Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 80: Chapter 80

Black Archive – Sub-Level 9 – 05:46 AM
The silence after the voice was worse than the words themselves.
Elena’s breath came in short, sharp bursts as she reached instinctively for the sidearm tucked beneath her jacket. Adrian did the same. His hand grazed hers in the dark—steady, grounding.
Then the emergency lights flickered on, blood-red and pulsing like a heartbeat.
The console rebooted with a flicker of static. But the text was gone. In its place, an eerie graphic—an outline of a human body, neural pathways glowing like circuitry.
SUBJECT CR-00 – ONLINE
PRIMARY HOST LOCATION: UNKNOWN
SLEEPWALKER PROTOCOL – REACTIVE
“CR-00…” Adrian whispered, his eyes locked on the screen. “That’s not you.”
Elena stepped forward, voice hoarse. “Then who is it?”
“I think,” Julia’s voice crackled through the comm again, “that’s the original.”
“The original what?” Elena asked.
“The original you.”
Adrian turned sharply. “You told me her clone was terminated.”
Julia sounded shaken. “That’s what the records said. But someone buried this deeper. Someone high enough to write her off the map—and bring her back when it suited them.”
Elena’s head spun. “So the voice we heard…”
“…was your template waking up,” Adrian finished grimly.
Suddenly, a door hissed open at the far end of the corridor. Cold air spilled in, and a figure stepped out of the shadows—tall, female, familiar.
Too familiar.
She had Elena’s face.
But her eyes were hollow. Empty. Unblinking.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” the doppelgänger said flatly.
Adrian raised his gun, instantly in front of Elena. “Step back.”
But the clone tilted her head, a slow, jerking motion, like a puppet remembering how to move.
“I’m not here to kill her,” she said. “I’m here to complete her.”
Elena’s voice barely came out. “What does that mean?”
The clone smiled—cold and precise.
“It means I remember everything you forgot.”
Black Archive – Sub-Level 9 – 05:48 AM
Elena’s breath caught. She couldn’t stop staring at her—it—the woman who wore her face like a glove and stood with eerie stillness, shoulders squared as if molded from stone. But it wasn’t just the familiarity that unsettled her. It was the stillness. The version of her in front of them didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe like a normal human. And she spoke with a precision that cut like glass.
Adrian’s stance widened, defensive. “We’re done with games. You’re going to tell us who activated you and what the hell Project Sleepwalker is.”
The clone’s gaze shifted toward him. “Blackwood. Always playing protector. But even you can’t protect her from what’s coming.”
“She’s not you,” Adrian bit out. “Whatever you are… you’re a product. Manufactured. Controlled.”
The woman took a step forward, and the security lights flickered again. “Exactly. And that’s why I was chosen to finish what she couldn’t.”
Elena found her voice. “Finish what?”
“Breaking the archive. Releasing the last directive.”
“What directive?” Adrian asked sharply.
The woman’s expression didn’t change. “The fail-safe.”
Behind them, Julia’s voice came through the comms, strained. “I’m seeing spikes in the Archive’s neural core. Something’s trying to rewrite the primary access chain.”
Adrian snapped toward the console, typing fast. “It’s her. She’s linking into the server. Her body must be wired to the system.”
“That’s not a body,” Elena whispered. “It’s a conduit.”
The clone moved again—slow, deliberate.
“Do you know why they created me first?” she asked, her voice quieter now. “Because I was loyal. I never questioned orders. I didn’t need to feel. You… you were the prototype that glitched.”
Elena clenched her fists. “I wasn’t a glitch. I made a choice.”
“No. You made them feel. And that made you dangerous.”
Adrian froze. “Who’s them?”
The woman turned toward him fully now. “The board behind the Initiative. The ones even Guillermo couldn’t name. They don’t want reform. They want control.”
Julia’s voice cut in again, faster now. “Adrian, it’s syncing. If she uploads the directive, it could erase the archive’s integrity. All those files—gone.”
Adrian stepped in front of the clone. “Not happening.”
But she didn’t flinch. “This isn’t about you anymore. It never was. She was built to destroy the truth. I was built to bury it.”
“I’m not your experiment,” Elena growled. “I’m not your shadow.”
“No,” the clone said softly, “but I am yours.”
Then everything exploded into motion.
The clone lunged—not at Elena, but the console. Adrian fired once, the bullet grazing her shoulder. No scream, no flinch. She slammed her hand into the port, a hidden microchip under her skin making contact. Sparks flew. The screen screamed with code. Alarms wailed through the sub-level.
“She’s initiating a full purge!” Julia shouted. “Adrian, kill the link now!”
Adrian dove for the failsafe lever. But the console sparked and exploded backward, sending him flying.
“Elena—!” he shouted just before hitting the floor.
Elena didn’t hesitate. She ran forward, slamming the heel of her boot into the clone’s back. They both went down, struggling. Fists. Elbows. Blood—though not all of it was red. The clone’s skin tore along her temple, revealing a web of translucent circuitry beneath.
Elena reached for her gun.
The clone beat her to it.
A flash—metal on metal. The gun skittered away.
Elena’s chest heaved. “You don’t get to erase me.”
The clone rose slowly, towering over her. “But I already did.”
Then came a sharp bang from the corridor.
The clone staggered backward—smoke trailing from her side.
Liana stepped in, weapon raised. “Told you I never miss twice.”
The clone swayed, looked down at the smoking hole in her side, and then—smiled.
“This was never about deletion. It was about resurrection.”
Her hand reached into her jacket.
Elena’s eyes widened. “She’s triggering something—!”
Before she could finish, the clone slammed something into her chest—a sharp, glowing shard—and her body went rigid. Lights surged across her veins like fiber optics.
Then her eyes glowed.
White.
Adrian pulled himself up just in time to see the transformation begin.
Julia’s voice came through—panicked now. “Adrian, whatever she just activated—it’s not local. I’m seeing a chain reaction across all known clone nodes.”
Liana stepped back. “You’re telling me she just woke all of them?”
“No,” Adrian said grimly. “She made herself the primary node.”
The clone’s voice echoed—not just from her mouth, but from the Archive speakers.
“Welcome to the new era of memory.”
Her body fell forward
and disappeared into data. Gone.
The console rebooted.
One final message appeared.
SLEEPWALKER HAS AWAKENED.
Undisclosed Safehouse – Bogotá – 10:42 PM
Elena sat on the narrow bench in the surveillance room, the flicker of live feeds dancing across her eyes. One showed the exterior quiet, undisturbed. Another monitored the hallway. The last one zoomed in on Adrian, still unconscious, bandaged and tethered to an IV.
He looked like a man waging war in his dreams.
Julia stood behind her, arms crossed, her expression unreadable. Between them, the decrypted segment of the Black Archive still scrolled across the screen. Names. Codes. Maps. And then—an encrypted subfolder, blinking red.
PROJECT: NIGHTFALL
Access Restricted. Require biometric override.
Elena’s fingers hovered over the touchpad. “What happens if I open this?”
Julia exhaled. “Everything changes.”
“I need to know who I am. What they did to me. I don’t care how deep it goes anymore.”
Julia moved forward slowly. “You can’t unsee the truth, Elena. This file… it isn’t just about you. It’s about all of us.”
A long silence.
Then, Elena pressed her finger to the scanner.
The screen flickered.
A loading bar filled—then burst open into chaos.
Blueprints. Military documents. Video files. One showed Adrian, younger, standing beside a man who looked eerily like Elena’s father. Another file auto-played.
A woman’s voice, calm, clinical.
“Subject CR-01 has stabilized beyond projected thresholds. She exhibits both empathy and autonomy. The test is complete. Initiate phase two: integration.”
Elena’s stomach twisted.
She recognized that voice.
It was her mother.
Julia moved beside her, stunned. “Your mother worked on the clone program?”
“She told me she worked in cancer genetics,” Elena whispered. “She said she left everything behind after the war.”
A pause.
“She lied.”
Julia clicked into the next set of logs—dossiers marked SLEEPWALKER PROTOCOL, with implant locations and emergency triggers embedded inside neuro-data maps.
Elena’s name was there.
Twice.
ELENA CRUZ [ACTIVE]
ELENA CRUZ-2 [UNKNOWN STATUS]
Julia’s fingers hovered over the tab. “She’s still out there.”
Elena clenched her jaw. “Then I have to find her before they do.”
Before Julia could respond, a new alert blinked on the screen.
INTRUSION DETECTED – EAST PERIMETER –
A second later, a low hum echoed from the hall. The lights flickered. A pulse ran through the walls like a heartbeat of static.
Elena rose to her feet. “That’s not power failure. That’s a jammer.”
Julia pulled a pistol from the drawer. “We’ve been found.”
—
Underground Hall – Safehouse Echo – 10:58 PM
Adrian stirred, his eyes fluttering open. The air was thick too still. His instincts snapped awake even before his body could. He reached for the bedside drawer, wincing, breath tight.
He found the syringe of adrenaline. Injected. Groaned.
Within seconds, the haze cleared.
Outside his door—footsteps. Quiet. Precise.
Not guards. Not Liana.
Something colder.
He grabbed his phone.
No signal.
Then he heard it—Elena’s voice. Low. Urgent.
Followed by a second voice—his.
No. Not his.
A replica.
A fake.
And that voice… it was whispering her name like a threat.
He swung his legs off the bed, adrenaline tearing through him.
“No one touches her,” he growled, stumbling forward.
Server Core – East Wing – 11:04 PM
Elena moved fast, ducking under a beam, pistol raised. Julia was ahead, guiding her through blind spots.
A shadow moved behind a column.
Elena fired twice.
The figure dropped but not before hurling something metallic.
A flashbang.
Elena turned, too late.
Light swallowed her.
Then darkness.
Silence.
A voice echoed inside her head.
“You think you’re real. But what if you’re not the original?”