There is too much Virginian in his French, she thinks, letting him pull out the chair for her. He manages to extol and butter her father for at least an hour before she cuts in.

"Either you're speaking on behalf of someone who would rather remain nameless, or you have a death wish."

His stunned expression at discovering she can in fact speak English and follow their conversation is her satisfaction. She smiles.

"She has a point, Dom," Miles says. "This wasn't invented for profit. If anything, it's a nightmare constructed by the industrial war machine, and multiple scientific journals have come forward condemning the training practice for its vast implications reflected in side effects of PTSD and C-PTSD in subjects dating back to the first trials." It's the world's next affliction."

Dom smiles into his cooling coffee.

"You're saying it's a product of war, a weapon," Dom summarizes, eyes clear and remorseless as he holds eye contact with Miles, voice chilly with disconnect from the point. She wants to shake him.

"Yes, precisely. And we've seen time and again what happens when a creation of war is brought home to the victor's people and marketed as something to make their lives easier or their pockets deeper. Just look at Dupont or Microsoft for gods' sake. This isn't the next thing in technology.

"Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. In the wrong hands, any advancement could be a curse, from the wheel to the vaccine. But what I'm talking about is the prevention of economic collapse. If only one nation gets its hands on this technology, think of the power they would wield in the trading arena. That's too much power for any one country to have."

"Says the American dreaming of silk-lined pockets," Mal excoriates with a shrewd, squinting smile.

He thinks a moment before answering.

"I had a dream once, Miss Miles," he says, the spinning ready for weaving. "I was strapped to a chair in a dark room, a white rag tied around my neck. It was drying out my mouth. There was only one light, far away, but every now and then it swung close to me, close enough to see the dust floating on my breath. A man in the darkness, face white as paint, mouth red as sin, stepped out of the shadows to look at me. He reminded me of my dead father. And I could feel myself struggling in my bed, back in reality, trying to wake up as he said, "If you're good at something, son, never do it for free." I've tried to live by those words ever since. Couldn't help feeling it was important."

She stifles a shudder and instead looks at Miles. His eyes are old and weary, regret pulling at the corners.

He heaves a Sisyphean sigh.

"Dom, I'm sure you believe you're doing the right thing, the noble thing," he says as he lays a hand on his old pupil's arm. "But I beg of you – as one of the stained advisors of that project – to leave well enough alone. If the powers that be want to twist the minds of men around their fingers, let them. Don't become an accomplice to your own undoing, hm?"

Dom looks into Mal's eyes in the next moment, determinism steeping her in his dream. She knows he is going to own the world one way or another. It takes her breath away.