PART ONE
> No one can cross the border into the realm of Torth. Any attempt means death.
- Alashani warning
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Weeks had passed without any sign of the Empire’s monstrous enemies. Rain poured down. The dead city remained black, sticky, and silent.
The Giant is dead, many Torth assured each other.
There is no way he could have survived,
with his chest punctured (a deadly wound),
and his powers deactivated.
Servants of All claimed that they had a reliable way to detect active Yeresunsa. It involved global electromagnetic activity, wind patterns, and some secret mojo which no one dared to quiz the highest ranks about. However, the Servants also claimed that the Torth Homeworld threw off false positive signals. The entire planet strobed with Yeresunsa indicators, so they could not determine whether the Giant was alive or dead.
They were just guessing.
The Upward Governess did not trust guesswork.
What if the Betrayer and the Giant stumbled upon a secret cache of medical supplies, or whatever had sustained Jonathan Stead when he’d hidden in the dead city?
The Betrayer is surely dead, her audience crooned to her.
You are safe on a sunny planet,
probably making yet another error in judgment.
The Upward Governess could not deny that she had made a blunder. Yes, fine. The enemies had escaped her home planet thanks to her own lapse in good judgment about Yellow Thomas, who had become the Betrayer. At the very least, she probably should have installed spy cameras in his suite in order to ward against a potential betrayal.
She had trusted her mentee.
So yes, every calamity that followed was technically her fault. The Megacosm was rife with replays of brave Torth military ranks dying in battle against the Giant.
Those death scenes were finally losing popularity in favor of fresher news stories, such as the upcoming invasion of Earth.
But still.
We are vigilant, her inner audience harmonized.
We have this handled.
Enjoy your frosted fruitcakes.
The Torth Majority figured they had indulged the Upward Governess a little bit too much. Very few Torth owned as much as she did: an indoor lake, a three-story aquarium, a menagerie, a biological museum, as well as hundreds of gardens and immersion holograph decks.
What most of them failed to take into account were tranquility meshes. The Upward Governess never impeded her own processing speed, so she soothed away her problematic (illegal) emotions through unconventional methods. She used environment and food as therapy.
She tapped her data tablet to release a stream of alien brine shrimp into her aquarium. As she watched her bony-plated eels feed, her inner critics seemed a little less relevant.
If the Betrayer was dead, then how had he managed to visit the Upward Governess in the Megacosm for a few fleeting milliseconds? That had occurred days after his disappearance in the dead city.
There was no way she had misidentified his gargantuan mind, with its primitive oddnesses.
He had been imprisoned. She was sure of it. But he wasn’t in the Isolatorium.
So much time had passed since then, one might reasonably assume that he had died. Why else had he quit trying to ascend? Even though the Majority rejected him, he would not have given up. Anyone sane would have kept at it.
But it was best to filter out normal proclivities when trying to assess the Betrayer. She had misjudged him before.
Another super-genius rolled into the Upward Governess’s audience. Even if the Betrayer lives, so what? He must have run out of medicine. He is surely dying by now.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The Death Architect was a dying child, too, of course. She wore her curly hair in pigtails tied with ribbons. Smart Torth filtered out that detail, as well as her frail, underdeveloped body and young age. In the ecosystem of minds, the Death Architect was a ripe super-genius. She was more than eleven years old (in human years), which, given her memory and processing speed, made her a whale in comparison to the small fish and plankton that comprised nearly everyone else.
The Upward Governess thought of her young competitor as more of a shark. A megalodon, of unknown size and strength. Like any bottom feeder, the Death Architect preferred the murky depths of esoteric scientific discussions, except when she was spying on her fellow super-geniuses.
I calculate less than a 0.0000001% chance that the Betrayer will ever pose a threat to Torth, the Death Architect thought, utterly devoid of emotion.
The Upward Governess disagreed. I estimate a 77.45% likelihood that the Betrayer is still dangerous, even taking a margin of error into account. Her estimate ought to alarm any self-respecting Torth. If the Betrayer found a way to survive in the dead city, that implies that the Giant found a way to recover from his wounds. If both of those outlaws work together …? The dangers seemed painfully obvious, to her. Then a lot of innocent Torth will die.
If only she could explore the dead city in person. If she were able-bodied, she would travel to the Torth Homeworld, and she would probably find clues that everyone else in the universe had missed.
Pathetic, her inner audience thought.
Perhaps they were right.
But what else did the Upward Governess have to live for? The Betrayer had stolen the last dregs of NAI-12 medicine. He might as well have triggered a blaster glove at her heart and exploded her chest.
She just wanted to live long enough to crush his future and destroy everything he had ever valued.
Hm. The Death Architect was capable of sending the Majority into a froth, but she never made waves. She was always agreeable. I suppose the Betrayer might still live, she conceded. But it is unlikely, and in any case, he is beyond Our ken, at least for the time being. Let Us (the Torth Empire) use Our collective resources wisely.
She directed her own massive audience to the upcoming conquest of Earth. A fleet of warships approached the backwater solar system of humankind. The ships were cloaked, and agents on Earth had made sure they would avoid detection by the primitive natives.
We should have colonized Earth a long time ago, the Death Architect thought. The natives will likely wreck the biodiversity of their own homeworld, if they are left unchecked for just a few more generations.
Billions of Torth chorused in agreement. Many disparaged the flimsy age-old arguments about keeping Earth in pristine condition.
Various high ranks chimed in, trying to claim scientific fiefdoms for Earth’s colonization. A top Indigo Blue biologist wanted to study monotremes. A top geologist wanted to hike through the Tsingy needle rocks of Madagascar.
Humans ought to be shipped off to other worlds and bred as slave stock, the Death Architect proposed.
That was met with less enthusiasm. A minority of Torth did want to own and collar their inferior genetic cousins. But most Torth still felt uneasy about putting human slaves in situations where they might befriend other sapients—or where sexually deviant Torth might be tempted to exploit their inferior cousins.
There were risks.
Nobody wanted to deal with Torth hybrid babies.
The Upward Governess hardly cared about the debate on human slaves. She wove in and out of the minds of Red Ranks on the Torth Homeworld, scanning the dark vista of the dead city. Many ambitious military ranks elected to get enhanced night vision surgery. They patrolled the perimeter wall. They peered into the ever-present black downpour.
Nothing moved out there.
You (Upward Governess) are very paranoid, the Death Architect thought with lazy certitude. Even if the Betrayer does show up, even if he becomes a nuisance once more, his love for primitive slave species can easily be exploited. I have done experiments.
She replayed some of her more gruesome experiments. Slaves would mutilate themselves, or others, for the sake of a beloved parent or child.
Bring Me his defenseless foster family, the Death Architect requested from her orbiters. I will make a torture chamber perfectly designed to destroy the Betrayer.
Military ranks thrummed with approval. They liked everything the Death Architect imagined.
The Upward Governess wiggled her fingers at a nearby slave, demanding snacks. She needed something to soothe away her mysterious feelings of disquiet and unease. She focused extra hard on the motions of the bony-plated eels and glow-fish in her aquarium.
Perhaps the Death Architect was right?
Perhaps the Betrayer was already defeated or easily defeated?
The Upward Governess was uncertain that anyone could predict the actions of the boy formerly known as Thomas. She used to be certain that he wanted a long life. She had trusted him to team up with her and do whatever it took to thrive.
How had he misled her?
Whenever she drifted off to sleep, she reexamined her unwise faith in her former mentee. Every time she awoke in her massive bed, a momentary panic seized her, until she became fully conscious and aware that the Betrayer was not currently stealing from her.
Her hair was falling out, she wheezed on every breath, and she had a long list of ailments related to obesity and lifelong muscular atrophy.
That galled her.
It should gall everyone. She was the eldest living super-genius. She was so old, in fact, she had actually menstruated for the first time, a few days ago, like a common slave or an animal. She had delayed the onset of puberty with hormone therapy, but that could not last. Now puberty was just another ailment she had to endure.
If she could live just a few more weeks, she would become the eldest super-genius in Torth history.
Yet no one valued that incredible achievement! No one cared about the wealth of knowledge she had amassed over fourteen—nearly fifteen—years. The plasmic polymers she had invented, and her parking structure designs, were going to be her legacy.
It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
The Upward Governess was certain of one thing: She had to stop the Betrayer before he could do anything that worsened her reputation.
She was not going to let him catch her asleep. Not ever again.