Talk to her about a former handler's death

Gritting your teeth, you remembered back to the death of the first Ciao... an unfortunate soul who'd loved her and been loved in return, to hear it told. The story you'd heard was the he tried to persuade her to get out of the life, but that could be another deception of hers. You asked her frankly: had she killed him the same way you were being killed now, because he got too close to the truth? Had he figured out that she was working inside the Goodbye Girls to pull the strings controlling the world's powers?

Rather than easing up, Vaarvel locked her grip in harder, causing you to growl with pain. "Now you're making wild conjectures. That isn't why I killed him. I wasn't lying when I said that killing him was for the good of humanity," she hissed, sounding surprisingly agitated.

You wondered if you'd just hastened your own death, but you did find the reaction interesting. It wasn't the only subject of interest either... you'd been interrogating others for long enough to spot subtle lies in people's testimony. It felt a bit petty, but you pointed it out anyway: last time, she'd said it was for the good of CEDIT, not humanity.

"Still sharp, even now. That was a lie. I lie, Ciao, even to people I care about. That's what I do. However, I ask that you believe me when I say that I killed him for humanity's sake."

What a strange lie, though! Did she really believe replacing Madison-- or killing you-- somehow benefitted humanity?

"Would you believe me when I say that what's in CEDIT's best interests is often very different from what is in humanity's? Sometimes, it benefits us all to experience a shake-up in CEDIT's ranks or a disruption of their normal operations. For example: when the lid was blown on CEDIT Russia's cybernetic enhancement projects or when CEDIT of South Africa was raided, putting an end to inhuman testing into cloaking research against live human subjects," Vaarvel posited, seeming to ease up her grip slightly for the sake of conversation. "If you look at it that way, Adder can almost be seen as the good guys sometimes, can't they?"

You thought that was going a bit far and told her as much.

"You're not seeing the bigger picture. There is nothing more dangerous than people who are trusted wielding unchecked power." Your fellow agent sounded deadly serious. "Adder has been many things within its life time. It started as a force to give CEDIT that authority, then transformed into one to challenge them and spread them thin. I watched them undergo these metamorphoses. Only when I witnessed them fail as either entity was I forced to jump to this extreme course of action and displace Madison. Her ambition was too lofty... for a long time, in the name of making CEDIT the finest policing force it could be, she's allowed them to grow past the limits of humanity. Cybernetics, gene manipulation, mind control coding... These were all CEDITs babies before they were Adder's. If Madison had her way, we'd have Au Revoirs and Tschaus deployed all over the world. You've tried handling a team of Goodbye Girls... How do you think the normal world would fare against countless of them?"

You couldn't help but mention that they'd be deployed in the service of CEDIT, a world security force, to fight Adder, a terrorist cell. That didn't seem like such a grim prospect.

"There are no lines between CEDIT and Adder, Nathaniel, except for the ones that were manufactured."

Your head was spinning as you tried to comprehend all of this. You asked her another important question: how did she know so much about Adder?

"Because I am Adder Adjutant, the founder of Adder."

That... made no sense! The founder of Adder was also the founder of the Goodbye Girls, if she was to be believed. That same double agent had led an attack during Operation Full House and sank a ship full of her own peers, while also allowing you to capture their figurehead leader. Furthermore, she'd said what she was doing for the good of humanity. Was allowing Adder to do the things they did-- selling arms all over the world to terrorist cells, killing CEDIT agents, hitting countless people with a mind control drug-- really in civilization's best interests?!

"Yes." Vaarvel answered quickly with a voice that sounded fittingly like a menacing hiss. "You can't help but see just a portion of the picture, but I see the whole image. Adder may have gotten away from my original intent, without me there to lead it directly, but it's always been a vital force. You might not believe this, but the 'death of Adder' combined with the 'victory of CEDIT' could have been the worst possible outcome in many ways for the world at large. The only positive result: it finally gave me the moment I needed to strike. With such a thoroughly weakened Adder... That Madison really let her guard down, when presented with such a fruitful situation."

Her words proved to be ironic; surprising even yourself, you managed to exploit a rare hole in Vaarvel's focus. You slipped free from her arms and immediately retrieved your service pistol, releasing the safety and aiming it straight for her. After the crazy things you'd just heard, it sounded like you might be doing the world a favor by taking her out now...

"We're still friends, aren't we? You're not going to shoot me," Vaarvel told you, grinning a thin, crescent smile.

{if Vaarvel Affinity > 199}After everything you'd gone through together, she had a good point. You'd been assigned to learn about the mystery surrounding her. Now you'd finally done so... that was your mission. Shooting her dead wasn't supposed to be part of the deal.{endif}