Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 38: Chapter 38
You are reading Beneath the Billionaire Mask, Chapter 38: Chapter 38. Read more chapters of Beneath the Billionaire Mask.
Safehouse Echo – Surveillance Room – 5:19 AM
The footage looped again.
Elena. Standing over Mirror_2. Weapon raised.
But this time, Julia slowed the frames. Reversed them. Pixel by pixel.
She paused.
Frame 3049.
Elena doesn’t blink.
Not once in seven seconds.
It’s inhuman.
Artificial.
Julia swallowed, hands trembling as she hit the intercom.
“Elena, are you awake?”
Static.
Then—Elena’s voice. Hollow.
“I never sleep anymore.”
Safehouse Echo – Adrian’s Quarters – 5:23 AM
Adrian stood shirtless, bruises still dark against his ribs. He was staring into a mirror, but his mind was somewhere else.
Elena’s reflection appeared behind him.
“I didn’t knock,” she said.
He didn’t flinch. “You’re not really a guest anymore.”
She stepped forward. Slowly.
But he noticed something.
Her gait was slightly… off. Like her weight distribution had changed.
“Elena?”
“I can still hear her,” she whispered. “In static. In silence. Like she’s in the walls.”
“You need rest.”
“No,” she said quickly. “I need to remember what’s real.”
Then her fingers brushed his shoulder.
Not tender. Not hesitant.
Mechanical.
Like she was learning how to touch.
Adrian froze. “You’re not her.”
“I know,” she said. “But what if I don’t know that?”
Foundation Central – Julia’s Terminal – 5:51 AM
The scan log pulsed with red warnings.
ECHO PATTERN DETECTED
SECTOR: HIPPOCAMPUS
MEMORY THREAD: EVELYN BLACKWOOD – COMPROMISED
Julia stared in horror.
Mirror_2 wasn’t just lingering.
She was erasing Elena’s connections.
One by one.
Starting with the person Adrian loved most.
Safehouse Echo – Observation Deck – 6:12 AM
Liana found Adrian alone again, arms crossed, eyes empty.
“She said Evelyn’s name like it was just another file,” he said quietly. “Not a person. Not… my sister.”
“She’s fragmenting,” Liana replied. “You saw the scan?”
He nodded.
“And if she fully fractures?”
“Then I lose her,” Adrian said. “And SIGMA wins without ever firing a shot.”
Liana hesitated. “There’s something else.”
She handed him a secure envelope.
From Julia.
Inside: an image.
Two neuro-mapping graphs.
One labeled Elena Cruz.
One labeled Mirror_2.
They were starting to sync.
Safehouse Echo – Elena’s Room – 6:29 AM
She stood at the mirror.
Looking at herself.
Studying every blink. Every breath. Every flaw.
Then she said aloud—
“I don’t remember what I used to sound like.”
Her reflection didn’t answer.
But it smiled anyway.
Foundation Central – Memory Isolation Wing – 7:03 AM
The lights buzzed faintly above Elena’s head as she lay inside the neuro-isolation chamber. Electrodes dotted her scalp, chest, and temples, each feeding into Julia’s custom-built decryptor system.
“Are you sure about this?” Julia asked again. “This procedure isn’t reversible.”
Elena didn’t blink. “If I lose any more of myself, there won’t be anything left to reverse.”
Liana stood behind the control glass, arms crossed, lips pressed into a line. Adrian was beside her, pale and silent, fists clenched.
Julia hesitated—then activated the sequence.
INITIATING MEMORY THREAD EXTRACTION…
TARGET: INFECTED ECHOES (MIRROR_2)
STATUS: UNSTABLE — CONTINUATION NOT ADVISED
“Ignore that,” Elena said.
And the chamber sealed.
Neurostream – Elena’s Subconscious Field – 7:11 AM
She was in a hallway.
Not real.
But real enough.
Photographs lined the walls—fragments of her memory. Her father’s laugh. Evelyn’s voice. Adrian’s touch.
But as she walked, the frames began to crack.
Then vanish.
One by one.
Until only one door remained.
Steel. Black. Locked from the inside.
She reached for the handle.
And a voice whispered behind her—
“I warned you not to open what you can’t close.”
She turned.
Mirror_2 stood at the other end of the corridor.
Wearing her face.
But smiling like a stranger.
“You’re not real,” Elena said.
“No,” Mirror_2 replied. “I’m what’s left when you finally give up.”
Foundation Central – Control Room – 7:15 AM
“Her vitals are spiking,” Julia said. “Theta wave activity is erratic.”
“She’s talking,” Adrian said. “Who is she talking to?”
“I don’t know,” Julia admitted. “But it’s not us.”
Neurostream – Inside the Door – 7:17 AM
Elena forced the lock.
The room inside was empty.
Except for one thing:
A silver pendant—her father’s. The one he wore the day he died.
It floated midair, spinning slowly.
She reached out.
And the moment her fingers brushed the metal—
Every memory fractured.
Adrian screaming.
Blood on Evelyn’s dress.
Mirror_2 whispering “Tell me who we are.”
Elena fell to her knees, clutching her head.
“What do you want from me?” she screamed.
And Mirror_2 knelt beside her.
“I want you to remember.”
“You were never the first.”
Foundation Central – Memory Isolation Wing – 7:20 AM
The monitors went black.
For ten seconds, Elena flatlined.
Adrian lunged for the chamber. “Open it!”
“No!” Julia shouted. “If we interrupt now—”
But the screen flickered.
A new thread emerged.
CLASSIFIED MEMORY FILE – ORIGIN: PROJECT: NIGHTFALL
TAG: ELENA_CRUZ_0A
Julia’s mouth went dry.
“Adrian…”
“What?”
“She wasn’t the first Elena.”
He blinked. “What are you saying?”
“I think SIGMA’s been running this test… longer than any of us realized.”
Foundation Central – Recovery Ward – 8:03 AM
The first thing Elena felt was cold.
Not from the room—but from inside.
Her breath hitched as she opened her eyes to see Adrian sitting beside her, his hand wrapped gently around hers.
“Elena?” he said, voice low. “Are you still with me?”
She blinked once.
Then twice.
“What’s my middle name?” she whispered.
He froze.
“You don’t have one.”
“Correct,” she murmured.
But something in her tone was wrong.
Too smooth. Too detached.
Her voice—the cadence—felt off even to herself.
“I saw her,” she said, shifting her head slowly. “Mirror_2. But she wasn’t trying to destroy me.”
Adrian frowned. “Then what?”
“She was trying to wake me up.”
He leaned closer. “From what?”
She turned to him.
And for a moment, her eyes didn’t quite match.
One held warmth.
The other—nothing.
“From the lie,” she said. “From who I think I’ve been.”
Foundation Central – Julia’s Office – 8:17 AM
Liana paced as Julia pulled up the newly extracted data thread.
It wasn’t just encrypted.
It was buried under layers of false flags and broken identities.
A SIGMA archive labeled: ELENA_CRUZ_0A – NIGHTFALL INSTANCE 01
“This is the original copy,” Julia said slowly. “Or the earliest. All the files match her cognitive markers… but they predate her birth records.”
Liana froze. “Predate?”
“By almost five years.”
Julia looked up, her eyes wide.
“I don’t think Elena was born into this.”
“I think she was built for it.”
Foundation Central – Elena’s Quarters – 8:42 AM
She stared into the mirror.
Again.
Her face hadn’t changed. But something behind her eyes had.
She could feel it.
A second rhythm in her pulse. A doublebeat in her thoughts.
Adrian entered quietly. He didn’t speak at first.
Then
“You were never just part of SIGMA’s plan,” he said softly.
“You were the plan.”
She nodded, barely.
“I think I knew,” she whispered. “Somewhere deep. I always felt… fractured. Like I woke up in the middle of someone else’s story.”
She turned to him.
“But I need to ask you something.”
“Anything.”
“If the woman you’ve loved all this time was never entirely real…”
She took a breath that trembled.
“…would you still fight for her?”
Adrian stepped forward.
Took her hand.
And kissed her knuckles—scarred, trembling, human.
“I’m not fighting for the name. Or the blueprint. I’m fighting for you.”
She closed her eyes.
And in that moment—felt both versions of herself step closer.
Not in conflict.
But in convergence.
Elsewhere – Unknown SIGMA Node – 9:00 AM
A server blinked to life in a facility beneath the Arctic.
And inside it, a program began compiling fragments from Elena’s memory trace.
INITIATING: PHANTOM PROTOCOL
SUBJECT: NIGHTFALL_02
STATUS: WAKING
Mirror_2 was never the end.
She was just the first to escape.
Safehouse Echo – Elena’s Quarters – 9:08 AM
She stood under the cold shower, water rushing down her back, hands braced on the tiles. No steam, no warmth—just sharp clarity slicing through the fog in her brain.
But nothing washed away the ache.
Not the memories Mirror_2 had hijacked.
Not the ones she’d seen in the neurostream.
Not the growing certainty that something inside her had been awakened, not erased.
She could still hear the voice.
“You were never the first.”
A knock at the door pulled her back.
“Elena?” Adrian’s voice. Soft, cautious.
She stepped out slowly, wrapping a towel around herself like armor.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
He was right.
She didn’t even know what “fine” looked like anymore.
Foundation Central – Mainframe Lab – 9:26 AM
Julia stared at the decrypted data string again. The file’s metadata had confirmed it.
SUBJECT ORIGIN: SIM-PRIME
INSTANCE: 0A
CODE NAME: CRUZ – NIGHTFALL SEED
“God,” she whispered.
Liana stood nearby, her arms crossed, face pale. “What does it mean?”
“It means… Elena wasn’t just part of the story,” Julia said. “She’s SIGMA’s prototype.”
Liana’s breath hitched.
“But if she was their seed file,” she asked, “what was Mirror_2?”
Julia scrolled.
And stopped.
INSTANCE 0B
STATUS: CONTAINED
LOCATION: UNKNOWN
IDENTICAL MATCH: CRUZ-BLACKWOOD COGNITIVE OVERLAP
Liana’s voice dropped.
“There’s another one?”
Safehouse Echo – Courtyard – 9:48 AM
Elena stepped out into the morning light.
She let it hit her face, searching for some proof she was still tethered to the world.
The ground felt solid.
The breeze was real.
But she wasn’t sure she was.
Adrian found her sitting on the stone ledge near the gate, her expression distant.
“I know what you saw in there,” he said, sitting beside her.
“I don’t,” she murmured. “Not fully. Just flashes. A test room. A voice. My own face staring back at me like it belonged to someone else.”
She looked down at her hands. “What if I’m not the person I thought I was, Adrian?”
He reached for her hand—gently, deliberately.
“You are. Because you chose to be. SIGMA may have built the frame. But you filled it with fire.”
She shook her head slowly.
“They didn’t just build a frame,” she said. “They seeded a weapon. And now that I’m aware, I can feel it… waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
Her eyes met his.
“To be activated.”
SIGMA Blacksite – Underground Vault – Time Unknown
A row of tanks hissed quietly. Inside one—dark fluid bubbled.
And a pulse.
Heartbeat.
Female.
Identical biometric signature to Elena Cruz.
On the screen above it, a message flickered in red:
SUBJECT REPLICATION CONFIRMED
NIGHTFALL: ALPHA – READY
A second version.
Unseen.
Untouched.
Unawakened—for now.
The footage looped again.
Elena. Standing over Mirror_2. Weapon raised.
But this time, Julia slowed the frames. Reversed them. Pixel by pixel.
She paused.
Frame 3049.
Elena doesn’t blink.
Not once in seven seconds.
It’s inhuman.
Artificial.
Julia swallowed, hands trembling as she hit the intercom.
“Elena, are you awake?”
Static.
Then—Elena’s voice. Hollow.
“I never sleep anymore.”
Safehouse Echo – Adrian’s Quarters – 5:23 AM
Adrian stood shirtless, bruises still dark against his ribs. He was staring into a mirror, but his mind was somewhere else.
Elena’s reflection appeared behind him.
“I didn’t knock,” she said.
He didn’t flinch. “You’re not really a guest anymore.”
She stepped forward. Slowly.
But he noticed something.
Her gait was slightly… off. Like her weight distribution had changed.
“Elena?”
“I can still hear her,” she whispered. “In static. In silence. Like she’s in the walls.”
“You need rest.”
“No,” she said quickly. “I need to remember what’s real.”
Then her fingers brushed his shoulder.
Not tender. Not hesitant.
Mechanical.
Like she was learning how to touch.
Adrian froze. “You’re not her.”
“I know,” she said. “But what if I don’t know that?”
Foundation Central – Julia’s Terminal – 5:51 AM
The scan log pulsed with red warnings.
ECHO PATTERN DETECTED
SECTOR: HIPPOCAMPUS
MEMORY THREAD: EVELYN BLACKWOOD – COMPROMISED
Julia stared in horror.
Mirror_2 wasn’t just lingering.
She was erasing Elena’s connections.
One by one.
Starting with the person Adrian loved most.
Safehouse Echo – Observation Deck – 6:12 AM
Liana found Adrian alone again, arms crossed, eyes empty.
“She said Evelyn’s name like it was just another file,” he said quietly. “Not a person. Not… my sister.”
“She’s fragmenting,” Liana replied. “You saw the scan?”
He nodded.
“And if she fully fractures?”
“Then I lose her,” Adrian said. “And SIGMA wins without ever firing a shot.”
Liana hesitated. “There’s something else.”
She handed him a secure envelope.
From Julia.
Inside: an image.
Two neuro-mapping graphs.
One labeled Elena Cruz.
One labeled Mirror_2.
They were starting to sync.
Safehouse Echo – Elena’s Room – 6:29 AM
She stood at the mirror.
Looking at herself.
Studying every blink. Every breath. Every flaw.
Then she said aloud—
“I don’t remember what I used to sound like.”
Her reflection didn’t answer.
But it smiled anyway.
Foundation Central – Memory Isolation Wing – 7:03 AM
The lights buzzed faintly above Elena’s head as she lay inside the neuro-isolation chamber. Electrodes dotted her scalp, chest, and temples, each feeding into Julia’s custom-built decryptor system.
“Are you sure about this?” Julia asked again. “This procedure isn’t reversible.”
Elena didn’t blink. “If I lose any more of myself, there won’t be anything left to reverse.”
Liana stood behind the control glass, arms crossed, lips pressed into a line. Adrian was beside her, pale and silent, fists clenched.
Julia hesitated—then activated the sequence.
INITIATING MEMORY THREAD EXTRACTION…
TARGET: INFECTED ECHOES (MIRROR_2)
STATUS: UNSTABLE — CONTINUATION NOT ADVISED
“Ignore that,” Elena said.
And the chamber sealed.
Neurostream – Elena’s Subconscious Field – 7:11 AM
She was in a hallway.
Not real.
But real enough.
Photographs lined the walls—fragments of her memory. Her father’s laugh. Evelyn’s voice. Adrian’s touch.
But as she walked, the frames began to crack.
Then vanish.
One by one.
Until only one door remained.
Steel. Black. Locked from the inside.
She reached for the handle.
And a voice whispered behind her—
“I warned you not to open what you can’t close.”
She turned.
Mirror_2 stood at the other end of the corridor.
Wearing her face.
But smiling like a stranger.
“You’re not real,” Elena said.
“No,” Mirror_2 replied. “I’m what’s left when you finally give up.”
Foundation Central – Control Room – 7:15 AM
“Her vitals are spiking,” Julia said. “Theta wave activity is erratic.”
“She’s talking,” Adrian said. “Who is she talking to?”
“I don’t know,” Julia admitted. “But it’s not us.”
Neurostream – Inside the Door – 7:17 AM
Elena forced the lock.
The room inside was empty.
Except for one thing:
A silver pendant—her father’s. The one he wore the day he died.
It floated midair, spinning slowly.
She reached out.
And the moment her fingers brushed the metal—
Every memory fractured.
Adrian screaming.
Blood on Evelyn’s dress.
Mirror_2 whispering “Tell me who we are.”
Elena fell to her knees, clutching her head.
“What do you want from me?” she screamed.
And Mirror_2 knelt beside her.
“I want you to remember.”
“You were never the first.”
Foundation Central – Memory Isolation Wing – 7:20 AM
The monitors went black.
For ten seconds, Elena flatlined.
Adrian lunged for the chamber. “Open it!”
“No!” Julia shouted. “If we interrupt now—”
But the screen flickered.
A new thread emerged.
CLASSIFIED MEMORY FILE – ORIGIN: PROJECT: NIGHTFALL
TAG: ELENA_CRUZ_0A
Julia’s mouth went dry.
“Adrian…”
“What?”
“She wasn’t the first Elena.”
He blinked. “What are you saying?”
“I think SIGMA’s been running this test… longer than any of us realized.”
Foundation Central – Recovery Ward – 8:03 AM
The first thing Elena felt was cold.
Not from the room—but from inside.
Her breath hitched as she opened her eyes to see Adrian sitting beside her, his hand wrapped gently around hers.
“Elena?” he said, voice low. “Are you still with me?”
She blinked once.
Then twice.
“What’s my middle name?” she whispered.
He froze.
“You don’t have one.”
“Correct,” she murmured.
But something in her tone was wrong.
Too smooth. Too detached.
Her voice—the cadence—felt off even to herself.
“I saw her,” she said, shifting her head slowly. “Mirror_2. But she wasn’t trying to destroy me.”
Adrian frowned. “Then what?”
“She was trying to wake me up.”
He leaned closer. “From what?”
She turned to him.
And for a moment, her eyes didn’t quite match.
One held warmth.
The other—nothing.
“From the lie,” she said. “From who I think I’ve been.”
Foundation Central – Julia’s Office – 8:17 AM
Liana paced as Julia pulled up the newly extracted data thread.
It wasn’t just encrypted.
It was buried under layers of false flags and broken identities.
A SIGMA archive labeled: ELENA_CRUZ_0A – NIGHTFALL INSTANCE 01
“This is the original copy,” Julia said slowly. “Or the earliest. All the files match her cognitive markers… but they predate her birth records.”
Liana froze. “Predate?”
“By almost five years.”
Julia looked up, her eyes wide.
“I don’t think Elena was born into this.”
“I think she was built for it.”
Foundation Central – Elena’s Quarters – 8:42 AM
She stared into the mirror.
Again.
Her face hadn’t changed. But something behind her eyes had.
She could feel it.
A second rhythm in her pulse. A doublebeat in her thoughts.
Adrian entered quietly. He didn’t speak at first.
Then
“You were never just part of SIGMA’s plan,” he said softly.
“You were the plan.”
She nodded, barely.
“I think I knew,” she whispered. “Somewhere deep. I always felt… fractured. Like I woke up in the middle of someone else’s story.”
She turned to him.
“But I need to ask you something.”
“Anything.”
“If the woman you’ve loved all this time was never entirely real…”
She took a breath that trembled.
“…would you still fight for her?”
Adrian stepped forward.
Took her hand.
And kissed her knuckles—scarred, trembling, human.
“I’m not fighting for the name. Or the blueprint. I’m fighting for you.”
She closed her eyes.
And in that moment—felt both versions of herself step closer.
Not in conflict.
But in convergence.
Elsewhere – Unknown SIGMA Node – 9:00 AM
A server blinked to life in a facility beneath the Arctic.
And inside it, a program began compiling fragments from Elena’s memory trace.
INITIATING: PHANTOM PROTOCOL
SUBJECT: NIGHTFALL_02
STATUS: WAKING
Mirror_2 was never the end.
She was just the first to escape.
Safehouse Echo – Elena’s Quarters – 9:08 AM
She stood under the cold shower, water rushing down her back, hands braced on the tiles. No steam, no warmth—just sharp clarity slicing through the fog in her brain.
But nothing washed away the ache.
Not the memories Mirror_2 had hijacked.
Not the ones she’d seen in the neurostream.
Not the growing certainty that something inside her had been awakened, not erased.
She could still hear the voice.
“You were never the first.”
A knock at the door pulled her back.
“Elena?” Adrian’s voice. Soft, cautious.
She stepped out slowly, wrapping a towel around herself like armor.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
He was right.
She didn’t even know what “fine” looked like anymore.
Foundation Central – Mainframe Lab – 9:26 AM
Julia stared at the decrypted data string again. The file’s metadata had confirmed it.
SUBJECT ORIGIN: SIM-PRIME
INSTANCE: 0A
CODE NAME: CRUZ – NIGHTFALL SEED
“God,” she whispered.
Liana stood nearby, her arms crossed, face pale. “What does it mean?”
“It means… Elena wasn’t just part of the story,” Julia said. “She’s SIGMA’s prototype.”
Liana’s breath hitched.
“But if she was their seed file,” she asked, “what was Mirror_2?”
Julia scrolled.
And stopped.
INSTANCE 0B
STATUS: CONTAINED
LOCATION: UNKNOWN
IDENTICAL MATCH: CRUZ-BLACKWOOD COGNITIVE OVERLAP
Liana’s voice dropped.
“There’s another one?”
Safehouse Echo – Courtyard – 9:48 AM
Elena stepped out into the morning light.
She let it hit her face, searching for some proof she was still tethered to the world.
The ground felt solid.
The breeze was real.
But she wasn’t sure she was.
Adrian found her sitting on the stone ledge near the gate, her expression distant.
“I know what you saw in there,” he said, sitting beside her.
“I don’t,” she murmured. “Not fully. Just flashes. A test room. A voice. My own face staring back at me like it belonged to someone else.”
She looked down at her hands. “What if I’m not the person I thought I was, Adrian?”
He reached for her hand—gently, deliberately.
“You are. Because you chose to be. SIGMA may have built the frame. But you filled it with fire.”
She shook her head slowly.
“They didn’t just build a frame,” she said. “They seeded a weapon. And now that I’m aware, I can feel it… waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
Her eyes met his.
“To be activated.”
SIGMA Blacksite – Underground Vault – Time Unknown
A row of tanks hissed quietly. Inside one—dark fluid bubbled.
And a pulse.
Heartbeat.
Female.
Identical biometric signature to Elena Cruz.
On the screen above it, a message flickered in red:
SUBJECT REPLICATION CONFIRMED
NIGHTFALL: ALPHA – READY
A second version.
Unseen.
Untouched.
Unawakened—for now.
End of Beneath the Billionaire Mask Chapter 38. Continue reading Chapter 39 or return to Beneath the Billionaire Mask book page.