PART 9 – THE LAST TRUTH
PART 9 – THE LAST TRUTH
The countdown echoed through the underground complex.
29:12... 29:11... 29:10...
Every second sounded louder than the last.
Red emergency lights painted the corridors in a blood-colored glow.
Rodrigo forced himself to think.
"Panic is exactly what she wants."
Ruiz nodded.
"We split up."
"No."
Nicolás shook his head immediately.
"That's what this place was designed for."
Everyone looked at him.
"The laboratories upstairs were built to confuse people."
"But underground facilities always have emergency exits."
"Scientists never build themselves into a trap."
Rodrigo realized he was right.
"Find the control room."
"If we stop the purge..."
"We save the evidence."
They hurried through the maze of corridors.
Every room revealed another piece of Helix's forgotten history.
Thousands of patient files.
Boxes of research samples.
Photographs.
Video recordings.
Some projects had truly been dedicated to curing children.
Others...
Were nightmares.
Project Aurora.
Project Eden.
Project Atlas.
Each had begun with hope.
Each had ended with human experimentation.
Don Esteban stopped in front of a faded photograph hanging on the wall.
Twenty scientists smiled proudly beside the Observatory.
He pointed toward one woman standing in the back row.
"There."
Rodrigo stared.
The silver-haired woman.
Only...
She wasn't old.
She appeared to be in her early thirties.
The photograph was dated...
Twenty-six years earlier.
Ruiz whispered,
"That's impossible."
"It can't be the same woman."
Don Esteban slowly shook his head.
"It is."
"I remember her."
"She looked exactly the same."
Silence filled the corridor.
Nicolás searched another filing cabinet.
Most folders had rotted with time.
One remained perfectly sealed.
Across the front:
CONFIDENTIAL – SUBJECT N
His hands trembled.
He opened it.
Inside...
Were photographs of a newborn baby.
Medical examinations.
DNA reports.
The child wore a tiny bracelet.
The name printed on it stopped his heart.
Nicolás Cruz.
Rodrigo stared in disbelief.
"No..."
The date matched Nicolás's birth.
Ruiz flipped through the remaining documents.
One report read:
Subject removed from facility before Phase One.
Location unknown.
Nicolás felt dizzy.
"I was here."
"No," Rodrigo whispered.
"You were born here."
Memories flashed through Nicolás's mind.
Not clear memories.
Fragments.
The smell of disinfectant.
Bright lights.
A woman singing softly.
He had always believed they were dreams.
Now...
He wasn't so sure.
Another page slipped from the folder.
A handwritten note.
Take the child. Run. Never let Aurora find him.
No signature.
Only one initial.
M.
Mariana?
Impossible.
She would have been a child herself.
Then Don Esteban spoke quietly.
"Mercedes."
Everyone turned toward him.
"Doña Mercedes."
Rodrigo stared at the old man.
"What are you talking about?"
Don Esteban closed his eyes.
"Before she married your father..."
"Mercedes volunteered at Helix."
The world seemed to stop.
Hundreds of kilometers away...
Mariana sat beside Doña Mercedes in the mansion's library.
She hadn't told the older woman about Carlos's warning.
Not yet.
Then the telephone rang.
A landline.
One that should have been disconnected.
Mariana answered cautiously.
No one spoke.
Only slow breathing.
Then...
A woman's calm voice.
"Ask Mercedes..."
"...why she abandoned the baby."
The line went dead.
Mariana slowly turned toward her mother-in-law.
Doña Mercedes had gone completely pale.
Tears filled her eyes before Mariana could ask a single question.
Back inside the Observatory...
Rodrigo confronted Don Esteban.
"You knew."
"I suspected."
"You let us live a lie."
"I was trying to protect him."
Rodrigo looked at Nicolás.
"Protect him from what?"
Don Esteban answered with visible fear.
"Aurora believed Nicolás wasn't just another child."
"They believed..."
"...his immune system survived something no one else could."
"He became the only successful subject."
Nicolás stepped backward.
"I was an experiment."
"No."
Don Esteban's voice broke.
"You were the child they couldn't poison."
Suddenly...
The emergency lights flickered.
A hidden speaker crackled.
The silver-haired woman's voice echoed through the facility.
"Congratulations."
"You finally found him."
Rodrigo shouted toward the ceiling.
"Who are you?"
She laughed softly.
"You've spent months asking the wrong question."
"My name doesn't matter."
"What matters..."
"...is what Nicolás carries."
Ruiz clenched his jaw.
"What do you want?"
"The blood."
Silence.
"The formulas failed."
"The poisons failed."
"The medicines failed."
"But one child survived."
"We've spent twenty years looking for him."
Nicolás understood.
"They never wanted Santiago."
The woman replied calmly.
"Santiago was only bait."
"You..."
"...were always the target."
The countdown reached...
08:41
Ruiz finally located the control room.
Banks of old computers surrounded a reinforced steel console.
Nicolás connected the surviving hard drive.
Lines of code scrolled across the monitor.
"I found the purge controls."
"Can you stop it?"
"No."
"Someone changed the administrator password."
Rodrigo looked around desperately.
"There has to be another way."
Then Nicolás noticed a small brass plaque beneath the keyboard.
Emergency Override – Founder Authorization Only
A fingerprint scanner.
Everyone stared at Rodrigo.
"My father."
Nicolás looked at him.
"You're his son."
Rodrigo placed his thumb against the scanner.
Nothing.
A harsh electronic tone sounded.
ACCESS DENIED.
Again.
Denied.
Ruiz cursed under his breath.
"It only recognizes Raúl himself."
The timer continued.
06:59
At that same moment...
Outside the mountain...
Carlos Mendoza reached the Observatory.
His truck skidded to a stop.
He jumped out despite his injuries.
The massive stone entrance was sealed.
He examined the mechanism.
Then smiled sadly.
"So that's your game."
From his backpack, he removed a weathered notebook.
Raúl Santillán's engineering journal.
He flipped rapidly through the pages.
Stopping at one diagram.
A hidden maintenance tunnel.
Barely wide enough for one person.
Carlos whispered,
"I hope I'm not too late."
He disappeared into the mountainside.
Back at the mansion...
Doña Mercedes finally broke.
She collapsed into a chair.
Mariana knelt beside her.
"Tell me the truth."
The elderly woman nodded through tears.
"Twenty-one years ago..."
"I worked as a volunteer nurse."
"There was a newborn."
"He was supposed to die."
"But he smiled at me."
"I couldn't leave him there."
"So I helped someone escape..."
"...with that baby."
Mariana whispered,
"Nicolás."
Mercedes nodded.
"I've loved him from the first moment I held him."
"I just never imagined..."
"...he would find his way back to our family."
Inside the Observatory...
The countdown reached five minutes.
Suddenly...
The reinforced door behind them burst open.
Carlos stumbled into the control room.
Covered in dust.
Bleeding.
Alive.
"I found another entrance."
Rodrigo rushed toward him.
"Can you stop this?"
Carlos looked at the fingerprint scanner.
Then at Raúl's engineering journal.
A faint smile appeared.
"No."
"But Raúl could."
He reached into the notebook.
Carefully removed a thin transparent sheet hidden between two pages.
It wasn't paper.
It was a preserved fingerprint.
Raúl Santillán had anticipated everything.
Carlos placed the transparent print onto the scanner.
The machine paused.
One second.
Two.
Then...
A green light illuminated the room.
FOUNDER ACCESS CONFIRMED.
Everyone held their breath.
The countdown froze.
04:03
Then another message appeared.
SECONDARY SECURITY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.
A hidden projector descended from the ceiling.
Raúl Santillán appeared once more.
This time...
The recording continued beyond the point where it had been erased.
He looked directly into the camera.
"If you're seeing this..."
"...then Aurora has finally found Nicolás."
Every face in the room turned toward the screen.
Raúl took a slow breath.
And spoke the sentence that changed everything forever.
"Nicolás... is my son."
The room fell into complete silence.
Rodrigo stared at the screen...
Unable to breathe.
Unable to speak.
Unable to understand how the homeless boy who had once saved Santiago...
...could also be his own brother.
The recording continued.
But before anyone could hear another word...
The lights throughout the Observatory suddenly went black.
May you like
Somewhere in the darkness...
Someone else had entered the facility.
