Location: Black Tower – Floor 38 (Nursery Wing Perimeter) Time: 8:58 A.M.The floor shuddered, Alarms shrieked, Lucas stood at the edge of a hallway lit in red, behind him, bodies and fire. Before him, Agent Leary and his kill team of ten operatives in armored vests.Lucas had one pistol. And a blade, And no margin for error. “You look tired,” Leary said, spinning Rachel’s bloodstained ID card between his fingers. “Still think you’re walking out of here?”Lucas stared at the card, Every breath tightened in his lungs, Every second, his heart pounded, and with it, the biometric tether inching toward detonation. He knew if he collapsed… His son died, So he smiled, Just a little. “I'm not walking out,” Lucas said.“I’m burning through.”Before Leary could react, Lucas threw the blade, It sank into the neck of the closest soldier, a scream, blood spraying. Then Lucas charged.He dove behind a security desk, rolled beneath gunfire, disarmed the nearest agent with a brutal knee to the throat

Location: Black Tower – 5:18 A.M... The tower was still, Smoke cleared from its hallways. Broken glass reflected the rising sun.But inside Helena’s private chamber, stillness was an illusion, She stood alone, in front of a wall-sized screen. Twelve profiles glowed in front of her.Her senior command. Every executive, strategist, and adviser she'd trusted across five years of rebuilding. One of them… was a mole. Rachel’s last whisper replayed in her head: “Someone close to you… is feeding the Council.”Helena’s eyes burned, And her hunt had begun, In his temporary office on the Tower’s fortified 60th floor, Lucas stared at the file he'd received: OFFER_OF_SEAT_09.docInside: a contract.Encrypted.Signed by the Council’s dead chairman.Offering Lucas a seat among them, conditional upon one thing: “Abandon your public crusade. Pledge your heir to the Council.”The signature at the bottom?Leary, Dated two months ago, Before Lucas had even made his first move. Which meant, They’d expect

Location: Archive Guild – Memory Forge, Undisclosed LocationThe chamber was ancient. Stone walls wrapped around a cathedral of quantum mirrors and cryo-scrolls. No lights. Only glowing script from floor engravings, pulsing with digital breath.Lucas stood inside, holding his son Across from him a man in a grey robe, his face covered by a translucent veil.“Your child has no past,” the man said. “No name, no record,No place.”Lucas nodded. “The Council erased him.”“Then we give him a new beginning.One the world can never delete.”A console rose between them carved from obsidian, with a single slot. “To restore his identity,” the veiled man continued, “a name must be offered in blood And a soul must be given in exchange.”Lucas turned slowly, Rachel stepped forward.Rachel’s GoodbyeRachel wore white, Not a dress A jumpsuit. Final Clean Quiet She kissed the child’s forehead gently.“I once betrayed your father,” she whispered to the boy “I won’t let the world betray you too.”Lucas’s

Location: Black Tower – Deep Vault Chamber, 2:11 A.M.Lucas stood in front of the cryo-sealed chamber that now held the real Elias. Monica input the final encryption code. Steam hissed The chamber sealed, deep below the tower’s core where no signal could penetrate, no eye could see.“He’s safe here,” Monica said. “Only you, me, and the Archive Guild know.”Lucas nodded. “What about the clone?”She hesitated. “It… he doesn’t know he’s a clone. Not yet.”Lucas stared at the mirrored screen Two infants Identical But only one carried the soul of the woman who’d sacrificed everything to protect him, Only one was Rachel’s legacy.Enter: The Ghost of RachelThat morning, Helena was handed a sealed envelope No return address, No markings. Inside: a single memory chip and a note, written in a familiar scrawl.“I knew they’d fake me.So I left behind something even they couldn’t mimic.”It was Rachel’s voice An encrypted recording. But not just of her speaking Of her singing A lullaby she used

Location: Interrogation Chamber, Sublevel 7 – Black Tower, 2:03 A.M.Ava Lang sat cuffed to a reinforced chair, Her face was bruised from the scuffle. Her mouth, smiling.Monica paced slowly in front of her, a biometric recorder running.“You injected the failsafe with corrupted frequencies,” Monica said. “That lullaby could’ve killed Elias.”Ava shrugged. “He’s not a person. He’s a threat.”Monica slammed her fist on the table You mean the clone?”“No,” Ava whispered. “I mean both.”The Council's TimelineAfter fifteen minutes of pressure, Ava cracked. Not with screams but with calm, surgical precision.“Phase Four begins in two weeks. Phase Five global asset seizure activates the moment Lucas dies, Phase Six is total memory overwrite: the real Elias will be erased from every system, every backup, every survivor.”Monica’s stomach dropped. “And the clone?”“Will become the face of the new world order, He’s not just replacing a son. He’s replacing a legacy.”Lucas’s Race Against Time