Elias Voss moved quickly despite the chaos around him. He carried the metal case close to his chest, keeping one hand on its handle as he crossed the concrete platform toward the calibration tower. Emergency lights painted his face red, then black, then red again.
My mother tightened her grip on my hand.
"Stay behind the vehicle."
"But he's going to the tower."
"I know."
"What's in that case?"
She looked toward the tower. "Something that could make the shutdown temporary."
The aircraft sat motionless on the platform, its dark wings outlined beneath the floodlights. Technicians were scrambling around it, trying to understand why the power systems had failed. One man shouted into a radio. Another crouched beside an open access panel, his face illuminated by a handheld lamp.
Voss ignored them all.
He reached the base of the tower and opened a narrow maintenance hatch. The metal case clicked against the edge as he set it down. He entered a sequence on a small keypad, then pulled a cable from the case and connected it to a port hidden behind the hatch.
Mom swore under her breath.
"He's bypassing the isolation system."
"Can he turn it back on?" I asked.
"Not the way it was. But he may be able to recover the original control architecture."
I glanced at the tower. Its enormous circular frame was dark, but faint sparks flickered near its lower supports.
"Then we should stop him."
Mom looked at me. "We need to know what he's connecting first."
She took the radio from her shoulder.
"June, do you copy?"
Static answered.
She tried again.
"June, this is Rachel. Voss is at the tower. He's attempting to recover the core."
A burst of interference followed. Then June's voice came through.
"I hear you. Carter's contacting the external response team. They've got a vehicle approaching the northern gate."
"Tell them to stay back. The tower may still be energized."
"Understood. What do you need?"
"Access to the original system diagrams."
June paused.
"Rachel, there's something you should know. I found another file in the archive."
Mom's eyes narrowed. "What file?"
"The original neural-interface study. It isn't just about Lucas."
A cold feeling moved through my stomach.
Mom lowered her voice. "Explain."
"The system registered a second compatible profile during the first tests. It was never identified in the final report."
Mom stared at the tower.
"Who?"
"I don't know yet. The file is encrypted."
Voss looked up from the hatch. Even at a distance, I could see that he had noticed the radio conversation.
He pulled a small device from his case and pressed it against the tower's access panel.
A deep mechanical hum began to rise.
Mom pushed me farther behind the vehicle.
"Stay here."
Then she ran.
She crossed the platform in a low sprint, keeping close to the concrete barriers. When she reached the nearest equipment station, she dropped behind it and began working on a small control box.
Voss straightened.
"Rachel!"
She didn't respond.
He moved toward the tower's central support, placing himself between her and the maintenance hatch.
"You can't undo everything again."
Mom looked up.
"I'm not trying to undo the past. I'm stopping you from repeating it."
He gave a short, humorless laugh.
"You always did believe those were different things."
I watched them from behind the vehicle. The distance between them was perhaps thirty yards, but it felt much larger. They spoke like people who had been arguing for years, not two people who had only recently found each other again.
Mom pulled a cable from the control box and connected it to a second port. The tower's remaining indicator lights flickered.
Voss turned toward his case.
"Don't!"
Mom pressed a key.
A loud metallic bang echoed from the tower. The maintenance hatch slammed shut, trapping the cable beneath its edge.
Voss lunged toward it.
For a moment, the case slipped from his hand. It struck the concrete and burst open.
Inside were several compact electronic modules, a small black drive, and a silver cylinder about the size of a flashlight.
The cylinder rolled across the platform.
Voss chased it.
Mom moved at the same time.
She reached the cylinder first and kicked it beneath the control vehicle. Voss stopped several feet away.
"Give it back."
"No."
His expression hardened.
"You have no idea what that contains."
"I know exactly what it contains."
He looked at the silver cylinder beneath the vehicle.
Then his gaze shifted toward me.
"Lucas."
I stepped backward.
Mom immediately moved between us.
"Don't."
Voss raised both hands slightly.
"I only want to talk to him."
"You've had enough opportunities."
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he said something I hadn't expected.
"Do you remember the first test flight?"
Mom didn't answer.
"The one where the aircraft vanished from every instrument for forty-seven seconds?"
Her face changed.
I looked between them.
"What happened?"
Voss continued, his voice quieter now.
"You were terrified. The aircraft stopped responding to ordinary commands. The sensors went blank, and we lost all contact with the test platform. But you brought it back."
Mom's jaw tightened.
"Because I shut down the interface manually."
"No. You did something else."
He stepped closer.
"You trusted the system long enough to let it interpret your instincts. It responded to you in a way it had never responded to anyone else."
Mom's expression became unreadable.
"That was a mistake."
"Perhaps. But it was the breakthrough."
He glanced toward me again.
"And when Lucas was born, the same pattern appeared in the system. A pattern connected to yours, but not identical."
I felt as though the ground had shifted beneath me.
"You're saying I got it from her?"
"Not exactly," Voss said. "The system recognized a relationship between two neural profiles. We suspected a biological connection, but we never proved it."
Mom shook her head.
"You don't understand what you're looking at."
"Then explain it."
"I don't owe you an explanation."
The tower suddenly emitted a sharp electronic tone.
A warning light appeared on the maintenance panel.
Voss turned.
Mom moved toward the silver cylinder.
He reacted instantly, lunging past her and reaching beneath the vehicle. His fingers closed around the cylinder just as she grabbed his wrist.
They struggled briefly. The cylinder struck the concrete, and a thin crack appeared along its casing.
A sharp electrical pulse snapped through the air.
Both of them recoiled.
The tower went dark.
For several seconds, nothing moved.
Then a distant alarm began to sound from the direction of the aircraft.
Mom looked toward the runway.
The prototype's cockpit lights had come back on.
"He's activated the secondary power source," she said.
Voss stood slowly, breathing hard.
"Not me."
She stared at him.
"What?"
He looked toward the aircraft, and for the first time that night, he seemed genuinely unsettled.
"The system is responding without the tower."
Mom's face lost its color.
The prototype's engines started again.
And from somewhere inside its cockpit, a voice came through the loudspeakers.
"Primary pilot profile recognized."
Mom went completely still.
A second voice followed.
"Secondary profile recognized."
My name appeared on a display near the aircraft.
Then a third message flashed across the screen.
AUTONOMOUS CALIBRATION INITIATED.
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: The Aircraft Began Making Its Own Decisions, and My Mother Finally Told Me Why She Had Never Shown Me My Father’s Last Letter
The Moment My Teacher Turned My Proudest Memory Into a Joke in Front of the Entire Eighth Grade
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