Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 26: Chapter 26
You are reading Beneath the Billionaire Mask, Chapter 26: Chapter 26. Read more chapters of Beneath the Billionaire Mask.
Safehouse Echo – War Room – 8:10 PM
Liana threw the phone onto the table. The image of Elias Blackwood flickered onscreen — captured through a grainy CCTV feed, his face half-hidden by a raised collar, but unmistakable.
“It’s not just the sighting,” she said. “Facial match hit 97% accuracy. And he didn’t go alone.”
She pulled up another image: Marcus, in a dark coat and baseball cap, trailing three steps behind.
Elena leaned in, jaw clenched. “What were they doing at the U.N.?”
“No idea yet,” Liana said. “But if Marcus brought Elias there, it wasn’t for diplomacy.”
Adrian sat at the head of the table, pale but alert. The bandage on his shoulder peeked beneath his shirt collar. He stared at the image of his brother like he was seeing a ghost. A ghost with someone else’s soul behind its eyes.
“I thought if I ever saw him again,” Adrian murmured, “it would be in a morgue. Or a memory.”
Elena watched him carefully. “But he’s real. And he’s in play.”
Adrian’s fingers tapped against the metal surface of the table. “Marcus is setting the stage. The U.N. sighting wasn’t just a risk—it was a message. He wants me to see that Elias isn’t a weapon anymore. He’s an asset.”
“Or a threat,” Liana said.
“Both,” Adrian whispered.
New York City – Outside Julia’s Apartment – 2:17 AM
Julia clutched a pepper spray in one hand and a pocket drive in the other. Her laptop had been fried—completely wiped after the breach. But she’d anticipated a worst-case scenario.
The flash drive contained a mirrored copy of the decrypted NIGHTFALL archive. She’d been backing it up every hour, ever since Guillermo’s message warned her to expect surveillance.
She slipped the drive into an envelope and taped it under the trash chute in the hallway.
“If they come for me,” she whispered to herself, “they’re not taking this with them.”
Suddenly, she froze.
A click echoed down the hall.
She turned—slowly.
A man stood at the far end, dressed in black, his face obscured.
He didn’t speak.
He simply lifted a hand…
…and pressed a single finger to his lips.
Julia backed away.
When she blinked, he was gone.
Safehouse Echo – Adrian’s Room – 10:44 PM
Elena stood at the window, phone in hand. The message from Julia came through in fragmented code:
They know.
Not just names.
Countdown has started.
Protect Adrian.
Don’t trust the signal.
I’m going dark.
Adrian’s voice broke the silence behind her.
“She sent something?”
Elena nodded, reading the message again.
“What does she mean by countdown?”
Adrian slowly stood, every movement tight with pain. “It means NIGHTFALL isn’t just a file anymore. It’s active.”
Liana entered with a satchel slung over her shoulder. “There’s more. The U.N. servers were accessed from an internal port two hours ago. Someone inside triggered a global surveillance sweep tied to old Foundation protocols. They’re trying to pull locations tied to your father’s projects.”
“Marcus is using Elias as the key,” Adrian said. “And the U.N. sighting was a test run.”
Liana pulled up a blinking file on her tablet. “There’s a list of targets… but only three have names.”
She turned the screen toward them.
1. Cruz, Elena.
2. King, Julia.
3. Blackwood, Adrian.
Elena’s heart lurched.
“He’s coming for us.”
“No,” Adrian said, jaw like stone. “He’s already here.”
A low hum vibrated through the safehouse walls.
Then the power went out.
Safehouse Echo – Bogotá – 10:46 PM
The lights died in an instant.
Monitors blinked off, the air vents stilled, and a silence surged into the safehouse like a held breath. Outside, the storm rolled low over the hills, thunder lashing like a warning.
Elena instinctively moved closer to Adrian.
Liana drew her pistol from the small of her back. “EMP?”
Adrian’s eyes darted toward the blacked-out hallway. “If it was, we’re not alone anymore.”
Liana moved fast, already checking the fallback generator’s manual trigger. No response.
“We’re dark across every channel. Security grid is fried. Backup’s offline.”
Adrian’s hand closed around Elena’s wrist. “We need to move—now.”
A soft, rhythmic clicking echoed from the far side of the compound. Footsteps. Boots.
Three pairs, maybe four.
Elena’s pulse jumped. “They found us.”
“Correction,” Liana muttered, slipping a blade from her boot. “He found us.”
Main Hallway – 10:49 PM
The team crept through the corridor, flashlights off, moving by memory and instinct. The only light came from the flicker of emergency exit signs that hadn’t yet burned out.
Adrian’s breathing was shallow, the wound slowing him down. Elena stayed close, eyes darting between shadows.
A crackle of static bled into the air.
Then a voice—chilling, familiar—rattled through the security intercom.
“You built a fortress, Adrian. But you forgot something… ghosts don’t need doors.”
Elena froze.
“Marcus,” Adrian growled.
“You’ve been chasing phantoms your whole life. Trying to make up for your father. For her. For Elias.”
Adrian’s fingers twitched near his sidearm.
“But you didn’t bury your brother. You just left him behind.”
A new voice crackled onto the feed.
Quieter. Strained. But undeniably familiar.
“Adrian… why didn’t you come for me?”
Elena’s blood ran cold.
Elias.
Control Room – 10:53 PM
Liana hacked open the override panel to the secured storage vault. It clicked open, revealing one final tactical set — weapons, comm units, encrypted chip drives, and a secondary hardline not dependent on wireless networks.
“We’ll use the cable line to reroute Julia’s last signal,” she said. “We need that drive back. It’s the only clean copy of NIGHTFALL we’ve got left.”
“Julia went dark,” Elena reminded her. “If they got to her—”
“She left breadcrumbs,” Adrian said. “She wouldn’t vanish without a plan.”
He tapped into the hardline console, rerouting the final data fragments that had backed up into the safehouse’s offline storage. As lines of code blinked back to life, a video opened—one Julia had tucked into the metadata as a failsafe.
It was short. Unsteady. A whispered message.
“If you’re seeing this… they’re already watching. They’re using Elias. But he’s fractured—he remembers just enough to follow Marcus, but not enough to know the truth. You have to reach him before he’s too far gone.”
She hesitated.
“Elena… if they come for me, don’t look back. Don’t try to save me. Just burn it all.”
The video cut.
Safehouse Perimeter – 11:01 PM
A drone zipped overhead. Not military grade—too quiet. But it paused near the roof, blinking red. Watching.
Inside, the static returned.
“You don’t have to run, Adrian. Not anymore. I brought your family back to you.”
The intercom crackled—then Elias’s voice, barely a whisper.
“I remember fire.”
Adrian’s jaw locked. “He’s not gone. I can reach him.”
Elena’s voice cracked. “What if you can’t?”
Adrian looked at her, eyes steady but pained.
“Then I do what I’ve always done.”
He chambered a round into his pistol.
“I stop the ones pretending to be heroes.”
Safehouse Echo – Lower Corridor – 11:06 PM
The air was thick with tension—like something breathing just out of sight. Elena kept her steps silent, her fingers wrapped around a small utility knife, every muscle taut.
From the wall speakers, Elias’s voice came again, hollow and detached:
“I remember screaming. My hands were bound. A room with mirrors… they told me I was broken. They told me you let them.”
Adrian winced like the words were knives.
“Elena,” he said, voice low, “if I don’t make it—”
“No,” she snapped, cutting him off. “We’re not doing that. You’re not dying in some haunted bunker while your brother’s being used as a weapon.”
Liana crouched ahead, studying movement from a thermal lens. “Two bodies on the eastern stairs. One’s pacing—agitated. The other… still. Watching.”
“Elena,” Adrian whispered, eyes narrowing, “that pacing one. That’s Elias.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s how I used to move… when I didn’t know who I was anymore.”
Security Wing – 11:13 PM
A door hissed open—manual override triggered. Elena, Adrian, and Liana stepped inside slowly.
The room was lit only by a single flickering bulb overhead. The walls had once been lined with screens, now shattered. And standing in the center of the room, as if torn from memory, was a man.
Younger. Taller. His black jacket hung off narrow shoulders. He looked up at the sound of footsteps.
Elias.
His eyes locked on Adrian’s—and something flickered. Not rage. Not recognition. Something colder. Emptier.
“You’re late,” he said flatly.
Adrian stepped forward. “Elias… it’s me. I thought you were gone.”
“You let me go,” Elias said. “They showed me the tape. You made the choice.”
“That’s not true.”
“They said you traded me. That I was the sacrifice.”
“No,” Adrian said sharply. “They lied to you. I never—”
“Stop.” Elias tilted his head. “You sound like him.”
Adrian froze. “Like who?”
A whisper.
“Cassian.”
Behind him, Elena’s breath caught.
Adrian stepped forward slowly, hands open. “Elias… Dad used you. So did Marcus. But you’re not what they made you.”
Elias blinked. “They said you’d say that too.”
Then his hand reached for something inside his jacket.
“Elena, down!” Adrian shouted—
A flash of silver—
A stun round fired—
Liana tackled Elias from the side, knocking the weapon loose.
He hit the ground hard, fighting with mechanical precision. Too clean. Too trained.
“Don’t kill him!” Adrian shouted.
Elena dove in, grabbing the stun gun and kicking it across the room.
Elias stilled, breathing hard, his eyes darting from face to face—until they landed on hers.
“You’re the journalist,” he murmured. “The one who followed the ghosts.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “And I found you.”
A pause.
Elias’s fingers twitched. His lips parted like he wanted to say something else.
But before the moment could crack open, the lights flickered again.
Then—
BOOM.
An explosion rocked the compound. Dust rained from the ceiling. Alarms blared.
Liana cursed. “Diversion—Marcus is breaching the south wall.”
Adrian grabbed Elias by the shoulders. “You’re coming with us.”
Elias didn’t resist.
But just before they turned to flee, he whispered:
“You shouldn’t have come back. He’s not the only one they resurrected.”
Safehouse Echo – Lower Levels – 11:19 PM
The walls trembled again as another concussive blast thundered through the compound.
Dust rained from above. Sirens flickered weakly before dying out entirely.
Adrian dragged Elias down the narrow stairwell with Liana clearing the front. Elena moved beside them, her shoulder bumping his as they ran. Every second was loud with chaos—shouts, the hiss of fire suppression systems activating, and the metallic scrape of something breaking through steel.
Liana shouted over her shoulder, “They breached the west armory. Marcus is cutting straight for the archive room!”
“We’ve already wiped it,” Elena called back.
“Doesn’t matter. He’ll make it look like he took something. It’s all theatre.”
They reached the panic corridor—an underground tunnel built for this exact situation. Adrian shoved Elias inside first, pressing his palm to the biometric override.
Nothing happened.
The system blinked red.
“Override denied,” the interface said coldly. “Non-cleared subject detected.”
Elena looked at Adrian. “It’s him. Elias is flagged.”
Liana cursed. “They locked it out using his DNA. They’ve turned him into a walking kill switch.”
“We can’t go back up,” Adrian growled. “There’s another way.”
He pulled Elena aside, pointing toward a small crawlspace hidden behind an old storage panel.
“It runs along the irrigation trench. If we move fast, we can exit through the eastern cliff drop.”
Elena looked back at Elias. “You trust him?”
“I don’t trust anyone,” Adrian said. “But I’m not leaving him again.”
They moved fast.
Safehouse – Upper Levels – 11:28 PM
Marcus stepped through the remains of the shattered archive room, his coat flaring like a villain’s shadow in the smoke.
“Empty,” he said, disappointed. “But predictable.”
Behind him, two men in tactical gear swept the space. One of them knelt near the floor—examining the faint outline of a concealed tunnel door.
“They went underground.”
Marcus smiled coldly.
“Of course they did.”
He pressed a finger to his earpiece.
“Deploy the Phantom. Burn the rest.”
The man across from him hesitated. “Sir… the Phantom hasn’t been fully tested.”
“It’s time it was.”
Irrigation Tunnel – Exit Hatch – 11:36 PM
The group emerged into a field of tall grass, lit only by the moon breaking through fast-moving clouds. Smoke from the safehouse curled in the distance, turning the night a deeper shade of ash.
Liana checked the perimeter with a thermal drone. “No signs of pursuit yet. If we move now, we reach the exfil ridge in twenty minutes.”
Adrian helped Elias sit against a boulder. The younger man’s breathing was erratic.
“They did something to him,” Elena said, watching. “His memories are fractured. But he’s still in there.”
“I know,” Adrian whispered. “But we might not have time to get him back before Marcus breaks what’s left.”
A sharp ping came through Liana’s comm.
“Emergency transmission… it’s from Julia.”
Elena took the device, her heart racing.
The voice message crackled to life:
“Elena, they’re not after the file anymore. They’re after you. Marcus didn’t just reprogram Elias—he duplicated the sequence.”
“There’s another subject.”
“Someone you won’t see coming.”
The message ended.
Elena looked at Adrian.
“Who else did your father experiment on?”
Adrian’s face paled.
“I don’t know.”
But Elias lifted his head, a flicker of memory surfacing behind haunted eyes.
“They called her… Nira.”
Liana stiffened. “I know that name. She was listed as a ghost operative. No confirmed kills. No confirmed sightings. Just a name… and a redacted kill list.”
Adrian muttered under his breath, “She wasn’t part of VIREX.”
Elias nodded once.
“She was NIGHTFALL.”
Liana threw the phone onto the table. The image of Elias Blackwood flickered onscreen — captured through a grainy CCTV feed, his face half-hidden by a raised collar, but unmistakable.
“It’s not just the sighting,” she said. “Facial match hit 97% accuracy. And he didn’t go alone.”
She pulled up another image: Marcus, in a dark coat and baseball cap, trailing three steps behind.
Elena leaned in, jaw clenched. “What were they doing at the U.N.?”
“No idea yet,” Liana said. “But if Marcus brought Elias there, it wasn’t for diplomacy.”
Adrian sat at the head of the table, pale but alert. The bandage on his shoulder peeked beneath his shirt collar. He stared at the image of his brother like he was seeing a ghost. A ghost with someone else’s soul behind its eyes.
“I thought if I ever saw him again,” Adrian murmured, “it would be in a morgue. Or a memory.”
Elena watched him carefully. “But he’s real. And he’s in play.”
Adrian’s fingers tapped against the metal surface of the table. “Marcus is setting the stage. The U.N. sighting wasn’t just a risk—it was a message. He wants me to see that Elias isn’t a weapon anymore. He’s an asset.”
“Or a threat,” Liana said.
“Both,” Adrian whispered.
New York City – Outside Julia’s Apartment – 2:17 AM
Julia clutched a pepper spray in one hand and a pocket drive in the other. Her laptop had been fried—completely wiped after the breach. But she’d anticipated a worst-case scenario.
The flash drive contained a mirrored copy of the decrypted NIGHTFALL archive. She’d been backing it up every hour, ever since Guillermo’s message warned her to expect surveillance.
She slipped the drive into an envelope and taped it under the trash chute in the hallway.
“If they come for me,” she whispered to herself, “they’re not taking this with them.”
Suddenly, she froze.
A click echoed down the hall.
She turned—slowly.
A man stood at the far end, dressed in black, his face obscured.
He didn’t speak.
He simply lifted a hand…
…and pressed a single finger to his lips.
Julia backed away.
When she blinked, he was gone.
Safehouse Echo – Adrian’s Room – 10:44 PM
Elena stood at the window, phone in hand. The message from Julia came through in fragmented code:
They know.
Not just names.
Countdown has started.
Protect Adrian.
Don’t trust the signal.
I’m going dark.
Adrian’s voice broke the silence behind her.
“She sent something?”
Elena nodded, reading the message again.
“What does she mean by countdown?”
Adrian slowly stood, every movement tight with pain. “It means NIGHTFALL isn’t just a file anymore. It’s active.”
Liana entered with a satchel slung over her shoulder. “There’s more. The U.N. servers were accessed from an internal port two hours ago. Someone inside triggered a global surveillance sweep tied to old Foundation protocols. They’re trying to pull locations tied to your father’s projects.”
“Marcus is using Elias as the key,” Adrian said. “And the U.N. sighting was a test run.”
Liana pulled up a blinking file on her tablet. “There’s a list of targets… but only three have names.”
She turned the screen toward them.
1. Cruz, Elena.
2. King, Julia.
3. Blackwood, Adrian.
Elena’s heart lurched.
“He’s coming for us.”
“No,” Adrian said, jaw like stone. “He’s already here.”
A low hum vibrated through the safehouse walls.
Then the power went out.
Safehouse Echo – Bogotá – 10:46 PM
The lights died in an instant.
Monitors blinked off, the air vents stilled, and a silence surged into the safehouse like a held breath. Outside, the storm rolled low over the hills, thunder lashing like a warning.
Elena instinctively moved closer to Adrian.
Liana drew her pistol from the small of her back. “EMP?”
Adrian’s eyes darted toward the blacked-out hallway. “If it was, we’re not alone anymore.”
Liana moved fast, already checking the fallback generator’s manual trigger. No response.
“We’re dark across every channel. Security grid is fried. Backup’s offline.”
Adrian’s hand closed around Elena’s wrist. “We need to move—now.”
A soft, rhythmic clicking echoed from the far side of the compound. Footsteps. Boots.
Three pairs, maybe four.
Elena’s pulse jumped. “They found us.”
“Correction,” Liana muttered, slipping a blade from her boot. “He found us.”
Main Hallway – 10:49 PM
The team crept through the corridor, flashlights off, moving by memory and instinct. The only light came from the flicker of emergency exit signs that hadn’t yet burned out.
Adrian’s breathing was shallow, the wound slowing him down. Elena stayed close, eyes darting between shadows.
A crackle of static bled into the air.
Then a voice—chilling, familiar—rattled through the security intercom.
“You built a fortress, Adrian. But you forgot something… ghosts don’t need doors.”
Elena froze.
“Marcus,” Adrian growled.
“You’ve been chasing phantoms your whole life. Trying to make up for your father. For her. For Elias.”
Adrian’s fingers twitched near his sidearm.
“But you didn’t bury your brother. You just left him behind.”
A new voice crackled onto the feed.
Quieter. Strained. But undeniably familiar.
“Adrian… why didn’t you come for me?”
Elena’s blood ran cold.
Elias.
Control Room – 10:53 PM
Liana hacked open the override panel to the secured storage vault. It clicked open, revealing one final tactical set — weapons, comm units, encrypted chip drives, and a secondary hardline not dependent on wireless networks.
“We’ll use the cable line to reroute Julia’s last signal,” she said. “We need that drive back. It’s the only clean copy of NIGHTFALL we’ve got left.”
“Julia went dark,” Elena reminded her. “If they got to her—”
“She left breadcrumbs,” Adrian said. “She wouldn’t vanish without a plan.”
He tapped into the hardline console, rerouting the final data fragments that had backed up into the safehouse’s offline storage. As lines of code blinked back to life, a video opened—one Julia had tucked into the metadata as a failsafe.
It was short. Unsteady. A whispered message.
“If you’re seeing this… they’re already watching. They’re using Elias. But he’s fractured—he remembers just enough to follow Marcus, but not enough to know the truth. You have to reach him before he’s too far gone.”
She hesitated.
“Elena… if they come for me, don’t look back. Don’t try to save me. Just burn it all.”
The video cut.
Safehouse Perimeter – 11:01 PM
A drone zipped overhead. Not military grade—too quiet. But it paused near the roof, blinking red. Watching.
Inside, the static returned.
“You don’t have to run, Adrian. Not anymore. I brought your family back to you.”
The intercom crackled—then Elias’s voice, barely a whisper.
“I remember fire.”
Adrian’s jaw locked. “He’s not gone. I can reach him.”
Elena’s voice cracked. “What if you can’t?”
Adrian looked at her, eyes steady but pained.
“Then I do what I’ve always done.”
He chambered a round into his pistol.
“I stop the ones pretending to be heroes.”
Safehouse Echo – Lower Corridor – 11:06 PM
The air was thick with tension—like something breathing just out of sight. Elena kept her steps silent, her fingers wrapped around a small utility knife, every muscle taut.
From the wall speakers, Elias’s voice came again, hollow and detached:
“I remember screaming. My hands were bound. A room with mirrors… they told me I was broken. They told me you let them.”
Adrian winced like the words were knives.
“Elena,” he said, voice low, “if I don’t make it—”
“No,” she snapped, cutting him off. “We’re not doing that. You’re not dying in some haunted bunker while your brother’s being used as a weapon.”
Liana crouched ahead, studying movement from a thermal lens. “Two bodies on the eastern stairs. One’s pacing—agitated. The other… still. Watching.”
“Elena,” Adrian whispered, eyes narrowing, “that pacing one. That’s Elias.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s how I used to move… when I didn’t know who I was anymore.”
Security Wing – 11:13 PM
A door hissed open—manual override triggered. Elena, Adrian, and Liana stepped inside slowly.
The room was lit only by a single flickering bulb overhead. The walls had once been lined with screens, now shattered. And standing in the center of the room, as if torn from memory, was a man.
Younger. Taller. His black jacket hung off narrow shoulders. He looked up at the sound of footsteps.
Elias.
His eyes locked on Adrian’s—and something flickered. Not rage. Not recognition. Something colder. Emptier.
“You’re late,” he said flatly.
Adrian stepped forward. “Elias… it’s me. I thought you were gone.”
“You let me go,” Elias said. “They showed me the tape. You made the choice.”
“That’s not true.”
“They said you traded me. That I was the sacrifice.”
“No,” Adrian said sharply. “They lied to you. I never—”
“Stop.” Elias tilted his head. “You sound like him.”
Adrian froze. “Like who?”
A whisper.
“Cassian.”
Behind him, Elena’s breath caught.
Adrian stepped forward slowly, hands open. “Elias… Dad used you. So did Marcus. But you’re not what they made you.”
Elias blinked. “They said you’d say that too.”
Then his hand reached for something inside his jacket.
“Elena, down!” Adrian shouted—
A flash of silver—
A stun round fired—
Liana tackled Elias from the side, knocking the weapon loose.
He hit the ground hard, fighting with mechanical precision. Too clean. Too trained.
“Don’t kill him!” Adrian shouted.
Elena dove in, grabbing the stun gun and kicking it across the room.
Elias stilled, breathing hard, his eyes darting from face to face—until they landed on hers.
“You’re the journalist,” he murmured. “The one who followed the ghosts.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “And I found you.”
A pause.
Elias’s fingers twitched. His lips parted like he wanted to say something else.
But before the moment could crack open, the lights flickered again.
Then—
BOOM.
An explosion rocked the compound. Dust rained from the ceiling. Alarms blared.
Liana cursed. “Diversion—Marcus is breaching the south wall.”
Adrian grabbed Elias by the shoulders. “You’re coming with us.”
Elias didn’t resist.
But just before they turned to flee, he whispered:
“You shouldn’t have come back. He’s not the only one they resurrected.”
Safehouse Echo – Lower Levels – 11:19 PM
The walls trembled again as another concussive blast thundered through the compound.
Dust rained from above. Sirens flickered weakly before dying out entirely.
Adrian dragged Elias down the narrow stairwell with Liana clearing the front. Elena moved beside them, her shoulder bumping his as they ran. Every second was loud with chaos—shouts, the hiss of fire suppression systems activating, and the metallic scrape of something breaking through steel.
Liana shouted over her shoulder, “They breached the west armory. Marcus is cutting straight for the archive room!”
“We’ve already wiped it,” Elena called back.
“Doesn’t matter. He’ll make it look like he took something. It’s all theatre.”
They reached the panic corridor—an underground tunnel built for this exact situation. Adrian shoved Elias inside first, pressing his palm to the biometric override.
Nothing happened.
The system blinked red.
“Override denied,” the interface said coldly. “Non-cleared subject detected.”
Elena looked at Adrian. “It’s him. Elias is flagged.”
Liana cursed. “They locked it out using his DNA. They’ve turned him into a walking kill switch.”
“We can’t go back up,” Adrian growled. “There’s another way.”
He pulled Elena aside, pointing toward a small crawlspace hidden behind an old storage panel.
“It runs along the irrigation trench. If we move fast, we can exit through the eastern cliff drop.”
Elena looked back at Elias. “You trust him?”
“I don’t trust anyone,” Adrian said. “But I’m not leaving him again.”
They moved fast.
Safehouse – Upper Levels – 11:28 PM
Marcus stepped through the remains of the shattered archive room, his coat flaring like a villain’s shadow in the smoke.
“Empty,” he said, disappointed. “But predictable.”
Behind him, two men in tactical gear swept the space. One of them knelt near the floor—examining the faint outline of a concealed tunnel door.
“They went underground.”
Marcus smiled coldly.
“Of course they did.”
He pressed a finger to his earpiece.
“Deploy the Phantom. Burn the rest.”
The man across from him hesitated. “Sir… the Phantom hasn’t been fully tested.”
“It’s time it was.”
Irrigation Tunnel – Exit Hatch – 11:36 PM
The group emerged into a field of tall grass, lit only by the moon breaking through fast-moving clouds. Smoke from the safehouse curled in the distance, turning the night a deeper shade of ash.
Liana checked the perimeter with a thermal drone. “No signs of pursuit yet. If we move now, we reach the exfil ridge in twenty minutes.”
Adrian helped Elias sit against a boulder. The younger man’s breathing was erratic.
“They did something to him,” Elena said, watching. “His memories are fractured. But he’s still in there.”
“I know,” Adrian whispered. “But we might not have time to get him back before Marcus breaks what’s left.”
A sharp ping came through Liana’s comm.
“Emergency transmission… it’s from Julia.”
Elena took the device, her heart racing.
The voice message crackled to life:
“Elena, they’re not after the file anymore. They’re after you. Marcus didn’t just reprogram Elias—he duplicated the sequence.”
“There’s another subject.”
“Someone you won’t see coming.”
The message ended.
Elena looked at Adrian.
“Who else did your father experiment on?”
Adrian’s face paled.
“I don’t know.”
But Elias lifted his head, a flicker of memory surfacing behind haunted eyes.
“They called her… Nira.”
Liana stiffened. “I know that name. She was listed as a ghost operative. No confirmed kills. No confirmed sightings. Just a name… and a redacted kill list.”
Adrian muttered under his breath, “She wasn’t part of VIREX.”
Elias nodded once.
“She was NIGHTFALL.”
End of Beneath the Billionaire Mask Chapter 26. Continue reading Chapter 27 or return to Beneath the Billionaire Mask book page.