Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 47: Chapter 47

Safehouse Zulu – Holo Room – 10:03 AM
Elena stared at the projection as if it might rewrite itself.
“G.C. – Project Origin Signature: Active. Target Lineage: Elena Cruz.”
Her voice was barely above a whisper. “This can’t be right.”
“It’s been verified three times,” Liana replied. “Your biometric ID is tethered to the archive’s root. You’re not just a threat to SIGMA anymore, Elena — you’re the last living key to its entire core.”
Adrian moved closer. “They built a weapon… using your family’s bloodline?”
“No,” Liana said, pointing at the flickering data. “They built a contingency — a legacy fail-safe in case SIGMA ever collapsed from within. Elena wasn’t supposed to uncover it. She was meant to trigger it.”
Istanbul – SIGMA Black Node – 1:44 PM (GMT+3)
Echo Prime stood at the center of a chamber filled with mirrored glass, each one projecting moments from Elena’s past — some real, some fabricated.
He studied them all. Memorized the pain. The loyalty. The mistakes.
He didn’t blink.
Nova circled him slowly. “You’ve been programmed with everything she is — down to her rage. Her grief. Her contradictions.”
“And the mission?” Echo Prime asked.
Nova smiled. “You are to become her shadow. The reflection she can’t escape. Her sins… perfected.”
“I understand.”
“No. Not yet.”
Nova lifted a syringe — a shimmering blue liquid pulsing inside.
He stabbed it into Echo Prime’s arm.
“This is the last piece,” he whispered. “A map of her father’s final memories. Guillermo Cruz’s mind… encrypted and copied. It’s yours now.”
Echo Prime closed his eyes as the download began.
And when he opened them, he wasn’t a clone anymore.
He was a Cruz.
Safehouse Zulu – Command Room – 11:10 AM
“Project Nightfall isn’t a weapon,” Julia said over the comm, her tone sharp. “It’s a philosophy. A way of continuing influence through reconstructed DNA and behavioral inheritance. Echo Prime wasn’t made to replace Elena — he was made to become the evolved version of her lineage.”
“A designer Cruz,” Mara muttered. “Built in a lab.”
Adrian’s voice was tight. “Then he’ll think like her father?”
Julia nodded. “And worse — he’ll believe in what her father died trying to stop.”
Elena stepped forward. “If he has even a piece of Guillermo’s conviction…”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
Because in her bones, she already felt it.
Zurich – SIGMA Archive Node – 5:37 PM
The encrypted vault opened with
Safehouse Zulu – Situation Room – 11:28 AM
Elena stood frozen as the intel unraveled on the holoscreen — surveillance footage, biometric overlays, real-time movement data pouring in from Julia’s satellite rig.
Mara muttered, “He’s already breached Zurich’s core vaults. That’s the deepest archive SIGMA ever built — not even Adrian had clearance to access that level.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened. “If Nightfall gave him authorization, then this isn’t infiltration. It’s inheritance.”
“Not just any inheritance,” Liana added, voice razor-sharp. “He’s activating Project: Nemesis.”
Elena’s fingers curled into fists. “What is Nemesis?”
Julia’s voice came over the channel again, grim.
“Nemesis was your father’s final contingency. A mirror-agent system. If the Cruz line ever turned against SIGMA, the clone would be used to eliminate the original — cleanly, quietly, with no trace.”
“Are you saying my father created a version of me… to destroy me?”
“No,” Julia said. “He created it to destroy what he believed he’d become. He feared that if he couldn’t stop SIGMA, someone in his bloodline might carry it on. Project Nemesis wasn’t about protecting power. It was about extinguishing his own name if it ever became corrupted.”
Liana looked at Elena. “He didn’t trust you.”
Elena shook her head slowly. “No. He trusted me enough to warn me.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the encrypted chip she recovered from Bogotá — the last remnant of her father’s off-grid archive.
“I think this is the key.”
Zurich – SIGMA Black Vault – 6:00 PM
Echo Prime stood inside the pulse-core chamber, surrounded by memory containers — old-world tech fused with bleeding-edge neural systems. This was not a place of data. It was a cathedral of secrets.
He connected to the interface.
A voice greeted him.
“Welcome, Operator Cruz.”
“Archive integrity?” he asked.
“Stable. Nightfall protocols remain intact.”
Echo’s hands moved with eerie confidence. His gaze never wavered as lines of code rushed across the screen — lives, assassinations, corruption trades… Elena’s legacy, piece by piece.
He selected one.
File 1187 — ELENA CRUZ: Psychological Profile, Phase IV
He opened it.
Footage of her filled the walls — from childhood to her first mission, from heartbreak to betrayal. Her patterns, her hesitations, her moral thresholds. She had no idea how closely she’d been studied.
“How poetic,” he whispered. “She was always the prototype. I’m the evolution.”
Then, without pause, he initiated NEMESIS Protocol Lock-On.
Target: Elena Cruz.
Location: Acquiring…
Safehouse Zulu – Lower Hallway – 11:49 AM
Elena stood alone, chip in hand, leaning against the cold wall.
She didn’t hear Adrian approach until he was beside her.
“You’re quiet,” he said.
She exhaled slowly. “My father created a bullet with my name on it. And I’m staring down the barrel.”
Adrian looked at her. “Then let’s change the aim.”
She turned to him. “I need to go to Zurich.”
“That’s suicide.”
“Then come with me.”
A beat of silence. Then:
“Always.”
Zurich – Outside the Vault – 6:14 PM
The final lock unsealed.
Echo Prime stepped into the observation chamber and paused.
A shadow stood waiting for him.
But it wasn’t Elena.
It was someone else.
Her eyes the same. Her expression… wrong.
He tilted his head. “Not her.”
The woman smiled. “Close enough.”
She drew a blade from her coat.
“For someone without a name… let’s see how well you fight for one.”
Zurich – SIGMA Vault Corridor – 6:17 PM
Echo Prime stepped over the woman’s unconscious body.
She had been fast — trained, ruthless. But predictable.
He was not.
Her blade lay broken beside her.
“You were never her,” he murmured. “Just a test run.”
As he entered the core vault, the system responded instantly to his biometric signature. The world tilted as wall after wall of encrypted intelligence unfolded before him — Cruz archives, SIGMA contingency logs, hidden blackmail files that shaped governments and overthrew nations.
But he ignored them all.
One file pulsed in red.
PROJECT: ORPHEUS
ACCESS CODE: NEMESIS KEY CONFIRMED
TARGET DNA PROFILE: ELENA GUADALUPE CRUZ
He placed his hand against the glass.
The chamber around him began to shift. Metal plates slid away. Hidden compartments revealed micro-drones, injectables, sub-dermal mapping software. All forged to adapt and hunt one person across any disguise, any identity, any geography.
“Begin adaptive replication,” he ordered. “Let me feel everything she felt.”
The AI replied:
“Initiating emotional-memetic sync… Warning: Subject DNA match within target proximity.”
He blinked.
“What proximity?”
“Five kilometers. Eastern perimeter. Moving fast.”
Echo’s pulse sharpened.
She was already here.
Zurich – Outskirts, Nightfall Transport En Route – 6:26 PM
Elena sat in the back of the armored vehicle, watching the city blur past through bulletproof glass. The closer they got to the vault site, the more her nerves quieted.
“Heartbeat’s spiking,” Liana said beside her, watching a monitor.
“I’m not scared,” Elena murmured. “I’m just… done running.”
Adrian sat across from her, eyes locked on hers. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
“I know,” she replied, a breath away from a smile. “But I think he needs to see me walk in without fear.”
“Why?”
“Because I want him to know,” Elena said, “that the legacy he inherited was never built to obey.”
Zurich – Vault Nexus Chamber – 6:42 PM
The chamber doors hissed open.
Echo Prime turned toward the entrance.
Elena stood there — coat flaring, eyes locked to his. Adrian at her side. Liana behind them, pistol drawn.
He tilted his head.
“You made good time.”
“I had a good reason,” Elena replied.
A moment passed — thick with recognition and mirrored rage.
Echo Prime stepped forward, past the blinking lights, past the weaponized silence between them.
“You are not the future,” he said.
She stared right back. “Then why are you built in my image?”
He paused — only for a breath.
Then raised his hand toward the interface.
Elena raised her weapon.
Liana’s voice was steady. “You make a move… you better hope you finish it.”
Echo smiled.
“You can’t kill a shadow.”
Elena exhaled. “Maybe not. But I can finally stop running from mine.”
Her finger tightened on the trigger.
Zurich – SIGMA Vault Nexus – 6:45 PM
“You look just like him,” Elena said, voice calm despite the storm brewing beneath it. “Guillermo.”
Echo Prime’s smirk faltered — just slightly. “That’s the idea.”
“But you talk like Nova,” she continued, stepping into the circle of flickering blue light. “Cold. Empty. All calculation. No soul.”
“I’m what you would’ve become if your father hadn’t failed.”
Elena circled him slowly, weapon still at her side but finger poised. “He didn’t fail. He made sure you’d never be the only version of me.”
Echo Prime’s voice was quiet now, eerily measured. “You’re flawed. Hesitant. Emotional. I’ve watched your file. You bleed for ghosts. I don’t.”
“And that’s exactly why you’ll lose.”
He moved fast—too fast.
The moment his hand twitched toward the vault’s interface, Adrian fired. The bullet caught Echo Prime in the shoulder — not enough to drop him, but enough to knock him back into the core conduit.
Sparks erupted behind him. The vault’s AI blinked erratically.
“Unauthorized sync interruption. Security override engaged.”
“Fall back!” Liana yelled.
But Echo Prime didn’t retreat.
He lunged forward with inhuman speed, grabbing Adrian by the collar and slamming him into the wall. Elena’s pistol raised, but she hesitated—Adrian was in the crossfire.
“I was made to end you,” Echo hissed. “Everything inside me exists to erase everything inside him.”
Adrian gritted his teeth. “Get in line.”
A blast knocked them apart—Elena had fired, clipping Echo’s arm and sending him staggering.
He recovered quickly, eyes burning now with something that looked eerily like grief—or maybe confusion.
“You can’t stop this,” he said, retreating slowly into the shadows of the vault. “Project Nemesis doesn’t need me anymore. I’ve already sent out the signal.”
Elena froze. “What signal?”
He gave her one last look — and it wasn’t hatred. It was almost… pity.
“You think I’m the weapon. But I was just the message.”
Then he vanished into the smoke, leaving behind a blinking screen:
>>NEMESIS SIGNAL SENT
>>AWAITING HOST ACTIVATION
>>PHASE V: INITIATION
Safehouse Zulu – 1 Hour Later
Julia stared at the code streaming in.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
“What is it?” Mara asked.
Julia swallowed. “The Nemesis Protocol wasn’t just one clone. It was a distributed sleeper network. They built more. Hidden in plain sight. Across continents. Waiting for her DNA signature to go live.”
“They’re not coming for Elena,” she said.
“They’re coming for everyone she ever trusted.”
Zurich – SIGMA Vault Chamber – 6:53 PM
The vault’s security doors slammed shut behind Echo Prime, sealing him off from Elena and the team.
Warning sirens pulsed red across the chamber walls.
“Containment Breach. Level Omega. Protocol Nemesis: Active.”
Elena paced toward the screen Echo had touched, her fingers hovering just inches from the glass. It was still warm.
“Do you copy that signal?” she asked Julia through her comms.
Julia’s voice came back shaky. “Not just the signal — the source path. It didn’t just go out… it went downward. Into the system’s roots. Nightfall wasn’t just storage. It’s the relay.”
Liana cursed. “He didn’t escape. He buried himself inside the system.”
“He’s becoming the signal,” Julia confirmed. “Every protocol. Every archive. Every clone tag — they’ll all follow his code now.”
Elena turned to Adrian. “We didn’t stop him. We activated him.”
Adrian clenched his jaw. “Then we erase the system.”
Liana shook her head. “We don’t even know where it ends.”
But Elena’s eyes were already on the vault schematics. She stepped closer, tracing the cold metal lines of circuitry beneath the floor.
“No,” she whispered. “I know how to end it.”
Adrian moved beside her. “How?”
“I carry the key. I was always the failsafe.”
Liana stepped forward. “You’re not seriously suggesting—”
“I’m going in,” Elena said. “Into the root archive. If he turned himself into code, I’m the only one with the genetic access to counter it.”
“That’s suicide,” Adrian snapped. “We don’t even know what the root interface will do to you.”
She turned, eyes fierce and clear.
“It’s either me… or everyone I love.”
Silence.
Then Adrian pressed his forehead gently to hers.
“Then I’m going in with you.”
Meanwhile – Unknown SIGMA Black Site – 7:12 PM
Rows of cryo-pods hissed open.
One by one, figures stepped out — not quite awake, not quite human.
Each one bore traces of Elena: her eyes, her gait, her imprint.
A flicker blinked in the chamber’s center.
NEMESIS COMMAND RECEIVED.
ECHO PRIME VERIFIED.
AWAITING MISSION EXECUTION.
A voice — not mechanical, but eerily familiar — whispered through the intercom:
“Let them think they’ve shut the door.”
“We were already inside.”