The jet hummed softly, a steady rhythm against the backdrop of her racing thoughts. She leaned her head against the cold window, eyes fixed on the swirling gray clouds outside. Her reflection stared back at her, but she didn't really see herself. Instead, her mind replayed every mission she'd been on since she first joined—every fight, every near miss, every decision, replayed in agonizing clarity. Faces flashed before her—angry, terrified, determined, and defeated. The bruised and battered bodies left in her wake. She'd won, but never by crossing that one unspoken boundary.
Every time, she chose not to kill.
At first, it had been instinctual. The thought of taking a life made her stomach churn. She didn't want to be that kind of person, even when everything in her training told her otherwise. Growing up, she'd believed in rules. Rules kept the world from descending into chaos. Rules made sense of the senseless.
"Don't hurt others unless absolutely necessary," her father used to say. His words echoed in her head every time she faced an opponent. She could disable, disarm, and incapacitate. She didn't need to take a life.
But now?
Out here, in the middle of missions that blurred every line she thought she'd drawn, she wasn't so sure anymore. Was holding onto that line a strength—a refusal to let the violence consume her? Or was it a weakness that put her team at risk?
Volt certainly seemed to think so.
His disapproving glare haunted her as much as the faces of her enemies. "They don't deserve your mercy," he'd told her. "Mercy gets you killed."
Did it? Or did it keep her alive—alive as the person she wanted to be?
There were moments she questioned it, moments when sparing an enemy only for them to resurface felt like a betrayal of her principles. The augmented fighter from the Dagger mission came to mind. She'd disabled him, left him gasping on the floor, alive but beaten.
And now he was back, angrier and deadlier than before.
The guilt gnawed at her. Not because she regretted sparing his life, but because her decision had opened a crack in her resolve. She couldn't escape the thought that maybe, just maybe, Volt was right.
What would her father think? Would he still tell her she was doing the right thing, that she was better than her enemies because she chose not to cross that line? Or would he tell her that protecting her team mattered more than her conscience?
Her hand rested on her blade, the cool hilt grounding her. It wasn't a weapon for killing. It was a tool for holding the line, for staying human in a world that seemed to demand she give up that part of herself.
But the line blurred more with each mission.
Volt's voice rang in her head, sharp and accusing from their last argument: "Hesitation can cost lives." He didn't get it. None of them did. For him, for all of them, the mission came first. Eliminate the threat, secure the objective, move on. They were soldiers, warriors. She wasn't. Not really.
Her blade wasn't for killing. That's what she told herself every time it shimmered to life in her hand. It was a tool, not a weapon. She'd trained to use it with precision, to disarm and disable without taking the ultimate step. She could bring down a pirate in seconds, leave them gasping on the ground, but alive. That was enough, wasn't it?
But doubt crept in during quiet moments like this. Was she doing enough to protect her team? Was sparing lives putting them at risk?
She leaned her head back against the jet's cold interior, now her eyes scanning the steel ceiling. The rules she once believed in felt so far away now. How could she cling to rules in a world that didn't seem to have any?
Her chest tightened. She wasn't sure how long she could keep walking this path. What if the day came when sparing someone's life cost her a teammate? What if her refusal to kill became the reason someone she cared about didn't make it back?
Would she still be able to look herself in the mirror then?
The thought chilled her. She turned her gaze to the clouds outside the window, searching for answers she wasn't sure would come.
Her mind drifted back to her earlier mission. A group of small-time smugglers, barely organized, but armed and dangerous. She'd fought her way through them, her blade a blur of movement, every strike calculated to incapacitate, not to kill. She remembered the look Volt had given her afterward.
"You left them breathing, did you think we weren't noticing!" he'd said, his voice cold and disapproving.
She'd shrugged, trying to brush it off. "They were out of the fight. That's what matters."
"No," Volt had replied, his tone sharper. "What matters is that they don't come back."
---
She shifted in her seat, glancing across the cabin at Volt, who was fidgeting with his gloves. His energy crackled even when he wasn't using his powers, like he couldn't ever really sit still. He probably thought she was soft. Weak. He'd never say it outright—not yet, anyway—but she could feel it in the way he watched her, in the way his orders were just a little more pointed when they were in the field together.
Her fists clenched at the thought. It wasn't weakness. It was control.
Control was what separated her from the people they fought. Pirates, terrorists, warlords—they thrived on chaos, on destruction. They didn't care who got hurt. She did.
---
But then there was him.
The augmented fighter from the Dagger mission. She could still see his face in her mind's eye, twisted with rage and pain as he charged at her. She'd taken him down, or so she'd thought. Left him breathing, bleeding but alive. And now? Now he was back, and Volt wouldn't let her forget it.
"Your hesitation could cost us this mission."
The words burned, not because they were harsh, but because she couldn't entirely dismiss them. Maybe she should have finished it. Maybe leaving him alive had been a mistake.
She hated that thought.
Her mind raced through scenarios, imagined herself in the moment again, imagined delivering the killing blow. What would that have felt like? Relief? Guilt? Would she have slept better that night or worse?
No. She shook the thought away. She wasn't like Volt or Tank or Ghost. She didn't need to be.
---
Her hand rested lightly on the hilt of her blade, the weight of it familiar and comforting. It wasn't a weapon for killing, she reminded herself again. It was her way of walking the line—staying human in a world that seemed determined to strip her of that humanity.
But how long could she keep it up?
---
Kykuit's voice crackled over the comm, pulling her back to the present. "We're five minutes out. Final checks, people."
She straightened in her seat, shaking off the lingering doubt. The mission was all that mattered now. She'd find a way to make it work—her way.
Because if she couldn't hold on to her line, if she couldn't stay true to herself, then what was the point of all this? What was the point of her?