Dahlia and the Garden of Light - Chapter 62: Chapter 62

Echelon Control Hub – Undisclosed Alpine Location
The room was cold, white, sterile—exactly the way he liked it.
The Leader of Echelon, a man known only to his inner circle as Dr. Ashir Voss, stared at the frozen feed playing on the glass wall. It showed Dahlia glowing faintly in Markus’s arms. Around her, vines pulsed like veins beneath skin.
The world had already seen it.
Again. And again. On every network.
“She was mine.”
The words came out in a hissed growl.
A trembling assistant stood behind him, unable to meet his gaze.
Dr. Voss turned sharply, voice rising. “Agent Kessler disobeyed three direct orders. Do you understand what that means?”
“He believed—”
“He believed nothing. He got recklesshe crosseda line.”
Dr. Voss walked over to the console and pressed a command key.
A file on Agent Kessler opened. Location: Osaka, Japan. Detained under war crimes protocol.
Dr. Voss’s hand hovered over the order key, his voice deathly quiet. “Silence him.”
“Sir, he’s in custody.”
“I don’t care. Make him vanish.”
The assistant hesitated only a second before nodding and leaving quickly, already tapping into shadow channels.
Dr. Voss turned back to the glass. “She was the perfect result. Years of augmentation trials, sequences buried in Mira’s DNA, rebuilt through pain. And now? Now the world wants to protect her?”
His fist slammed into the desk. “I built gods. And they dare call me villain.”
But then—everything went dark.
Echelon Labs – Simultaneous Global Raid
In Tokyo, Berlin, and Johannesburg, Echelon research facilities erupted in alarms. Vaults cracked open. Servers glowed then fried. Hidden scientists fled, chased down by smoke grenades and black-ops precision.
In Norway, a remote lab tucked beneath a mountain bunker shook with the sound of detonations. The northern lights lit up broken steel as a figure in a long coat walked through the wreckage.
Antonio Anderson.
Behind him, Eliot tapped keys on a portable uplink, wiping every trace of data.
Christian moved with calm rage through the corridors, disarming traps and marking vials for incineration.
Theo blew open the encrypted storage, holding up a vial marked GEN-4A-D.
He crushed it under his boot.
Back at Echelon Headquarters – Ashir Voss’s Estate
Dr. Voss didn’t even make it to the elevator before the walls blew inward.
He stumbled back as vines cracked through the polished concrete. Smoke poured in through the ventilation system.
Then came the footsteps.
Boots.
Black. Silent.
A half-dozen Anderson special forces surrounded him in seconds.
Antonio entered last—his coat dusty, face unreadable.
“Dr. Voss,” he said calmly.
Voss snarled. “You shouldn’t be here. I own this land. I own the future—”
“No. You don’t.” Antonio stepped closer. “You burned your humanity trying to create something divine. You experimented on children. You turned Mira into a weapon. You chased my daughter like she was property.”
“She is my work!”
“She’s mine.” Antonio’s voice cracked for the first time—rage leaking through restraint.
“You want the truth?” Antonio asked, voice low. “Eliot found your financial routes. Theo cracked your biometric system. Christian traced your cold storage backups.”
“You don’t know how deep this goes—”
“We do. And we hit every last one of your labs in the same hour.”
Voss paled.
“Osaka. Milan. Montreal. You’re not a shadow anymore. You’re exposed.”
“Then finish it,” Voss spat.
Antonio leaned in, nose to nose.
“No,” he said. “We let the world bury you.”
With a motion, he nodded to Eliot.
Eliot activated a drone feed to broadcast the interior of the lab live to global channels.
“You think you made gods,” Antonio said, stepping back. “But all you really did was awaken a family.”
The Aftermath – One Week Later
Anderson Next to the hutt Temporary operation center
Multiple screens displayed global feeds. Former Echelon board members arrested. Underground research sites dismantled. Mira’s name cleared.
Christian passed a file to Theo. “Last of the Geneva files. We scrubbed them all.”
Eliot slouched in a chair. “Tokyo’s lab had files dating back twenty years. He was targeting children with specific DNA markers. Dahlia was one of thirty-seven candidates.”
“Thirty-seven?” Mira’s voice shook.
Theo nodded. “Only two survived. Dahlia… and one other. File corrupted. Identity unknown.”
Antonio stood by the window, arms crossed. “We’ll find them. If they exist.”
Amy looked over at Dahlia, who was sleeping peacefully in a nest of flowers nearby. Derek was curled up next to her, snoring faintly.
“She doesn’t know what we did for her,” Amy whispered.
“She doesn’t need to,” Antonio said. “She just needs to heal.”
Markus entered from the shadows.
“Clean-up team just reported in. Echelon’s server farms? Gone. Their AI models? Purged. Their shadow board? In custody.”
Antonio nodded.
Markus held out a simple data drive. “But there’s something you should see.”
He placed it into Eliot’s hand.
“Backdoor feed from their inner sanctum. Just one image recovered. A child… in a white cell. No ID. But their blood code matches Dahlia’s 82%.”
The room fell silent.
“Another experiment?” Mira asked quietly.
“Or a sibling,” Markus said.
Antonio exhaled slowly. “Then we’re not done.”
Late Evening
Dahlia stirred in her sleep. She murmured something and turned toward the garden light. Derek blinked awake beside her, yawned, then smiled and touched her hair gently.
"Good morning” he whispered.
The vines curled tighter around them like a promise.
And far away, across oceans and ash, the last petals of a once-monstrous empire scattered into the wind.