Chapter 14: Crossroads of Fire
The cold lingered even after they left the vault.
Elara sat silently in the back of the armored snow transport, watching frost form along the inner edges of the window. Damien drove without speaking, his hands firm on the wheel, but his occasional glances into the mirror betrayed his worry.
She hadn't said a word since discovering her own face preserved in that cryo-pod. The silence wasn't out of shock. It was calculation, like a volcano quietly gathering pressure before eruption.
"Elara," Damien finally said. "Say something."
She looked at him through the rearview mirror. "I need to speak to Naomi. Now."
He tapped his earpiece. "Naomi, patching you in."
Her voice came through the static. "I'm here."
"Tell me everything you found in the Reyes files," Elara said. "Everything about Variant A-0."
There was a pause. Then Naomi's voice returned, slower. Measured.
"It's not just that you have a genetic twin. The prototype is a failsafe. Your father believed that if anything happened to you or if you went too far off course, he needed a version of you he could awaken and control."
Elara's laugh was dry and humorless. "Control? That worked out so well with me."
Naomi hesitated. "She's not like you. Her emotional centers were modified. More compliant. More precise. Less… human."
"So a better me," Elara said.
"No," Naomi said fiercely. "A hollow you. He may have wanted insurance, but that clone isn't the woman who held her mother's hand when she was dying. She's not the woman who married her enemy to save her people. She's not the woman risking everything to burn Arclight to the ground."
There was a long silence. Then Elara whispered, "Noted."
Two hours later, they arrived at a secure airstrip in Iceland. The snow transport rumbled to a halt, and a small jet idled on the tarmac.
Luca was already waiting by the steps, his coat flapping in the wind, two hot coffees in hand. He grinned when he saw them, though the grin faded when he got a good look at Elara's face.
"Well, someone's had a fun morning," he muttered, handing her a coffee.
She took it without comment. Sipped. Winced. "Still tastes like burnt motor oil."
"Good to know some things never change," Luca said, then added lightly, "You want me to crash the plane into Arclight headquarters, or are we saving that for Christmas?"
Damien chuckled despite himself. "Not yet. But keep your schedule clear."
Elara glanced between them. "How long until we reach the next vault?"
"Three hours in the air," Luca said. "Naomi says the Prague team hit a firewall, literal and digital. We'll need to break in physically. Old-school style."
"Explosives?" Damien asked
"Explosives," Luca confirmed. "Preferably the loud kind."
Elara nodded. "Good. I'm in the mood for loud."
In the air, the mood lightened, barely.
Elara and Luca sat across from each other, passing time with a battered deck of cards Damien had stashed in his go-bag. The game started as poker, devolved into blackjack, then transformed into something that mostly resembled war with shouting.
"You cheat like a politician," Luca accused.
"You bluff like a drunk fortune teller," Elara shot back.
Damien leaned against the bulkhead, arms crossed, watching them with amused exhaustion.
Luca wagged a finger. "You know, this is how dynasties collapse. First it's cards, next thing you know, boom!, coup d'état, right in the middle of a royal banquet."
"You think I'm royalty?" Elara asked with a half-smile.
"Your glare certainly commands worship."
She flicked a card at him. It hit his forehead and fluttered to the floor.
"Ah! I've been slain!"
Damien muttered, "If only."
The laughter was real, even if short-lived. It reminded them what they were fighting for: not just survival, but the right to laugh again. To be human again.
Elara found herself staring out the window sometime later, watching the clouds roll like ancient waves. Her reflection stared back, distorted in the curved glass. For the first time in a long time, she allowed herself to remember her father's voice, not in coded files or encrypted messages, but in memory.
You're not just smart, Elara. You're impossible to predict. That's your gift.
"Then why build a version of me you could control?" she whispered.
Damien moved to the seat beside her. "You thinking about her? The clone?"
"I'm thinking about the possibility that she might be more stable. More useful. More... everything."
He looked at her hard. "Don't do that. Don't diminish who you are because someone tried to build a shortcut. She's a copy. You're the original. Imperfect, unpredictable, and exactly what the world needs."
Her eyes flicked to him. "You're annoyingly good at speeches."
"I've had practice."
When they landed in Prague, the mood shifted.
The city was colder than expected, and tension lay heavy in the air. Their contact, a wiry man named Vasko, led them to a hidden elevator beneath an abandoned textile mill. The shaft descended hundreds of meters.
"Elara," Damien said, as the doors closed, "when we get in, don't hold back."
She raised an eyebrow. "You worried I'm going soft?"
He looked at her, serious. "I'm worried you're carrying too much alone."
She smiled slightly. "That's what clones are for, right?"
He didn't laugh.
Neither did she.
The vault was a steel monolith buried under layers of bedrock and reinforced alloy. Naomi's remote link buzzed in Elara's earpiece.
"I can get you through the first two locks. After that, it's manual."
"Copy that," Elara said.
They moved quickly. Luca laid charges on the final barrier. Damien kept watch. Elara keyed in codes, fingers dancing with muscle memory inherited from years in her father's lab.
Then the explosion.
The vault opened.
Inside was darkness.
And then light—blinding, sterile, surgical. Rows of data banks lined the walls. Cryo-storage units hummed beneath the floor. This wasn't just a vault. It was a memory chamber.
The files they retrieved weren't just research logs. They were messages.
To her
"Project Genesis wasn't about the future," Naomi said, reading the first decrypted file. "It was about guilt. Your father didn't just want to change the world. He wanted to undo what he believed he'd ruined."
"And what was that?" Damien asked.
"Her," Naomi said softly. "Elara."
Later that night, back at a secure flat overlooking the frozen Vltava River, Elara opened one of the encrypted videos Naomi had transferred to her device.
Her father appeared, ten years younger, shoulders stooped, eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion.
"Elara, if you're seeing this… I've failed you. I've tried to protect you by making you into something stronger, but I know now that strength isn't in your DNA. It's in your choices."
He paused, pressing fingers to his temple. "Variant A-0 was a mistake. A necessary one, I thought. But you… you've always been more than code. I only hope you can forgive me. Or at least outlive my sins."
Elara stared at the screen long after the message ended.
Damien placed a warm drink in front of her. "He was wrong, you know. Not about you. About himself.
She looked up, eyes shimmering. "I don't want to outlive his sins. I want to bury them. With fire."
Luca called from the other room, "If we're lighting things on fire, I brought marshmallows. Just saying."
Elara managed a laugh. It was small, but real.
It was the beginning of her next decision.