Chapter 20 - THE BLOODLINE KEYJulian released the chamber doors.
Not because Amelia persuaded him.
Because Victor had Cassandra.
Water poured away through the floor drains as Nathaniel cut Theodore free.
Gabriel remained conscious, but Samuel secured his wrists.
Amelia faced the woman wearing Helen’s face.
“You are coming with us.”
“I cannot leave this level.”
“Why?”
The woman pulled back the collar of her coat.
A surgical port had been implanted beneath her skin.
Wires led from it into a device at her waist.
“My heartbeat is linked to the factory archive.”
Elias studied the system.
“If she crosses the perimeter, the records erase.”
“Who did this?” Amelia asked.
“Sebastian.”
“He has been dead for twenty years.”
“He prepared longer deaths than his own.”
Theodore touched the woman’s face.
“What is your real name?”
She looked at him with something resembling sorrow.
“Helena Voss.”
Theodore stepped back.
Helena Voss had been Helen’s neurologist.
She had disappeared after the plane crash that supposedly killed Helen.
“You copied her memories.”
“Some of them.”
“You copied her face.”
“Sebastian ordered reconstruction.”
“Why?”
“Because grief made you controllable.”
Theodore’s expression collapsed.
Amelia had never seen her father look so old.
Helena opened the ledger and removed a thin metallic strip.
“This contains Helen’s original neural recordings.”
Elias aimed his weapon.
“You said you were our mother.”
“I said you never called me Mother.”
“You allowed us to believe it.”
“I needed Gabriel to believe it too.”
Gabriel looked up from the floor.
“She is lying again.”
Helena turned toward Amelia.
“Your mother discovered that Orpheus was not designed to select an heir. It was designed to create one.”
Amelia held the vial collected at age seventeen.
“What is this?”
“A biological key. Your blood can authorize Hart Meridian’s military systems.”
“And Elias?”
“He carries the second half.”
“Julian?”
“He can override both.”
Nathaniel examined the vial.
“Three-person command architecture.”
Helena nodded.
“One heir activates. One challenges. One corrects.”
Amelia understood why Gabriel wanted the siblings divided.
Together, they could control Orpheus.
Separated, each could be manipulated.
Julian’s voice came through Nathaniel’s phone.
“Victor is moving Cassandra to Hart Meridian Tower.”
Amelia looked at the clock.
“What does he want?”
“The bloodline key.”
Theodore stared at the vial.
“There is no single key.”
Julian’s voice hardened.
“There is now.”
He sent them an image.
Cassandra sat restrained beneath a medical scanner. Tubes carried blood from her arm into a silver chamber.
Victor stood beside a digital display.
It read:
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COMPOSITE HEIR SYNTHESIS: 41%
Helena whispered, “He is creating a fourth successor.”
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