I had left my clothing outside of the airlock, since getting it soaked would not have done any good. Aquantis smiled slightly as she watched me getting undressed, and I shrugged, “My merman form doesn’t have legs. I still have to pick up a waterproof bag for my gear, one that is strong enough to handle going at speed underwater.”

She nodded, “I had to get something specially designed for keeping my stuff dry. But, you know, you could keep your belt and tie your boxers to it, in case you need to leave the water and don’t want to cause a scene.”

I grinned and took her advice. I was just intending to take a swim around the ship, spend some quality time with Mariah, and then return, but her idea had a lot of merits.

While the airlock was half filled with liquid, I went ahead and shifted, putting my face down into the salt water and inhaling. As before, it was incredibly unpleasant for a moment before my freedom kicked in, and I was a little worried that the true form would interfere with my shift, but fortunately, my worries were unfounded.

The pressure kept increasing, but my freedom handled it fine. Once the airlock doors opened, Mariah shifted into her mermaid form, which was exactly what I had hoped it would be. Her tail was much longer than her legs, but, like mine, it was dolphin rather than fishlike.

After a few moments to get used to it, We started swimming around the fortress, examining it more closely. It was streamlined, although not excessively so. It was about 800 feet long, 400 feet wide, and about 400 feet tall at its tallest point, almost like a long egg cut in half lengthwise, with the top half a transparent smaller dome displaying a small building and some greenery.

It was likely limited to around 20 knots underwater, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it could do 60 knots on the surface or twice that while flying. Along the edges were a series of eight egg-shaped pods, each around 100 feet in diameter, which I assumed were the propulsion systems.

On the whole, the thing looked like a giant dirigible cut in half, lengthwise. The top half had telescoping shields that would cover the greenhouse, but they were currently dropped, and while swimming over it we could see down into a small, empty town with surprisingly delicate, artistic-looking buildings that rose nearly 12 floors at the tallest point. Inside the greenhouse, the glass top was supported by giant columns or buildings.

Aquantis showed me how to speak underwater, and I learned that my aura allowed me to move much faster with my internal jets than I had expected, as well as to modulate sound waves. We had a great deal of fun experimenting with the forms, although I have to admit I preferred to make love to girls on dry land since it offered a bit more variety and the pheromones didn’t carry well underwater. We didn’t have as much time to mess around as I would like, as the exploration itself took nearly an hour, and after almost two hours we stepped back in through the same lock.

I will pretend that I didn’t take advantage of her in the lock, but that would be lying, and she was more than happy to wait a little while after the atmosphere stabilized for me to dry and return to my human form.

After a few moments, Camilla reappeared, “Excuse me sir, but Sif would like to request access to the Combat Information Center. As this is considered a high-security area and allows access to systems that could cause a great deal of damage, I informed her I would need to ask permission of the platform owner first.”

I nodded to her, “Go ahead, but we need to find showers to wash off the salt and then head up to the CIC ourselves. I am going to need to talk to Sif about getting this place working, at least as a decent hidden base. I doubt very much we will ever be able to get it crewed, but I want to definitely get a rundown on its capabilities.”

Camilla nodded, “This is the fourth of 8 battle platforms commissioned by Proteus for fighting against the waves from Siberia. To the best of my data, only two were built. Platform 1 was designed as a pure battle and biological research platform, as a team center for the Prometheans, and was built to be space-worthy. It is currently in an unknown orbit. After receiving the platform, Proteus defaulted on it’s commission, and platforms 2 and 3 are currently unfinished in an undisclosed location.”

I was startled as she pointed out where we could get showers in the berthing. Both Aquantis and I quickly cleaned off the salt, and I asked Camilla to return when we were finished. “So wait, I thought Cadmium was a supervillain?” I asked her.

Mariah nodded, “Me too. He was declared a registered global offender about four years ago, after a very obvious strike in Siberia during an invasion that took out two Prometheans, Silverlight and Gargoyle. I thought at the time I had a chance of becoming a Promethean, and did a report for my senior project in Metahistory. Apparently, against orders, he did a coherent light attack on one of the Kaiju that took out two Prometheans, a class D villain named Tempura, and forced three fighters to eject.”

“Is that when they stopped allowing air equipment assaults on the waves?” I asked her curiously, washing her back.

She nodded, curling back against me, “Yep. They ordered him to surrender and he refused, or at least no one ever heard about him again. He was never a hero or a member of Prometheans since he’s a genius meta. His Category is B because of his inventions, but without his gear, he’s basically a class E at best. I know he’s been providing metatech arms and armor to whoever can pay ever since, but I had no idea he’s the one that built Stronghold.”

She leaned back a little, “Scratch right there.” She said as my fingers drifted over part of her back. “That’s why I don’t like salt water as much. It’s bigger and deeper and more interesting, but when you dry out you have to sluice it off or it itches like crazy.” She smiled a little, “But I actually had to re-write the report, since I called into question why they still used stronghold if it was built by a supervillain. The Prometheans website said it was declared free of monitoring, but it still seemed sort of risky to depend on something that’s basically designed and built by a supervillain who could have put in all sorts of backdoors.”

I nodded, and we slipped out of the shower to start drying off. I called back Camilla because I didn’t really care if an AI saw me without clothes, and Aquantis was pleasantly affected. “Camilla, is platform 1 still in use?”

Camilla nodded, “Yes, it’s currently registered under the name of Stronghold. Its location is protected, but it is still actively in use.”

“Is it as large as this one?” I asked.

Camilla nodded, “It is approximately 60% larger, and was designed for researching meta abilities. It has room for 2000 crewmen, guards, and officers, and almost 3000 prisoners of meta class C or lower, with metahuman ability neutralization fields. It currently serves as both a maximum security prison as well as the primary facility for the Promethean teams, although protector teams have their own facilities.”

I was getting very suspicious as I donned my uniform. “Camilla, did Cadmium use coherent light weaponry?”

“Negative.” She responded. “Thermal weaponry such as plasma, lasers, coherent light arrays, and microwave-based weaponry were determined to be largely ineffective against both chaos spawn and many metahumans who were thermally resistant. On average, over half of the Chaos spawn waves would require applications that exceeded the energy output of a solar flare to be effective, which would be devastating to earth’s ecosystem and ability to sustain life, as well as nearly impossible to power.”

“Cadmium chose to specialize in kinetic, shaped-charge, and electromagnetic weaponry. While this is often partially resisted, especially by metahumans, scaling to prevent lethality was much more efficient, and enough kinetic energy in a small enough area will penetrate almost any defenses. It also required vastly less resource expenditure to fire a rail gun or particle projection cannon, and kinetic dampeners would stop both standard kinetic weapons as well as molecular agitation, or thermal weapons.”

I nodded slowly, “Did Cadmium use guided projectiles?”

She shook her head, “No. Guided projectiles were unable to respond with the speed of a particle projection cannon or guided electromagnetic weapon. We possessed bombs, primarily for penetrating submerged defenses, and Kaiju that specialized in tunneling, but missiles were considered incredibly wasteful and slow when a focused particle projector could accomplish the same thing for a surface target without wasting an expensive electronic guidance package.”

“So Cadmium doesn’t use missiles or self-guided munitions?”

She shook her head, “The design workshop doesn’t use them, and neither platform has them installed. I do not know about the Maker’s armor, but it seems unlikely, guidance packages are bulky. Electrical length only goes so far, and terminally guided munitions are nearly useless below a certain size no matter how small the package. Wire guidance is marginally more efficient, but has a very low maximum range and speed.

I sighed. It was never simple.

When we got to the CIC, I was surprised to see that Sif seemed fascinated with the weapons controls and detection systems. She looked up as we entered, and said, “Hey Louis, There are no munitions onboard, but if we can get some into play, this place should be more than capable of defending itself.”

I nodded and smiled at her a little, “I thought you were into the old-school combat thing. Swords and bows.”

She nodded, “I sort of am, but I am a scion, not a relic. Modern defense systems definitely have their place. I have been speaking with Camilla, and it looks like there was no chance that the missile that hit Defender HQ in Chicago came from here. The only deployable tracking systems they have are for drones, as well as a sealed system for ballistic missile deployment.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I sort of figured that out. Ballistic missile deployment?”

Sif nodded, “Yes, there’s an actual sealed ballistic missile deployment system installed. It’s still locked with presidential codes, which is kind of odd, and it looks like it could be installed into the tracking systems, but isn’t currently. Even the packaging is original, and it would be useless without some seriously high-level hacking or decoding tech or a cyberkinetic.”

“Camilla, are there ballistic missiles installed on board?”

She reappeared and shook her head, “No, the tracking system was delivered via Department of defense courier. There was supposed to be a high-yield metatech ballistic missile package installed as well for national defense, but I am afraid Cadmium’s life ended before the platform could receive the devices.”

I was shocked, “Wait, you mean that the government was going to officially install high-yield devices on this platform? What sort of payload are we talking about?”

She nodded, “Most of the information is security sealed, but the platform was supposed to receive an official United States military nuclear deterrent watch group from the Air Force approximately two months ago. Installation facilities for the launch systems have already been built, although the actual launchers and guidance hardware was supposed to be installed by technicians. The payload would be a meta-equivalent package of approximately 8 megatons”

Sif looked confused, “So wait, Cadmium was declared an international terrorist by Proteus, and yet the US government was working with him to install Trident V ballistic missile launchers with a range of up to 6000 miles and low orbital capabilities?”

I nodded, “Which means if they were installed, Stronghold would be within range of the ballistic missiles. Weapons inspection teams from Proteus would never find a platform, the guidance systems are completely locked by the pentagon to presidential deployment codes, and the yield is the equivalent of a high-yield proscribed nuclear device?”

Camilla nodded, “Yes. Such a payload would be capable of vaporizing a small city, island, carrier group, or orbital facility such as Stronghold.”

I scratched my head and flopped into one of the chairs, “Okay, this is getting weird. Cadmium was some sort of operative for the US government, was declared an international terrorist by Proteus, and as a class B meta, he should have had a lifespan upwards of 300 years, and yet apparently he died of some sort of undiagnosed heart failure at 85 years old.”

I looked at Camilla, “Can you tell me. Did Cadmium’s armor have any life support functions, such as if someone had a heart attack while wearing it?”

Camilla nodded, “Yes, Cadmium was instrumental in the creation of numerous medical implants. If someone had a medical emergency while wearing the suit, it was capable of administering epinephrine, Adrenalin, Atropine, and electrical stimulation. If a heart did not restart with standard medical procedures, the suit itself would be capable of intercepting and maintaining blood flow for some time until medical assistance and a donor heart or artificial replacement could be installed.”

“Did any of those medical procedures trigger?” I asked the AI

She shook her head, “No. I have not autopsied the bodies, since that generally requires qualified medical observers, but the suit did not detect any medical emergencies, and it’s medical supplies and autoinjector systems were not triggered except for the atropine, which administered 6 doses.”

“He was exposed to nerve gas?” I asked her.

She shook hear head, “No, there are no traces of any nerve agents in the control room. Based on the suit’s records, it is likely that cardiac arrest occurred due to atropine overdose. At no time did the suit’s cardiac protection system engage.”

“So we are assuming, then, that it is likely that his suit killed him?” I asked.

Camilla nodded, “All clues indicate that until an autopsy can be performed. At this stage of decomposition, however, an autopsy might not provide any useful information.”

“So either his suit malfunctioned, or someone sabotaged it?” I asked curiously.

Camilla bowed slightly, “Considering the failsafes that Cadmium regularly engaged, sabotage or Cyberkinetic control or material control appear to be the most likely contributing factors to his life failure. Cyberkinesis would require a much more powerful cyberkinetic, and sabotage would be incredibly difficult for a cyberkinetic like Cadmium to fail to notice.”

I nodded slowly. “So basically, we are talking at least a Class A cyberkinetic or a class B material controller who could shut down his suit and force it to kill him, or a gadgeteer that was much better than he was.”

Sif shook her head, “There is another option.”

I raised an eyebrow, “Please do tell.”

She shrugged, “If we are willing to look outside of the standard Metahuman types, there are a number of supernaturals that could have done it with far less power. Illusionists could have convinced him to sabotage his own suit, mesmers or other mind controllers could have forced him to kill himself, and even a fortune or fate controller like Windfall, not that I suspect her, could have hit him with a bad luck curse powerful enough to force a malfunction that would kill him.”

I looked at Sif in alarm, “I thought mental powers were impossible?”

Sif looked at me steadily, “Proteus has stated that. Of course, that means it must be true.”

I sighed. Dammit.

Okay, it turns out that many supernaturals that are NOT metahumans possess abilities that could be firmly placed in the ‘mental powers’ category. Also, the assumption that metas could not have mental powers were specifically directed by Proteus. As a Scion, Sif was more than familiar with a few abilities that clearly qualified as psychic or mental in nature.

“For instance,” She stated, “How do you think Windfall calculates fortune, or even how her ability to manipulate fortune even works?”

I was scanning through the sonar readings, as the entire vessel traveled at about 12 knots underwater towards where Kjootoo’s Yacht was currently located. “I assume she just caluclated based on available information, but I am guessing you are going to tell me it’s a lot more than that?”

Sif nodded, “Much more. She gets information as a solid force. There’s no way a simple brain could hold all the information off of which she makes her judgments. She treats information as a solid stream of energy that she divvies up to determine odds, instinctively. That includes mental impressions, and some information sheerly from the environment itself. More importantly, look at your brother, Paul.”

I glared at her suspiciously, “What do you mean, look at Paul?”

“He is a chooser. He can see into the future. If that does not qualify as a psychic ability, nothing would.”

“What the fuck would I want to look at that traitor for? If he sees the future, if that’s his power, then I will never see him again, because he knows if I see him again I will fucking kill him.”

Sif coughed, and stood up. “Camilla, Please return this vessel to the surface. I wish to leave. Now.”

Camilla appeared, and glanced at me, and I nodded to her, “Do it.” I was pissed, and I had no idea what the hell had set Sif off. “What has you so angry?”

“He is a chooser. He has been through misery you cannot dream of. He is not one of the Valkyr, and is not protected from the curse. He is forced to live daily in hell simply because he was born male, and you are saying you would destroy him if you could see him? I thought you were honorable, but not only do you disrespect a chooser, but you would slay your own kin because of an inconvenience.” She reached around and took the sword section of her spear in hand. “I refuse to be around someone who is such scum.”

I looked at her in rage and confusion, “What the fuck do you mean? He put me through three years of hell. I don’t even know what a chooser is, let alone why I should forgive him for it.”

Camilla stated, “We have reached surface level.” Sif started walking through the exit. “Your hell pales in comparison to his. He is stuck here, in the mortal realm. Every day he lives through what you went through, in his mind, only you… where you experienced each day, he might have lived through a thousand years of repeated tortures.”

I followed her through the exit, “I literally have no idea what the hell you are talking about. Why are you so angry with me?”

She stopped in the hallway, “Didn’t you see it when you analyzed him? Are you really so stupid that you don’t even realize what he has to go through every day?”

I shook my head and barked, “I never fucking analyzed him! He was gone before I even knew I could, and the one time he came back it was to rip me off, and then rob me and sell me out to the cartels! I never even had the chance, and if I had gotten close enough after what he did I could have broken his arm!”

She glared at me again, leaning against the wall. “I do not like the role of peacemaker. It is not natural. I am a warrior, of a line of warriors, but if you are truly ignorant I found myself forced to teach you about honor. What did he do? What did he say last time you spoke with him?”

I sighed, starting to feel like I was the asshole. After what he did, selling me out to the cartels and ripping me off twice, how could I feel like the asshole here? “Last time I saw him we didn’t talk. He came because somehow he knew I had 5 grand from my fight with Callie. I gave it to him because he begged and made me feel guilty, even though I knew he was going to blow it on drugs.”

She shook her head, “Did he try to talk to you?”

I nodded my head, “I told him if he said a word I would break his arm, and his kneecap.”

She started walking up the hallway again. “It’s a good thing we are on the surface then. I think I am going to have to beat the stupid out of you.”

I shook my head as she undogged the door to expose the large flat section with marks leading to a hangar, where I suppose the shuttles Camilla had mentioned were stored. “Some clue as to where I was being stupid would be appreciated. Remember my information. I though I was a metahuman, and metahuman awakenings don’t seem to follow family lines, except for type.”

She nodded, “I don’t want to kill you, so I won’t use my spear if you don’t use your wings.”

I nodded and took two steps away from her. I wished I had my pads, but hopefully we were both tough enough that some fighting contact wouldn’t hurt either of us. “Sounds like a plan, although I could argue that I am losing some defense that way.”

She shrugged, “So we fight until you admit you are an idiot.”

I laughed, “Oh that will be a short fight then. I admit I am an idiot, I do idiotic things all the time. I just want to know why you think I should not kick Paul’s ass.”

“You say he betrayed you.” she said, peeling off her bag and setting it next to the hangar doors. “What did he do to betray you?”

I set down my own gear next to hers and got into a ready stance. “Well, first off, he abandoned the family when I turned 16. We didn’t see hide nor hair until I was almost 22, after mom and Bobby died. He stole the house right out from under me when I was in the hospital, which was where I was living at the time, leaving me in the street.”

She nodded, “You were in the Hospital? How much did that cost?”

I shrugged, “No idea. I got a crap settlement from Proteus, but I guess they paid the bills. But I didn’t have any place to live. I was just lucky that the Home Workshop let me come back before my money ran out.”

She nodded, “How long were you in the hospital? How badly were you injured?” She bowed slightly and started feinting in my direction. I let her do so, but still blocked since I imagined a feint would become a true attack if I let my guard down.

“I umm… think I broke my spine in a couple of places, and a ton of other bones, but I was out pretty quickly.” I said, trying to catch her wrist when she slightly overextended. After a moment I realized that her overextension was another feint when she nearly nutted me with her knee. Scraping up the inside of my thigh before I managed to step back far enough to avoid the knee. I suddenly lost my balance and flipped over to slam into the ground with a loud oof, and I realized she had taken advantage of my lack of balance from the step back to flip me into my back.

“Proteus doesn’t pay shit for hospital bills unless your insurance company forces it out of them. If you weren’t asked to appear in court, that means someone took care of the bills for you. Most likely Paul. So he sold the house for you, which would probably have been caught up in probate and eaten by inheritance taxes, and used it to pay off the hospital bills you couldn’t default. Inconvenient, but better than having hundreds of thousands in debt. Next?” She asked, stepping back and letting me get back to my feet.

I nodded, stretched for a moment, and then launched myself at her.

A heartbeat later I was back on my back, gasping for breath as she stepped away. I had barely seen her move. I knew she wasn’t any stronger than me anymore, and I had been training for years in mixed martial arts…. But then, she had probably trained for decades, and her leg had just seemed to be in exactly the right place to flip me over to slam into the deck plates again.

I slowly got to my feet, and wiggled a little, letting my regen help me recover. “He wasn’t with us when mom and Bobby died.”

She got back into a stance as I recovered, “Would it have helped?”

I shook my head, “No, that fucker Rainbow used the car as a missile weapon while fighting another meta.”

She smiled, “Try again.” She said making a beckoning motion with her hand. I didn’t know if she meant the excuse or the fight, but it was probably both.

“Fine, the last time I saw him he ripped me off for five grand, and then sold me to the cartel.”

This time I approached her slowly, staying as low as possible. While we were doing the standup game, my reach advantage didn’t seem to be helping, and I figured if I could take her to the floor I would have the advantage.

“What are you doing? I have seen you use your strength energy before, when you were fighting in Siberia,” she asked, “Why aren’t you doing it now?”

I sighed, I was using my normal strength, not my aura. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“So, not only are you behaving dishonorably, you are disrespecting my fighting skills. Why?”

I grumbled, “I wasn’t disrespecting your fighting skills. I assumed we were in a friendly match, and you are a girl.”

She shook her head, “In that case you are even dumber than I thought. We are in a fight, we are not fucking. Lots of girls can kill you. If you refuse to use your strength, this fight, this conversation, and our interaction is over.”

“I thought that we were not using our powers. You haven’t shocked me yet or bursted me off of the ship.” I said.

She nodded, “Yes, but I am using my strength as a scion. If I hadn’t, you are tough enough to have completely ignored getting thrown. Use it or lose it.” She didn’t look quite as pissed when she realized I was trying to stick to the rules, as they were.

I nodded and came in low again, this time reinforcing myself with my aura just like I had done my wings. She tried to throw me again as I came in low, but my aura was far enough outside of me to blend into the deck plating a bit, and my iron will allowed me to resist her strength as I dived at her knees.

I finally dropped her to the deck, straddling her hips for a moment as I set myself into the pummeling position to get good fist and elbow strikes while avoiding her leg grapples coming up from behind. This was the kind of fighting I had trained for, and by bracing my knees with my aura and adding to my arm strength, I managed to pin her wrists to the deck over her head. She struggled for a moment and then relaxed. “Much better. You are a lot stronger than I expected.”

I nodded, “It helps that I can sort of weld myself to the ground, as you probably noticed.”

“So tell me.” She said conversationally, “How much of Callie’s money did you get to keep after you were captured? It is no surprise he could talk you out of the money, he probably practiced the conversation dozens of times.”

I shook my head, “None of it. The Cartel took what I had when he sold me out.” With that I braced my hand over both of her wrists, using my aura to hold my fist to the ground. She started to struggle a bit as I released my other hand, and then tapped her nose, “In this position I could pummel you quite a bit. Are we done with the round?”

She shook her head, “Not quite yet. I have you right where I want you. How did you know he sold you out?”

I shrugged, and shifted slightly down to hold her hips tighter as she tried to get her legs up to lockbar my head. This kind of fighting was my specialty, and while she might have had decades more training, I had mass and position and lots of experience on my side. She was strong, but not strong enough, and only sheer strength could break it. “He was in the car when I was taken.”

“Was he gloating?” She asked a little breathlessly, trying to wriggle her hips out from under mine.

I shook my head, “No, he had his hand on his face and was bleeding. He told me there was nothing he could to, but I could tell he was lying.”

“How could you tell he was lying? Did you analyze him? Could you smell the lie?”

“I don’t know, I could just tell he was bullshitting me. They let him go when they had me secured. And he also robbed my place while I was running and showed them my stash.”

She sighed a little, trying to shift her elbows. Not going to happen. I shifted my feet slightly as she concentrated, bracing them over her thighs and then using my aura to pin her thighs to the ground. “So he looked like he got beat up, and you were convinced he was lying. Do you know what Cassandra’s curse is?”

I nodded, leaning forward just enough to see if she would go for it. She did, lifting her head to try and headbutt me, but I chuckled as I shifted back just enough to prevent any impact. “I know that Cassandra was cursed by Apollo so that no one ever believed her when she told them about the future. Do you yield?”

She smiled a little, “I will give you this round, but if you want me to yield, you will have to do a lot better than that.”

Whew, temper averted, at least a little. I rolled off her, and she started squirming to her feet. She looked tired, and I guess she had really been struggling to get out from under me. “Cassandra’s curse was not a curse from Apollo. Time doesn’t like to shift, and true foreseers literally live through that time. If they warn someone who believes it, that person can change that fate, and the entire universe doesn’t want to change the way it runs just because someone listened. Cassandra’s curse ensures that no one believes real future visions. If he had warned you, you would have thought he was lying.”

She started rubbing her wrists, “Choosers have it even worse. Powerful people, or people fated to make a difference in the world, when they die, keeping them alive would make a profound change. Even keeping them from misfortune would change the universe enormously. True seers can make minor changes, like easing suffering by helping the soul move on quickly, helping prevent less important souls from dying, or preventing the misfortune from spreading too far, but the primary focus does not change. The fact that Paul was there meant he had probably lived through the scene, maybe dozens or hundreds of times, possibly trying to make changes. Maybe he did make changes and stopped something far more horrible from happening.”

She did not appear to be lying. “So you are telling me that this whole time Paul has been living through horrible events again and again trying to change them, and when he said he tried his best he really had?”

She nodded and sat down, resting for a moment, “That is the most likely thing. He was there, in Siberia, during your battle. He had to collect Vectress soul when she dies, and he looked like he wished he were the one dying instead of her.”

“I never saw him.”

She nodded, “Of course you didn’t. He might have been through it dozens of times before, and knew how to keep you from seeing him, and maybe killing him. Or it might have been his first time and he was just lucky. Still, he came to her the moment you left, and took her out of her broken body before she was tortured too much, and then vanished. The fact that I could see him means that you knowing this about him is a rightful part of the timeline.”

“And the drugs?” I asked her, “He let them destroy his life?”

She smiled a little and crossed her legs on the ground. “Choosers never sleep. He’s probably just like you, and they never affected him. He cannot sleep safe in Asgard, free of death and misfortune like the Valkyr can, so the drugs were probably the only thing that allowed him to ever get a night’s rest.”

I sighed. That was two. Vengeance denied. I would have to look him up when I got a chance and see if what Sif said was true. Even if my mind screamed that he was lying, if my senses and analysis fell flat I would have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

She looked at me evilly, “Besides, he might have approached you dozens of times already, and you hurt or killed him. It happened to him, but you wouldn’t remember it.”