CHAPTER 5 — THE WOMAN WHO CONTROLLED MEMORIES
The cyberattack lasted only forty-seven seconds.
Long enough to steal every classified file.
Long enough to send one message.
STOP DIGGING.
Federal agents immediately placed me under protective custody.
They believed Director Zero would try to silence me.
They were right.
The first attempt came two nights later.
Not with guns.
Not with poison.
With memories.
A woman dressed as a hospital nurse entered my recovery room carrying flowers.
She smiled kindly.
"I'm only here to check your medication."
Something felt wrong.
Her hospital badge was upside down.
As she reached my bedside, I noticed a tiny injector hidden beneath her sleeve.
She wasn't a nurse.
She was an assassin.
I grabbed her wrist just as she pressed the injector toward my neck.
We struggled.
The syringe shattered against the floor.
Security rushed inside.
But the woman never fought back.
Instead...
She laughed.
"You still don't understand who you are."
Before anyone could stop her, she bit down on a hidden cyanide capsule.
Within seconds...
She was dead.
The agents searched her belongings.
Nothing.
No identification.
No fingerprints.
Only a folded photograph hidden inside her shoe.
It showed a little girl standing beside a lighthouse.
The girl was me.
Holding hands with...
Director Zero.
My entire body went numb.
Agent Brooks stared at the picture.
"Rebecca..."
"You've met her before."
That night, my mother finally confessed the truth she had hidden for decades.
Director Zero wasn't just another criminal.
She had once been Evelyn Hale's closest friend.
The woman who helped invent the memory technology.
Until greed turned science into human trafficking.
Then my mother whispered something that completely changed everything.
"Rebecca..."
"Director Zero didn't choose you because you were my daughter."
"She chose you because..."
"...she helped raise you."
The room fell silent.
May you like
If that was true...
Then the woman hunting me had once been family.
