Alfred's chest tightened as she spoke. It had been easy to put off worrying about whatever the curse had done to him when he had no symptoms, but if what she was saying was correct, the fact that he had no symptoms was just a sinister facet of this particular curse: that he might never know what it was doing, until it was too late. He would, in essence, be walking around with a death sentence, working on borrowed time — and he wouldn't even know how much time he had until it was over.

There had to be more information she could give him. He wanted to ask so many questions. How did they know that any of it had been attached to him at all? What sorts of actions were likely to be perceived as threatening by a curse that had outlasted the civilization that built it? What did this actually mean for him, practically speaking? But she had said the curse was old, and no one had the answers — so was it even worth the breath the ask?

It took him a second to respond to her request. His brain was still working hard to catch up to this new reality and try to come to terms with it, or at least come to terms with it enough to go on functioning in the near future. After a difficult pause, he stretched his hands out on the table towards her, palms up. "I think it was both," he said very quietly.