There is a long, long pause. When River talks again, her tone is carefully respectful, yet oddly unsure. Perhaps Neil may recognize it as the voice of someone a little intimidated to speak to someone else they see as a professional superior.

"How certain are you that death will cleanse any hypothetical corruption? A lot of my job is dealing in cases where it really, truly doesn't. Bad, hard deaths that leave a soul scarred, curses that chase people away from the Sunless Lands, all that. We might be stuck here, but the island is concentrating harm, keeping it here. What gets let out...it doesn't have elsewhere to go."