Chapter 27 - SIXTY SECONDS TO SAVE AMY
Amy collapsed.
Her body struck the floor as the countdown reached fifty-six seconds.
I tore the neural crown away and dropped beside her.
Her eyes were open, but unfocused.
“What did you inject?”
Teresa backed toward the console.
“I did not need to inject her. Helix has been in her system since childhood.”
My blood turned cold.
“The treatments after her mother died,” Adrian said from the doorway.
He had entered with two armed members of Evelyn’s network.
Teresa looked almost pleased to see him.
“You finally remembered.”
Adrian ran to the console.
“Amy’s neural response was conditioned years ago. The failsafe is activating dormant receptors.”
“Stop it.”
“I need the reversal sequence.”
Teresa laughed.
“Only I have it.”
Evelyn forced one of the guards to the floor.
Elias entered from the core chamber.
He looked at Amy, then at the countdown.
Forty-two seconds.
“The reversal sequence is stored in Teresa’s memory profile,” he said.
“Can you access it?”
“Not without connecting her.”
I grabbed the neural crown and moved toward Teresa.
She pulled a small pistol from beneath the console.
Adrian stepped between us.
The shot struck him below the ribs.
He fell against the chair.
Evelyn fired at Teresa, but she had already moved behind the control column.
Thirty-one seconds.
Adrian pressed his hand against the wound.
“Connect me instead.”
“You don’t have the sequence.”
“I built the original receptor model.”
“Original isn’t enough.”
“It may identify the pattern Teresa changed.”
Twenty-four seconds.
We secured the crown around Adrian’s head.
I reconnected myself to the network.
Pain returned.
Adrian’s mind opened beside mine.
It was filled with equations, regret, and one memory repeated so many times that it had become a prison.
Teresa holding newborn Connor.
Adrian begging her to stop the experiments.
Daniel taking the baby away.
Adrian choosing silence instead of exposing everything because exposure would have destroyed his career.
“You let Daniel fight alone,” I said inside the network.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I was a coward.”
Seventeen seconds.
Adrian found the original receptor pattern.
Elias compared it to Teresa’s modifications.
Amy’s signal weakened.
Ten seconds.
“There are three possible reversal codes,” Elias said.
“Which one?”
“I cannot determine it.”
Teresa’s voice echoed from the room.
“Choose wrong and her brain stops immediately.”
I felt Amy’s presence fading.
Then she sent one final memory.
The music box.
The melody her mother had hummed.
Seventeen numbers.
The same numbers that opened the drive.
I understood.
Amy’s mother had encoded the reversal sequence into the song before she died.
I entered it.
The countdown stopped at one second.
Amy inhaled violently.
Her body arched, then fell still.
The monitors stabilized.
Teresa stared at the screen.
For the first time in my life, my mother looked afraid.
Then the entire mountain facility began to shake.
Adrian looked toward the thermal display.
May you like
“Someone has activated the destruction sequence from outside.”
📖 Amy survives with one second remaining, but an unknown force has triggered the facility’s destruction before Connor can free the other subjects. 👇
