Chapter 75: The Choice She Never Wanted

The coffee shop was half-empty, the kind of place people passed without remembering. Dim lights. Quiet tables. No loud music. No crowd of hunters showing off rank badges.

Kassia sat near the corner window with both hands wrapped around a cup she had barely touched.

She kept checking the entrance.

Adrian was late by only a few minutes, but every second stretched thin. The longer she waited, the more her thoughts circled the same uneasy question.

Why meet off-site? Why not through official channels? Why did his voice on the call sound like a man standing on the edge of something irreversible?

When the door finally opened, she almost failed to recognize him.

He wore a long coat and a dark face mask that covered most of his features. His posture was stiff, eyes moving once across the room before locking onto her table.

He came straight over, sat opposite her, and only then lowered the mask enough for her to confirm it was him.

"Dr. Adrian?" Kassia asked under her breath.

He nodded once.

"Keep your voice low."

Kassia did not waste time with polite greetings.

"Why did you ask me to come here?"

Adrian straightened in his seat. For a moment he looked like a man forcing himself through a door he could no longer close.

"Because I am going to show you something," he said. "Something not everyone knows about Apex Guild."

He took out a compact projection device and set it on the table between them.

A privacy field hummed faintly to life, muting their voices from nearby seats. Then the first video appeared.

Kassia’s breath caught.

On the screen, hunters in restraints were dragged through sealed corridors. Research rooms glowed under cold light. Bodies on examination tables.

Extraction machines clamped over arms and chests. Files flashed next transfer logs, off-registry cargo routes, medical reports stamped with private clearance codes.

Names blacked out. Dates stretching back years.

Illegal containment.

Forced experiments.

Hunters who entered Apex projects and never returned to public record.

One clip showed a man screaming as light was pulled out of his body in thin violent strands. Another showed a sealed chamber labeled only with a number.

Then came still images of vanished hunter IDs, financial transfers routed through private shells, and internal notes written in language too careful to be innocent.

Kassia’s hand flew to her mouth.

"This... this can’t be real."

Adrian’s voice stayed flat.

"It is."

She stared at him, shock tightening every line of her face.

"Then why show this to me instead of going to the police? Or WHA? Or the government?"

"I will," Adrian said. "I am going to leak this to the public and the authorities. But I am waiting for the right moment.

If I release it too early, they bury it. If I release it incomplete, Leonard walks free. Evidence has to survive the first wave of denial."

Kassia’s pulse hammered in her ears.

"And why me?"

Adrian looked at her directly.

"Because their next primary test subject is you."

The words hit harder than any dungeon blow.

"My awakening..." she whispered.

"Yes. Your power." Adrian tapped another file open. Graphs and cellular scans filled the projection. Regeneration curves.

Tissue rebuild rates. Compatibility markers that climbed far outside normal healer ranges.

"You still do not understand what you awakened. Your regeneration is not normal recovery magic.

It rebuilds damaged tissue at a rate never cleanly recorded in Earth’s hunter history. In stable conditions, it approaches functional immortality."

Kassia’s fingers went cold around her cup.

Immortality.

She had thought she awakened a strong healer trait. Something useful. Something that would help her earn money and protect the people she loved.

A gift she could shape into a better life.

Not this.

Not a reason for men in sealed rooms to look at her body like raw material.

"Leonard Valen wants your regeneration," Adrian continued. "He has already taken power from multiple hunters through methods no public guild would survive if exposed.

Most people never learn those victims existed. He does not want a partner. He wants a resource he can harvest."

Kassia shook her head slowly, as if denial could rewrite the files still glowing between them.

"Why are you telling me this? Why help me?"

Adrian’s expression finally cracked.

"Because I also lost my daughter to him."

The coffee shop noise seemed to fall away.

"I joined his secret program to stay close," Adrian said. "I act as if I am helping him.

In truth, I have been collecting proof piece by piece. When I have enough, I will do what needs to be done.

But if you walk back into their hands now, you will not leave as yourself."

Kassia’s throat tightened.

"So what happens if I stay?"

Adrian did not soften the answer.

"You die in stages. First through tests. Then through extraction. And anyone connected to you gets dragged in with you."

Daemon’s face flashed through her mind at once.

His tired smile after low-rank gates.

The bruises he tried to hide.

The cheap flowers by the window.

The way he still talked about their future like it was something they could build with ordinary effort.

He was already struggling just to survive as an E-Rank hunter.

If Apex learned how important he was to her...

They would use him.

Break him.

Or kill him to remove hesitation from her body.

The thought made her stomach twist.

Kassia’s voice came out thin.

"What do I do next?"

Adrian leaned in.

"If you have relatives, a partner, anyone close cut those relationships immediately. Leave this city. Disappear before they finalize containment.

Once they cannot find you easily, they will shift focus and search for another candidate. That window of time is when I release the evidence to the public and the government."

Cut the relationship.

Leave.

Disappear.

Each word landed like a blade.

Kassia sat frozen as the projection light painted pale color across her hands. In her mind, one sentence repeated without mercy.

How can I break up with Daemon?

He was not a temporary comfort.

He was the person she wanted to marry.

The person she wanted children with.

The person she had been silently building this entire future for.

She had joined Apex for him.

She had hidden her awakening for him.

She had imagined their anniversary as the day everything finally turned bright.

And now the only way to keep him alive was to tear that future apart with her own hands.

Her lips parted, but no solid answer came. The cup in front of her had gone cold.

Outside the coffee shop window, ordinary people walked through ordinary evening light, unaware that across one quiet table, a woman was being asked to destroy the happiest part of her life in order to save it.

Adrian watched her in silence, waiting.

Kassia could not look at him anymore.

All she could see was Daemon’s face and the unbearable shape of the goodbye she had never wanted to learn how to say.