Despite Miranda Ellis’s assurances, Kylie had been wary of the French prisoner. In most cases, she withheld her prodigious senses, refraining from spying on people’s emotions. More than concerns about privacy, knowing the true emotions of the people around her had always been a disheartening experience. She did not hold back against the Frenchman, however.
Examining him as she read the packet Miranda had given her to pass along, she sensed the exact moment he resolved to kill her, escaping before he had the chance. As he was category three, he had not anticipated her having the perceptual strength to read his emotions.
She had raised the alarm herself, knowing that she would be punished for her terrible mistake, but Miranda’s preparations had been thorough. The Frenchman was gone by the time security dealt with the impediments Miranda had put in place, although not without killing a few of them on his way out.
Since then, Kylie had been dwelling on the fact that if she’d read Miranda’s emotions, she might not have been taken in so easily. Miranda had apparently known of her aversion, as well as the fear of Asano that had driven her to accept Miranda’s plan so readily.
The door opened. She looked at it curiously, as it was off-schedule for her meals. When she saw the man that stepped through, her blood ran cold. Asano didn't move further into the room, standing just inside the door. Kylie jumped out of her seat, retreating to the opposite side of the room from Asano.
“Can I sit?” he asked with an awkward smile.
“If I say no, will you leave?”
“If that’s what you want,” he said. “I asked to see you after I was briefed on the recent excitement. My sister and my friend are out shopping and I had a little time, but if you don’t want to speak to me, I’ll go.”
He waited, and when she didn’t respond for a long time, he opened the door to leave.
“Wait,” she said hesitantly.
He turned back to look at her.
“You’re sure?”
She nodded and he closed the door again before moving into the room. He turned the seat around so that he could face her if she sat on the bed, moving it away a little to give her space. She didn’t sit on the bed, instead retreating into the corner like a scared animal.
“Have they told you what happened since you turned yourself in?” he asked.
After her experiences with Miranda and the Frenchman, Kylie did not hesitate to explore him with her senses and was startled by what she found. He felt profoundly different from the last time she had seen him. More than just a different person, he felt like a different kind of entity altogether. It was to the point that she suspected him of being an impostor, some kind of bizarre interrogation tactic. It didn’t matter, since she had already told them everything, whether they believed it or not.
Looking closer, she felt something in his aura. It was an aspect of his aura she had noticed before that her instincts told her would be difficult, if not impossible to replicate. It was like an authentication mark on his soul, unchanging even when his soul underwent a grand transfiguration. The man sitting in front of her was Jason Asano, but transformed from the man she had met less than a week earlier.
Once she believed it was him, she started realising the similarities, alongside the differences. His aura was still domineering and resolute, with dangerous and powerful undercurrents. Stronger than ever, it felt like a solid wall in front of her. Even her powerful senses were unable to penetrate it and grasp his emotional state.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
“People had my friend and I had to become something new to get her back.”
She didn't ask if he succeeded. She would never put herself in between that man and whatever it was he wanted and pitied anyone that did.
“Did the Frenchman come after you?” she asked. She still had some desperate hope that Miranda’s plan and her part of it was at least partially authentic and that she wasn’t just a fool and a traitor.
“No,” Jason said. “As best they’ve been able to figure, the person who convinced you to release him never intended to send him after me. That’s what you said the idea was, right?”
She nodded.
“Miranda Ellis and the man she released haven’t been heard from since,” Jason said. “Rather than send the man for a second round with me, she had a bomb placed on the Network plane carrying me to France. I lived, obviously, but eight Network personnel did not. The entire flight crew, most of the security team and one Steering Committee member.”
She flinched.
“I didn’t know,” she said. “They don’t tell me anything in here.”
“Did you know that the Frenchman killed more Network personnel as he escaped?”
“They told me,” she said. “Is that why you’re here? To get revenge by telling me about all the people my mistake got killed.”
“You feel responsible for the people on the plane?”
“If I’d read her aura, I might have known that she was deceiving me.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because people can be vile inside their own heads.”
“Ah,” Jason said. “Your sensitivity must almost be akin to mind-reading, except you feel people's baser instincts instead of their loftier thoughts. You get all our ugly urges without the higher ideals that keep us from savaging each other like animals. Or capitalists.”
“Not yours,” she said. “Your aura was already too strong, too controlled. All I caught was glimpses of your emotions. Now I get nothing but what you let people see. Your aura is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”
“That makes you all the more scared,” Jason realised. They both knew that her emotions were an open book to him.
“Why are you here?” she asked again.
“I’m not sure myself, to be honest. They told me about you, and I felt compelled to see you. Realising how scared you were of me in that dimensional space shook me a little. Not as much as you, obviously. I’m not responsible for your decisions. I am, at least partially, though, the impetus that led you to where you are now.”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“We’re all responsible for our own choices,” he said. “Inevitably, we make bad ones. Sometimes we pay for that and sometimes others pay for us. I’ve been thinking a lot about my own choices lately. The people I’ve killed and the smaller number I’ve let live. Once you’ve done it enough, killing becomes easy, in the moment. Satisfying, even. Vanquishing your enemies can be intoxicating.”
He paused in recollection, Kylie only watching him and not speaking.
“I was on a job, early in my career,” he said. “It wasn’t much more than a year ago, although it feels like forever. There was a man that tried to kill me and I let him live. I was still doing that then. This man went on to be a henchman for a local crime lord and rose up the ranks rather quickly, being an essence user. When the crime lord had me kidnapped later, I don’t know if he was aware of my connection to the man.”
Jason got up and went to the fridge, opening it up and taking a bottle of water.
“Do you mind?” he asked.
She shook her head.