Chapter 7
581 Words
The silence that followed was deafening, pierced only by the shrill ring of someone's dropped champagne glass cracking on marble. The ballroom erupted into chaos—guests scrambling, security flooding the perimeter, murmurs rising like a storm tide.
But Elara heard none of it.
She stood frozen, eyes fixed on the now-black screen, her thoughts racing with fragments of memory. Evelyn. Her twin. The other half of her soul. Lost, buried, mourned. And now—working with the very man who had just threatened to dismantle everything.
Sebastian’s hand touched her arm lightly. She flinched.
“Elara,” he said, voice low and tight, “we need to move. Now.”
She turned to him, searching his face for the answers her mind couldn’t process. “Did you know she was alive?”
His eyes flicked with pain. “No. I would have told you.”
“But you knew she was part of the Gemini encryption,” Elara said. “That we were.”
Sebastian hesitated. “I knew there was something in the neural map your mother left in the prototype. I thought it was protective, a lock. I didn’t know it was you.”
She pulled away, blinking against the tears forming in her eyes—not of grief, but rage. “She’s alive, and she’s been helping *him*. For how long?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But if she’s with Dorian, we have less than 48 hours to stop whatever they’ve started.”
The ballroom doors burst open. Lucien Vega stepped in, flanked by armed guards. He strode toward them with authority that needed no announcement.
“Lock down the estate,” he ordered. “Full sweep. No one in or out. And someone shut down that screen before the press gets wind.”
Lucien’s gaze found Elara, and softened marginally. “Miss Wynn, you’ll come with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere until I know what Evelyn’s planning,” Elara replied.
Lucien’s jaw tensed. “If what Dorian says is true, Evelyn is the plan.”
Sebastian turned to Lucien. “Where’s your copy of the Gemini protocol?”
Lucien gave a faint, bitter smile. “Gone. Corrupted this morning. Remote trigger. I’m guessing that was Evelyn too.”
“Then we need to trace her last known movement,” Elara said, stepping forward. “The airstrip footage—can we trace the jet?”
Lucien nodded slowly. “We’re already trying. But the signal bounced off three ghost servers. Military-grade cloaking.”
“And the original Gemini servers?” Sebastian asked.
Lucien’s voice dropped. “One is still offline in Zurich. But the others—they were in Morocco and South Korea. Both hit with EMPs three hours ago.”
“She’s dismantling the safety nets,” Elara murmured. “That means she’s activating the root protocol.”
Lucien’s face darkened. “Which gives whoever controls it full access to the global surveillance grid, and potentially... military response channels.”
“Then we need to find Evelyn,” Elara said, lifting her chin. “Before she uses it.”
Sebastian stepped beside her. “You’re not alone in this. Whatever she’s doing, we’ll stop her. Together.”
But even as he said it, doubt clouded Elara’s mind.
Because deep down, she wasn’t sure she wanted to stop Evelyn.
Not until she heard her side of the story.
Not until she knew why she had left.
And what she had become.
- Writer
