Spud-Bar laughs, but there’s no levity to it, nothing mirthful or genuine.

“My dove, if we don’t exist anymore, you and I and the rest of this bunch, why do you imagine there’s anything Crache can’t hide from its people? Especially when whatever or whoever it is goes against the idea that we’re living in a peaceful paradise?”

“I just thought… I thought I was getting a handle on all this,” she says. “The Professor… whatever or whoever he is… he was making sense.”

“I’m sure he was,” Spud-Bar says gently, as if speaking to a small child. “Now, come on. Your food is gettin’ cold, if someone hasn’t already swiped it.”

Again, Spud-Bar carefully takes Evie’s arm and urges her away from the curtain, back to their seats at the end of the feasting table. Evie settles there, staring at a half-eaten cabbage cup with absolutely no appetite.

“What will they do with him?” Evie asks. “The Professor, I mean?”

Spud-Bar shrugs, slurping the rest of their soup without complaint. “They’ll let him fight tomorrow. Probably load ’im into a suicide tumbler. If he doesn’t die, then they’ll execute him tomorrow night. Rules is rules. Savages can’t be killin’ folks off the field.”

“Right,” Evie says, thinking about the lives she’s saved this evening, including and especially the Professor’s. “Where would we be without rules, after all?”

SHAHEEN

LEXI HAS NEVER TRULY EXPERIENCED hunger, nor seen its effects up close. She doesn’t understand why the little girl’s belly is so bloated if it’s empty.

“This is what happens when one is starved, Te Gen,” Taru explains gently, and only for Lexi’s ear. “I imagine it is much like feeling warm though one is freezing to death.”

Lexi is speechless.

The child can be no more than four or five years old. Her name is Char and her mother tells them she hasn’t been able to feed the girl in four days. Char’s mother cradles her under the hole-pocked eave of a disused building in the Bottoms. Like many of the abandoned buildings here, the wall of this one is marked by red paint with a symbol that designates that the Capitol is going to repair and reuse the structure for a new purpose. Taru has already explained to Lexi that this rarely occurs, and many of these old buildings have stood empty for years. Despite that fact, Aegins who patrol the Bottoms are instructed to keep the insides of every marked structure clear of vagrants. They perform regular sweeps, and anyone found squatting is often violently beaten from the buildings, while others are even arrested, and some never seen again.