Jake felt his heart clench as he heard the Spartan's chilling proclamation, but before long he shot back unswervingly,
"You're lying."
Their numbers had indeed not changed. Jake counted exactly as many Aetheric and Spiritual signatures as before. However, it was one thing to detect exactly the same number of auras and quite another to see for himself who they belonged to.
The ones Jake had crushed beyond hope... He couldn't find them anywhere close by. Especially those who had been obliterated by his Eye Laser Beam, which affected both the physical and psychic planes. Even digitized, it was impossible to recover from such injuries so quickly without assistance.