WARNING: DARK AND GORE AHEAD!
...
"It’s not like that." Ava avoided the woman’s gaze, as if it was seeing right through her.
"Then?"
"I worked for them. I did what they wanted me to do."
"I wondered quite a bit about why you would become an officer only after a few months of training. Then Matthew refused to give me your file."
"Matthew refused?"
"What? Did you really expect the man to give you up?" Baba snorted. "We argued. He was angry and refused to talk to me for a few days. I was lucky, I took care of him since he was young."
"So what do you really want to know?"
"Most of the things here on the file are redacted."
"Trillium wanted it that way. The rest of the information is technically confidential."
Baba nodded. "So what did you do for them?"
"I said, I did everything that they ordered me to do." Ava said with a sigh.
"Including killing shifters and witches?"
"Yes," she pursed her lips.
"First month after you were deployed as an agent... two other agent that were not on your unit committed suicide."
"That’s— normal." Ava said.
"Why?"
"I don’t know? Maybe they couldn’t take it."
"Couldn’t take what?"
"The gore... the killings. Look Baba, I know you have lived a long life. You must have seen the horrors in this world. Shifters and witches and humans and other kinds out there do some... dark things."
"I know. Please don’t think that I am interrogating you. I am just hoping to find out why until now... you couldn’t do the candle test. I mean... you are powerful. More powerful than most priestesses in the world. But you couldn’t really pass the candle test. You couldn’t... maintain the fire for more than a minute."
"I know,"Ava sighed. She couldn’t do it. No matter how much she tried to. She could easily create a fire and kill people but she couldn’t maintain the mild fire of that candle for more than a minute.
That sounded absurd.
But it was a fact.
"So, Trillium?"
"I don’t know if I’m allowed to disclose— "
"They betrayed you Ava."
True. They betrayed her. But... talking about the past meant exposing herself and her own past.
"The reason why you seem calm even after what Trillium did to you. Is it because of what happened this past year?" Baba asked. "They have something on you, right?"
"Trillium has something on everyone."
"I know."
"When I was an agent, they sent me to Sierra Leone for a cult case. Shifters."
"I saw that. However, almost eighty percent of that file had been redacted."
"It’s because of what happened."
"Tell me about it."
Ava pursed her lips. She didn’t want to say it. "Do I really have to tell you everything?"
"If you can. Of course, I am not forcing you to do so."
Ava sighed. "I spent two months on training and I was really angry. It was just months after Gabriella’s death."
"Go on."
"In Sierra Leone... there was this cult of shifters who believed in... some devil. They thought sacrificing virgins and pregnant women was the right way to go."
"And?"
"Well... we observed and then solved the case in a week."
"You solved the case in a week..." Baba nodded. She elegantly poured some tea for herself and more tea for Ava. "How?"
"I— I killed them all."
"Thirteen people. All men. Shifters."
Ava nodded. "Fifteen."
"Fifteen?"
"They didn’t include the... underage boys. Two of them. One was seventeen the other sixteen. Brothers."
"Why?"
"We— rather— I walked into them as they tried to remove a baby from the pregnant woman’s belly. The others were... trying to remove a young girl’s clothes and I... snapped."
"They were trying to remove a baby?"
"Using a kitchen knife."
Baba pursed her lips and stared at her. Unable to maintain eye contact, Ava lowered her eyes towards her tea. Then she downed it without saying another word.
"Do you regret your actions Ava?"
"No." Ava answered almost immediately. She didn’t even bat an eyelid when she added, "If given the chance... I would do it again."
"It must have been a brutal scene. What did you feel when you killed them?"
"I— I couldn’t remember most of it. It was too sudden. Something came over me and... I just lost it." Would it be too bad for her if she told her that she liked killing those people?
Those bastards had already killed eleven women when Ava got there. All of them were sacrificed in a ritual to summon some demon. They were raped and dismembered and had been cannibalized! Those people... the people in that place deserve what she did to them.
"So, you think killing them was... justice?"
"I don’t care about justice Baba. I don’t give a fuck about that notion. Those people were doing the wrong thing. I just wanted to stop them, the way I saw fit."
"So the motivation was— "
"Look... they are killing mothers. Mothers with kids. How many kids do you think lose their mothers every year just because of criminals? Those people killed eleven women. Six of them were mothers. They had kids and husbands and families. And those monsters just took their lives."
Baba sighed.
"I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you upset."
"I’m not. Samuel told me it was... it was part of the job."
"Killing shifters?"
"And witches... yes. Killing is part of the job."
"To my understanding... Trillium rewarded you for doing that and promoted you as an officer?"
"A few months after that. Yes. I was promoted as an officer."
"Since then... you have been killing for them?"
"I didn’t kill innocents." Ava said. She leaned back and smiled. "It was just part of my job."
"So, they made you their killer."
"That— "
"Since then all the cases that you handled usually involved mothers and women being brutalized. And you became their... bounty hunter."
Ava pursed her lips.
"Last question Ava... did you do it because you honestly thought it was part of the job? Or... it was because you like it?"
Ava bit her lower lip. She eyed her empty tea cup for a few seconds before she said. "It was both. The assurance that Samuel gave me... was like a protection. I did it because it was a part of my job and I continued doing it... because I liked doing it."
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