Who could swear an eternal vendetta against such a good man? Xue Yang, apparently, which really shouldn't surprise her. "And this led to him recommending you as someone who knows him well and can vouch for him?"

"Xue Yang has sworn an eternal vendetta against me because he wants me to pay attention to him." He sounds very unbothered by this state of affairs. 

Xiao Xingchen eats cookies with the grace of a dancer doing a pirouette.

One more sigh, for good measure. "He...does seem to have a habit of doing ridiculous things to get people's attention."

"I know better by now than to hope he's loyal to America, but do you think he has any loyalties to any foreign powers?"

Very graceful cross-legged sitting on a desk. Munch munch cookies.

"I'm not sure if I count."

"I think I'm not allowed to know which country you're from" it's China, it's obviously China, it's all the DoD cares about these days and his name is Xue Yang where Yang is the personal name, if he has foreign contacts it's so transparently China she can't imagine why they bothered but sometimes rules are like that "but are you a US citizen?"

"No. I don't think I'm here legally? Unless Song Lan did some paperwork about it. Is the process to be here legally particularly complicated?"

(It doesn't seem to occur to him that this might be an unwise thing to tell a member of the US government.)

OK. Xue Yang is a black hat, Song Lan is also a black hat, Xiao Xingchen is very pretty and very memorable and presumably does the sort of physical security work that lets him stroll into her office casually despite the theoretical safeguards and have the grace of a professional gymnast. It should not surprise her that, as he presumably gets paid in unmarked bills, he's never bothered with the niceties of a green card.

"OK. I can mark that down, it won't be a problem." Since she can't fail Xue Yang, which he is apparently managing to delight in. "Are you an agent of your government?"

"My government is a monastery in a remote mountain range that believes on principle that no one there should interact with the outside world, I'm not sure how I could be an agent of it."

Ah, Tibet, and with religious and political ties. That would be complicated. Thankfully, it means Xiao Xingchen really isn't a problem. Not even if he becomes a close contact.

"That is fine. Song Lan mentioned that he looks up to you: has he ever told you anything that, in your opinion, could represent a character flaw or weakness that would open him to exploitation by a foreign government?"

"--Uh. You have met Xue Yang, right?"

She laughs, easily. "Mr. Xiao" -- she really hopes he didn't actually reverse them for her-- "while Xue Yang does not so much possess character flaws as consist of them, so far I have not found anything that Mr. Meng will not overlook, supply, or both. The US Government seems to be in complete agreement with Mr. Meng on this point."

Very calmly: "He wants to take revenge on me because he wants attention from me, and he wants attention from me because he's in love with me, and he thinks being in love is stupid and dumb and cringey so probably the thing he actually wants is to trick me into mass murdering innocent people."

Evil is not a term Jane believes is useful. People follow their motivations, and sometimes you may disagree with them strongly, but people are not good or evil. Though Xiao Xingchen makes a convincing case for being genuinely truly good, in a way that makes her desire feel improper, and Xue Yang...

She would much rather have him destroying Three Gorges than Hoover. "I suppose that leads into the more pertinent question: what is your opinion of Meng Yao, and in particular his ability to control Xue Yang?"

Xiao Xingchen makes a face. "He's very clever and very ruthless, much more so than anyone thinks. It is convenient for him if Xue Yang continues to be a very confused, very traumatized, very brilliant child who hasn't realized that hurting people won't make him happy and who is desperate for any scraps of affection that Meng Yao is willing to give him. He thinks of Xue Yang as a very annoying tool that keeps breaking and I don't think it's good for Xue Yang to have as his primary emotional relationship someone who doesn't see him as a person."

"That...does...seem...bad for Xue Yang?" Xue Yang blinded his boyfriend for interrupting his torture session, wants to convince Xiao Xingchen to commit mass murder, has committed unnumerable other felonies and horrifying acts, and Xiao Xingchen cares about him and wants him to grow up well. "Why haven't you convinced Xue Yang to follow you around instead of Meng Yao, then?" Meng Yao may be bad news who lied to her but he is unlikely to betray his country, and it does not seem like Xiao Xingchen is skeptical of that? If Xue Yang grows up he may be more likely to defy Meng Yao, but at the same time TS for someone who considers breaking into the NSA to be a fun game is a little redundant.

"Song Lan thinks this is literally the worst idea I've ever thought of and I should recognize that some people are not worth my time to save. --Also I'm not sure of the ethics of dating someone who's fifteen, sexual ethics didn't come up often at the monastery."

She'd thought he looked young.

She'd thought he looked young, and ignored it. Parsed his childish ways as deliberately offensive, rather than that of a teenager never allowed to grow up.

She doesn't scream. She's quite proud of herself, for that.

What can she do? CPS isn't going to be able to do anything. Not with Meng Yao right there, and Xue Yang loyal in exchange for candy and the chance to provide oral sex. They'd drilled into her the importance of respecting different cultural backgrounds so long as nobody involved could be blackmailed over it, and so she'd ignored everything.

Her niece was turning sixteen.

"Normally there would be a concern about power dynamics but I think that you are extremely unlikely to abuse your power over Xue Yang. Whether Xue Yang can be saved, and whether that is worthwhile, is something I am afraid I can't answer." But it is absolutely something that could change. Signs of Xue Yang becoming a better person would have to be concerning, to whoever had to watch over him, assuming anyone did, assuming Meng Yao didn't maneuver to get the role himself, just to extract more blowjobs from the finnicky tool that is his 15 year old pet hacker he must have been grooming for years. "I think that he is likely to have an outsized impact on the world, compared to most, and you may wish to take that into account." Imperfect processes needed to be corrected by humans, that was her entire job, the reason it wasn't an automated form. And if, just in this case, she's correcting Meng Yao's control over Xue Yang? Giving Xue Yang a worthy role model (at least, a worthy role model by the standards of hackers)? She's a human being.

"For what it's worth," Xiao Xingchen says, "I don't think Meng Yao is taking advantage of Xue Yang or-- not like that. Meng Yao doesn't want to have sex with Xue Yang. There just-- aren't a lot of ways to motivate him."

...Is that even better? She supposes so.

"That...helps. Thank you."

"I don't think anything I say is particularly likely to help. I don't think anyone else can help Xue Yang."

"Perhaps he can help himself."

"I'll do my best, ma'am. I'm glad he has someone like you looking out for him as well."

"I'm not...I'm just a background investigator, I am not a Security Officer who works with people after they've passed." She's not...whatever Xiao Xingchen is.

"Well, it's a change for there to be anyone who cares about him at all." Xiao Xingchen smiles. "I suppose you can write down in the form that I might end up trying to steal him from the US government. If I do, I swear by the bright moon and the gentle breeze that I will do all in my power to make him defend the sapient people of the Earth, and American humans as a subset thereof no more or less important than any other, that I shall strive to make sure his recreational activities involve wandering the wilderness and do not involve harm to the life, limb, or property of any American citizen, and that we shall cooperate with the US government as our goals align."

(As he speaks, it sounds like the universe is listening.)

OK, a physical security hacker who, as the swords suggested, is really into fantasy. Alright, she can do this. "That...does seem plausible, with how you've described Meng Yao." She pauses. People like this are often fond of technical truths, and she's noticed something. "For you to do all in your power to make him defend the people of Earth seems unlike you."

Charming smile. "Fourth language. --Cause him to in a noncoercive fashion? I'm not Meng Yao."

She looks suspiciously. His English has been perfect so far, he pauses where he's thinking of concepts and not of words, and he said "cringey" and "literally the worst". If English is actually something he's less than completely fluent in she'll eat the next SF-85 she gets handed. In front of the client. "I think Meng Yao could describe candy and sex as non-coercive."