Tanner kept it from starting out too weird by just opening with something entirely in keeping with his personality, “I'm just here to be supportive. I don't have a stake in this. We've known each other for a long time, and I felt you might appreciate having a friend present.” Tanner folded his arms — a clear “I am not involved” gesture, and waited for someone else to speak.

  Lyn waited a beat for Tanner to finish and decided to just have it out. “I do want to apologize to you, Nat, but we couldn't risk alarming you or doing anything that might trigger an episode outside this room. People could have been hurt or killed, and I made a choice to forestall that potential outcome. You yourself noted that they happen without warning.”

  “Yet you thought keeping me in the dark — potentially allowing me to make bad decisions or to fail to take action to avoid this bad outcome — was a good idea?” Nat shot back, then continued, “We don't know each other, we're not friends, this isn't like Tanner, who I've known for years. You said you wanted to be my therapist and then immediately violated my trust and didn't even give me enough information to make an informed choice.”

  “It is not my choice to keep you fully in the dark on this. It was my choice to incapacitate you, yes, to avoid a potentially dangerous situation for all the residents of Bell House at the very least.”

  “See, you say that, but I still have no idea whatsoever you're talking about. If it's not your choice, then whose is it?”

  Lyn looked askance at the administrator, and clearly waited for him to say something. He did not rise to the prompt.

  “Well?” Nat was still of a temper and low on patience — he looked the administrator in the eyes, held the gaze, and then followed up. “Explain to me why I should spend another minute here, being treated like a child.”

  The administrator sighed and answered, “Your episodes, which we now believe to be a side effect of a system interaction with your talent, are dangerous.”

  “How dangerous?”

  “If you were to step outside this room and have an episode with energy output on par with this morning, you could unintentionally kill or permanently maim everyone without a thermal acclimatization within tens of meters, and cause severe burns on anyone out to a hundred meters, or more.”

  Lyn paused, staring off distractedly, then stepped forward and snapped their fingers — a spark of electricity ignited and resolved into a stable arc between thumb and forefinger, where it buzzed softly as it danced.

  “I'm afraid it could be worse than that, potentially far worse,” came Moira's tinny voice, emanating from the arc in Lyn's hand somehow.

  Nat cocked his head to the side, “Moira? Are you still here? Is this a talent?”

  “I was never here, in the sense you mean. Lyn is allowing me the ability to manifest partially — speech and hearing only, via aether relay.”

  “Okay, this is one of those the world I know is smaller than the world that is things. Moving on,” Nat was intensely curious about how that worked, but managed to remain focused on the topic of discussion, “What exactly what do you mean by worse?”

  “I mean that there are a few potential outcomes — from a thermal event similar but more dramatic in scope as previously mentioned, to an aetheric dissonance cascade, to a relativistic event.”

  The administrator had turned to look at Lyn's hand at the mention of a cascade, and now froze entirely, clearly considering the ramifications.

  At this last comment, Lyn now looked down, aghast, at their own hand where Moira's voice emanated. Now it was everyone else's turn to ask in unison, dumbfounded — “What?”

  Was it strange that Nat somehow felt vindicated?

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  Moira continued, “This list is by no means exhaustive, but they're the most likely possible outcomes, in descending order of likelihood. There's the thermal events you're familiar with, potentially of increased severity — as Nat essentially vents pooled energy when his talent ends. His talent may function differently now that his system isn't terminating and re-invoking itself tens of times per second. You cannot use prior behavior as a predictor at the moment until additional observations are made.”

  The administrator had an answer for that already — clearly it had previously been considered, “We have contingencies that take little preparation to deal with a potential event of that scope. We can move everyone to the staff wing temporarily, put up some additional fireproof baffling, and some wall stones facing away from the main facility can be removed to allow for venting of heat.”

  “Okay, clearly some consideration has been put into this — good to know, and you should probably start those preparations as soon as we finish our discussion, but wait just a moment, please. That response sounds well-suited to the likeliest outcome; unfortunately it's not the only plausible one. The next most likely alternative is that Nat's abilities do not trigger the same thermal event now that his system is online, but instead vent excess accumulated aetheric energy directly. So, basically a localized dissonance event, maybe a single large one, or possibly a mid-size event with smaller echoes following it — that's actually probably the best case, honestly — it would likely drop off in power rapidly — possibly after seconds, or minutes at most.”

  The administrator chimed in, “That doesn't sound nearly as bad.”

  Lyn's face had taken on a look of concern at that situation, more so than discussing heat that could cause stone to glow. Nat scrunched his eyebrows, considering the implications, which Lyn noticed and so explained, “A dissonant field might just irritate Ber'Duun within its radius, but it could drive Ber mad with anger, or wild with fear. Luckily, as with all energy, the effects lessen dramatically with distance, so it would be severe within a few tens of meters, with only mild anxiety and skittishness being more likely out to perhaps a few hundred meters at most. The impact is not to be underestimated though — near populated areas even such mild effects have the potential to trigger stampedes, or elevate aggression, as with any dissonance event. The danger is primarily because most areas usually know that a field is coming and can thus prepare, whereas with this, it could catch people by surprise.”

  Lyn continued, “I'd say as long as Nat avoids Ber, and to a lesser extent, Ber'Duun, there's relatively low risk. It would obviously be worse in an area more heavily populated with Ber or Ber'Duun, but the Laster schism is close by. Even Ber tend to avoid lingering near active schisms, moving through them quickly whenever possible. It's one of the reasons I tend to end up with jobs in the area; since I'm not strongly affected by them due to my attunement. But even I wouldn't choose to settle here long-term; it grates on the senses — which is why these are predominantly Human lands, now — Brin included,” Lyn nodded to Tanner at the end, who gave a curt nod in return.

  “Okay, so that's less of a concern with some caution. And the third? I'm not familiar with the term — what is a relativistic event?” That was the administrator again.

  “I'm not going to get into the technical side, much as I might want to. I do want to reiterate that it is clear that talents can fail in unexpected ways, but so far those outcomes seem to be roughly equivalent to what a powerful talent is capable of — destructive, but not catastrophic. That implies we can assume a level of competence in safeguard design that baselines beyond any of our capabilities. The system warnings do lead me to believe that failure is possible, though the person primarily in danger in those situations is Nat.”

  Moira waited a beat to give Nat a chance to respond. She was unable to see his hand rise to rub his forehead. Then she resumed the litany of dire outcomes.

  “At the low end would be friction events, where the two inertial frames, or their interface points, oscillate against each other. Like starting a fire with a bow drill — the twine doesn't get hot, but the end of the stick pressed into the wood does due to the speed of rotation. That could be similar in overall effect to a thermal event, but potentially higher temperature — possibly sufficient to ignite anything flammable out to hundreds of meters. Given that we already have thermal events, this level of outcome seems plausible, though less likely.”

  “Worse would be a collision between objects moving at dramatically different speeds relative to one another. Like a pebble kicked up by a horse in a gallop. It's small and light, but moves fast enough to bruise. In this case, the pebble might carry the force of a boulder tumbling downhill, or perhaps an avalanche.”

  The orderly's eyes, already wide, now threatened to pop out of their head. They edged backwards towards the door.

  “Okay, that's worse. What's worst — the outcome you aren't mentioning?”

  “I would like to reiterate that the extreme end would require the talent not only be badly designed but somehow manage to bypass all safety measures and failsafes. There's no point discussing it. If it were even remotely possible, we'd already be a rapidly expanding cloud of vapor.”

  Nobody said a word for an entire minute.