Chapter 85: Vesper 2

Chapter 85: Chapter 85: Vesper 2

"They drew their sidearms," she said, her voice light and casual. "In my line of work, anyone holding iron between me and the exit is a target."

"Did you enjoy it?"

The question dropped so casually that Vesper paused mid-breath. Her violet eyes locked onto his, searching his face for disgust, moral outrage, or pity. She found none of them, only the calm, analytical gaze of a surgeon probing a wound.

"Sometimes," she answered, her tone dipping low. "When the contract is difficult. When someone thinks their money or their rank makes them untouchable, and they realize a six-inch needle doesn’t care about their bank account. That part is... satisfying."

"And the ones who weren’t untouchable?" Felix pressed. "The ones who were just working an ordinary shift?"

Silence settled over the small chamber, thick and suffocating under the low hum of the dampeners. Vesper looked down at her bare fingers, slowly turning them over.

"I don’t remember their faces," she said.

"That’s a lie."

Her head snapped up, real irritation flashing across her brow. "Excuse me?"

"You have a top-tier metal affinity," Felix said, leaning forward until his forearms rested on his knees. "Your perception with conductive metals requires millimeter precision across hundreds of yards. You can’t afford a bad memory. You remember every heartbeat, every breath, and every drop of blood that hit the floor when you pulled those pins."

Vesper stared at him. The teasing lilt in her voice vanished completely, replaced by a cold, defensive wall. "Then why ask if you already think you know?"

"Because I want to know if you’re proud of it, or if you’re just hiding behind the contract because thinking about it makes you feel like the monster the Association says you are."

A sharp tension filled the room. Vesper’s shoulders went rigid. For a second, the steel plating on the back wall gave a faint, microscopic shudder: a reflex instantly crushed by the dampening field.

"You think you’re clever, Valerius," she spat softly. "You think because you fixed Seraphina Veyr and coaxed that little dark-element girl into playing nice that you can crack open an assassin’s head and fix the gears. But I’m not broken. I was built for this. I took money, I cleared names, and I survived. The Association does the exact same thing behind closed doors, they just call it ’national defense.’"

"The Association is full of arrogant bastards and corrupt politicians," Felix agreed without missing a beat. "Half the directors belong in cells right next to yours."

Vesper blinked, caught off guard by the blunt agreement. "...Then why the hell are you working for them?"

"I don’t work for the directors," Felix said, his voice dropping into something hard, unyielding, and heavy as granite. "I work for the people who have to wake up every morning wondering if an S-rank gate is going to tear open above their homes. The system is rotten in places, sure. But without it, the walls fall. Monsters flood the streets. And humanity burns in a week."

He stood up, towering over the small steel chair.

"You killed people who were holding those walls together, Vesper. Not because you believed in a cause, and not because you had a vision. You did it for numbers on a screen and the cheap thrill of proving you were sharper than everyone else."

He took a step toward the bunk. Vesper didn’t back away, but her fingers tightened into the rough fabric of her gray prison trousers.

"Do you think what you did was right?" Felix asked quietly.

She met his eyes, her jaw clenched tight. "No."

The answer came out sharp, unvarnished, and immediate.

Felix didn’t blink. "Then why did you do it?"

"Because it was the only thing I was ever good at," she whispered, the words slipping out before her defenses could catch them.

Dead silence fell over the cell.

Felix looked at her for five long seconds. He cataloged the tension in her hands, the rapid pulse fluttering at her throat, and the faint, bitter crease between her brows. It wasn’t redemption. It wasn’t an apology. But it was raw and honest.

Felix turned toward the exit and tapped his clearance card against the interior release sensor.

CLUNK.

The heavy deadbolts ground open.

"Leaving already?" Vesper asked. Her voice had regained some composure, but the mocking edge was gone, replaced by a strange, hollow uncertainty. "What’s the verdict, Doctor? Am I beyond saving?"

Felix paused at the threshold, glancing back over his shoulder.

"You’re a murderer," he said flatly. "You’re arrogant, you’re dangerous, and you have enough blood on your hands to fill this entire sector."

Vesper gave a bitter, humorless twitch of her lips. "Expected as much."

"But," Felix continued, cutting through her cynicism, "you know what you did was wrong. That means whatever is broken inside you isn’t dead yet."

Her eyes widened slightly.

"I’ll be back tomorrow," Felix told her, stepping out into the reinforced corridor. "Spend the next twenty-four hours thinking about who you want to be when those dampeners eventually come off. Because if you try to play games with me next time, I’ll sign the core-severance papers myself."

The heavy titanium hatch swung shut between them.

SLAM.

HISS.

Felix stood in the cold hallway, letting out a slow, measured breath as the armed guards snapped back into formation around him.

He ran the conversation through his mind once more. No grand revelations. Just a single, jagged crack in an otherwise flawless veneer of ice and steel.

A faint smirk touched Felix’s lips as he adjusted his coat collar.

"Interesting," he murmured under his breath, turning toward the elevator. "Very interesting."

Inside the sealed darkness of the cell, Vesper remained frozen on the edge of the mattress.

She stared at the blank steel door, her chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven breaths. Her hands, still gripped tightly in her lap, were trembling.

She wasn’t planning an escape route. She was wondering what she was going to say to him tomorrow.

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