Lie, truth.

"No, you're not," he tells her. "I know for a fact that you don't have amnesia and that those aren't your only powers. Who are you? Why are you pretending to be a case 53?"

The sudden punch doubles him over. She jumps over him and rams the door, bursting into the hallway. The power testing room has a balcony, to make testing large-scale flight simpler. She makes a break for it, her feet making dents in the tile as she accelerates.

He releases a golden disk of light that wraps around her and holds her in place. "Infiltrator in the power testing lab!" he shouts, running after her.

The golden light pins her center of mass, but it doesn't do anything about her rotational momentum. She kicks herself into a handstand and grabs pieces of the broken floor, throwing them at him.

The shattered tiles are stopped dead by a shield of golden light, and he yanks her into the air.

PRT troopers race down the hallway, pouring into the room behind him.

Well. She doesn't really see any options that keep within the powers she's pretending to have. On the other hand, he has her pinned, which is really inconvenient, and means she can't easily get away and try again.

"Okay, you got me," she says, switching to a Californian accent. "I do have powers, and they did make me look like this, but I don't have amnesia. On the other hand, I also don't have a legal identity. I thought if I posed as a case 53 I could get papers that would let me be in the country legally," she admits. She tries kicking her legs to turn upright, but can't get any leverage, and settles for crossing her arms.

True, false, misleading truth, true. True, true, the power tells him.

He stops short, turning that answer in his mind. She doesn't have powers? What does that mean? Is she being empowered by another parahuman?

"What are your powers?" he asks again. "I'll know if you try to lie again," he warns her.

Well. Isn't that an interesting constraint to work with.

"I am very tough, I can perceive details of things within a limited distance of myself, and I have limited shape-shifting," she tells him. She does not tell him about all of the other things that she can also do. "I don't want to hurt anyone. I really do want a legal identity. I'm from another world, and I know how to build technology from my world that I want to share to improve quality of life here."

Misleading truth, true, misleading truth, true, misleading truth, true, true, the power tells him.

He hates thinkers.

"Okay. I believe you. Here's what's going to happen. These fine officers are going to handcuff you, and we're going to relocate to an interrogation room. And then I am going to ask you for more detail on all of that, and you're going to tell me. Clear?"

She nods, and lets the troopers put cuffs on her wrists and ankles without protest. Once they have, they lead her to a small room. Eidolon sits down across from her.

He nods to the PRT Trooper to start recording.

"Eidolon, performing a thinker-enhanced interrogation of an unknown parahuman. Let's start simple. What is your name?"

"I'm named Yew," she tells him. "I know it makes a horrible pun -- you can continue calling me Alda if you prefer."

True, true, true.

"Please explain where you're from, and how you got here."

"I was originally born in a small town in Vermont," she replies. "But I moved around a lot (misleading truth). I was a scientist (true) -- I specialized in dimensional engineering (misleading truth), trying to figure out how to use spatial folding techniques to construct a pocket dimension (true). Eventually, one of my experiments failed in a way I still don't understand, and I ended up landing in this world (true). I tried to make peaceful contact (true), but the first group of people I met tried to kill me (misleadingly true). I ended up escaping and making my way here, learning about case 53s along the way (misleading truth). So I thought that if I pretended, I could get a legal identity here and figure out what to do next (true). I think my world of origin is more technologically advanced (ambiguous) -- I can reconstruct most of our technology (misleading truth), and I think doing so would help drastically raise the standard of living here (true)."

He marks up the live transcript with notes.

"Let's talk about the people who tried to kill you. Can you describe them, and what happened in more detail?" he asks, drumming his stylus against the table.

"I mentioned having limited shapeshifting, right? (True misdirection) I think that I scared the people pretty badly, in a way that I probably wouldn't have if I had been more normally shaped at the time (true)," she says, biting her lip. "As for describing them -- they wore dark uniforms, except for one guy in power armor, and a few in different clothes who showed up when I was trying to get away (true). They seemed pretty competently organized (true). I escaped and went north (misleading truth), but they somehow tracked me down and pursued me, until I managed to get far enough away (true). I think I'd lost them by the time I made it here (true)."

Now that he's settled in, she subtly starts mirroring his breathing and his posture.

"Cartel?" he scrawls in his personal notes.

"Do you know whether you had to cross the US border to get here?" he asks.

"I did cross the border coming here, yes (misleading truth)," she says.

If she's not lying about the border, but is being misleading about it ... Did she take a meandering route that went south across it and then back north?

He drums his fingers on the table.

"To the best of your knowledge, where were you when you crossed into this world? When this group tried to kill you?"

She winces internally.

"I was pretty badly hurt by the accident (true), so I didn't see exactly where I landed (true). By the time I was aware enough to work out where I was, I was already in the group's base (true). And I escaped fairly late at night (misleadingly true). I could try to draw the area for you, and see if someone can figure it out (vacuously true)?"

This is, quite possibly, the most frustrating interrogation he's helped with this month. He decides to put a pin in the location questions and try to suss out more general details.

"In the time since you came to this world, have you committed any crimes? Do you intend to commit crimes in the future?" he asks.

"I don't know! (misleading truth)" she says. "I haven't read all of the laws, and they might be different between this world and my world (true). Nothing I have done or plan to do would be against the law in my world (true)."

He nods, and takes notes for a moment while he thinks.

"Let's discuss your powers. What else can you tell me about them?"

She shrugs.

"I don't know what else to tell you (true)," she says. "I can tell if someone is cancerous (true). I can tell where cards are in a deck (true). But I can't see facts that don't ... leave physical evidence in the moment, I guess? (misleading truth) Like, I couldn't tell whether someone was cheating on their spouse just from looking at them, although I might be able to spot a hair on their collar. (misleading truth)"

"What about your ability to shapeshift?" he prompts.