The helicopter blades sliced through the sky like a ticking clock. Each rotation brought us closer to the place where everything had begun—and where it would all end.
We flew over open waters, the coast fading behind us as the GPS zeroed in on a cluster of dark shapes on the horizon. A private island—no name, no record. Just a red dot blinking on every traceable satellite. A ghost off the map.
Sergeant Kane sat at the edge, rifle across his lap, helmet on, eyes cold.
Hana hadn't spoken much since we found Wilburt's journal. The shock still clung to her like mist. Not fear. Not grief. Resolve.
And me? I kept thinking about everything—the bionic eye, the lies, the trap we walked into. And of Wilburt.
The friend I never really knew.
My fingers brushed the edge of my eye patch.
"Lucas," Hana said beside me, her voice calm but unblinking. "You ready?"
I nodded, heart pounding. "Let's end this."
The chopper touched down with a hiss of wind and salt. The compound ahead rose like a fortress, all steel and silence. No guards. No sirens. Just... waiting.
We entered low and fast—three shadows in the dark. Moving room to room, clearing blind corners. But what we found wasn't a laboratory.
It was a server farm.
Rows of blinking machines. Towers of data. Holograms flickered alive as we stepped closer. Project names. Transaction logs. Surveillance footage.
Every screen led to one truth:
There was no experiment. Not anymore. There never had been.
Project Aeon was a front.
An intelligence laundering syndicate—recruiting students from developing countries, training them, then using their skills to scam, manipulate, and infiltrate global systems. The bionic eye? The "experiments"? All a narrative. A lie fed to insiders and outsiders alike to keep the syndicate hidden beneath layers of myth.
They didn't need soldiers.
They needed believers.
And Wilburt? He wasn't missing.
He was waiting.
The screens lit up.
A feed from another room. And there he was—Wilburt. Calm. Poised. Smiling.
"Lucas," he said over the intercom. "You made it."
I felt my throat tighten.
"I was hoping it'd be you who solved it. You always had the potential. Too clean, too... privileged. Perfect candidate for conversion."
"You lied to me," I said. "All of it."
"Lied? No. I recruited. You needed a reason to chase the truth. I gave you one. And look how far you've come."
Hana stepped forward, fury in her eyes. "You used us."
"No," Wilburt said coolly. "I freed you. But now you've seen the engine behind the curtain, and I can't let you walk away."
The doors locked with a click.
Sirens spun red across the ceiling.
"You'll have to make a choice," Wilburt said. "Join us, or burn with the truth."
Then the feed went black.
I looked at Hana. She didn't hesitate. "We bring it all down."
Kane pulled a data spike from his belt. "Thirty seconds. This whole place lights up like a Christmas tree."
I stepped back from the console, staring at the spiraling code, the network of lies Wilburt had built with his charisma and rage. All of it was crumbling.
But just before the upload hit 100%, a second feed opened.
A live shot.
My parents.
Tied. Gagged. Alive. Monitored by Project Aeon's offshore cell.
"If you trigger the upload," Wilburt's voice returned, colder now, "they die."
Silence.
Everything froze.
Hana turned to me slowly. "Lucas…"
"I have to make the call," I whispered.
Save the world.
Or save my family.
And then—I realized something Wilburt didn't count on.
The eye patch. The Oculus.
The prototype wasn't just a piece of tech. It was a lens, a recording device. I'd activated it earlier in the lab out of instinct—and it had been syncing to our field feed all along.
The truth was already broadcasting.
Every word. Every frame. Every confession.
Wilburt's trap was unraveling.
Alarms blared.
External systems breached.
Backup arriving.
I turned to the camera and said two words.
"Checkmate, Wilburt."
The compound erupted in chaos.
We fought our way out—gunfire, smoke, darkness. The servers melted in flames behind us. Wilburt vanished into the ether.
But Project Aeon was exposed.
The syndicate's funding lines were frozen. Their shell companies dismantled. Hana's father led a global task force. The world finally saw the hidden war we'd been part of.
Wilburt?
He disappeared without a trace.
Until next time.
------------------
Epilogue
I stood on a rooftop in Singapore, the new elite university spread out beneath me.
Hana walked up beside me.
"We're not done, are we?" I asked.
She smiled.
"No, Lucas. We've only just begun."