Chapter 43: The Price of Interference

Chapter 43: Chapter 43: The Price of Interference

Seraphina barely registered where she was as Felix guided her toward the bed, still clinging to his coat like letting go would make him disappear, her shoulders shaking with every sob.

He didn’t say anything at first. He just let her cry.

A few minutes in, her breathing finally started to slow, and she lifted her tear-streaked face toward him. "Felix... I... I don’t want to..."

"Shh." His voice stayed gentle. "It’s okay. I understand."

She shook her head anyway, desperate. "I hurt... them. I didn’t mean to — I even killed some of them, Felix. I never wanted—"

"Seraphina." His voice went firm enough that she flinched, eyes snapping up to his. "No one died."

She just stared at him.

"Everyone’s alive. Everyone who got hurt has already been treated, I made sure of it myself." Her lips parted. "You didn’t kill a single person."

She held his gaze for a long moment, the trembling gradually easing out of her. "Okay,"

She whispered, and leaned back into him. Within minutes exhaustion took over completely, her breathing going slow and even.

He waited until he was certain she was fully asleep before easing her down onto the bed and pulling the blanket over her, looking down at her face for a moment.

"Just sleep," he murmured. Then, quieter, harder: "Leave the rest to me."

He turned and walked out. There was a meeting waiting for him, and answers he had every intention of getting.

---

**The Meeting**

The conference hall was unusually quiet. Three directors sat across the long table: Elena Voss at the center, Director Marcus Halden of Hero Operations to her right, Director Adrian Vale of Administration and Security to her left. Senior staff stood behind them, and Dr. Hart sat further down the table beside Gideon.

The room’s whole atmosphere shifted the second the doors opened. Felix walked in with a cold level expression. He took the chair at the opposite end and sat without a word.

Nobody spoke for several seconds until Elena finally broke it. "Felix."

"Director." Polite. Far too polite. She caught Gideon’s eye briefly, she’d already warned the other two not to do this, and they’d ignored her anyway.

Marcus leaned back. "Let’s keep this professional."

"I intend to." Felix set both hands flat on the table. "Let’s start with my contract."

Nobody answered right away.

"Seraphina and Liora were placed under my exclusive therapeutic jurisdiction. Every decision touching their therapy: schedule, environment, outside stimuli was supposed to go through me first." His eyes moved across all three of them. "While I was gone, Seraphina got pulled off my team and handed to another unit without a word to me."

Marcus started to speak. Felix raised a finger. "I’m not finished." Silence returned.

"You confiscated the books I gave Seraphina." His gaze moved to Adrian. "You confiscated the console I gave Liora." Then back to Elena. "And nobody told me either had happened."

Elena sighed. "Felix, the circumstances around Vesper’s escape—"

"Aren’t my problem," he cut in, calm enough that the interruption landed harder than if he’d raised his voice. "Vesper didn’t get out because I gave Liora a gaming console. She got out because your security system had a hole in it, and she spent fourteen months finding it and using it." He leaned forward. "Instead of owning that, you confiscated personal items from two patients and let it look like the objects were somehow the problem."

Adrian’s jaw tightened. "That’s an assumption."

"It’s an observation." Felix reached into his coat and set a document on the table, tapping it once. "My contract. You breached it."

"The contract also grants the Association emergency authority when national security’s involved," Marcus said.

"Does it?" Marcus hesitated, and Felix’s mouth curved faintly. "Show me the clause. Which one gives you authority to override my jurisdiction because a different prisoner escaped?"

No answer.

"That’s what I thought." Felix sat back.

Evelyn watched him closely from her seat, saying nothing. She’d seen him angry before. This wasn’t that: he wasn’t shouting, wasn’t threatening anyone. He was calculating, and that was worse.

---

Elena spoke again. "The decision on Seraphina came from a belief that she needed exposure to other heroes. Her dependency on you had become a real concern."

"You call it dependency," Felix said. "I call it therapeutic progress." She didn’t respond.

"Seven years, she didn’t speak to anyone. Refused almost every interaction there was. Then she started speaking to me." He glanced at Evelyn. "She started running missions with the team." Back to Elena. "She started functioning like a person again." His fingers tightened slowly against the table. "And the moment she actually started trusting someone, you took that person away from her."

Gideon’s eyes dropped. He already knew exactly where this was headed.

"And then someone in that plaza used the one set of words guaranteed to reopen her trauma."

"You can’t say the Association intentionally triggered her," Marcus said.

"I didn’t say intentionally. I said you built the conditions for it, and the result was completely predictable." He looked between them. "You knew she’d killed thirty-seven people during her original breakdown. You knew nothing at all about what actually caused it. And you still put her in a room of strangers and let those strangers dig straight into her past." Elena’s eyes closed briefly. "You gambled with a Tier 1 patient’s stability, and you lost."

---

"We couldn’t let a prisoner become permanently dependent on one hero," Adrian said.

"Then you talk to her therapist about gradual exposure. You don’t just yank the anchor and hope for the best."

"I’m not questioning your expertise."

"You just did." Adrian went quiet, and Felix stood, and somehow the whole room felt smaller for it. "I’m an Ultra III healer. There are three living people with that proficiency. I’m also one of the few who can hold the frontline in a real fight." No arrogance in any of it, just fact, laid flat on the table. "I don’t need the Association. My family doesn’t need the Association. I don’t need the salary." His eyes went colder. "I joined because I wanted to fight inside rifts. Because I enjoy it."

Everyone at that table already knew the Valerius name could buy him a life the Association couldn’t touch.

Everyone also knew what his healing alone was worth: an Ultra III healer wasn’t an employee, he was a strategic asset at the national level, and if he walked, they lost one of the most valuable healers alive.

If he went public with exactly how his patients had been mishandled, the fallout would go well past this room.

"You know what my healing is worth," Felix said to Elena.

"I do."

"Then you know I could name almost any price for emergency treatment, and people would still pay it." He sat back down, arms folding. "So let’s stop pretending this is about money. This is about authority."

---

"Felix, I warned them," Elena said.

Marcus glanced at her. "Elena—"

"No." Her voice hardened. "I told both of you separately that pulling Seraphina off Felix’s team without preparing her first was dangerous."

"And we decided operational necessity outweighed that concern," Adrian said.

Felix’s mouth curved without any warmth in it. "Operational necessity. That’s what we’re calling it." Nobody answered. "You made a call on my patients without consulting me. You confiscated things I personally brought into their treatment. And now you’re trying to justify all of it after the fact, once the consequences already landed."

A long silence sat in the room before he spoke again. "So I’ll make it simple. How do you want to move forward from here?"

Marcus and Adrian traded a look. Elena said nothing. Gideon watched all three of them carefully.

"Because I’m not staying under a contract you can ignore whenever it’s convenient," Felix said, voice still perfectly level. "Either my jurisdiction gets respected from here on, or we rewrite the whole arrangement."

"What exactly are you asking for?" Marcus said.

"I’m asking you to decide." Felix stood. "Do you want me responsible for these patients or not? Because if the answer’s yes, you stay out of my therapy entirely. And if the answer’s no—" he turned toward the door "—then end the contract."

Total silence. He stopped in the doorway without turning around.

He glanced back once. "You either trust my judgment, or you don’t."

Then he walked out, and the door closed behind him.

Nobody moved for a while. Elena finally exhaled. "I told you this was a bad idea."

Marcus just stared at the closed door. Adrian said nothing at all. Gideon leaned back in his chair, because everyone in that room had just learned the same thing at the same time.

They hadn’t been negotiating with an ordinary A-rank hero. They’d just found out exactly how much weight an Ultra proficient healer could throw around once he actually decided to use it.

And now the Association had to decide whether it was willing to hand that authority back or risk losing him for good.