Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 78: Chapter 78

Bogotá – Julia King’s Apartment – 3:47 PM
The sky outside Julia’s windows darkened with rolling clouds, but inside, the storm had already begun. Her hands flew over the keyboard, decrypting layers buried in the chip CR-01 handed over—an old encryption language from Blackwood Systems’ ghost archives.
On screen, a location flickered:
“NODE 1-BRAVO – ATLANTIC RESEARCH FACILITY – DECOMMISSIONED.”
But the signal pulsed.
Active. Alive.
Julia’s pulse quickened. She pressed a key.
A second file opened—audio only. Garbled, at first, until a voice came through:
“This is Subject EL-0X. They think I’m sedated. I’m not. If this gets out… if anyone’s listening… I am not the clone. I’m the original. They used me.”
Julia’s breath hitched. She leaned in.
“They said I was the perfect psychological blueprint. Empathy, resilience, defiance… And now they’ve buried me in the dark so they can build an army in my image.”
“If you find this—don’t trust Adrian Blackwood.”
The line cut out.
Julia froze.
Safehouse Echo – War Room – 4:15 PM
“She said what?” Adrian asked, his eyes narrowed at the transcript Julia just sent over.
Elena stared at the screen, face pale. “She said not to trust you.”
Silence stretched between them.
Liana exhaled. “We don’t even know when this was recorded. Or if it’s bait.”
“She’s not bait,” Elena said sharply. “She’s me.”
Adrian crossed his arms. “And I’m supposed to just accept that there’s another version of you out there feeding messages to anyone with a cracked firewall?”
“She’s not feeding. She’s pleading.”
Liana moved between them. “We don’t have time for mistrust. Julia traced the coordinates to a facility off the coast of the Azores. Atlantic current patterns confirm access is only possible via sub-launch or blackwater drop.”
Adrian nodded slowly. “Then that’s where we’re going.”
“No,” Elena said. “That’s where I’m going.”
Adrian turned to her, hard. “You’re not doing this alone.”
“You’re compromised. If that audio’s true, you’re part of the reason she’s there.”
Pain flickered across his face. “And if it’s false?”
“Then we’ll know.”
She stared him down.
And Adrian… let her win.
Atlantic Research Facility – Sub-Launch Prep – 12 Hours Later
Waves crashed against the steel hull of the stealth craft. Julia briefed the team through earpieces as they suited up.
“Once inside, we follow the heat trail and find Node 1-Bravo. If Subject EL-0X is alive, she’ll be held in Cryo or Deep Neural Stasis. These facilities are boobytrapped against psychic bleed.”
“Psychic what?” Liana asked.
“Don’t ask.”
Elena locked eyes with CR-01—who stood beside her, armored and silent.
“Are you ready?” Elena asked her clone.
CR-01 nodded. “I was built for this.”
The ramp lowered.
Cold salt air rushed in.
Adrian’s voice came through the comms one last time from a safehouse miles away.
“Elena… if she is you… then be careful. The version of you they wanted to control… may not want to be saved.”
Sub-Sector: Node 1-Bravo – Atlantic Research Facility – 03:12 AM
The hatch creaked open.
A hiss of air escaped as Elena, CR-01, Liana, and Julia stepped into the stale, freezing corridor. Lights flickered faintly overhead—emergency power, barely holding. The walls were lined with plexiglass, some cracked, others stained with frost. This place had been asleep for years… or pretending to be.
Liana scanned with a thermal reader. “Three heat signatures ahead. Stationary. Cryo level.”
Julia nodded. “That’s where they’d hold something they couldn’t risk waking.”
CR-01’s voice cut through. “Not something. Someone.”
The deeper they went, the thicker the silence became. CR-01 walked with eerie calm, as if the walls themselves remembered her footsteps. Elena noticed it — how the doors slid open without her touching them. How certain lights blinked to life in her presence.
“You’ve been here before,” Elena said.
CR-01 didn’t answer.
Cryo Bay – NODE 1-BRAVO
Three capsules lined the far wall.
Two were empty. The third hummed quietly — its frost-lined window fogged, heartbeat monitor blinking softly.
Liana wiped the glass.
Inside… was her.
Not CR-01.
Not Elena.
Someone else.
The features were unmistakable — the same defiant jaw, the slight scar on the brow — but this one looked older. Hardened. A version of Elena that had lived something cruel and survived.
The nameplate read:
SUBJECT: EL-0X — STASIS MODE: ACTIVE
PSY-LOCK CONDITION: LEVEL 5
RELEASE REQUIRES MATCHED DNA AUTHORIZATION.
Julia stepped forward. “She’s been locked with a dual security chain. One of you needs to authorize it.”
Elena hesitated. “Is it safe?”
“No,” CR-01 said. “But it’s necessary.”
Elena placed her hand on the scanner. A sharp light scanned her palm. Then CR-01 followed, doing the same.
The capsule hissed.
Froze.
Then began to unlock.
Inside, the figure stirred.
And opened her eyes.
“…About time,” the original Elena rasped, voice weak but razor-sharp. “Took you long enough to save yourself.”
Observation Bay – Ten Minutes Later
They gathered in a sealed chamber, the three Elenas facing each other for the first time. Julia watched nervously, her fingers flying over diagnostic pads, monitoring neural echoes between the women.
Elena couldn’t take her eyes off her original self.
“You’re real,” she said quietly.
Original-Elena nodded. “And so are you.”
“Why did they keep you?” Liana asked.
Original-Elena’s smile was grim. “Because I remembered everything. And they couldn’t risk the truth walking free.”
CR-01 tilted her head. “And what truth is that?”
Original-Elena looked at Adrian’s Elena.
“That you weren’t built to find Adrian Blackwood. He was built to find you.”
The room went still.
“What does that mean?” Elena asked.
Original-Elena’s eyes narrowed.
“It means everything you’ve uncovered so far… was designed to lead you here. To me.”
And then the screen behind her flickered on.
An old message.
A familiar voice.
Guillermo Cruz.
“If you’re seeing this… then Subject EL-0X has been activated. And so has NIGHTFALL. You’ve broken the first seal. The next choice you make will decide which of you lives.”
Atlantic Research Facility – Observation Bay – 03:47 AM
Silence.
Cruz’s pre-recorded message had faded, but the weight of his final words hung like smoke in the cold air.
“The next choice you make will decide which of you lives.”
Julia froze at her console. Her hands trembled, cursor blinking on a prompt marked:
“NIGHTFALL: SUBJECT PRIORITIZATION – SELECT ONE”
“What the hell does that mean?” Liana snapped, stepping forward. “What choice?”
Original-Elena—EL-0X—stood taller, stronger now that the stasis effects were wearing off. Her eyes, darker than Elena’s, were razor-focused. “He embedded a kill switch protocol. Only one of us is coded to survive the next sequence.”
CR-01 clenched her fists. “He didn’t trust us?”
“No,” EL-0X replied. “He didn’t trust them—whoever was hunting us. He made sure only one version could continue the mission if everything collapsed.”
Elena’s voice cracked. “And what’s the mission?”
EL-0X turned to her, gaze softer than before. “To burn down the system that created us. That started with Adrian’s father. But it doesn’t end there.”
Elena stepped toward the console, reading the lines of encrypted code cascading across the screen.
SUBJECT PRIORITY TREE:
CR-01: PROTOTYPE V3
ELENA CRUZ: PRIMARY FIELD UNIT
EL-0X: MASTER TEMPLATE
A final box blinked:
CHOOSE ONE TO PRESERVE.
“I’m not doing this,” Elena said. “We’re not sacrificing anyone.”
“It’s not up to us,” Julia said grimly. “The moment this system rebooted, it activated a biometric decay loop. One of you will begin to degrade in less than 24 hours.”
“What kind of monster was your father?” Liana whispered.
Adrian’s voice came over comms, hoarse but urgent. “I’m inbound. Don’t choose anything until I get there.”
Elena glanced at the two women who bore her face—different versions of the same soul, shaped by fire, ice, and silence.
“I won’t let a dead man write our ending,” she whispered.
Then the alarms blared.
INTRUSION DETECTED. NODE-3 BREACHED.
Julia’s screen exploded in red warnings.
“They found us,” she breathed.
“Who?” Elena shouted.
But CR-01 already knew.
“The ones behind Project VIREX,” she said, her eyes glowing faintly.
Then she turned, pulled a gun from her belt, and aimed it at the console.
“I’ll buy us time. Choose fast.”
“No!” Elena shouted, rushing forward.
But CR-01 fired—blowing out the screen before the decision could be made.
Sparks showered the room. Darkness fell.
And behind it, something stirred in the walls. Something mechanical. Something awake.
Elsewhere – NODE-3 DARK ACCESS TUNNEL – 03:58 AM
A black-ops strike team moved in formation, silent as ghosts, weapons drawn.
Their leader paused at a biometric scanner.
A soft beep.
A hidden door opened.
Inside: a dimly lit archive room.
At the center of it stood a figure.
Marcus Vale.
His arm was in a sling. Blood crusted his collar. But he smiled as the agents entered.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “The hunt is over.”
He turned toward a tall stasis chamber still humming with blue light.
“Let’s wake the last siren.”