Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 76: Chapter 76

Private Airstrip – En Route to Piedra Ciega
6:03 AM
The sky was a sheet of iron, streaked with pre-dawn mist. As the plane ascended, the silence inside the cabin was far louder than the roar of the engines.
Adrian sat across from Elena, his eyes unreadable. His shoulder—still healing—was bound tightly beneath his black tactical shirt. A pistol sat on the bench beside him, untouched but ready. Like him.
Elena studied the chip in her hand. The encrypted key Julia had given her. The one she hadn’t dared use—until now.
“What if this doesn’t work?” she asked softly. “What if this whole thing was always about drawing us back in?”
Adrian’s voice was calm, but his gaze burned. “Then we burn it down on our terms.”
Beside them, Liana ran diagnostics on the EMP disruptor. “We’ve got one shot at disabling NIGHTFALL’s core relay. If we miss—”
“—the virus spreads globally,” Elena finished. “And Marcus wins.”
Adrian looked at her. “Not if I can help it.”
She leaned back, closing her eyes. “We’ve come full circle.”
“You sure you want to face him?” Liana asked from the corner. “He’ll say anything to break you.”
Elena opened her eyes—steel now.
“Then let him try.”
Piedra Ciega – Outer Perimeter
7:17 AM
The ruins were colder than she remembered. Wind swept over the crater where the old vault had once stood. It was now a shell—reconstructed into something worse. Sleek towers of surveillance tech curved around the edge, pulsing faintly with light.
A voice echoed over the comms.
“Welcome home, Elena.”
Marcus.
He was watching. Waiting.
“You’ve come a long way. You brought the whole circus too. Cute.”
Adrian signaled for radio silence. They moved through the ruins in tight formation—Adrian, Elena, Liana. The wind whispered past fragments of old stone and shattered memories.
At the base of the former vault chamber, a narrow staircase led down into the earth.
The command center.
The core of NIGHTFALL.
Liana pulled a small detonator from her bag. “Once we plant this, it’ll give us a five-minute delay before total system failure. We don’t get to hit reset twice.”
Elena nodded. “Then we only need once.”
Adrian looked at her, voice low. “We don’t leave until you’re safe.”
Elena met his eyes. “We don’t leave unless we win.”
He offered a grim smile. “Same thing.”
They descended.
Each step echoed like a countdown.
Underground Command Node – 7:31 AM
The door hissed open.
Inside stood Marcus Vale—calm, blood-streaked, his arm still in a sling from their last encounter. But his eyes were alive with fire.
And behind him?
A second Elena.
Identical.
Expressionless.
Wearing a Blackwood crest.
“Welcome to the threshold,” Marcus said, voice smooth. “You brought yourself… and left your sanity upstairs.”
Elena froze.
The clone stepped forward.
And smiled.
“Ready to meet the version of you that never hesitated?”
Underground Command Node – 7:32 AM
The air crackled with static tension.
Elena’s eyes locked with her replica’s. The resemblance was chilling—down to the faint scar above the brow, the determined set of her jaw. But there was something hollow in the clone’s gaze. No warmth. No humanity.
Just programming.
“She’s perfect,” Marcus said softly, circling them like a snake. “Faster, stronger, loyal only to the mission. No guilt, no attachments. And unlike you, she doesn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.”
“She’s not me,” Elena snapped.
“No,” the clone said coldly. “I’m what you could’ve been without the baggage.”
Adrian stepped in front of Elena, shielding her instinctively. “Cut the theatrics, Marcus. You built a puppet. We came for the strings.”
Marcus smiled. “And you still think you’re not dancing?”
A red light flared on the wall behind him.
SLEEPWALKER PROTOCOL: INITIATED.
From the side corridor, footsteps. Dozens. Maybe more.
Replication units.
Elena felt her stomach twist. “How many are awake?”
Marcus raised a brow. “Enough to erase the past and replace it with something… obedient.”
Liana’s voice cut through over comms. “EMP set. You’ve got six minutes.”
Marcus heard it too.
His grin widened. “Then let’s make it count.”
With a sharp command, he disappeared into the shadows.
And all hell broke loose.
Combat Zone – 7:36 AM
The clone Elena moved first—rushing like a ghost, her blade flashing under the flickering lights. Adrian intercepted her mid-strike, barely dodging her blade, and countered with brutal efficiency. She wasn’t just fast. She predicted him.
Elena ducked, drawing her pistol and firing at an approaching replication soldier. Sparks burst from his chest as the armor fried.
Liana screamed into the comms, “They’ve breached the stairwell—three minutes until full surge!”
The clone knocked Adrian back into a console. Sparks erupted. Blood spattered the screen behind him.
“Adrian!” Elena yelled, charging forward—only to be blocked by her clone.
They clashed.
The same face.
The same voice.
But different hearts.
“You’re not real,” Elena growled, blocking a strike and countering with her elbow.
“I’m better,” the clone hissed. “I was made for this.”
“And I earned this.”
With a final push, Elena slammed the clone into a panel—just as Liana detonated a flash charge behind them. The room burst in light and sound.
The clone collapsed—stunned.
Adrian, bleeding but conscious, stumbled up. “We need to overload the core. Now.”
Elena nodded, grabbing the detonation trigger and slamming it onto the control console.
Five seconds.
They ran.
Exit Corridor – 7:40 AM
The detonation ripped through the underground node. Fire and data surged as the core of NIGHTFALL melted into dust. The replication uplink disintegrated.
But as they reached the surface, a second wave of soldiers awaited them—this time, unmanned drones.
Adrian cursed. “He had a backup relay.”
Liana’s eyes widened. “Then Marcus… he’s already gone.”
From above, the escape chopper dropped low. Ropes unfurled.
Elena looked back one last time. The clone’s body remained half-buried in the wreckage, face frozen in something between shock and sorrow.
She climbed aboard, heart pounding.
Adrian met her gaze. “You chose right.”
Elena nodded slowly, though her hands still trembled.
But even as the chopper lifted away, Marcus’s voice echoed from the still-active comm unit left behind.
“You burned the mask. But the face beneath it? Still mine.”
Extraction Point – Abandoned Refinery Outskirts – 8:01 AM
The sky was a dull wash of gray as the chopper disappeared behind the mountains.
Inside the armoured van, silence reigned.
Elena sat with her hands clasped between her knees, eyes fixed on the blood crusted at the edge of her sleeve—her clone’s blood. Adrian sat across from her, head tilted back, breathing shallowly through clenched teeth as Liana patched his side.
No one spoke for a long time.
Finally, Elena broke the silence.
“I saw her hesitate. For a split second. She could’ve killed me… but didn’t.”
“She was glitching,” Liana said flatly. “Residual moral fragments. It’ll fade if Marcus finds a way to reboot her line.”
“She wasn’t just code,” Elena whispered.
Adrian met her eyes. “She was still dangerous.”
Elena nodded, reluctantly. But her mind churned with something deeper. It wasn’t just the clone. It was the message behind it—that someone had seen her life as duplicable. As if everything that made her human could be programmed, dissected, improved.
That thought was worse than the fight.
“Julia’s offline,” Liana said, snapping the tablet shut. “Whatever network node was feeding the replication uplink—it wasn’t just for NIGHTFALL. There’s another.”
Adrian grimaced. “Then Marcus isn’t done.”
“No,” Liana said quietly, “he’s just opening the next door.”
Unknown Location – NIGHTFALL Secondary Site – 10:44 AM
Marcus Vale stood in a sterile room, flanked by glass vats and humming servers. Behind him, the remains of the Sleepwalker Protocol were already being dismantled, packed into black crates marked for transport.
A man in a lab coat approached.
“She hesitated,” Marcus said, almost to himself. “She chose… mercy.”
The technician hesitated. “It’s… an echo, sir. We think her consciousness imprinted more deeply than expected. Traces of subjective attachment—likely from Subject CR-01’s psychological patterning.”
Marcus’s jaw twitched. “Burn it all. If one layer’s infected, the rest are useless.”
“And the others?”
He turned toward the far wall—where five sealed capsules stood, each bearing an identical face.
“Wake the next.”
The technician froze. “Sir, that version hasn’t undergone full suppression training—”
“I said wake her.”
The lights flickered as the containment pod hissed open.
And a new Elena stepped forward—eyes blank, skin flawless, breath slow and mechanical.
Marcus studied her.
No tremble. No hesitation. No memory.
Just mission.
“Welcome back, Cruz,” he whispered. “Let’s see if this version knows how to end him.”
Safehouse Echo – 11:27 AM
Adrian stood at the balcony, shirtless, wounds still raw but bandaged. Rain dotted the railings. He could feel it—the war shifting. Marcus was no longer just pulling strings.
He was building gods.
Elena joined him, her expression distant. She held a drive in her palm—the final piece Julia had managed to decrypt before the crash.
“Coordinates,” she said. “And something else.”
He took it. Plugged it into the screen inside.
The data flickered alive—maps, names, files marked PROJECT: RED VEIL and CR-01: CONTINGENCY.
One line blinked at the top of the terminal:
“If she remembers… terminate. If she hesitates… replace.”
Elena’s heart dropped.
“I was never supposed to survive,” she said softly.
“No,” Adrian said, standing beside her. “You were supposed to disappear.”
She looked at him.
“But I didn’t.”
“No,” he said, reaching for her hand. “You didn’t.”
She turned her eyes back to the screen—where a list of operational units came online.
And somewhere in South Africa…
REPLICA-07 ACTIVE
OBJECTIVE: TERMINATE BLACKWOOD.
Safehouse Echo – Briefing Room – 12:03 PM
Elena stood with her arms folded, the decrypted files projected on the wall in front of her. Liana paced near the window, while Adrian, still bandaged and bruised, reviewed the surveillance images Julia managed to recover before she went dark.
“Project Red Veil,” Elena repeated, voice low. “Another protocol. Another layer of lies.”
“Not just lies,” Liana said. “Insurance.”
Adrian exhaled sharply. “Red Veil is a kill-switch.”
“Whose?” Elena asked.
Liana looked at her. “Yours.”
The room fell silent.
Adrian turned to the map. “These sites… they’re spread across four continents. Not just replication labs. These are sleeper facilities. Holding tanks. Behavioral override centers.”
“Each linked to a clone?” Elena asked.
“Each linked to a contingency,” Liana answered. “If any of the CR-01 subjects regain full autonomy, Red Veil activates. Erase, replace, repeat.”
“So I was never supposed to make it this far,” Elena said softly.
Adrian walked toward her. “But you did. You made it through everything. And now we have the key to take this down from the inside.”
Liana pulled up a new screen—one showing a blinking dot over a location in South Africa.
“We traced the transmission from your clone’s last command signal,” she said. “Whatever Marcus has planned—it starts here.”
Elena’s eyes narrowed.
“I want to be the one to end it.”
Adrian reached for her hand. “Not alone.”
She squeezed it tightly. “Then let’s burn the rest of the veil.”
Johannesburg, South Africa – Red Veil Node 7 – 3:37 AM
The facility hummed with artificial light. White corridors stretched like veins beneath the earth. Inside one of the control chambers, Replica-07 sat before a terminal. Her face was Elena’s—perfectly identical—but her demeanor was robotic, her expression blank.
A man entered the room. Not Marcus, but someone new.
“We’ve uploaded the real Elena Cruz’s latest neural profile,” he said. “You’ll have her thoughts. Her instincts.”
“But not her doubt,” Replica-07 responded.
He nodded. “Exactly.”
She stood, fluid and silent. “Target: Adrian Blackwood. Protocol?”
“Seduction. Deception. Execution.”
She turned without blinking. “Then begin the fall.”
Safehouse Echo – Balcony – 7:02 PM
Adrian watched Elena from the balcony doorway. She was reading her father’s last encrypted letter again. Each time she read it, her hands trembled a little less.
“He warned me,” she said softly as Adrian approached. “He knew this was coming. He just didn’t know how far it would go.”
Adrian stood beside her. “We end it. Together.”
She turned to him, something burning in her gaze now.
“If there’s another me out there… if she’s stronger, colder, better trained”
“You’re the one who chose truth over safety,” he said. “You’re the real threat to them. Not because you’re perfect but because you keep fighting.”
Elena stared at the horizon, then at her reflection in the glass wondering not for the first time… what if the mirror blinked again?