thecapitol | Suspects' Holding Cell

The vans drive for what seems like an hour before they come to a stop, and Peacekeepers blindfold and forcefully drag even the most cooperative suspects into a building.

The suspects are all held in one cell, a large, metal room with a thick door and a single ledge that serves as a bench. Bright fluorescent lights beam from overhead. There are no windows and no clocks, no sign of where they might be.

The Peacekeepers take off the blindfolds, though without much care for whether they come off all the way or chafe or stay slung around the suspects' necks. The suspects' hands are left cuffed behind their backs, and even the most ingenious of them won't be able to pick the lock on their restraints, but they're otherwise left to roam freely through the space.

Suspects are removed, one at a time, at unpredictable intervals, by Peacekeepers armed with tasers. Some take three hours to return, while others are back within only a minute. Each of them comes back having been clearly roughed up and pressed for information that they may or may not hold; some are bleeding or sporting the beginnings of black eyes.

They'll be sleeping here tonight.

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Mindy laughed. "Right. Disturbing the peace. I think I can get an idea of what 'the peace' is supposed to mean. In a way, that's kinda why we're here now, isn't it?"

She nodded. "Oh, that'd do it. Back home I was nursing a revenge plot my father started, since it took my mom and his wife away. I know all about how vendettas get started."

Mindy did get the silence, but it didn't make things any easier.

"They'll want information from us. That's their prize."

"Except if they'd suspected us of murder then and there, we'd already be dead," Susannah said. "They'd killed people for much less after all."

Those poor boys, she thinks. Even if she knows for the moment that she's not in the Neshoba County Jail, her mind isn't far from Freedom Summer and is it any wonder?

"You too," she adds, still thinking of those boys, only one of which had been her color. "Even as white as you are, if they thought you were a nigger lover they might have killed you."

"The internet is a fun little tool," Mindy remarked, looking at the ground a moment. "You hear all this shit in school about racism, but they talk about slavery and shit, and when its gone, you can probably see those fucking teachers taking a breather. They can mention some shit about Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights. You open the right web page, you learn about people being hung, torn to pieces, postcards with crowds of fucking whities gathered around bodies, even taking pieces as souvenirs. Hate like that, school doesn't even want to touch, you know?"

She shakes her head. "But you do what I do, you see how depraved motherfuckers are. The different ways that they can kill someone, how they can torture someone without batting an eye. I bet you're right, they would have killed me back then. People are shit, and if someone tried to get me to use my privilege as an excuse to look the other way I'd slit their throat. If you're too much of a coward to extend punishment fair, that you make exceptions, the fucking law might as well not even exist."

That, and thinking of Ellie and Riley, she knew how quickly the two would have been killed, and that got her blood boiling.

Susannah winces as Mindy goes into her rant. She's not entirely sure what the 'internet' and 'web pages' are--a bit after her time she guesses, maybe they have something to do with the communicator network--but some of the stuff Mindy mentions... well, it cuts a little close to home. She tries to listen anyway, though. She's got a feeling saying this is important for the girl.

"I suppose that's why you're in here with me," she says finally.

"I'm in here with you because I already have a strike against me," she said. "Tried to get that Ian kid out of captivity, and we were found out and burned. We got off easy. In the end, useless, since the kid died in the games forever, but I don't think they trusted us not to be rebellious."

That, and Mindy had BEEN being rebellious anyway. "What were you doing that made you suspicious?"

Joining the rebellion, she doesn't say, since as far as she cares she was brought in when Carlos told her about District Thirteen and that was months and months ago. Besides, there's a much better and more recent reason for them to have brought her in.

"My man went on the network to tell everyone that the Capitol, not gangs, destroyed District Three."

Mindy ought to remember Eddie, she thinks, since their time as Mentors for their Districts overlapped by a couple months.

Oh, she already had. That was why she was here, after all. They just happen to catch her looking for undetected spots, and she had no reason to explain why she hadn't been in her room. Oops?

"Then he was an admirable guy," she said quietly. "He was one of the ones they took away, wasn't he?"

Susannah hesitates. Until they'd taken her away for interrogation, that's what she'd thought. But during the whole terrible thing she'd distinctly heard one of them tell the other that they had no idea where Eddie Dean was.

"Someone snatched him up, anyhow," she says finally.

"Sorry," she said again. "You know, they took my dad too. He...well, you know. He shouldn't even be around anymore. The only way they could have been more bastards is if they grabbed some of the scum I took out back in my world, or my friend Dave."

"Mmm. Don't give them ideas," Susannah says.

"This was bad enough," she said darkly. "I mean, you have no idea how happy I was to see him. He died egging me on, to take out as many guys as I could, you know? But I couldn't stop the fire in time, and that fucking killed me...and him, literally. So that was great. But he's in THIS place, and now God knows where he is now after they reunion happened. Not knowing...that's the worst thing."

"It is," Susannah says. "It lets your mind come up with so many different options for what's really happening to them, each worse than one before."

"I have a theory they aren't gone. Think about how many people actually care about their families. Now, you want to push the Capitol, guess what? They have a little leverage. Why throw away bargaining chips that you can use later, right? It makes logical fucked up sense."

Susannah nods. "That it does."

"From the lily white angry chick to you, I hope you get the hell out of here soon. You don't deserve to be here."

Now Mindy, she DID, and relished it. But not Susannah.

"Thank you, Mindy," Susannah says, quietly. "But none of us do, except whoever killed that woman and even then, they ought to get a tickertape parade instead."

At the mention of that woman, Mindy's eyes darkened considerably.
"I still remember how he looked when he came back. It was....fuck. Susannah, he wasn't some kid, but he was a caveman. He knew simple things, simpler times. No way he could see how messed up people could be. There was talk...of bid...well, you know."

She clenched her fists, and said the last part low. "I'm pissed off they beat me to it."

"... so am I," Susannah says, in a voice just as quiet.

Suspects' Holding Cell

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