Chapter 9 OPHELIA'S BREATH HITCHED

Velgrave Vault Theta was buried three miles beneath the old science wing.

Surrounded by quantum locks, null fields, and psychic warding.

It was meant to stay shut forever.

But the Wolfe siblings weren't good at following rules.

Lilith cracked the security grid while Tobias and Nina scrambled the external defenses. Carl and Kai held the perimeter. Ophelia led the infiltration team.

Inside, the vault was sterile. Cold. Rows of cryo-chambers, tanks, and prototype weapons lined the walls.

But at the center - suspended in light - was a case.

Within it, a single strand of golden DNA floated in magnetic stasis.

Ophelia's breath hitched.

Halo Prime.

The original gene. Pure. Unaltered.

She reached for it.

And alarms screamed.

"Move!" Carl shouted from behind, dragging her down as energy bolts lit the chamber.

The doors sealed.

From the opposite side - Velgrave's Chairwoman stepped into view.

Tall. Silver-cloaked. Her eyes burned with cybernetic clarity.

"I see the vermin brought friends."

Chairwoman Selene Virell.

Not Calen.

His sister.

And the one who had taken over his research after he "disappeared."

"You're just as dramatic as your father," Selene said coolly, eyeing Ophelia. "Always chasing ghosts."

Ophelia stood, defiant. "And you're just as heartless as I remember."

"You remember nothing. What you call memory is curated trauma. I curated it."

Ezra snarled. "You destroyed lives."

Selene walked closer to the case. "I created order. Without us, the world would've torn itself apart under uncontrolled powers."

Carl stepped beside Ophelia. "Funny how every tyrant thinks they're saving the world."

Selene ignored him. "That gene doesn't belong to you. It belongs to humanity."

"No," Ophelia said. "It belongs to no one. That's the point."

Selene's fingers twitched - and from the far end of the lab, containment pods cracked open.

Dozens of artificial soldiers. Each genetically engineered. No will. No conscience. Only command.

Ezra whispered, "She made an army."

Ophelia grabbed the case.

"Then let's give them something to fight."

Everything became chaos.

Lilith's lightning scorched the front line. Kai blinked in and out, leaving exploding tech behind him. Carl disrupted their neural comms. Tobias folded space, collapsing part of the ceiling between enemy lines.

But it was Ophelia - focused, burning - who tore into the Chairwoman's psychic defense.

Selene screamed as Ophelia entered her mind, dragging up every suppressed moment. Every hidden horror.

The woman crumpled, twitching.

The artificial soldiers - without commands - froze.

Ezra sealed the vault behind them, Carl carrying the case with Halo Prime.

Ophelia knelt over Selene's twitching form. "You stole everything from us."

Selene spat blood. "And yet... you still became what I made you."

"No," Ophelia said. "I became what you were afraid of."

And with that, she left her to the silence.

They had the gene.

They had the proof.

And now... the war would go public.

The footage hit the Net at 3:16 a.m.

Encrypted files. Genetic research. Cryo-lab images. Surveillance audio from Vault Theta.

And most importantly: the Halo Prime genome.

The world didn't react immediately.

But Velgrave did.

By morning, three of their external labs had been set on fire by protestors.

By noon, their investors pulled out.

And by evening, the name Ophelia Wolfe was being whispered in rebel circles across every major city.

She had gone from ghost... to symbol.

Ezra stared at the news feeds with a blank face. "It's working."

Ophelia didn't look so sure. "We just threw the world into chaos."

Carl stepped beside her. "Sometimes, you need chaos to break a cage."

She met his eyes. "And what if the cage fights back?"

"It will," he said, his voice low. "So we hit first."

Not everyone agreed with the leak.

Within their own alliance, fractures began to form.

Rei, the ex-professor, voiced it first. "We had a plan. We were building strength. You exposed us."

Kai backed him up. "Now Velgrave's not hunting rebels. They're hunting us. All of us."

Ezra snapped, "We're not hiding anymore."

"That's not leadership," Nina cut in. "That's ego."

The tension in the war room grew thick enough to slice.

Ophelia stood slowly. "We don't need to like each other. But we're already in this."

"Then what's next?" Lilith asked. "Because once they regroup, they'll come harder than before."

Ophelia looked at the wall of screens - showing riots, rallies, arrests.

"We give the people something more than truth."

Carl raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"

"A future," she said.

And for the first time, no one argued.

They hijacked a Velgrave news channel.

It was supposed to run a primetime piece about Academy reforms.

Instead, it glitched - then cut to black.

Then her face appeared.

No glamour. No disguise.

Just Ophelia Wolfe, in a plain shirt, standing in front of a cracked emblem once worn by Velgrave's top brass.

"You don't know me," she began. "But you've lived in the world my kind helped build - and suffered for it."

"We are the Bloodborn. Not accidents. Not threats. But people."

"Velgrave tried to erase us. Control us. Destroy us."

"But they failed."

Behind her, silhouettes of her team came into view. Ezra. Carl. Lilith. Tobias. Nina.

"To every person who has ever been silenced... experimented on... lied to... we see you."

"We are done hiding."

The feed cut.

In the silence that followed - a movement was born.