The Dual-Baby Vote

Chapter 264: The Dual-Baby Vote Ethan raised his right hand while Martha watched him for the first time that morning. Leah saw the turn of Martha's head, small and precise, as if she were inspecting a witness she had once owned. Ethan did not look away. The Geneva photograph was still fresh in the jury's mind, but a photograph could be argued around. Ethan was there to put a voice inside that room and make Martha's vote audible. Margaret approached with no softness in her pace. "Mr. Hunt, did you attend Fourth Generation Board meetings?" "Yes," Ethan said. "Between two thousand twelve and two thousand eighteen, I attended annual meetings in Geneva. James Hunt Sr., my father, chaired them." "What was discussed?" "Fourth Generation operations. Birth-record alteration. Identity construction. Heir placements. Expansion funding for government infiltration and media acquisition." Mercer shifted at the defense table. Judge Rodriguez watched Margaret closely, still guarding the relevance line. "Did Martha Thorne participate?" Margaret asked. "Yes. She reported Foundation heir placements. She requested additional targets. She voted on expansion authorizations." Margaret placed a typed minute page under the document camera. "I want to take you back to September nineteen ninety-eight. Were you present for a Board meeting in Geneva?" Ethan's fingers moved once against the witness rail. "I was five. My father brought me. He said I was learning Foundation operations. I sat in the corner." "What did you hear?" "A vote. The dual-baby heir project. The Voss family names. My father approving the test as Committee Chair." Ethan drew one slow breath. "Martha Thorne voted yes." The courtroom did not gasp. It did something worse. It absorbed the words with total attention. Leah looked at Martha. The older woman had gone still again, but the stillness was no longer command. It was containment. "Did you understand what was being approved?" Margaret asked. "No. Not then. I remembered names, the room, the vote. I understood years later." "Did your father ever explain it to you?" "In two thousand twelve. He briefed me on Fourth Generation history. He told me the Voss case had been a dual-baby proof-of-concept target. Martha requested the female infant because she needed a Foundation heir to replace the deceased Isabella Thorne. I was the male infant retrieved from the vehicle scene and retained for Hunt Capital placement." Leah felt the old facts hit in a new order. She had known them. She had lived inside their consequences. But Ethan saying them under oath made them stop being a private wound and become a public architecture. Ethan did not ask the jury to pity him. That mattered. He did not describe himself as stolen, used, or broken, though every word on the record allowed it. He kept his eyes on Margaret and gave the court the shape of the machine that had made both of them useful to other people's power. For Leah, that restraint landed harder than any plea. Martha had built a world where children were placed like investments; Ethan was choosing to become a witness instead of a product. Margaret's voice remained low. "Did Martha Thorne authorize both baby thefts?" "Yes." "Did she participate in the Board meeting that approved the Voss family as target?" "Yes." "No further questions." Mercer rose like a man stepping onto familiar ground. "Mr. Hunt, you were five years old in nineteen ninety-eight." "Yes." "You have dissociative amnesia related to the Voss murders in two thousand two." "Yes." "You cannot remember witnessing those murders, but you ask this jury to believe you clearly remember a Board meeting from four years earlier." Ethan's jaw tightened. "The meeting is clear. The murder scene is blocked." "Convenient." "Trauma is not convenient." A juror's pencil stopped. Mercer heard the damage and changed angle. "You are testifying under immunity from conspiracy charges." "Yes." "Without immunity, you could face life imprisonment." "Yes." "You are also testifying against your father, a man currently fighting extradition in Geneva. You understand a jury might see you as a son saving himself by betraying his family." Ethan looked past Mercer to the defense table, then back. "My father chose Fourth Generation over family. I am choosing truth over him." Mercer gave the jury a faint, almost sorrowful nod. "And yet your father never signed a document explicitly authorizing the Voss murders." "No." "Martha Thorne never signed a document using the word murder." "No." "So once again, we have euphemisms, memory, and cooperating witnesses." Margaret stood for redirect before Mercer could make the phrase feel final. "Mr. Hunt, is there documentation of the September nineteen ninety-eight Board meeting?" "Yes. Typed minutes found in Martha Thorne's training materials." Margaret put the page on the screen. "What do those minutes show?" "Five-to-two approval of the dual-baby heir project. Voss family selected as proof-of-concept target. Hunt patriarch voted yes as Committee Chair. Martha Thorne voted yes as Board member." "Do the minutes bear Martha Thorne's approval?" "Her initials appear beside the vote record." "So your testimony is not standing alone." "No. The minutes support it." Margaret touched the edge of the page, careful not to cover the initials. "When you found these minutes in Martha Thorne's training materials, did they match the room you remembered?" "Yes," Ethan said. "The same date. The same attendees. The same vote." "And the same target?" "The Voss family." Margaret let the jury look at the initials before she asked the last question. "Did Martha Thorne participate in approving the operation that took James and Elena Voss's children?" Ethan's voice did not rise. "Yes." Judge Rodriguez recessed for lunch at 12:15. Ethan stepped down from the witness stand looking older than when he had climbed it. Richard met him at the aisle and put a hand on his shoulder. "You did good work today." "I did what was necessary," Ethan said. Leah caught his eye over the copied minutes and the Polaroid. She gave him one nod, not forgiveness, not alliance, but acknowledgment of a cost paid in public. Ethan returned it and turned toward the coalition table. Across the room, Martha sat with her lawyers and did not look at any of them. But Leah saw the change in Mercer's posture as he bent over his notes. The defense had built itself around one missing word. Now the jury had a vote, initials, payments, ledgers, and a son who had chosen the stand over his father. When the court returned after lunch, Mercer would not be defending a gap anymore. He would be defending a system with Martha's name written through it.