"Yes!"

"You know, people wouldn't have to ask you questions that make such aspersions on your character if your character were a bit better. I'd like to meet the kids."

"Will you consider us to have acted in poor character if other things which you disapprove of come to light later, or would you prefer to prioritize meeting them over digging into that?"

"I mean, I guess we can talk about it right now if you're very anxious about my exact character assessment."

"I'm not, particularly, unless you would feel deceived by us having failed to mention something."

"I guess if there turns out to be something really egregious that I would have expected to be obviously so even to you that would be bad."

"The gruesome surgeon does not work here of his own free will.  We've also done - rather more - genetic experiments on non-human animals.  It was my understanding from speaking with Ms. Tralle that your purpose here was to determine what should become illegal with regards to medical experimentation and research, and that you weren't intending to go off investigating instances of personal abuse.  Given that, should I also include work we've done at other facilities, or work at other facilities which we know to have occurred but didn't participate in, or are you overall trusting us to handle this the same way as instances of personal abuse and are investigating here for other reasons."

"Please go ahead and tell me what the other facilities are up to. I'm not actually too fussed about the nonhuman animals provided they are not, specifically, British cats."

"What does 'British' mean?"

"...Britannian. Sorry. I am from another universe with similar but not identical geography."

"I would have to check the records but I don't see why we would have gotten any of those, then.  At other facilities there's a lot of overlap between drug development and personal abuse; there's some creation of children who go against the natural order in various ways which I don't know whether to expect you to object to, given that their treatment is generally fine once they exist these days."

"I probably don't object to violating the natural order as long as it's not violating any children but can you give me a couple examples?"

"The main examples I'm familiar with involved delaying the time between conception and birth, which usually prevents a soul from attaching at all.  But if the child is born during the right 'season', centered to their conception date as opposed to matching the calendar, a soul will attach at birth even if that birth occurs many years after the samples were taken."

"...yeah I don't first-pass object to that as stated. I guess you could be doing something awful to the surrogates."

"Oh, we haven't used or needed human surrogates for years."

"- gosh. That might have implications though I hope it does not because they'd be annoying."

"Oh?"

"My species can't have children and it's a whole thing. Most of them would be lovely to the children but there's absolutely nothing in place to enforce that."

"Oh.  That does sound like it could have annoying implications."

"Yeah. Hopefully your thing doesn't work because it only works on the local sort of baby and those can't grow in a place without souls or something. I'd like to postpone finding out. Please don't advertise."

She makes a mouth-zipping motion and throws away the invisible key.

". . . I think they're fairly common knowledge among the general populace," the other guy notes.  "Though I could be wrong."

"Buying a week would be nice, I'm keeping many balls in the air. I will certainly not hold you responsible if they get the idea from the news or something."

"I won't tell any other mysterious bat men I see this month about them, this I swear."

"I am planning to keep the mysterious bat persons mostly in my city downcylinder but if some come here as tourists, yeah."