Meanwhile--

Mordred regains consciousness tied to a chair.

He is facing a bookshelf with the most abominable self-help titles: Etiquette In Society, In Business, In Politics, and At Home; The Richest Man in Babylon With Study Guide; The Game of Life And How To Play It. There is a chair askew from the wall but not facing anything. The overall impression is that there are enough items to make this office feel Casual and Lived In, but not enough to make it actually seem like a place anyone actually lives in.

It is kind of difficult to pay attention to the terrible self-help books, because it feels like Mordred's skull has been beaten with a blackjack, because it has.

"Hello!" a man says with a very cheerful voice. "It's lovely to get to meet you."

".......hello."

He is smiling very broadly in a way that gives the impression that he has read somewhere that smiling very broadly makes people like you, which is true.

"Thomas, I am very impressed by your determination in finding out information about our little organization!"

He would like to come up with some very clever, very plausible lie that would convince this person that he has never in his life encountered the concept of a cult and this is all a big misunderstanding.

However, his skull has been beaten with a blackjack.

So instead what he says is "I... okay?"

"Oh, don't be shy! I would love to hear about your point of view about this issue."

What.

".........you are going to have to be more specific what issue you want my point of view on?"

"It has always been my philosophy that anyone who takes the time to disagree with me is interested in the same things I am! Criticism is really someone trying to help you, don't you think?"

what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck

"Um. My criticism is that I think it is bad to kill people and also to beat people's heads in with blackjacks?"

It would be GREAT if he could come up with something more useful to say than that, but, regrettably, he has no idea what's going on and also his head still hurts like hell.

"Thank you!" the man says very sincerely.

"I'm Peter Lukas, by the way, Thomas! Second-in-command of this little organization."

"......con...grat...ulations?"

Okay. Okay, he needs to think, it would be great if his skull weren't still screaming but in fact it is and he still needs to think, Lukas is calling him by the name he gave the hospital so there's a limit to how much they can know and the others are plausibly safe, he doesn't remember what names he told them for Oswald and Araari but he can try to remember that later, and they don't have his real name so they don't know about LA and the names Lukas has for him and Oswald are different from the names Mariam and Inaaya and company have.

Things aren't as bad as they could be! He is still tied to a chair and his skull is still screaming but things are not as bad as they could be.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Lukas," he says instead of any of that. Lukas is almost certainly going to kill him and Mordred isn't sure why he's putting it off but he'd like him to keep putting it off as long as possible.

"I am very interested in hearing about your success here in Malta! It seems like you've gotten a lot accomplished."

What is the absolute minimum amount of information that Thomas Lee could have found out in Malta given what Lukas observably knows.

"...I have found out that Tereza Doe hates being in the hospital and that Lela's treatment isn't working, and have not learned much else. I was going back to learn more but, regrettably, did not manage to."

"Oh, you shouldn't feel bad," Peter says encouragingly. "That's a lot to learn!"

No it's not. "........thanks?"

Agravaine I'm so sorry, I promised I wasn't going to die and I was going to come home and I'm so sorry -- this is not a productive line of thought.

"I think it's important to think about the points on which we agree here. We both think that Lela Donovan should get better!"

"We do indeed both think that."

WAIT SHIT THERE WAS SOMETHING IMPORTANT. "-- also are you aware that Nectar eats your goals and replaces them with endless power-grabbing for its own sake because it's really important I think that people know that and I have not gotten the impression that most people do."

"We agree that Nectar has effects on your brain, Thomas!"

Yeah fair he was not actually expecting that to have any impact it just seemed worth a shot.

He says very sincerely, "Thomas, you make an excellent point and I am going to think it over."

It is ninety years too early for Mordred to reply with "doubt.jpeg" and yet.

Okay, come on, think, he has no idea how he could possibly convince them to keep him alive, what's the absolute worst case scenario -- the absolute worst case is that they know everything and Lukas is using a fake name to fool him into thinking they don't and they're about to kill him and then kill the rest of the team and also his brothers and also Gale and also Inaaya, and if that's true he can do nothing whatsoever about it so it's not worth thinking about and also it seems unlikely, Walker didn't hurt his family. Yet.

Agravaine I'm so sorry, he thinks again, even though it's useless.

"Thomas," Peter says, "don't you think it's important for people to be successful in life?"

".........maybe? Depending on what they want to be successful at?"

"Yes!" he says. "We agree. It is good to be successful in business and terrible to be successful in bank robbery!"