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Clearly, this guy had been able to respond to stimuli, even if it was only for a moment. So he wasn't completely unreachable, at least.

Or he was still just faking, and Selena's move had caught him off guard.

Hector was particularly wary of that.

As he kept mulling it over, Voreese apparently arrived at her own conclusion and turned to Selena again. 'Alright, kiss him on the lips.'

He stepped in and eased Selena back toward the others.

'Oh, come on. You guys are seriously underestimating the power of a little female attention. I mean, look at her! She's cute as a button, isn't she? I'm just helping her harness her latent abilities. You understand, don't you, Selena?'

"Would you shut up already?" said Roman.

'Fuck you. I'm trying to use a scalpel here, so you fellas better not whip out a sledgehammer and call that the superior solution. There are a lot of innocent bystanders around, you know.'

That part, at least, Hector could agree with. "Relax," he told Voreese. "We don't need intel that bad. There are other places we can try."

'Hmph.'

Before resorting to that, though, Hector had to wonder if he could wake this guy up somehow. Assuming the dude wasn't simply faking, then shouldn't it have been theoretically possible to extend his own aura around this fellow and protect him from manipulation like the others in his party.

Unless... his aura wasn't actually what was protecting them? Hector was fairly sure it was, but didn't actually know that for certain, of course. Moreover, he wasn't sure how to manipulate his own aura in such a way, either. He'd kinda done stuff like that before, but... hmm. It wasn't like he was consciously protecting Roman and everyone else, at the moment.

So maybe it was a subconscious thing? They were all part of the 'group,' so his aura was just shielding them automatically.

Did he just have to start thinking of this stranger as part of the group, too, then? Somehow, that felt wrong. And maybe kinda dumb. Especially when he didn't know the first thing about this person.

A new aura arrived at the periphery of Hector's senses, pulling his attention away from his internal debate. Someone was right outside the building. Someone that hadn't been there a few seconds ago.

He reached out with the Scarf for more information, but the door swung open before it could tell him anything, throwing the air currents into disarray.

"Would you mind leaving that man alone, please?" came a very youthful voice.