Almost against his own will, he broke his focus from the scope yet again to look up at Matt.
He knew there was something preternatural about the blind man he'd rescued from the alley who had been good enough to give him a space in his apartment to sleep (that space being a square, roughly the size of his person, on the floor in front of the couch, to be clear). Matt hadn't asked him a lot of questions he didn't know how to answer, and he hadn't really asked any in return. But anyone who could identify the age and sex of a person from a hundred feet without seeing them possessed an ability no one else could claim to.
He processed that, and took a slow breath. His heartbeat was very even, very regular. It hadn't sped up when Matt entered the room, or during this conversation, such as it was. Several things between the two of them weren't natural - that even heartbeat was one of them.
"Assets are never done," he said.
Over the months since his last wipe (nine months and thirty eight days - thirty nine?) he had changed. He knew that was true. He didn't know what those changes made him, except capable of his own choices. At some point over that span he had started to develop nascent sensations, long since thought dead - opinion, for instance, and prejudice, and emotional attachment. He did not talk about them. They felt like ghosts that could disappear if he looked too closely at them, and he had come to dislike them. He didn't known what would happen if he investigated them - he didn't know that it would be good. It would be less clean, there was no doubting that. He feared the instability the wipes had been so frequently administered to prevent, and down that long, winding path, there was bound to be instability in spades. It was safer to do what he knew. It was better to do what he had been trained for. Now that Steve was gone, there was no other purpose in his life than this mission, the one he had chosen for himself.
Assets are never done.
"She retired." His voice grated like a chipped knife on stone. "Know about debts, Matthew. Usury." Where had he found that word? A forgotten book. Something about hell. Had they wiped that too? Any time he happened to get hold of a song or a piece of writing? Killing the urge to investigate? "Convinced mothers to give their children to the state. For training. Eliminated those that didn't comply. Other things. Worse things. Worked with a man. Brother. One operational name." His eye was back to the scope. She was still talking to her companion, and they were arguing, now, heatedly.