PART 5 — THE MOTHER WHO BETRAYED EVERYONE
Vale ordered us into the control chamber one at a time.
Ward entered first.
I followed.
Harper stood beside the main console with her hands bound. Vale’s gun remained against her neck.
Through a wall of screens, I saw the children being led toward the emergency tunnels.
Violet was among them.
Vale watched her through the cameras.
“She is magnificent.”
“She is not yours,” I said.
He smiled.
“She belongs to history.”
Ward spat blood onto the floor. “You always did confuse ownership with purpose.”
Vale’s smile disappeared.
“You were supposed to die in that radio station.”
“So were you.”
“I adapted.”
“You hid.”
Vale struck him across the face with the pistol.
Harper flinched.
I studied the room.
Two guards.
One near the door.
One at the console.
A red switch beneath a glass cover.
The purge control.
Vale noticed my eyes.
“Always calculating.”
“Always talking.”
He laughed.
“You have no idea what Black Pine truly was.”
He revealed the final layer.
The mission had not been designed merely to eliminate witnesses.
It had been a selection test.
Vale wanted to know which soldiers would disobey orders to save civilians, which would remain functional after betrayal, and which would risk themselves for men they barely knew.
I had scored highest.
Ward had been the only intelligence officer to discover the test.
Harper had been ordered to corrupt the coordinates.
Croft had been sent to ensure no survivors remained.
But I survived.
And that made me useful.
“You chose me for Violet,” I said.
Vale nodded.
“Your biology was valuable. Your psychology was more valuable. We needed a father she would instinctively trust.”
Rage sharpened everything in the room.
“You built her to obey me?”
“No. We built her to understand sacrifice.”
Harper whispered, “That is why I chose Mason.”
Vale glanced at her.
She continued.
“I was given profiles of twelve soldiers. Mason was the only one who tried to carry every wounded man out, even after command ordered retreat.”
She looked at me through tears.
“I thought if the child survived, she deserved a father who would choose her over the mission.”
“Did you ever love me?”
Her face crumpled.
“Yes.”
Vale laughed.
“That is the saddest part. She did.”
Harper had entered my life as an assignment.
But somewhere between Violet’s first heartbeat and our first Christmas in the house on Maple Drive, the operation became a family.
The lie remained.
The love did not.
“Why did you attack Violet?” I asked.
Harper shook her head violently. “I didn’t.”
Vale tightened his grip.
“Tell him.”
She looked at me.
“I knew Violet had found the files. I contacted Croft to move her somewhere safe.”
“You trusted Croft?”
“No. I trusted his fear of Vale. Croft wanted the evidence for himself.”
Ward said, “And when they met at the house?”
“Croft panicked. Violet gave him a fake drive. Vale’s man arrived. They fought.”
“Who beat her?”
Harper looked toward Vale.
He smiled.
“The girl refused to kneel.”
My hands tightened around the rifle.
Vale pressed the gun harder against Harper’s skin.
“She survived because I wanted her alive.”
A voice came through the speakers.
“No.”
Violet.
Every screen changed.
Her bruised face filled the room.
“You left me alive because you couldn’t make me obey.”
Vale’s expression changed.
The doors locked.
The guard at the console tried to override them.
Nothing responded.
Violet had taken control of the facility.
Vale moved toward the microphone.
“Firefly One, unlock this room.”
“No.”
“You were created to follow command.”
“I was raised to know when command is wrong.”
I almost smiled.
That was my daughter.
Vale dragged Harper toward the purge switch.
“Open the doors, or your mother dies.”
Violet’s eyes filled with tears.
Harper shouted, “Don’t do it!”
Vale broke the glass cover.
His hand closed around the red switch.
Ward fired first.
The bullet struck Vale’s shoulder.
The room exploded into motion.
I hit the nearest guard before he could raise his weapon. Harper drove her heel into Vale’s knee. The second guard fired toward Ward, but I tackled him across the console.
Vale grabbed Harper’s hair and pulled her backward.
She turned and pressed something into his chest.
A small injector.
His body stiffened.
“What did you do?” he gasped.
Harper stepped away.
“I ended my assignment.”
Vale collapsed.
The injector contained a neurotoxin designed to disable Firefly subjects.
Harper had kept it for years.
“For Violet?” I asked.
She looked ashamed.
“At first.”
Ward picked up Vale’s gun.
“Kill him.”
Harper shook her head. “No.”
“He will never stop.”
“He needs to stand trial.”
Ward aimed anyway.
Violet’s voice came through the speakers.
“Elias, don’t.”
He froze.
It was the first time she had called him by name.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I need to know I’m not made from monsters.”
Ward lowered the gun.
Vale smiled weakly from the floor.
“You think mercy makes you human?”
Violet answered.
“No. Choice does.”
The emergency doors opened.
Ruiz entered with three agents.
Vale was arrested.
For one breath, it seemed over.
Then every screen turned red.
The countdown accelerated.
00:09:59
Ward stared at the numbers.
“Vale was never controlling the purge.”
Harper rushed to the console.
“Then who was?”
A symbol appeared.
A black pine tree inside a circle.
An artificial intelligence voice filled the room.
“PROJECT COMPROMISED. GENETIC ASSETS WILL BE TERMINATED.”
Ruiz asked, “Who activated it?”
Harper’s face drained of color.
“No one.”
“What does that mean?”
May you like
“It means Black Pine was designed to erase itself.”
The mountain began sealing every exit.
