"Do you want to see pictures of my cats?" Rosa asked as Juan filled her cup. She and Drexel had dropped by for tea.

"Of course." Her husbands had recently gotten another cat.

The phone was duly passed around. "It turned out that Patchy isn't actually female," Rosa said. "My idiots both have higher education and didn't realize what bits the cat has!"

That error was understandable - Patchy was a calico. "Patchy's male?" Juan asked.

"No, that's biologically impossible. They're intersex - they have mosaicism, to be specific. So they're fertile - well, not anymore, since they're sterilized now - but the vet said they were capable of impregnating a female cat."

"Good thing they're sterile now," Juan quipped.

Dora admired the kitties for a second longer and handed back the phone. "Did you come here just to show off the cats?"

"No." Rosa turned serious. "Did you see that article in the papers today? The 'I Defend' one."

"I did," Dora said.

"What did you think?"

Why did Rosa consider her an authority in these matters? "I couldn't help but be drawn to the argument that the death penalty is irreversible," she said. "Once a person is dead, there is no bringing them back. A truly just system cannot include a punishment where killing the innocent will have to happen at some point, as all judges are fallible. An incarcerated person can at least be released."

Rosa took a sip of tea. "Me, I can't help but think that it's wrong for the state to even have the power to kill legally."

"I wouldn't go that far," Juan said, snapping a small piece of chocolate from a bar. "In a fair justice system-"

"That can change," Rosa cut him off. "And a dictatorship might bring back the death penalty, yes, but having the entire thing already be legitimate in the mind of the average person certainly won't help."

Drexel chuckled. "And you're annoyed at what that paper said?"

Rosa threw her hands in the air. "They took my words completely out of context!" she complained. "Yes, I think the rich should be taxed more, but how in the world can I be accused of Communist sympathies when my son owns a business? Small businesses are a community's lifeblood!"

Still smiling, Drexel placed a spoonful of honey into his tea. "That's the free press for you. I don't want to contemplate what scandal will be next."

"Is that something you recently thought of?" Juan asked Rosa. "I went through your files, it doesn't seem that you had to deal with capital crimes much."

"Oh, I made it clear I didn't like the death penalty," Rosa said seriously. "For politically acceptable reasons, mind. The first time my superior pulled me aside to say that the judgement had already been written, I said that I would not execute unless I was willing to personally go up to the defendant's family, look them in the eyes, and say that I killed their loved one, did not regret it, and would do it again. Which I did not, in that case."

Dora thought about the executions she had ordered. Sometimes, the relatives had been content, relieved, or even gladdened by the supreme penalty. Other times, they had defended their loved one to the last. All of her sentences, she had been sure of - but even now, would she be able to tell the small child of one of the criminals against humanity that she did not regret killing their parent?

Drexel took the chocolate bar from Juan. "Not much of a help, that. I remember I had a case ten or so years back. Terrorism - someone placed a bomb in a local Peacekeeper HQ. Rumour had it that it was an inside job, no information on who was the culprit is known so far. Official line was that it was some sort of anarchist plot." He ate a small piece of chocolate. "In any case, two people were arrested for it. Demetrius Knacker, unskilled factory worker, twenty-six. And Ladislaus Farrier, electrician, twenty-six. No previous convictions, politically reliable. Confessed pretty quick. The materials seemed legitimate." He spread his hands. "So I sentenced them to the supreme penalty, and they were shot within the hour. Only found out later that evidence had been doctored and they had been tortured into confessing."

"So it was an anarchist plot carried out by people who weren't anarchists?" Rosa asked. "It's crazy how we never thought to ask questions. Snow could have issued a decree saying that the sky was purple and we'd have gone along with it." She spun her cup in its saucer. "It is absolutely outrageous that in the new Panem, the state still has the power to kill. Knacker and Farrier - if the investigators had simply been mistaken instead of malicious, they'd have been just as dead."

Juan tipped his head this way and that. "I just can't shake off the feeling that for some people, death is the only punishment adequate to expiate their crimes."

"And I think that's a moot point," Rosa said sharply. "Do you really think it's worth it if even one in a hundred such sentences are passed on someone wrongly convicted for a capital crime? And it's more than one in a hundred." She reached for a small cake but did not eat it. "All the democratic lands bar a few don't have the death penalty anymore. If they removed it and did nothing else, nothing happened to the crime rate. And if it was part of a set of wide-reaching societal reforms, the crime rate plummeted. We're already liberalizing the justice system. Why not get rid of the death penalty as well?" Given the slowness with which Congress dealt with issues, that would take years.

"There goes Red Rosa," Drexel said with a smile. "But I do see the point of reforms. 105.5 - that has no room in a democratic society." That article stated that one who organized an unsanctioned public meeting that turned violent was to be executed. "That entire thing about unsanctioned public meetings, too. It's unconstitutional."

"It's far from the only unconstitutional paragraph in the Criminal Code," Dora said. "Everything that has to do with censorship must be thrown out. The ban on movement between towns. The paragraph on sabotage - it's so blatantly targeted at the working class. The way it's phrased, if a clerk were to come down from their office and break a machine, it's simply vandalism."

Juan nodded. "I am quite certain that if they stopped executing for rape, far fewer victims would be murdered as well. Same with robbery with violence and the like."

"I had to deal with one of those," Rosa said. "It was like something out of the scary stories I heard growing up. Bandits living in the forest robbed a farmhouse on the outskirts of town, killed everyone, set the house on fire. Got caught by Peacekeepers. Pre-written judgement, of course, no even perfunctory attempts at determining degree of guilt, everyone found in the hideout was dragged to the gallows. When the crowds cheered at the sight of a fourteen-year-old in the noose, I felt a twinge of wrongness but dismissed it. The Peacekeepers had spent years taking bribes from the bandits. It was only when a well-off farmer was targeted that they did anything. Absurd."

Dora was glad she was from the city. She couldn't imagine living in fear of gangs coming in from the forest. There were gangs in the city, of course, but they stuck to lower-class areas, which were easier targets. In the countryside, even a very prosperous farmer could be attacked by bandits. A lone person with their hunting rifle could do nothing when it was too dark to see and people were creeping up from all directions.

"Law and order in the Snow style," Drexel said sarcastically. Dora was pleasantly surprised to see him not defend the system for once.

The alpha and omega of Desai's statement was that Ledge had not had any power over anything. Listening to it, Mary got the impression that Desai wanted the judges to believe that Ledge had spent his time at work napping in his office.

"Aharoni's going to tear him to shreds," Mary predicted to Rithvik. She was lying in her bed, laptop on her knees. The two were videocalling, so she could see the new above-ground apartment he was living in. "I can tell he's going to struggle to defend himself."

"He hasn't even taken the stand yet, how do you know?"

"Because Desai's defense is weak." Mary thought about it for a second or so. "I just don't see the judges falling for that, even if he fits their expectations of a paper-pushing bureaucrat who did nothing all day."

Rithvik nodded. "We'll live and we'll see."

"And how are you doing? I see you're above the ground now?"

"I am," Rithvik said with a smile. "Third floor. I get dizzy when I look out the window, but the sunlight is so good."

"Enjoying the yard?"

Rithvik shrugged. "I think I liked playing chess better when I didn't have to worry about the temperature."

"You'll have to send me pictures."

"You know you can just come home and see for yourself, right?" he replied with raised eyebrows.

Mary laughed. "Honey, you know I'm signed on until the end of the trial."

"Not even for half a day?" he asked mock-plaintively.

"No - it'd be a scandal."

"What if I lured you home?" There was a wicked grin on his face.

"How?"

Rithvik winked and unbuttoned his shirt.

"You can't do this to me - I already apologized for not calling last week!" And the week before that, and the week before that. There were always urgent things for her to do.

"Sure I can," he said, leaning towards the camera.

Mary decided that she could stop thinking about Ledge for today.

Stephen couldn't shake his irritation. He had been on needles since those children had managed to break into the jail. The guards had gotten a thorough dressing-down (as had Chaterhan, for contraband), but he knew now that the jail was nowhere as secure as he would have liked, and there was nothing he could do to make himself stop dwelling on it.

On the witness stand, Ledge's witnesses were replaced by Ledge himself. Stephen could barely pay any attention to it. All he could imagine was someone bursting into the jail and shooting someone. What if a revanchist disguised themselves as a child and used the guards' laxity to attack?

Ledge and his lawyer both spoke in droning monotones that threatened to put the audience to sleep. To most questions, Ledge replied with a curt yes or no, but sometimes more elaboration was needed, and he began to speak in an emotionless dry voice. Stephen noticed that he was subtly pushing all of the blame onto Dijksterhuis, who was aware of it. Dijksterhuis took careful notes and passed the occasional note to her lawyer. There wasn't anything else she could do for now.

After the day ended, Stephen ate dinner in the cafeteria before going up to his office. Tiller was already out. Not having any excuse to put it off any longer, he called his parents.

"Hello, this is Sakis Vance?"

"Dad?"

"Steph!" Dad exclaimed. "How are you doing? I heard on the news a couple days back you had a break-in?"

Stephen winced. "We did. We've upped security now."

"Well, that's good. Anything else interesting?"

Not for the first time, Stephen wondered whether he should tell his parents about Angelo. As always, caution won out. He didn't want to get ahead of things if he didn't have to. "No. How are you?"

"Oh, we're as always. Everyone keeps on thinking we're some sort of experts on the trial, just because of you. I was telling the neighbour just yesterday - I know as much about this Ledge as you do!" He paused. "Who is Ledge?"

Stephen couldn't blame his father for not knowing. That section of the dock seemed to blur together into an amorphous mass, and the average person couldn't tell Dijksterhuis from Oldsmith, to say nothing of Pollman and Ledge. "Former minister of finance, charged with the implementation of the Hunger Games, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and a common plan or conspiracy to commit the abovementioned crimes."

"The Minister of Finance was involved with the Hunger Games?"

"The prosecution argues that he was involved with the monetary side of them - deciding how much could be taken from the budget, the like."

"I thought that ministers of finance took money from the budget for themselves," Dad joked.

"That, too, but that falls under crimes against humanity."

"He stole so much money, it was a crime against humanity?"

All over the country, many former government officials were being or had been tried for straightforward financial crimes - embezzlement, money laundering, bribery. In the highest levels of the national government, however, the sums stolen had been so vast and had doomed so many people to death, fraud fell under the umbrella of crimes against humanity. "You could say that."

Dad chuckled. "By the way, how's your deputy doing?"

Ugh. "Just because my deputy has the time to date does not mean-"

"I know! Why do you think that'll always be my next question?"

"Because it usually is?"

Dad had to concede that was accurate. He huffed for a few seconds before continuing. "In any case, how is that TA of hers doing?"

"Great," Stephen said warily. "She tells me she wants to propose soon."

"So they're happy together?"

"Yes."

"Then why don't you find yourself some nice local man and settle down with him?"

Once, Stephen hadn't had even the slightest chance of hiding his relationships from his parents. He could get back from an outdoor exercise and they'd instantly know if he had hooked up with someone. To this day, he had no idea if they had managed to figure it out from his speech and body language or if the information had somehow managed to get into Thirteen's almighty rumour mill.

And now, they seemed to have no idea about Angelo. Stephen had suspected for a while that they were stringing him along, but that was not their style. Had he become better at lying or had they simply not found out about it yet? Stephen now took his time off as often as Tiller - the guards may have thought him incapable of having friends or a partner, but the rest of the staff were not sixteen years old, they were sure to be thinking he was meeting with someone. It was odd that nobody had said anything to him. Usually, people were confronted about their alleged relationships on the slightest pretext.

"I don't want to talk about this."

"Stephen, you're nearly forty!" His birthday was next week, and Angelo had promised something special - if he could get the apartment to himself and Feather, of course. How the neighbours hadn't recognized him yet was a mystery. "You need to find someone now so you're not too old to chase after small children."

"Maybe I'll adopt teenagers," Stephen said mulishly. "Why are we talking about me? How is Mom?"

"Mom is perfectly fine. She's gotten into hiking."

That was a very strange mental image. "Well, I suppose she does like the forest." Stephen's earliest memory was of sitting on her back as they walked through the woods.

"Keeps on dragging me along. It's freezing out here, and she thinks the best way to spend the day is walking through the forest."

Stephen imagined going for a walk with Angelo. For some absurd reason, his imagination conjured up Feather on a leash beside them. Then, Stephen wondered if Feather would be a danger to the rats they had agreed to get once they had their own place. It was hard to imagine that tub of aspic hunting down as much as a cockroach, but perhaps he had been a lean alley cat before some pensioner got their hands on him.

"Steph, are you sure everything's alright at work? You seem distant today."

Stephen wanted to laugh out loud. "It's that break-in. I'm very worried about it."

"I know you must be taking it hard," Dad said sympathetically.

"I am." Stephen looked at the clock. "And the usual paperwork, of course. Quite exhausting."

"You'll be well-prepared for fatherhood," Dad joked.

Stephen wanted to beat his head against the table.

Since the move-out was a workday, Leon only had Marcellus, his friends, and his grandparents to help him out. He wasn't taking along any furniture, at least. It had been decided that Marcellus' girlfriend would move in with them once they got married and Leon's old room would be for their future children.

Even without the furniture, there were still quite a few things. A suitcase of clothes was easy enough for Leon to prepare the other day and for Grandpa One and Grandpa Two to bring to his new place, but the books? Leon had carefully picked out only what he knew he would want to read again, but when he arrived at the apartment after work, his grandparents were teasing him for smuggling bricks, and he wasn't even half-packed yet..

"Did you hear who was just arrested?" Marcellus asked. His face still had an odd greenish tinge.

"Yeah." Leon thought for a few seconds and put the book back on the shelf. "The Debt Lord himself. I'm glad he's alive - he deserves to pay for all he's done." Alisher Lindholm had been the overlord of all the country's payday-loan agencies and Lux's cousin by marriage (and also Chaterhan's third cousin), resulting in countless people taking out loans with crazy interest rates out of desperation and ending up wearing the white.

"I spit on your pitiful bleating," Marcellus quoted in a deadpan voice. He had been oddly reserved for the last while. Leon was glad his last days at home were ones of peace and quiet.

"I heard a joke about that." Lindholm had said that about ten years back when asked in an interview what he wanted to say to people blaming him for their bankruptcies. That phrase had become proverbial, along with 'pearls' such as 'chaotically complicated prices' (the former minister of resources), 'the pensioners say pig necks are too expensive - as if a pig has no other organs!' (Snow), 'there will be no inflation' (the former minister of finance several months before a spike in inflation) and 'fakes fabricated somewhere out there' (Snow again) that Leon still associated with his early adolescence. "Alright, so Lindholm is on trial being asked where he got the money for his yacht. What will he say? Option a) - lie, option b) - answer evasively, c) - change the topic, d) - I spit on your pitiful bleating."

Marcellus laughed out loud. "Option e) - all of the above."

There were only some little things left now. Bedsheets, things for personal hygiene, and various odds and ends. They split them up into several bags he, Nilofar, Inge, and Sebastian could carry to Nilofar's place.

"Visit us as often as you want," Mom said. "You still have the key, this is still your apartment."

"We'll miss you," Dad said. He had deliberately cut his shift short today. Leon was slightly irritated he felt the need to do it but he still felt grateful nevertheless.

"Yeah," Marcellus said. "I can't believe you're moving out before me."

"I guess," Leon said in reply to all three. "Bye."

The four of them left the apartment. Leon felt a massive relief at knowing this place wasn't his home anymore. He tried to recall the happier moments before, but it was all poisoned with the knowledge of what had been going on in the country. Only then had the four of them been on one wavelength. Now that political jokes weren't enough to bind people together, it was obvious just how different they had always been under that veneer of kitchen solidarity.

It wasn't like he had problems with his parents. Leon had always gotten on quite well with his parents - the worst it had ever gotten was him sulking in his room because they didn't let him stay out late for some party or other. Perhaps he didn't like some of their views, but it was hardly something he felt the desire to fight about. But Marcellus? They had been very close since their mid-teens, when the three-year age difference ceased to put them on different levels of maturity. They had always told each other the freshest political jokes, looking around as if afraid the NCIA was at the windows. And now?

A part of Leon wanted to resent the changes of the past year for taking his brother away from him. The other, the one that scanned the documents, thought poor relations with Marcellus were a small price to pay for the end of all those horrors.

"So," Inge said cheerily. "You don't have to report to your parents your every sneeze anymore?"

"I suppose not," Leon said, feeling like a boat whose anchor chain had just broken. Like he was floating along and had no idea what would happen next.

"Must feel great."

Leon did feel relieved, but now there were different worries. He had never paid for utilities before, his parents hadn't let him. How did that work? And he'd now have a new commute to work, too. "Nilofar, be honest - what are the odds of being groped by soldiers on the way home?" The building was very close to a major street, which meant that it was well-patrolled - and that it was well-patrolled.

"Depends on time of day. Just going home from work, I've never had trouble, because they're still sober by then."

Going to the bar or something else of the sort would be a different story. Leon suspected he would never get used to the catcalls as long as this continued.

The first thing Rye saw when she walked into the kitchen was Jinwe cooking eggs. She hadn't known Jinwe could make eggs. "Good morning," she called out.

"Oh, thank God you're here," Jinwe said, turning around. "Where is the bowl?"

"Five centimetres in front of your left hand."

"Of course it is," Jinwe muttered, using a spatula to put the eggs in the bowl.

Rye walked forward to inspect the eggs. They were good. "So you're in the breakfast rota now?" she asked as Sophia Papaionnanu, one of the assistant prosecutors from Two, walked into the kitchen.

"I did not think you were serious," the older woman said in a disapproving tone.

"What?" Jinwe said defensively. "I can cook eggs."

"How do you know they're done?"

"I touch them with the spatula and feel the texture."

"I suppose that works." Papaioannu trudged over to the kettle, filled it with water, and put it to boil. "We're gonna have to drop by the PX today," she said, perusing the cupboards. "We're out of tea."

Given the general conditions of the city, tea wasn't too bad a thing to be out of. "How's your grandson doing?" Rye asked, vaguely recalling that she had been meaning to call him the other day.

"Already studying frantically for the bar," Papaioannu said with pride evident in her voice. "He's a smart boy. How's your daughter doing?"

She meant Billie. "Turned twenty not too long ago. I keep on thinking she's in first year, but she's a good way into third."

"Time flies, doesn't it?"

"Except at Lodgepole."

Jinwe laughed and placed the frying pan into the sink. "I heard an anecdote the other day. The Death Squad is being bored to death."

Papaioannu smiled slightly - she was working on that trial. "That's how it does with document-based trials."

Feng walked into the kitchen, hair sticking up vertically. Seeing that made Rye pat down her own hair, just in case.

"Is it really that bad?" Feng asked.

"Yes," Jinwe said.

"Ha-ha." She patted down her hair nevertheless. "Do you even know what I meant?"

Jinwe nodded. "Either your clothes or your hair. It has to be something everyone would notice as soon as you walked into the kitchen. Probably your hair, though, as I doubt my bathrobe is the height of elegance, either."

"Yeah, it was my hair." All of them had just rolled out of bed. Rye was in a bathrobe and a pair of slippers she had bought on the black market a while back. "Wait, you made eggs?"

"I did."

"Excellent. I thought we were having leftovers." Feng swooped down onto the fridge and took out some fresh vegetables and sauces.

As they set the table for breakfast - it was a pearl of wisdom from Rakesh that a collective like that needed to take its meals together for purposes of cohesion - everyone else trickled in. The meal was indeed mostly leftovers, but the fresh eggs were very welcome.

"Who's excited to start the day?" Anna Goldfield asked.

"Spare me," Nora Pillar muttered.

On the plus side, Rye didn't have to go to the courtroom today, as she needed to prepare for Lee's cross-examination. On the minus side? Rye couldn't really think of anything. Everything was better than sitting inside that citadel of boredom, even digging through stacks of documents with Smith and Torres.

Somehow, even work was easier today. Leon was surprised when the bell chimed, signalling the start of lunch break. Feeling pretty good about everything, he went to meet up with his friends, one of whom was now his roommate.

Aside from Nilofar, Leon shared the apartment with Zoe and Danyal. Both were rubble clearers, though Zoe was from the Capitol and Danyal was a DP from Seven who had somehow ended up in the Capitol. They had different political views, but arguing with them was so much easier than arguing with Marcellus. Leon never felt like he had to stubbornly defend something he didn't believe in for fear of giving the other person's opinion legitimacy. He simply said what he thought was right, they said what they thought was right, and it was as simple as that. The fact that Zoe didn't say horrible things about District people helped. It was actually Danyal Leon could tell he would argue more with - the man was an actual Communist.

"So, how was the first night at the new place?" Inge asked Leon as they scrolled through trial updates on Sebastian's phone. Over at the key criminals trial, Ledge had managed to pass himself off as a powerless paper-pusher and blame Dijksterhuis for everything. The question was now if the judges would believe it.

"It's definitely nice when I don't have to tiptoe around for fear of waking somebody up." All of them woke up and went to work at the same time.

"How's he as a roommate?" Sebastian asked Nilofar. "Does he snore?"

"No," she replied with a chuckle. "And he's a great cook, too."

Two heads whipped around to stare at him. "You said you're terrible," Sebastian said accusingly.

Leon shrugged. "I'm not that good. My brother's much better."

Nilofar ate the last bit of her sandwich and crumpled up the paper bag in which it had been. "I only accept that as an answer because your father works in a restaurant."

"Oh yeah, he does!" Inge exclaimed. "Maybe you could drop by in the evening and say hi."

"I think I will, but he's a dishwasher, not a cook."

"Speaking of, what's for dinner today?" Nilofar asked teasingly.

"I managed to find some stuff, so it'll be navy-style macaroni with meat."

Inge's eyebrows met her hairline. "Wow. What's it made with?"

"Macaroni with mushroom sauce - I got a couple cans of mushrooms."

"But where's the meat?"

"Verdant ate it."

Sebastian nearly dropped his phone. "Good one."

Leon looked over Sebastian's shoulder as he scrolled through a news feed. "Who's next at the key criminals trial? Brack?"

"Yeah," Nilofar said. "She's gonna try the same tack, I bet."

Inge nodded. "She was the deputy. I bet she'll make a huge fuss about that." Her face twisted. "I think it'll be like with Lark."

Leon shook his head. "I don't think so. Lark was just a round-the-clock loudmouth, but Brack signed off on educational policies. She could be politeness itself and it wouldn't save her from those horrid textbooks." Danyal hadn't even seen those - he had signed the lease with an X. After a few months of evening classes, he could theoretically read any text, but Leon could see how hard it was for him to connect the squiggly lines on a page with the words he knew.

"I actually read an investigation a while back," Inge said. "On last survey, fifteen percent of Panem, excluding Thirteen, was literate."

Leon felt like he had been punched in the stomach.

"Fifteen percent?" Nilofar hissed. "How is it so low?"

"What's the definition of literacy used here?" Leon wanted to know.

"The ability to read and write a simple sentence."

Eighty-five percent of Panem could not read and write a simple sentence. Horrifying.

"I bet that's because of the rural areas," Sebastian said. "Even in the Capitol where farm kids usually go to school, they don't show up most of the time, so they do two grades in six years but are still functionally illiterate and can't write a simple sentence. It'd be interesting to see a more precise survey that tested reading and writing separately."

"Urban areas are hardly better," Nilofar said. "Danyal's from a big city, and nobody from his circle could write their name."

"Didn't they already say this during the prosecution part of the trial?" Sebastian said.

Leon shrugged. "They said so much, it all blurred together. I'm sure they had to have said something about lack of education."

"It's worse than that," Inge said. "There's tens of thousands of communities where there wasn't even an elementary school. The more well-off had to buy passes so that their kids could go to a nearby town. Hell, in my town, lots of people only spoke Nahuatl."

"Which shows you how incompetent the regime really was," Sebastian said. "The last thing a dictatorship trying to become totalitarian needs is a large minority of people who don't even speak the official language. But nothing was ever done about it."

Not knowing what to say, Leon ate his sandwich. It was quite basic - a slice of bread and a bit of canned meat. All around them, other archivists were eating. Others had slipped out to queue at the nearby soup kitchen.

"So," Nilofar said, "any interesting documents today?"

Leon shook his head - his entire morning had been spent on the IGR's finances since its inception. He had no idea how the size of the budget and what it had been spent on would help in the upcoming trial and was a little bit curious to see if the information was ever used. It sometimes felt like the archivists were being used simply to digitize the country's many archives.

"I had the reports of Death Squad operations," Sebastian said, carefully eating his sandwich so as to not drop even a crumb. "Someone found the box in the basement where they live now." Documents could have been found in someone's bathroom cabinet and Leon wouldn't have batted an eye. "All the papers are stamped 'destroy after reading'."

Leon, Nilofar, and Inge had a good chuckle at that. Many documents with that stamp had been found, a testament to how convinced the government had been that it would get away with it. "You think they'll be able to use it at the trial?" Leon asked. "Prosecution's case is almost over."

Inge carefully unwrapped the foil that covered a piece of fresh apple and folded the foil for re-using. "What kind of operations?"

"Nothing earthshattering. Everyone named already has evidence of other murders against them. Though I suppose the relatives of the victims will at least get closure now."

That said a lot about them, that they were more interested on the impact on the defendants than on the actual victims and their relatives.

Mary had noticed that the back row was deliberately trying to be as unobtrusive and unnoticeable as possible. Where before, newspapers' front pages had been adorned with quotes by defense and prosecution, the defenses of Brack and Dijksterhuis passed almost unnoticed by the wider world.

Brack called a handful of rather unhelpful witnesses who reinforced rather than denied Brack's power as deputy minister. When Brack herself took the stand, the courtroom was confronted by a flood of denials like nothing any of them had seen before. The former deputy minister of education reached a new rock bottom when she claimed that just because she signed something didn't mean that the information in the document was true. Olivia Harris of Six was hardly Jinwe, but she was able to break through that defense on cross-examination.

Dijksterhuis, by comparison, put up a bigger fight. She tried to justify the regime's economic policies and on several occasions, put the cross-examining Robert Wu of Eleven into a position where he had to retreat or else get into a debate on taxation. Her presence at planning conferences for the Games were not so easy to justify, and Wu almost had fun leading Dijksterhuis through the usual argument about whether or not one had approved of the Games.

It was very hard to find someone willing to admit they had approved of them. So far, Mary had met one - Joe. The problem was that NCIA files did feature observations that a large number of people were unaware of even the biggest happenings in the Games, which meant that anyone could claim they had been part of that large number, and not because they were too busy with work and family, but out of true ideological opposition.

Mary had read in the news that sociologists were studying the link between the Games and the general violence of society in Panem. Leaving aside the brutality of the dictatorship, the way ordinary people treated each other was also quite harsh. Back in Thirteen, it was very rare for children to fight with their fists, but here, it was accepted and nobody even batted an eye. Students had fought each other with sharp blades over perceived insults, getting their faces sliced up in the process - that had been banned, but Mary suspected it had simply been driven underground. Mary wasn't sure how things were in the rest of the country, but in the Capitol, people got into brutal fistfights over allegations of cutting in a queue. The place was better policed now than before, but people still got their relatives together to hunt down and beat up the person who had raped them, be that an abusive spouse or an ostensible one-night stand. There was, however, a set of unwritten rules regulating who could fight whom. A child would be punished for hitting a much smaller child, and it would not do for a young adult to beat up a pensioner who had robbed them.

Was it Thirteen that was different, or the rest of Panem? On the surface, people were, of course, always people, but below that, there were cultural differences Mary still couldn't quite understand.

Outside, it began to rain. Mary was glad to be sitting in a car. The temperature was at that unpleasant point where it was as cold as it could be without the rain turning to snow. She and Reed were on the way to a party at the restaurant, and they had called for a taxi because of the terrible weather. Mary suddenly realized that they had arrived. She had spent more time lost in her thoughts than she had realized.

"Did you bring an umbrella?" Reed asked.

"No, but the entrance is two metres away." Reed looked down at his expensive suit. Mary's own suit was just as expensive. "Zip up your coat," she advised.

"I suppose." He looked outside and winced.

Fortunately, a person with an umbrella rushed up towards them as soon as the taxi stopped, so they were able to get out and get into the restaurant in dryness. They handed over their coats and sat down at their table. They were early, of course. It often seemed that only Thirteeners were capable of being punctual, and that - only if they wrote down their appointments on their hands in an imitation of the schedule they had used to have. Mary had Joe keeping her on top of everything.

"Er, chief of counsel?" someone asked. Mary turned to the side and saw a kitchen worker, a man in his fifties with brown skin and grey hair, wringing his hands. He had a name tag saying 'Salman Shim'.

"Yes?"

"I went for a little break," Shim said apologetically, as if afraid Mary would ask him why he wasn't in the kitchen, "and I remembered you'd be here today. I just wanted to say hello. My son's working on the trial - in the archives, that is."

"It's very nice to meet the person making our food," Mary said warmly. This was certainly better than the glowers she sometimes got on the street.

"Well, I wash the dishes, but thank you," Shim said, not raising his eyes from the ground and still wringing his hands. "I better go."

Mary turned to Reed, who looked a little bit confused. "That was odd," she said.

"Yeah." Reed waved slightly at Peony, who had just walked in.

"Son's working with documents and father's here," Mary mused. "A dishwasher just washes dishes, but his son almost has to be pro-trial."

"I bet they cheered the Games either way," Reed said with an uncommon sharpness. "Ooh, look, there's the entertainment."

Since people were now starting to arrive and settle in, the first performers were released - two elderly people singing opera duets. The eye candy would be sent in when everyone was paying attention. For their part, the couple did an amazing job. In ill-fitting finery that must have been lent to them for the performance, they sang about love to each other with such sincerity and emotion, it was breathtaking. Mary took a good sum of money from her wallet and called over a server to hand it to them after.

"Good day," Trevor Hall said, sitting down next to them. "Or evening, rather." His eyes flicked over to the empty seat next to him, and Mary suspected that to him, it was not empty.

"Ah, so you drew the short straw?" Reed asked him teasingly. Most of the others didn't like sitting next to her, because she was their superior. Reed and Isabella were practically the only ones she could get casual with.

"Andrea Webster and I, yes," Trevor replied with a smile. "Those singers are magnificent, by the way. They should be down at the opera house."

"Maybe they are," Mary said, "and are here to earn some extra money." In the best Thirteen tradition, people who could boost morale were highly valued, but in the best Capitol tradition, extra money could always be made somehow.

"Hold on, let me look it up." Reed glanced around, decided that people were still arriving, and took out his phone - there was an entire etiquette around when phones could be used at even semi-formal gatherings like these. He tapped his screen a few times, scrolling down through a list. "Found them. They do indeed sing here."

"High-class entertainment we're getting," Trevor said appreciatively. "By the way, Chief of Counsel, there is some important news I wanted to tell you personally."

"We can do this later, when there isn't this crowd," Mary suggested.

Trevor shook his head, looking sombre. "Everyone will find out eventually. I'm going back into inpatient. I can't do this anymore. They're still here. They're everywhere I go." His eyes flicked sideways. "I can't cope with this and everything else."

"Are you going to hand over your work to Martha?" Martha Latimer was his deputy.

"We'll see." He sighed. "I'm sorry."

"What for?" Reed looked very uncomfortable at hearing the conversation. "You have nothing to apologize for. Your cross-examination was as good as it could be, all your work is done on time, your team considers you a good boss."

"I'm sorry I'm so screwed up."

"Show me one person in this room who isn't."

Trevor smiled sadly. "But I'm the only one who can't control myself."

"You are perfectly in control," Mary said firmly. "Which is why you are taking this step - to not let yourself be put in a position where you might lose control."

"I suppose," Trevor said, and took a sip of water.

At that moment, Andrea approached the table, hiding her unhappiness at having to sit with Mary. Perhaps she should have asked to sit with Isabella again. Mary had made a firm decision that she would go home after the key criminals' trial, but Reed and Isabella were both more than eager to remain and keep working. Since Reed was the better planner and organizer, she would promote him to her position, with Isabella becoming his second-in-command.

"Good evening," Andrea said. She was one of the ones who couldn't wait to go home. Fortunately, there were plenty of lawyers eager to work on the trials now that the first wave of Depuration was over, and there was more than enough of the team willing to stay on and provide continuity.

"Good evening," the three of them said, Trevor still looking upset.

"Interesting day today at the assistant Gamemakers' trial." She certainly wasn't going to discuss her new boyfriend with Mary. At least Andrea had gotten divorced the other month, so there was nothing especially newspaper-worthy about her relationship with another consenting adult. It drove Mary to distraction that the media was more interested in sex scandals than the trial itself.

"It was," said Mary, who had to keep track of all the trials. "I suspect that Hryb will sing a different song once he's testifying for himself." The youngest and least experienced of all the defendants, his equally young lawyer was practically doing cartwheels trying to save him from the noose.

"I'm just glad Heavensbee refused to testify for the defense."

Given that he had testified for the prosecution, that would have taken the trial to new heights of absurdity. "Very much so. I'm glad he chose to distance himself from the others instead of seeking excuses for them." Having been a spy for Thirteen since his late twenties, he had taken on himself the burden of perpetrating the Hunger Games so as to acquire information at the highest levels of government. Granted, most of it had been quite useless, which reinforced Mary's personal opinion that a) it had not been worth it at all and b) Heavensbee had gone too far in any case, but nobody was asking her personal opinion.

Reed and Trevor looked slightly irritated at not being able to start a conversation of their own. Mary had tried to be the friendly kind of boss, but it seemed that she had failed.

"We're making progress," Andrea said.

Mary looked out the window, to where several locals were standing with faces pressed against the glass. They were wrapped up in scarves and shawls against the cold. Paupers were still paupers and lawyers were lawyers. A regime change did nothing to alter that.

"How are things at home?" Mary asked all three of her neighbours at once.

"How do you think you're doing so far?" Miroslav asked Pollman, who was sitting on his cot and rubbing his hands together.

Pollman huffed. "Smart of them to bring in a prosecutor originally from the Capitol. That Zvi's not going to go on an emotional tirade, that's for sure." The cross-examination would end tomorrow.

"But Reed Zvi is a defector."

"I think I misspoke. The important thing is that Zvi's from a good family. He's not going to start whining about something or other."

"Were you worried about that?"

Pollman smiled slightly. "To be honest, I was hoping for that. Any mistake on the prosecution's part gives me more chances."

"You think there were any?"

"I-" Pollman sighed, leaning against the wall. "Honestly, my lawyer played it a bit too safe. Hopkins should have tried to defuse the tricky questions instead of letting Zvi deal with them himself. But then again, Zvi would have just brought it up again, or something of the sort."

"Probably," Miroslav said.

Pollman sighed again, as if the air in the cell was too stuffy to breathe. "You know, Doctor, I trust you."

"I'm glad," Miroslav said seriously.

"So I'll tell you I wish I had been able to see what was what before. I know others could. I wish I could have been one of them." He dropped his head in his hands. "I just did my job. I never hurt anyone. But that's why they're after me."

"Will you say that tomorrow?"

Pollman laughed. "And destroy my own defense?" His claim was that he couldn't have ever thought that what he was doing was wrong. "No thank you. I want to live."

The rest of the defendants would all claim something like that, except for Coll, if he didn't get cold feet at the last second. It would remain to see which approach was better - or if the tribunal wasn't interested in that sort of nuance.

A/N: Calico cats have two X chromosomes by definition. Most non-female calicos have XXY chromosomes, but other arrangements are also possible. They're often called male, but 'hermaphrodite' is more accurate - or, if you're talking about your precious kitty, 'intersex', the word used for people who are biologically neither male nor female.

At time of writing, Alisher Usmanov is an oligarch who owns a large part of the Russian telecommunications industry. He does have a giant yacht, and he did once say, in response to an investigation of his wealth, 'I spit on you, Navalny'. There were a few months where Navalny and Usmanov were posting videos in response to each other.

The other quotes are from Belarus ~2012-2014. 'Chaotically complicated prices' was from a functionary whose name I don't even recall anymore, 'there will be no devaluation' (in Russian, we usually say 'devaluation' to mean 'inflation') was Pyotr Prokopovich, the head of the Central Bank, shortly before inflation skyrocketed in 2012, and the remarks about 'pig necks' and 'fakes fabricated in Poland' were from Lukashenko. Why pig necks? I read somewhere that they're the cheapest part of a pig, but don't quote me on it.

Recipe for actual navy-style macaroni (макароны по-флотски):

gastronom DOT ru/recipe/14679/makarony-po-flotski

300g macaroni

600g ground beef (other proteins or mushrooms should also work)

2 tbs tomato paste

2 tbs plant oil

1 onion

2 cloves minced garlic

½ cup hot water

salt

pepper

Makes 6 servings.

1. Cook macaroni.

2. Chop onion finely. Fry onion and garlic in oil for 5 mins. Add beef and cook for 10-12 minutes, getting rid of any lumps.

3. Add tomato paste, stir it in and cook for 2 mins.

4. Add hot water, salt, and pepper, and cook for 5 mins.

5. Add macaroni, cook together for 5 mins or until done.

6. Before serving, you can sprinkle on grated cheese and fresh greens.