold in submarines?"
Verdant's face twisted. "That blasted song. But yes, some of the submarines were being held together with duct tape and prayers. Those ones always had some equipment or other not working, resulting in all sorts of problems - mold, extreme cold, lack of oxygen. I remember once, it was so cold down there, we had to sleep three to a bunk for warmth. Never thought that cuddling another man could be so devoid of romance."
"What was it like to serve on something so unreliable? You mentioned accidents were frequent."
"It certainly wasn't pleasant, but we did our duty." Verdant tried to shift around and hissed in pain, clutching at his thigh. In the courtroom, he never showed any sign of pain, him doing so now was a sign that he trusted Miroslav. Verdant draped an arm over a rolled-up blanket. The former admiral was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms. In the courtroom, he wore the brace over his uniform trousers, giving him an air of a wounded warrior, but in casual clothing, he looked like he had been hit by a car or something of the sort.
"That was enough?"
"For me, yes." Verdant paused. "I know some of the others were more reluctant, but it was their job. Nobody wanted to let their fellows down."
Miroslav jotted that down. Not wanting to let down one's comrades, or the fear of being perceived as a coward, was constantly given as the reason to perpetrate atrocities. "What did you feel when you were promoted topside?"
"I was proud, and glad that my service had been found deserving of recognition." Verdant's face suddenly collapsed into agony. "I can't do this. Get the orderly."
Miroslav got up and knocked on the door. "Already?" the gum-chewing guard asked, opening it.
"He needs painkillers."
The guard looked into the cell. "Doesn't look it." Indeed, Verdant's face was now completely smooth, only a sight tension betraying the pain he was in.
"Get Dr. Shentop," Miroslav insisted. The guard, unwilling to argue with him, did as bid. "Do you want me to stay for now or should I go?" he asked, turning back to Verdant.
Verdant made an incomprehensible gesture with his head. "You can go. I can't think in any case."
"Alright." Miroslav stepped into the corridor, closing the door behind him.
The phone rang. Stephen pushed aside the stack of complaints and picked it up. "Lieutenant Stephen Vance speaking."
"Steph!" Dad exclaimed. "I finally caught you!"
"Dad, I told you, my schedule changes."
"Mine doesn't." Stephen could hear his father smile. "How are you doing there? Have you found a nice man yet?"
Stephen wanted to throw the phone out the window. "Unlike some of my subordinates, I did not come here to date around," he said stiffly. He was already miserable enough over the nonexistent state of his personal life, did his parents really have to add to it?
"You don't have to date around. Just one is enough."
"Let's change the topic," Stephen said. "Have you moved above-ground yet?"
"No, not yet, but we're on the list. Should be within the next few weeks."
"Good."
There was a pause. "I read about you on the Web," Dad said.
Stephen clapped a palm to his face. Who had taught his parents to use the Web? "And?"
"They say you're very strict," Dad replied diplomatically.
Either they said he was very strict or they said he was very lax. Both angered him. Was the truth really so boring? "I am as strict as I need to be. The key criminals and the teenage witnesses need to be handled differently." Quint had finally been convinced that summer school was more interesting than roaming the streets aimlessly, if only because Stephen forbade him from eating lunch in the jail, which made him have to show up for school and its free lunches.
"Teenage witnesses? How young are they?"
"Youngest incarcerated witnesses are twelve, but there's some younger kids in the Witness House."
"Lots of orphans these days," Dad said, the implication evident in his voice.
"There are. How's Mom?" Stephen was sick and tired of his parents' subtle hints that he could always adopt on his own.
"Oh, she's fine. The doctors switched her to a different blood pressure medication, and it's working much better."
After ten more minutes of basic chit-chat, Stephen said he had to go. In reality, there was still half an hour to his shift, but there was something he needed to do. Stephen unlocked his safe and took out a bag of candy he had confiscated from the guards. He would put it to better use than selling it on the black market and spending the money on the squeeze of the day.
It was not far to the Witness House. The former palatial residence of Patricia Kezen was now her hotel for witnesses. Stephen made his way to an outbuilding. It was far from the shanties most Lodgepolers lived in, but a prefab barracks was not the sort of environment children should have been living in. Since everyone knew Stephen already, he was able to get through the multiple layers of defenses with no issue.
The door was open, and a group of children was playing with marbles in the dust next to it. Further off, a child was sitting against the wall and reading a book. They stood up when they saw he was coming and ran over. Stephen couldn't hold back a smile. "Good evening, everyone," he said.
"Good evening," they chorused impatiently. Chuckling to himself, Stephen began to hand out candy, counting out the pieces. They darted inside, cherished prizes clutched in their fists. Stephen, too, stepped into the orphanage. A curtain was pulled back where it divided the boxy building into two sections - between nine and twelve years old, and less than nine. Anyone above twelve lived in the Witness House proper. Stephen noticed that there were more little faces crowded around him than before. They must have brought in their friends, and the minders were unable to kick them out even though the place was ostensibly for witnesses. Good thing his guards could be counted on to supply him with limitless candy.
The coordinators of the orphanage got the mostly empty bag. "What are we supposed to do with them?" a very attractive man around his age asked, holding up the bag with his one hand.
"I don't know," Stephen said.
The man shrugged. "I guess we can sell it. Pity you can't supply us with something healthy."
"The guards aren't interested in healthy, I'm afraid. I'm just repurposing contraband here."
"I should have realized," the man said with a laugh. A delusional part of Stephen wondered if he was flirting with him, and he cursed Dad for reminding him about it. Tiller and her TA were still going strong - why couldn't he find someone? "Well, I won't hold you up. I know you're busy."
"I'll see you later," Stephen said, heading for the exit.
"It sank?" Marcellus demanded, hands on his head. "Was he drunk? Or do I need to be drunk to properly appreciate this I-don't-even-know-what of a response?"
"That does it," Dad said, taking a sip of weak tea made from a bag they had already used twice. He had this evening off, so the four of them were sitting on the couch, drinking tea, and watching television. "I don't understand how anyone can defend him."
"I'm not defending him," Marcellus said irritably.
"Did I say you were?" Dad stretched out on the couch, feet dangling off the end. He was half-lying on top of Mom.
"I forgot what it's like to see him on television," she said, running her hands through Dad's mostly nonexistent hair. Marcellus was already starting to lose his, and was extremely insecure about it. Leon had the same hair as Mom - hopefully, whoever had provided her with half of her DNA hadn't gone bald early, too. "Completely surreal."
"Yeah," Leon said. "I forgot what it's like to see his face." He glanced at where the portrait had once hung on the wall. The discolouration of the rectangle wasn't noticeable anymore. If only everything could disappear so fast.
"I forgot what his face looked like," Marcellus grumbled. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Wish I was never reminded. I mean, really? It sank?"
"He didn't care about them," Leon said. "He didn't care about any of us. He just wanted to stay in power. I bet he's turning over in his grave right now."
"Why?" Marcellus asked.
"Because life's gotten so much better with him gone."
His brother looked like he wanted to argue, but he was still rattled from the interview. "I bet he's mad," he said instead. "Remember all that stuff about how the rebels want a second Dark Days? Shame we didn't lose the first time around."
"Now if only I could convince Grandma and Grandpa of that," Dad muttered, eyes half-closed. Mom appeared to be asleep. The television had moved on to apocalyptic prophecies about the harvest. "I can't believe how hard-headed they are."
"You know how it is with them," Marcellus grumbled. "McCollum's and Snow's vaunted stability. Remember that last purge?"
Dad shuddered. "How could I ever forget? It was so backwards. When I was your age, or a little younger, the purge started with the odd saboteur and terrorist-"
"-You mean people accused of terrorism," Leon cut in.
"Yeah, yeah." That was by far not the worst possible reply. "Well, it started with normal people and then got to up there. Like always before. But it was backwards with Talvian. First there were reshufflings, and then it radiated out. For years, it was a nightmare."
Marcellus leapt to his feet. "No, it wasn't, I was in college then, I remember. It was the spring when I was a student-teacher. I had been assigned a grade one class. One of the kids mentioned being happy because the snow was melting, and my first instinct was to tell them to be quiet, but I had no idea how to phrase it, so I said nothing."
The factory had been comfort and tranquility itself by comparison.
"Teachers had a hard job to do," Dad said.
"That's what we got for having a president named Snow. In the atmosphere of a purge, you couldn't even discuss the weather." Sometimes, when hearing things like 'snow is falling,' Leon had amused himself for a brief second with the other way to interpret that phrase before tossing that thought out of his mind as if it could be read on his face. Marcellus paced around the room. "But anyways. That was really only that year when I was afraid to say anything. First couple of years things were normal for people like us."
"Normal?" Leon protested.
"What other word should I use for the default state everyone was accustomed to seeing as the default? A person born without a leg has that as their default state, that doesn't mean they are happy that way - but it is still normal for them."
"Let's hope the new government can issue prosthetics for everyone, then," Mom said as Dad patted her hands.
Today was going to be interesting. Rye felt more alert than she had in days, and the audience was shifting around impatiently. Today, an assistant Gamemaker would be explaining whose names had actually been in the Reaping bowls. Already as a child, Rye had noticed that nobody with severe disabilities had ever been picked, so it had come as no surprise to find out that there had been an entire bureaucracy in place.
First, though, the usual beginning of a direct examination. As she listened with one ear, Rye wondered why it mattered that some children had not been eligible for the Reapings. Perhaps it was the hypocrisy? As if sending in someone with only one hand was somehow unacceptable, when the Games themselves should never have been acceptable in the first place.
Finally, Trevor Hall asked the big question. "What sort of disabilities resulted in the exclusion of a child from the list?" The prosecutor from Eight was still in poor health, constantly suffering from nightmares and hallucinations. He was also speaking in a middle-class urban Eight accent, which sounded almost incomprehensible to Rye's ears.
Pulcher's mouth twitched. "I will answer this question in two stages, as physical and mental disabilities were handled differently. For physical disabilities - to put it very crudely, anyone who could not run or hold something in both hands was excluded. Missing limbs, paraplegia, and so on, as well as vision or hearing impairments that could not be compensated for with glasses or hearing aids."
Rye had suspected that for years, as had everyone - Barrow's brother had no leg and had always been convinced that his name had never been in the bowl - but the confirmation still stung. She imagined the Gamemakers sitting around and deciding who should or should not have their name in that bowl.
"What about chronic conditions?"
"Anything requiring regular medication meant exclusion. Diabetes, AIDS, and so on. This also applied to children who, for example, needed a brace to walk, even if they were capable of running with it on, as well as conditions such as epilepsy and narcolepsy."
That was so horribly twisted. What had the motivation for that been? The Games hadn't started as a twisted television show.
"And what of mental disabilities?"
"Anyone institutionalized permanently or with certain diagnoses was automatically excluded, and, once again, anyone on medication was not in the lists. Beyond that, local authorities were supposed to use their discretion and report if there was someone who should have been excluded, which was very rare. It only happened in the case of rich families who had been able to keep their disabled child at home. "
Hall nodded. "Did kids slip through the cracks?"
"In theory - of course. In practice, however, there was never a case where someone who was completely ineligible was sent in, though there were a few incidents that officially should not have happened." She spoke in a completely dispassionate tone. "A much bigger problem were acute diseases and injuries, which were often hard to track. There were several instances where the Gamemakers sent in medications and things like that."
"What were 'borderline cases'?"
"There is a fuzzy line between being able and unable to function. It depends a lot on one's surroundings. To give a completely unrelated example, dyslexia wouldn't ever even be diagnosed in the child of a miner but it would be a massive impediment to the child of a doctor. The same went for other mental disabilities. In some cases, a child of a farmer would be considered a bit slow and would never receive a diagnosis, but that same impediment in their own child would result in a middle-class urban parent to seek out a diagnosis that could potentially result from their immunity from the Reaping."
Rye had never thought about that, but it was true. It even worked the other way around. Conditions in factories were often horrific, but an office was quiet and heated. She tried to recall if anyone had ever mentioned going out of their way to secure a diagnosis for their child because of the rumours, but she couldn't recall any. And in any case, the sort of people who were able to demand anything at all from anyone were also the sort to think that the Games were something that happened to poor people.
"When did this removal of names from the list begin?"
"The very beginning."
Hall looked at the judges. "I have in my hand Document 00-392, the minutes of a conference shortly before the very first Reaping. It is in your document books on page 3." Rye had seen that document. In it, the organizers of the Games complained about how hard it was to find everyone's records and cull out the disabled. "Have there been instances of children with disabilities slipping through the cracks and ending up in the Hunger Games?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"In rural areas and among the urban poor, most people did not have official medical files and thus could not be evaluated from this standpoint. However, since children born with disabilities in such families tended to die before the age of twelve, there was never a situation where a Tribute did not understand what was happening or could not run away from the pedestal."
"Can you give an example of a borderline case?"
Pulcher nodded. "In the Fifty-Seventh, Kenneth Hoven, the boy from Three, leapt off the pedestal. In an interview, his parents claimed that he had always had some sort of ill-defined issues. Had he had access to healthcare, it is likely that he would have been diagnosed. Higher-ups really didn't want suicidal Tributes."
"Can you provide an example of a Tribute who should not have been eligible no matter what?"
"The most recent is Michael Hirota, the boy from Ten in the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games. Polio left him with a severe limp, and he struggled to walk."
"Witness, what was the point of this?" Hall asked. "Surely the terroristic goals of the government would have been well-served by including the most vulnerable."
Pulcher shook her head. "The idea was the Districts expiating their sins through noble combat. There's nothing noble in children killing other children with disabilities like swatting flies."
"In that case, why the age range of twelve to eighteen? As you well know, many protest moods were inspired by the sight of emaciated twelve-year-olds in the Hunger Games."
"Because during the Dark- the civil war, the government had conscripted children from the age of twelve into the armed forces, and the age of majority had been nineteen since Panem had been established as a state."
That much had already been gone over last month. The trial personnel sagged with boredom as they listened to Pulcher restate the aims of the Hunger Games, but the audience was enthralled.
Thumeka listened to the assistant Gamemaker, half-heartedly jotting down some notes. The press section was uncomfortably crowded due to the high interest in Pulcher's testimony - good thing that she was in the front row. Mikola was leaning against the wall and making caricatures of the defendants. His pencil transformed Slice into a befuddled prairie-dog, an animal Thumeka had only seen on television, and Blues - into a sad slug. Chaterhan became an angry ferret, and Grass - a bored fox.
"Accurate," Thumeka whispered, nodding at the pictures. Less than two metres from her, Slice was trying to meld with the wall, Blues was slumped against her own corner, Chaterhan was glaring at nothing in particular, and Grass appeared to be contemplating something important - probably wondering what would be for lunch. As always, Lee was sketching and Kirji was studying what had to be a newspaper.
"Thanks," Mikola whispered back.
"You going to do all of them?" Jiao asked. The three of them were still sticking together, but John Moore had permanently relocated to the military case.
"Why not? I have the time."
The prosecutor looked sickly as he examined the witness. "When were Reapings rigged?" he asked, getting straight to the point.
"Seldom," the witness replied. "The Games were arbitrary terror, not targeted. The most common reason for a rigging was to have the child of a Victor go in, and in recent decades, reapings in One, Two, and Four were rigged to have the weakest and smallest children be chosen, to make the other Districts angry that nobody was volunteering for their twelve-year-olds. The most recent example is the Seventy-Fourth - in Two, the younger brother of the designated volunteer was deliberately Reaped."
"The Reapings were not used as a punishment for perceived disloyalty?"
"No. Too great a risk of that being used as a rallying cry." The witness made a vague gesture. "If someone was really so troublesome in that way, they'd be arrested, or the Death Squad would be sent in in extreme cases." Krechet winced, almost imperceptibly. "What did happen twice in my memory was the children of extremely influential people being chosen as the result of the parent having lost in national-level financial intrigues."
The prosecutor seized that thread and proceeded to ask about how well-known the Death Squad had been.
"Do you recognize any of the defendants as being part of the Death Squad?"
"Yes. The tall man in the front row fourth from right is John Krechet, the most recent deputy commander of the squad. Talvian would often take him along to meetings. Like an attack dog."
Krechet looked happier at that, but Thumeka didn't see why. She had heard that there was an entire list of people he had killed personally floating around. He may have been just an attack dog, but he was still a murderer many times over.
With half an hour remaining until the day finally ended, an entire back-and-forth about Talvian and what meetings she had and had not attended ensued. Thumeka and Jiao watched Mikola draw. Coll was rendered as a skink, and Talvian - as a tiny field mouse. It took Thumeka all her willpower to not burst out laughing when Mikola drew Lee as a raccoon. The former minister was by now nowhere near as rotund as the trash bears, as journalists from these parts called them, that frequented the compost bins in the press camp were, but it was still an uncanny resemblance.
"Any other comments?" Raymond asked as their discussion of the day's events drew to a close.
"Yes," Daniel said, staring at his notebook. "What is it like for you as a defector from the Capitol to have to preside over this part of the case?"
Raymond raised his eyebrows. "You're a journalist now?"
"Ha-ha," Daniel deadpanned. "No. I'm just curious. You're becoming more and more tense by the day." Dora had noticed that, too. "And you don't participate when Rose and I talk about the past. I'm worried for you."
"Thank you for your concern. I am indeed feeling out of place now. Unlike the rest of you, I was never in danger of the Hunger Games."
"As if we were," Brutus said, gesturing to himself, Juan, and Sean. "Alright, there were these early years, but our children were as safe as those in the Capitol."
Sean gnashed his teeth. "Unless they were convinced to sign up," he said, clearly thinking about his sister. "But that was their choice, at least."
"I am fascinated by how much of the entire system was deliberate," Moira said, staring out the window. "And it did work, I suppose. The one time I asked my colleagues what they thought of the Games, they said they didn't dwell on the fates of 'that sort'. Because the Tributes were disproportionately poor."
"Same here," Dora said. Those sorts of value judgments had driven her round the bend. As if she was any more valuable than Jack! "And then they'd poke fun at me for falling for Capitol propaganda that everyone from Ten was the same."
Taylor tapped their pencil against the table. "Interesting. So even pointing out the falsity of the government's claims became something that furthered the divisions."
"I don't think that was part of the conspiracy," Rosalinda joked.
"I'm sure the prosecution would think of a way to include it," Cora muttered.
Raymond sagged and picked up his cup of water. He did not look quite natural in his uniform. The rest of them had gotten shirts and ties from the same warehouse. "It feels so strange. Don't I have more in common with the defendants than with you?"
"Absolutely not," Moira said. "You've internalized the propaganda. Leaving aside the fact that you're as much from Thirteen as anyone who was born there, being born in the Capitol means nothing."
"I have more in common with you than with a working-class person from my own city," Dora added.
Drexel nodded along. "I'm learning about what happened in my own District for the first time during this trial."
"Why are we so insecure?" Rosa spoke up. "We can't have a conversation without someone saying that they're undeserving of their position. Face it - we were all chosen over every single one of our colleagues for a reason."
"What reason?" Cora asked. "Acquitting one person because the prosecutor was too drunk to argue properly and then being fired? Half my colleagues are better people than me."
"But are they better judges?" Rosa asked. Cora had nothing to say to that. "And you, Raymond. The press praises your handling of the trial." The fact that that was a compliment said a lot about the current press.
"Alright," Raymond said. "Is there anything else or can we go?"
There was nothing, so they could go. Dora and Juan walked to their billet in silence.