Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 90: Chapter 90

Blackwood Estate – Underground Vault – 3:13 AM
The door hissed open like it hadn’t been touched in decades.
Adrian stepped into the vault’s cold silence, each footstep echoing over marble floors etched with coordinates and coded phrases. The final key to Julia’s network had been traced here—hidden beneath the very empire he built to outrun his past.
Elena followed, her flashlight beam dancing across old schematics, war documents… and a wall of faces.
Her breath hitched.
Twelve portraits. All Adrian. All different ages, styles, scars—variations of him built over the years.
Adrian froze. “I never knew they archived this.”
“These are versions of you,” Elena whispered, moving slowly, “all discarded. Or perfected.”
She turned to him. “Which one are you?”
Adrian didn’t answer. His eyes lingered on a younger face—gentler, smiling faintly. “Not the best one. Just the last one standing.”
The final drawer at the far end of the room slid open with a metallic sigh.
Inside was a data capsule—black, polished, humming faintly like a heartbeat. And beside it… a letter. Handwritten. Signed with a name that turned Elena’s stomach cold.
CR-01.
Her clone number.
She picked up the letter, hands trembling.
To the one who survives,
You weren’t just engineered to feel… you were programmed to forget. But if you’ve found this, then your awakening is ahead of schedule.
You are not the weapon. You are the trigger.
Everything collapses the moment you choose him.
– J.
Elena’s pulse raced. She handed it to Adrian, who read it silently, his jaw tightening. “Julia knew we’d find this.”
“Then she also knew I’d still choose you.”
“No,” Adrian said softly. “She knew you’d have to choose between me and who you were created to become.”
Suddenly, alarms flared to life—scarlet light flooding the chamber.
Adrian lunged toward the data capsule, but it vanished into the floor with a mechanical whir.
“Self-destruct protocol initiated,” a monotone voice announced. “You have four minutes to evacuate.”
Elena turned to run, but the vault doors slammed shut.
Trapped.
“Four minutes,” she muttered, eyes scanning for a panel. “Tell me you know how to override this.”
“I can slow it down,” Adrian said, already pulling wires from a panel, sparks flying. “But I need you to do something else.”
“What?”
He looked at her, fierce. “If I fail… you have to leave me behind.”
She flinched. “That’s not an option.”
“It is now.”
Elena grabbed his hand. “Then do what you have to. But I’m not walking out without you.”
Three minutes.
Two lives.
One legacy.
And somewhere, in another chamber far away… a second Elena was waking up.
Blackwood Estate – Underground Vault – 3:14 AM
“Timer at three minutes,” the system repeated, red lights stroking the walls in angry pulses.
Elena knelt beside Adrian as he yanked open the side console beneath the mainframe, a flurry of wires snaking out like veins. Sparks flew, burning the back of his hand, but he didn’t flinch.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, grabbing a cloth from her jacket.
Adrian glanced at her, then at the wall of his lost selves—twelve versions of him designed, tested, rejected. “If this thing blows, that’ll be the least of our worries.”
“I can help—”
“No.” His voice cut sharp. “This system was designed by Julia. Only someone with root-level biometric clearance can delay the cascade. That’s me.”
“And what am I supposed to do? Stand here and—”
“Elena.” His tone shifted, softer, urgent. “The eastern stairwell. Behind the cabinet on the far side. There’s a manual override to the vault. It’ll buy us time.”
She hesitated. “If I go…”
“You’re not leaving. You’re unlocking our only way out.”
She sprinted.
Across the vault, past the haunting rows of abandoned identities, her hands found the lever behind the cabinet. She yanked—once, twice—and the mechanism groaned, metal teeth shifting deep within the walls.
“Override engaged,” the system confirmed. “Two minutes remaining.”
Adrian shouted from across the room. “I’ve bypassed the core firewall, but there’s a failsafe trigger on the data capsule. If it’s destroyed, it’ll wipe every replication node across the globe.”
Elena’s eyes widened. “Julia planned to take all the clones down with this one?”
“No,” he said grimly. “She planned to reset the entire program. Including us.”
Behind her, a loud clang. A hidden door unsealed to reveal an escape shaft descending into darkness.
Elena turned back. “We have a way out!”
Adrian hesitated.
And then—everything happened at once.
A sudden low-frequency hum filled the vault, distorting sound like a pressure drop before a storm.
The portrait wall blinked.
The youngest Adrian in the lineup—the one smiling faintly—glowed with faint circuitry. His eyes moved. Not a projection. A replication interface.
“What the—” Elena gasped.
A soft voice, eerily familiar, echoed from the wall. “You were never supposed to wake up this soon.”
It wasn’t Adrian’s voice.
It was hers.
Elena.
But not the one in the room.
The other.
Replication Node 7 – Unknown Location – Simultaneous
In a dim chamber, a figure stood bathed in cyan light. Her face was Elena’s, but her eyes were storm grey, cold as steel. Tubes retracted from her spine, the final upload complete.
She opened her eyes.
“Begin Phase Three,” she said to no one. “Target: Adrian Blackwood.”
Blackwood Vault – 3:17 AM
Elena’s ears rang with static. The countdown hit one minute.
Adrian looked at her, eyes blazing.
“We leave now,” he said, grabbing her hand.
And just before they dove into the shaft, the younger Adrian on the wall—an interface, or something worse—smiled faintly and whispered,
“It always ends with fire.”
Then the vault exploded.
Darkness swallowed them.
The tunnel echoed with metallic screeches as the red-eyed machine surged closer. Elena pulled Adrian to the side, pressing him into a jagged recess in the wall just as a blast of heat singed past them.
The bot—sleek, humanoid, but grotesquely precise—lurched into view. Its frame was too smooth, too agile. Not a typical defense drone. This was something else.
Adrian’s breath caught. “It’s not just a machine. It’s… augmented with bio-matter.”
Elena’s stomach turned. “You’re saying it’s part human?”
He nodded slowly. “Clone body. Machine consciousness. A hybrid.”
The red-eyed thing turned toward them again. Then it spoke—and it was her voice.
“Terminating corrupted variant. Requesting override: denied.”
“Why does it sound like me?” Elena asked.
Adrian stepped forward, shielding her. “Because it’s one of the three. The one they didn’t kill.”
The machine cocked its head. “Target Adrian Blackwood recognized. Lethal authorization granted.”
“Not today,” Adrian growled.
The fight exploded.
Adrian moved fast, pulling Elena behind the remnants of a wall as bullets ricocheted from the machine’s weaponized arm. Elena reached into her boot and yanked out a stolen micro grenade—a leftover from the vault.
“On three,” she hissed.
Adrian nodded. “One.”
The machine advanced.
“Two…”
Its arm charged again, humming with energy.
“Three!”
Elena lobbed the grenade under its legs and pulled Adrian flat to the ground.
Boom.
The blast shook the tunnel, throwing sparks and shards of metal into the air. The red-eyed clone shrieked, its left leg blown apart. It stumbled, trying to recalibrate.
“Run!” Adrian shouted.
They sprinted down the tunnel, their boots pounding through debris. Behind them, the half-functional clone gave chase, dragging its damaged body with terrifying persistence.
Elena glanced back. “It won’t stop.”
“We don’t need it to stop,” Adrian panted. “We just need a way out.”
Then, ahead—light.
A ladder. A maintenance hatch glowed faintly above.
Adrian shoved Elena upward. She climbed fast, pushed the hatch open… and froze.
“Adrian,” she gasped. “You’re not going to like this.”
He climbed up beside her—and stared.
They weren’t at the surface.
They were in a chamber. Circular. Clean. Brightly lit.
And inside, along the walls—twelve suspended clone pods.
Each bearing a name.
Each holding a face.
Ten were dark.
Two glowed faint green.
And one of them… had Julia’s face
Adrian’s breath fogged against the glass as he stared into the pod bearing Julia’s face.
Her features were peaceful, serene—frozen in stasis. But beneath the surface, monitors blinked in rhythm with a pulse. She was alive. Sleeping.
Elena moved to the console nearby, her fingers flying over controls. “These pods… this isn’t storage. It’s activation sequencing.”
“Sequencing?” Adrian asked, jaw clenched.
She nodded grimly. “Each of these clones is pre-programmed for deployment. They’ve been… customized. Look—weapon modules, emotional dampeners, psychological failsafes. This isn’t science—it’s warfare.”
Adrian moved to the second glowing pod—his face staring back at him.
A version of himself. Younger. Colder. Lips slightly curled, as if mid-command.
The label read:
SUBJECT AB-X2
STATUS: ONLINE – SLEEPWALKER PROTOCOL STANDBY
His throat tightened. “They built me again. Not just once.”
Elena’s voice trembled. “And they’re still active. These aren’t relics—they’re operational.”
Suddenly, a new alert flashed across the screen Elena was reading:
EXTERNAL WAKE SIGNAL INITIATED.
PODS AB-X2 AND CR-02 SCHEDULED FOR DEPLOYMENT.
ETA: 04:22:00
“What does that mean?” Adrian demanded.
Elena stepped back from the screen. “It means… we have less than five hours before the next clones—yours and mine—are fully activated.”
“And then what?” Adrian asked.
“They’re released into the world. With a mission.” Her voice dropped. “A mission we don’t control.”
Adrian glanced around, adrenaline surging. “Then we destroy them. All of them.”
“No,” Elena said quietly. “Not yet.”
He turned sharply. “Why the hell not?”
She moved to Julia’s pod. Her hand hovered over the manual release switch. “Because someone brought her back for a reason. And if we kill them all now, we may lose our last chance to find out who.”
“You’re risking everything—”
“I’m risking it for answers. For us. For every person these programs were meant to replace.”
A moment of silence stretched between them.
Finally, Adrian stepped back. “Fine. But if they wake before we’re ready…”
“Then we kill them,” Elena said softly, her fingers brushing the pod. “Even if they look like us.”
A soft hiss escaped the ceiling.
They froze.
From the far end of the chamber, another door opened—airlock-grade steel grinding apart.
A single figure stood in the entrance.
Cloaked.
Still.
Watching.
“Elena,” Adrian said slowly, raising his gun. “That’s not a clone.”
“No,” Elena whispered. “That’s the one who’s been pulling the strings.”
The figure stepped into the light.
And smiled.
The cloaked figure’s boots clicked slowly against the polished floor as they advanced. The lab’s overhead lights flickered—momentary glitches in the system or intentional tampering, it was impossible to tell.
Adrian steadied his weapon, but the stranger showed no fear. Instead, they stopped just short of the pod where Elena’s clone still pulsed in soft amber light.
“You’re late,” the voice said—genderless, distorted beneath a modulation device.
Adrian didn’t lower the gun. “Who the hell are you?”
The figure lifted a gloved hand, pulling back the hood.
Elena’s breath hitched.
It wasn’t a stranger at all.
It was Director Evelyn Rourke—long thought dead, the original architect of the Replication Directive, and once Adrian’s most trusted mentor.
“I watched you bury her,” Adrian growled, disbelief shaking his voice.
Evelyn gave a cold smile. “And I watched you dismantle the legacy I built. But not all deaths are permanent, Adrian. You should know that better than anyone.”
Elena stepped forward, eyes blazing. “You were behind everything? The clones, the implants, the neural overrides?”
“I gave humanity a path to perfection,” Evelyn replied. “You call it evil. I call it efficiency.”
“You were supposed to be dead,” Adrian said, anger rising.
She tilted her head. “I was. And in that silence, I realized something… Adrian Blackwood was my greatest creation—and my worst failure.”
Behind her, the console lit up again:
REPLICATION NODE 9 UNLOCKED
CR-01: SYSTEM LINK ESTABLISHED
NEURAL MERGE: 6%… 7%… 8%…
Elena’s knees buckled. She grabbed the console for support.
Her head pounded.
And then—she screamed.
Adrian lunged toward her, but Evelyn raised a small device in her hand.
“It’s begun,” Evelyn whispered. “You wanted to find the truth. But the truth, Elena…” She smiled darkly. “The truth is already inside you.”
Adrian caught Elena just before she collapsed. Her skin was burning hot, pupils blown wide, body seizing with pulses like electricity surged through her veins.
“Elena—look at me,” he whispered, cradling her face.
Her eyes fluttered open, but they weren’t fully hers anymore. Behind the amber hue of her irises, something artificial sparked.
“She’s syncing,” Evelyn said, voice distant and detached, like a scientist observing an experiment. “Every clone had a fail-safe. CR-01 was always the key. She wasn’t just made to survive—she was made to awaken.”
Adrian reached for the pistol again, fury mounting. “You’re not going to take her.”
“I already have,” Evelyn replied.
The console beeped:
Neural Merge: 72%… 73%…
Elena jerked upright. Her voice sounded layered—her own, and beneath it, something… colder. Synthetic.
“Adrian,” she whispered, “I—I don’t know what’s happening. I can see things. Memories that aren’t mine.”
Adrian cupped her cheek. “Fight it. You’re stronger than anything they programmed.”
Evelyn pressed a button on the device in her palm, and Elena suddenly gasped, gripping her skull.
Neural Merge: 84%… 85%…
“We’ll overwrite her,” Evelyn said. “Turn her into the intelligence she was always meant to be. You’ll get to watch the woman you love become something far more… efficient.”
Adrian raised his gun again. “Not if I end you first.”
But just as he fired, Evelyn vanished—an afterimage of light and distortion where she stood.
A projection.
“Damn it,” Adrian muttered, the bullet striking the console behind her illusion.
Sparks flew.
The neural link halted.
Merge Suspended at 89%
Elena slumped against him, eyes flickering.
Adrian held her tight, heart racing. “Come on, come back to me…”
Her voice, faint as breath: “It’s not just me in here anymore.”
Elena’s body trembled in Adrian’s arms, every muscle strained against an invisible force. Her eyes darted wildly as if caught between two realities—hers and something darker.
“She’s not stable,” Liana warned from behind, fingers flying over her tablet as the merge signal continued blinking erratically.
Merge Suspended at 89%
Override Command: Awaiting Reconnection…
Elena clutched Adrian’s jacket, her voice hoarse. “There’s another voice… in my head. She sounds like me, but colder. She wants control.”
Adrian brushed damp strands of hair from her face. “You’re not giving her control. Not now, not ever.”
“She’s angry,” Elena whispered. “She thinks I stole her life… She says I’m the impostor.”
A siren blared from the corridor outside—an alert. Emergency override protocols had been triggered.
Liana glanced at the system. “Someone’s trying to remotely resume the merge. We have maybe two minutes before full reintegration starts—whether we want it or not.”
Adrian looked back at Elena. Her skin was pale now, her breaths short and shallow. “Then we sever it. All of it.”
“That could kill her,” Liana warned.
Adrian didn’t blink. “And if we don’t?”
“She’ll lose herself completely.”
Elena’s gaze locked onto his. “If it comes to it… you have to choose me, Adrian. Not who I was designed to be. Me.”
A tear slipped down his cheek.
“I already did,” he said.
Then he reached for the hardwire at the base of her neck—where the neural tether was still faintly active.
Liana shouted, “Wait! If you rip it without disengaging the sequence”
But it was too late.
Adrian yanked the cable free.
Elena screamed and everything went white.