"You left us when we needed you most. You didn't just walk away from me, you abandoned us for your god knows what reasons. You don't get to come back and pretend you were ever a mother." His voice cracked slightly at the end, betraying the storm behind his cold facade.
"I had no choice!" she cried, reaching out. "You think I wanted to leave? I was protecting you...."
"Protecting us? From who? From you?" he snapped, slapping her hand away. "Don't lie to yourself, and don't insult me by lying to me. If you were protecting us, where were you when we cried ourselves to sleep? When he," Lu Ting Zhou caught himself, fists clenched tightly.
Song Yaya's lip quivered. "I couldn't come back. They would have,"
"Save it!" he barked. "All these years, and you never once tried to send a message, a signal, anything. Don't act like the victim now. You only showed up when things started turning better for us, and you hadn't expected it to be, so you came back because you needed something."
She was sobbing now, her body shaking with desperation. "I'm still your mother! I still...."
"You are nothing to me."
"If you are talking of having a mother, we already have one who has been with us all these years you have been missing!"
Silence.
There was total silence...
His words hit like a dagger, and Song Yaya collapsed forward, a soundless sob escaping her throat. Her hands curled into fists against the floor, powerless and broken.
Lu Ting Zhou turned, dragging his injured leg toward the door. Every step was a pain, but it was nothing compared to the ache in his chest.
He looked over his shoulder, "Stay away from me. And stay away from them too. If you ever go near them… I will make sure you regret it."
He staggered to the door and slammed his fist against it. It didn't budge no matter how forcefully he knocked it! The cameras whirred silently, recording everything.
"We need to work together if we want to get out of here alive," Song Yaya said cautiously. "Even if you hate me we have to team up!"
"Hate?" he turned to her, his eyes sharp and dangerous. "Hating you would mean I still care. But I don't. I stopped the day I realized you would sacrifice your kids for your own gain."
She stared at him, eyes wide, lips trembling. "I would never....."
"You already did, and it's possible that you can do it once again..." he cut her off. "It won't be something new coming from you!"
Song Yaya didn't know what else to say! Her son was hell-bent on not acknowledging her presence.
— — — — — —
Behind a dark glass wall, far beyond the sterile room's reach, several figures stood silently in an observation chamber lit only by monitors and holograms. Screens displayed multiple angles of the locked room, each capturing the raw, unraveling tension between mother and son.
A man in a lab coat leaned forward, adjusting his glasses. "Fascinating, truly fascinating.." he murmured. "So much emotional volatility. We don't even need to provoke them, just let them tear each other apart. It would be easy to handle them."
Another voice, deeper and calm, spoke from the shadows behind him. "Lu Ting Zhou's loyalty to his brother and Lu Wan Ruyi is absolutely marvelous. And that could be a problem... or a solution, depending on how we use it to our benefit."
A third figure, a woman dressed in a sleek black suit with an insignia on her collar, crossed her arms. "Song Yaya failed to trigger a protective response. That's a shame. But look at him, he still hasn't realized why we brought them in."