"Read anything besides the transcript recently?" Dora asked as she walked into the living room, where Juan was lying on the couch and fanning himself with a fan he must have gotten from the black market. A mug of tea stood next to him on a low table.

"Does the prosecution film on torture that ended up all over the Web count?"

Dora had seen that film. Collated from footage of tortures in Peacekeeper stations and prisons, it made for horrific viewing. The more people knew how the 'stability' of Panem had been achieved, the better. "That's something you saw, not read," she tried for a light tone.

"A few studies on the Games. Some foreigner did a study on how people reacted to their children being Reaped."

At least they were doing studies and not pretending they understood something they had never experienced. "What are the findings?" she asked, sitting down next to him.

Juan sat up, still fanning himself. It was a week into August. Hopefully the weather would cool down soon. "Usually, people conformed outwardly, talking about how proud they were that their child died honourably for the country, but inwardly, felt like they had been wronged."

"Of course," Dora said, unsurprised. "People were hardly going to complain outside of the kitchen."

"I'm surprised they felt unhappiness at all."

"I'm not. I'm sure the parents of any dead soldier are unhappy deep down, no matter how much they support the cause."

"That's a good point."

"So, what are the other studies?"

"There's short documentary about how the Hunger Games seeped into every facet of life - children playing at them and so on." When her children had been small, Dora hadn't thought anything of them playing Hunger Games in the schoolyard. It was a game that often got vicious, being little more than a pile-up of a group fight. "People learned a surprising amount of information from them. One woman in Eight swears the Sixty-Fourth Games saved her life."

"How?"

"Remember the part where the boy from Two was attacked by wolves?"

"No." The Games all blurred together in her recollection.

"Well, that happened, and he managed to keep them at bay with his spear and make his way back to the Cornucopia, where the rest of the pack chased them off. So the thing is, this woman lives in a town where there used to be massive problems with stray dogs."

"We had them, too."

"Same here, but in her town, it was an actual nightmare, people were being attacked regularly. When she was attacked, she remembered that bit from the Games and used her umbrella to keep them from pouncing while retreating to a building, where people threw things from their windows. In the movie, there's a part where she visits the grave of the boy from Two and thanks him. It's interesting how things can be important to someone in ways they were not intended to be. The Games were set up as punishment, not survival guide."

"The one time the Games helped someone."

"That's the thing, it wasn't one time. People picked up all sorts of useful tidbits of information."

Dora wasn't sure if that said something bad or something good about human nature.

"Lieutenant? There's a problem at Entrance Three."

"Thank you for notifying me." Stephen got up from his desk and made his way to the entrance. There were always problems the others kicked upstairs until they landed on him - beggars, the relatives of prisoners, angry people demanding the right to shoot Talvian. Today, it was the former.

The five children were ragged and wore only T-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops. The smallest ones were barefoot. The biggest one, who looked to be around ten, was carrying a toddler on their back and held a tattered bag in their hands. "Hey, Officer," they said. "Give us food?"

Despite the bravado of their words, Stephen could tell that they were terrified. His heart squeezed as he looked at the little faces. "What gave you the idea that this is a soup kitchen?" he asked sternly. "Go to a Community Home." If they were willing to beg, they clearly didn't have ration cards.

"Quint says there's food here," the eldest insisted.

Stephen's heart broke. The child sounded so earnest, so desperate. He couldn't say no to these little faces. "This is not a meeting-ground for urchins," he insisted. "I know it's crowded in Community Homes, but we are also on rations here."

"Please?" It was a child of around five or six.

Despite himself, Stephen smiled and ruffled their short hair. "Fine. You're here just in time for lunch. Smart kids."

He led them down the corridors, ignoring the odd looks he got. "Is Quint here?" the ten-year-old asked.

Quint would be testifying next week and, after that, would finally be out of Stephen's hair. The issue was where he would go. These children were not the first Stephen had seen living in the rubble, unwilling to stay in the overcrowded Community Homes, but they were the first ones with the audacity to go to him for food.

"Alright," Stephen said as they entered the mess. "Wash your hands." There was a row of sinks by the entrance.

They looked at him strangely but complied. Two tried to splash each other, and the ten-year-old carefully washed the toddler's little hands with soap and water. "What's for lunch?" a seven-year-old cheerfully demanded. They noticed the board and grinned. "Ooh, bean stew and buckwheat. And fruits! And bread!" At least they could read. The pictograms were not very clear.

"I don't like bread," a five-year-old whined, tugging the ten-year-old on the sleeve. "I want something else!"

Stephen wondered if this is what Holder's parents had felt when their son was five. "How do you know you don't like it?"

"It makes me sick."

Did this child have celiac disease? Good thing they were having buckwheat today. "I'll get you nutrient bars, then." Everyone old enough to understand that made a face, except for the five-year-old, who nodded. "Alright, let's join the queue."

Right now, the witnesses were eating lunch, which meant that Quint was somewhere here. Ah, right - in the far corner with a group of other child soldiers. The queue advanced quickly.

"I've got five children and a toddler here," Stephen said.

The soldier leaned over the counter. "Lieutenant, what are they doing here?"

"Eating lunch."

Stephen heard one of the witnesses behind him mutter about how he wouldn't know a joke if it bit him on the ass.

"Er, alright, Lieutenant."

"And give this one a nutrient bar instead of bread." The tasteless little bricks, being little more than rectangles of nutrients and whatever mysterious mass gave it its structure and calories, were the saviours of those with allergies and other food intolerances.

The soldier obediently deposited the correct amount of everything onto the six trays.

"Look, it's Quint!" one of them called out. The nearby witnesses were openly staring. "Hey, Quint!"

"Hush," Stephen said. "People are trying to eat."

"Sorry."

Stephen picked up the tray meant for the toddler and they walked to Quint's table. The boy's face lit up when he saw the ten-year-old. "Hey," he said, motioning them over. "Aww, is that Shawna? She's so cute!"

The ten-year-old took Shawna off their back and handed her to Quint, who began to clumsily feed her beans. The others rapidly dug into their food, leaving not a grain behind in under a minute. "Can we have seconds?" the seven-year-old asked shyly.

"You want more?"

"Yeah!" they all chorused, except for Shawna, who was trying to grab the fruits Quint was feeding her.

How could he tell them 'no'? "Did you have breakfast today?"

"Nuh-uh," the ten-year-old said glumly.

"Well, let's say that was breakfast, and now you're going to have lunch."

The seven-year-old grinned. "Can we have yesterday dinner, too?"

Stephen wanted to pick them all up and take them to a place where they would never have to go hungry. He imagined walking in a park somewhere with Angelo, surrounded by a flock of children. No rubble, no hunger, no being pulled out of bed at three in the morning because one of the prisoners was suffering from withdrawal.

"Don't eat so much at once, you'll make yourselves sick."

"We can eat it later," the ten-year-old said, realizing that they had nabbed a soft target. It was ironic that Stephen, an experienced interrogator, couldn't stop himself from being manipulated by a child. "Can we?"

"Of course."

Five identical grins.

When Stephen described the situation to Angelo on a quick walk they were able to squeeze into their schedules that day, his boyfriend looked ready to melt - and not just from the heat. "That's so nice of you!" he said. "I know you've got issues with thieves at the Justice Building - it's great you still have extra food."

"They're too small," Stephen admitted. "I can't stand seeing children have to ask for food. That's so wrong. They're children!"

Angelo chuckled. "Now every homeless child in the municipality will come to you for food."

"Then I'll feed them," Stephen said. "Maybe that will shock the government into fixing the system instead of letting children run around and beg because Community Homes don't have enough."

Angelo kissed him on the cheek. "I can't believe the media says you're heartless."

"The media doesn't know a lot of things about me." From Angelo's face, it was obvious that he, too, was thinking of the time Stephen had sucked him off in an alley. "Oh, get your mind out of the gutter, my shift's in fifteen and so's yours." They were just close enough to the Justice Building for Stephen to be able to return in time.

"I've been trying to work on my poker face," Angelo muttered. "How do you always see through me?"

"Twenty years of working in law enforcement."

Angelo nodded. "I spent twenty years in an office, but I also noticed something about you."

"Do tell," Stephen prompted, curious.

"You don't like being able to see through everyone and manipulate them. You lie to your parents as convincingly as I do and any orphan could get you to hand over your last piece of bread. Outside of work, you're fine with being manipulated like any other person."

Stephen had never thought about it that way, but in hindsight, he hadn't done too good a job of persuading his parents that he was getting enough sleep. "And you have me wrapped around your little finger, is that what you're suggesting?" Stephen asked playfully.

"Of course."

If only he could see Angelo every day! The longer the trial wore on, the more Stephen wanted a conventional and boring life.

After the documents, Antonius knew that nothing good would come from witness testimony from the IGR. The witness had an adolescent frame, and every square centimetre of their body was covered up, making him think of Uncle Albinus, who also wrapped himself up like that to as much as go get the mail when the sun was shining, as it was today. They had arrived holding a small child by the hand, though going by their size, it was unlikely they had a biological six-year-old child. Perhaps they were siblings.

"Witness, please state your name, age, and address."

The witness adjusted the shawl covering the bottom part of their face. "I'm Subject 102-43 and I was created on the second of May, sixty-one. I live in the Institute for Genetic Research, Wing One, Room Three."

Antonius had to stop himself from letting his mouth fall open. The documents had implied that human mutts were not truly human, but this person was clearly one. Cotillion looked far too calm for what was happening.

"Witness, do you have any other name you call yourself?"

The youth looked uncomfortable. "Um, no? Should I? Well, Technician Antus calls me 'PhD' sometimes, because I'm his PhD - get it? - but that's a nickname, not a name. Well, he usually calls me 'Dee' for short, but that's also a nickname."

"That is no issue. Witness, do you recognize any of these people?" Antonius looked around to see who was uncomfortable. He himself had never stepped foot into the IGR, so he was safe there.

"Your Honour," Dee said, "I can't perceive things that are at a distance in that level of detail. Could you ask them to speak or something? Even if they just said 'Hello', that would be enough." So they had a vision impairment, then. That explained the dark glasses - and was also reminiscent of Uncle Albinus.

The request was granted. The defendants went up to the microphone one by one and counted to five. Dee recognized Cotillion. "Oh!" they exclaimed, sitting up straight. "That's Godmother! Sorry, Your Honour, I meant that's Director Cotillion!"

Godmother? Cotillion was thinking far too highly of herself.

"I'm confused," Dovek said to Cotillion in a voice that carried to the other side of the dock. "You already had six children. Why did you need more?" Cotillion demonstratively turned away from him.

Talvian was also recognized - no surprise there. The rest were not, and the testimony continued.

"If I may ask, Witness, would you be willing to show your face? It would greatly help in understanding the situation."

Dee looked very uncomfortable at that request. "Um, alright," they said hesitantly. Dee fidgeted with the hem of their shawl for a second or two before suddenly tearing it and the sunglasses off, and Antonius could do nothing but gape and hope that the cameras were not on him.

Dee was bald and their skin was definitely light enough for them to have albinism, but unlike Uncle Albinus, they had no pale-blue eyes to act as indicator.

They had no eyes at all.

No eyelids, no eyebrows, nothing but smooth skin where eyes should have been. Antonius had seen similar features on the face of a burn survivor, but the deputy CFO also had skin mottled grey and no nose or ears. Fowler was obviously the survivor of a horrible accident. Dee was obviously...something. The rest of their face was uncanny in its ordinarity. A mouth. A nose. Two ears. But no eyelids. Antonius was reasonably certain that Dee had never had eyeballs.

Dee was sobbing, upset by the shocked reaction their face had gotten. "I was supposed to be scary. That's what they always told me. I strike dread into people with a single glance." Antonius wanted to punch whoever it was who had gasped out loud. This was just a child! An odd-looking child, yes, but still a child, not a thing or a monster. His hands itched to hug poor Dee. Uncle Albinus had told Antonius about being teased for not looking like his parents or siblings with his white skin, blue eyes, and pale-yellow hair, and he could not imagine how much worse it must have been for a child with such atypical features.

Dee took a piece of paper from a folder and ran their hand down it. Antonius realized the prosecutor had asked a question. "There were a hundred of us created," the youth said in a more confident tone. "Well, not really created, at that point. I don't know. Anyway, seventy-one were born, ten lived to one year of age, and I was the only one to make it to two, and indeed, the only one who ever left intensive care. So the project was a failure."

"Did you know about this?" Antonius asked Blues. All these testifying children were getting to him. Bad enough that he had bawled like a five-year-old when that polio survivor had testified.

"How could I?" Blues whispered back. "I asked if they had the animals ready, they replied. They didn't share this kind of information with outsiders."

The prosecutor went on. "A hundred embryos created - with what characteristics?" A hundred embryos. How many women had been needed to birth so many babies? A hundred Avoxes seemed too much even for the IGR, but multiple births were riskier. Perhaps fifty, all of them carrying two each? Still a lot of women.

"I do not have eyeballs or optic nerves. Also, I'm bald, albino, and intersex for some reason. I'm not sure what Doctor Dacien was thinking. But I don't mind being me. Except when people are scared of me. Oh, and I can echolocate, but that wasn't on purpose. I figured it out when I was little, and the technicians just ran with it."

"What?" Krechet hissed at Talvian. "Did you know about this?"

"It wasn't my jurisdiction," she batted her former subordinate away.

"But they recognized you!"

"And so?" Talvian said as if ordering a dog to sit.

"Do you know the full name of this Doctor Dacien?" the prosecutor continued.

"Yeah. Lucian Dacien. I think he started out with animal mutts and tried to go into hybrids, but they failed as always, so he shifted to human mutts full-time. I think it was because someone committed suicide. Again."

"Could you describe the involvement of Defendant Talvian in the program?"

"She turned up from time to time, to talk to Director, I mean Defendant - is that right? - Cotillion. She met me a few times, but I always had to wear dark glasses and a scarf to not scare her. I overheard a bunch of their conversations, because they'd go into the Director's office and leave me on the couch outside. They complained about how all the others died and how I was terrible at fighting and useless. Also, they talked about the animal mutt program a lot, and talked about whether a mutt that did really well in the Games be used for other purposes. I'm not sure what other purposes. Sorry."

"So-" Krechet began.

"Be silent."

Antonius felt a sudden stab of pity for the large man. He was going to hang for murder and could not even gain respect from the person who had turned him into a murderer. "I want to know, too," he said.

Talvian glared at him. "There is nothing to know," she said politely.

"Do you know if Defendant Blues was aware of the human mutt programs?"

"I don't know?" Dee scratched their head. "I think she was only mentioned a few times. She said some sort of animal mutt was needed, or something, and a bunch of technicians were complaining that it was too short-notice."

Blues visibly sagged in relief.

"Please describe the responsibilities of Defendant Cotillion."

"Well, she was the Director of the IGR. She was the godmother of all the human mutts. She was really nice, always brought us candy when we did something well. She's the first person I remember. Whenever we did something new, she always wanted to know. Everything was recorded. We mostly lived in dorms, and she would visit and tell us stories and about the Games and whatnot. Thing is, she was also the one who decided if someone was useless. Like, the useless Avoxes, they could just be sent on to sewer maintenance or something-"

"What was the role of Avoxes in the program?"

"They were the wombs, and that was basically it. If one miscarried too often, she'd be fired, and nobody wanted to be fired because this was a really good position. Like, they got excellent healthcare, nobody ever died as a result of pregnancy. Well, I mean, that was normal for the Capitol, but the District people probably don't know. And they were mostly defectors who got caught and Rebels and whatnot, so it must have seemed like a good position. When I was little, I wanted to be an Avox, because they seemed to have nice lives to me, but then I found out I don't even have external genitalia, only gonads that don't really work properly. Anyway, it was the interns who raised us. I heard that normal people are birthed and raised by the same person, so I'm just clarifying. I had a really nice intern, his name was Intern Antus. Well, he was only an intern for a few years, he got promoted to Technician. Most of the other human mutts weren't so lucky, even the special ones who had their own. The interns kept on running away to the Rebellion or quitting or relocating to the plants department. By the way, what happened to Technician Antus? He was really nice. He was never scared of me and always told me I looked pretty, but some of the other human mutts called me creepy."

What a messed-up picture of the world. A child who wanted to be an Avox? Cotillion would hang, that was for sure.

"Is that Severus Antus?"

"Yeah."

"He is currently in custody. Please continue with your description of Defendant Cotillion's role. You were mentioning how she decided what to do with those individuals considered useless."

"Really? That's nice. Can I meet him again? I mean, he's basically my dad, if I'm understanding what that is correctly. Anyway, the Director would evaluate everyone on their nineteenth birthday and decide what to do with them. If they were special, they had to pass a test, and if they did, they'd be used for something. Basically, there were two types of special - special as in unique, and special as in useful for something. I was both, so it might be confusing. Anyway, if they failed, they would be used for experiments and die, just like the people stolen from hospitals and prisons and the non-special ones. I wasn't really scared, though, because Doctor Dacien told me once I could be totally useless and still pass because my face is so scary."

Cotillion's face was perfectly emotionless. Antonius turned around to see how the back row was doing. Slice appeared to be catatonic and Thread was wringing his hands. Lee was sketching, face long, and Kirji was, for once, not solving crosswords.

"Does this mean that some human mutts were created to not be useful?"

"Oh, yeah, that was most of them. Doctor Dacien and his friends really liked to mess around and create random crap. I think they started out with mice but moved on to humans even though the gestational period is way longer because they wanted to make cool stuff. All the Doctors just wanted to have fun. The Director was always yelling at them for wasting resources that could have been used on making useful stuff, like more of me. She really wanted to create an actual human-animal intermediary, but the Doctors kinda gave up on that pretty quick. They said they wanted to push the boundary, not beat their heads against it. That was five years ago in the Director's office, by the way. There should be a record. The officer with the weird voice told me you have all the files. Anyway, the useless mutts would be used in experiments until they died." Dee said that as if that was perfectly normal, but how else could someone sound when talking about their life?

"What was the role of the technicians and interns?"

"Well, I already said that the interns raised the human mutts. They washed and dressed us when we were little and whatnot. Like, Technician Antus raised me pretty much by himself. He was an intern then. Anyway, sometimes they said weird things, and we'd be punished if we repeated them. Like, they told us that the Games were evil and that District Thirteen existed. The Director had one publicly hanged after she put up anti-Snow leaflets everywhere. They were even in Braille, so I could read them. It was nice of her to do it just for me; all the other human mutts could see. The interns were mostly really nice, even if they were sad. The technicians were more important. They were actual professionals, and the interns were mostly PhD students. The technicians worked in the labs and did experiments on us. There was always someone getting fired because they refused to do something, but you had to be politically proper to get hired, so there were less anti-Snow people there. Or maybe they were super-sneaky and sent info to the Rebellion while pretending to be politically proper. The Director was always worried about that."

"What sort of experiments were performed?"

"Oh, all sorts of stuff. I don't know much about the experiments done on useless subjects, but it was mostly just killing them slowly and in different ways. The clones would be put in the same painful situation, and they'd see if there was a difference in how they reacted. They liked to take those of us with handicaps and force us to do things that were difficult for us. Like, they made me try to tell where a line drawn with pencil was on a piece of paper. Or they made me run around an unfamiliar room. They were mostly focused on making me some sort of super-soldier, but I was really bad at everything. Like, I couldn't shoot because I can't perceive things that are that far away, and it was super-hard for them to make me good at hand-to-hand because I have very little testosterone. More than a normal female, but less than a normal male. Anyway, I'd say I'm pretty good for my size, but not what they wanted. And they wanted to teach me how to skulk around and scare people so I could freak out enemies of the state, but they also didn't want to let me out of the compound so I just ran around the halls trying to ambush people until I gave the Deputy Director a heart attack when I jumped out of his wardrobe at night. He survived, but I was confined to the human mutt wing from then on. I mean, it was his fault for not locking his apartment door, anyway."

Antonius chuckled at that. Even custom-made human mutts were still children.

"Do you know the reasons for your other features that are rare in the general population?"

"What, like the baldness? No. Well, the baldness and albinism might have been to make me scarier. Or maybe it was an accident. Weird stuff always happened when a project first started. Not sure about being intersex, though. When I'm dressed, I look pretty normal neck-down. I think Doctor Dacien just wanted to see how much random crap he could shove into one body."

"When you say 'doctor', what do you mean by that? Were they all medical doctors?"

"Dunno. It was just 'Doctor this' and 'Doctor that'. I think Doctor Dacien was a geneticist. I mean, why else would he be creating human mutts?"

"Were you ever scared?"

"Like, ever? Well, I was often scared when I was told to run in an unfamiliar room, because I would often collide with stuff. I broke my nose once. If I ran slowly, the technicians and doctors yelled at me, so I had to be fast. And I was super-scared when I found out about what happens to the special human mutts, but then Doctor Dacien told me I was safe, so I stopped being scared for myself, but there were all those other human mutts and I was scared for them all the time. And when I gave the Deputy Director a heart attack, I was also really scared they'd shoot me or something. By the way, what happened to the Deputy Director?"

"He is in custody awaiting trial."

"Well, let him sleep with the light turned on, please. And don't have me testify, because he might have another heart attack. He always threatened to have one when someone told him to visit the human mutt wing. Anyway, the most scared I've been was when the Rebellion was coming. All the doctors ran off, and most of the technicians and interns. It was just the few who remained watching over us and stuff. Technician Antus had to deal with the little ones and I barely saw him. The older ones had to help out. I got to watch over Achik, he's the one over there. He has a name because that's the point of some experiment someone was doing. Anyway, I watch over Achik because the Rebellion sent in some people, but we're mostly still just kinda doing the same old thing, going to school and stuff, but all the interns and technicians got arrested and there's pretty much nobody watching over everyone. Some of the human mutts got adopted, but not the ones with the weird abnormalities. Everyone's just running around doing whatever. I think I'll adopt Achik as soon as I move out. Your Honor, where do I go to get a job?"

"The Chair does not deal with such issues, Witness, but I'm sure someone will help you and Achik. I have no more questions."

"Does the prosecution wish to ask more questions...does the defense wish to ask questions? Thank you, Witness, you are free to go."

"Okay!"

Everyone sat, silent, for a few seconds. Then, the judges rose without announcing that the court was adjourned for the day. There was still half an hour left, not enough time to start something meaningful.

In his cell, Antonius sat on his cot and tried to think. Was he cold because he was afraid or because the temperature was cooler today? He put on his plaid shirt and sat back down.

It always got to him when they had a child testify. Perhaps that was why they did it. Antonius thought about his son and wondered if he'd ever get to see him again. After a testimony such as that one, he could imagine no fate for them other than everyone being executed.

The next day, it was Miroslav's turn to sit in the courtroom and take notes as more documents were read into evidence and a former IGR technician testified about an experiment where children had been starved to death. Despite his request, at lunch, journalists were allowed to enter the room where the defendants were eating.

The mood was, of course, very strained. Coll and Dovek were bickering over responsibility, and Blues was nodding along to everything that Coll said. The defendants tried to ignore the journalists, but when one got too close to Krechet, he threw his tea at them.

All of a sudden, it wasn't so gloomy in the room anymore. The guards were laughing even as Warden Vance defused the situation. The journalists were kicked out, Krechet was deprived of his tea for a month, and the others were glad to have something else to think about.

The conversation shifted to the Peacekeepers and their role in atrocities - even that was a simpler discussion topic when the other option was underage criminals being starved to death. "You have to admit, there were some serious bad apples in there," Krechet said, poking at his rice. "A few years ago, my daughter went to a school friend's house and was standing in the street checking her map when someone came onto the street and shot her - fortunately, he only grazed her arm. He then called the Peacekeepers, who arrested her for loitering and put her in jail for fourteen days."

Miroslav had seen photos of Rachel Lowman from around that time. With her shaved head and cheap clothing, not to mention the accent Krechet had mentioned she spoke despite her expensive education, she was a stereotypical thug, and her massive size would have made her only more threatening in the sort of neighbourhood where her friends from her elite state school had lived.

"Shot her?" Bright asked incredulously, hopefully thinking of how she herself had arbitrarily shot people. "But what was she doing?"

"Standing," Krechet said icily.

"But she must have-"

"I do want to know why an unarmed child was shot in the street," Chaterhan, of all people, interfered.

"Child?" Dovek said. "You think the fully-grown offspring of that is a child? I wouldn't have wanted to see her sniffing around my house, either."

Krechet's face went from paper-white to red to grey in a fraction of a second. "So now it's illegal to be tall?" he fired back at the lead defendant. He must have been very rattled by the morning's witness.

"Your daughter should have known about the consequences of parading around in good neighbourhoods like she belonged there."

"How dare you say that about someone handpicked by Talvian to be the deputy commander of an elite antiterrorist squad," Chaterhan said. Now if only he had expressed empathy towards people he wasn't related to before - but still, progress was progress. Chaterhan whirled around to glare at Lux. "Why was the victim of the shooting arrested instead of the perpetrator?"

"She was probably behaving in a threatening way."

"She was bleeding from the arm and lying on the ground with her hands on her head and crying, not understanding why everywhere she goes, people hate her!" Krechet snapped, voice thick. "Of course she was the one arrested. The man called the Peacekeepers and claimed to be subduing a dangerous thug. And who were they going to believe - a respectable middle-class person or a girl with a shaved head wearing a shirt with the sleeves torn off?"

"Why was she wearing rags like those?" Oldsmith asked.

"Because the sleeves were frayed beyond repair but the rest of the shirt was good, so why throw it out? We were saving every penny at the time - three-quarters of my salary went to paying for school or saving for university." What the defendants thought of this kind of budgeting was clear from their faces.

"Couldn't you ask someone to interfere?" Blatt asked.

"Stonesmith made it very clear that she wasn't going to run around getting our kids out of trouble, and I didn't have any connections beyond her. I did ask her to step in when they started pinning the blame for some kind of robbery on Rachel - she failed the lie detector and 'looked suspicious', I said of course she looks suspicious, she's on the autism spectrum, even people in our parts sometimes found her creepy - and get that dismissed, but fourteen days in jail is the exact kind of thing Stonesmith refused to bother herself with."

"In that case, shouldn't she have known better than to act in such a provocative way?" Slice didn't react to the revelation about the autism, as she was too busy poking at her food, lost in her own thoughts.

"Mr. Dovek, I remind you respectfully, Rachel was simply standing in the street," Chaterhan said, desperately trying to maintain decorum in the lunch room.

Krechet shook his head. "I could never bring myself to explain why people treat her the way they do. She'd tell me and Helena about how she was accused of something or other at school and nobody would believe her but then a friend would defend her and they'd get believed, but she never understood why, it never hit her, she just took it in stride. Or people would cross the road when she approached but she never noticed it. She never noticed the stares or anything. I'm glad for it. It always hurt me so much as a child. I was acutely aware there was something wrong with me. Rachel never had to feel that way."

None of them thought it was odd that someone could just shoot someone like that. Miroslav, too, understood that by now. After hearing 'come when they kill you' one too many times from those ostensibly there to protect them, people took it upon themselves to protect themselves and their families, but given the prohibitive costs of firearm permits, not to mention the guns themselves, it was more often than not middle- and upper-class people who had the power to kill.

After an afternoon full of IGR documents listing off atrocity after atrocity, Miroslav went to Cotillion first. The IGR's former head was sitting slumped over on her cot. "I give up," she said. "Just hang me now."

"Why?"

Cotillion looked up at him, clearly exhausted. "Why do you think?" she asked in an exasperated tone. "I knew about all of this. Ordered it. Ignorance of the law is no excuse." That was a first - the others claimed ignorance of the law gladly.

"So now what?" Miroslav asked.

Cotillion shrugged. "I wait to die, I guess. I understand why it'll happen. I'm not happy about it, but I can't blame them."

That was a first. Miroslav knew that things would change by the time she took the stand, but it was still progress. "Will you admit that much in court?" he asked.

"I don't know," Cotillion said with a sigh. She leaned against the wall and stared at the ceiling. "This trial is a sham top to bottom. I don't want to legitimize it."

Miroslav decided to step back and work on that later. "Why didn't you recognize it was wrong before?"

"Did you recognize that anything was wrong about Thirteen?"

"Yes," Miroslav answered. "I wrote reports to the government about how certain elements of its policy were detrimental to everyone's well-being. Many of my suggestions were accepted."

"See?" Cotillion said. "You could change things in Thirteen. Nobody could do that here." She paused. "Who did you use for experiments?"

"Volunteers. Researchers also studied people who had been hospitalized for a certain reason and followed their recovery or decline - with their consent, of course, or the consent of their family if they could not communicate."

"Huh." Cotillion seemed surprised by that answer. "Seems like you were limiting yourself."

Miroslav shook his head. "Ethics aside, human lives can't be thrown out like that. It's wasteful. Tell me, what was gained from shooting those ten people with poisoned bullets?"

"They wanted to test the bullets," Cotillion said uneasily.

"And they couldn't test it on animals?"

Cotillion scratched her head. "Feels wrong to kill an innocent creature like that. Those people had been sentenced to death."

Whether rightly or wrongly was beside the point here. "And what did you gain from the experiment? Were the bullets ever used? Did any of the experiments contribute any knowledge that you did not already have? Was ten even enough for statistical significance?"

"Doctor, are you a prosecutor now?" Cotillion asked irritably.

Miroslav made himself look smaller. "Please, tell me, as a researcher to a researcher - did you really think those deadly experiments contributed anything of use?"

Cotillion shrugged. "Everyone always puffed themselves up in their reports. I had no idea what was going on most of the time." An odd expression flickered over her face. "People justified the strangest things to get grants. Once I went there and was confronted by ten identical five-year-olds. Nobody could tell me why they were created and under whose authority they were. I think they were sent to the experiments wing soon after that."

"And you?" Cotillion had worked in the plants department, ostensibly developing hardier variants of crops, and in reality, pocketing budget money.

"I did my job," she said defensively. "Zevin handpicked me himself to take over." Under him, the human mutt program had begun. Zevin's Abominations were soon renamed Cotillion's Abominations.

"He did?" Miroslav asked, resigning himself to yet another session of rehashing inane gossip.

A/N: I'm not an expert in albinism, but from the cursory research I've done, it appears that people with the condition sometimes are born with hair that isn't white per se but rather very light, and they can have brown eyes. Unlike some animals, humans cannot lack pigmentation in the eyes to the point where they appear red under regular conditions.