Chilton chewed on the interior of his cheek, calculating what little leverage he might retain -- but he wasn't sure when Jack was from, and a miscalculation would gnash against his own angles. Therein rest the complexity with Jack Crawford: he was a bold, direct man and his sheer focus willed the conversation to his terms. It was that authority that Chilton found himself in glowing awe of. A marbled sense of power.

So he played it straight. No answers withheld, no mind games enacted -- not this round, anyway. Jack had a gun full of persuasion, whether he knew its weight with Chilton or not.

"It's an effect of the transdimensional dislocation -- spacetime, I'd wager. Not all of us are pulled from the same universe, the same place," he said before a quiet, soft pause. His inclined head couched two widened eyes, the pair watching Jack. "And not all of us are from the same. Time. I had left Baltimore just when Abel Gideon had escaped my hospital."