[ Better, is his one and only thought on that faint glimmer of something behind the controlled mask. With most people, Crais would immediately pry at that 'crack' - not with bad intent, but simply because he gives no fucks and if he wants to know he will ask.

He actually uses a little more discretion this time. Uses his willingness to answer questions about anything and lay his cards out on the table for something other than an act of defiance against previous conditioning and an aggressive display of confidence.

He uses it as a means of being trustworthy, even knowing trust is months (at best) in the future and requires a little actual vulnerability on his end, since there is something in here that resonates with Washington. ]

I don't know the answer to that. There were a lot of... intersecting circumstances and I think they all had to be in place to lead to that particular outcome. Talyn - the ship I was interfaced to - was increasingly unstable and I was out of options for him. The neurbleedback through the interface was becoming increasingly worse as his mental state declined; I couldn't control him and it was killing me, anyway. I'd been alone for the majority of time for years, and had enough time to start to figure out how to be a person. There was the technology. If any of those were missing I would have looked for other options - including the outlet.