Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 94: Chapter 94

Location: Valley Outpost – 6:03 AM
The fog blanketing the valley clung to the trees like ghost skin. It muffled every sound, swallowed every whisper—except for the mechanical crunch of boots against damp soil.
CR-03 advanced slowly, each step deliberate. Her eyes—Elena’s eyes, but colder, deader—scanned the terrain. Aerial drones hovered in a silent ring above her, tracking heat signatures and broadcasting encrypted pulses into the atmosphere.
In her earpiece, a robotic voice ticked:
“Target anomaly 01 detected. DNA convergence confirmed. Termination priority escalated.”
She didn’t flinch. She just smiled.
Safehouse Echo – Interior
“Contact in 90 seconds,” Liana said, voice tense.
Adrian tightened his vest and glanced at Elena, who stood by the door, firearm holstered but hand twitching. Her face was calm, unnervingly so.
“Last chance to change your mind,” Adrian muttered.
“No,” Elena replied. “She’s carrying a key. A failsafe. The one embedded in my code before I escaped the program.”
Liana spun around. “What key?”
Elena took a breath. “They called it the Sleeper Key. It activates a full identity overwrite—if she gets close enough, she can rewrite me, force me into compliance.”
Adrian cursed. “So this isn’t just about surviving. This is about staying you.”
A nod.
Forest Perimeter – 6:09 AM
Rain began to fall—light, then heavy.
CR-03 paused beneath the dense cover, her hand rising slowly. From a thin compartment on her spine, a shard-like blade ejected, humming with pulse energy. Her lips moved without breath.
“Engaging convergence protocol.”
Safehouse Interior – 6:10 AM
“Get into the tunnel,” Adrian barked at Liana. “If this goes sideways, you dump the servers.”
“No,” Liana snapped. “I stay with the signal. If she broadcasts the overwrite, I can scramble it. But only for 90 seconds.”
Elena met Adrian’s eyes. “That’s all the time I’ll need.”
She stepped out the door without waiting for permission.
Ridge Clearing – 6:14 AM
Fog and rain blurred everything into smears of gray and silver. Elena stepped forward into the clearing… and there she was.
Her.
CR-03 stood like a reflection in a nightmare—her smile, her voice, even her stance mimicked Elena’s—but wrong in the most visceral way.
“Why run?” CR-03 asked, tilting her head. “You’re wasting time pretending to be broken.”
“I’m not broken,” Elena answered, lifting her gun.
“No,” the clone agreed, eyes glowing. “But you will be.”
Back in the Safehouse – Liana’s Station
The encryption monitor flared.
“SLEEPER KEY ACTIVATED – 89 SECONDS”
Liana’s hands flew across the keyboard. “Come on, come on…”
Ridge Clearing – 6:15 AM
CR-03 surged forward—too fast, inhumanly fast. Elena barely sidestepped the blade swipe, her gun rattling as she fired twice—both shots missing by inches.
The clone wasn’t just faster. She predicted her.
Elena hit the mud hard, rolled, came up with her blade drawn instead of her gun this time. “You think you’re me?” she hissed.
CR-03 smiled wider. “No. I’m the better you.”
They clashed.
Flesh against steel. Memory against programming. Will against fate.
Safehouse Monitor – 60 SECONDS REMAINING
Liana screamed at the terminal. “Her heartbeat’s syncing! She’s losing the override window!”
Forest Clearing
Elena slammed her elbow into CR-03’s face—no effect. Blood from her own lip mixed with the rain. She was tiring. And CR-03 wasn’t.
Suddenly, Elena reached into her coat—pulling a second shard. Her key.
CR-03 paused.
“You brought yours?” the clone sneered.
“I brought mine,” Elena whispered, eyes blazing.
And stabbed it into her own thigh.
The clone blinked. Confused. “That—wasn’t in the script—”
Safehouse – Terminal Flashing
“OVERRIDE FAILURE”
“CONFLICT ERROR: DUAL KEY DETONATION”
Liana slammed her fist on the desk. “She rewrote her own code.”
Ridge – 6:17 AM
Elena’s scream shook the trees. Her blood hissed where it hit the wet grass—but her eyes burned golden.
“I’m not a program.”
She kicked CR-03 backward with full force, sending her crashing into the tree behind.
“I’m the virus that corrupted your system.”
And she pulled the trigger.
Ridge Clearing – Moments Later
The echo of the gunshot hadn’t faded before CR-03’s body slumped forward, motionless. Steam hissed from the shattered core implanted in her spine—Adrian’s modification had worked. One direct hit, and the neural transmitter fried.
Elena stood frozen, gun still raised. Her breathing was ragged, soaked hair matted to her skin, but her stance was unwavering. She didn’t lower her weapon—not even as CR-03 stopped twitching.
Behind her, the forest remained eerily silent.
Then came a slow clap.
Adrian stepped out from the trees, his weapon holstered, face unreadable.
“You rewrote yourself,” he said.
Elena didn’t move. “Had to. I couldn’t risk her doing it first.”
Adrian approached slowly. “And the override damage? You could’ve locked yourself out of your own memories.”
“I almost did.” She lowered the gun, finally, but her hand trembled. “I remembered my father’s voice, just in time. He used to say, ‘The real you shows up when the world tries to erase you.’”
Adrian’s face softened. “And she showed up.”
“I did.” Her voice cracked.
Adrian reached her, brushing mud from her cheek, his fingers lingering. “I would’ve pulled the trigger for you.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But this… I needed to win this one myself.”
Safehouse Echo – 6:32 AM
Liana hunched over the console, watching the data settle. The override signal had burned out. CR-03’s internal clock had been permanently severed. The program wouldn’t be able to reboot her again.
“Node 7 is dark,” she announced.
But just as she sat back, another window opened.
[NODE 2: LOW SIGNAL PING DETECTED – OFFSHORE SERVER – MALTA]
Liana stiffened. “What the hell?”
Adrian’s voice crackled through her comm. “What did you say?”
“Another signal. Not CR-03. Something older. More primitive. But… it’s using Elena’s original neural map.”
Elena, listening, went cold. “There’s another?”
Liana hesitated. Then:
“It’s not a replication. It’s a source file.”
Private Jet Hangar – Classified Location – 7:05 AM
The clone’s body had been secured, burned, and buried before the sun peeked over the horizon. But Elena’s heart wasn’t settled.
As she stood near the loading ramp of the jet, Adrian handed her a thermal flask and nodded toward the readout Liana had sent them.
“Malta,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense unless—”
“Unless they stored a primary copy of me there,” Elena finished. “From before I escaped. From when I was… theirs.”
Adrian studied her. “You’re not going to like what we find.”
She stared at the rising sun. “I’m done looking for what I like. I want the truth.”
He offered a dry smile. “You sure you’re ready for that?”
“I just killed myself to protect who I am now,” she said. “I think I can handle the rest.”
Adrian glanced toward the jet. “Then buckle up, Cruz. We’re going back to where the nightmare started.”
Last Scene – Malta Facility: Unknown Depths – 7:06 AM (Local Time)
A lab assistant moved through a corridor of flickering blue lights. At the end of the hall, a cylindrical tank pulsed softly. Inside, floating in a pale blue suspension gel…
A woman.
Identical to Elena.
Eyes closed. Motionless.
But suddenly, the tank hissed. Her hand twitched.
A voice over the intercom whispered:
“Begin reactivation protocol. Subject CR-00 is waking up.”
In Transit – Adrian’s Private Jet – 7:41 AM
The engines hummed steadily, but inside the cabin, tension hung like a thick fog.
Elena sat near the window, her eyes fixed on the endless clouds below. Her mind replayed every word, every glance, every breath that CR-03 had taken before dying. She still saw her own face staring back at her—the same eyes, same scars… but a soulless imitation.
“Do you feel it?” Adrian asked, sliding into the seat beside her.
She turned slowly. “Feel what?”
“The shift. Like something’s about to snap wide open.”
She exhaled. “I feel like I’ve been chasing shadows for months. But now… the shadows are chasing me.”
Adrian studied her, voice low. “Do you regret choosing to fight her?”
“No,” Elena said instantly. “But I regret not asking her what she remembered. What she knew.”
He nodded, jaw tight. “She may have held the key to why they built you in the first place.”
Elena looked down at her trembling fingers. “Maybe that key still exists. In Malta.”
Adrian pulled a sleek tablet from his case and brought up the Malta facility schematic. “Liana found traces of a cryo-lock protocol used to store memory cores. Something… old. The logs say the subject was sealed ten years ago.”
Elena’s gaze snapped to his. “Ten years? That’s before the program even went public.”
He nodded. “Which means you weren’t just an experiment, Elena. You were a prototype.”
She leaned forward, voice sharp. “Then what the hell was I built for?”
Adrian hesitated—then tapped one final file open.
On-screen: Project VOX: Neural Hybrid Replication for High-Level Strategic Manipulation
Beneath it: Elena’s genetic code. But this one had a designation not seen before.
CR-00: Voice Seed
Elena’s mouth went dry. “Voice seed? What does that even mean?”
“It means,” Adrian said carefully, “you weren’t just meant to survive the system.”
“You were meant to become it.”
Malta – Black Vault Chamber – 8:03 AM
Somewhere below a forgotten military outpost, in a chamber colder than death, the CR-00 replica’s eyes snapped open.
And this time… they weren’t empty.
Her voice crackled through the monitoring speakers, chilling every soul in the facility.
“If I was the seed… what did you think I’d grow into?”
Then she smiled.
Location: Liana’s Temporary Command Center — Geneva, Switzerland – 8:37 AM
Liana’s fingers flew over the keys, decrypting layer after layer of data spilled from the fragmented Project VOX files. Her pupils dilated as the file tree opened—branch after branch connected not only Elena, but a host of shadow operations hidden under different names, different funding streams, even different governments.
A blinking icon appeared in red.
SLEEPWALKER PROTOCOL — LIVE LINK ESTABLISHED
NODE: CR-00 | LOCATION: MALTA | STATUS: AWAKE
Liana’s blood ran cold.
She slammed a secure line open to Adrian’s jet. “You’re not going to believe this. CR-00 wasn’t deactivated. She was sealed—and she’s awake.”
Static crackled, then Adrian’s voice: “What’s she doing?”
“She’s not escaping. She’s… sending data. Outbound pulses in staggered frequencies. Like she’s calling something.”
Elena’s voice cut in from the background. “Calling who?”
A pause.
“Or what?” Adrian added darkly.
Location: The Vault – Malta – Simultaneously
CR-00—an earlier, more polished version of Elena—stood calmly at the center of the black chamber. No panic. No confusion. Only calculation.
Her eyes weren’t just watching. They were mapping.
The facility’s mainframe came alive under her command. No typing. No interface.
Just her thoughts.
On the wall, blueprints flashed: international city grids, surveillance mainframes, high-profile individuals. One line of text blinked at the top:
PHASE II: THE QUIETING INITIATIVE
She tilted her head, smiled faintly, and whispered, “The voice was never meant to speak. Only to silence.”
A door hissed open behind her.
Black-clad figures stepped in—guards, armed, masks drawn.
She didn’t flinch.
She raised a single hand.
And they stopped.
Every man froze mid-step, their weapons clattering to the ground, as if gripped by an unseen force.
CR-00 walked past them, whispering as she did.
“Your Elena may be the key… but I’m the lock they forgot they made.”
On the Jet – 9:02 AM
Elena clutched the armrest, her stomach twisting.
“She’s going to rewrite everything,” she muttered.
Adrian stared at the screen. “Unless we get to her first.”
“But what if she’s not the only one?” Elena asked, voice breaking slightly.
Liana’s voice buzzed back through the speaker.
“She’s not.”
A beat of silence.
“CR-00 just reactivated five dormant nodes across Europe. This isn’t a resurrection.”
“It’s a war cry.”