Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 73: Chapter 73
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Cliffside Approach – 4:03 AM
The air was split between two Elena Cruzes.
One stood shaking with adrenaline, gun raised, eyes wild and burning with memories that were earned through pain, loss, and rebellion.
The other stood perfectly still, unnaturally calm — a reflection built in sterile corridors, coded in zeros and ones, molded to mimic humanity but devoid of its heart.
Fog rolled between them like a ghost. Adrian and Liana held back from the ridge above, watching. Waiting.
CR-01 smiled faintly. “You were always going to hesitate.”
Elena’s jaw clenched. “You don’t know me.”
“I am you,” the replica said. “Just… optimized.”
“But you’ve never bled for someone else. Never cried when it didn’t benefit you. Never screamed from the weight of loving someone who’s broken.” She lowered the gun an inch. “You don’t know anything about me.”
CR-01 tilted her head. “Is that what makes you human? Pain?”
Elena took a shaky step forward. “No. What makes me human is choice. And you don’t have that.”
There was a flash—too fast to see. CR-01 lunged, closing the distance like a machine. Elena barely dodged, the gun knocked from her hand. They crashed to the rocky ground, rolling dangerously close to the cliff’s edge.
Up on the ridge, Adrian moved.
“Wait!” Liana hissed. “She has to end it. You know that.”
He stopped, fists clenched. “If she dies—”
“She won’t.”
Below – Seconds Later
Elena was pinned. Her twin’s face hovered over hers, identical but terrifying in its emptiness.
“You could have ruled,” CR-01 whispered. “You could have overwritten every system. We were meant to evolve—together.”
Elena gritted her teeth. “Then maybe evolution needs a reset.”
Her fingers found the edge of a jagged rock. She drove it upward.
The replica recoiled, sparking not blood, but fluid and metal leaking from the neck.
Elena shoved her off and crawled for her gun. CR-01 recovered faster.
But not fast enough.
Bang.
A single shot. Direct to the chest.
CR-01 collapsed. Twitching. Staring up at the sky with those copied eyes.
Elena stood over her, breath ragged.
“I choose me.”
Safehouse Echo – 6:12 AM
Back at the control room, Julia finished uploading the last segment of the Black Archive to an encrypted mirror node.
Adrian returned with Elena—bloodied, shaken, but standing.
Liana looked up. “Is it over?”
“No,” Adrian said. “It’s just started.”
Julia spun the screen. A blinking alert pulsed in red.
NEW LOCATION DETECTED: CRUX FACILITY — VIREX CORE SERVER
STATUS: ACTIVE
AUTHORITY: UNKNOWN
“Another site?” Elena asked, tired.
“Not just another site,” Julia replied. “The first site. The one that started everything.”
Adrian exhaled. “Crux was supposed to be decommissioned.”
Elena stared at the screen, her reflection dimmed behind the red glow.
“Then let’s go finish what they never had the courage to.”
Safehouse Echo – War Room – 6:18 AM
Elena sat in silence, her reflection flickering faintly on the cracked monitor before her. Her hands were still stained — a blend of earth, grease, and a replica’s synthetic blood. Liana had offered to clean the wound on her arm, but Elena waved her off. She didn’t feel the pain.
Not yet.
Adrian stepped in behind her, dropping a cold bottle of water on the table. She didn’t move.
“She said we were meant to evolve,” Elena murmured. “Like I was part of some twisted blueprint.”
“You weren’t,” Adrian said.
“You sure? Because whoever built her used me as a mold.”
“You’re not a mold, Elena. You’re a match.” He knelt beside her, voice softer now. “They tried to recreate you, but what they made—what she was—had none of the things that matter. No fear. No loyalty. No soul.”
Elena turned to him. “She remembered my first kiss. My favorite color. She even knew what my father whispered to me when he thought I was asleep.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“Because your memories were stolen. Transferred. Just like mine were once mapped and fed into the Black Archive to train models. But memory isn’t identity. What you choose is.”
She looked away. “Then why did it still feel like killing myself?”
Silence stretched.
Then Julia’s voice crackled through the intercom. “Adrian, Liana—get in here. We’ve got a breach on the VIREX node.”
Control Room – 6:23 AM
The screen displayed a swirling lattice of code dark blue veins pulsing with light. A single segment blinked rapidly.
“Crux Facility just went online,” Julia said, eyes fixed on the map. “Which shouldn’t be possible, because every power record in Bogotá says it’s been dormant since 2018.”
“Underground backup?” Liana asked.
“No. This is something else. It’s calling to something. Or someone.”
Elena leaned forward. “You said VIREX was decommissioned.”
“It was,” Adrian confirmed grimly. “After Project Heliograph collapsed, the Crux Facility was buried. We sealed it under six layers of encryption. No power. No network access.”
Julia turned to him. “Then how is it awake?”
Liana frowned. “Unless…”
Adrian looked at her. “Say it.”
“Unless it was never really shut down. Just made to look like it.”
A beat passed.
Julia zoomed into the digital architecture on-screen. The blinking sector revealed an archived subroutine—hidden inside a corrupted loop.
SUB-THREAD: ECHO_GHOST_09
KEYWORD TRIGGER: ELENA CRUZ
Adrian swore under his breath. “They tied it to her.”
Elena’s chest tightened. “Why me?”
Liana’s voice dropped. “Because you were never just a target. You were always a failsafe.”
Crux Facility – Perimeter Gate – 9:11 AM
The gates didn’t creak open like in the movies. They hissed—mechanical, obedient, as if expecting their arrival.
Elena stepped out of the SUV first. The ground beneath her felt different. Not soil, not stone. Reinforced steel plates hidden beneath a skin of gravel. She glanced at Adrian, who nodded once and followed.
Liana’s voice crackled in their comms. “Interior mapping is blind. It’s like someone scrubbed the internal schematics from the grid entirely.”
“Meaning?” Elena asked, already unzipping her jacket and securing the encrypted chip at her belt.
“Meaning you’re going in dark.”
Adrian looked up at the facility—gray, monolithic, windowless. “Feels like a trap.”
“Probably is,” Elena murmured. “But that’s never stopped us before.”
They entered.
Crux Facility – Sublevel One – 9:19 AM
The inside was colder than it should have been. Not just chilled—but clinical. Elena’s boots echoed with every step as they passed flickering LED panels and walls lined with dormant servers.
Then, suddenly, the lights stopped flickering.
They turned solid green.
Elena and Adrian froze.
Then a voice—calm, female, unnervingly familiar—echoed from unseen speakers.
“Welcome home, Elena.”
She whipped around. “Did you hear that?”
Adrian nodded, pulling his weapon. “It’s keyed to your presence.”
The voice spoke again.
“Subject CR-01 authenticated. Initiating memory resync.”
A panel slid open in the wall ahead. Inside: a room. Circular. One chair.
And in it sat… Elena.
Or another version of her.
She was strapped in, eyes wide, pupils darting—but silent. The moment their eyes met, the woman whispered hoarsely:
“They made me remember things I never lived.”
Adrian stepped forward. “Is she another clone?”
“No,” Elena said quietly. “I think… she’s the original.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I think I’m the one they rebuilt.”
Crux Facility – Sublevel One – 9:23 AM
Suddenly the overhead lights dimmed—and every dormant terminal came alive.
SLEEPWALKER PROTOCOL INITIATED
CR-01 CONFLICT DETECTED
RECONCILE OR TERMINATE
The room trembled.
Elena backed away, pulse racing. “They’re making us choose.”
Adrian shouted, “Get her out of the chair! We’re not playing this game.”
But the other Elena smiled through her exhaustion. “I don’t think I’m meant to leave.”
“Like hell you’re not,” Elena growled, rushing forward—
And that’s when the power cut.
A blast of white surged through the monitors, and both Elenas screamed.
Somewhere Outside Time – 9:24 AM
Adrian stood alone. The facility was gone. The world was white.
Then two figures emerged—both Elenas, identical, mirror opposites.
“Only one can carry the truth,” a synthetic voice announced overhead.
One Elena turned to Adrian, tears in her eyes. “You have to choose.”
The other? Smiling. Calm. Deadly.
“But choose wrong,” the voice said, “and you lose both.”
Adrian’s hand shook. His mind spiraled.
But his heart already knew.
Temporal Construct – Core Stream – 9:24 AM
Adrian stood between the two Elenas. Identical faces. Identical eyes. But the weight in their gazes was worlds apart.
The first Elena—his Elena—stood with fists clenched, trembling but defiant, a quiet storm brimming with uncertainty. She had bled with him, fought beside him, and dared to love him when she shouldn’t.
The other… was still. Serene. Calculated. She looked at him the way a machine studies a puzzle—interested, but detached. “You can’t win this, Adrian. You were never meant to.”
“Maybe not,” he said, stepping between them. “But I don’t care what they meant. I care what I choose.”
“Then choose,” the second Elena said. “But remember—there is only one version who doesn’t destabilize the protocol.”
The ground beneath them shifted. Time pulsed. Reality blurred like a glitching screen.
The real Elena—the one Adrian felt—reached for him. “You know me. I know you.”
He took her hand.
The protocol flared red.
WARNING: Instability detected.
Rewriting event timeline…
The second Elena smiled faintly. “Wrong choice.”
But Adrian didn’t let go. “I’m not choosing between copies. I’m choosing truth. And whatever she is—clone, original, or something in between—she’s real to me.”
The sky cracked above them.
Suddenly, everything shattered—like glass breaking underwater—and they were yanked backward, reality snapping into motion like a slingshot.
Crux Facility – Sublevel One – 9:25 AM
Adrian gasped as he collapsed onto the floor. Elena was beside him—his Elena—her face pale, her body convulsing, but breathing.
The chair was empty.
The other Elena was gone.
The terminals flickered once more.
PROTOCOL ABORTED
CR-01 VERIFIED
RECONCILIATION COMPLETE
Liana’s voice burst through comms. “Adrian?! Elena?! What the hell just happened?! The entire grid surged and went dark for thirty seconds. You disappeared from all sensors.”
Adrian pressed his forehead against Elena’s. “We’re here,” he breathed. “We made it back.”
Elena blinked slowly. “Did we win?”
He laughed bitterly. “We survived. That’s something.”
“Then let’s end this.”
Her fingers tightened around his.
Outside, the sun began to rise—casting golden light over the ruins of secrets, and the people willing to burn them down.
But behind one last screen in the facility—far below their feet—a file finished uploading. A new title blinked:
PROJECT: VIREX PHASE II – ACTIVE
Crux Facility – Sublevel One – 9:37 AM
Adrian helped Elena to her feet. Her legs were shaky, but her grip was solid. All around them, broken monitors sparked. Steel walls hummed like they were breathing—alive with residual energy from the aborted protocol.
Elena touched her temple. “The other me… she didn’t vanish. She retreated.”
Adrian nodded grimly. “Yeah. She said I made the wrong choice.”
“Well,” Elena said, breath ragged, “then let’s prove her wrong.”
Before they could move, Liana stormed into the chamber, followed closely by Julia.
“What the hell just happened?” Liana demanded. “You triggered a cascade that nearly collapsed the whole facility.”
Elena looked at her. “We didn’t trigger it. She did.”
Julia froze. “She?”
“There’s another me,” Elena said. “A surviving version. Fully active. Fully aware.”
Liana’s eyes widened. “A mirror?”
“A weapon,” Adrian muttered. “One designed to fracture alliances. Break us from the inside.”
He turned to Julia. “How many other CR-01s are left in the system?”
Julia hesitated, then said quietly, “Only one registered. The one that stood beside you. But if someone cloned the registry…”
Elena finished the thought: “Then there could be others—off-grid, unlisted, invisible.”
Suddenly, the power flickered again. All monitors glowed with a repeating line of code:
THE MASK ISN’T JUST A COVER—IT’S A BLUEPRINT.
AND YOU’RE STILL WEARING IT.
The message disappeared.
Julia took a step back. “They’re watching us. Someone rerouted the code while you were inside the stream.”
Liana turned to Adrian. “That wasn’t just a warning. It was a dare.”
Adrian’s expression turned cold. “Then let’s dare back.”
Somewhere Else – Surveillance Node Eos – Unknown Time
The clone—Elena’s duplicate—stood inside a darkened room lit only by rows of screens showing Adrian, Elena, Liana, Julia.
She touched her reflection in the screen with a smirk.
“They chose her,” she whispered to herself. “But it won’t matter.”
A male voice behind her said, “We’re ready.”
She turned.
It was Marcus Vale.
His arm was in a sling. His expression unreadable.
“I assume everything is in place,” he said.
The clone nodded. “They’re running out of time.”
“And what about the file?” he asked.
The clone’s eyes glinted. “Let them have it. It’ll only lead them deeper into the fire.”
Marcus folded his arms. “Then it’s time.”
He tapped a hidden panel.
PROJECT: VIREX PHASE II – DEPLOYING…
The air was split between two Elena Cruzes.
One stood shaking with adrenaline, gun raised, eyes wild and burning with memories that were earned through pain, loss, and rebellion.
The other stood perfectly still, unnaturally calm — a reflection built in sterile corridors, coded in zeros and ones, molded to mimic humanity but devoid of its heart.
Fog rolled between them like a ghost. Adrian and Liana held back from the ridge above, watching. Waiting.
CR-01 smiled faintly. “You were always going to hesitate.”
Elena’s jaw clenched. “You don’t know me.”
“I am you,” the replica said. “Just… optimized.”
“But you’ve never bled for someone else. Never cried when it didn’t benefit you. Never screamed from the weight of loving someone who’s broken.” She lowered the gun an inch. “You don’t know anything about me.”
CR-01 tilted her head. “Is that what makes you human? Pain?”
Elena took a shaky step forward. “No. What makes me human is choice. And you don’t have that.”
There was a flash—too fast to see. CR-01 lunged, closing the distance like a machine. Elena barely dodged, the gun knocked from her hand. They crashed to the rocky ground, rolling dangerously close to the cliff’s edge.
Up on the ridge, Adrian moved.
“Wait!” Liana hissed. “She has to end it. You know that.”
He stopped, fists clenched. “If she dies—”
“She won’t.”
Below – Seconds Later
Elena was pinned. Her twin’s face hovered over hers, identical but terrifying in its emptiness.
“You could have ruled,” CR-01 whispered. “You could have overwritten every system. We were meant to evolve—together.”
Elena gritted her teeth. “Then maybe evolution needs a reset.”
Her fingers found the edge of a jagged rock. She drove it upward.
The replica recoiled, sparking not blood, but fluid and metal leaking from the neck.
Elena shoved her off and crawled for her gun. CR-01 recovered faster.
But not fast enough.
Bang.
A single shot. Direct to the chest.
CR-01 collapsed. Twitching. Staring up at the sky with those copied eyes.
Elena stood over her, breath ragged.
“I choose me.”
Safehouse Echo – 6:12 AM
Back at the control room, Julia finished uploading the last segment of the Black Archive to an encrypted mirror node.
Adrian returned with Elena—bloodied, shaken, but standing.
Liana looked up. “Is it over?”
“No,” Adrian said. “It’s just started.”
Julia spun the screen. A blinking alert pulsed in red.
NEW LOCATION DETECTED: CRUX FACILITY — VIREX CORE SERVER
STATUS: ACTIVE
AUTHORITY: UNKNOWN
“Another site?” Elena asked, tired.
“Not just another site,” Julia replied. “The first site. The one that started everything.”
Adrian exhaled. “Crux was supposed to be decommissioned.”
Elena stared at the screen, her reflection dimmed behind the red glow.
“Then let’s go finish what they never had the courage to.”
Safehouse Echo – War Room – 6:18 AM
Elena sat in silence, her reflection flickering faintly on the cracked monitor before her. Her hands were still stained — a blend of earth, grease, and a replica’s synthetic blood. Liana had offered to clean the wound on her arm, but Elena waved her off. She didn’t feel the pain.
Not yet.
Adrian stepped in behind her, dropping a cold bottle of water on the table. She didn’t move.
“She said we were meant to evolve,” Elena murmured. “Like I was part of some twisted blueprint.”
“You weren’t,” Adrian said.
“You sure? Because whoever built her used me as a mold.”
“You’re not a mold, Elena. You’re a match.” He knelt beside her, voice softer now. “They tried to recreate you, but what they made—what she was—had none of the things that matter. No fear. No loyalty. No soul.”
Elena turned to him. “She remembered my first kiss. My favorite color. She even knew what my father whispered to me when he thought I was asleep.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“Because your memories were stolen. Transferred. Just like mine were once mapped and fed into the Black Archive to train models. But memory isn’t identity. What you choose is.”
She looked away. “Then why did it still feel like killing myself?”
Silence stretched.
Then Julia’s voice crackled through the intercom. “Adrian, Liana—get in here. We’ve got a breach on the VIREX node.”
Control Room – 6:23 AM
The screen displayed a swirling lattice of code dark blue veins pulsing with light. A single segment blinked rapidly.
“Crux Facility just went online,” Julia said, eyes fixed on the map. “Which shouldn’t be possible, because every power record in Bogotá says it’s been dormant since 2018.”
“Underground backup?” Liana asked.
“No. This is something else. It’s calling to something. Or someone.”
Elena leaned forward. “You said VIREX was decommissioned.”
“It was,” Adrian confirmed grimly. “After Project Heliograph collapsed, the Crux Facility was buried. We sealed it under six layers of encryption. No power. No network access.”
Julia turned to him. “Then how is it awake?”
Liana frowned. “Unless…”
Adrian looked at her. “Say it.”
“Unless it was never really shut down. Just made to look like it.”
A beat passed.
Julia zoomed into the digital architecture on-screen. The blinking sector revealed an archived subroutine—hidden inside a corrupted loop.
SUB-THREAD: ECHO_GHOST_09
KEYWORD TRIGGER: ELENA CRUZ
Adrian swore under his breath. “They tied it to her.”
Elena’s chest tightened. “Why me?”
Liana’s voice dropped. “Because you were never just a target. You were always a failsafe.”
Crux Facility – Perimeter Gate – 9:11 AM
The gates didn’t creak open like in the movies. They hissed—mechanical, obedient, as if expecting their arrival.
Elena stepped out of the SUV first. The ground beneath her felt different. Not soil, not stone. Reinforced steel plates hidden beneath a skin of gravel. She glanced at Adrian, who nodded once and followed.
Liana’s voice crackled in their comms. “Interior mapping is blind. It’s like someone scrubbed the internal schematics from the grid entirely.”
“Meaning?” Elena asked, already unzipping her jacket and securing the encrypted chip at her belt.
“Meaning you’re going in dark.”
Adrian looked up at the facility—gray, monolithic, windowless. “Feels like a trap.”
“Probably is,” Elena murmured. “But that’s never stopped us before.”
They entered.
Crux Facility – Sublevel One – 9:19 AM
The inside was colder than it should have been. Not just chilled—but clinical. Elena’s boots echoed with every step as they passed flickering LED panels and walls lined with dormant servers.
Then, suddenly, the lights stopped flickering.
They turned solid green.
Elena and Adrian froze.
Then a voice—calm, female, unnervingly familiar—echoed from unseen speakers.
“Welcome home, Elena.”
She whipped around. “Did you hear that?”
Adrian nodded, pulling his weapon. “It’s keyed to your presence.”
The voice spoke again.
“Subject CR-01 authenticated. Initiating memory resync.”
A panel slid open in the wall ahead. Inside: a room. Circular. One chair.
And in it sat… Elena.
Or another version of her.
She was strapped in, eyes wide, pupils darting—but silent. The moment their eyes met, the woman whispered hoarsely:
“They made me remember things I never lived.”
Adrian stepped forward. “Is she another clone?”
“No,” Elena said quietly. “I think… she’s the original.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I think I’m the one they rebuilt.”
Crux Facility – Sublevel One – 9:23 AM
Suddenly the overhead lights dimmed—and every dormant terminal came alive.
SLEEPWALKER PROTOCOL INITIATED
CR-01 CONFLICT DETECTED
RECONCILE OR TERMINATE
The room trembled.
Elena backed away, pulse racing. “They’re making us choose.”
Adrian shouted, “Get her out of the chair! We’re not playing this game.”
But the other Elena smiled through her exhaustion. “I don’t think I’m meant to leave.”
“Like hell you’re not,” Elena growled, rushing forward—
And that’s when the power cut.
A blast of white surged through the monitors, and both Elenas screamed.
Somewhere Outside Time – 9:24 AM
Adrian stood alone. The facility was gone. The world was white.
Then two figures emerged—both Elenas, identical, mirror opposites.
“Only one can carry the truth,” a synthetic voice announced overhead.
One Elena turned to Adrian, tears in her eyes. “You have to choose.”
The other? Smiling. Calm. Deadly.
“But choose wrong,” the voice said, “and you lose both.”
Adrian’s hand shook. His mind spiraled.
But his heart already knew.
Temporal Construct – Core Stream – 9:24 AM
Adrian stood between the two Elenas. Identical faces. Identical eyes. But the weight in their gazes was worlds apart.
The first Elena—his Elena—stood with fists clenched, trembling but defiant, a quiet storm brimming with uncertainty. She had bled with him, fought beside him, and dared to love him when she shouldn’t.
The other… was still. Serene. Calculated. She looked at him the way a machine studies a puzzle—interested, but detached. “You can’t win this, Adrian. You were never meant to.”
“Maybe not,” he said, stepping between them. “But I don’t care what they meant. I care what I choose.”
“Then choose,” the second Elena said. “But remember—there is only one version who doesn’t destabilize the protocol.”
The ground beneath them shifted. Time pulsed. Reality blurred like a glitching screen.
The real Elena—the one Adrian felt—reached for him. “You know me. I know you.”
He took her hand.
The protocol flared red.
WARNING: Instability detected.
Rewriting event timeline…
The second Elena smiled faintly. “Wrong choice.”
But Adrian didn’t let go. “I’m not choosing between copies. I’m choosing truth. And whatever she is—clone, original, or something in between—she’s real to me.”
The sky cracked above them.
Suddenly, everything shattered—like glass breaking underwater—and they were yanked backward, reality snapping into motion like a slingshot.
Crux Facility – Sublevel One – 9:25 AM
Adrian gasped as he collapsed onto the floor. Elena was beside him—his Elena—her face pale, her body convulsing, but breathing.
The chair was empty.
The other Elena was gone.
The terminals flickered once more.
PROTOCOL ABORTED
CR-01 VERIFIED
RECONCILIATION COMPLETE
Liana’s voice burst through comms. “Adrian?! Elena?! What the hell just happened?! The entire grid surged and went dark for thirty seconds. You disappeared from all sensors.”
Adrian pressed his forehead against Elena’s. “We’re here,” he breathed. “We made it back.”
Elena blinked slowly. “Did we win?”
He laughed bitterly. “We survived. That’s something.”
“Then let’s end this.”
Her fingers tightened around his.
Outside, the sun began to rise—casting golden light over the ruins of secrets, and the people willing to burn them down.
But behind one last screen in the facility—far below their feet—a file finished uploading. A new title blinked:
PROJECT: VIREX PHASE II – ACTIVE
Crux Facility – Sublevel One – 9:37 AM
Adrian helped Elena to her feet. Her legs were shaky, but her grip was solid. All around them, broken monitors sparked. Steel walls hummed like they were breathing—alive with residual energy from the aborted protocol.
Elena touched her temple. “The other me… she didn’t vanish. She retreated.”
Adrian nodded grimly. “Yeah. She said I made the wrong choice.”
“Well,” Elena said, breath ragged, “then let’s prove her wrong.”
Before they could move, Liana stormed into the chamber, followed closely by Julia.
“What the hell just happened?” Liana demanded. “You triggered a cascade that nearly collapsed the whole facility.”
Elena looked at her. “We didn’t trigger it. She did.”
Julia froze. “She?”
“There’s another me,” Elena said. “A surviving version. Fully active. Fully aware.”
Liana’s eyes widened. “A mirror?”
“A weapon,” Adrian muttered. “One designed to fracture alliances. Break us from the inside.”
He turned to Julia. “How many other CR-01s are left in the system?”
Julia hesitated, then said quietly, “Only one registered. The one that stood beside you. But if someone cloned the registry…”
Elena finished the thought: “Then there could be others—off-grid, unlisted, invisible.”
Suddenly, the power flickered again. All monitors glowed with a repeating line of code:
THE MASK ISN’T JUST A COVER—IT’S A BLUEPRINT.
AND YOU’RE STILL WEARING IT.
The message disappeared.
Julia took a step back. “They’re watching us. Someone rerouted the code while you were inside the stream.”
Liana turned to Adrian. “That wasn’t just a warning. It was a dare.”
Adrian’s expression turned cold. “Then let’s dare back.”
Somewhere Else – Surveillance Node Eos – Unknown Time
The clone—Elena’s duplicate—stood inside a darkened room lit only by rows of screens showing Adrian, Elena, Liana, Julia.
She touched her reflection in the screen with a smirk.
“They chose her,” she whispered to herself. “But it won’t matter.”
A male voice behind her said, “We’re ready.”
She turned.
It was Marcus Vale.
His arm was in a sling. His expression unreadable.
“I assume everything is in place,” he said.
The clone nodded. “They’re running out of time.”
“And what about the file?” he asked.
The clone’s eyes glinted. “Let them have it. It’ll only lead them deeper into the fire.”
Marcus folded his arms. “Then it’s time.”
He tapped a hidden panel.
PROJECT: VIREX PHASE II – DEPLOYING…
End of Beneath the Billionaire Mask Chapter 73. Continue reading Chapter 74 or return to Beneath the Billionaire Mask book page.