Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 85: Chapter 85
You are reading Beneath the Billionaire Mask, Chapter 85: Chapter 85. Read more chapters of Beneath the Billionaire Mask.
Classified Coordinates – Deep Andes Facility – 10:43 AM
The chopper touched down in a remote clearing surrounded by dense cloud forest, the canopy above nearly swallowing the sun. A hidden hatch slid open in the ground—metal disguised as earth—and the landing pad slowly descended like an ancient elevator into the mountain’s core.
Adrian stood at the edge, scanning the treeline.
“This place wasn’t on any of the archives,” Liana said, unease in her voice.
“That’s because it predates them,” Adrian murmured. “Before VIREX became a ghost file, it was a whisper inside Blackwood’s earliest records. My father buried it here.”
Elena tightened the strap on her backpack. “Then why bring me now?”
Adrian turned. “Because I think it was never meant for him.”
The vault doors slid open with a hiss of vacuum-sealed pressure, revealing a corridor carved from bedrock. Lights flickered awake one by one. Unlike the sleek tech of the Foundation, this place felt… older. Raw. Like it had survived a purge.
They stepped inside.
On the wall, carved in metal above a rusted keypad, were the words:
VIREX INITIATION PROTOCOL
“Truth is the virus. You are the carrier.”
Liana raised a brow. “That’s comforting.”
They moved in silence, deeper into the labyrinth. The air grew colder, denser. Elena’s boots echoed against steel floors that hadn’t been walked in years—maybe decades. With every step, her pulse grew louder in her ears.
Then, they reached it.
A glass chamber. A stasis pod.
Inside… floated a woman.
Identical to Elena.
Eyes closed. Hair fanned around her like ink in water. A biometric display beside the pod blinked softly:
SUBJECT: CR-00
STATUS: DORMANT
EXPIRATION: FAILED
OVERRIDE KEY: ELENA CRUZ – DNA MATCH REQUIRED
Liana stepped back. “I thought CR-01 was the only active one left.”
“This isn’t CR-01,” Adrian whispered. “This is… the original.”
Elena stared at her mirror image, cold and sleeping behind glass.
“Then who am I?” she asked, breath trembling.
A sudden alarm blared. Red lights bathed the corridor in urgency.
VIREX NODE REACTIVATION INITIATED
EXTERNAL OVERRIDE DETECTED
Adrian cursed. “They found us.”
Liana pulled her weapon. “We’ve got inbound.”
But Elena didn’t move. She pressed a hand to the glass.
The eyes of the woman inside opened.
And smiled.
Deep Andes Facility – Secure Chamber – 10:52 AM
The smile wasn’t mechanical. It was knowing—deliberate.
Adrian stepped forward instinctively, positioning himself between Elena and the pod. “She shouldn’t be awake. No power grid in the region could’ve triggered this manually.”
“Unless someone remote-hacked the override,” Liana said, scanning her device. “The signal’s bouncing through at least eight dead satellites. Someone’s been planning this reactivation for years.”
Elena didn’t flinch. She kept her eyes on the pod. “She looks exactly like me.”
“No,” Adrian said, his voice lower. “She doesn’t.”
Elena blinked. “What?”
“Look at the eyes,” Adrian said. “Yours hold fire. Hers… don’t.”
The woman behind the glass slowly raised her hand, mirroring Elena’s. Then her mouth moved—but no sound came.
Liana activated the chamber’s intercom. The next words chilled them all.
“You were built to replace me. But I was built to last.”
Elena took a sharp breath.
“She’s not just a clone,” Adrian muttered. “She’s the control model.”
The chamber’s floor rumbled as the dormant facility groaned to life. Crates lining the walls unsealed, revealing weapon racks, data drives, and surgical equipment far too advanced for a site this ancient.
Liana pointed at the side console. “This isn’t just a vault. It’s a reboot hub. Designed to reissue field operatives—or reset them.”
Suddenly, the overhead speakers crackled again.
“Welcome, Subject CR-01. You’ve passed autonomous threshold. Uploading personality delta to NODE CENTRAL.”
Elena’s knees nearly gave. “It’s scanning me? For what?”
“Your independent thought,” Adrian whispered. “Your defiance. They’re harvesting it.”
The woman inside the pod moved again, pressing her other hand to the glass.
Adrian’s voice turned sharp. “Step back, now.”
The glass hissed—seams glowing.
“She’s overriding the seal!” Liana shouted.
Before they could react, the pod’s front burst open, smoke flooding the room. The figure stepped out slowly, barefoot, fluid, her body not quite… natural. There was something too smooth about the way she moved—too perfectly calculated.
Face to face, she stood before Elena.
“Do you feel it?” the clone asked softly. “That space between your thoughts—the static they left behind?”
Elena gritted her teeth. “You’re not me.”
“No,” the clone said. “You’re me. But broken.”
Adrian aimed his gun. “That’s far enough.”
The clone didn’t blink. “You won’t shoot. Not while you’re still deciding which one of us you love.”
Adrian’s grip tightened. “I already chose.”
Elena’s breath shook, but her eyes burned. “Then let her go.”
BOOM.
The explosion rocked the facility. A section of the corridor caved in. Dust and sparks rained down.
“Contacts breaching from the north tunnel!” Liana shouted, pulling her sidearm. “We need to move—now!”
The clone didn’t flinch. She stepped back toward the pod, typing something onto the chamber console with surgical speed.
“I’ll see you at the end,” she said, and then—
VANISHED.
Not ran. Vanished. A blink. A shimmer. Gone.
“Stealth phase tech,” Liana hissed. “Prototype stuff.”
Adrian grabbed Elena’s wrist. “We don’t have time.”
They sprinted out of the chamber as alarms blared louder, echoing through the ancient metal halls. Whatever VIREX had started, it wasn’t buried anymore.
And somewhere, a version of Elena was walking free perfect, unfeeling, and with everything she had once feared was inside herself.
Deep Andes Facility – Escape Route Delta – 11:09 AM
The corridors lit up in violent red. Emergency floodlights pulsed, warning of an imminent containment breach. Echoes of mechanical limbs shifted in the distance—no longer dormant, but awake.
Adrian, Elena, and Liana pushed through the winding tunnel system beneath the Andes complex, every turn revealing old tech humming to life like it had simply been waiting.
“We’re not alone,” Liana said, eyes darting to her motion sensor. “Movement. Six signatures. Fast. Too fast to be human.”
“Drones?” Elena asked, breath ragged.
“Worse,” Liana replied. “VIREX made more than clones.”
They ducked into a reinforced corridor where a ventilation shaft glowed faintly above them. Adrian reached up and punched the seal. “Up. Now.”
As Elena climbed, the shaft echoed with distant shrieking—a synthetic, high-frequency screech that made the back of her teeth ache.
“Do you know what that is?” she gasped.
Adrian looked grim. “No. And I don’t want to.”
They reached a crawlspace above the main chamber just in time to see them—
Six tall, semi-humanoid constructs with glistening polymer skin and red-lit visors, each one bearing the VIREX insignia carved into its chest like a badge of death.
“Sleepwalkers,” Liana whispered. “I thought they were a myth.”
Below, the clone Elena stood among them, her body no longer trembling but composed. Commanding.
“I am Subject CR-01,” she said calmly. “Primary host template confirmed. Upload complete. Initiating Phase Two.”
The machines turned as one and knelt.
Adrian’s blood went cold.
“She’s leading them,” Elena breathed. “She’s their queen.”
Adrian grabbed her hand. “Then we stop her before she becomes their god.”
Suddenly, the ceiling vent above them cracked.
They froze.
One of the Sleepwalkers had detected them.
Its face lifted—no nose, no emotion—just empty logic. It raised a serrated forearm, slicing upward toward their vent.
“MOVE!” Liana screamed.
They bolted through the crawlspace just as the shaft exploded behind them in a rain of sparks and steel.
Their only option now was the emergency ascent tunnel—vertical, narrow, slick with condensation and time. It was a race against creatures that didn’t breathe, didn’t bleed, and didn’t stop.
As they climbed, Elena’s voice was steady—terrified, but determined.
“If she’s learning from me… what happens when she learns how to love him?”
Adrian didn’t answer.
Because that was the very thing he feared most.
Deep Andes Facility – Emergency Ascent Tunnel – 11:17 AM
The climb was brutal.
Rust flaked off the rungs. Every handhold was slick. Beneath them, the guttural clang of metal on metal echoed louder—closer. The Sleepwalkers weren’t just fast; they were adaptive. Learning. And they were climbing, too.
“Elena, faster!” Adrian urged.
She gritted her teeth. “Not exactly wearing my combat boots here.”
A low rumble vibrated through the walls. Liana cursed under her breath. “They’re trying to collapse the tunnel. Trap us in.”
Just then, a burst of steam hissed from a broken pipe above them, nearly scalding Adrian’s hand. He lost grip for a second—but Elena reached down without thinking, locking their fingers and hauling him up.
“You still trust me?” she asked through ragged breaths.
He met her eyes. “Always.”
Behind them, the screeching metal tore into their nerves. Liana turned and aimed her compact charge at the ladder’s base.
“What are you doing?” Elena shouted.
“Buying us time.”
Liana pressed the trigger. A low whine, then—
BOOM.
The lower rungs blew apart in a shockwave of fire and debris. The entire tunnel trembled. The first Sleepwalker slipped, crashing against the wall. Another fell into the abyss.
Two more kept coming.
Elena screamed as a jagged shard sliced her thigh. Adrian caught her again—arm around her waist, practically carrying her the last few meters.
They burst through a sealed hatch, collapsing into a decaying hallway aboveground. The sunlight bleeding through cracked ceiling tiles was the first real light they’d seen in hours.
“Lock it!” Adrian barked.
Liana slammed the manual lever down. “That’ll hold for maybe ten minutes.”
Elena’s hand was soaked in blood, but she didn’t stop. “We can’t just run. She’s down there, Adrian. I’m down there.”
Adrian turned, chest heaving. “That’s not you.”
She paused. “But she was made from me.”
Liana straightened, eyeing the sunrise through fractured glass. “Then we finish this before the rest of the world wakes up and meets her first.”
Adrian pulled a small, charred drive from his jacket.
“The backup,” he said. “Julia has the main archive… but this?”
He held it up.
“This has the kill code.”
Elena’s eyes widened. “You never told me—”
“I had to be sure you were you,” he replied.
Then the hallway lights flickered.
The ventilation system roared to life.
And from deep beneath the compound… CR-01 began to sing.
The melody was wrong—unsettling. Glitched. But familiar. Elena’s lullaby.
“She’s learning,” Elena whispered. “She’s mimicking everything.”
Liana swore. “Then she just declared war.”
Above the Deep Andes Facility – Emergency Exit Perimeter – 11:33 AM
The morning sun cast long shadows across the jagged ridge as Adrian, Elena, and Liana stood on the gravel-strewn clearing, hearts pounding, lungs raw from smoke and panic. Below them, the sealed hatch now throbbed faintly with pressure—like something alive was trying to breathe through steel.
Elena wiped her bloodied hand against her jeans, eyes never leaving the metal trapdoor. “She’s not going to stop, is she?”
“No,” Adrian said, voice low. “Not until she finishes what the program started.”
Liana knelt beside a half-buried comms case, prying it open and activating the satellite relay. “Sending the signal to Julia. Once she decrypts the kill code from Adrian’s drive, we can override CR-01’s command chain.”
Elena looked back toward the twisted remains of the compound. “And what if it’s too late? What if she’s already triggered the others?”
Adrian answered before Liana could. “Then we change the plan. We hunt them down—one by one.”
The wind picked up, whipping Elena’s hair across her face. In the distance, a faint static buzz echoed through the radio waves.
Then… a voice.
Garbled. Familiar.
“Subject Blackwood. You failed the test.”
It was her voice—but not hers.
CR-01.
Adrian stiffened. “How the hell did she tap into the comms?”
Liana’s fingers flew over the interface. “She’s ghosted the uplink. She’s piggybacking off our signal. Shit—she’s in Julia’s system already.”
More static.
“You should’ve let me sleep.”
Then the signal cut.
Silence.
Elena stared at the clouds rolling in over the peaks. “We didn’t just wake her up,” she said softly. “We provoked her.”
Adrian turned to her, eyes dark. “Then we finish what we started. No more secrets. No more masks.”
Liana stood. “And no more versions. Only one Elena Cruz walks out of this war.”
Elena took a shaky breath, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a memory crystal—the very one she found buried in the vault. Still encrypted. Still glowing faintly.
“Then let’s find out why I was built… and who’s still trying to control me.”
The chopper touched down in a remote clearing surrounded by dense cloud forest, the canopy above nearly swallowing the sun. A hidden hatch slid open in the ground—metal disguised as earth—and the landing pad slowly descended like an ancient elevator into the mountain’s core.
Adrian stood at the edge, scanning the treeline.
“This place wasn’t on any of the archives,” Liana said, unease in her voice.
“That’s because it predates them,” Adrian murmured. “Before VIREX became a ghost file, it was a whisper inside Blackwood’s earliest records. My father buried it here.”
Elena tightened the strap on her backpack. “Then why bring me now?”
Adrian turned. “Because I think it was never meant for him.”
The vault doors slid open with a hiss of vacuum-sealed pressure, revealing a corridor carved from bedrock. Lights flickered awake one by one. Unlike the sleek tech of the Foundation, this place felt… older. Raw. Like it had survived a purge.
They stepped inside.
On the wall, carved in metal above a rusted keypad, were the words:
VIREX INITIATION PROTOCOL
“Truth is the virus. You are the carrier.”
Liana raised a brow. “That’s comforting.”
They moved in silence, deeper into the labyrinth. The air grew colder, denser. Elena’s boots echoed against steel floors that hadn’t been walked in years—maybe decades. With every step, her pulse grew louder in her ears.
Then, they reached it.
A glass chamber. A stasis pod.
Inside… floated a woman.
Identical to Elena.
Eyes closed. Hair fanned around her like ink in water. A biometric display beside the pod blinked softly:
SUBJECT: CR-00
STATUS: DORMANT
EXPIRATION: FAILED
OVERRIDE KEY: ELENA CRUZ – DNA MATCH REQUIRED
Liana stepped back. “I thought CR-01 was the only active one left.”
“This isn’t CR-01,” Adrian whispered. “This is… the original.”
Elena stared at her mirror image, cold and sleeping behind glass.
“Then who am I?” she asked, breath trembling.
A sudden alarm blared. Red lights bathed the corridor in urgency.
VIREX NODE REACTIVATION INITIATED
EXTERNAL OVERRIDE DETECTED
Adrian cursed. “They found us.”
Liana pulled her weapon. “We’ve got inbound.”
But Elena didn’t move. She pressed a hand to the glass.
The eyes of the woman inside opened.
And smiled.
Deep Andes Facility – Secure Chamber – 10:52 AM
The smile wasn’t mechanical. It was knowing—deliberate.
Adrian stepped forward instinctively, positioning himself between Elena and the pod. “She shouldn’t be awake. No power grid in the region could’ve triggered this manually.”
“Unless someone remote-hacked the override,” Liana said, scanning her device. “The signal’s bouncing through at least eight dead satellites. Someone’s been planning this reactivation for years.”
Elena didn’t flinch. She kept her eyes on the pod. “She looks exactly like me.”
“No,” Adrian said, his voice lower. “She doesn’t.”
Elena blinked. “What?”
“Look at the eyes,” Adrian said. “Yours hold fire. Hers… don’t.”
The woman behind the glass slowly raised her hand, mirroring Elena’s. Then her mouth moved—but no sound came.
Liana activated the chamber’s intercom. The next words chilled them all.
“You were built to replace me. But I was built to last.”
Elena took a sharp breath.
“She’s not just a clone,” Adrian muttered. “She’s the control model.”
The chamber’s floor rumbled as the dormant facility groaned to life. Crates lining the walls unsealed, revealing weapon racks, data drives, and surgical equipment far too advanced for a site this ancient.
Liana pointed at the side console. “This isn’t just a vault. It’s a reboot hub. Designed to reissue field operatives—or reset them.”
Suddenly, the overhead speakers crackled again.
“Welcome, Subject CR-01. You’ve passed autonomous threshold. Uploading personality delta to NODE CENTRAL.”
Elena’s knees nearly gave. “It’s scanning me? For what?”
“Your independent thought,” Adrian whispered. “Your defiance. They’re harvesting it.”
The woman inside the pod moved again, pressing her other hand to the glass.
Adrian’s voice turned sharp. “Step back, now.”
The glass hissed—seams glowing.
“She’s overriding the seal!” Liana shouted.
Before they could react, the pod’s front burst open, smoke flooding the room. The figure stepped out slowly, barefoot, fluid, her body not quite… natural. There was something too smooth about the way she moved—too perfectly calculated.
Face to face, she stood before Elena.
“Do you feel it?” the clone asked softly. “That space between your thoughts—the static they left behind?”
Elena gritted her teeth. “You’re not me.”
“No,” the clone said. “You’re me. But broken.”
Adrian aimed his gun. “That’s far enough.”
The clone didn’t blink. “You won’t shoot. Not while you’re still deciding which one of us you love.”
Adrian’s grip tightened. “I already chose.”
Elena’s breath shook, but her eyes burned. “Then let her go.”
BOOM.
The explosion rocked the facility. A section of the corridor caved in. Dust and sparks rained down.
“Contacts breaching from the north tunnel!” Liana shouted, pulling her sidearm. “We need to move—now!”
The clone didn’t flinch. She stepped back toward the pod, typing something onto the chamber console with surgical speed.
“I’ll see you at the end,” she said, and then—
VANISHED.
Not ran. Vanished. A blink. A shimmer. Gone.
“Stealth phase tech,” Liana hissed. “Prototype stuff.”
Adrian grabbed Elena’s wrist. “We don’t have time.”
They sprinted out of the chamber as alarms blared louder, echoing through the ancient metal halls. Whatever VIREX had started, it wasn’t buried anymore.
And somewhere, a version of Elena was walking free perfect, unfeeling, and with everything she had once feared was inside herself.
Deep Andes Facility – Escape Route Delta – 11:09 AM
The corridors lit up in violent red. Emergency floodlights pulsed, warning of an imminent containment breach. Echoes of mechanical limbs shifted in the distance—no longer dormant, but awake.
Adrian, Elena, and Liana pushed through the winding tunnel system beneath the Andes complex, every turn revealing old tech humming to life like it had simply been waiting.
“We’re not alone,” Liana said, eyes darting to her motion sensor. “Movement. Six signatures. Fast. Too fast to be human.”
“Drones?” Elena asked, breath ragged.
“Worse,” Liana replied. “VIREX made more than clones.”
They ducked into a reinforced corridor where a ventilation shaft glowed faintly above them. Adrian reached up and punched the seal. “Up. Now.”
As Elena climbed, the shaft echoed with distant shrieking—a synthetic, high-frequency screech that made the back of her teeth ache.
“Do you know what that is?” she gasped.
Adrian looked grim. “No. And I don’t want to.”
They reached a crawlspace above the main chamber just in time to see them—
Six tall, semi-humanoid constructs with glistening polymer skin and red-lit visors, each one bearing the VIREX insignia carved into its chest like a badge of death.
“Sleepwalkers,” Liana whispered. “I thought they were a myth.”
Below, the clone Elena stood among them, her body no longer trembling but composed. Commanding.
“I am Subject CR-01,” she said calmly. “Primary host template confirmed. Upload complete. Initiating Phase Two.”
The machines turned as one and knelt.
Adrian’s blood went cold.
“She’s leading them,” Elena breathed. “She’s their queen.”
Adrian grabbed her hand. “Then we stop her before she becomes their god.”
Suddenly, the ceiling vent above them cracked.
They froze.
One of the Sleepwalkers had detected them.
Its face lifted—no nose, no emotion—just empty logic. It raised a serrated forearm, slicing upward toward their vent.
“MOVE!” Liana screamed.
They bolted through the crawlspace just as the shaft exploded behind them in a rain of sparks and steel.
Their only option now was the emergency ascent tunnel—vertical, narrow, slick with condensation and time. It was a race against creatures that didn’t breathe, didn’t bleed, and didn’t stop.
As they climbed, Elena’s voice was steady—terrified, but determined.
“If she’s learning from me… what happens when she learns how to love him?”
Adrian didn’t answer.
Because that was the very thing he feared most.
Deep Andes Facility – Emergency Ascent Tunnel – 11:17 AM
The climb was brutal.
Rust flaked off the rungs. Every handhold was slick. Beneath them, the guttural clang of metal on metal echoed louder—closer. The Sleepwalkers weren’t just fast; they were adaptive. Learning. And they were climbing, too.
“Elena, faster!” Adrian urged.
She gritted her teeth. “Not exactly wearing my combat boots here.”
A low rumble vibrated through the walls. Liana cursed under her breath. “They’re trying to collapse the tunnel. Trap us in.”
Just then, a burst of steam hissed from a broken pipe above them, nearly scalding Adrian’s hand. He lost grip for a second—but Elena reached down without thinking, locking their fingers and hauling him up.
“You still trust me?” she asked through ragged breaths.
He met her eyes. “Always.”
Behind them, the screeching metal tore into their nerves. Liana turned and aimed her compact charge at the ladder’s base.
“What are you doing?” Elena shouted.
“Buying us time.”
Liana pressed the trigger. A low whine, then—
BOOM.
The lower rungs blew apart in a shockwave of fire and debris. The entire tunnel trembled. The first Sleepwalker slipped, crashing against the wall. Another fell into the abyss.
Two more kept coming.
Elena screamed as a jagged shard sliced her thigh. Adrian caught her again—arm around her waist, practically carrying her the last few meters.
They burst through a sealed hatch, collapsing into a decaying hallway aboveground. The sunlight bleeding through cracked ceiling tiles was the first real light they’d seen in hours.
“Lock it!” Adrian barked.
Liana slammed the manual lever down. “That’ll hold for maybe ten minutes.”
Elena’s hand was soaked in blood, but she didn’t stop. “We can’t just run. She’s down there, Adrian. I’m down there.”
Adrian turned, chest heaving. “That’s not you.”
She paused. “But she was made from me.”
Liana straightened, eyeing the sunrise through fractured glass. “Then we finish this before the rest of the world wakes up and meets her first.”
Adrian pulled a small, charred drive from his jacket.
“The backup,” he said. “Julia has the main archive… but this?”
He held it up.
“This has the kill code.”
Elena’s eyes widened. “You never told me—”
“I had to be sure you were you,” he replied.
Then the hallway lights flickered.
The ventilation system roared to life.
And from deep beneath the compound… CR-01 began to sing.
The melody was wrong—unsettling. Glitched. But familiar. Elena’s lullaby.
“She’s learning,” Elena whispered. “She’s mimicking everything.”
Liana swore. “Then she just declared war.”
Above the Deep Andes Facility – Emergency Exit Perimeter – 11:33 AM
The morning sun cast long shadows across the jagged ridge as Adrian, Elena, and Liana stood on the gravel-strewn clearing, hearts pounding, lungs raw from smoke and panic. Below them, the sealed hatch now throbbed faintly with pressure—like something alive was trying to breathe through steel.
Elena wiped her bloodied hand against her jeans, eyes never leaving the metal trapdoor. “She’s not going to stop, is she?”
“No,” Adrian said, voice low. “Not until she finishes what the program started.”
Liana knelt beside a half-buried comms case, prying it open and activating the satellite relay. “Sending the signal to Julia. Once she decrypts the kill code from Adrian’s drive, we can override CR-01’s command chain.”
Elena looked back toward the twisted remains of the compound. “And what if it’s too late? What if she’s already triggered the others?”
Adrian answered before Liana could. “Then we change the plan. We hunt them down—one by one.”
The wind picked up, whipping Elena’s hair across her face. In the distance, a faint static buzz echoed through the radio waves.
Then… a voice.
Garbled. Familiar.
“Subject Blackwood. You failed the test.”
It was her voice—but not hers.
CR-01.
Adrian stiffened. “How the hell did she tap into the comms?”
Liana’s fingers flew over the interface. “She’s ghosted the uplink. She’s piggybacking off our signal. Shit—she’s in Julia’s system already.”
More static.
“You should’ve let me sleep.”
Then the signal cut.
Silence.
Elena stared at the clouds rolling in over the peaks. “We didn’t just wake her up,” she said softly. “We provoked her.”
Adrian turned to her, eyes dark. “Then we finish what we started. No more secrets. No more masks.”
Liana stood. “And no more versions. Only one Elena Cruz walks out of this war.”
Elena took a shaky breath, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a memory crystal—the very one she found buried in the vault. Still encrypted. Still glowing faintly.
“Then let’s find out why I was built… and who’s still trying to control me.”
End of Beneath the Billionaire Mask Chapter 85. Continue reading Chapter 86 or return to Beneath the Billionaire Mask book page.