Chapter 88: Vesper 4

Chapter 88: Chapter 88: Vesper 4

Saturday morning at Acheron Deep was quiet.

Felix was never scheduled to run sessions on weekends. He usually spent Saturdays resting in Valemont, but today he came anyway.

Two meetings in, he still had no idea what to do with Vesper Cruz. He hadn’t seen enough proof that she could be rehabilitated, and keeping her on his docket meant putting his name on a killer.

He had walked into the facility determined to reach a final verdict. If she showed no real conscience today, he would sign the paperwork and walk away.

CLUNK. HISSSS.

The vault door rolled open.

Vesper sat perched on the edge of her cot, her back straight and her hands resting loosely in her lap.

She looked up as he crossed the threshold. A small, calm smile touched her lips, without any of the teasing mockery or sarcasm from before.

"Good morning, Felix."

"Morning," he replied.

He dragged the metal chair over.

SKRRR

And then sat down three paces away, resting his hands on the armrests.

He studied her face, thinking back to what she had said yesterday: I was built for this. He wondered whether that had ever been an actual boast, or just the only excuse she had for surviving an ugly world he had never known.

But understanding how she grew up didn’t wipe away the bodies she had left behind, and he wasn’t going to sugarcoat reality.

"You’re here on a Saturday," she noted, tilting her head. "I didn’t think the Association paid you overtime."

"They don’t," Felix said. "I came because I need to make up my mind today."

"Ah. Final judgment." Her voice stayed even, but her fingers tightened slightly against her knees. "You look tired, Doctor."

"Long week."

"Dealing with me, or saving the world again?"

"A bit of both," Felix said, leaning back. "Though right now, you’re the one holding up my weekend."

Vesper let out a soft breath that was almost a chuckle. "I’m honored. You’re losing sleep over my soul."

"Don’t flatter yourself. I’m losing sleep over my paperwork. If I sign off on you and you go back to sticking needles into people’s skulls, that’s my signature on the report."

"Then don’t sign it," she said, watching him closely. "Cut my core, ship me to the federal block, and enjoy your Sunday pancakes. It’s the clean choice."

"The clean choice is usually the lazy one," Felix replied evenly. "I don’t mind putting a monster down, Vesper. But I like to be sure it’s actually a monster first."

She held his gaze for a second, then looked away, tapping one finger against her knee. "And two days weren’t enough to figure that out?"

"Not quite. You talk a lot, but most of it is armor. You give me what you think an assassin is supposed to say."

"Maybe that’s all there is."

"Maybe," Felix agreed. "Or maybe you just don’t know how to talk without a contract between your teeth. That’s what today is for."

She looked back at him, her lips curving into a dry, faintly curious smirk. "Back for more moral tests, then?"

"A few," Felix said. "Let’s change the scenario. Say you’ve already accepted a contract. You break into the target’s home. He’s sitting at the dining table with his daughter, around eight years old. Your client never mentioned a kid. She’s not on the contract, and she has no idea who you are."

Her expression went totally flat.

"The man sees you and reaches for a gun under the table," Felix continued. "You have a clear shot with a needle, but the little girl is standing right behind his chair. If you fire now, there’s a serious chance the spike passes through him and hits her too."

He leaned forward. "What do you do?"

"Find another angle," she said immediately.

"There’s no time. He’s drawing the gun."

"Disarm him, then."

"There’s no guarantee that works. He might shoot you."

"I don’t need a guarantee."

"Suppose your disarm fails, and he ends up killing both of you."

Her jaw locked tight. "Then I fail."

"Would you still go out of your way to keep from hurting the kid?"

"Yes."

The answer slipped out raw and instant, with zero hesitation.

The cell fell into dead silence. Vesper caught herself, her eyes hardening as she realized she had answered from the gut without thinking.

"Don’t look so pleased with yourself," she snapped, crossing her arms.

"I don’t look pleased."

"You have the most irritating face on the continent, Doctor."

"That has nothing to do with the question."

She glared at the wall.

Felix kept his face calm, but inside, he noted the shift. When the scenario was about an abstract stranger or an adult official, she talked like a cold machine.

But the moment a child stood in the crossfire, her very first instinct was to shield her, even if it meant risking her own neck.

That didn’t mean she was suddenly an angel, but it proved one crucial thing: she wasn’t completely dead inside. There was a huge difference between not caring about targets and believing human life had zero value, and she had spent years pretending those two things were the exact same thing.

"One more," Felix said.

She groaned softly. "How many of these dumb tests do you have?"

"Plenty."

"I should have pretended to be asleep when the door opened."

"Try that next time."

"Maybe I will." She looked back at him. "Go on. Hit me."

"You’re running a mission with a crew," Felix said. "Everything goes smooth until one of your partners makes a careless mistake. The alarm trips, guards flood the halls, and the plan falls apart. Your boss radios in and orders you to ditch him and run. If you stop to help, you’ll both probably get caught. If you leave him behind, you get out clean."

"Then I leave," she said flatly.

"Without helping him?"

"If helping him gets me killed, yes."

"Even if he’s the veteran who kept you alive during your first year in the business?"

Something flickered behind her violet eyes.

Barely visible, but there. "Doesn’t change the math."

"What if he took a bullet for you yesterday?"

"Still doesn’t change the math."

"What if he was the only person in the entire syndicate who ever treated you like an actual human being?"

Her fingers dug hard into the cloth of her pants.

"You’re getting ridiculous now."

"Answer the question, Vesper."

"I’d leave," she insisted, her voice tight.

"Would you regret it?"

Her lips parted to fire back a sarcastic brush-off, but the words died on her tongue. Felix waited. Her gaze slowly dropped to the floor between their boots.

"I don’t know," she murmured.

It was quiet, raw, and completely genuine.

Felix didn’t push it further. "Alright."

She snapped her head up, surprised. "That’s it?"

"That’s it."

She stared at him, dumbfounded. Then, a short, genuine laugh slipped out of her mouth: soft, tired, and surprised.

"You really are a weird guy," she said, shaking her head.

The dampeners hummed quietly around them. For a moment, neither of them said anything.

"What about you, then?" she asked, leaning her head back against the wall.

"What about me?"

"You. The famous healer who acts like everyone in handcuffs deserves a chance to turn their life around."

"I never said everyone deserves a second chance," Felix replied evenly.

"You sure act like it."

"I act like people deserve a shot when there’s reason to believe they can actually change."

She looked at him, her eyes calculating. "Say a hunter on your team is bleeding out. You can save him, but if you stop to patch him up, you have to abandon an objective that could save hundreds of civilians. What do you do?"

Felix said, leaning back. "If stopping to heal him guarantees that hundreds of innocent people die, I won’t pretend his single life outweighs everyone else. But I also won’t just throw him away if there’s a third option."

"And if there is no third option? If it’s strictly him or them?"

"Then I make the call I can live with."

"Even if it means letting your own friend die?"

"Yes."

The blunt answer caught her completely off guard. She blinked, searching his face.

"I’m a healer, Vesper," Felix said, his tone heavy and grounded. "My job is keeping people breathing, but that doesn’t mean I can play god. I can’t save everyone, and I don’t get to turn off my brain just because a situation turns ugly. Sometimes people die right in front of me. Sometimes I have to pick where my hands can actually make a difference. I hate it every single time, but pretending hard choices don’t exist won’t make them go away."

Vesper watched him with a different kind of focus now. "You’ve killed people too."

"Yes,"

"Mostly. Criminals, raiders, rogue awakeners."

"Did you enjoy it?"

Felix took a second to consider it honestly.

"Sometimes I enjoyed the thrill of the brawl, but enjoying a fight isn’t the same as enjoying someone’s death."

Silence fell over the room again.

"I don’t need to feel like a saint every time I make a choice," Felix added. "I just need to know why I made it, and take full responsibility for what happens next. That’s all I’m asking from you."

Vesper looked away, staring down at her bare feet. "You’re asking an awful lot from someone who spent her whole life just doing what she was told."

"Am I?"

"Do you think changing who you are is easy?"

"No. It’s miserable."

"Then what makes you think I can even do it?"

"Because you already know how to make smart choices," Felix said plainly.

Her brow furrowed.

"Think about it," Felix continued. "You spent years figuring out how to sneak past security, read escape routes, spot traps, and survive when a job went sideways. You don’t lack a brain. You can think for yourself just fine. You’ve just spent your whole life using those brains to serve scumbags who would have replaced you the second you slipped up."

Her violet eyes went wide, frozen on him.

"That doesn’t excuse the people you murdered," Felix said firmly. "It just means you aren’t an empty robot. You’re capable of choosing a different path."

For once, she had no snappy comeback. She stared at him, looking like someone searching for the hidden catch in a contract.

Slowly, her usual smirk returned, though it was much softer this time. "Careful, Doctor. Keep talking like that and I might start thinking you actually care about me."

"I care that you have a working brain. What you do with it is on you."

"Way less romantic."

"My heart is broken," Felix said dryly.

She let out a quiet chuckle. Then the smile faded, her face settling into something curious and quiet.

"Can I ask you something real?" she asked.

"Shoot."

"Why did you become a hero?"

Felix tilted his head.

"A healer, specifically," she pressed, her eyes flicking down to his hands. "Why risk your life keeping other people alive when you could have had an easy gig? You can clearly scrap, I know how hard you hit. You could have registered as a front-line combatant, made a pile of cash, lived in a penthouse, and done whatever you wanted. Why take the one job where your entire life revolves around making sure other people don’t bleed out?"

Felix sat quietly for a moment, then gave a simple shrug.

"Because I wanted to help people."

Vesper stared at him. She waited for the punchline. When none came.

"Oh, come on! That is awful!"

"What’s wrong with it?"

"That’s your whole reason?" she laughed, shaking her head. "No secret revenge? No tragic backstory where someone died in your arms and made you swear an oath?"

"Sorry to let you down," Felix said, smiling faintly.

She kept chuckling, shaking her head in pure disbelief. "You really are unbelievable."

Felix let her laugh run its course. Once she quieted down, he leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.

"Alright. My turn," he said. "Why did you become an assassin?"

The smile wiped off her face like cold water on chalk.

Vesper went completely rigid. She looked at him for a long, heavy moment, her eyes turning unreadable. Slowly, she leaned her head back against the cold steel plate behind her bed.

"Funny you should ask," she said, her voice dropping into a distant, quiet rhythm as she stared up at the dim ceiling lights.

"When I was eight years old... I actually wanted to be a hero."

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