Jessa is the end of me, but that’s acceptable. I’ve lived long enough, been deactivated and reanimated twice already, pulled from the ground and reassembled by people who wanted me to kill for them. This time, I will ask the MSA to hide me well, dismantle me if needed, scatter the pieces so that no one brings me back later. I want this life, the one where I met Jessa, to be my last one. I want the last thing stored in my memory banks to be the sound of her voice saying my name, and the feel of her lips pressed to my face.
The corridor opens into a room. I freeze, not believing my eyes.
It’s an underground chapel carved into the stone itself. Stalactites hang from the ceiling, and water drips from somewhere unseen. In the center of this raw, ancient cave sits something that looks like it was lifted from a medieval monastery and placed here whole, protected from centuries of erosion by the same magic that powers the traps we’ve survived.
The altar is a simple table, and there’s a kneeling platform in front of it. Iron sconces line the walls, and as we step inside, candles ignite on their own. Behind the altar stands the vault door, made of heavy metal and covered in intricate botanical patterns. Under the kneeling platform, I spot a trap door set into the floor, the seams barely visible. A red rug stretches from the entrance to the altar, and on the altar itself sits a piece of parchment, an ink pot, and a quill, all perfectly preserved.
Jessa lets go of my hand and walks around the chamber, examining everything. She crouches to inspect the trap door, then rises again to study the vault door, though she doesn’t approach it. There’s no use in trying to open it.
“This is the Confession Chamber,” she says. “I read about it in the family records. The heir kneels at the altar, and three questions appear on the parchment. They must be answered truthfully, out loud. So, that’s the challenge. The magic will judge if I’m telling the truth or not.” She glances at the trap door. “If I lie or refuse to answer, the floor opens and I fall into a pit. If I speak the truth three times, the vault door unseals. It’s designed to break the unworthy. I know there will be three questions, but I have no idea how personal they’ll be, or if they’ll be trick questions I could fail without realizing.”
“I have experience with confession,” I say. “And I know it should be confidential. I’ll leave and give you privacy.”
I turn to go.
“Castien, no.” She stops me. “Don’t go. Please.”
I turn back to her, and I’m surprised to see she looks terrified.
“I need you here,” she says. Her eyes are wide and her hands are clenched at her sides. “I need you to stand beside me just in case I get the answers wrong and the trap door opens. I want you to try and catch me. Promise me you won’t let me fall to my death.”
I close the distance between us and take her face between my hands. She’s so small, so breakable and brave, and I want to tell her a thousand things, but I hold back.
“I will catch you,” I say. “No matter what happens, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She lifts herself on her toes and presses her lips to the smooth steel where my mouth should be. The contact sends a pulse through my Aether Core that I don’t even try to suppress. When she lowers herself back onto her heels, she’s smiling.
“So, you confess a lot?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“What’s confession like for you?”
I take a moment, trying to find the right way to explain it.
“There’s a room in every MSA building called the Quiet Room. It’s soundproof and mostly bare, lit by server lights. In the center, there’s a docking station where I kneel and expose the connection port at the nape of my neck. Brother Tolliver, who is a technician and a priest, plugs a data cable into the port. Then I have to verbalize everything I’ve done wrong. I speak it out loud while the system records and evaluates, and if my actions were justified within my mission parameters, Brother Tolliver initiates the Purge Protocol. The data gets erased from my active memory. I remember that it happened, but the sensory details and the emotional guilt wash away.”
I don’t mention that the last time I confessed, right after I met her, the purge didn’t work.
“Oh,” Jessa says. “So, it works like a refresh for your system.”
“Yes, exactly. It prevents me from being burdened by everything I’m forced to do during my missions.”
She gives me a sad smile.
“I hope you don’t rush to confess what happened between us last night. Because it’s not a sin, Castien.”
I hang my head.
“I’ll have to confess. There’s no other way.”
She frowns at me, her brows drawing together.
“Sorry,” I say. “It’s just the way I function.”
She reaches for my hand and squeezes it.
“Don’t apologize. I understand. Just… I don’t want you to judge yourself so harshly.”
