* Keiko appears, her ghostly blue-dressed self, in... some mindscape! [Keiko goes into Jarek's mind! She's in an office. Through the window, she can see another office. And through the window in that office, she can see another! Everything is sooooooooooooooo offwhite. How drab. Jarek's sitting in a cubicle, wearing the same suit he always wears. He looks around a bit, then focuses on Keiko. "Great."]] * Keiko smiles a bit grimly, her hand producing a scalpel. "So how'd one little girl slip by you?" ["I always knew you were a monster."] * Keiko licks her lips, then says, "That makes two of us." So show me. How'd you miss it. How did she fool you for a year. Or did she fool you at all? ["Hmph. I'm just a normal man doing my job. I've got a wife and kids who are going to suffer all because I did what I was told. But you! You're some freak who gets her jollies by poking around in people's heads. You're akin to a rapist."] * Keiko 's eyes narrow. "Show me." ["I spent my earily career as a cop. I've put hundreds of psychopaths behind bars. Murderers, rapists, people who collected fingers... But none were as monsterous as you. Even a woman being raped can escape into her own mind, but you don't even give that much. you're no different from them."] ( earily = earlier. quite the typo ) * Keiko snaps, "Your job was to ruin my life. You don't get to judge me." * Keiko steps forward. "Show me. Last time I ask." ["Wrong. My job was to keep you under control. A horrible job. No government should ever try to use its menaces to society in any sort of capacity. But that's what I was told to do, so that's what I did."] ["And it's a good thing, too. God knows what you would have done if you were given any leeway. Who else would you rape with your mind? Probably everyone you came across."] * Keiko points with her scalpel. "I am tired of all of you adults telling me that your choices didn't matter! You... you did horrible things, and you justify it because you had no control! I haven't had any control over my life for a year, you monster." * Keiko shudders, then growls, "At least I know what I am." ["You're a monster. Nothing you do will change that."] * Keiko is silent a moment, then half-smiles. "No. It won't." * Keiko then dispatches with the discussion, the mind Keiko slicing at him with the scalpel. She'll find the memories the hard way. [That doesn't take long. Turns out it's a simple story: Jarek was told at times that Ludwig Bernstein wanted to speak to Cyra in quiet, and if he cared about his job and the welfare of his family, he wouldn't say anything to anyone.] (And he didn't keep any secret records?) ( Nope. He never asked what it was about. ) ( He decided it was best not to know. ) [He also has a wife and two sons.] (Did he entertain the thought that Bernstein was raping Cyra?) ( Nope. ) * Keiko steps back, in mindspace, and closes her eyes a moment. "Just a coward. An angry... stupid, coward." [He scowls. "I told you so. Are you satisfied, now that you've forcefully invaded my privacy?"] No. ["So what, then? You going to turn my mind into mush? Rape is often followed by murder."] * Keiko flips the scalpel away. "I would have to take away nine months of your life to even come close to balancing our scales. And then forty years more." All of it on display for someone else to see. ["I see, so it's the amount that matters. I'm sure a woman in the hospital who was just raped can be conforted to know that the woman in the room next door was raped by more guys than she was."] * Keiko closes her eyes. "There is no comfort here, angry man." There never has been. There never will be. I will leave you with your hate. There is enough of it. And more peace than I have ever had. ["More than you deserve, for certain."] ( Done here? ) * Keiko flips out her scalpel again, is silent a moment, then her face is flat as she wipes the memories of it from his mind... leaving him exactly as he was before. Hateful, cruel, and with the innocence of stupidity.