With as much speed as he'd used to get to his feet, his hand snapped up to grab Gabe by the wrist before those fingers could touch his cheek. Now even that eyebrow fell, returning his face to being completely cold. The kid was still trying to get inside his head, and it made him worry the device might not hold out for long. He'd built it for a passive effect, not an emotional assault. A targeted attack could possibly overpower it, and he wasn't going to risk it.

"You drove her to it," he said, cold as ever. "Is that what you wanted from me? From my team? Push us into slitting our wrists?"

It wasn't his actual theory. It had to be something more complex than that, he could see that much. If the goal were merely their deaths, why wait so long? The problem was pinpointing exactly when Gabe entered their lives, his false memories making it hard to find a hard point in time. Before he'd started working on the project, but how long before? What purpose could Gabe have other than their deaths? Even if he were spying, any information he'd gathered in the first day or two would have been enough. He'd had as much access to the lab as anyone else. So what was his end game?