Chapter 48
2233words
Sinclair Dominion HQ | Operations Floor
The lights on the ops floor had just brightened from overnight dim to full-day intensity, casting a cold, blue tone across the consoles and screens. The hum of servers filled the background like static breath.
Ash leaned over his terminal, fingers flying across the keys. Vex stood behind him with a mug in one hand and a datapad in the other, eyes scanning quick feeds. Lucian entered from the corridor, coat unbuttoned, hair slightly damp from the morning mist. He didn’t pause.
“What’ve we got?”
Ash didn’t look up. “Clearance dump came through last night. Full packet. Harold wasn’t kidding — he unlocked everything.”
Lucian moved closer. Vex handed him the datapad, already queued to the right file tree.
“Research logs from 1989 to ’92,” Vex said. “Defense-aligned, black-column. All tied to Alton. Most of the Aurelius references were buried under project nesting. Took hours to decrypt.”
Lucian scanned quickly. Rows of coded entries, nested under unfamiliar sub-project names, all eventually pointing to one thing.
Ash brought up a projection on the holowall — a rotating map of Dominion-linked facilities overlaid with red markers.
“That signal from last night?” Ash said. “It lines up with one of the flagged sites. Shut down in the ’93 sweep, listed as decommissioned. But this?” He tapped the screen. “This says it wasn’t just a lab. It was one of the testing corridors tied to genetic sequencing and... memory imprinting.”
Lucian’s gaze sharpened. “And Aurelius?”
Ash’s jaw tensed slightly. “He wasn’t just a codename. Or a subject.”
He flicked to a new file — a hand-written memo, scanned and redacted in blocks.
‘Final-stage protocol: Aurelius to remain viable in the event of host failure. Priority: containment, memory preservation, code regression. He is not to know what he is.’
Vex added quietly, “He was the failsafe. The backup copy, in case the original programs went rogue. A living contingency.”
Lucian lowered the datapad slowly. “So he was never meant to survive. Just to hold what they couldn’t risk losing.”
Ash nodded. “And someone just tried to wake him up.”
Ash dimmed the holowall as silence settled between them. The lines of code, maps, and memos now burned in the backs of their minds more than on the screen.
Lucian turned away from the projection, voice low but resolute. “Where’s the signal now?”
“Dormant,” Vex answered, setting down his mug. “Last ping was at 03:17. Short burst. No follow-through.”
“That could mean it was a test,” Ash added. “Or a one-time ignition. A wake command.”
Lucian paced a slow line. “And what are we waking, exactly? A full subject?”
Ash shook his head. “No. Not a person. The logs describe something pre-developmental. Contained. Not sentient. Best-case — it’s an embryo with encoded memory sequences. Worst-case — it’s a shell waiting for upload.”
Vex crossed his arms. “Either way, someone knew enough to dig for it.”
“Any signs of where the access originated?” Lucian asked.
Ash brought up a narrow trace. “Offshore relay. Bounced through three dead nodes. But the origin pulse triangulated just outside Alton, California. An old Dominion facility, officially decommissioned — but clearly not dead.”
Lucian stopped. “That’s not an accident.”
He turned to Vex. “Get confirmation from local satellite coverage. Any thermal anomalies. Movement. Anything.”
Vex nodded and walked out, already tapping into his headset.
Ash stared at the frozen signal log. “No identifiers. No known user keys. Whoever did this knew how to stay invisible.”
Lucian didn’t answer right away. His gaze lingered on the signal coordinates.
“Then it wasn’t random,” he said finally. “Someone knew exactly what they were looking for.”
Ash exhaled slowly. “Aurelius was supposed to be erased.”
Lucian’s jaw tightened. “And if they managed to revive what Kristina’s parents destroyed… this isn’t just containment anymore. It’s bait.”
Sinclair Dominion HQ | Strategy Room
Late Morning
The meeting had moved from the ops floor to the glass-encased strategy room, now sealed with blackout protocols. The air was tighter here. Ash stood by the holo-projector, while Vex leaned against the wall near the surveillance feed.
Lucian stood at the head of the table. Kristina sat at one side, fingers clenched, jaw set — like she already knew what they were about to confirm. Eli lingered behind her, silent but present.
Ash projected the facility layout — a 3D model of the Alton lab. Sparse details. Many areas corrupted or redacted.
“We scanned it an hour ago. Thermal readings are faint — minimal power cycling, but something’s active.”
Kristina’s voice was quiet. “You said it wasn’t a person. Then what is it?”
Ash replied, “It’s not sentient. But it was designed to hold imprints — genetic, neural, maybe even memory patterns. A kind of... biological archive.”
Vex added, “It’s not just code. It's built to become something. Or someone.”
Kristina’s gaze dropped to the table. “My parents destroyed that lab. They swore it was gone.”
Lucian nodded. “They did. But if the embryo was cryo-preserved, it could’ve been recovered without ever waking. Stored. Hidden. Even sold.”
Eli spoke for the first time. “So who benefits from waking it now?”
Then Lucian: “That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Sinclair Dominion HQ | Private Corridor
The door clicked shut behind her. She needed air, but the halls felt just as suffocating. She pulled a small photo from her pocket — her mother’s old locket. Inside: her parents, smiling, and a much younger her.
They never told her the full truth.
Her DNA. A backup. A failsafe.
Her breath caught.
What if it remembers something? What if it remembers me?
Sinclair Dominion HQ | Ops Floor
Late Afternoon
Ash stared at the screen as the live satellite feed refreshed. A subtle flicker of light near the facility’s core.
“Did you see that?” he said.
Vex nodded. “Pulse just echoed on the interior grid. Short. Rhythmic.”
Ash ran a sequence scan. “It’s mimicking a biometric pattern. Heartbeat. But slower.”
“Which means?”
He turned to her. “It’s not just awake. It’s stabilizing.”
Unknown Location
The holoscreen shimmered with Dominion’s drone feed, casting a soft blue glow across the room. A gloved hand reached forward, tapping a control key. On the display, the Alton facility’s readout pulsed faintly — dormant systems stirring, memory cores blinking to life. Deep within, the earliest vaults had begun registering activity. Life signs: not human, but mechanical. Faint thermal returns. Data systems booting from near-zero.
A figure stood in the dark, posture relaxed but eyes sharp. The facility had been silent for nearly two decades. That silence was ending.
“You can erase a subject,” the figure said, voice smooth and steady. “But not a design.”
Another entered the room, footsteps soft against the metallic floor. Taller, older — with a lean face partially illuminated as he stepped forward.
“Are you sure this will bring her here?” the second man asked, folding his arms.
“She’s already on the move,” the first replied. “The moment the sequence pinged, their systems flagged it. She’ll come — because she’s not the kind to leave questions unanswered.”
The screen refreshed. A low ping traced through the data trail. No activation of the subject, but the vault’s integrity had held. The signal had gotten through. Barely — but enough.
“You’re still using her,” the second man said. His voice held no accusation, only quiet calculation.
“I’m activating what was built from her,” the first said. “Nothing was ever embedded. Nothing forced. She was gifted — and they used her as the foundation. She’s not the weapon. But the weapon was patterned after her. And now it’s calling back.”
On the screen, the name Aurelius flickered in the corner — beside another tag that had reappeared after years of dormancy: [ALISTAIR M.] – OVERRIDE CREDENTIALS ACCEPTED.
Alistair Miller stepped fully into the light now, gaze fixed on the feed. The same man who had overseen the early phases of Project Aurelius, once purged from Dominion records, long thought dead or buried.
“She won’t come quietly,” Miller said. “And if she finds out what this was really meant to be—”
“She won’t run,” the other replied. “She’s her parents’ daughter. She’ll try to fix it.”
There was silence between them as the facility's grid shimmered faintly on the screen. The memory vault had not released its contents — not yet — but the command line had opened. A pulse sent. A response awaited.
“Let the girl come,” the first figure said, turning away. “She doesn’t need to be a part of it. She only needs to see it.”
“And when she does… the rest will follow.”
Alton Facility – Lower Cryo Vaults
The silence here was ancient.
Frost clung to the corners of steel support beams. Dustless, undisturbed — until now. Emergency lights, dulled with age, blinked in slow cadence like dying stars. A rhythmic hum began to pulse low through the cryo-vault walls, following no human heartbeat, but something slower. Calibrated. Calculated.
A vault hissed quietly.
The seal had not broken — not yet — but the pressure within was shifting. One chamber in particular, marked in faded stencil:
AURELIUS – STAGE 0.3 remained intact, its biometric glass frosted over from decades of cryogenic preservation.
Internal sensors lit up — dim blue tracking lines across the chamber’s readout screen. The display flashed briefly, then steadied. A central line pulsed like a weak heartbeat. Then again. Slower than human. But consistent.
Vault Neural Echo Scan: 9% complete. Recovering Imprint Fragments...
Across the room, outdated terminals blinked to life. Data lines crawled across ancient black-and-green interface windows. Logs once thought lost began self-repairing — backup nodes rerouting power. Somewhere deep in the system, a child’s laugh echoed faintly — distortion over speakers not used in years.
In a side monitor, a faint neural map began to form — not solid, not whole, but scattered, incomplete. A digital ghost of something never born.
One file blinked rapidly.
GENETIC RECOGNITION STANDBY... Match Pending – 97.8% Subject: K. A. ALONZO
The embryo never moved. No twitch, no breath, no thought. But still — the systems stirred around it, adjusting conditions, warming lines, re-routing oxygen levels.
A hum passed through the walls again — like an ancient machine waiting for a key that hadn’t yet arrived.
The old operations room had fallen silent again, the hum of the systems barely audible beneath the weight of what they’d uncovered.
Kristina stood at the center, eyes fixed on the rotating 3D model Ash had projected onto the holowall — a skeletal rendering of the Alton facility, layered with red thermal traces, time-stamped data logs, and the erratic blip of the last activation burst. Aurelius.
Lucian exhaled slowly. “So it wasn’t random. It was timed. Purposeful.”
Vex nodded from his corner, arms crossed. “The ping at 03:17? It came minutes after we accessed the locked packet. Someone was waiting for us to dig. Maybe even depending on it.”
“Or baiting us,” Sebastian muttered.
Ash swiveled in his chair. “We traced the signal route again. It passed through three dead relays, then bounced from an off-grid satellite — Dominion tech, but not on any official roster.”
Eli spoke up. “And the origin?”
Ash tapped the display. “Alton. Same sector where the original Aurelius incubation records pointed. All signs lead back there.”
Kristina’s voice was quiet. “And Alistair Miller?”
Lucian turned to face her fully. “He funded the off-book trials. He pushed your parents' formula beyond its intended limits. And when they tried to stop it, he erased them. It’s all in the recovered logs. He’s not just involved. He never stopped.”
Sebastian held up a decrypted file. “There’s mention of a fallback protocol — something about preserving the subject, keeping it dormant unless triggered by a specific neural resonance. The only genetic match... is you.”
“But there’s nothing in me,” Kristina said, jaw tight. “We’ve already established that. I was never embedded, never programmed. My parents only gave them the sample. They didn’t know what it would be used for.”
“Exactly,” Vex said. “But Miller isn’t trying to activate you. He’s trying to use you as the trigger — visual, emotional, biochemical. It’s not about you being the host. It’s about you being the match.”
Ash added, “He wants you to see it. That’s the final key.”
A heavy silence fell.
Then Lucian straightened. “We’re not giving him that chance.”
Eli leaned in. “So what’s the play?”
Lucian’s gaze swept the team. “We finish this. We go to Alton. We find the vault, the subject, the source of the signal. We shut it down — before Miller gets there, or worse, activates it first.”
Sebastian nodded. “We’ll need ground suppression. And an EMP cradle. Anything to stall remote triggers.”
“I’ll rig the echo-jammer,” Ash said. “We’ll cloak our access and block any external command signals.”
“And we take Miller down,” Kristina said firmly. “This ends with him.”
Lucian’s voice was steady. “Agreed. No more hiding. No more running. We end it where it began.”
They exchanged a final look — the six of them, weary but aligned. The pieces of the puzzle had finally fallen into place. Alistair Miller was no longer a shadow. The facility was no longer a mystery. And the target was no longer a question.
The mission had become clear.
Tomorrow, they would move.
The pieces were in place. Now came the strike.
—To be continued.
