Morph [EDITING] || Wattys 2017 Winner

~THIRTY SEVEN~

~amelie~

The voices float up to me from the next grille across, and I hurriedly propel myself towards it until i'm almost directly on top of it.

"What do you want?" The question is sharp and pointed, and I recognise the dark male voice I heard earlier from below me. I whip my gaze down, peering through the grille, and see two figures, shrouded in darkness.
"You know exactly why I'm here, Roman." The most surprising thing about that sentence is not the revelation that the voice is Agent Roman.

It's the fact that the person saying it is my mother.

I press my lips together to keep from gasping, my heart hammering, as they speak - Roman, and my mother.
"Let her go," commands my mother.
Roman's tone is low and authoritative, reminding her who holds the power. "No."
"Our arrangement was for someone else. Not my daughter. I never expected her to keep my directions to herself. She should have told someone else, and then-"
"That is irrelevant," he cuts in. "That is your fault for misjudging her. I made a deal for rebel information - now I have my source. You daughter was never part of, or expressly not part of, our bargain."

What?

My mother's voice becomes increasingly agitated as she says again, "Let her go."
Roman repeats his refusal. "No. I don't gain anything from freeing her - in fact, I lose. I upheld my end of the deal, you yours. Simple."
"But-"
"Grace. I gave you all the resources and help you needed to free your brother. Is that not enough?"
My mother's voice is firm. "Not when it's my daughter we're talking about."

A crack splits the air, and I flinch as the gunshot noise reverberates around me for a second, bouncing through the vents. I clamp my hand over my mouth as I stare downwards, at the crumpled figure slowly sliding against the wall, and the second standing over them, holding a slim black pistol. The shooter is strangely still, frozen, motionless as they hold their gun pointing towards the body.

Either my mother has just killed Roman, or he's shot... her.

I scramble back from the grille, tears in my eyes, hand still over my mouth. The full weight of my mother's betrayal hits me as I realise just how much she sacrificed to get Matthew back, and it overwhelms me. One of my parents is a mass murderer and the other is a traitor, and I don't know how to handle it. But the emotion is suddenly overcome when I have another realisation. Although unwillingly, I've just told Roman's forces all they need to know about where the rebel base is. I have to get back to my father, Hunter, Amber, Lila, Elian, Thomas - I have to tell them exactly what's coming.

So I push down my despair, clamping my lips together, crawling through the vents once more to get away from the horrifying, eerily still scene.

~~~

~hunter~

"We need to find her," I say firmly, clenching my fists.

Elian looks up at my outburst and so does Markus, and all the other people in the room avoid my gaze awkwardly. After I failed to find Amelie, Elian called an emergency meeting. We're all gathered together to figure out what to do if an attack is launched at us - Grace and Amelie are gone, and one of the worst case scenarios is that mother has kidnapped daughter. The other... even after all she's done, some people have suggested it's Amelie herself who's turned traitor.

I've never wanted to punch anyone more in my life.

"Hunter, we have bigger things to worry about," says Elian, weariness etched into every corner of his face. "We have no idea where to even start looking for her, and we don't know if we can even help her." That's the other part that makes me so angry - the giving up on her, even after all she's been through, all she's found her way out of. Nobody except me is willing to accept she's in no way a lost cause. "Right now, we need to prepare ourselves. And then, only then, we can talk about Amelie."