Amber & Ice

Chapter 26: Hook, line and sinker

Dyo arrived outside Bree’s apartment before Athena, but, reluctant to see Bree alone, he decided to wait on the street for Athena to get there before going up.

It gave him time and air to mull over what he had seen, too. Hermes. He couldn’t believe it. Hermes had been in the group for almost three years now. Dyo, who had joined while he was still in school, could remember Hermes’ first meeting. Artemis had been the one to recommend him, after an impassioned speech he gave against a pop vote in one of her lectures. She would be devastated when she was told what he was doing now.

For the past few months, Hermes had steadily been supplying them with information from his placement in the voting centre. He had been the one to alert the group to the upcoming military vote and had also given Dyo the information he needed to break into the voting centre. How long had he been selling them out to the Freedom Institute? How long had he been double crossing them? Had he ever been on their side?

Dyo shook his head. The more he thought about it, the more he started to feel sick. But before his lunch was able to make a re-appearance, he saw Athena walking up the street towards him.

“Hey,” she said, looking sombre. “Are you ready to do this?”

“I guess,” Dyo sighed. He didn’t feel ready. But he knew that they needed to go and speak to Bree. Athena took hold of his hand and squeezed it before leading the way through the door of the building and up the stairs towards Briseis’ flat. When they reached her door, Athena squeezed his hand again and, reluctantly, he knocked on the door.

Briseis’ eyes grew wide as she opened it and found them stood there. “Dyo? Athena? What are you doing here?” As she got over her shock, her eyes narrowed. It was nice to see she had softened her approach since their last argument…

Dyo bit back the petty remark he wanted to make and forced himself to be civil. This was too important. “We have information on your leak. There’s something you need to see.”

“I guess you had better come in then,” she told him reluctantly, stepping out of the way so that they could enter her tiny apartment.

Dyo didn’t even try to explain what they had discovered; he didn’t think he could find the words. He just plugged his glasses into Briseis’ screen and pressed play on Athena’s video footage.

She watched in silence, her lips growing smaller as she pursed them into oblivion. “When was this?” she asked, as it came to an end.

“About an hour ago,” Athena told her.

“How did you get it?”

Athena hesitated for a moment before replying to her. “Castor Grant has been spending a lot of time with my room mate.”

“That would explain his reference to not needing your name, but not why you were filming him.”

“I was worried that he might have been spying on me. I needed to know for sure, so I followed him.”

Briseis nodded. “Good instincts. I think Ariadne was right - you’ll make a great addition to our group - if you still want anything to do with us, of course.”

“I think that’s as close to an apology as you are going to get, Athena,” Dyo said, a smile spreading across his face for the first time that afternoon. “It’s actually quite an achievement for Bree, so I think we should accept it. Returning to the matter at hand, however, what are we going to do with our spy?”

“Somewhat helpfully, Hermes appears to have already supplied us with the answer to that one. I will call the others - we need to set a trap.”

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