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An ideal servant? That just made Hector even more curious as to why Garovel would've released him. He held his tongue, though, figuring the reaper was getting to that.

'I had high hopes for Simon--and so did many of our superior officers, I think. Even before completing the standard four years of training, he was often chosen for real missions, apprenticing under various veterans.'

Hector couldn't help himself now. 'So what happened, then?'

The reaper broke for a sigh. 'Simon was... Well, I could say he simply grew too arrogant and dangerous, and that would not be a lie. But it would also strike me as too dismissive. There was more to it than that.

'It was about six years in when our spy work first began, and he was incredible at it. Right from the start. Had a real aptitude for it. TOO much so, perhaps. Looking back on it now, I think his string of early successes might have caused more problems for him in the long-term than I realized at the time. For the longest time, he never really tasted failure. He was just THAT good right out of the gate.

'But it didn't last forever. Eventually, we did suffer a major loss. And because he'd never experienced something like that before, it just hit him that much harder. I'm not sure he ever fully recovered from that.'

Hector was reluctant to ask, but he felt compelled to. 'What exactly happened?'

'It was a mission in Palei. Infiltrating a weapons factory. Deep in Abolish territory. Extremely dangerous. I didn't want to take the mission, but that wasn't anything new. I'd tried to refuse many other missions previously, but he just went off and did them without me. And he'd succeeded every time previously, so why would he think this time would be any different? He had such confidence. It drove me crazy.'