Dora knew that Count Four would be shocking. She had half-expected the prosecution to start with a bang, but they began with documents about the healthcare system. Andrea Webster, Dora's compatriot, recited price lists of medications and order forms submitted by hospitals.

It was not a new thing to Dora that medications in the Districts were horrifically expensive even though officially, anything required for the maintenance of functionality had been free. Where the tax money Dora had paid so that someone with a chronic condition could have the medicine they needed had gone was obvious - cottages and yachts. Thanks to Jack, she had known that procedures she had winced at would have been unaffordable for his family, no matter how necessary.

Some of her fellow judges didn't seem to get it. Dora could beat them over the head with the price tags of various treatments some of them had received during pregnancy and childbirth, but Cora still didn't really worry about how in the villages, hyperemesis was frequently lethal, even the fairly socially conscious Moira only shrugged when reading a document about the rates of deaths from eclampsia in different income groups, and Drexel didn't seem to care that had his wife been poor, she would have died giving birth to their first child. Dora, for her part, wanted a stiff drink whenever she thought of Jack's mother giving birth in her shack with no painkillers and no antiseptics to clean with aside from a bar of soap.

Webster read official documents that proved that a vial of insulin had cost thirty dollars everywhere, regardless of vastly differing average incomes between Districts. The implications for Type 1 diabetics across the country were obvious.

"Your Honours, when insulin was invented, the patent was sold for a single dollar, as the inventors wanted it to be available to every single person who needed it. Later innovations permitted pharmaceutical companies to file their own patents and use that to ratchet up the price. But nobody has gone so far as Defendant Carolus Lee and his Ministry of Health and made this elementary drug without which type 1 diabetics die within months of their diagnosis available only to those who live in certain areas of the country."

Webster recited how much people doing certain jobs in certain Districts earned per month. In light of the cost of a single vial of insulin, it was hard listening. Her own father had been on dialysis for the last ten years of his life - had he not been a prosecutor, Dora would not have gotten to spend those ten years with her father.

Webster then switched to reading sections of demographic reports, comparing life expectancies and what people died from across Districts. In the Capitol, the life expectancy was fifty-eight and death came in the form of cancer, infectious disease, heart disease, and workplace injuries. In Three, it was just forty-one at birth, with infectious disease being the leading cause of death and the horrifically high infant mortality dragging the overall life expectancy down. But even a twenty-year-old in Three could only expect to live to seventy or so.

Dora had read that people were confused about how the healthcare system could be a crime against humanity (and also jokes about how it was so bad, it was a crime against humanity), but to her, it made perfect sense. Deliberate inequality targeted at groups deemed inferior. Looking at the defendants, it was hard to believe they had ever had any pretensions at being a better sort of people - they looked just like anyone Dora could have seen on the street back home.

Half an hour of demographic reports later, Webster switched to antiretroviral drugs. "In the Capitol, HIV/AIDS was a chronic condition, nothing more," she said. "If HIV was caught very early, it could be cured entirely, and even if it wasn't, it meant that the person had to go to the pharmacy every month and pick up a bottle of pills. Within a year, they would not be able to pass on the disease to anyone else." She held up a document. "Document 10-204. In District Ten, an individual paid fifteen thousand dollars in 74 for their treatment."

Plenty of people had only earned that much in a year, or even much less. Dora wondered if perhaps that individual was her cousin, who could afford the treatment he needed thanks to being a tenured professor. Or her cardiologist, who spent most of her salary on keeping herself alive.

Webster reminded the tribunal of what percent of people in Ten had earned enough money to make paying so much a possibility. Dora recalled medications being mentioned in Count One, as conspiracy to keep life-saving medications expensive only in the Districts, but only now was the prosecution really getting into what had cost how much. Receipts for fifteen-thousand-dollar medications were a much more powerful evidence for the average person than the minutes of conferences where the price wasn't even referred to. Dora could see people in the audience glaring at Lee.

"Ready?" Rakesh whispered to Rye.

Rye nodded. "Perfectly ready." As the witness was sworn in, Rye approached the lectern and spread out her papers.

Jamal Pennington, age thirty-nine, the son of the managers of one of Eleven's largest plantations. Unexpectedly for someone of his financial status, he was short and skinny. And unexpectedly for someone with his condition, he was breathing.

Rye looked over at the dock, where Lee looked very uncomfortable. Good. Life-saving medication had officially been free, and it was on the conscience of the former Minister of Health that it had not actually been so outside the Capitol. The documents proved it. The witness would merely be the nail in the coffin.

"What is the name of the health condition you suffer from?" Rye asked.

"Cystic fibrosis."

"Before the Rebellion, did you ever meet another adult who had the condition?"

"No."

Anticipating the logical comeback, Rye elaborated. "In District Eleven, how many people with cystic fibrosis lived to your current age?"

"A handful."

Lee looked very, very uncomfortable. He looked down as his neighbours side-eyed him.

"Witness, why are you alive?"

Pennington laughed out loud, as did the audience. Rye imagined the dressing-down Rakesh would subject her to for this and winced.

"Silence!" Sanchez demanded quietly but firmly.

"Because my parents were able to pay half a million dollars annually for my treatment."

Rye made a show of looking at her papers. "Do you stand by your previous assertion that they earned a little under fifty thousand dollars every year?"

"Yes."

"Then where did the money come from?"

Pennington shrugged. "I do not know the exact details. Rumour had it they participated in organized crime, but that is the usual rumour when someone lives beyond their means."

So far, as expected. "Paying for your treatment forced your parents to live beyond their means?"

"Yes. Far beyond them."

Lee looked ready to sink through the ground.

"Let us backtrack a little bit," Rye said. "What is cystic fibrosis and why is it so lethal?"

Pennington gave a quick overview of the symptoms. "As a teenager," he continued, "I was told by a doctor that it was theoretically possible for me to live to forty - I was surprised, I had grown up thinking I was supposed to be dead already. In fact, it is theoretically possible for me to live as long a life as anyone else. But the cost..." He gulped. "In Eleven, over ninety-nine percent of babies with the disease died before their first birthday. My parents paid for me to be institutionalized, because the plantation was quite remote and it was hard to get the proper care."

"And of that one percent - I presume they were the children of well-off people, like yourself?"

Pennington nodded. "Before becoming of age, I lived in a hospital for chronically ill children. As a very small child, I was allowed to interact with fellow sufferers, even though I had to stay two metres away from them at all times. I later found out that they were all from very rich families."

Rye held up a document. "I remind the Tribunal that in 70, an engineer in the ninetieth percentile of income earned forty-seven thousand dollars, as per Prosecution Exhibit 11-302." Blues flinched at hearing that. "Now, how many children your age with cystic fibrosis were there in the hospital as you got older?"

"At first, something like ten in the hospital, and that many again lived at home but went in for checkups with us," Pennington said, rubbing at his forehead. He took a sip of water. "I was too small to remember it, but I am extrapolating from my later years at the hospital. My first clear memory is from when I was four years old. I remember doing my exercises all alone in the gym, and a nurse walked in and told the PT that I was the last one in my cohort at the hospital."

"Everyone else was simply unable to keep up with the bills," Rye stated.

"Yes. When I was thirteen, someone tried to rob a bank to pay for their child's treatment."

Rye ignored that last part, even though it would ignite plenty of outrage. "Growing up, did you feel afraid that one day the money would run out and you would simply die from an infection?"

Pennington shrugged. "I knew full well that a bare handful of people in the District could spend half a million dollars each year that I knew of. On some level, I think I had to have been aware that something was deeply wrong there, but I was afraid to probe." He gulped water from the glass.

"Besides you, have you personally met or know of any other long-living people with cystic fibrosis in Eleven?" Rye asked.

Pennington shrugged. "There is a fifteen-year-old - she's the daughter of a city mayor and a city head prosecutor, or whatever it's called." How they got more money than they should have had did not need to be said. Rye imagined civil servants and business owners dutifully handing in bribes, unaware that they would be used to keep a teenager from drowning in her own mucus. "Besides that, I do not know personally of anyone who made it beyond the age of five and thus cannot talk about their experiences."

"Were you and the mayor's daughter eligible for the Reapings?"

"I doubt it. I did not even attend them." Pennington finished the water in his glass. Suddenly, he began to cough. It sounded like he was dying from a lung infection.

There was nothing about Pennington to suggest that, had he been born to Rye and Barrow, he would have died as a baby. Rye had no illusions about that. She had never met someone with cystic fibrosis in her life, and she had never heard of it being anything other than a disease incompatible with life.

Now, time for the crowning number.

"How was this disease described in medical literature and in medical files in Eleven?" Rye asked. Pennington looked confused. "Was it considered a chronic condition?"

Pennington snorted and started to cough again. When he recovered, he explained in a hoarse voice, "Absolutely not. My parents were told I had a condition incompatible with life, I believe that's the phrasing. It was rather odd to be told that I was supposed to be dead."

"That is indeed the phrasing," Rye said, looking at the tribunal. "As it was in all of the other Districts." She rattled off a list of document numbers and looked at the audience, and then at the defendants. "But in the Capitol, it was officially listed as a chronic condition. This, despite the fact that the lists of what disease was categorized as what were drawn up in the national Ministry of Health." Of course, this had predated Lee, but it would still make him look very bad.

"What proof do you have of that?" Sanchez asked.

Shit. Rye glanced down at her notes and gave the document numbers. The Chair spent some time going through the document book before nodding.

"It's not my fault!" Lee said at lunch as they dug into their succotash. Antonius half-heartedly moved his spoon around the tray, looking for something other than lima beans and corn. "I only had the position for a few years in any case. I couldn't just order around pharmaceutical companies."

Toplak tore her piece of bread into little pieces, no doubt thinking about how much schizophrenia medications had cost outside the Capitol. "Couldn't you have asked Snow or something?" she asked.

"To lower the prices? He was the one who benefited from the budget being skimmed, he'd never have agreed to spend money on the Districts."

"Why?" Thread snapped.

Antonius should have expected that. He kept on forgetting that Thread and Verdant were from Two.

"Why-what?" Lee asked.

"Why did I only receive my smallpox inoculation in the Academy? Why did my neighbour's uncle die of rabies even as his family got on their knees to beg the paramedic to send for the vaccine?" Usually uptight and restrained, Thread now looked ready to explode. "Tell me, Mr. Minister, why did my childhood friend wither away and die in the space of months when the cure was lying in a safe just metres from her? Isn't the point of a government that it helps the people with what they can't do on their own? Like buying insulin?"

"Settle down!" Warden Vance commanded.

"We gave our lives for the country," Thread said quietly, "and our families were abandoned like so much trash." He ate a spoonful of succotash. "This tastes better than the rations we were fed at the Academy. So choke on it!"

The mental health team was very intrigued by this new development, but Stephen had the discipline of the defendants to worry about. "What was that display at lunch?" he asked Thread, who was putting his cell in order after the guards had ransacked it, finding nothing. He did hamster away various bits and bobs from time to time, but not always.

"I apologize," Thread said, dropping the piece of paper he had been picking up and standing at attention.

"As you were," Stephen said for the third time already. Thread was usually a delight to have as prisoner, he was tidy and disciplined, but he could not shake his old habits. "I said, keep cleaning. You don't have to click your heels every time I walk in. You're not a soldier."

"Yes, warden." Thread looked like he had been slapped. Looking much diminished, he crouched down and picked up the sheet of paper.

"So, Thread, explain this to me. What was that display at lunch?"

"Warden, you heard it all. You do not need me to tell you the entire thing all over again." He picked up the blanket and made his bed neatly with a few effortless motions. If only the others could be so neat.

"Nevertheless, I would like to know what's going through your head right now." If Thread was planning to throttle Lee, Stephen needed to know.

"Warden, that is what Dr. Mallow and Dr. Aurelius are for. You must have more important tasks."

"My task is the mental and physical well-being of my charges," Stephen said. "Tell me, Thread. Is this going to repeat?"

"No, warden." Stephen said nothing for a few seconds. Thread finally got the hint and elaborated. "I was upset. Lee infuriates me. That entire Capitol establishment - they turned us into obedient automatons, and now we have to share the dock with them."

If only Thread had been only an obedient automaton. He had perpetrated plenty of atrocities of his own volition. He wasn't saying anything new, though, so Stephen hoped this would be a one-off. "Good," he said, and left the cell.

"I see you've decided to join us," Mary told Reed as he sat down next to her.

Reed shrugged. "Someone's lawyer tried to argue that they could not have been at a certain massacre because they had actually been at a different massacre at the time."

The Peacekeepers' trial was certainly something. "At least it's not the judges' trial."

"Don't remind me of that one," Reed said with a mock-shudder. "Even in law school, I didn't see so much pointless hairsplitting. I pity the audience. I hope the case against Grass doesn't end up so convoluted." He looked around the courtroom. "Avoxes, huh? How did the medical stuff go?"

"Them indeed." Some political prisoners had had their tongues removed and had to work as slaves in various sectors. It had been considered the 'merciful' option, for those who had recanted. "Alright. The defendants cried when children in cuirass ventilators testified." Granted, it had taken Mary all of her self-control to not do the same already when Morrison had recited the statistics - only twenty percent of the population had been vaccinated against polio before the Rebellion, with predictable results.

"So did I," Robert Wu said. He rubbed his forehead with his palm. "I hadn't cared about epidemics since my youngest got old enough to have all his vaccines. But ninety-five percent of parents didn't have that privilege."

"Horrible," Reed said quietly.

Amber Vargas of One took her place at the lectern. She limped heavily due to a wound that had been sustained either in action or in a drunken fight. The session began, and she began to speak. "The Prosecution first passes to the Tribunal the document book for this case, labelled '4C'."

The books were passed around. Mary made sure that the defense lawyers also had copies in front of them.

"Panem was not the only country to assassinate political opponents. To imprison them without trial and subject them to brutal tortures. To throw them out of hovercraft and poison them with nerve agents. But nowhere else in the world were political opponents mutilated and turned into slaves."

Mary nearly fell off her chair - was that even English? Vargas was a notary's child from very rural One, surely this heavy Spanish accent would have been beaten out of her in school if not at home? Officially, of course, the regime had tolerated other languages as little as most regimes of the sort, but many things did not reach the uneducated populations of rural counties, one of them being 'proper' speech.

The defendants didn't look too worried at the content and busied themselves laughing at Vargas' accent. Only Talvian and Dovek had direct responsibility over Avoxes (though Toplak had owned them in the Training Centre), and both of them were tough nuts to crack. "I quote from Document..."

Mary listened carefully as Vargas described how the system of Avoxes had arised when forced labour and corporal punishment had collided. The background had been gone over during Count One, but it had been mentioned off-handedly together with other punishments back then. Now, Vargas went into the details of Avox life. She read long excerpts from instructions on what was to be done with Avoxes.

Avoxes had been Capitol political prisoners and attempted defectors and the odd Peacekeeper. Individuals who would have been executed otherwise could be sentenced to the Avox condition if they expressed remorse - or if they got lucky with their lawyer, apparently. Vargas described a trial from a few years ago, when a four-year-old child whose family had tried to defect to the Capitol had been turned into an Avox instead of being executed thanks to the lawyer somehow managing to convince the judge.

The judge had been Komal Lophand, on trial in the Lodgepole Justice Building at the moment. And the lawyer? None other than Lucius Fisher, Blues' drab lawyer. He turned bright-red when he realized Vargas was talking about him.

"Fisher is so adorable," Reed sighed. "I just want to pat him on the head and tell him that everything will be okay."

An odd sentiment, given that Fisher clearly had nerves of steel and wasn't afraid of standing up to anyone.

"Fisher convinced Lophand?" Lavanya whispered to Mary. "I don't see him arguing his way out of a paper bag."

Mary nodded. He had objected a few times, and each time, he had cringed, wrung his hands, and generally acted as if the limit to what was acceptable was much more restrictive than what it was in reality. That would have been extremely important when political lawyers balanced on a razor's edge between being incompetent and putting themselves in danger, but now, it meant he was not being as persuasive as he could have been. "Maybe he has hidden depths. I'm sure Baer's schooling all of them."

"Lophand should have hired him," someone quipped. Mary did not laugh, but it took her effort.

Vargas moved on to describing how, exactly, people had been turned into Avoxes. Their tongues had been cut out and they had been assigned to jobs. Younger women and sometimes even mere girls had had the 'option' of going to the Institute of Genetic Research to function as surrogates for the genetically modified humans that were created there. At hearing that, all heads whipped around to glare at Cotillion.

"As per Document 00-902," Vargas said, "these women and girls not only gave birth to the human mutts and fed them during their infancy, but they also did menial jobs in the IGR - cleaning, routine maintenance work, laundry. Skilled tradespeople such as plumbers, cooks, and electricians did work they were qualified for. If you look at the second page of the document, Your Honours, you will see that none received even a cent in payment."

It was a nightmarish scenario that Vargas described. For a handful of scattered leaflets or an incautious word at the wrong place and time, a woman could end up spending decades fixing leaky pipes in the IGR while constantly pregnant. If she broke rules, she was forced to give birth with no painkillers. The only way out was transfer to sewer maintenance, either voluntarily or due to too many miscarriages..

"The sewer maintenance referred to in Document 00-903 was exactly what it sounds like. Instead of using skilled workers with proper tools and protective equipment, Avoxes were sent in with only their hands and the most basic tools. Cheaper that way. Nevertheless, many a girl or younger woman opted for this work over the seemingly more physically comfortable IGR work, because they knew the complications that could ensue, and they understandably did not trust the government to provide them with proper healthcare." Vargas rattled off a list of pregnancy-related complications that could happen even to someone who lived in good conditions, received prenatal care, and gave birth in a well-stocked hospital. Mary's sister Wendy had spent all of her pregnancies on strict bed rest, and Alan's wife had suffered from such massive tearing giving birth to their youngest, it had rendered her unable to have more biological children. "Pregnancy is a natural and usually desired process," Vargas continued, as she never had to worry about the cost of birth control and abortion, "but it is a painful, exhausting, and complicated one. To force someone to undergo it after giving them a choice that is not a choice - work fifteen-hour shifts up to your neck in sewage or be an incubator - is nothing less than torture."

If an Avox had connections or their family had money, they could be transferred to somewhere else. Avoxes were cleaners at elite nightclubs and the like; a few particularly trusted ones worked at the Hunger Games Training Centre. Some were even able to eventually live at home, though they were never paid money, meaning that they had to live off the charity of family members.

An Avox testified that afternoon about having worked in the Training Centre. She recounted a variety of gossip told about Toplak that Tornabene tore into shreds, much to the disappointment of the other defendants.

No problem. The documents had been bad enough, establishing Toplak's link to the Avox system. Dovek and Oldsmith, too, were not looking too happy as the tribunal adjourned for the day. And as for Cotillion, she was more worried about tomorrow.

"I quote from the letter: 'Please, get me out of here. They took Bethany yesterday in the middle of the night. I don't want to be taken away. You know they're only keeping me here because of what I said. I know it's expensive, just get me out of here. Or at least visit me. They don't take you away if you're visited.'"

Rye tried not to show the emotions welling up inside of her. Fifteen-year-old Jonathan Sztojay had lived in a centre for children with disabilities since the age of six, when his parents had realized that they could not afford to continue looking after him. He had been lucky enough to be born in the Capitol, where he received the care he needed for free, but looking after a child with disabilities such as Jonathan's at home had still required more time and energy than his parents had. By the time he had gotten older and more independent, he had begun to act out in politically dangerous ways, causing the doctors to slap him with a diagnosis that convinced his parents that they would not be able to take care of him on their own.

As if to taunt Lee and Cotillion, Carver was doing the presentation. "What I say now will most likely be repeated during the presentation on the penitentiary system, as there is much overlap. In both cases, some unlucky individuals in government institutions with nobody to look after them did not stay for more than a year there before their transfer to the IGR." The fact that Carver was a prosecutor was a sign that she did have family who looked after her, but Rye hoped that the so-called Minister of Health was thinking about the children given up to Community Homes by parents who could not take care of them. The same proportion of them were good parents as of parents in general. But having neglectful parents was deadly when one's survival hinged on being visited at least once every few months.

Cassiopea Vargas, Lee's lawyer and Amber Vargas' namesake, spoke up and asked if the defense would have the opportunity to cross-examine Jonathan.

"Of course," Carver said before Sanchez could open his mouth. "He's going to be testifying immediately after lunch."

"He is?" Vargas asked, shocked. "We were not told of any witnesses testifying today. The prosecution thinks it can pull witnesses out of hats!"

Irons stepped in to argue that everyone had been duly notified and it was the fault of the defense if they weren't paying attention, and Sanchez, as always, had to mediate. "How much time does the defense need?"

Baer whispered to Vargas for a few seconds before speaking up. "Would today after the afternoon break be satisfactory?"

That was quite generous. In Baer's place, Rye would have demanded an entire weekend to prepare. But then again, it would be hard to cross-examine in such a delicate situation.

Crisis solved, Carver began to explain how human experimentation worked. Children in Community Homes, people sentenced to life imprisonment or long prison terms, and the institutionalized who were never visited were sent to the IGR, where various lethal experiments were done on them. Carver led with excerpts from a recently-written report that plainly stated that the experiments were of no scientific use. The vast majority had not been carried out properly - even in science, corruption and falsified data had been omnipresent - and even the ones done properly only confirmed what was already known from studying hospital patients in a humane way.

"I continue to quote: The best way to rescue individuals suffering from hypothermia is already well-known thanks to non-lethal experiments on volunteers and case studies of hospital patients. Nothing of use was gained from freezing criminals to death.'"

The entire day was taken up by that, and more. Carver promised that human mutts would be dealt with the next day and called in Jonathan. Both he and his parents had given consent for him to testify in front of an audience. The boy had a full short beard despite his young age and used a wheelchair, which he propelled with his hands.

"For the sake of the record, witness, when were you institutionalized and why?" Carver was still next to the lectern. Rye had the idle thought that all they needed was for Low to object, and then it'd be the battle of the wheelchair-users.

Jonathan looked ill at ease, clearly not wanting to be the centre of attention. "Well, I've got a bunch of conditions. I can't really walk and I've got epilepsy. I can use my hands now, but that took a while, so my parents had to wash me and feed me even when I got bigger. Eventually, they just couldn't spend so much time on me and sent me to an institution."

"You say your hands are fine now. What does that mean?"

"Er, what?" Jonathan scratched his beard.

"Could you use a wheelchair like this one before?"

"No," he said ruefully. "The doctors said my motor skills were delayed. They put me in physical therapy so I could eat and stuff." To think that this was a marker of extreme luck! The Capitol had tended to be better about this, because even with massive corruption greater funding meant more money actually being put to use, but even Capitolian Community Homes had usually neglected their charges.

"Before, you couldn't eat on your own?"

Jonathan shook his head. "I'd drop the spoon or whatever."

"Can you eat on your own now?"

"Yes."

"Can you dress on your own?"

"Yeah."

"Can you wash yourself?"

"Well, I need a tub to sit down in, but yeah."

"Was the place where your family lives wheelchair-accessible?"

Jonathan nodded. "I live there now, it's all good."

"Can you manage your epilepsy?"

"Yeah, it's alright. It's just some mild convulsions and I need a nap afterward. They used to be way more frequent, but they got rarer when I got older."

"Witness, you are currently living with your family. Why were you not released from the institution before?"

"Because I knew about what happens when people disappear. They didn't want to let me go. They made up a bunch of diagnoses about me and scared my parents into thinking I wouldn't be able to live with them." Jonathan was jittery now, wringing his hands over and over.

"What diagnoses did they make up?"

Jonathan grimaced. "They said I was cognitively impaired or something. Made me answer a bunch of weird questions. The psychiatrist asked - when is President Snow's birthday? I answered that I didn't know and also didn't care." Everyone laughed at that, and Jonathan looked around the courtroom, surprise and pride evident on his face. He soaked in the mirth until Sanchez called for silence.

Rye realized that she also didn't know the date of Snow's birthday. She had known it before, of course - it had been an important date constantly mentioned on the television. But it wouldn't have been so odd for the exact day to slip one's mind. And now, of course, it didn't matter.

"Did they ask anything else?"

"Yeah. They asked who's going to come after Snow. Well, even ten-year-old me knew that was a dangerous question. I said - I guess some politician will. They said I was wrong and that after Snow, there will be...Snow." He looked around the courtroom. "So I'm sitting there thinking, who's the crazy one here?" Rye laughed out loud at that one.

"And that was why you were diagnosed with a cognitive impairment?"

"Yeah. The psychiatrist was like - well, he doesn't know this super-basic thing, and his attitude's all wrong, so clearly there's something wrong with him."

"Thank you, witness. Now, what do you mean by people being taken away?"

Jonathan resumed wringing his hands. "Kids came and went. There was a Community Home nearby, so sometimes, kids would be told they were too disabled to be in the Community Home, or the other way around. We had kids from all over Panem, actually. I met someone from District Eight, but she was taken away. That means they disappeared and never came back. It happened to kids from outside the Capitol, they were all taken away a few days after coming."

Carver had to have been thinking that she could have been one of them, had her parents not been able to take care of her. Rye felt a sudden burst of gratitude that she had never been forced to make that choice.

"Taken where?"

"The IGR. When I was ten, I overheard the doctors talking about who they were going to send for the starvation experiments. They caught me but they couldn't do anything because my parents visited every week." He paused. "I mean, they probably could have just killed me, but they were too lazy to do the paperwork."

"Paperwork?"

"If someone who was visited died, they had to tell the relatives something, and it was a pain in the neck. That's why they only used people who weren't visited. You didn't have to tell anyone anything because nobody cared. If someone did turn up years later they'd say - what kind of a parent are you, not checking on your child for so long? It's not our fault the letter got lost in the mail."

"Do you know of any cases when someone was killed in the centre?"

Jonathan shook his head. "Nah. I heard the doctors talking all the time - wish so-and-so would just die already, stuff like that. And nobody died, except from TB or whatever. I knew I wasn't in danger because the doctors liked me. I mean, I could talk and say if I needed something. Once they knew I knew where they took everyone, they stopped being nice. They used to tell me I'd go home as soon as I could do stuff on my own, but then they stopped. I tried to tell a few others about it, but the doctors flipped out and started coming up with ways to get my parents to stop visiting. Get them to give up on me. That's when I sent the letter you asked me about. Through a janitor."

"Did they visit?"

"No. They said later they were turned away at the gates and told I was sick. A psychiatrist I didn't know came, talked to me for a few minutes, and shouted at my psychiatrist that he was a liar and that they'd have another intern situation if they brought in a kid with a working brain. I think they meant that nobody wanted to kill kids with a normal intelligence. Easier to kill someone who can only lie on the bed and moan. Even I didn't like dealing with them, it was so hard."

And with adults, of course, they used the so-called dregs of humanity. Easy enough to justify death for those.

"Did your parents believe that your diagnosis was correct?"

"Yes." Jonathan sounded morose. "After I was diagnosed, I asked them to take me home a few times but they said they wouldn't be able to give me what I needed."

Rye tried to put the timeline into order. "When you were ten, you found out about your fellow patients being taken to the IGR."

"Yeah."

"You were then falsely diagnosed with a cognitive disability."

"Yeah."

"Your parents then decided to keep you in the Community Home."

"Yeah."

"You were never transferred to the IGR because the IGR doctor did not want to take you."

"Yeah. He said people like me, who can learn, should live."

What a thing for that maniac to say knowing full well most people with disabilities never received a lick of support. "When you were thirteen, you tried to tell other children about the IGR."

"Yeah."

"The staff tried to get your parents to stop visiting."

"Yeah."

"Why did they change their mind and decide to send you to the IGR even though an IGR functionary said he did not want you?"

"At that point, they were too worried about me telling others. They wanted to shut me up."

"Did they try to send you away?"

"No. My parents were unable to get to me after that point, but I was working in the Home by that point, so they needed me. Plus I stopped talking about it."

"Did anything else happen to you around that time during your stay at the institution?"

Jonathan's face crumpled and he wrung his hands again. "A doctor saw me kissing a girl and had me sterilized."

It sounded like the audience collectively choked.

"Did they tell you why?"

"He said it's what they do to boys like me, and told me to be grateful, because at his old Community Home, all boys had gotten vasectomies when they turned twelve. He said it's so we idiots don't breed out of control."

"Did he say why only boys?"

Jonathan nodded. He sat hunched over, his shoulders on the same level as his ears. "I asked about the girl, and the doctor explained it's an invasive surgery to sterilize girls, so it takes more resources, and they were already stretched for resources. Plus you can make a girl get an abortion, but if a boy manages to have a baby with a normal girl, nobody will know until the baby turns out stupid and it's too late by then."

"What exactly happened to you when you went for the surgery?"

"The surgeon doing the operation told me she needed to do something for research. When the operation was over, she held up a jar with something inside, laughed, and asked me if I wanted to hold my testicles."

"This was when you were thirteen?"

"Yes."

"What effects did this have on you?"

"After the war, a doctor told me that I would only be able to go through puberty if I took hormones. Which I did." Jonathan scratched his beard. For someone who had only begun puberty last year, he looked like a normal fifteen-year-old boy, and that beard would have been the envy of many a twenty-year-old.

If Rye thought about it, she really shouldn't have been surprised by this. When she had come to the hospital about to give birth to Billie, she had complained about being in pain, only for the nurse to snap that Barrow should have worn a condom if she hadn't wanted to be in pain. An outraged Barrow retorted that this had been a planned pregnancy, and the nurse said that in this case, it was doubly their fault, because they had wanted it, and then kept on muttering about how 'some people' shouldn't have the ability to reproduce, most likely because she had noticed Rye and Barrow's rural accents but not been familiar enough with their regions to realize they were from well-off families.

After Billie's birth, the doctor had firmly suggested that Rye get a tubal ligation, and when Barrow had stepped out to telephone relatives, he had been accosted by a nurse who would have forced him to get a vasectomy if not for his knowledge of the law scaring her off (he ended up getting one once Rye was pregnant with Flora and was sure she didn't want to go through any more pregnancies). If this was how medical staff treated rural young adults with the money to give birth in a hospital, how had they treated people with no means whatsoever who had been placed in their care by the state?

"Thank you, witness. Now, what was an intern situation?"

"They killed themselves all the time," Jonathan explained. "That's what the psychiatrist said. They saw all the death and killed themselves."

Rye then asked him a few questions designed to demonstrate that the reason Jonathan had not even begun puberty at thirteen was because of Community Homes barely feeding their charges, but she could tell this would be far less shocking than the castration.

"No more questions, Your Honours."

Vargas and Beeker had whispered to each other the entire time of the direct examination. Beeker, Cotillion's lawyer, was the one with the ungrateful task of cross-examining a minor.

"You were diagnosed with a cognitive disability at the age of ten," she prompted.

"Yes."

"Because the psychiatrist didn't want to release you back into the community?"

"Yes."

Beeker nodded and looked through some papers. "You attend school, right?"

Rye realized where this was going and hoped Beeker would know better than to bait a fifteen-year-old.

"Yes."

"Regular school?"

"Yes," Jonathan said, unaware of the trap. There was nothing the prosecution could do.

"How do you do in school?"

Jonathan shrugged. "Alright, I guess."

"Are you planning on graduating?"

"I'm gonna finish grade eight and go to trade school."

"What grade are you in right now?"

"Eight. Last one." He was two years behind.

Beeker nodded. "You were held behind?"

"Not really. I started school two years late. My brain also took a while to catch up. Like my hands."

"And how are you in school?"

Jonathan chuckled. "Alright. I don't need straight As or anything, so good enough, I guess."

"I'm looking at your last report card," Beeker said. "You aren't doing well at all. Cs and Ds, for the most part, and you're already taking the easiest versions of classes."

That angered Jonathan. "Aw, come on, you can't just read that to everyone!" he snapped, leaning forward, hands clutching his armrests, every bit the shy teenager who didn't want his struggles to be aired publicly.

"According to your last IQ test-"

"The hell does that have to do with anything?" Jonathan demanded. "Read the damn evaluation, I can cook my own dinner! Low IQ isn't reason to keep me locked up there when I can live with my parents just fine!" He was tripping over his words now. "I live with them right now! And I could have been living with them years ago if that psychiatrist wasn't too scared of what I'd tell everyone!"

"Order," Sanchez said once Jonathan fell silent.

Beeker seemed to realize there was no way to justify the institutionalization of someone who was currently doing just fine outside of an institution. "I am simply suggesting that perhaps your original diagnosis was correct."

"No, it wasn't!"

"Witness, please answer this simple question - what's four times five?"

Jonathan's eyes widened and he looked at the judges with mute desperation on his face as Carver objected. Rye's heart went out to the boy, and she wanted to cry at the expression of relief that appeared when Sanchez struck the question and told him not to answer it.

"Do you believe your diagnosis may have been correct?" Beeker asked, abashed.

"And if it was? Even someone with a low IQ knows they test for life skills when deciding if someone should be able to go home."

Rye couldn't hold back a chuckle. Teenage sarcasm was teenage sarcasm, even in a courtroom.

"Were you capable of being released at the age of ten?"

Jonathan looked ready to explode. "Not yet," he snarled. "But when I was thirteen, I washed independently, dressed independently, worked in the kitchen, even knitted myself a sweater! And I couldn't even pick up a spoon when I was six! I don't get why the PTs worked so hard if you could be held there like in jail for no reason at all!"

"The defense has no further questions."

"Does the prosecution want to re-examine?"

Rye did not want to re-examine.

"Thank you, witness, you are free to go."

Still looking angry, Jonathan wheeled himself out of the courtroom.

A/N: The life expectancy for someone with cystic fibrosis in the USA is in the mid-forties, though that of course will vary wildly depending on the family's resources. There have been people who lived into their eighties with the condition.

The last scene is inspired by a similar scene in the excellent movie 'Judgement at Nuremberg'. By the way, Jonathan can ordinarily do mental maths at that level, but not when he's in such a stressful situation.