"Hm?" Rene muttered.

"Ah, sure." he said.

"I can do that." he told her, before leaving the two of them.

"...so..." Ash muttered.

"This is... an interesting development, to understate it." he said.

"Do you think she's a threat to us?" he asked Ashley.

Ash was silent as he heard that.

"Maybe she was ordered to survive, and stay alive." he told her.

"And normally I'd call that a joke, but that's actually a very real possibility." he muttered.

"Seriously. For all we know, she's staying alive because she was told to, not from any sense of self-preservation." he went on, shaking his head.

"Like a program doing something it's told to do while it waits for the next command... except in this case, that next command's not coming."

"No argument here." Ash replied.

"She needs help. And that's understating it." he muttered.

Meanwhile, Rene ascended to the ground floor, just as he saw Lindsay.

"Where's your guest?" he asked him.

"Showering." Lindsay replied.

"She should be finishing momentarily." he added.

Lindsay looked over towards her, and sighed quietly.

"Good." he replied.

"Here." he told her, handing her a submarine sandwich.

"You must be hungry." he said.

"Eat what you can of this." he went on, handing her a bottle of water.

"And something to drink as well." he added.

"...how are you feeling, Lindsay?" Rene then asked the Fyrane.

"Just fine." Lindsay replied.

".........." Lindsay was silent as he witnessed this.

"You know, you can-" he started to say, before pausing.

"Please do sit down at the table to eat." he asked of her.

"....holy crap..." Rene muttered.

"Indeed." Lindsay agreed.

'Does she have NO free will of her own...?' Rene wondered.

"...." Rene was silent as Hazel sat down at the table and continued to eat.

"Lindsay." he said.

"Mm?" Lindsay muttered in response.

"What is she?" Rene asked. "Species-wise." he then clarified.

"I am unsure." Lindsay admitted.

"Hm." Rene mumbled, as he simply made his way closer towards her.

"Hey. I'm Rene." he introduced himself.

"Mind if I ask you a few questions?" he asked her.

'....interesting.' Rene thought.

'Troubling, but interesting.' he thought further.

"May I ask what you are?" he asked her.

"I mean... well... let's put it this way..." he mumbled.

"I'm a lantha. What about you?" he asked her more clearly. He figured volunteering the information first was only proper, when asking such a question.

"................" Rene was silent as he heard that.

That sounded like a programmed response to him. And he was sure it was. Odds are it was something that Vanessa had told her to say... and to ONLY say that.

"I see." he said.

"That... really didn't help..." he mumbled.

"But regardless... finish eating for now." he told her.

"I need to think about my wording some."

'Hmmmmmmmm....' Rene thought.

"I'm going to check the ruins." Lindsay said, seeming to know what he was thinking.

"Or send Ash to." he went on.

"Any info WOULD help." Rene admitted.

"...I would like to do a mana scan on her, though." he went on.

"See what makes her tick, so to speak."

Lindsay seemed to snap to reality when Hollie spoke to him.

"Oh! Sorry!" he apologized.

"It's just... well, it's.... no. It's not nothing." he muttered.

"I've been working with a patient for months now. And... I'm chipping away at the walls in her mind, but I think I've hit the limit of what I can do." he told her.

He then proceeded to tell Hollie about Hazel, how she had been found by Ash, how she was still a complete mystery, for the most part, everything. Except for their sessions, of course.

"I don't know what to do now, Hollie. Where to go from here." he sighed.

"I think she might be beyond my help. Not help, entirely, but MY help." he admitted, and Hollie could hear how much it hurt him to say that. "But I don't know where she could go for such a level of help."