Definitely a tough read yet. Conner's a pretty decent study of faces, but it's gonna take more than the first meeting for him to start sussing out those microexpessions. At the very least, he isn't getting a reprimand right now — that's something.

No guarantees that means Viktor's an ally or a genuinely good person, he's been baited and switched one too many times to assume. A little healthy skepticism's gonna linger for a while.

"I'm not gonna lie to you, the Auto-Doc thing's really tempting my inner twelve-year-old. Robot Wars was a hell of a show," All of that said in an offhand, slightly dry roll. Probably hard to tell whether or not he's joking. "But maybe we put a hold on that for the moment and jump to how exactly this is meant to go. Do me a favor, mate, and tell me what you expect from me, honestly. Really. Not just what they've got written down in the company-mandated pamphlets."

LAND had a great byline. Learning and National Defense, out there furthering humanity in a dual-pronged approach. Research ways to improve mankind, use what they learned to shut down threats before they got to be a problem. Sounds fantastic. All the HR memos were real sellers. Took him a while to figure out what was between the lines. What his actual job was, as opposed to what they told him it was.

You could say he's a fan of skipping pretense.