Her face was pale, her jaw clenched so tightly her cheekbones sharpened into severe angles. She stared unblinking at the massive center monitor.

The screen showed a live feed of the trauma bay. A team of frantic surgeons was cutting away Gideon’s blood-soaked shirt.

Standing right beside Beatrice was Princess Cecelia. The young royal’s eyes were red and swollen from crying. She gripped Beatrice’s bare arm, her manicured nails digging painfully into the older woman’s skin.

“They tried to kill him,” Cecelia sobbed, her voice trembling with genuine terror. “I had to call the Ministry of Defense to force the police to declare a city-wide emergency. Who would do this to him?”

Cecelia was completely blind to the truth. She believed the illusion.

But Beatrice was not blind.

She studied her son’s face on the screen. Gideon was pale, covered in blood, and supposedly hovering on the edge of death. Yet his facial muscles were completely relaxed. There was no tension of pain around his eyes.

A cold, creeping dread settled deep into Beatrice’s stomach.

She knew the monster she had raised. She knew the darkness that lived inside Gideon’s skull. This bombing — this perfectly timed catastrophic injury that had forced him into the most secure medical facility in Europe — reeked of his psychotic, artificial design.

But it didn’t matter if it was a setup.

The Sterling family name was on the line. The heir was bleeding on a table. As the matriarch, she was bound by the chains of legacy to protect him.

Beatrice coldly peeled Cecelia’s fingers from her arm without offering a single word of comfort. She walked with rigid, mechanical steps toward the main security console.

She placed her hand on the biometric scanner and leaned down to the microphone.

“This is Professor Vance,” Beatrice said. Her voice was pure, aristocratic ice. “I am initiating a Level One Override.”

She typed a twelve-digit alphanumeric code into the keypad — a master cipher known only to her and Dr. Rhys.

Deep beneath the earth, heavy hydraulic machinery groaned to life.

On the monitors, Beatrice watched as the three massive titanium blast doors separating the upper levels from the deep-sleep medical sector slowly began to rise.

“I am taking command of all internal security,” she ordered through the intercom. “Any shadow unit operative who attempts to interfere with my son’s medical team will be considered a hostile threat and neutralized immediately.”

Half a mile away, hidden in the freezing, rain-soaked forest on the mountain slope overlooking the Institute, Eliza lay flat on her stomach in the thick mud.

The icy rain hammered against her back, soaking completely through her waterproof jacket. A dull, throbbing ache from her still-healing left shoulder reminded her of the cost of this war. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably, but her eyes were locked onto the high-powered tactical binoculars in her hands.

She watched the heavy blast doors of the Institute’s loading dock begin to grind open.

“Got it,” Cipher whispered from the brush beside her.

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