She was exhausted.
She didn't even know what day it was.
She looked down again at the puddle of mush in front of her, took a deep breath through her nose, and scarfed it down as quickly as possible, trying to ignore the repulsive texture as it crawled down her throat like a drunken slug. She tried not to wince.
Somewhere, she knew that Reaper's eyes were trained on her, watching her every move - every reaction. He was waiting for her to make a mistake. Any misjudgment would be her demise.
She rose from her cold steel chair, the rubber stoppers scraping along the concrete floor, and took her tray promptly to the tray receptacle.
A Talon grunt bumped into her, and she stared down at him, her eyes hard and unreadable. She felt her lips turn into a snarl of disgust.
He looked up at her with wide, horrified eyes and a face red enough to be easily mistaken for a large tomato. Jeering from somewhere behind her met her ears. She did not move.
"My apologies, ma'am." He nodded his head in acknowledgement, regaining some of his composure.
He didn't look old enough to have seen a woman naked in person before.
Widowmaker said nothing, simply staring down at the young man.
Her eyes drifted to the embroidered patch on his arm.
Reaper's.
A thought crossed her mind, but her expression did not change from mild disgust.
Were there more of them than usual?
She waited, holding the young man's stare until he retreated. He wouldn't make it off this floor alive with that show of cowardice. She took a quick look around the room, noting that the majority of people in the cafeteria either had white masks on their arms or blue wings.
The aviation unit.
Only three groups at a time could be in the cafeteria.
Reaper's soldiers still outnumbered the aviation unit, which was not necessarily unheard of since his branch mostly consisted of footsoldiers, but the aviation unit seemed larger than usual. Her eyes tracked around, ignoring how many of the simpletons oogled at her as if she were some circus animal.
Less than a quarter of the people in the room had red rifles on their arms - the marksmen. That number had significantly decreased since she'd last been there.
Something deep in her bones told her that she'd been standing there too long, and that someone was sure to notice her interest. She walked off down the hall to the elevator, padding around on her bare feet. She tried to block out the cold by building mental walls around her brain.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled for a second before a presence loomed over her shoulder. She did not turn.
Reyes.
A misty hand swiped a keycard down the card reader, and the doors slid open without so much as a thump.
She walked in without looking behind her until she was solidly in the elevator. The presence followed her turned back, and felt-like fingers trailed down her spine. She steeled her gaze on the door.
"Widowmaker, you are less responsive than usual."
A statement of fact.
"I am functional."
Are you just telling yourself that?
The confidence she'd built in herself the last few weeks took a battering ram dead and center.
Reaper laughed as the elevator stopped on her floor. He shoved her out of the elevator with the hand that had rested on her lower back. She nearly fell but caught herself in a spin that brought back too many feelings to count or stoically bear.
Widowmaker winced.
Reaper's eyes narrowed considerably. "Are you functional, my Widowmaker?" The words sounded harder than before, less ingratiating - less confident and more accusatory.
"Oui," she replied simply, fighting to sink her feelings into a mental ice bath.
Reaper nodded and looked down at Widowmaker's leg. "Ah, there's the problem."
She'd almost forgotten about the steady throbbing in her leg from whatever puncture had laid a hole in her.
"You're bleeding. You need stitches. Go to your chambers." He tossed her the keycard, which she caught one handed. "Shower. You smell revolting."
Silently, she departed from the looming man. He vanished into thin air.
He only did his little vanishing act when he wanted to intimidate people. It only annoyed Widowmaker.
It always had.
The defects began early, whispered her mind as she swiped the keycard. The little green light blinked on with a happy little plink along with it.
She entered and dropped her shoulders.
They would be watching her every move. She couldn't cry like she so desperately craved. She couldn't allow the grief to settle onto her shoulders. She had to be Widowmaker here.
They were watching everywhere.
He was watching.
If you just turn back to them and let them help you…
She went for the shower and waited for the water to warm. She could risk that much, right? They wouldn't care if she let her water warm up, right?
Hot showers in Florence were a luxury she didn't realize she enjoyed until then.
But…
The water never got any warmer.
They'd cut the hot water to her room.
She climbed in anyway, wishing to exfoliate her skin - to scrub off any trace of anyone else on her skin. She couldn't feel the warmth of Lena's skin anymore. She couldn't feel the aftereffects of their kiss. The only thing she could feel in that frigid shower was the weight of utter loneliness.
And the cold.
She could feel the cold water slapping against her skin like hailstones.
She reached for her shampoo, a small luxury for herself, and realized with sinking horror that it had been replaced by standard issue shampoo along with standard issue soap. She couldn't hold it in anymore.
The tears bubbled up and spilled over in an instant, lost in the freezing water coming from overhead. She showered there, crying - some sense of relief washing over her with every bout of silent sobs.
The door that led directly into her room hissed shut, and her sobs ceased as if she'd turned off water from a faucet. For a brief moment, she was grateful for the cold water keeping her face from becoming puffy from tears. The redness in her eyes, however, would remain.
The tension relieved by crying crept back into her shoulders as she left the confines of her poorly concealed shower.
Reaper stood there with a medic who looked grizzled and worn. He held a black bag in his right hand.
A few minutes later, the medic barked out a few harsh words to Reaper and called in a bedsheet and a comforter. No pillow, though.
"I'm saying this as a doctor, Reaper. This Widowmaker unit is beyond exhaustion. It is imperative that it recover from… whatever the hell you've been doing to it. If you keep running it at this pace, it'll meet its date without much notice. Hell, it looks like it's about ready to shut down at any damn moment."
Reaper's hard voice sounded like gravel grinding together. "I don't tell you how to take care of your tools, doc."
The doctor waved a dismissive hand at Reaper, and Widowmaker, through the haze of the drugs injected directly into her veins, wondered how he was still alive from such insolence.
"I'll remind you of who is next in line, Abernathy." Reaper growled.
"And I'll remind you of who is best in this goddamn facility for medical care. I don't give a damn what threats you hurl at me, Reaper. I'm trying to save you the only Widowmaker that isn't obviously compromised. With you taking them out left and right with your insane assassinations, we only have two left, and they're cracking under the pressure. They're deteriorating."
That piqued her hazy interest. She'd known there were more, but were they…
She lost her trail of thought, and her eyelids became heavy. Something pulled at her leg.
The doctor - Abernathy - laughed at something. Widowmaker lost track of what they were talking about despite every fiber of her being screaming that the conversation was important.
She was already so tired…
When slumber rolled over her, she wasn't sure whether or not she was dreaming. The darkness. That cloying darkness. She felt restrained, but only by her own fatigue rather than be physical restraints. For that long moment, she was certain that they'd thrown her back in The Pit, and now she floundered around in her drugged semi-consciousness, clawing at nothing but close, featureless walls.
But.
The walls of her prison weren't featureless. Her roaming, desperate hands ran over what felt like a light switch - room temperature, rigid plastic protruding a quarter of an inch from the wall surrounded by softer plastic.
She switched the tab upward and warm yellow light from incandescent bulbs lit a small but functional room. In the center, a round, oak table - deeply but not unsettlingly familiar - housed four chairs, two of which were occupied by equally familiar individuals.
A shock of brown hair hung in loose curls around the man's head. His hair was longer than he had kept it in the more recent years. His green eyes turned to her and seemed to pierce her heart with more accuracy than any sniper could manage. His lips, dainty for such a strong featured face, parted in a wide smile that shone pearly white teeth. She noticed her jaw clench in the way it did when he was exceptionally happy. He stood wordlessly and pulled out one of the unoccupied chairs from the table and gestured to it with his broad, strong hands. His skin might have been a shade paler than she ever remembered, but even in death, Gérard Lacroix was breathtaking.
He reached out a hand and she took it a few steps later. She couldn't help but notice the brown of her own skin and looked to her forearm.
No tattoo.
Instead, she wore a dainty silver bracelet with no other adornment. Gérard had given it to her after their fifth year of marriage.
Part of her started remembering that evening, but another part cut her thoughts off as the other person turned from her seat facing away from where she'd been standing.
Large brown eyes met her own for only a half a second before a bell chime giggle rose up from the girl's lips. "Hiya, Amélie. Glad you could join us, love." She clapped a hand over her mouth and a faint pink settled on her freckled cheeks. "Oh, right. I forgot to do the thing." She cleared her throat and waggled her fingers around both sides of her face. "OoOOooOo," she said in what Amélie presumed to be a "spooky" voice. "I'm your subconscious."
Amélie felt herself smile. How very like Lena…
Still holding Gérard's hand, she sat at the table. His skin was so… warm.
She felt cold.
"What is this place?" She felt herself ask.
Gérard blinked. "You tell us, darling. It's your head after all."
Amélie frowned, and Lena responded quickly. "What he means to say is that you're dreaming, but you're kinda talking to your subconscious." She waved a hand again. "That's me." A pause. "And him."
Amélie continued frowning and noticed a shape out of the corner of her eye - not a shape, exactly, but there was an individual that she'd seen in more than one windowpane. Tall, stoic, and calculating, the unnaturally blue version of herself stood just out of direct line of sight.
"What about that?"
That? That's still you.
Lena waved a hand. "You know what that is just as well as we do."
Gérard squeezed Amélie's hand reassuringly. "We'll talk about her later. Right now, I think you have questions."
Fatigue rolled over Amélie once more, as if she were perfectly awake and not surrounded by split portions of her own mind. Didn't people usually just have one subconscious and not three? Wait, no. Four, if she counted herself.
Even better.
"Why are you here?" Her voice sounded small even to her own ears.
Lena, with her feet tucked up under her legs on the chair, leaned forward and took Amélie's other hand. Her skin was as soft as Gérard's was warm. It felt so real. "You need help, love. We're gonna do our best to help you figure it out."
Amélie barked a short, sarcastic laugh and heard the figure in her peripheral vision chuckle mirthlessly. It sent a shiver down her spine. "I don't even know what I need help with, chérie."
Lena bobbed her head noncommittally. "Well, that's what we're here for."
Gérard leaned in, and Amélie could smell the light aftereffects of his cologne still on his collar. "There's a lot going down, and you see it all from the inside. You see Talon from the inside, which was more than I could ever do."
Unease crept back into Amélie's stomach, remembering what Reaper and the doctor had been discussing when she'd, presumably, fallen asleep. "Are you talking about what Abernathy said to Reyes?"
Gérard nodded.
Lena piped up, squeezing Amélie's right hand. "Didn't you think it a bit odd when there was no one around in the bottom floor's halls?"
Gérard tilted his head, much in the way he did when he was thinking about phrasing something properly. "Or when the cafeteria had only a few sects in it."
"Those sectors were completely… wrong. The numbers were wrong," Amélie agreed.
A rough voice rolled like thunder overhead in the empty space that had just been the ceiling. Times are changing… It wasn't so much something she heard rather than she felt in every fiber of her being - every molecule bounced around the the sheer volume and presence of those three horrible words. It was Reyes's voice.
Reyes.
"Reyes is pulling something off," Amélie whispered more to herself than her company.
Lena made a scoffing snort. "Yeah, and…"
Gérard smiled over at Lena. "Come on, kid. You know she's working on putting it together."
Sudden frustration seized Amélie's heart and threw her for a loop. It was mind boggling to feel that intensity still. She saw Widowmaker shift in the corner of her vision. "Why can't you just tell me?" The demand was nearly a plea.
Lena's face, grinning her mischevious grin, changed to a look of concern and sympathy. "We only know what you know."
Familiar frustration surged again, but this time, it wasn't geared toward anyone. It was just… frustration. She didn't have a target. She didn't have an objective. Something about aimless feeling was… liberating.
She spent a second revelling in her aimless, joyful frustration.
Almost tangibly, she felt pieces of the infuriating puzzle clicking together.
The teams. The allies. The doctor's words. The blatant rejection of Talon's practices.
The blatant rejection of Talon.
Rejection.
Revelation.
Revolution.
Amélie's eyes went wide. A chill made the hairs of her whole body stand on end. The sinking revelation turned into a sinking stone in her stomach that threatened to make her sick. "Reyes is starting a revolution."
Lena pulled back her hand and started clapping. "Ding, ding, ding! And here we have it, folks! We have a winner!"
Amélie couldn't help but let a giggle escape despite the pit in her stomach. That pit had started feeling so constant and eternal that she might as well be a plum - mere flesh surrounding that awful, awful ball of concrete. Part of her wondered if the giggles deterred the pit from taking root and sprouting into something even worse.
The giggles died out quickly as the severe form in the corner of her eye shifted into full view. Up until now, she'd been like one of those paintings whose eyes followed you no matter where you went.
Now, though, she seemed to move of her own volition instead of like she was tethered by an invisible fishing line to the corner of Amélie's sight.
Her eyes were cold - dead - seemingly unseeing, but Amélie knew the truth of that facade. Those eyes were calculating. Her out of focus eyes were belying the truth of her heart. Those reflexes of that corpselike woman were as lethal as her will.
She felt Gérard squeeze her hand reassuringly, but there seemed less tangible pressure there than before. She began to look over to her left side to see him, but the lights cut out, sinking Amélie back into blackness.
"We'll get to her later."
The cloying heat covered her again, suffocating her through its thick blanket that covered her nose and mouth. Seven red dots came to life, gleaming ominously through the darkness. The glint of metal shining blood red in the light's wake.
"Personne n'échappe à notre regarde."
Amélie's ear caught the words as the undercurrent of a much louder sound. A deafening crack of crumbling silence. That's when the pain hit.
Maybe the pain hit first.
When she thought back to it, she could no longer tell whether the chicken or the egg came first in that incident.
She plunged through the floor as if someone had pulled it out from under her, her chest aching - surely a bullet had torn through her heart.
Her heart.
Oh, god, her heart.
It beat too fast.
Too hard.
It hurt.
The rapid beep beep beep of a heart monitor filled her ears and the walls of her prison cell became screens.
The voice - that terrible, cold voice - filled the room as if coming from a thousand rattling speakers riddled with feedback. Freezing water stood placidly over both of her feet.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BOW TO THE WILL OF THOSE TRAITORS
Amélie's chest pounded and reverberated with every piercingly frigid word. The waters rose slightly.
TALON WILL RESCUE YOU
Another few pangs tore through.
The hypothermia would set in. The water climbed up her leg steadily.
GIVE UP THIS CHILDISH PURSUIT
Those heinous waters in her mind reached neck level.
The voice continued berating her.
The sound became one cold note hammering at her head. She felt the rising waters fill her mouth and nose, trickling into her lungs.
She tried to speak through the waters, but only felt herself growing heavier.
No.
The waters receded a fraction of a centimeter.
This is my choice.
The waters pulled themselves from her lungs.
"You cannot take this from me." Her voice held strong, even in her terror. One hand gripped her aching chest. "Whatever I do, it will be my choice."
The cold room began to spin, or at least, Amélie's head felt as if the room were spinning. In a blink, she found herself swaying back at the table, one hand steadying herself on the chair back.
Widowmaker sat across from her with a cold smile.
There was nothing warm about this part of her mind. She was every calculated move. She was the embodiment of her logical resolve.
But there was more to her than just logic driven survival, right?
Talon may have programmed her to be that way but…
She was more than just her programming.
"Sit, child. If you insist on being difficult, I will explain this to you in a way that you can understand." The monotone voice held nothing but contempt.
Amélie sat, not knowing what else to do but humor Widowmaker.
Humor herself?
Now wasn't the time to psychoanalyze herself.
She folded her hands on the table, unsure of what to do with them besides bite her nails. She shouldn't show weakness to this monster.
A humorless quirk of Widowmaker's lips caused the hairs on Amélie's arm to reach for the sky. "Monster, I might be, but that makes you just as accountable."
"Accountable?" The word slipped out without her necessarily willing it.
Widowmaker's eyes narrowed. "Do not waste my time. Time is of the essence."
Amélie lowered her eyes, cowed.
"This." Widowmaker pointed accusingly at Amélie. "This is weakness. This is defective. Talon did not make you to be defective."
"I'm not 'defective,'" Amélie shot back, she hoped angrily, but it came out as a fearful squeak. "I'm just a person."
Widowmaker did not raise her voice, nor did she change her neutral expression. "You are a tool crafted by Talon. Talon does not make mistakes."
Memories of Gérard walking around cities, telling grand stories of his adventures, hit Amélie full force. He'd told her so much about Talon yet nothing at all.
"Talon gave you the gift of clarity, you foolish child." Widowmaker spread her thin, bony fingers on the table. "You are not meant to ask questions. You are not meant to go gallivanting off with that thing you call your friend. You know as well as I that she would abandon you without hesitation if it came to making a choice between her precious Overwatch and you." She cracked her neck both directions. "She's a fickle thing."
"You don't know anything about me," Amélie retorted. A fire in her chest kindled and began to rage.
The lights cut off again. A low chuckle seemed to come from everywhere all at once. "Don't I?"
Above their head, an unseen film projector crackled to life with a quiet thump, filling the room with a disconcerting clicking.
A familiar image.
An image she never wanted to see again.
Amélie stood, her naked body covered in blood, her arms dangling loosely at her sides. A dripping knife was held in one hand, a torn mass of flesh that used to be her husband at her feet. Her face was hellishly blank.
Emotionless.
Not even cold.
Asleep on her feet.
In the darkened room, Amélie's eyes widened, and she shook her head. "No. No, that's not me. That's what Talon did to me. That's what Talon made me!"
On the screen, the still image lurched into movement. At first, Amélie simply swayed from side to side like a sleepwalker, blood drip-drip-dripping from the knife, but then her eyes slowly widened. Tears ran down her face, cuffing streaks through the blood, but otherwise, she remained the same.
The other Widowmaker drummed her fingers on the table with a smile. "Amélie, my dear, you have no idea. This is who you think you are." She snapped her fingers. "Show her."
The image blurred, playing in reverse, too fast to see the action.
"Please don't," the real Amélie asked.
Widowmaker didn't respond.
On the screen, Amélie stood over her husband yet again - but he was sleeping, not dead.
Not yet.
In a trance, she lifted the knife in both hands, like one performing a sacrifice to the gods, poised to strike.
Gerárd's eyes fluttered open. "My dear…? Are you-"
She brought down the knife. He let out a quiet whuff of air as it sheared down into his body, cutting through the soft flesh of his stomach. She twisted, and things that were meant to be kept inside saw air for the first time.
"No!" The Amélie at the table screamed. Widowmaker didn't move.
They both froze on the screen, Amélie with the knife, Gerárd barely breathing. Blood was the only thing moving.
A horrific tableau.
Finally, Gerárd seemed to realize what was happening to him, if not why, and his wrists were on hers, but even from here in the future, Amélie could see how weak his grip already was. He was in shock, and he'd been awoken from a dead sleep.
He made a choking sound. Blood spattered from his mouth, speckling past-Amélie's face. Finally she moved, pulling the knife from her husband's body with a horrible sucking noise - then brought it down again.
Gerárd did the only thing he could - he tried to grab the blade before it could pierce his heart. He deflected the knife, but at the cost of a long, pouring gash on his palm and wrist. He tried to struggle to a sitting position, not quite noticing the state of his guts, and screamed. It was an undignified sound. Not at all what you'd expect from the poster boy of an organization like Overwatch.
Amélie stabbed again, and again, the knife chunking off of and sliding between ribs, but she was not the master of anatomy she would become. She didn't hit the heart.
Maybe in retrospect, maybe she couldn't bring herself to do it.
Finally, far too late to do anything about it, Gerárd realized what was going on.
"Amélie…?" His voice was barely a whisper.
Future-Amélie had her head in her hands, but she could still hear everything, could remember every horrific detail. The way the knife had felt in her grasp. The way the hot blood had felt on her arms and face. The joy of causing pain and death.
Her face was trance-like, but inside, she was alive.
Trance-Amélie hesitated, for the briefest of moments. Something flickered in her eyes, and Gerárd had hope on his face.
He was too weak now to lift his arms, but she kept stabbing and stabbing and stabbing.
Blood.
Blood.
Blood.
She could see bone in half a dozen places.
His lungs were torn to shreds. He couldn't speak. All he could do was mouth three words.
I.
Love.
You.
Amélie screamed, and the knife came down one last time, plowing through his left eye and into his brain, hard enough to shatter skull.
He went absolutely limp.
"No!" Amélie, the real Amélie, screamed.
The image froze on her vacant, bloodied face.
"This is what you are, Amélie," Widowmaker purred. "This is where it began. Imperfect, unformed, but the beginning of something truly wonderful. A diamond in the rough."
Amélie shook her head. Her vision wavered, the tears coming unbidden to her eyes. "What if this isn't what I want to be? What if I don't want to be perfect?" Her voice was so, so small.
Widowmaker laughed. "Are you under the impression that it matters what you want, my darling?"
thump.
thump.
thump.
Three more projectors crashed to life overhead. The other three blank walls were filled with the same image of murderer-Amélie's trancelike face.
"This is what you are."
thump.
One more, pointing directly down. Even the table itself became a screen.
Amélie trembled. "This isn't happening. This is a dream and I don't have to see what you're showing me. I can wake up."
"Then wake. Wake, if you can."
Amélie tried. God, she tried. Even the cold walls of her room at Talon were preferable to… to this.
The images began to rewind again.
Oh, no.
The screen in front of her began to play.
A second later, the one on her left began. The one on her right. The one behind her. The one on the table.
They were all slightly out of sync, the loud clickclickclicks of the projectors filling the room. There was so much dark light, so much flickering. One moment, darkness. The next, they were both bathed in light.
Flick flick flick.
Then the stabbing began, and a discordant cacophony filled the room, the sounds of the knife entering and leaving his body and chipping bone filling the room. Amélie covered her ears but she could still hear it oh god the sounds were like horrible mosquitos burrowing into her ears and everywhere she looked was blood and death and guilt Gérard my love my sweet sweet love what did I do to you what did they make me do what did I become
Gérard screamed five times, the agonized ululating overlapping and twisting together to form something somehow even worse than the sum of their parts, and Amélie was screaming too, her eyes closed, and it was all she could do to keep herself from digging her fingers into her ears until blood ran and things broke and she would never have to hear her beloved hurt like this again she would never hear anything again
this is a dream
But it didn't matter, the sensory overload was too much. The guilt was too much and too real. What had she done?
"i love you"
no
"i love you"
"i love you"
"i love you"
Amélie…
"i love you…"
"Gérard!" She was screaming the words, and she was only half conscious of what she was saying. "Gérard, I'm so sorry! Gérard!"
Five times, the knife ruined his eye and skull bone splintered.
On all five screens, Amélie stared down at what she had done.
Then, five times, five different ways, each Amélie began to laugh.
The real Amélie shut her eyes tight, hands still pressed hard against her ears.
thump
thump
And with that, two more projectors started up. In an impossibility that could only exist in the most fractured, hellish of fever dreams, the hysterically laughing, sobbing murderer was projected onto the insides of her eyelids.
There was no escape.
The smell of blood filled the room, and Amélie's eyes flew open. The Widowmaker was gone, and her own hands were that familiar shade of blue.
She couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Panic and pain stabbed into her heart and she was hyperventilating and
THUMP.
Total darkness.
Total silence.
She felt her lips move, but it wasn't her who spoke.
"This is who you are."
The lights flickered back on again, the warm glow of the incandescent bulbs lost in a flickering, fluorescent glare.
Two identical envelopes sat on the table in front of her folded hands.
Two paths she could take from here.
She reached her hand out.
A jolt of fear coursed through Amélie Lacroix, the body jerking up not feeling quite like her own. There was a masked face leaning down toward her. Her first instinct told her to cringe away from the frightening man. A nearly simultaneous one told her to stand her ground.
She felt cold, clammy hands clawing at her mind, threatening to pull her under the waters again. She wanted it. She knew it could help her.
But…
She knew it could rule her.
"Good to see you awake and functioning, my Widowmaker." Gabriel Reyes straightened and removed his mask, skin rippling like heat waves over concrete.
There was a glint to his eyes that she had not seen before.
She might have wondered about it more if she hadn't been suffering an identity crisis yet again. Was she Amélie or Widowmaker?
Both.
Slowly, it dawned on her, but the revelation was not comforting, just as seeing Lena and Gérard in her dream had not exactly been comforting.
She was both. She could be both. She had to be both Amélie and the creature called Widowmaker. It... might be essential to her survival to continue being both.
"I have a mission for you." Reyes threw a folder harshly down on her body, covered by only a blanket. "You'll find a new suit in your closet." He turned to go but paused at the door. "It's a shame that this must be done, but take your time. I want this to be a… solo mission. " The door slid open smoothly. "Ah, one more thing. I trust you, my Widowmaker. I trust only you."
The hulking monster disguised as man left without another word, silently - as if nothing of his body made a single sound. She still felt the mechanical stare of the eye in the corner - the surveillance camera that watched her every move. She, again, wondered if there was one in the bathroom that she didn't know about. She wouldn't put it past her captors.
A sinking feeling attacked her stomach while familiar elation at a target wrenched her heart. Her fingers brushed the cold, brass tab and flipped the top open. The crinkling of the thick paper seemed deafening in the otherwise quiet room.
With shaky fingers, she withdrew the large folder from within the envelope (the folder was just so… big), her eyes going wide at the name printed across the front in large, neat letters.
LENA E. OXTON
She vaguely noticed the clatter of a plastic pen that collided with the floor.
Amélie thought back to the folders in her dream.
She could take the path of cold calculation until Talon was done with her - the easiest choice and the one she wanted to take the most, in all honesty. She wanted to be forgiven of all her sins against them, but…
But this was too far.
That was the one person she could never go against.
That was her friend.
Widowmaker - Amélie Lacroix made her choice.