Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 27: Chapter 27
You are reading Beneath the Billionaire Mask, Chapter 27: Chapter 27. Read more chapters of Beneath the Billionaire Mask.
Eastern Ridge – Jungle Perimeter – 12:12 AM
The air was damp and charged as Elena, Adrian, Liana, and the barely-stable Elias crouched beneath a tangled curtain of vines. Their breath came fast, their nerves frayed from too many close calls. Yet it wasn’t the immediate danger that made Elena’s skin crawl now.
It was that name.
Nira.
“She was never on the VIREX logs?” Elena asked, eyes flicking to Adrian.
He shook his head slowly. “I oversaw all of my father’s private funding after he died. VIREX was the deepest it went. NIGHTFALL was just a codename—at least I thought. But Nira… that wasn’t a project. That was a person.”
“A phantom,” Liana added. “The kind of ghost they train to erase problems before they make noise.”
Elias stirred at the name, his eyes unfocused but mouth twitching with a whisper:
“She doesn’t kill because she’s ordered to. She kills because she’s… free.”
Elena stiffened. “You knew her?”
“I think she watched us,” Elias murmured. “From inside the program. I remember glass. Cold. One time I woke up and she was in my room… smiling.”
Adrian inhaled sharply. “What did she do to you?”
“She told me I had a pretty soul. Said it would burn bright when I broke.”
He went silent after that.
New York – Lower East Side – 1:41 AM
Julia paced in her backup apartment, lights off, gun resting on the kitchen counter beside her laptop. The last encrypted message had barely made it out before her signal was intercepted.
She was running out of safe devices.
Running out of time.
She clicked open the final remaining file from the archive Elias had unknowingly carried with him—an anomaly labeled only:
X: NIRA
Inside: a single photo.
Black and white.
A girl no older than nineteen. Shaved head. Eyes like voids.
Below the image:
Subject: NIRA-01
Origin: Classified
Cognitive Suppression: Partial
Weaponization Protocol: Active
Emotional Attachment Markers: Removed
Trigger Phrase: UNKNOWN
Julia scrolled further.
There was a list of targets marked PRE-CLEARED.
Names she recognized.
Names like:
KING, JULIA
CRUZ, ELENA
BLACKWOOD, ADRIAN
And one she didn’t:
VALENTINE, ROTH
Her fingers hovered over the name. She clicked once.
A classified link blinked, then opened.
Access Denied.
Suddenly—
Crash.
Glass shattered in the hallway.
Julia grabbed the gun, backing up slowly.
Another crash—closer.
Then a soft, deliberate knock.
She steadied her breathing.
“Who’s there?”
Silence.
Then a girl’s voice—gentle. Curious.
“I like your heartbeat.”
Julia didn’t move.
“It’s loud.”
Somewhere in the Colombian Jungle – 2:00 AM
The team huddled in the temporary exfil station, a small makeshift bunker Liana had prepped years ago for emergencies like this.
Adrian leaned against the wall, every muscle tense.
“She’s after us,” he said. “And Marcus is using her as his checkmate.”
Elena looked down at Elias, who had finally fallen asleep beneath a pile of blankets.
“But why now? What’s the endgame?”
Liana glanced at the tablet.
“Julia’s last message pinged a shadow trail. The name ‘Valentine Roth’ came up. No files. No records. But get this—he’s marked as handler-level for NIRA.”
Adrian frowned. “Handler?”
“Meaning Marcus isn’t the only one pulling the strings.”
Elena turned toward him, voice soft but sharp.
“Then the real question is… who created her?”
New York – Lower East Side – 1:43 AM
Julia didn’t breathe.
The hallway beyond her door remained still—but something shifted in the air, a pressure like a storm about to break. Her finger tightened on the trigger.
“You don’t have to be scared.”
The voice came again—closer now. Not from behind the door anymore.
From inside the apartment.
Julia turned slowly.
A girl stood by the broken window, barefoot, rain in her hair. She looked… young. Maybe eighteen. Maybe older. Her features were symmetrical, doll-like. But her eyes—her eyes were wrong.
Emotionless.
Observing.
Alive, but empty.
“Who the hell are you?” Julia asked, gun raised.
The girl tilted her head. “That depends. Who do you want me to be?”
“Step away. Now.”
“I can be quick,” she said softly. “Or I can make it beautiful. I was told to give you a choice.”
“Told by who?”
Nira smiled.
“By the man who said you know too much.”
Colombian Jungle – Temporary Exfil Station – 2:07 AM
Elena paced the bunker, chewing the inside of her cheek. Her mind was spinning with everything Elias had revealed… and what he hadn’t.
“Adrian,” she said, pausing. “There’s something I don’t understand.”
He looked up from the satellite feed.
“If your father hid a subject like Nira, buried even deeper than VIREX… what else was he hiding? What if NIGHTFALL was never a single project, but a collection of weapons?”
Adrian’s face darkened.
“Then it wasn’t just about atonement,” he said. “It was about control.”
“They’re building an army.”
“Or already have one.”
Liana stepped in. “Confirmed breach of Julia’s apartment. Video feed caught the silhouette of a girl. Young. Fast. The system shut down seconds after facial recognition tried to run.”
“Do we have eyes on Julia?”
“No. But there was no blood.”
Elena exhaled shakily. “Then maybe she got out.”
Liana didn’t respond.
New York – Rooftop – 1:57 AM
Julia burst through the rooftop access door, panting. Her gun was out of ammo. She’d emptied it into the floor, just to give herself an opening.
Nira hadn’t flinched once.
Now Julia’s only hope was height and luck.
She sprinted across the rooftop, wind tearing at her jacket. Sirens echoed in the distance. A helicopter blinked far across the skyline—but too far to see her.
Footsteps followed behind her. Calm. Patient.
“You’re running,” Nira called out. “That means you’re still scared. That means you still have hope.”
Julia climbed the ledge.
Below: a fire escape. Just barely in reach.
She jumped.
Her fingers caught the edge—pain lancing through her arms.
She scrambled down, breathing hard.
Above, Nira stood at the edge of the roof, staring down.
“Tell Elena Cruz…”
She crouched, tilting her head.
“…she’s next.”
Then she disappeared into the night.
Exfil Station – 2:31 AM
Adrian stared at the decrypted file Liana had just recovered.
It wasn’t about Nira.
It was about someone else.
A man named Valentine Roth.
A former intelligence strategist turned rogue psychologist.
Adrian’s voice came out flat. “He didn’t just design NIGHTFALL. He programmed its operatives.”
Elena leaned over his shoulder. “What does that mean?”
“It means Nira isn’t just a killer. She’s a story he wrote. A weapon with motives that aren’t her own.”
He clicked into Roth’s signature profile.
A single sentence had been left at the bottom—one that wasn’t part of any official document.
“Every mask begins with trauma.”
New York – Fire Escape – 2:02 AM
Julia collapsed behind a rusted vent, breath hitching in broken rhythms. Her palms were scraped raw, her heartbeat a war drum in her ears.
She didn’t feel safe—she didn’t feel alive.
She felt watched.
She reached into her boot, pulling out the last tool she had: a mini-flash relay transmitter. Just enough to send a distress ping to Elena’s last known satellite route.
But before she could activate it, a voice whispered behind her.
“I watched your interviews.”
Julia spun, but there was no one.
“You asked such brave questions.”
Then—directly behind her—a presence.
Cold breath brushed her ear.
“But you never knew what the answers would cost.”
Julia turned and fired a flare blindly into the night sky.
The light exploded above the city like a red star.
She didn’t know if anyone saw.
Colombian Jungle – Exfil Station – 2:09 AM
A flash alert appeared on Liana’s screen, catching the entire group’s attention. The coded flare registered with one word embedded in the beacon:
NIRA.
Elena stared at the message. “She found Julia.”
“No,” Adrian said. “Julia made sure we could find her.”
They all turned toward the map now illuminating on the screen.
Liana drew a deep breath. “She’s still alive. But if we’re going to reach her…”
Adrian finished the thought.
“…we’ll have to go back to the city.”
Elena met his eyes. “Back to where it all began.”
Marcus Vale’s Location – Unknown Underground Lab – 2:44 AM
Marcus watched the screen flicker with grainy rooftop footage of Julia’s escape.
Nira entered the chamber behind him, her hands stained with something that looked like paint—but wasn’t.
“She hesitated,” she murmured.
Marcus turned slowly. “You let her go.”
“I wanted her to send the flare.”
Marcus raised a brow. “Why?”
Nira smiled faintly, the expression never reaching her eyes.
“Because they think this is about ending the past.”
She walked to the screen and touched Elena’s image as it froze mid-frame.
“But I was built for the future.”
Final Scene – Abandoned Facility – Unknown Date & Time
Somewhere deep underground, in a black site long forgotten by the governments that funded it, a room reactivated.
Sparks crackled from dormant computers. A green light blinked to life.
Inside, a figure sat in a chair—restrained, barely breathing.
A voice played from a speaker overhead. Calm. Male.
“Wake up, Subject Theta.”
The figure stirred.
Another weapon.
Another resurrection.
Somewhere Off-Grid – Blackwell Research Annex – 3:06 AM
The room was colder than death.
Rows of cryo-pods lined the walls, most dark, forgotten, or cracked from time. But one—just one—glowed faintly. A heartbeat monitor pulsed.
Slow.
Steady.
Then—
PING.
Vital signs surged.
Temperature rising.
The voice returned, clipped and clinical.
“Subject Theta—reactivation protocol successful.”
In the corner of the room, Valentine Roth stepped into view.
His face was sharper in real life than the few glimpses Adrian ever saw. Clean-cut. Elegant. Like a surgeon who smiled only at funerals. He watched the figure inside the pod with the reverence of a sculptor admiring his masterpiece.
“You were our failure,” Roth said softly. “But now you’ll be our correction.”
A low hum filled the space.
The pod hissed open.
Inside was a man—his body riddled with scars, eyes still closed, chest bare beneath bio-sensors. He looked human—but barely. Like something pulled from a battlefield and sewn back together by someone without a soul.
As air hissed from his lungs, his eyes flicked open.
No light in them.
No name.
Only a whisper from Roth:
“You remember Adrian Blackwood, don’t you?”
A flicker.
A tremor in the man’s fingers.
And then a single word rasped from his throat.
“Brother.”
Safehouse Echo – Colombian Jungle – 3:07 AM
Adrian jolted upright in his bunk, breath ragged.
Sweat clung to his skin like static.
He looked around—Liana asleep at the monitor, Elena sitting at the edge of the room, watching the jungle like it might reach in and grab her.
Adrian stood slowly.
“Elena…” he murmured.
She turned, sensing the shift in him.
“What is it?”
Adrian’s voice was quiet, but cold.
“He’s awake.”
The air was damp and charged as Elena, Adrian, Liana, and the barely-stable Elias crouched beneath a tangled curtain of vines. Their breath came fast, their nerves frayed from too many close calls. Yet it wasn’t the immediate danger that made Elena’s skin crawl now.
It was that name.
Nira.
“She was never on the VIREX logs?” Elena asked, eyes flicking to Adrian.
He shook his head slowly. “I oversaw all of my father’s private funding after he died. VIREX was the deepest it went. NIGHTFALL was just a codename—at least I thought. But Nira… that wasn’t a project. That was a person.”
“A phantom,” Liana added. “The kind of ghost they train to erase problems before they make noise.”
Elias stirred at the name, his eyes unfocused but mouth twitching with a whisper:
“She doesn’t kill because she’s ordered to. She kills because she’s… free.”
Elena stiffened. “You knew her?”
“I think she watched us,” Elias murmured. “From inside the program. I remember glass. Cold. One time I woke up and she was in my room… smiling.”
Adrian inhaled sharply. “What did she do to you?”
“She told me I had a pretty soul. Said it would burn bright when I broke.”
He went silent after that.
New York – Lower East Side – 1:41 AM
Julia paced in her backup apartment, lights off, gun resting on the kitchen counter beside her laptop. The last encrypted message had barely made it out before her signal was intercepted.
She was running out of safe devices.
Running out of time.
She clicked open the final remaining file from the archive Elias had unknowingly carried with him—an anomaly labeled only:
X: NIRA
Inside: a single photo.
Black and white.
A girl no older than nineteen. Shaved head. Eyes like voids.
Below the image:
Subject: NIRA-01
Origin: Classified
Cognitive Suppression: Partial
Weaponization Protocol: Active
Emotional Attachment Markers: Removed
Trigger Phrase: UNKNOWN
Julia scrolled further.
There was a list of targets marked PRE-CLEARED.
Names she recognized.
Names like:
KING, JULIA
CRUZ, ELENA
BLACKWOOD, ADRIAN
And one she didn’t:
VALENTINE, ROTH
Her fingers hovered over the name. She clicked once.
A classified link blinked, then opened.
Access Denied.
Suddenly—
Crash.
Glass shattered in the hallway.
Julia grabbed the gun, backing up slowly.
Another crash—closer.
Then a soft, deliberate knock.
She steadied her breathing.
“Who’s there?”
Silence.
Then a girl’s voice—gentle. Curious.
“I like your heartbeat.”
Julia didn’t move.
“It’s loud.”
Somewhere in the Colombian Jungle – 2:00 AM
The team huddled in the temporary exfil station, a small makeshift bunker Liana had prepped years ago for emergencies like this.
Adrian leaned against the wall, every muscle tense.
“She’s after us,” he said. “And Marcus is using her as his checkmate.”
Elena looked down at Elias, who had finally fallen asleep beneath a pile of blankets.
“But why now? What’s the endgame?”
Liana glanced at the tablet.
“Julia’s last message pinged a shadow trail. The name ‘Valentine Roth’ came up. No files. No records. But get this—he’s marked as handler-level for NIRA.”
Adrian frowned. “Handler?”
“Meaning Marcus isn’t the only one pulling the strings.”
Elena turned toward him, voice soft but sharp.
“Then the real question is… who created her?”
New York – Lower East Side – 1:43 AM
Julia didn’t breathe.
The hallway beyond her door remained still—but something shifted in the air, a pressure like a storm about to break. Her finger tightened on the trigger.
“You don’t have to be scared.”
The voice came again—closer now. Not from behind the door anymore.
From inside the apartment.
Julia turned slowly.
A girl stood by the broken window, barefoot, rain in her hair. She looked… young. Maybe eighteen. Maybe older. Her features were symmetrical, doll-like. But her eyes—her eyes were wrong.
Emotionless.
Observing.
Alive, but empty.
“Who the hell are you?” Julia asked, gun raised.
The girl tilted her head. “That depends. Who do you want me to be?”
“Step away. Now.”
“I can be quick,” she said softly. “Or I can make it beautiful. I was told to give you a choice.”
“Told by who?”
Nira smiled.
“By the man who said you know too much.”
Colombian Jungle – Temporary Exfil Station – 2:07 AM
Elena paced the bunker, chewing the inside of her cheek. Her mind was spinning with everything Elias had revealed… and what he hadn’t.
“Adrian,” she said, pausing. “There’s something I don’t understand.”
He looked up from the satellite feed.
“If your father hid a subject like Nira, buried even deeper than VIREX… what else was he hiding? What if NIGHTFALL was never a single project, but a collection of weapons?”
Adrian’s face darkened.
“Then it wasn’t just about atonement,” he said. “It was about control.”
“They’re building an army.”
“Or already have one.”
Liana stepped in. “Confirmed breach of Julia’s apartment. Video feed caught the silhouette of a girl. Young. Fast. The system shut down seconds after facial recognition tried to run.”
“Do we have eyes on Julia?”
“No. But there was no blood.”
Elena exhaled shakily. “Then maybe she got out.”
Liana didn’t respond.
New York – Rooftop – 1:57 AM
Julia burst through the rooftop access door, panting. Her gun was out of ammo. She’d emptied it into the floor, just to give herself an opening.
Nira hadn’t flinched once.
Now Julia’s only hope was height and luck.
She sprinted across the rooftop, wind tearing at her jacket. Sirens echoed in the distance. A helicopter blinked far across the skyline—but too far to see her.
Footsteps followed behind her. Calm. Patient.
“You’re running,” Nira called out. “That means you’re still scared. That means you still have hope.”
Julia climbed the ledge.
Below: a fire escape. Just barely in reach.
She jumped.
Her fingers caught the edge—pain lancing through her arms.
She scrambled down, breathing hard.
Above, Nira stood at the edge of the roof, staring down.
“Tell Elena Cruz…”
She crouched, tilting her head.
“…she’s next.”
Then she disappeared into the night.
Exfil Station – 2:31 AM
Adrian stared at the decrypted file Liana had just recovered.
It wasn’t about Nira.
It was about someone else.
A man named Valentine Roth.
A former intelligence strategist turned rogue psychologist.
Adrian’s voice came out flat. “He didn’t just design NIGHTFALL. He programmed its operatives.”
Elena leaned over his shoulder. “What does that mean?”
“It means Nira isn’t just a killer. She’s a story he wrote. A weapon with motives that aren’t her own.”
He clicked into Roth’s signature profile.
A single sentence had been left at the bottom—one that wasn’t part of any official document.
“Every mask begins with trauma.”
New York – Fire Escape – 2:02 AM
Julia collapsed behind a rusted vent, breath hitching in broken rhythms. Her palms were scraped raw, her heartbeat a war drum in her ears.
She didn’t feel safe—she didn’t feel alive.
She felt watched.
She reached into her boot, pulling out the last tool she had: a mini-flash relay transmitter. Just enough to send a distress ping to Elena’s last known satellite route.
But before she could activate it, a voice whispered behind her.
“I watched your interviews.”
Julia spun, but there was no one.
“You asked such brave questions.”
Then—directly behind her—a presence.
Cold breath brushed her ear.
“But you never knew what the answers would cost.”
Julia turned and fired a flare blindly into the night sky.
The light exploded above the city like a red star.
She didn’t know if anyone saw.
Colombian Jungle – Exfil Station – 2:09 AM
A flash alert appeared on Liana’s screen, catching the entire group’s attention. The coded flare registered with one word embedded in the beacon:
NIRA.
Elena stared at the message. “She found Julia.”
“No,” Adrian said. “Julia made sure we could find her.”
They all turned toward the map now illuminating on the screen.
Liana drew a deep breath. “She’s still alive. But if we’re going to reach her…”
Adrian finished the thought.
“…we’ll have to go back to the city.”
Elena met his eyes. “Back to where it all began.”
Marcus Vale’s Location – Unknown Underground Lab – 2:44 AM
Marcus watched the screen flicker with grainy rooftop footage of Julia’s escape.
Nira entered the chamber behind him, her hands stained with something that looked like paint—but wasn’t.
“She hesitated,” she murmured.
Marcus turned slowly. “You let her go.”
“I wanted her to send the flare.”
Marcus raised a brow. “Why?”
Nira smiled faintly, the expression never reaching her eyes.
“Because they think this is about ending the past.”
She walked to the screen and touched Elena’s image as it froze mid-frame.
“But I was built for the future.”
Final Scene – Abandoned Facility – Unknown Date & Time
Somewhere deep underground, in a black site long forgotten by the governments that funded it, a room reactivated.
Sparks crackled from dormant computers. A green light blinked to life.
Inside, a figure sat in a chair—restrained, barely breathing.
A voice played from a speaker overhead. Calm. Male.
“Wake up, Subject Theta.”
The figure stirred.
Another weapon.
Another resurrection.
Somewhere Off-Grid – Blackwell Research Annex – 3:06 AM
The room was colder than death.
Rows of cryo-pods lined the walls, most dark, forgotten, or cracked from time. But one—just one—glowed faintly. A heartbeat monitor pulsed.
Slow.
Steady.
Then—
PING.
Vital signs surged.
Temperature rising.
The voice returned, clipped and clinical.
“Subject Theta—reactivation protocol successful.”
In the corner of the room, Valentine Roth stepped into view.
His face was sharper in real life than the few glimpses Adrian ever saw. Clean-cut. Elegant. Like a surgeon who smiled only at funerals. He watched the figure inside the pod with the reverence of a sculptor admiring his masterpiece.
“You were our failure,” Roth said softly. “But now you’ll be our correction.”
A low hum filled the space.
The pod hissed open.
Inside was a man—his body riddled with scars, eyes still closed, chest bare beneath bio-sensors. He looked human—but barely. Like something pulled from a battlefield and sewn back together by someone without a soul.
As air hissed from his lungs, his eyes flicked open.
No light in them.
No name.
Only a whisper from Roth:
“You remember Adrian Blackwood, don’t you?”
A flicker.
A tremor in the man’s fingers.
And then a single word rasped from his throat.
“Brother.”
Safehouse Echo – Colombian Jungle – 3:07 AM
Adrian jolted upright in his bunk, breath ragged.
Sweat clung to his skin like static.
He looked around—Liana asleep at the monitor, Elena sitting at the edge of the room, watching the jungle like it might reach in and grab her.
Adrian stood slowly.
“Elena…” he murmured.
She turned, sensing the shift in him.
“What is it?”
Adrian’s voice was quiet, but cold.
“He’s awake.”
End of Beneath the Billionaire Mask Chapter 27. Continue reading Chapter 28 or return to Beneath the Billionaire Mask book page.