Chapter 62

POV: Isabella

​The world didn't fade; it fractured.

​I stood on the balcony, the rain soaking through my silk blazer, but I couldn't feel the cold. I couldn't feel anything except the rhythmic, pulsing heat in the center of my chest. It felt like a second heart, one made of static and cold logic, trying to override the slow, stuttering beat of my own.

​Liam was climbing. I could hear the grunt of his breath, the scrape of his shoes against the stone. He looked like a madman, a billionaire in a three-thousand-dollar suit scaling a trellis in a thunderstorm.

​"Isabella, give me your hand!" he shouted, his face appearing over the edge of the railing.

​I tried. I really tried. But my fingers were locked in a rigid, unnatural claw. "I can't, Liam. The override... Eleanor triggered the Sovereignty Protocol."

​"I know," he said, pulling himself over the railing with a grunt of effort. He landed on the stone floor of the balcony, dripping wet and breathing hard. He didn't hesitate. He grabbed my shoulders, his hands warm and solid against the numbness of my skin. "Look at me. Stay in the room, Isabella. Don't let the data stream take you."

​"It's too loud," I whispered. "It's not just code. It's... it's memories. Files I didn't know were there. My father... he’s in here, Liam. His voice. He’s telling me to run."

​"Then run with me," he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, handheld device—a signal jammer I’d seen him use in the Sterling labs. He clicked it on.

​The buzzing in my head didn't stop, but the sharpness of it dulled. The heat in my chest receded just enough for me to draw a jagged, sobbing breath.

​"It’ll only hold for a few minutes," Liam said, his eyes scanning the door to the study. "We have to get out of here before Arthur brings the security team back. If they catch us together, Eleanor will use it as proof of a conspiracy."

​"I don't care about the conspiracy," I said, my voice returning to a human pitch. "I want my name back, Liam. I want to be able to stand in a courtroom and say 'I am Isabella' without a machine contradicting me."

​"Then we petition for independence," Liam said, leading me toward the back stairs. "Not as a Sterling. Not as a Vane. We go to a judge tonight. I’ve already contacted a friend in the District Court. He’s waiting for us."

​"You did that? While the board was stripping your chairmanship?"

​"I did it because the chairmanship doesn't matter if you're not there to see me lose it," he said.

​We moved through the house like shadows. The Vane estate was a labyrinth, but I knew the service corridors better than any of the guards. We reached the garage just as the main house lights began to strobe—the emergency lockout Eleanor had initiated.

​"My car is at the end of the drive," Liam said, his hand tight around mine.

​We ran. The rain was a wall of water now, blurring the edges of the world. We didn't head for the main gate. We headed for the break in the stone wall near the old carriage house—the one place the cameras didn't reach.

​We scrambled through the gap, my breath coming in short, panicked gasps. Liam’s car was waiting, a dark, silent silhouette in the trees. We tumbled inside, the doors locking with a heavy, satisfying thud.

​"Where are we going?" I asked, leaning my head against the cool leather of the seat.

​"To the city," Liam said, his hands white on the steering wheel. "To the only place Eleanor can't reach with a remote command. A courtroom."

​The drive was a blur of neon lights and splashing puddles. Liam didn't speak. He was focused on the road, his eyes constantly checking the rearview mirror for the black sedans that would inevitably follow.

​We reached the courthouse at 2:00 AM. It was a massive, imposing building of granite and law, its windows dark except for a single office on the fourth floor.

​Judge Samuel Vance was waiting for us in his private chambers. He was a man of immense gravity, a contemporary of my father’s who had spent thirty years watching the Vane and Sterling families trade blows in the dark. He didn't look at Liam as the CEO; he looked at us as two people standing on the edge of a cliff.

​"This is highly irregular, Liam," Judge Vance said, his spectacles perched on the end of his nose. "A petition for legal independence and the separation of personal assets from a primary trust... in the middle of the night? Without a formal hearing?"

​"The 'asset' is being remotely accessed by a hostile party, Sam," Liam said, his voice calm and lethal. "Eleanor Vane is attempting to use the Medusa core to bypass Isabella’s legal autonomy. If we don't file this petition tonight, she’ll be classified as an 'unstable ward' by morning. You’ve seen the televised fracture. You know what she’s trying to do."

​I stepped forward, my hands still trembling but my voice steady. "Judge Vance, I am not a ward. I am a person. The files I leaked tonight prove that the trust was built on fraud. I am asking the court to grant me temporary autonomy until a full forensic audit can be completed. I am asking to be separated from the Vane name."

​Vance looked at me for a long time. I could see the conflict in his eyes—the law versus the legacy. "The Vane-Sterling merger is a multi-billion dollar entity, Isabella. Dissolving your ties to it could trigger a global financial crisis."

​"Then let it trigger," I said. "I am not a price to be paid for market stability."

​Vance sighed and picked up his pen. "If I grant this, I am also granting a stay on all remote medical commands from the Vane Global cloud. It would mean that any attempt by Eleanor to sync with your marrow would be a criminal act of assault."

​"That’s exactly what we want," Liam said.

​Vance began to write. The sound of the pen on the parchment was the most beautiful music I had ever heard. He stamped the document with the seal of the court and handed it to me.

​"You have forty-eight hours of legal independence, Isabella," Vance said. "A formal hearing is set for Wednesday at 10:00 AM. Between now and then, you are an independent entity. But be warned: the Vane estate will not let you walk away with their IP without a fight."

​"I don't want their IP," I said, clutching the paper to my chest. "I just want my life."

​We walked out of the chambers, the air in the hallway feeling lighter, cleaner. For the first time in years, I felt like the ground beneath my feet was mine.

​"You did it," Liam said, a small, tired smile touching his lips.

​"We did it," I corrected.

​But as we reached the elevators, the doors opened to reveal a wall of flashbulbs and reporters. They had tracked us. Or rather, someone had tipped them off.

​"Isabella! Is it true you've filed for separation?"

"Liam! Did the board authorize this?"

"Is the Medusa project being shut down?"

​The questions were a roar. But through the crowd, I saw a familiar face. Sarah Jenkins was standing at the back of the lobby, her phone to her ear. She wasn't looking at the reporters. She was looking at me.

​She held up her phone, showing me the screen.

​It was a live feed from the Sterling-Vane medical lab. A team of technicians was standing around a large, shimmering cylinder of blue fluid—the primary cooling tank for the Medusa Master Core.

​The headline on the screen read: CORE DEGRADATION IMMINENT. PRIMARY SUBJECT SYNC REQUIRED WITHIN 24 HOURS OR BIOLOGICAL COLLAPSE COMMENCES.

​The cliffhanger wasn't the reporters or the judge. It was the realization that Eleanor hadn't just been trying to control me. She had been keeping me alive. And by gaining my legal independence, I had just signed my own death warrant.

​"Liam," I whispered, showing him the screen. "She’s shutting down the cooling system. If the master core overheats, the shunt in my chest... it’ll burn me from the inside out."

​Liam looked at the screen, then at Sarah, then back at me. The legal victory felt like ash in our hands.

​"We have twenty-four hours," Liam said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, quiet register. "To find the bypass codes or break into the lab."