Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 102: Chapter 102
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The descent was silent.
No words. Just the low hum of the underground tram slicing through darkness, slicing through dread.
Elena sat across from Adrian, her fists clenched around the pulse disruptor, her mind echoing with fragments of voices that didn’t belong to her. The Genesis neural link was growing louder too loud.
“She’s close,” Elena whispered. “I can feel her. Like she’s sitting in my skin.”
Adrian’s jaw tensed. He reached across the space between them and placed a hand over hers. “We end it today.”
Liana adjusted the signal dampeners on Elena’s neck. “You’ve got twenty minutes max before the link tries to rewrite your neural map completely. After that, you’re not just compromised. You’re theirs.”
“I’m already theirs,” Elena muttered. “They built me.”
The tram screeched to a halt, its door sliding open with a hiss.
Before them stood a massive corridor carved from volcanic rock. At the far end: the Vault the heart of Genesis. Sealed for twenty-two years. Opened now only by her retinal scan.
Elena stepped forward, the access panel scanning her. It blinked green. Access Granted.
Inside, the Vault was colder than she expected.
Walls of curved glass contained prototypes, preserved clones suspended in bio-fluid. Some were deformed. Some looked… like her. Others looked like Adrian. A legacy of stolen faces.
Liana gasped. “These aren’t just clones. These are evolutionary trials.”
Adrian scanned the central chamber’s console, fingers flying. “There’s one more file. CODE NAME: Catalyst.”
Just as he accessed it, the lights flickered. Then: a second heartbeat.
Elena spun around—and froze.
There she was.
Standing tall in a dark tactical suit, flawless, cold, eyes glowing faint silver.
Her. But not her.
Catalyst.
No scars. No tremble in her hands. No humanity.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Catalyst said, voice a hollow twin of Elena’s. “You broke protocol. You were meant to collapse. Instead, you evolved. I am the correction.”
Adrian stepped forward, gun raised. “You’re the virus. Not the cure.”
“No,” Catalyst whispered. “She is.”
And in that moment Elena screamed.
She dropped to her knees, gripping her head, as a surge of data poured into her mind like wildfire. Childhood memories flickered and died. Her mother’s voice twisted. Adrian’s smile shattered into static.
“It’s rewriting me,” she gasped. “It’s trying to erase you.”
Adrian dropped beside her, holding her as she convulsed.
“Then hold on to me,” he whispered fiercely. “Don’t let go. Whatever happens, don’t let go.”
Elena clutched her skull, as if her hands could hold her mind together. The flood of neural override from Catalyst felt like knives sharp, digital blades slicing through her thoughts. The pain wasn’t just in her body. It was in her identity.
Catalyst didn’t move. She didn’t need to. Her presence was already devouring Elena.
“I’m not here to kill you,” Catalyst said flatly. “I’m here to complete you. Merge. Finalize. There was always meant to be one.”
“Over my dead body,” Adrian growled, cocking his weapon.
“You misunderstand,” Catalyst turned her gaze to him. “You’re not part of the final equation.”
Then she turned to Liana.
And smiled.
A slow, almost knowing smile.
Adrian’s brows furrowed. “Why are you looking at her like that?”
Catalyst said nothing. Just stared. And Elena, fighting the storm in her head, caught it. The silence. The signal. The code looping behind Catalyst’s irises. Her heart dropped.
“She’s the conduit,” Elena gasped. “Catalyst is syncing through Liana’s neural implant.”
Liana froze. “That’s not possible. My implants were deactivated”
“You think Genesis would ever give you full autonomy?” Catalyst’s voice was silk and steel. “You were always the failsafe, Liana. Your loyalty was never in question. It was programmed.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed. “No… no, she’s lying.”
But Elena was already crawling to her knees, blood dripping from her nose. “Adrian, the uplink she’s using Liana’s frequency to bypass the Vault’s firewall. If we don’t sever the connection Catalyst won’t need to merge with me. She’ll rewrite me from here.”
Liana’s hands shook. “I—I didn’t know. I swear”
“Then prove it,” Adrian said, stepping forward. “Help me stop her.”
Catalyst tilted her head. “Too late.”
The chamber lights burst into white, and a high-pitched screech tore through the Vault. A countdown began on the console screen:
PROTOCOL PRIME ACTIVATED: 07:44 MINUTES TO SYSTEM CORE INTEGRATION.
The entire facility began to shake.
Catalyst’s eyes dimmed, like her job was done.
“Merge or resist,” she said softly to Elena. “Either way, by the end of this, I will be the last version of us.”
Then she stepped backward into a containment pod and sealed herself inside. Her form flickered, slowly dissolving into code.
“She’s digitizing,” Adrian shouted. “She’s moving to the mainframe!”
Elena stood, her body trembling, but her eyes lit with resolve.
“Then we take the mainframe first.”
Alarms blared overhead, their red pulses slicing through the darkness. The countdown kept ticking.
07:01… 07:00… 06:59…
Adrian worked the console, fingers flying. “She’s not just uploading. She’s splicing your genetic memory into Genesis’s root protocol. She wants to overwrite the command center with your conscience!”
“No,” Elena said through gritted teeth. “Not my conscience my pain. She’s weaponizing it.”
Her knees buckled again, but she caught herself on the rail. Her hands trembled violently then stopped.
The shaking stopped.
The voices dimmed.
The pain stilled.
Because Elena somehow had reached inside the chaos and grabbed a thread.
A memory. Adrian.
Not a code. Not a hallucination. A real memory. One she chose to keep.
It was him, in the safehouse after their first kiss, whispering: “You’re not broken. You’re reborn.”
She smiled faintly. “I still remember you.”
Adrian turned. “Elena?”
Her back arched with the strain of the neural pull but her eyes snapped open, fierce.
“I can choose what stays.”
She pressed her hand to the interface, teeth gritted. Her voice was barely above a whisper but every word rippled through the vault:
“You don’t get to rewrite me, Catalyst.
You don’t get to control me like they did.
This body may be built…
but I made the woman.”
The room rattled.
Catalyst’s pod sparked.
Adrian’s eyes widened. “She’s forcing a counter-sync. She’s infecting the uplink with her own memory stream!”
“Not infecting,” Liana murmured. “She’s seeding it.”
The walls flickered. The vault lights blinked in rhythm with Elena’s heartbeat.
Thump.
The alarm dimmed.
Thump.
Catalyst’s data stream stuttered.
Thump.
Then silence.
And then… Elena collapsed.
Adrian caught her mid-fall, pressing her to his chest, his voice breaking. “Stay with me, Elena. Stay.”
She looked up at him, her voice hoarse.
“I think I just hacked my own mind…”
Then her head slumped onto his shoulder.
And the countdown on the mainframe froze at 05:32.
The silence didn’t feel like peace.
It felt like the pause before something bigger hits.
Adrian held Elena tightly, his heart pounding harder than the vault alarms ever did. Her body was limp, pulse faint but present. He brushed a bloodied strand of hair from her cheek.
“Elena,” he whispered. “Say something.”
Her fingers twitched.
Then slowly, her lips parted.
Her voice was strained but sharp.
“I saw everything.”
Adrian leaned closer. “What do you mean?”
Her eyes opened.
And for a second they didn’t look like hers.
Not fully.
“Catalyst… showed me the core memories. Not just mine. Hers. Our source code. The origin sequence. She’s not the final version.”
Adrian’s breath caught. “What?”
“She’s not the end,” Elena whispered. “She’s just the door.”
She turned her head toward the flickering central console. Data was still pouring across the screen only now, it wasn’t Catalyst’s code. It was Genesis’s root file system, unraveling.
PROJECT: ORIGINOS // SUBJECT: ZERO // CLASSIFIED ACCESS REQUIRED
Liana moved toward it, her voice tight. “I thought Catalyst was the apex.”
“She was the decoy,” Elena replied. “Genesis created her to keep the real experiment hidden. Me.”
Adrian stared at the screen. “What’s Subject Zero?”
The console blinked.
A black-and-white image appeared.
A girl no older than five. Eyes wide. Expression blank. Face pixelated from time. Below the image:
NAME: REDACTED
PRIMARY CODE HOST
MOTHER KEY HOLDER: UNKNOWN
CONSCIOUSNESS ARCHITECT: DR. NATHANIEL VOSS
STATUS: DORMANT
LOCATION: UNMAPPED
Liana whispered, “That’s the original. The very first.”
Elena stared at the screen, her voice trembling.
“She’s still alive.”
Adrian turned to her. “Then what are you?”
Elena closed her eyes.
And when she opened them again, they glowed faint silver.
“I’m her shadow.”
Elena pulled herself up slowly, her breathing heavy. The Vault’s red emergency lights painted her in flashes of blood and shadow, but she didn’t tremble anymore.
Her mind was scarred but no longer shattered.
Adrian stared at her, still kneeling beside the console. “What do we do now?”
Elena’s voice was colder now. Sharper. Like steel forged from grief.
“We don’t stop Catalyst. We out-code her.”
Liana frowned. “She’s already inside the Genesis network.”
“And I’m inside her,” Elena said. “I saw where she leads. There’s a failsafe buried in the Genesis root something not even she can access alone.”
Adrian stood. “The Origin File?”
“No. The Architect Protocol. The code Nathaniel Voss buried when he disappeared. It’s not just a shutdown it’s a rewrite. A way to reclaim everything.”
A beat passed.
Liana’s voice dropped. “Elena… if you use it, you’ll be rewriting your own existence. Your memories. Maybe even your identity.”
Elena turned to face the mainframe. Her expression was unreadable.
“I know.”
Adrian took a step forward, pain etched in his eyes. “Then we’ll lose you.”
She looked back at him and for a second, everything softened.
“No,” she said quietly. “You’ll meet all of me. The version I was meant to be. The one before Genesis. Before the trauma. Before the fragments.”
She placed her palm on the console.
And the system reacted.
Lines of golden code burst across the interface. Hidden architecture revealed itself layer by layer like the Vault was blooming from within.
Then the screen locked on a final prompt:
ACTIVATE ARCHITECT PROTOCOL?
WARNING: MEMORY WIPE. PERSONALITY MERGE. STRUCTURAL RISK: 92%.
ENTER KEY SEQUENCE TO CONFIRM.
Elena glanced at Adrian one last time.
“Tell me you trust me.”
He didn’t blink.
“I’d follow you into the fire.”
She nodded once… then began typing the key.
Her own name.
Her mother’s voice.
The day she escaped Genesis.
The night she met Adrian.
Every truth she’d clung to in the storm.
Each line… a memory. Each stroke… a goodbye.
Then she hit ENTER.
The Vault trembled as the Architect Protocol surged.
Elena stood tall as light engulfed her not screaming, not resisting.
Becoming.
There was no light.
No pain.
No time.
Only code.
Elena floated in a silent ocean of fractured data glowing lines of memory looping in endless spirals around her. Voices whispered, not from outside, but within. Hers, and not hers.
“Elena Voss, born from fragments…”
“Not the first. Not the last.”
“Find the core. Find yourself.”
She turned or thought she did. Movement was conceptual here, not physical.
Beneath her, strings of code twisted like DNA. She recognized pieces her childhood laughter, her father’s voice, the first time she felt rain. But scattered between them were broken echoes.
Screams. Sterile rooms. Scalpel sounds.
Genesis.
She reached for one line and was instantly pulled inside it.
She was eight.
Strapped to a table.
Monitors blinking.
Dr. Nathaniel Voss leaned over her, voice eerily calm.
“You’re adapting faster than Subject 1. Memory is solidifying. The shadowing effect is… nearly perfect.”
“Where’s my mother?” her child-self whispered.
Voss froze just for a second.
Then he turned to the nurse. “Increase sedation. She’s slipping again.”
Elena yanked herself free from the memory-stream, panting.
“He knew. He always knew I wasn’t the first.”
Then a presence stirred in the distance subtle, ancient, heavy.
Another consciousness.
She spun around.
There, in the space beyond code and time, stood a figure faint and glowing. Small. Delicate. A child with silver eyes. The girl from the black-and-white photo.
“I waited for you,” the girl said.
Elena’s breath caught. “You’re Subject Zero.”
The girl tilted her head. “No. I’m what’s left of her.”
“Where are you?”
“In the dark. Hidden from Genesis. They made me… and then they erased me. But not before I left a part of myself behind.”
She took a step forward, data rippling beneath her feet.
“You.”
Elena’s heartbeat pounded in her ears.
“I’m not just a clone,” she said slowly.
“No,” the girl whispered.
“You’re the evolution.”
Suddenly, a sharp distortion sliced through the Architect Protocol.
The Vault. The real world. Adrian’s voice calling her name, faint but urgent.
Subject Zero’s eyes widened. “They’ve found the bridge. You don’t have much time.”
Elena’s pulse spiked. “Bridge?”
“Catalyst. She’s trying to override the Protocol from outside. She can’t delete you but she can trap you in here.”
Elena clenched her fists. “Then help me stop her.”
The girl reached forward, pressing her small hand to Elena’s chest.
A glowing thread connected them. Code merged. Memory synced.
Elena’s mind ignited.
Files unlocked. Memories aligned. Architect Control transferred.
“Remember,” the girl said, her form fading, “you’re not just the key…”
“You are the door.”
Elena’s body convulsed in the Vault.
Her eyes snapped open blazing silver.
Adrian stumbled back, stunned.
“Elena?”
She stood slowly, her voice layered hers and someone else’s beneath it.
“I found her. I found me. And I remember everything now.”
She turned toward the terminal, hands glowing with pure code.
“Let’s end Genesis.”
No words. Just the low hum of the underground tram slicing through darkness, slicing through dread.
Elena sat across from Adrian, her fists clenched around the pulse disruptor, her mind echoing with fragments of voices that didn’t belong to her. The Genesis neural link was growing louder too loud.
“She’s close,” Elena whispered. “I can feel her. Like she’s sitting in my skin.”
Adrian’s jaw tensed. He reached across the space between them and placed a hand over hers. “We end it today.”
Liana adjusted the signal dampeners on Elena’s neck. “You’ve got twenty minutes max before the link tries to rewrite your neural map completely. After that, you’re not just compromised. You’re theirs.”
“I’m already theirs,” Elena muttered. “They built me.”
The tram screeched to a halt, its door sliding open with a hiss.
Before them stood a massive corridor carved from volcanic rock. At the far end: the Vault the heart of Genesis. Sealed for twenty-two years. Opened now only by her retinal scan.
Elena stepped forward, the access panel scanning her. It blinked green. Access Granted.
Inside, the Vault was colder than she expected.
Walls of curved glass contained prototypes, preserved clones suspended in bio-fluid. Some were deformed. Some looked… like her. Others looked like Adrian. A legacy of stolen faces.
Liana gasped. “These aren’t just clones. These are evolutionary trials.”
Adrian scanned the central chamber’s console, fingers flying. “There’s one more file. CODE NAME: Catalyst.”
Just as he accessed it, the lights flickered. Then: a second heartbeat.
Elena spun around—and froze.
There she was.
Standing tall in a dark tactical suit, flawless, cold, eyes glowing faint silver.
Her. But not her.
Catalyst.
No scars. No tremble in her hands. No humanity.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Catalyst said, voice a hollow twin of Elena’s. “You broke protocol. You were meant to collapse. Instead, you evolved. I am the correction.”
Adrian stepped forward, gun raised. “You’re the virus. Not the cure.”
“No,” Catalyst whispered. “She is.”
And in that moment Elena screamed.
She dropped to her knees, gripping her head, as a surge of data poured into her mind like wildfire. Childhood memories flickered and died. Her mother’s voice twisted. Adrian’s smile shattered into static.
“It’s rewriting me,” she gasped. “It’s trying to erase you.”
Adrian dropped beside her, holding her as she convulsed.
“Then hold on to me,” he whispered fiercely. “Don’t let go. Whatever happens, don’t let go.”
Elena clutched her skull, as if her hands could hold her mind together. The flood of neural override from Catalyst felt like knives sharp, digital blades slicing through her thoughts. The pain wasn’t just in her body. It was in her identity.
Catalyst didn’t move. She didn’t need to. Her presence was already devouring Elena.
“I’m not here to kill you,” Catalyst said flatly. “I’m here to complete you. Merge. Finalize. There was always meant to be one.”
“Over my dead body,” Adrian growled, cocking his weapon.
“You misunderstand,” Catalyst turned her gaze to him. “You’re not part of the final equation.”
Then she turned to Liana.
And smiled.
A slow, almost knowing smile.
Adrian’s brows furrowed. “Why are you looking at her like that?”
Catalyst said nothing. Just stared. And Elena, fighting the storm in her head, caught it. The silence. The signal. The code looping behind Catalyst’s irises. Her heart dropped.
“She’s the conduit,” Elena gasped. “Catalyst is syncing through Liana’s neural implant.”
Liana froze. “That’s not possible. My implants were deactivated”
“You think Genesis would ever give you full autonomy?” Catalyst’s voice was silk and steel. “You were always the failsafe, Liana. Your loyalty was never in question. It was programmed.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed. “No… no, she’s lying.”
But Elena was already crawling to her knees, blood dripping from her nose. “Adrian, the uplink she’s using Liana’s frequency to bypass the Vault’s firewall. If we don’t sever the connection Catalyst won’t need to merge with me. She’ll rewrite me from here.”
Liana’s hands shook. “I—I didn’t know. I swear”
“Then prove it,” Adrian said, stepping forward. “Help me stop her.”
Catalyst tilted her head. “Too late.”
The chamber lights burst into white, and a high-pitched screech tore through the Vault. A countdown began on the console screen:
PROTOCOL PRIME ACTIVATED: 07:44 MINUTES TO SYSTEM CORE INTEGRATION.
The entire facility began to shake.
Catalyst’s eyes dimmed, like her job was done.
“Merge or resist,” she said softly to Elena. “Either way, by the end of this, I will be the last version of us.”
Then she stepped backward into a containment pod and sealed herself inside. Her form flickered, slowly dissolving into code.
“She’s digitizing,” Adrian shouted. “She’s moving to the mainframe!”
Elena stood, her body trembling, but her eyes lit with resolve.
“Then we take the mainframe first.”
Alarms blared overhead, their red pulses slicing through the darkness. The countdown kept ticking.
07:01… 07:00… 06:59…
Adrian worked the console, fingers flying. “She’s not just uploading. She’s splicing your genetic memory into Genesis’s root protocol. She wants to overwrite the command center with your conscience!”
“No,” Elena said through gritted teeth. “Not my conscience my pain. She’s weaponizing it.”
Her knees buckled again, but she caught herself on the rail. Her hands trembled violently then stopped.
The shaking stopped.
The voices dimmed.
The pain stilled.
Because Elena somehow had reached inside the chaos and grabbed a thread.
A memory. Adrian.
Not a code. Not a hallucination. A real memory. One she chose to keep.
It was him, in the safehouse after their first kiss, whispering: “You’re not broken. You’re reborn.”
She smiled faintly. “I still remember you.”
Adrian turned. “Elena?”
Her back arched with the strain of the neural pull but her eyes snapped open, fierce.
“I can choose what stays.”
She pressed her hand to the interface, teeth gritted. Her voice was barely above a whisper but every word rippled through the vault:
“You don’t get to rewrite me, Catalyst.
You don’t get to control me like they did.
This body may be built…
but I made the woman.”
The room rattled.
Catalyst’s pod sparked.
Adrian’s eyes widened. “She’s forcing a counter-sync. She’s infecting the uplink with her own memory stream!”
“Not infecting,” Liana murmured. “She’s seeding it.”
The walls flickered. The vault lights blinked in rhythm with Elena’s heartbeat.
Thump.
The alarm dimmed.
Thump.
Catalyst’s data stream stuttered.
Thump.
Then silence.
And then… Elena collapsed.
Adrian caught her mid-fall, pressing her to his chest, his voice breaking. “Stay with me, Elena. Stay.”
She looked up at him, her voice hoarse.
“I think I just hacked my own mind…”
Then her head slumped onto his shoulder.
And the countdown on the mainframe froze at 05:32.
The silence didn’t feel like peace.
It felt like the pause before something bigger hits.
Adrian held Elena tightly, his heart pounding harder than the vault alarms ever did. Her body was limp, pulse faint but present. He brushed a bloodied strand of hair from her cheek.
“Elena,” he whispered. “Say something.”
Her fingers twitched.
Then slowly, her lips parted.
Her voice was strained but sharp.
“I saw everything.”
Adrian leaned closer. “What do you mean?”
Her eyes opened.
And for a second they didn’t look like hers.
Not fully.
“Catalyst… showed me the core memories. Not just mine. Hers. Our source code. The origin sequence. She’s not the final version.”
Adrian’s breath caught. “What?”
“She’s not the end,” Elena whispered. “She’s just the door.”
She turned her head toward the flickering central console. Data was still pouring across the screen only now, it wasn’t Catalyst’s code. It was Genesis’s root file system, unraveling.
PROJECT: ORIGINOS // SUBJECT: ZERO // CLASSIFIED ACCESS REQUIRED
Liana moved toward it, her voice tight. “I thought Catalyst was the apex.”
“She was the decoy,” Elena replied. “Genesis created her to keep the real experiment hidden. Me.”
Adrian stared at the screen. “What’s Subject Zero?”
The console blinked.
A black-and-white image appeared.
A girl no older than five. Eyes wide. Expression blank. Face pixelated from time. Below the image:
NAME: REDACTED
PRIMARY CODE HOST
MOTHER KEY HOLDER: UNKNOWN
CONSCIOUSNESS ARCHITECT: DR. NATHANIEL VOSS
STATUS: DORMANT
LOCATION: UNMAPPED
Liana whispered, “That’s the original. The very first.”
Elena stared at the screen, her voice trembling.
“She’s still alive.”
Adrian turned to her. “Then what are you?”
Elena closed her eyes.
And when she opened them again, they glowed faint silver.
“I’m her shadow.”
Elena pulled herself up slowly, her breathing heavy. The Vault’s red emergency lights painted her in flashes of blood and shadow, but she didn’t tremble anymore.
Her mind was scarred but no longer shattered.
Adrian stared at her, still kneeling beside the console. “What do we do now?”
Elena’s voice was colder now. Sharper. Like steel forged from grief.
“We don’t stop Catalyst. We out-code her.”
Liana frowned. “She’s already inside the Genesis network.”
“And I’m inside her,” Elena said. “I saw where she leads. There’s a failsafe buried in the Genesis root something not even she can access alone.”
Adrian stood. “The Origin File?”
“No. The Architect Protocol. The code Nathaniel Voss buried when he disappeared. It’s not just a shutdown it’s a rewrite. A way to reclaim everything.”
A beat passed.
Liana’s voice dropped. “Elena… if you use it, you’ll be rewriting your own existence. Your memories. Maybe even your identity.”
Elena turned to face the mainframe. Her expression was unreadable.
“I know.”
Adrian took a step forward, pain etched in his eyes. “Then we’ll lose you.”
She looked back at him and for a second, everything softened.
“No,” she said quietly. “You’ll meet all of me. The version I was meant to be. The one before Genesis. Before the trauma. Before the fragments.”
She placed her palm on the console.
And the system reacted.
Lines of golden code burst across the interface. Hidden architecture revealed itself layer by layer like the Vault was blooming from within.
Then the screen locked on a final prompt:
ACTIVATE ARCHITECT PROTOCOL?
WARNING: MEMORY WIPE. PERSONALITY MERGE. STRUCTURAL RISK: 92%.
ENTER KEY SEQUENCE TO CONFIRM.
Elena glanced at Adrian one last time.
“Tell me you trust me.”
He didn’t blink.
“I’d follow you into the fire.”
She nodded once… then began typing the key.
Her own name.
Her mother’s voice.
The day she escaped Genesis.
The night she met Adrian.
Every truth she’d clung to in the storm.
Each line… a memory. Each stroke… a goodbye.
Then she hit ENTER.
The Vault trembled as the Architect Protocol surged.
Elena stood tall as light engulfed her not screaming, not resisting.
Becoming.
There was no light.
No pain.
No time.
Only code.
Elena floated in a silent ocean of fractured data glowing lines of memory looping in endless spirals around her. Voices whispered, not from outside, but within. Hers, and not hers.
“Elena Voss, born from fragments…”
“Not the first. Not the last.”
“Find the core. Find yourself.”
She turned or thought she did. Movement was conceptual here, not physical.
Beneath her, strings of code twisted like DNA. She recognized pieces her childhood laughter, her father’s voice, the first time she felt rain. But scattered between them were broken echoes.
Screams. Sterile rooms. Scalpel sounds.
Genesis.
She reached for one line and was instantly pulled inside it.
She was eight.
Strapped to a table.
Monitors blinking.
Dr. Nathaniel Voss leaned over her, voice eerily calm.
“You’re adapting faster than Subject 1. Memory is solidifying. The shadowing effect is… nearly perfect.”
“Where’s my mother?” her child-self whispered.
Voss froze just for a second.
Then he turned to the nurse. “Increase sedation. She’s slipping again.”
Elena yanked herself free from the memory-stream, panting.
“He knew. He always knew I wasn’t the first.”
Then a presence stirred in the distance subtle, ancient, heavy.
Another consciousness.
She spun around.
There, in the space beyond code and time, stood a figure faint and glowing. Small. Delicate. A child with silver eyes. The girl from the black-and-white photo.
“I waited for you,” the girl said.
Elena’s breath caught. “You’re Subject Zero.”
The girl tilted her head. “No. I’m what’s left of her.”
“Where are you?”
“In the dark. Hidden from Genesis. They made me… and then they erased me. But not before I left a part of myself behind.”
She took a step forward, data rippling beneath her feet.
“You.”
Elena’s heartbeat pounded in her ears.
“I’m not just a clone,” she said slowly.
“No,” the girl whispered.
“You’re the evolution.”
Suddenly, a sharp distortion sliced through the Architect Protocol.
The Vault. The real world. Adrian’s voice calling her name, faint but urgent.
Subject Zero’s eyes widened. “They’ve found the bridge. You don’t have much time.”
Elena’s pulse spiked. “Bridge?”
“Catalyst. She’s trying to override the Protocol from outside. She can’t delete you but she can trap you in here.”
Elena clenched her fists. “Then help me stop her.”
The girl reached forward, pressing her small hand to Elena’s chest.
A glowing thread connected them. Code merged. Memory synced.
Elena’s mind ignited.
Files unlocked. Memories aligned. Architect Control transferred.
“Remember,” the girl said, her form fading, “you’re not just the key…”
“You are the door.”
Elena’s body convulsed in the Vault.
Her eyes snapped open blazing silver.
Adrian stumbled back, stunned.
“Elena?”
She stood slowly, her voice layered hers and someone else’s beneath it.
“I found her. I found me. And I remember everything now.”
She turned toward the terminal, hands glowing with pure code.
“Let’s end Genesis.”
End of Beneath the Billionaire Mask Chapter 102. Continue reading Chapter 103 or return to Beneath the Billionaire Mask book page.