Liir stiffens, then relaxes. No doubt his natural tendency to be a wallflower isn't helped much by his recently manifesting secondary power. An errant hair and he could find himself involuntarily reliving Gilbert's memories, a blur of intimate details, if his centering exercises don't work.

"Yes, it's usually our collective souls. They're much less messy in the abstract."

But then, Liir finds people in general the same way, mutant or baseline. Easier to apprehend in a book than live. Case in point: He's looking at the grey, slushy sky rather than Gilbert, even though he's definitely not hard to look at.