A/N: Shorter chapter this time. I split this off from a too-long chapter because by some quirk of what I call "writing math," the time I spend editing increases exponentially the longer my chapters are. I really don't understand it. Anyway, hopefully this helps me get both chapters posted sooner.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter! And thanks again to Miss Scarlett 05 for helping me out.

Chapter 22: Raid

Gale walks into the office where he and all the other Reconstruction Committee members have desks, and unceremoniously flops into his chair. Over the mountain of papers, he watches Committee Member Douglas and his two young assistants across the room.

Douglas must sense Gale's attention because he looks up and says, "Good of you to join us again, Hawthorne. Work fits into your schedule now?"

"Oh, I was working," Gale says evenly. It's torture to hide that he knows Douglas ordered the land proposal maps to be altered, but Madge had stressed the importance of not tipping him off before the raid.

"Looked like you were having trouble with your love life."

Gale thinks he should win one of those Medals of Valor for his restraint. "Nope." His love life is just fine.

"I'll take your word for it." Douglas winks like they're in on a joke together and then picks up the phone to start one of his lengthy, unrelated-to-work conversations about grain patterns in lumber or the newest trends in furniture styles. Gale wonders briefly how someone so corrupt can be so boring, and then shifts his gaze to Douglas's assistants to be sure they aren't up to anything devious. They both seem to be engrossed in committee reports. Like usual, the boy smiles tentatively in Gale's direction, but when all he gets in return is a scowl he turns back to his report.

Gale checks his communicuff for updates, hoping the raid is still on schedule. No new messages, and at least ten more minutes to go. He's an edgy mix of exhausted and wired; it had been a long night. As soon as the joint investigation between Covert Intelligence and the army formally opened yesterday after Madge's hearing, an endless parade of tasks that had to happen right now emerged, keeping all the teams busy late into the night. Gale had to pull together evidence and give directions to the army squads deploying this morning to canvass the District 2 mountain vicinity for more of those trailers. Because the network of conspirators (or gang of assholes, as Gale thinks of them) is potentially so large, the plan is to conduct simultaneous raids throughout the districts to avoid collaborators warning their accomplices elsewhere. That meant a large-scale mobilization, and the earliest everything could be synchronized to begin was this afternoon.

Which is where Gale comes in: keeping watch on the Reconstruction Committee members targeted in the raid. He'd wanted to hunt down trailers and trigger-happy saboteurs in the mountains, but since he shares office space with so many of the raid's targets he'd been assigned babysitting duty. Same with Perri—like him, she's at her own desk, pretending to work while her eyes roam the room. Most people in the office read or write quietly at their desks or make muted phone calls, aside from Douglas's loud discourse on the best lacquers for wood paneling. Gale feels positive he's missing out on more exciting action inevitably happening elsewhere, an uncomfortable repeat of his stint on the Star Squad during the war. The only upside to his apparent post-war destiny of being stuck in an office is that he might see Madge soon—she'd messaged late last night that her suspension had been revoked and she was going to be on a raid in District 2. ("Very safe, strictly paper!" she'd assured him.)

A communicuff across the room chirps the arrival of an incoming message, and Gale looks up in time to see Douglas's annoyingly friendly assistant frown at his wrist. The kid shows the message to the other assistant, who bites her lip and glances at the door. Seconds later, Mr. Friendly opens a desk drawer and transfers a stack of papers to his briefcase.

Gale clenches his teeth—did that punk just get warned about the raid? Forcing a neutral expression onto his face, he stands up and casually strides over to their desks. "That a Model 8550?" He nods at Mr. Friendly's communicuff. "Sounds different than mine."

"Um, yeah, I think so," the guy mutters, holding his hands below the desk. Probably deleting the message and praying Gale doesn't ask to see the communicuff. Gale doesn't because he doesn't want to let on that he's suspicious, but he does sit on Mr. Friendly's desk and gives him a completely fake smile. It's strange enough behavior that Douglas looks up from his phone call to shoot a questioning expression at Gale. But then Douglas continues with his conversation, apparently unaware of the imminent raid. Gale's determined to keep it that way; his assistants can't warn him with Gale hanging around.

Mr. Friendly kicks his briefcase under his desk and swallows nervously. "So… do you need something, Lieutenant Hawthorne?"

"Yeah. I want to know: why does Douglas have two assistants, and I have to do all my own work? I probably need more help than anyone." Gale nods toward his disaster zone desk, littered with unread papers he'll probably just "file" in the trash bin. At the same time, he scans the room for other suspicious behavior. Committee Member Fisher hastily shoves papers into his briefcase, but luckily Perri is already walking over to his desk to delay him.

"Um, I think Mr. Douglas pays for us himself, not the Committee," Mr. Friendly says.

Gale turns back to the kid and smiles snidely. He's done playing nice and can't pull it off anyway. "Maybe if I could afford to pay other people to do my work for me, I could have gotten a land proposal out before you all stole the project."

"We didn't steal… It's… better for the whole country to do things quickly."

"You stole it," Gale accuses. "And just because your boss tells you to do something, that doesn't mean it's right."

Even though Gale's thinking specifically about the fact that Douglas is so lazy he couldn't pull off a fraud without his assistants being deeply involved, it doesn't hurt for the kid to assume Gale's mad about them horning in on his project. Works as a distraction. Before the assistant can do anything other than shrink backward under Gale's glare, Douglas hangs up his phone impatiently and intervenes.

"Hawthorne, why do you have your grubby boots on Mark's desk?"

Gale hops off the desk but keeps staring at the Mark and the girl. "We're just chatting about right and wrong. Sometimes people get them confused."

Douglas launches into a long-winded request for Gale to kindly not harass his hard-working staff, but Gale tunes it out, straining for any indication that the raid team has entered the building. For once Douglas's rambling is a blessing—it saves Gale from making excuses to continue hovering near their desks.

Soon enough, Gale hears fast-moving footsteps in the hallway. Seconds later a flood of agents storm the room, all wearing identical black pants and jackets with "C.I.D." emblazoned in large white letters on the back. Covert Intelligence Department. As soon as they descend on the desks of Douglas and his two assistants, Gale steps back. Agents also surround Fisher and other committee members Gale hadn't even realized were under suspicion. Another team blocks the door so nobody can exit. The room swells with exclamations of disbelief that a respected body like the Reconstruction Committee has been subjected to a CID raid.

"What's going on here?" Douglas asks angrily.

The lead agent, a man Gale doesn't recognize, slaps a paper on Douglas's desk and signals for his colleagues to do the same to the other targeted committee members.

"Search warrant authorized by President Paylor. We're seizing your files and have some questions for you."

"There must be a mistake," Douglas protests. "I was appointed by the president herself."

"And now she wants us to ask you some questions."

"I'm not going anywhere," Douglas huffs.

"You are. In handcuffs or not, your choice."

Gale has the self-control to keep a smirk off his face as he watches Douglas and his assistants mutely follow the agents into the hallway. Mark the no-longer-as-friendly assistant avoids eye contact, probably aware that Gale was onto him. And suddenly a wave of guilt hits Gale: that kid messed around with maps and gets hauled off like a murderer, while Gale actually caused innocents to die and walks free in a cloud of his own smugness?

He returns to his desk, partly to get out of the agents' way and partly because confusion edges out his satisfaction that they're one step closer to busting all the cheaters and schemers. He slumps into his chair and watches the first wave of agents finish escorting the targets out. As they leave, another set of black-clad agents enters the room, holding cardboard file boxes. Gale's head shoots up, searching for Madge. Is this what she meant about her role in the raid being "strictly paper"? The people who pull all the files after the exciting part of the raid ends? She isn't with the second group, though.

He spots Perri on the side of the room, watching over the scene in the same the way the foremen in the mines used to monitor the crews to be sure no one was slacking off. Her eagle eyes land on him. His expression must be pretty grim because she makes her way over to his desk and looks at him expectantly, apparently waiting for him to explain what's bothering him.

"Doesn't it seem off," he says under his breath, "that people who've done much worse things than these people weren't punished? People who did things for Snow? Or during the war?"

Perri peers down at him over the rims of her glasses. "Many were punished."

"But not everyone."

"That would be impossible. The focus of the post-war trials was on the worst of the worst. The trials couldn't go on forever; we did need some of us left to rebuild and move forward. Even if not all of us have unblemished histories."

He takes her statement as an acknowledgement of her own regrets for whatever she did while working for the Capitol. But that doesn't really help. Gale waits until a nearby agent passes them and then speaks even more quietly. "Did Madge tell you I designed weapons during the war?"

"No. But I suspected something like that."

He stares at a drab, gray pamphlet on his desk. Its pages are wrinkled from re-readings and a coffee ring curves through the title. It's one of the ethics essays he keeps coming back to—the one about whether there should be universal rules on how to conduct war. The idea had seemed absurd when Katniss brought it up that day in Special Weapons in 13, but now…

Still focused on the pamphlet, he speaks slowly. "I designed a bomb with a secondary explosion. I meant for it to target the Capitol's medical teams, so they wouldn't be able to help troops injured in the first explosion. It was to give us an advantage in battle…" He glances up and sees Perri's narrowed eyes telegraphing her disapproval. "I know it was wrong. Now. At the time, I…" He trails off, still too frustrated with himself to say anything that sounds like an excuse for his thought process during the war. He plows ahead. "The thing is, I think that design was adapted into… the bomb that ended the war."

He waits for the gasp of horror, but Perri just keeps looking at him in her judgmental way. It's like being turned inside out: studied and rejected. He feels strangely relieved at the confirmation that she thinks what he did was terrible. But that triggers another pang of guilt—he shouldn't get to feel better for knowing that.

"I should have to go through one of those trials," he concludes.

Perri looks annoyed at him. "The president and the prosecutors choose who they try, Gale, not you. And I doubt the Capitol coincidentally employing a similar idea to one of your designs—vile as it was—will tempt them into subjecting you of all people to a trial."

"That's not it," he says sharply, frustrated once again at the reminder of the chasm between his public image and reality. "Coin had my design. She could have used it to turn the country against Snow by making it look like the Capitol set off that bomb."

"Creative theory. What do you have to back it up?"

He crosses his arms over his chest and glares at her. "I know my design."

Perri waits with raised eyebrows for him to elaborate. After spending the last 24 hours painstakingly piecing together evidence of wrongdoing related to the maps and the land parcel scam, Gale knows she wants something more concrete than suspicion and his knowledge of his own design. He glances at Plutarch's desk across the room—Plutarch was in on everything with Coin and probably knows the truth. But Plutarch is also a crafty bastard. Every time Gale has brought up the bomb, Plutarch has adamantly blamed Snow and chided Gale to "stop obsessing and go do something useful." Then he would invariably invite Gale to appear in whatever new waste of time TV show he was pushing that week—Plutarch's definition of useful. Gale and Beetee eventually acknowledged that Plutarch was a dead end and spent their energy going over any other avenue they could think of to figure out once and for all if their design had been used. No matter what, they always ended up with the same answer: maybe.

Before Perri can say anything else, a few more CID agents trail into the room. Out of the corner of his eye Gale spots a fair-haired figure. But it's only Simon, who nods a greeting to Gale and Perri and walks toward them. Simon had been unsuspended at the same time as Madge and apparently is back from District 3 now. For once Gale's glad to see him. If Simon is here, chances are Madge is too.

"I'll save you the trouble of asking," Simon greets as he sets an empty cardboard box on the nearest desk. "Madge is with the team at the bank. Our overnight surveillance sweeps showed a number of suspects channeling transfers through the bank in town here. Madge specializes in banks; we needed her there." He glances around the room. "Everything go all right with the raid here?"

"Mostly," Perri says. "No actual arrests; everyone agreed to be questioned."

"Douglas's assistants, and at least Fisher, were tipped off by a few minutes," Gale adds.

Simon frowns. "We tried to synchronize, but with this many raids in this many locations I guess the first targets got warnings out. Any other problems?"

Gale shakes his head, still surprised at how uneventful the raid was. "I thought they'd put up more of a fight." He'd had his gun ready if he needed it. The idea of jabbing someone like Douglas into submission had also crossed his mind as a task he wouldn't necessarily mind.

"We had surprise on our side," Simon points out, "and these people probably don't think they've done anything wrong. Or at least anything they think we could catch them at. A lot of suspects seem to mix those concepts and convince themselves that's all that matters…" He trails off and then takes his cardboard box over to one of the desks to start loading it with files. Perri excuses herself to talk to the chair of the Reconstruction Committee, who just arrived and seems to be frozen in shock in the doorway at the disarray.

Gale checks the watch on his communicuff and wonders how long the bank raid will take and if he'll be able to see Madge afterward. In the distance he hears the deep boom of the town's quarry setting off another blast. Even though it's a promising sign of reconstruction and business returning to the district, he can't help tensing up whenever he hears the rumbling, and this one was louder than the others. Too many memories, none good. The ubiquitous dust on blast days also reminds him of District 12's coal dust, an eerie echo of the past.

His mind wanders back to his conversation with Perri about his bomb design. During the ethics and justice sub-committee meetings he's contributed to the discussions in general terms, but maybe he should use his experience to convince the others about the importance of warfare guidelines and to figure out what those should be. And to sort out what types of wrongs qualify for trials, since that's not clear either. All of that, and trying to make the country safer, would do more to make up for the harms he caused than endlessly hating himself. Besides, his unconscious attempts to punish himself mostly ended up hurting his family and Madge...

A burst of electronic beeping yanks him back to the present. The communicuffs of all the agents in the room sound off in an angry, syncopated rhythm. Gale realizes his own wrist is chirping as well. Text flashes across the tiny screen:

BOMB. D2 BANK. NEED BACKUP.