When Yuri'd been told that he was being transferred to Valparaiso, he hadn't thought it was much of a punishment at the time. Some place that wasn't twenty damn degrees at best most of the time sounded like a great idea to him. But his first interview had been that damned fon Fabre kid, and after that, one of Hyrda Corinthian's pilots. The last six months in Alaska he'd been doing his best to forget his hometown, throwing himself into the physical training and the meditation, striving so that when the time came, he could do the impossible--bring nothing into the Drift.

It was a long shot, but it wasn't like he had much to lose if he failed.

He had been more confident in Alaska, but he was already dreading the prospect of being faced with the fon Fabre heir day in a day out. The kid reminded him too much of his devastated home, of the man who'd caused that devastation... The man he'd killed. He'd managed a flip attitude through that interview and the one after, but he found himself oddly tired now that he was one interview away from getting out of these sterile rooms.

Get it together, he told himself. Maybe he'd try meditating after, get a head start on getting his mind straight.

He had planned to just breeze through this last interview with a minimum of effort but as the other person sat--he blinked, tensing up into a sitting position from his easy sprawl.

Something about this guy--

"Guy...?" his mouth said, miles ahead of his brain.