The tower's circular frame illuminated from the inside outward.
White light traveled along its metal supports, tracing the shape of the enormous ring. A low electrical hum rose from the ground, and the air seemed to tighten around the compound.
Mom grabbed my shoulder.
"Don't look directly at the tower."
I turned my face away, blinking against the brightness. The hair on my arms stood up. Somewhere near the aircraft, a warning alarm began to pulse.
Voss watched the readings on his tablet.
"Begin synchronization."
One of the technicians hesitated. "Sir, the feedback is fluctuating."
"Correct it."
"We're getting an unstable response from the secondary profile."
Voss glanced at me.
"That's expected. Continue."
Mom stepped toward the control vehicle.
"Stop the sequence, Elias."
He barely acknowledged her.
"You're looking at the most important breakthrough of our generation."
"You're looking at an uncontrolled system."
"Only because you keep interfering."
A technician pressed a button. The aircraft's cockpit lights flickered to life. Its dark fuselage seemed to ripple beneath the floodlights, as if the surface were reflecting a landscape that wasn't there.
The prototype was preparing to activate its masking system.
Mom moved quickly.
She crossed the open space toward a maintenance console beside the control vehicle. One of the guards turned toward her, but she ducked behind a stack of equipment before he could block her path.
"Lucas, stay down!"
I dropped behind the low concrete barrier beside the maintenance building.
Voss shouted something to the technicians. Several of them abandoned their stations and hurried toward the aircraft.
Mom reached the console and opened its access panel. She pulled a cable from her jacket and connected it to the exposed port.
The screen flashed.
A warning appeared.
PRIMARY OVERRIDE REQUIRED.
She typed a sequence of commands.
The warning changed.
AUTHORIZATION REJECTED.
Mom tried again.
The tower hummed louder.
I could feel the vibration through the concrete beneath my knees. The lights along the ring brightened until the surrounding desert seemed washed in white.
Voss turned toward the console.
"Rachel, stop!"
She ignored him.
I looked at the screen from behind the barrier. A series of colored lines ran across the display. One line remained steady while the others jumped erratically.
It reminded me of the sensor map in Aunt June's control room.
I crawled closer to the console, staying low behind a parked maintenance cart.
Mom saw me approaching.
"What are you doing?"
"Looking."
"Lucas, get back!"
I pointed at the display.
"That line is different."
She glanced at it.
The steady line connected the tower to the aircraft's neural interface channel. The other lines represented sensor feedback and masking adjustments.
Mom's eyes narrowed.
"You're right."
She tapped the screen, opening a new window. The interface showed a repeating pattern of signals, each one arriving slightly earlier than the last.
"He's forcing the system to predict the pilot's responses," she murmured.
"Can you stop it?"
"Not from this panel."
She examined the lower edge of the display.
Then she saw a small symbol beside the secondary profile.
My name.
A connection status indicator flashed green.
Mom's face changed.
"He's using your signature as a reference."
I felt a cold sensation in my stomach.
"Can he make the plane respond to me?"
"Not unless the connection becomes active."
"But it says the connection is available."
"Available isn't the same as established."
She moved to another menu. A diagram appeared, showing a direct pathway between the calibration tower and the aircraft's interface.
At the center of the pathway was a small square marked CORE.
Mom stared at it.
"That's the original control architecture."
"Can you shut it down?"
"Yes. But the override is protected by the system's own feedback loop."
I didn't understand.
She pointed toward the repeating pattern.
"Every time I send a shutdown command, the system interprets it as an input to be corrected. Voss built a loop that treats external interference as a calibration error."
"So how do you get around it?"
She didn't answer.
Across the compound, Voss had begun walking toward us. The guards followed several steps behind him.
"Rachel," he called. "You're wasting time."
Mom looked from the screen to the aircraft, then toward the tower.
I recognized the expression on her face. It was the same one she'd worn in the kitchen when the landline rang and she learned Admiral Carter was missing.
She was making a decision she didn't want to make.
She opened the metal box she'd carried from the facility and removed a folded document. Its edges were yellowed, and several sections had been marked with handwritten notes.
"What is that?" I asked.
"The original shutdown protocol."
She spread the document across the console.
"Before I destroyed the first system, I designed a way to disable the interface without damaging the aircraft."
"Why didn't you use it before?"
"Because it requires access to the core."
She pointed toward the prototype.
The cockpit.
I stared at the aircraft.
"You have to get inside."
"Yes."
Voss was getting closer.
"Then let's go," I said.
Mom looked at me sharply.
"No. I go alone."
"But the system recognizes my profile."
"That's exactly why you stay away from it."
She folded the document and tucked it into her jacket. Then she pulled a small tool from the console and used it to disconnect the interface cable.
The screen went dark.
For a brief moment, the tower's light dimmed.
Voss stopped walking.
"What did you do?"
Mom stepped away from the console.
"Something you should have done years ago."
He raised his tablet and tapped a command.
The tower brightened again.
The aircraft's cockpit canopy began to close.
Mom turned toward the hangar platform.
"Lucas, run to the service building. Find the emergency power switch. It should be behind the red access panel."
I hesitated.
"What about you?"
"I'm going to stop him."
She pushed me toward the maintenance building.
"Go!"
I ran.
Behind me, voices rose in anger. The guards shouted. A metallic crash echoed across the compound, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone hitting the ground.
I reached the service building and slipped through the door. Inside, the emergency panel was mounted on the far wall beneath a faded safety sign.
I pulled it open.
There were three switches.
One was labeled LIGHTING. Another was marked VENTILATION. The third had no label at all.
I remembered Mom's instructions from the original diagram. The emergency power control was supposed to be connected to the tower's backup system, not the building's ordinary electrical supply.
I traced the wires with my eyes.
A thick red cable disappeared through the wall.
I followed it to a smaller panel beneath the main switchboard. Its cover was secured with two screws.
I searched the workbench for a screwdriver and found one beneath a pile of old manuals.
My hands were shaking so badly that the first screw slipped from the driver.
I forced myself to slow down.
One screw came loose.
Then the other.
Inside was a narrow switch surrounded by warning labels. The words were faded, but I could make out the instruction.
EMERGENCY FIELD ISOLATION.
I hesitated.
If I pulled it, would the tower shut down? Would the aircraft lose power? Would the entire facility go dark?
I didn't know.
Outside, the engines roared again.
The building trembled.
I reached for the switch.
Before I could pull it, the computer terminal on the nearby desk flickered to life.
A message appeared.
LUCAS.
I froze.
Another line appeared.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO HELP HER.
The screen displayed a live image of the prototype's cockpit. My father sat inside, wearing a dark flight helmet. The canopy was closed, and the aircraft's instrument panels glowed around him.
He looked directly into the camera.
"Lucas," he said through the terminal's speakers. "I know you're frightened. I know your mother has told you that I'm dangerous. But I want you to understand something."
I stepped away from the screen.
"You don't know me."
His expression softened.
"You're right. I missed your childhood. I missed your first words, your first day of school, and every birthday you've celebrated. I can't change that."
For a moment, I couldn't breathe.
Those were the things I'd always imagined asking my father about. The things I'd wanted to tell him if he'd ever come home.
He continued.
"But I can give you something now. I can show you what you were born capable of doing."
I looked at the emergency switch.
"What do you want from me?"
He leaned slightly toward the cockpit camera.
"I want you to help me finish the system."
"By using my brain?"
"By allowing the interface to recognize your natural response patterns. You won't have to fly the aircraft. You only need to complete the handshake."
I remembered Mom's explanation. Recognition wasn't permission.
I looked at the screen.
"And if I refuse?"
His expression changed.
"Then your mother will destroy everything she spent her life building."
I thought of the photograph in the metal box. The scratched-out face. The old cabin. The invisible aircraft above the trees. The applause in the auditorium, and the way Mom had looked at me when Admiral Carter called her one of the finest officers he'd ever served with.
My mother had spent years protecting people from the very technology my father wanted to control.
I wasn't going to help him undo that work.
"No," I said.
His jaw tightened.
"Think carefully."
"I have."
The screen went black.
A second later, the emergency panel began flashing red.
The tower had detected an unauthorized connection.
I pulled the isolation switch.
The lights went out.
A tremendous crack rolled across the desert. The calibration tower's illuminated ring flickered violently, then dimmed. The prototype's engines sputtered, and the aircraft's masking field collapsed in a wave of shimmering distortion.
For a moment, the plane seemed to become two aircraft at once: one visible beneath the floodlights, the other a faint, transparent outline hanging several feet above it.
Then the distortion vanished.
The aircraft sat motionless on the platform.
I ran outside.
The compound was plunged into partial darkness. Emergency lamps glowed along the ground, and technicians were shouting over one another. The tower's upper ring had stopped rotating, but smoke rose from a maintenance structure near its base.
Mom stood beside the control vehicle, holding the shutdown document in one hand.
Voss was nowhere in sight.
I hurried toward her.
"Mom!"
She turned and grabbed me in a fierce embrace.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Did you pull the isolation switch?"
I nodded.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then held me at arm's length.
"That was dangerous."
"You told me where it was."
"I told you where it was because I thought we'd have time to reach it together."
I looked toward the aircraft.
"Where's Dad?"
Her face tightened.
Before she could answer, the radio on her shoulder crackled.
Admiral Carter's voice came through.
"Rachel, we've got a problem. The prototype's secondary power source is still active. It's moving."
Mom looked toward the runway.
A low rumble rose from the aircraft.
The cockpit canopy began to open.
Then a figure climbed down the ladder on the far side of the fuselage.
Elias Voss had escaped the cockpit.
He was carrying a small metal case.
And he was heading toward the calibration tower.
Mom's expression changed from relief to alarm.
"Lucas," she whispered, "he's not trying to restart the aircraft."
She reached for my hand.
"He's going after the original core."
Click here to continue reading: PART 9: My Father Reached for the Original Core, and My Mother Discovered the One Part of His Plan She Had Never Anticipated
The Moment My Teacher Turned My Proudest Memory Into a Joke in Front of the Entire Eighth Grade
Part 8 of 40
