The room reeked of rust and antiseptic.
She lay half-conscious, her wrists pinned behind the cold metal of the chair, soaked in sweat and silence. The mother of Kirion's daughter—known in official logs only as Subject Virelia—had once been a ghost, a phantom assassin whispered about in government halls. But now, she was just a broken silhouette beneath a flickering bulb.
Her captors weren't the rebels this time. They were her own employers. The very same government she'd once served with unwavering precision.
The chair creaked beneath her weight as the man across from her adjusted his uniform, crisp and dark like his tone.
"You had your chance, Virelia," he said. "You were sent to infiltrate the resistance. Reacquire the asset. End the traitor, Kirion. But instead—" he slammed a folder on the table—"you failed. Worse, you hesitated."
Her lip was cracked, her breath shallow. But her eyes, though bloodshot, remained locked on his.
"I retrieved the girl," she whispered. "That was the objective."
"The objective," the officer repeated mockingly, "was full elimination. You formed attachments. You let your old life cloud your judgment."
The mention of her past struck like a match against old gasoline.
"I did my job," she said flatly. "You wanted her off the grid. I put her behind twenty feet of concrete and blackout firewalls. You wanted Kirion wounded—he's half-blind and buried in resistance fallout. You're welcome."
"You were seen protecting her," he snapped. "You disarmed agents. You delayed the kill order. You even shielded her during the transfer."
Virelia looked away. For a brief moment, the illusion cracked. She hadn't been a mother in years, not truly. But in that one moment—when her daughter had clutched her wrist in fear and whispered, "Why?"—she had felt it all return. Not love, not exactly. But the unbearable weight of what she had once chosen to leave behind.
That weight never left. It clawed at her, even now.
A door hissed open. Another figure entered. Taller, older, cloaked in medals and menace. The head of covert ops himself—General Salin.
"Leave us," Salin commanded. The officer obeyed, quickly.
Salin approached slowly, pulling a small chair to face her. "Virelia," he said calmly. "I don't care about your guilt. I don't care about your tears. What I care about is the truth."
She narrowed her eyes. "What truth?"
Salin leaned in. "What does Kirion know? What is he planning? And most importantly… is the girl compromised?"
Virelia hesitated.
The truth, like so many things in her life, had sharp edges.
She could lie. Say Kirion was fractured. Say the girl was broken and obedient. But none of that would buy her freedom. Not anymore.
So she told him the partial truth.
"She's smarter than either of us imagined," she said. "And Kirion's not the threat anymore. She is. She'll burn every firewall, unravel every lie you've sewn. And if he dies, she'll carry the revolution without him."
Salin studied her in silence.
Then, quietly, he stood. "Then we'll need to break her, too."
As he left, Virelia felt her stomach twist. Not with fear, but with a dreadful certainty: she had become the bridge between two worlds. But bridges, by nature, were always the first to fall in war.