Two Torth supplicants remained in the spotlights, surrounded by soldiers. Kessa studied Mondoyo and Serette. One looked amiable, one looked severely somber. One was as dark as night, the other as pale as sand. One was fat, one bony. They were visual opposites. Neither one looked dangerous.

Yet Thomas had said they were formidable.

The Twins hovered next to each other, so close that Kessa knew they were basking in each other’s thoughts. She recalled what Garrett had said about their identical minds. These two super-geniuses mentally siphoned off each other.

“Move apart, please.” Kessa gestured. “I wish to question each of you, and I don’t want you to coordinate your answers.”

The Twins hesitated. Either they did not trust her, or they were unused to obeying an ummin.

“Serette is unable to speak out loud,” Mondoyo said. “I can serve as her voice, if you will allow it?”

“That will be expedient,” Kessa allowed. It would be easier than having Serette type on a tablet, anyway. Few people could read. “But I will question you without her aid. Move apart.”

She hoped she would not have repeat herself a third time. She should not need to explain that she was in charge here.

The unsmiling girl glided apart from the reluctant boy. He likewise moved his hoverchair. Soon each floated within their own bubble of space. They would not be able to read anyone’s minds.

“Mondoyo.” Kessa focused on the boy Twin. “Tell me, why did you and Serette leave the Torth Empire?”

Mondoyo glanced towards his partner, as if seeking affirmation. He looked more uncertain now that she was beyond telepathy range. “Um, we each have different reasons.”

That was interesting. Kessa had half-expected a breezy and bland answer.

“Tell me your reason, then,” Kessa invited.

“I never wanted to be a Torth.” Mondoyo spoke with plain simplicity. “All my life, I yearned to be someone better. I just needed the right opportunity.”

“All your life?” Kessa was skeptical. She saw Garrett, Ariock, and Evenjos tense up, suspicious. “You wanted to escape even before Thomas invited you to join him?”

“Yes.” Mondoyo spoke with an earnestness that seemed far more human than penitent. “I’ve always had a full range of emotions. I did my best to suppress it, but it was an awful struggle.”

“Nope.” Garrett made a noise of disgust. “I’m calling bull crap.” He turned to Kessa. “This kid passed his Adulthood Exam. That means he literally witnessed slaves being tortured to death, and he did not react. No matter what he says, he is a Torth citizen who attained Blue Rank. He is a master at suppressing his emotions.”

“I cheated on the Adulthood Exam,” Mondoyo said.

“That’s impossible!” Garrett sounded incensed. “You can’t deceive Torth or cheat on that test. He’s got to be lying to us.”

Kessa had heard about the horrific exam directly from Thomas. Eight adult Torth surrounded a teenager—a victim—and forced them to wear a specialized mesh that amplified their own emotions. The testers then collectively imagined visceral scenarios, indistinguishable from reality, designed to elicit slave-like emotional reactions.

Fewer than forty percent of Torth children passed the Adulthood Exam.

Those who failed were sentenced to death. Their bodily organs got harvested for scientific research and medical purposes.

Kessa was highly interested in meeting underaged Torth who had yet to encounter their Adulthood Exam, given the implication that sixty percent of them had a full range of human emotions. Torth children might be easily rehabilitated. They could become human-like citizens of the liberated civilization.

But so far, Ariock’s forces had yet to conquer a baby farm. The Torth Empire always evacuated any baby farms that were on an at-risk planet.

Garrett spoke to the whole crowd. “I met a Torth boy who believed that he was an Athpinari slave in the skin of a Torth. Believe me, he would have loved a way to cheat on his Adulthood Exam. He did have emotions. And he had to run away before they could test him—because he knew he wouldn’t pass.”

That unfortunate boy had gotten caught and tortured to death in the Isolatorium. The point was evident.

“Not even Thomas was able to deceive his testers,” Kessa said, letting the boy Twin know that she was no ignorant slave. She would not be easily fooled.

“Well.” Mondoyo sounded like he was confessing to a shameful crime. “I figured out a way.”

“How?” Kessa asked.

Mondoyo seemed to realize that he needed to prove his extraordinary claim. “Well, first,” he said, “I was able to arrange for my testers to be visually blind.” He indicated his eyes. “I orchestrated special interest groups, so that certain Brown Ranks would be available during my testing. There were two with vision, but I arranged for them to, uh, accidentally ingest a toxin that impaired their vision on the day of my exam.”

Garrett spoke to Kessa, his tone scathing. “Even if he did that, it wouldn’t matter. Torth don’t rely on vision.”

Kessa knew the truth of that from firsthand experience. She took daily lessons with telepathy gas.

“The blind testers would sense if anything was amiss,” Garrett said huffily. “He’s lying. There’s no way he could fool them, or get an imposter to—”

“My partner can pass as me,” Mondoyo cut in. “Her mind is identical to mine.”

Garrett gaped.

Every mind was indelibly unique, Kessa knew. Was it possible that the Twins were that much alike, mentally? It was hard to believe.

“Serette had already passed her Adulthood Exam,” Mondoyo said. “And we both knew she could pass as me.”

“But!” Garrett spluttered. “Wasn’t she on another planet at the time? You two didn’t move in together until years later. You had never even met each other in person!” He gave Mondoyo a hard look. “Jeez, you were only—what?—seven?”

“She lobbied for a right to visit my city,” Mondoyo said. “Since she had recently gotten promoted, her orbiters granted her that right. She persuaded the exam committee that she should physically be in the audience when I was raised to Yellow.”

Garrett gawked as if Mondoyo was a strange new exotic alien.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“I enlisted help from slaves in my baby farm,” Mondoyo went on. “Even though I had never spoken to them before, I knew what would motivate them to help. I knew them well. The trick was to swap me for her, right before the exam began.”

Kessa found herself gawking, too. She had learned how secure baby farm facilities were. They were probably the hardest places to infiltrate in the Torth-ruled galaxy.

“I also had to make sure I was drugged,” Mondoyo added. “I couldn’t let anyone walk by and accidentally sense my mind. So I had to be asleep during the exam.”

Garrett looked flabbergasted. “And then you would need to wake up right afterward, right? So the audience could see you when you got awarded with new optical implants?”

“Yes.” Mondoyo dipped his head in acknowledgement. “It was a logistical nightmare. It took a lot of preplanning.” He nodded towards Serette. “She secretly invented a sleeping potion. It was similar to what Thomas invented when he went renegade. That’s how I stayed asleep, behind the curtain, so to speak. I was in an elevator, and I asked a slave to jam it, so that it wouldn’t return me to the baby farm.”

“And…” Kessa marveled at the Twins’ level of subterfuge. “Serette took your exam for you?”

Mondoyo nodded with pride. “She passed.”

Super-genius minds would be particularly hard to probe, if not impossible. Kessa supposed it was possible for the exam committee to be fooled by an incomprehensible storm of data. Perhaps the Twins were enough alike for that.

“While the testing chamber morphed from night to day,” Mondoyo went on, “a slave woke me up. I hurried out of the elevator to claim my place as a citizen. My partner hurried into the audience, and she used a prearranged excuse to prove that she’d gotten delayed, to explain why she wasn’t waiting with the rest of them earlier.”

If only Thomas were here. He might have been able to verify the story.

Instead, Kessa had to check on Garrett’s reaction. Everyone looked towards Garrett.

“It’s remotely plausible,” Garrett admitted with gruffness.

If the old man was willing to admit the possibility … Kessa studied Mondoyo anew. Perhaps he really was everything she and Thomas hoped for?

“So you faked your way through the Adulthood Exam.” Kessa conceded that Mondoyo might be telling the truth. “And then you pretended to be an adult Torth. But why didn’t you join Thomas as soon as he called for fellow renegades to join him?”

“I wasn’t sure about Thomas, at first,” Mondoyo admitted. “I kept expecting him to get killed.”

Kessa accepted that. She, too, had been unsure about Thomas at first.

“Instead, he survived.” Mondoyo gestured at the urban lights of Freedomland. “And then he thrived.”

Perhaps Thomas had thrived due to a mighty advantage: Ariock. Without the Bringer of Hope, where would the Conqueror be?

A strong female voice rang out across the spaceport. “None of this is an excuse.”

Kessa realized that Evenjos had made a very incisive point. No matter how human Mondoyo was, he had continued to work for the Torth Majority when he should have been on Thomas’s side.

“Normally,” Evenjos said, “I would have sympathy for this child. But I cannot forgive him and his partner. These two children destroyed millions of lives. People are dead or re-enslaved because of the chemical weapons which they invented.”

The girl Twin remained stony-faced. She didn’t seem to care.

The boy Twin, Mondoyo, looked contrite. “I’m sorry.”

As if a mere apology was enough.

Kessa saw opinions shift throughout the troops. Gazes hardened. Gloved hands flexed. Too many people had lost loved ones thanks to telepathy gas, insanity gas, or the gaseous inhibitor. Everyone had a reason to hate these particular military scientists.

Mondoyo seemed to shrink. “Those projects began before Thomas gained regenerative healing. At the time, it wasn’t clear to anyone that you had a chance of winning.”

A poor excuse.

Ariock looked forbidding. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Even if we had quit,” Mondoyo said, “the terrible weapons would still have gotten invented. Our super-genius peers are capable. Telepathy gas was already close to completion when we first received the project notes from the lab of the Upward Governess. We stalled its release for as long as we could.”

Perhaps that was true. The Torth Empire was capable of atrocities, even without help from the Twins or the Upward Governess.

“We couldn’t sabotage our own work too much, or too obviously,” Mondoyo said. “If we were to do so, the Death Architect would have noticed. She would have insinuated it to the Majority, and they would have had us executed.”

Kessa wondered how many Torth did awful deeds solely out of fear of the Majority. Was the Death Architect also a secret renegade?

“So you invented insanity gas.” Ariock’s tone was dark. Clouds covered the banded planet in the sky. “Because you were obedient to the Majority.”

“We did stall its release,” Mondoyo said. “And of course, we secretly laid some groundwork to invent the antidotes.”

Antidotes?

That put a stop to any brewing violence. Ariock, Evenjos, and Garrett all exchanged looks of suppressed hope.

“Are you saying,” Garrett said with slow deliberateness, “that you secretly invented immunity to the inhibitor?”

Amidst the troops, the albinos in black armor stared at Mondoyo just as fervently as Garrett, Evenjos, and Ariock. Immunity could potentially turn the war around. Instead of losing ground, they could get back to conquering Torth cities and winning.

Mondoyo looked uncomfortable at all the attention focused on him. “Uh, we laid the groundwork. We still need to run some experiments.”

Garrett looked like he wanted to squeeze a better answer out of the boy Twin.

“Obviously, we couldn’t even think about immunity.” Mondoyo spoke quickly, as if eager to appease his audience. “Not in public. Otherwise the Torth Majority would pressure us to invent it. But Serette and I did think about it, and we swapped ideas via encrypted messages. We’ve built up a lot of solid hypotheses that ought to be tested.”

Serette nodded.

“We wanted to be able to offer Thomas a gift,” Mondoyo went on, “to prove our goodwill.”

That was a nice gift, Kessa thought.

“We can never make up for the atrocities our inventions have caused.” Mondoyo bowed his head. “I will spend the rest of my life atoning. That’s why I’m here. But I—we—both want to do anything we can, in order to help you defeat the Torth Empire and replace it with something better.”

Ariock beckoned to Garrett and Evenjos. The heroes huddled, with Ariock kneeling. Soldiers stayed a respectful distance away. No one wanted to be caught eavesdropping.

Kessa joined the heroes. After all, she was in charge of penitent Torth.

Ariock spoke in a low voice. “If we accept the Twins, we would have to give them access to Thomas’s lab.”

Kessa nodded.

“They would have access to his research,” Ariock said. “Is that wise? Is there any way we can do that without a huge risk?”

It was a good question. Could the Twins be trusted with military secrets?

“Ugh. Maybe.” Garrett looked frustrated. “I suppose I could keep an eye on them.”

As if Kessa didn’t matter. As if her job was nothing.

Kessa straightened. Someone would need to oversee the Twins, to coach them towards humanity and redemption, but Garrett was the least qualified to do that. His management style had probably driven Thomas away.

“You appointed me to evaluate any Torth who is willing to work towards redemption,” Kessa reminded her friends. “I would like to finish evaluating the Twins. If I deem them safe to work with—” she emphasized the fact that Ariock had interrupted her evaluation—“then I will fully take charge of them.”

Ariock, Garrett, and Evenjos exchanged glances.

Kessa was aware of her lack of intrinsic power. All of her authority had been given to her.

But was earned authority really worse than inherited power? Did it make her inferior? Or just different?

“This is the job that Thomas gave me,” she explained. “And it is a job that I respect.”

“They ought to be handled with care,” Garrett said, as if Kessa was a fool.

“You are all bigger targets than I am.” Kessa met the gazes of the heroes of prophecy, defiant of their power. “Let me buffer you from the danger. I will handle this.”

She might put Varktezo through steps to become one of her lieutenants. Not that she wished to dump a huge burden onto the shoulders of a busy adolescent, but she might need his help.

Garrett opened his mouth. He seemed to search for more arguments.

Kessa did not give him time to find any. “You agreed to let me do this,” she reminded him. “I assume those were not just empty words you threw out, to humor Thomas?”

She had backed Garrett into a corner. Ariock looked impressed. Even Evenjos looked reluctantly admiring.

“All right. Fine.” Garrett made a cigarette appear. He stuck it in his mouth, ashamed. “They’re all yours. But if they get to be too much for you to handle? Call me.”

“I will make them my priority,” Kessa said.

Ariock, Evenjos, and even Garrett looked appeased. They wanted immunity to the inhibitor. They might not embrace the Twins, but they were not going to assassinate them, either.

Mondoyo scanned the crowd, his gaze searching. “I guess Thomas is in trouble. Otherwise he would be here.” He saw everyone’s unease, and added, “Is there anything we can do to help him?”

“I don’t think so.” Kessa stepped in front of the heroes. Average Torth might dismiss her as a figurehead, but she wanted the Twins to understand who she was. She was in charge of penitents and renegades. They needed to see that she was their overseer.

“I’m inclined to trust you,” Kessa admitted. “But I have more questions.”

She shifted her focus from Mondoyo to Serette. Until Kessa could speak to the stoic-faced girl Twin, she would not fully understand this duo. She was curious to learn more.

“I want to hear Serette’s side of the story,” Kessa said. “And I want to hear it in her own words.”