Project: MIRACULOUS

Chapter 4

"Nathalie!"

Her eyes watch the sky. Resembling a rich purple carpet unraveled across the horizon, she can't help but to momentarily admire it. A soft breeze passes, removing her velvety hair from its normally secured bun. She could've reached that boy and 8075. But she chose not to.
The memory of the boy toting 8075 in his arms and striding across that green field replay over and over in her mind. Nathalie stopped as soon as she reached the door and absentmindedly watched the teenagers sprint into the thousands of miles of thick trees. She didn't know where he was taking her, but God-willing, she wouldn't stop them.

The green field reminds her of the radiant green of that boy's eyes and she receives the same sick feeling remembering the chilling stares of both. The green hosted by the field and the eyes of that boy were achingly similar to Adrien's eyes. She ran behind the boy and he turned back to gaze at her and their eyes locked, her own turquoises colliding with his scintillating emerald orbs. So perplexing, so vast; as she met them she couldn't help to immerse herself in a pit of reminiscences, to revisit memories she had folded and pushed to the back of her mind like worn picture frames jammed into storage boxes. She so foolishly paused in her tracks and gaped, and the gap between her and them widened as he sprinted further. The most bewildering fact about the whole situation is that every single guard who entered that boy's path received a bullet in their head, and the boy shot them without hesitation. However she stared at him for a span that seemed to stretch for minutes rather than just five seconds. And he hadn't shot her despite the numerous wide-ranged opportunities presented before him. He merely stared back with a glint in his eyes that she couldn't quite read. Or maybe she was just crazy.

"Nathalie," he curses, catching his breath as he stands beside her. The door is still open from where 8075 and the boy had escaped. "Why didn't you shoot that boy?"

She doesn't look at him.  The question, a simple one, has an answer that will not exit her tongue. She didn't shoot him; she wanted them to escape. She didn't shoot because she isn't ruthless like him. She'll never say these things; certain words bring consequences.

"Mr. Agreste, you know that I could not kill the boy..." she says carefully. "We needed him for testing." Deep down, she promises to herself that she will never kill those children. She will do everything in her power to keep them from harm.

A discontented frown crosses his face. "I knew he'd come!" He growls. "Hell, I knew it! That was the plan!" His hands fly up in torment.

Nathalie watches a shooting star glide across the sky. She wishes for the boy and 8075's safety.

"Nathalie, you hear? Next time, shoot the boy. I don't care," Mr. Agreste says through gritted teeth. His words are laced with anger and vengeance, and this time she turns her head to look at him.

For once, Gabriel Agreste looks older than mid-forties. Age has wearily taken over him—bags droop beneath his eyes and sagging resides in certain places of his once defined face. His blue eyes are steel and cold and guard numerous secrets that she has gradually uncovered. Though Gabriel has disappeared from the public eye, he has not from her—yet for some reason, she feels he slowly is disappearing from her, from the world. From himself and from who he used to be. After he lost Adrien two years ago, he lost himself.

"I can imagine how difficult everything must be for you, sir. But is this what your son would want? Not so, I'm sure," She sighs and stares into his intricately guarded blue eyes.

He knows she's right.

But his wife is gone...his son is gone...and there's no other way to retrieve them.