Chapter 51: The Sleeping Beauty

Grind... Clank... Boom.

The massive obsidian gates groaned as they slowly split apart. Dust and cold air rushed out, hitting Jackson, Serenity, and Alex in the face.

The smell was distinct. It didn't smell like rotting dungeons. It smelled... sterile. Like ozone and rubbing alcohol.

"Flashlights," Jackson ordered, stepping in front of his family.

They stepped through the threshold.

What they saw made Alex drop his laptop.

It wasn't a cave filled with gold coins. It was a high-tech facility hidden inside the ancient rock. But it looked old—like a sci-fi laboratory from the 1990s that had been abandoned.

Dust covered old computer terminals. Cables ran along the floor like dead snakes.

"This technology..." Alex picked up a dusty circuit board from a desk. "This processor is more advanced than what we have today. But it looks thirty years old. Who built this?"

"Not Stefan," Serenity whispered, looking around. "He barely knew how to send an email."

"Someone built this beneath the palace," Jackson kept his gun raised. "And Stefan was just the gatekeeper."

They walked deeper into the facility. At the very center of the room, there was a faint blue light pulsating.

It came from a large cylindrical glass pod. It was connected to massive machines that were humming quietly—the source of the vibration Serenity felt earlier.

It was a Cryogenic Stasis Chamber.

"Is that..." Serenity walked closer, wiping the frost off the thick glass. "Is that a person?"

Inside the pod, suspended in a blue liquid, a woman was floating. She had pale skin, long dark hair floating around her face, and she wore a white hospital gown. She looked peaceful, like she was just sleeping.

Serenity looked at the woman's face. She didn't recognize her.

But she heard a sound behind her. A sound of a weapon dropping to the floor.

Clatter.

Jackson dropped his gun. His knees hit the ground hard.

He was staring at the woman in the tank with eyes wide open, filled with horror and disbelief. His face lost all color.

"Jackson?" Serenity rushed to him. "What is it? Do you know her?"

Jackson couldn't speak. He reached out a trembling hand and placed it on the cold glass, right over the woman's face.

"Mother..." he choked out a whisper.

Serenity froze. "What?"

"That's my mother," Jackson said, tears streaming down his face. "Margaret Sterling."

"But..." Serenity was confused. "You told me she died in a car crash when you were ten. You said you saw the body."

"I did," Jackson’s voice shook. "I saw her coffin being lowered into the ground. My father told me she was gone."

He looked at the woman inside. She looked exactly the same as the day she "died" twenty years ago. She hadn't aged a day.

"Why is she here?" Jackson touched the glass frantically. "Why is she in Montbert? Why is she in a tank?"

Alex walked up to the control panel next to the tank. He plugged in his laptop.

"Dad," Alex said seriously. "She's alive. The machine is keeping her in 'suspended animation'. Her heart beats once every minute."

Alex pointed to a logo on the screen.

"And look at this. The system belongs to a group called 'PROJECT OMEGA'. The admin password is authorized by... 'Grandfather'."

"My grandfather?" Jackson’s eyes turned from sorrow to rage. "My family did this to her?"

He stood up, his fists clenched so hard his nails dug into his palms.

He thought he knew everything about the Sterling Empire. He thought he was the King.
But turns out, his entire life was a lie constructed by the older generation.

Stefan kept Serenity out to hide the vault.
The Sterling family kept Jackson in the dark to hide... this.

"We need to get her out," Jackson commanded. "Alex, open it."

"I can't," Alex frowned. "The defrost sequence takes 48 hours. If we open it now, she dies."

"Then we protect this place," Jackson turned to Serenity. "No one leaves. No one enters."

Serenity took his hand. It was ice cold.

"We will find the truth, Jackson," she said firmly. "We solved the mystery of the Golden Hawk. Now, we solve the mystery of Project Omega."

Jackson looked at his sleeping mother, then at the ancient walls of the vault.

The villains weren't just in Montbert. They were in his own backyard in New York.

"The Order," Jackson whispered, remembering Stefan's last words.

They didn't just want the mine. They wanted the technology inside this vault. And they wanted his mother.

"War," Jackson said darkly. "They want a war? I'll give them an apocalypse."

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