“You’re talking about brainwashing, uh, five to eight percent?” Garrett paused, his mouth working silently as he did calculations. “Of all death cultists?”

“Of all Torth,” Thomas corrected. “Including penitents on our side. There will be death cultists and other problems buried in our population. We should make this one single mass conversion event.”

Kessa’s eyes widened. She looked like she was doing mental recalculations.

“That’s a lot of targets,” Garrett said.

“More than two trillion,” Kessa said.

Thomas nodded. He had already calculated a target quantity of 2.4e+12.

“And they will gently, uh, brainwash their comrades?” Evenjos seemed troubled.

Thomas nodded again.

“It won’t be a panacea,” Garrett said. “Some would drop out of the Necrocosm.”

“Right,” Thomas admitted. “There will be rogues who are isolated and not near any vector where our penitent brainwashers can get to them. But this should convert almost all of the holdout Torth to our side. It will rob the Death Architect of her supporters.”

“I like it.” Garrett made a cigar appear.

“We should be against robbing people of their free will,” Cherise said.

A guilty blush crept up Thomas’s face. He had invited Cherise to this secret meeting because he wanted to gauge her reaction. She had a better moral compass than his own. Now he wondered if he was suggesting an atrocity without even being cognizant of what it was.

“But,” Cherise said, “this isn’t that.”

She pulled a dog-eared origami lion out of her pocket and placed it on the table.

Thomas recognized it. He had folded that little gift for her on another planet, more than a million lifetimes ago.

“You said it’s a temporary effect.” Cherise gave Thomas a look of respect. “It’s no different than using any a weapon during war. They’ll still be themselves. They’ll be our prisoners, with the same chance to work toward redemption that any penitent has. It’s a kinder fate than most of them deserve.”

Thomas felt lighter.

“These aren’t the Torth who passively sat around until their empire fell apart,” Cherise said. “These are the ones who actively go around murdering innocent people. They’re terrorizing former slaves. So I think it’s fair to temporarily brainwash them to get them to stop.”

“I do not know if they are all guilty in the same way,” Kessa said. “But yes. The Torth who worship the Death Architect are convinced of their righteousness. We have to defend ourselves.”

Thomas was relieved that both Cherise and Kessa were in agreement. He was taking the right course of action.

“Have you already identified which of our penitents have the power to twist minds?” Kessa asked politely.

Thomas was grateful that Kessa had the gumption to ask such a hard, dangerous question. “Most of them, yes. I won’t share that knowledge until the last minute.” He gestured around the War Room. “We don’t want to give any potential enemy mind readers a chance to think and scheme. I would spring the idea on them only when we’re ready to enact it. I can quickly train them in the first-time use of their power. By my calculations, more than ninety percent of them are likely to join us and willingly brainwash their problematic brethren.”

He did not have to explain about the other ten percent. Kessa’s lieutenants did their best, but the Torth had lost a whole lot of material wealth and power on a collective level, and on individual levels. Loss was hard to cope with. There were always penitents who regretted kneeling, or who felt as if they had been pressured into obeying the inferior species.

“Ideally,” Thomas went on, “we’ll enlist them without telling them why they were chosen. Then we’ll drop them into enemy territory. In those territories, we’ll arrange to have telepathy gas pre-released, unbeknownst to them.”

Garrett gasped as he realized what Thomas was angling towards.

“That way,” Thomas went on, “when they brainwash enemy Torth into joining us, the brainwashing message gets reflected on them, as well. That should prevent any of the brainwashers from going rogue.” The last thing he wanted to have to do was hunt down criminals who could twist minds.

“That’s actually brilliant,” Garrett admitted, his tone begrudging. “So the message only affects Torth who need to be converted, whether they’re on our side or not.”

“Exactly,” Thomas said.

“But this plan completely hinges on your raw strength.” Garrett gave him a speculative look. “Even if our penitents handle most of the targets, I assume you’ll need to take on some ungodly number by yourself. You’re the only one who can identify the brainwashers.”

Thomas nodded. “I’ll take on a million or so. And this will all need to happen in a very short window of time. Like, within a minute. The Death Architect will figure out what’s happening. For all we know, she’s foreseen it. We need to convert the Torth masses as quickly as possible, before a major warning gets going in the Necrocosm.”

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“So you’re going to need a substantial power boost.” Garrett chomped on his cigar. “And a lot of mass-teleportation.”

“Yes.” There was no way around that. “I’ll need help from Ariock. And you. And Evenjos. We’ll have to enlist the Yeresunsa warriors to help boost the power of our brainwashers, but my own sphere of influence will need a lot of, uh, augmentation.”

Evenjos looked disturbed. Her gaze darted to Garrett. “This is something we should discuss.”

“I would ask that all of you link with me,” Thomas said. “You, Garrett, and Ariock.”

This was the prophecy which Ah Jun or her disciples had purposely sabotaged, Thomas was pretty sure. The painting’s message remained, stretching across eons from Ah Jun to Thomas. He was fated to do something pivotal. He had to carry it out, or else the Death Architect would win.

“Do you really need that much power?” Evenjos’s tone was more serious than Thomas had ever heard it.

“Of course he does.” Garrett smoked his cigar. “He’s planning to rapid-fire brainwash a million Torth before the Death Architect has a chance to assassinate them. The boy has stamina, but not like that. We cannot risk him running out of power in the middle of it.”

Thomas nodded. Even with the raw power of Ariock, he wasn’t entirely sure that he could reach across the galaxy and invade so many minds, and lightly crawl across them, leaving fresh tracks and changes. He had never attempted anything like it before. He had experimented with directing swarms of alien bugs, but only on a much smaller scale. Bugs had much simpler minds.

He might fail.

But he had to try. He wanted to rob the Death Architect of all of her resources and assets.

Garrett snorted a dry laugh. “I think now we know why the secret cabal of Servants of All wanted to use you. This explains it.”

Thomas had figured that out more than a year ago. The secret cabal had wanted their own weaponized version of Audavian.

“But they had brainwashers among them all along,” Evenjos argued. “They could have used them instead of you.”

“They had no clue,” Thomas explained. His own biological father had possessed Audavian’s power, but instead of using it for the betterment of all Servants of All, he had kept it secret. He had hoarded it for his own private use.

In contrast, Thomas’s brainwashing power had been common knowledge right from the start. The Upward Governess had dug out his worst experiences in foster care and showed them to the whole Torth Majority.

“Ah,” Evenjos said. “I suppose secrecy around that power makes sense. Audavian was pulled down by his own constituents once they realized he was brainwashing allies as well as enemies.”

“I think the ones who are self-aware will feel some relief, having it out in the open,” Thomas said. “It’s a lot of pressure, to sneak around in an empire full of mind readers.”

“Did the secret cabal of Servants expect that you would change the minds of all 38.2 trillion Torth?” Kessa studied Thomas.

“They expected it politically,” Thomas said. “I’m sure they would have urged me to use my power judiciously, on select individuals who were major social influencers.”

“The Torth don’t know about linking,” Garrett put in. “They couldn’t have boosted his power to the level needed to brainwash the entire Megacosm.”

Thomas nodded, although he didn’t like Garrett’s wording. “I’m not sure we should call this ‘brainwashing.’ It’s lighter than that. It wears off. I would call it suggesting.”

Kessa stood, as if she was as inspired and restless as Garrett. “The timing of this will be crucial. How are we going to pack death cultists into the Necrocosm? We need them to be paying attention at the exact moment you strike.”

“I have ideas,” Thomas said. “We could target one of their hotshot champions, to create a sensation. Or we could pretend that we’re about to spill a major secret.”

“A lie?” Garrett said hopefully. “Like, maybe you tell them that you’re about to teach the secret of how to brainwash.”

“And then brainwash them into never using that power,” Evenjos said. “Force them to all forget that it even exists.”

“Or,” Cherise said, “you could reveal which Torth are the brainwashers, which will provoke enough suspicion to push them into a frenzy. While they’re freaking out, getting ready to shoot the brainwashers, we have smugglers set off telepathy gas. That way, their emotional state trips up the whole empire. That would send the Necrocosm into a panic, wouldn’t it?”

Thomas nodded. “That would do it.”

“And the brainwashers get their own power reflected back on them,” Kessa said, “if they are in a telepathy gas zone.”

Garrett grinned. He seemed completely on board and excited. “The only ones who escape will be those who are isolated and asleep at the time. It will be the barest fraction of a fraction.”

Thomas could not suppress a twinge of sorrow. He nodded, pretending that he wanted nothing more than to wipe out the last vestiges of his mother’s and his father’s universe.

He did want to end Torth tyranny.

But he would miss the Megacosm, now and forever. He would even miss the Necrocosm. That loss was a price Garrett seemed able to shrug off. Everyone seemed okay with it. Everyone except Thomas.

“Does the Death Architect know your plan?” Kessa asked, her tone somber. “How much of the future does she foresee?”

“All I can do is guess,” Thomas said. “But I don’t think she’s an oracle. That’s a fifth magnitude power, and it’s extremely rare. I doubt she sees a comprehensive tree of possibilities. It’s a little more likely that she can see her own future.”

If only he could peer into the Death Architect’s labyrinthian mind. What misapprehensions and wrong assumptions was she operating under? Was there any way to change her mind, even without gaining access to her personal core?

Everybody made wrong assumptions. Super-geniuses were no exception. Sure, super-geniuses were more cognizant of epistemological pitfalls, since they were able to compare and contrast so many lifetimes of absorbed knowledge, but the Death Architect must have a few critical flaws in her reasoning. Those flaws had led her to want to destroy the universe.

Thomas just didn’t know her well enough to be certain of what she misapprehended.

“She makes her own luck,” Thomas said. “But even if she’s close to being omniscient, she has limits. I don’t believe she knows my plans. She only knows what steps her dreams and instincts tell her to take in order to make her goal happen.”

“Great,” Garrett muttered with sarcasm.

“It’s an edge we have,” Thomas said.

“What do we do, in order to prepare for this?” Evenjos asked.

There were plenty of things to do. They needed to secretly enlist the penitents on Thomas’s mental list. They needed Yeresunsa who were willing to link with those penitents, to boost their raw strength. Their military armadas needed to be prepared to take advantage of a sudden collapse of the Torth Necrocosm. And—

“We need Ariock,” Garrett said.

That was undeniable.

“You know where he is?” Garrett’s gaze drilled into Thomas. “Right?”

Thomas slumped. He felt like a traitor. Ariock and Vy hadn’t been gone for long. Just three days. When Thomas had fled to Earth, he had spent more than a month alone in various human places, picking trash in Dhaka and hiking around Mongolia.

Then again, he wouldn’t have returned to the war without persuasion.

“Ariock is still wearing his superluminal tracker,” Thomas admitted. “Like all of us.”

Garrett stood. “He might remove it.”

“Let’s give him one more day,” Thomas said.