Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 64: Chapter 64

Blacksite Facility – Unknown Coordinates – 11:58 AM
Elena’s boots echoed sharply as she stepped into the corridor, every surface reflecting a distorted version of herself. The lighting buzzed overhead—too white, too perfect, like even the shadows were being monitored.
This wasn’t a place for people.
It was a place for tests.
Behind her, Adrian walked with a limp, the wound in his shoulder barely stabilized. Liana flanked them, gun drawn, eyes sweeping every corner.
“Are we sure this is it?” Adrian asked through gritted teeth.
Liana tapped her comms. “Julia confirmed the coordinates. The replication hub is underneath this wing.”
Elena exhaled slowly, bracing herself. “And the Sleepwalker?”
“Alive,” Liana replied. “And waiting.”
The steel doors ahead opened on their own—without a sound.
Inside: silence. Screens. White walls. A surgical coldness that wasn’t designed to comfort.
And her.
She stood in the center of the room—Elena’s exact reflection. Same posture. Same jawline. But no emotion. Just calibration. As if she were calculating outcomes before speaking.
“You made it,” the clone said calmly.
Elena didn’t move. “Was this the plan all along?”
“You were the plan. I’m the correction.”
“There’s nothing broken about me.”
“Then why were you activated by accident?”
Adrian stepped forward, despite the pain. “She’s not yours to control.”
The clone’s eyes flicked toward him, expression neutral. “You’ve been a variable from the start, Mr. Blackwood. But not essential.”
Elena’s fists clenched. “Why use my face? Why not build your own?”
“Because your story is already believable. And fear,” the clone added, stepping closer, “spreads faster when it wears a familiar mask.”
Behind her, a panel slid open.
Twelve tanks lined the wall.
Inside each—bodies.
Clones. Some incomplete. Others suspended in animation. One of them… half-formed, but unmistakably Adrian.
Adrian’s breath caught. “What the hell…”
“Insurance,” the clone replied.
“No,” Liana muttered, backing up. “This is a full continuity breach. They weren’t just replicating assets they were simulating futures.”
Elena’s head spun. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” the clone said softly, “you’re not here to stop me. You’re here to become me.”
A shrill tone pierced the air. Elena’s knees buckled as her vision doubled. Her vitals spiked on the monitors lining the room. She gasped.
“They’re syncing us!” Julia shouted through comms.
“I won’t be overwritten!” Elena snapped.
“No,” the clone said, stepping forward, “but you will surrender.”
Then the lights cut.
And all hell broke loose.
A gunshot echoed. Liana dove. Adrian tackled Elena out of the way just as the clone raised a syringe glowing with blue serum.
The fight had begun.
Not just for identity.
But for ownership of the truth.
Blacksite Facility – Central Core – 12:03 PM
Syringes clattered to the floor. Sparks hissed from a shattered terminal as the emergency lights strobed red.
Elena staggered up behind a console, one side of her head bleeding where she’d hit the edge during the blast. Across the room, her clone moved with eerie precision, navigating the smoke like she’d rehearsed it in a loop.
“Don’t let her near the tanks!” Liana shouted, firing a warning shot toward the clone’s path.
“What’s in them?” Elena called.
“Memory sync serum. If she completes it, she’ll absorb your timeline.”
“My life?”
“Everything. And overwrite the original you.”
Elena’s blood ran cold.
Adrian, still limping, gritted through pain and jammed a security baton into one of the control panels. The surge sent a pulse across the room, forcing several tanks to power down. The flickering lights exposed what looked like an unfinished version of Elena’s face inside one of them—eyes closed, mouth slightly parted, like a silent scream was frozen mid-birth.
“You think I want this?” the clone said suddenly, voice mechanical now. “I didn’t choose to exist like this. I was programmed to survive. So now I’m choosing how.”
Elena stood tall. “You’re not surviving—you’re stealing.”
“I’m claiming what was meant for me. You’re the deviation. I’m the perfected result.”
A low beep vibrated through the air. Then another. The tanks were auto-rebooting.
“Liana—!” Adrian warned.
“I’m trying!” Liana snapped, furiously typing into the backup override.
Elena advanced toward her clone. “You talk about perfection—but you’ve never made a real choice. You’ve never lost. You’ve never risked anything.”
“I don’t need to risk. I calculate.”
“Then calculate this” Elena lunged, tackling the clone hard.
They collided into one of the cryo-pods. Glass shattered. Blue liquid sprayed as both women hit the ground, wrestling. The clone was faster—like muscle memory coded in microseconds—but Elena had rage.
Real rage.
And real love.
She struck hard, elbow to jaw, dislocating it. The clone responded with brutal force, slamming Elena into the wall. Sparks rained as a conduit cracked.
“You’re not strong enough,” the clone hissed.
“I don’t need to be,” Elena growled.
Behind her, Adrian tossed her a live cable.
Elena caught it—jammed it into the exposed port in the clone’s neck.
The scream that followed wasn’t human.
The clone convulsed violently—eyes glitching between emotionless calm and something like fear. Then she collapsed, twitching, smoking, still.
Silence returned.
Elena stood, shaking.
Liana’s voice broke it. “All data’s wiping. The sync was interrupted. We’ve still got time to get out.”
Adrian reached for Elena, gripping her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
She nodded—but barely. “They weren’t just cloning bodies. They were rewriting history.”
Adrian looked at the lifeless version of her on the floor. “And they almost erased you to do it.”
Elena’s voice was low, steady now.
“No one erases me.”
Blacksite Facility – Emergency Corridor – 12:16 PM
The alarms had stopped, but the dread hadn’t.
They moved fast now. Liana led the way, weapon still raised, guiding Adrian and Elena through the flickering corridor. Elena’s knuckles were bruised. Adrian’s shirt was soaked with blood. And behind them, the clone’s body was already being consumed by fire from a ruptured conduit.
“You’re sure she’s gone?” Adrian asked.
Liana didn’t answer right away. “Physically? Yes. But data can replicate faster than flesh. And that node was transmitting for over two minutes before we interrupted it.”
Elena slowed as they reached a secured bulkhead door. “You think she backed herself up?”
“I think whoever created that protocol didn’t plan for just one Sleepwalker.”
Adrian’s expression hardened. “Then we shut them all down. Every node. Every vault. We end this.”
“There’s more,” Liana said, pulling a drive from her jacket. “Before the systems began the wipe, I extracted one file.”
She plugged the drive into her wristpad and turned the screen toward them.
A single name blinked at the top.
SUBJECT: CR-01-PRIME
Elena’s blood froze.
“I thought I was CR-01,” she whispered.
“You are,” Liana said slowly. “But that tag doesn’t mean you’re the original.”
The room spun for a heartbeat.
“That clone we killed…” Elena started.
Liana nodded grimly. “Might not have been the final version. Just the next closest.”
Adrian stepped between them. “We’ll figure this out. But we’re not going to do it while bleeding out in a corridor full of trip wires.”
He turned to Elena, voice low.
“You’re the only version I trust.”
Her eyes lingered on his.
“Then help me prove I’m real.”
Somewhere Else – Surveillance Relay Silo – Unknown
Screens flickered in rows.
Footage of the fight. The fire. Elena and her clone’s final clash.
A gloved hand tapped a console. A live feed loaded. New coordinates. A chamber buried in reinforced black glass.
Inside, a tank pulsed faintly with glowing blue serum.
The body within?
Identical to Elena.
Except her eyes… were open.
And watching.
Safehouse Echo – Surveillance Room – 1:02 PM
Elena sat quietly, her hand wrapped in gauze, eyes scanning a looping clip on Liana’s screen. It was grainy, but unmistakable.
The footage showed her clone—Elena’s face, her voice—walking into a chamber two weeks ago. Not today. Not during the fight. This footage predated it.
“How is that possible?” Elena asked.
Liana’s brow furrowed. “There’s a timestamp anomaly. Someone edited the logs. What we fought today may not have been the most recent iteration.”
“You’re saying there’s another?”
Liana tapped in deeper. “I’m saying the one we saw today may have been planted to distract you. The real CR-01 Prime might still be active. Hidden.”
Adrian leaned against the wall, arms crossed, his shoulder freshly dressed. “A decoy. While the original moves unseen.”
Liana nodded. “And there’s more.”
She pulled up another segment. A heat signature from earlier that morning—one that matched Elena’s biometric data—was logged entering the Safehouse perimeter before the team returned from the facility.
Elena froze. “That can’t be right.”
Adrian stepped forward. “Are you saying she was already here?”
Liana zoomed in. “Not her. Not you. Something… in between.”
The clip ended on a blurry figure moving past the surveillance blind spot—a shadow that matched Elena’s build but not her gait. Too smooth. Too deliberate.
“We missed her,” Liana said. “She walked right past us.”
Elena exhaled, dread curling in her chest.
“If she’s in Bogotá… then what’s her next move?”
Adrian didn’t answer. He looked at the screen like he
Elsewhere – Abandoned Cathedral, Bogotá Outskirts – 1:43 PM
The city pulsed far below. Inside the cathedral’s shattered nave, an altar had been gutted and wired with tech. Flickering screens displayed a rotating map—Safehouse Echo marked in red.
The replica of Elena stood barefoot in front of it, wrapping a leather strap around her forearm. Her voice was calm as she activated a secure channel.
“Subject Prime online.”
A distorted voice responded. “Phase Two begins now. Remember your directive.”
She smiled faintly. The same smile Elena had once used to lie to an arms dealer in Prague.
“I remember everything.”
Behind her, a black duffel lay open. Inside: an identical press badge. A matching jacket. A tiny metal syringe labeled Phase-2: Identity Sync.
“They think they’ve won,” she whispered.
“Let them believe it a little longer.”
Safehouse Echo – Surveillance Archives – 2:05 PM
Elena paced.
The air was tense. The kind of tension that felt like a countdown had already begun—but no one knew what the detonation would look like.
Liana closed the file slowly. “Replication Node 7 was just one of ten facilities tied to Project Sleepwalker. The others? Still dark. No signals. But we can’t be sure.”
Adrian leaned forward, his voice low. “We need to trace who ordered the Sleepwalker Protocol. This wasn’t just about control—it was about replacement. Selective replication of high-value individuals.”
Elena’s voice was barely audible. “How many have already been replaced?”
The silence that followed was heavier than any alarm.
Liana exhaled. “I cross-referenced Black Archive names with encrypted transfer logs. Politicians. CEOs. Military contractors.”
She turned the screen again.
There, across a black terminal screen, was a string of code tied to a single directive.
ACTIVE TARGET: BLACKWOOD
Adrian froze.
“They’ve already queued me for replication.”
Elena turned sharply. “No. We stop this now.”
Liana nodded. “There’s a ship docked in Cartagena—a floating data farm. It’s not on any registry. But it’s where the node’s backup signals point.”
Adrian stood. “Then that’s where we go.”
But Elena didn’t move. Her hand grazed her neck. The tiny scar behind her ear—the one she had ignored—was burning now. Tingling.
“Wait,” she whispered.
“What is it?” Adrian asked.
“That clone I fought… she said something strange. She said: ‘You should’ve known—you left me buried under Bogotá.’”
Liana’s eyes widened.
“Buried,” she said softly. “Not born.”
Adrian met Elena’s gaze.
“What did you leave behind, Elena?”
Elena’s fingers tightened.
“Not what,” she said, her voice tightening.
“Who.”
Underground Facility – Bogotá Subterranean Tunnels – 3:11 PM
A figure stirred in the dark. Machines hummed. Red lights flickered in sequence.
A stasis chamber hissed open.
Inside it—another Elena.
Eyes open.
Breathing.
And smiling.