Miroslav drank some iced tea - literally a cup of cold tea with an ice cube added - in his office before going to talk to the key criminals. Today would be particularly interesting. Seemu's testimony had started out strong, but under cross-examination, she had admitted that she had taken drugs before going to her so-called clients and could not actually give names and dates with any certainty. She had provided a detailed insight into how children had been recruited into the Academies and who had been responsible for the running of the institutions, but the public still thought the testimony botched.

"How are things going?" he asked Mallow as he sipped his tea.

Mallow shrugged. She had gotten today off and had spent it in the office. "Decent enough. I finished the draft of my writeup on Lux - you should take a look at it when you get back."

As the trial continued, the pressure on the mental health team, or at least on Miroslav himself, lessened. He still worked in the juvenile jail, but he could make his own hours, and he only went to the eating disorders clinic as a patient. And even there, things were getting better. Miroslav was by now only at risk of binging if he was completely alone, and he made sure to never be completely alone when food was around.

"Did you include the conversation I had with him yesterday?"

"How could I not? The Commander-in-Chief, in all seriousness, considered himself to be the paper on which Snow wrote orders." And just like before, the former Peacekeepers obeyed Lux in public, but behind closed doors they whispered - lackey. Of course, that was highly hypocritical coming from the paragons of heel-clicking obedience that the other four were. "No wonder they lost," she added with a chuckle.

"Our Peacekeepers agree," Miroslav quipped.

"That they do," Mallow said, drinking some of her own tea. It was horrifically hot in the office. Miroslav, as a civilian, could get away with a short-sleeved shirt, but Mallow was stuck with her uniform. "Agbonwaneten was telling me the other day she never knew there were so many different ways to complain about the higher-ups and justify rape."

Miroslav chuckled, but he wasn't actually amused. Arman Sadeghlou, his fellow psychologist, was from Two, and said that there was nothing to fear there from a revanchism perspective. Not only was everyone claiming that they had served honourably, unlike the Lodgepolers, but they tried to make themselves into mute objectors. Revanchism was hardly in the cards if everyone wanted to make themselves out into a resistor.

"At least mine aren't justifying rape," Miroslav said, finishing his tea. "I best go now before my patients start loudmouthing."

As luck would have had it, Lark was indeed the first one on his list. "Doctor, I'm being insulted on the Web!" he complained as soon as Miroslav stepped into the cell.

"Do you want to-" Miroslav barely bit back the words "-tell me about it?" The joke was completed with 'Do you want to loudmouth about it?' but that would have been highly unprofessional.

Lark scrutinized his face for a few seconds. He must have found what he was looking for, for he went on a lengthy rant about how nobody respected him. Since the former propagandist clearly just wanted someone to talk to, all Miroslav had to do was listen attentively and ask prompting questions whenever the torrent of words slowed.

Ledge would not be so easily dealt with. The former minister wanted to talk economics. "I talked to Dijksterhuis at lunch," he said. "She says Gonzalez is an idiot. How does she think she'll be able to put a refrigerator in every household when we couldn't electrify the damn country in seventy-five years?"

It was always 'Dijksterhuis said this' and 'Dijksterhuis said that' with Ledge. By abnegating his own ability to think, he implied that he was an insignificant appendage and was thus not worthy of the noose. "I don't know," Miroslav said. The defendants talked to him as if he was an expert in world economics, military strategy, and artificial fertilizers. "What do you think the plan is?"

"I know what the plan is. Dijksterhuis told me." There it was again. "If there was no corruption, we'd not just electrify the country, but become a Great Power. But there's no rooting out corruption in this place, not by Snow, not by Gonzalez, and not by God Himself." He fanned himself with a folded piece of paper. It was even hotter in the cell than in Miroslav's office, and Ledge was fifty-eight and out of shape from being for so long in a small cell. As a concession to the heat, the detainees had been given T-shirts and shorts to wear, but Ledge still had beads of sweat on his face. "You know, I keep on getting asked - if you knew people were taking suitcases of cash to so-and-so, why didn't you tell Snow? But how was I supposed to know if they were in favour or not? Maybe Snow knew and approved."

Suitcases of cash had indeed been found in ministers' houses and the apartments of even junior NCIA and Peacekeeper officers, together with jewelry for the lovers, literal gold toilets, and keys to palatial cottages. "Interesting," Miroslav said.

"Did I ever tell you that Kren took bribes in sex?"

Slice's boss' boss had been the sort of person from whom that made sense. "No," Miroslav said.

"Well, he did. Someone asked Slice if he ever harassed her, but she's so naive in that regard, I don't think she'd have noticed it if it happened. No wonder she could never maintain a relationship for more than a few months. She's on the autism spectrum, isn't she?"

"Ledge, you know I can't talk about other people's health to you."

"Aww," Ledge said in a wheedling tone, sounding like Biljana when she wanted something. "Well, I think she's on the autism spectrum. She seems completely out of it in the courtroom - I bet she's just overloaded. Like that Peacekeeper, but milder."

Ledge's skills as an incorrigible gossip could have unexpected uses. "Let's talk about you, not Slice."

"But what if I want to talk about the others?" Ledge asked half-seriously. "I know who fathered Talvian's children."

"Mr. Talvian?"

Ledge nodded. "Sometimes the obvious choice is the right one. I mean, just look at the kids. My daughter was taller at six than hers were at nine, and I'm not exactly tall, either." Ledge was a metre seventy and a bit stretched out, but when he stood, he stooped, making him look shorter. "In any case, interesting day today. I saw Seemu a few times before at events. They always dressed her up in skimpy leather - hot, but I could tell she didn't like it. Some people just don't like showing skin, I suppose, and I guess being forced just made it worse."

"What did you think she was doing there?"

"I thought she was someone's arm candy. I'm sure there's photos of me out there with some model or other on my arm, doesn't mean I slept with them." Rumour had it that Ledge had actually hired Victors himself, but rumours were of little use in a court of law. As it was, Miroslav found Ledge slightly repulsive. "Anyway, I believe her. Seems like something Snow would do. You know, when his wife died, he always appeared alone at events."

Now that he was talking, Ledge became more animated despite the heat. He fanned himself a few times with the paper and set it aside on the cot. His T-shirt sleeves were fully rolled up, exposing slender shoulders. "Is that significant?"

"Of course!" Ledge said. "Chaterhan always dragged Chaterhan-junior around, but Snow kept his granddaughter away from the limelight." He leaned back against the wall and fanned himself with his hand. "Phew. I feel like I'm in an oven! No idea how Best is handling this." A few of the older ones had been given icepacks and the like.

"What does that mean?"

"Well, that he wanted to keep her secret, of course! Do you know who her father was?"

"Yes."

Ledge made a face. "Did Talvian tell you?"

"I'm not allowed to tell you that."

"Can you say who the father is, at least?" Ledge asked, stretching out with his head on his pillow. Miroslav wondered if the trial would last long enough for them to start complaining of the cold instead.

Miroslav nodded. "His daughter's colleague at the lab where she worked."

"That's reasonable." Ledge picked up his makeshift fan and waved it a few times halfheartedly. "Since we're on the topic, is the Julius Ding show still on air?"

Unfortunately, Miroslav could confidently answer that in the affirmative. Miryam Zafar loved the program.

"What was the last episode about?"

"Eleven years ago, a man was handed a baby by a woman who kept her face covered and claimed it was his. Since he had slept around in the past year, that was plausible." Ledge grew more animated, sitting up and away from the wall. "He took the baby and raised it. The child looks nothing like him, so he couldn't help but wonder who the mother was."

Ledge nodded. "It's always an interesting twist when they can't find the mother. That makes sense, though - technically speaking, I barely needed to do anything to create my own children. Is he the biological father, by the way?"

"That's what they also wanted to check. They found the mother but prolonged the drama with her admission that she had multiple partners at the time." Privately, Miroslav wondered why the participants in the drama hadn't used birth control, given that it had always been free in the Capitol, but the Ding show wasn't meant for people who made good decisions. "Turns out he's not even the biological father." Ledge laughed out loud. "He may as well have gone to the nearest orphanage and adopted from there. But the child does look like a copy of their mother."

"Drama like that is the great unifier," Ledge said with a sigh. "Everyone, no matter where they live or what their social standing, likes to gossip about other people's relationships."

That was one good thing about the last decade and a half in Thirteen. Since nearly every couple could only have children via adoption and the use of donor sperm, there hadn't been much in the way of paternity scandals. If one-quarter of the population was fertile, that meant that one-sixteenth of couples could have biological children, and that wasn't even taking into consideration same-sex couples. "Let's talk about something slightly more high-brow," Miroslav said. "What is your opinion on the day's proceedings?"

Ledge did not have a very high opinion of the proceedings. His irritating humour, however, was preferable to Best's anger.

"Why are they doing this?" Best demanded as soon as the door shut behind Miroslav. The oldest defendant had an icepack under one arm. Despite the heat, he still worked out every morning. He was in better shape at his seventy-six than Miroslav. "Doctor, you know I had nothing to do with the Games."

"The others did, though."

"Then why am I sharing a dock with them?"

Miroslav was familiar with the case, so he knew the correct answer. Because of the defectors your soldiers gunned down and left to drown. Because your Coast Guard sank foreign ships heading to Thirteen and shot down a passenger plane that had gone a hundred metres too far north. Because you handed over alleged spies and attempted deserters to be tortured and killed by the NCIA. Because you were in the military for fifty years, and there is no criminal order you did not give at some point.

"Why do you think you're here?"

"Because we lost the war."

Of course. "Be more specific. Why you and not somebody else?"

"Because I founded the Coast Guard as an independent branch. Nobody else was brought here out of retirement." He sat very straight, icepack propped up on a pillow. "This-"

The radio began to blast 'Don't Lock Me Away.' Best fell silent and shook his head, a trace of an amused smile on his lips.

"I can tell them to turn it down," Miroslav offered. His most powerful psychoanalysis tool was offering to have that song turned down.

"It's no problem. They're only children."

"And so?"

"Doctor, you have to believe me. I did not condone the use of child soldiers. We didn't use them in the Coast Guard." Best sounded almost desperate. "I had children myself." Once stationed in the Capitol, he had pulled strings to be allowed to marry. "A child of twelve or fourteen - they're so little." That was definitely a jab at Thirteen recruiting policies, but Thirteen had also had a policy to only send those of age into actual combat.

"And yet, you supported the Hunger Games."

Best grimaced. "Sometimes, great evils are necessary. It is a terrible thing to kill an innocent hostage because of the actions of someone else, but what if that is the only thing that can pacify the population?" Hostage-taking had not succeeded on that count, not in its conventional form and not as the Hunger Games. "Would you like some candy, Doctor?" he asked, reaching for his pocket.

"I have an eating disorder," Miroslav said without thinking.

"I suppose I'll give it to Doctor Mallow when she visits. I can't eat these things - bad for the stomach." He dropped his hand on the rough blanket.

"What did you think of today's witness?" Miroslav asked.

"I never concerned myself with the Games," Best said. "I watched the mandatory portions, of course, but once I was retired, I didn't bother to turn the television on half the time." He sighed. "As a child, my family avoided the Games. That was the pre-television era, so it was easy. I remember being upset when we couldn't go watch a movie, because they knew the newsreels would be showing the Games."

With Best, it was a matter of time until he started on a trip down memory lane. "You didn't watch Enobaria Seemu's Games?"

"I don't recall it. I recognized her, but that may have been from seeing her on television later on. I know she's the one who bit someone on the neck." He switched the icepack to the other arm. "I can't imagine it. I've been in plenty of hand-to-hand fights, but never to the death. And at such a young age, too."

"Only eighteen," Miroslav agreed. "But her opponents were even younger."

Best made a sharp sound. "I was born with the Games, but I do not understand why. I don't think I ever will."

That was the closest he had ever come to condemning them. Miroslav knew he had to tread carefully. "You don't understand why," he echoed.

"Of course not. Whose idea was it to make the hostages kill each other - and transform it into a television show? It was never military policy to make hostages kill each other. It was a completely unnecessary level of cruelty. And all it did was infuriate the Districts. Look at how other countries conduct occupations - it could have been so much more peaceful."

The morning news had told of two different genocides currently happening, so Miroslav doubted that. "They covered the start of the Games just recently."

"I know that, my memory isn't completely gone!" Best looked angry now. "Why couldn't you have this rebellion earlier and string up the ones who started it all?"

If only Best could be convinced to say something of the sort in court! But Lux was still stubbornly sticking to his words, as he was convinced he would hang no matter what. "We needed to know that we would be able to win," Miroslav said. "Why didn't you do anything to make that more likely?"

"I couldn't," Best said, and he sounded sincerely upset by that. "I was a soldier. For a soldier-"

"-orders are orders," Miroslav finished. "But how can an order to shoot a baby be justified?"

"I never shot babies. If that was how my orders were interpreted, I cannot be blamed for individual excesses." Best put the icepack against his cheek.

"Come on, you know better than I do that it was not individual."

Best crossed his lean arms on his chest. "You won't believe me if I say I managed to stay out of it all." He paused. Miroslav stayed silent, hoping he would elaborate. Most people would speak to fill the silence, but Talvian, for example, could not be manipulated so easily unless she wanted it to happen, and some were simply taciturn. Best, fortunately, was not one of them. "One rotten apple spoils the barrel. Shame it doesn't work the other way around."

"It does," Miroslav said. "You've been reading newspapers, you know the stories."

Best shook his head. "One person put up leaflets. Another listened to foreign radio. And so what of it?" He ran a hand over his mostly white hair. Despite being thirty years older than Miroslav, he had more of his hair remaining. "I wish sometimes you had simply shot me instead of putting me through this."

"You wish to die?" Best topped the list of key criminals at risk of suicide. The others had rallied and were dedicated to surviving no matter what (aside from Dovek, who could easily end up killing himself just to annoy everyone), but Best was still stuck in that despair.

"Yes," Best said plainly.

"That's no good."

"What's the good of me staying alive?"

This, at least, was normal practice, even if it was hard to convince someone that life was worth living when they were being charged with a capital offense and would probably be dead within the year.

Hints. Implication. Rumours. The defense had made short work of that, as well they should have, if they were any kind of competent. Subordinates had queued around the block to exonerate themselves (and there was still the material on organized crime), so Kirji and Toplak were quite doomed, but public opinion was that the trial was falling apart.

Mary sat in the restaurant and watched the young performers who had just performed a rather provocative dance sidle up to customers. None approached her, somehow sensing that she wasn't interested.

She had a table for two right by the window, meaning that she could see the locals with their faces pressed against the window. Two rubble-children noticed her looking and waved. Mary waved back, acutely aware of how unfair it was that she was enjoying these excellent spicy pork noodles and they probably had to queue for soup and bread twice a day. Even the detainees at the jail were eating better than these barefoot children, though they were much diminished from their arrest.

"Sorry I'm late," Reed said, dropping into the free seat. A server was behind him, holding a tray with a bowl of noodles and another one - of dumplings. "Meeting ran long." The server, a wrung-out skinny young man, put down the bowls and left. Mary wondered what he thought of them. She had heard that one of the dishwashers had a child working for the documents department, but that was neither here nor there.

"No problem." Mary ate a few noodles. "I know you've got that trial starting tomorrow." The assistant Gamemakers would be going on trial.

Reed winced and ate a dumpling with his hands. "I don't think we should rush with these trials."

"We aren't rushing. You said you're ready."

"We're ready, but more time would be preferable."

"There is no time. The IDC-"

"If it's made it this far, it'll make it a few years more."

"No, it will not. Depuration's being held together with duct tape and Dr. Blueroot's prayers - she's at my office every other day, telling me about Reconstruction and why the world will end if we don't give the land to the peasants." She took a sip of mineral water to wash away some of the burning sensation from her mouth. She had asked for very little spice, but the resource-starved Thirteen's definition of slightly spicy and this were very different things. "Not like Dr. Nurbeko is any better, but at least they're optimistic." She wondered what Dr. Lee would have said. It was a shame he died before the trial began. It was a shame he died at all.

"Reconstruction?"

Mary took out a book from her bag. Despite her irritation, she had to admit that Dr. Blueroot was saying things she needed to take note of. "You know the civil war in nineteenth-century USA?"

"A little bit." Reed tried the noodles and his eyes nearly fell out of his sockets. "Wow, I didn't think it would be this spicy." His face turned bright-red and his eyes teared up, but he ate some more. No need to waste perfectly good food. "Yeah, I know the civil war. Was Reconstruction like our Depuration?"

"It was supposed to be something similar, but it failed. They ended up with gangs of terrorists rampaging through the countryside killing people for no reason. There was never that same desire for the defeated side to ingratiate itself to the victors as fast as possible."

Reed looked at the people watching them eat. "Let's hope we don't have terrorists," he said uneasily. "I just had Vance tell me we've been running a hopelessly insecure operation this entire time, so I'm still jumpy."

Mary wound some noodles around her fork. "That's just Vance. He read some book where the star defendant kills themselves and now thinks that's going to happen to us. A cockroach already won't get through his defenses - what does he think we're missing?"

"Proper guards, apparently. The ones he's got are either gangsters more interested in spending money on either hookups or family, depending on temperament, or kids with nowhere else to go, with a small handful of older ones willing to earn money for their family without peddling gum from under their bunks." He wiped his nose with a napkin and continued eating his noodles.

"He's told me that before. He's worried about them being convinced to smuggle in suicide implements."

Reed nodded. "And I think he's just worried about bad discipline because he's, well, the way he is."

"It certainly doesn't reflect well on the trial if the guards are running hither and thither fetching newspapers and coffee for the prisoners."

"True," Reed conceded. "I suppose I've just had it up to here with Thirteen discipline." He made a chopping motion across his neck. "And Vance is a massive hypocrite in any case. Lavanya saw him walking out with someone the other day."

Mary tried and failed to imagine that. She had known of him before, and he had always put his career before starting a family. "He was probably interviewing a potential witness, or something of the sort. You know how unorthodox his methods are."

"I suppose that's more plausible." Reed wiped his eyes with a sleeve. He then wiped them again, and again. "I need to stop eating spicy things." He took a packet of pills from his pocket and tossed one into his mouth. "Antacids," he said in response to Mary's questioning look. By the way, on the topic of witnesses - we've got one willing to testify to the murder of ten thousand people."

That sounded like a bad dark joke about District Twelve. "How did they murder so many?" Mary finished off her noodles and reached for the water to cool her mouth down.

"They were a 'task force' commander." Reed made air-quotes with his hands. "Rampaged around Seven before ending up in a POW camp, nobody asked him anything until now, and he cheerfully confessed." He shook his head, incredulous. "Ten thousand. I suppose that's nothing when you look at the genocides they have abroad, but that's not how they tried to wage the war."

He was right - ten thousand was nothing compared to the people who earned the name 'the butcher of X' abroad. There, they had massacres where tens of thousands were machine-gunned in days, killers whose kill counts went above a hundred thousand. But Snow hadn't been trying to commit genocide in Seven, he had tried to win a civil war. "Lux won't be happy."

Reed sighed. "Nobody understands why we're holding these trials. The Peacekeepers' trial is barely watched and the main one doesn't make sense to them. We're going to have to knock them on their asses when it comes to Count Three."

"Don't worry about it," Mary said, draining her glass. She still felt terribly thirsty and her mouth was on fire. "I've already drawn up the schedule. Do try to make it on the first day. It'll be movie day."

There was one thing keeping Leon going - the eight-hour day that loomed on the horizon. The IDC had started a bunch of other trials, which meant more material flooded in, but there was no backlog. In fact, today, they had all been let go half an hour early. There just was no need to keep them there for so long.

Leon sat on the bus and stared out the window. He wasn't sure what he was feeling. Tired, mostly. And glad the past year happened the way it did, no matter what anyone said. Today, he had worked next to a new person, a twenty-year-old from Seven. Leon told him that he had never watched the Games, and the lie had made the young man's eyes light up. He didn't know yet that everyone was saying that.

It was easier to pretend that he hadn't watched. He hadn't approved, so what did it matter if the factory bosses had put them on at lunch break? Or if they had put them on in case the neighbours dropped by? But did it even matter if he had approved or not? It wasn't like this disapproval had ever helped anyone.

Outside the window, the sky was still light. The bus made its way down the street, rolling past husks of buildings and large empty spaces where the most precarious free-standing walls had already been knocked down. And the rubble-people, going through the ruins of buildings, especially brick ones, and looking for material that could be recycled - or sent to the Districts. The Districts were even taking the rubble.

If the trials fell apart, Leon would join these people. His old job didn't exist for now, and there were no new jobs. Just rebuilding. 'Don't ask questions, rebuild the country' - everyone was only too happy to follow that one of Paylor's instructions. Marcellus worked a few days a week, he had to prepare for the next academic year, which would hopefully be normal.

The bus rolled on, stopping every so often. Leon wondered how many people on the bus with him had once dreamed of smashing his head in.

"So, any thoughts so far?" Juan asked Dora as they sat on the living room, two ventilators working in tandem to cool them down.

"Thoughts on what?"

Juan looked uncomfortable. "The defendants. The material against them."

The presentations on the individual defendants hadn't even started yet. Her assistants claimed they had heard somewhere that first, the prosecution would present something horrific for Count Three, and then intersperse them in at random. "They're not in a very good situation at the moment, that's for sure." Dora put her mug of iced tea against her forehead. The tea was bitter and cold, perfect for keeping her from wilting in this heat. Good thing the courtroom was air-conditioned.

"Was Slice even mentioned so far?"

"Yes - she is alleged to have been part of the conspiracy and a propagator of the Games."

Juan leaned back against a cushion. "I don't remember that. A propagator of the Games? Her and every newscaster, then. I don't see any reason why she specifically should be in the dock."

"That's what we agreed on," Dora reminded him. "The prosecution will need to be very convincing in their presentation about her."

"We did?"

"We did." Dora held up her notebook, where she kept track of things like that.

Juan nodded. "I think I'll go sleep now. I feel like my brains are frying. I've never had to try more than one person at once, you know," he said apologetically. "How can you stand the eight-hour days?"

"Habit," Dora said honestly. She, being reliable, had often been forced to work practically round the clock. Back then, she had thought she was on top of things because she was so disciplined, but in hindsight, the quality of her decisions had suffered.

"I'd have thought I'd get used to it by now," Juan muttered, getting up and going to his room and leaving Dora alone with her tea and the two fans that could not cool her down no matter how hard they tried.

A/N: The gold (actually gilded) toilet is not a joke, one was actually found in the palace of a police colonel (I'm afraid to imagine what the generals have) who headed the traffic police in Stavropol province in Russia. Article's in Russian but the photo speaks for itself.

mk DOT ru SLASH social/2021/07/20/dizayner-pokhvalila-zolotye-unitazy-glavy-gibdd-stavropolya-alekseya-safonova DOT html

On a less comedic note, so far, the 'record' for 'biggest mass shooting' belongs to Dr. Dr. Otto Rasch (not a typo), Kurt Eberhard, and Paul Blobel, who oversaw the murder of 33,771 (yes, they kept precise count, no, I don't know if the survivors are included in the number) people on 29-30 September 1941. Otto Rasch himself had a kill count of 120,000. So yeah, ten thousand human lives wiped out isn't even that much.

As for movie day - if you get the reference, yes, it will be that bad.