Chapter 193 The Intercepted Call

Chapter 193 The Intercepted Call
The war room stopped feeling like a headquarters sometime around three in the morning.

Now it felt like a bunker.

Rain hammered relentlessly against reinforced windows while every screen across the room glowed with intercepted communications, satellite tracking, financial reroutes, and failed containment alerts from territories across three regions.

Nobody had slept.

Not really.

Coffee cups littered the strategy tables beside open weapons cases and stacks of decrypted Council files while Blood Guards rotated in and out carrying updates every few minutes.

Eric Vortan had vanished.

And every hour he remained missing made the situation worse.

Because someone like Vortan didn’t disappear alone.

He disappeared with contingencies.

With resources.

With secrets dangerous enough to bury entire governments.

I stood near the central operations display beside Tessa while Fred worked furiously through communication intercepts across multiple encrypted channels.

The tension in the room felt suffocating now.

Not fear.

Pressure.

Like everyone understood we had crossed some invisible threshold and couldn’t go back.

Darius stood near the far wall speaking quietly with Vincent and two senior Blood Guard commanders when Fred suddenly froze.

Not metaphorically.

Actually froze.

His hands stopped moving over the console.

Every instinct in my body sharpened immediately.

“What?” I asked.

Fred didn’t answer right away.

His expression changed slowly.

Confusion first.

Then disbelief.

Then something colder.

“We caught something.”

The room shifted instantly.

Darius crossed toward us immediately.

“Audio?”

Fred nodded once.

“Encrypted relay.” He swallowed slightly. “Partial transmission routed through one of Vortan’s emergency channels.”

Tessa straightened sharply.

“Can you clean it?”

“Already am.”

The war room quieted.

Rain hammered outside.

Static crackled softly through the speakers while Fred isolated the signal and stabilized the distortion layer by layer.

Then

A voice filled the room.

“…you were supposed to stop them.”

Eric Vortan.

Older.

Controlled.

But strained.

Not panicked yet.

Just angry enough to lose some composure.

Another voice answered immediately afterward.

And my stomach tightened violently.

Calder.

I’d never heard him speak before.

Not directly.

But somehow I knew instantly.

Thin voice.

Sharp.

Frayed around the edges like stretched wire seconds from snapping.

“This is not my fault.”

Static hissed sharply.

Then Vortan again.

“You told me the hybrid subjects were contained.”

“They were.”

“Then explain Siberia.”

Silence crackled briefly across the speakers.

And when Calder answered again

Something was wrong.

Not arrogance.

Not cold scientific detachment.

Fear.

Real fear.

“They adapted faster than projected.”

Darius’s expression darkened beside me.

Fred increased the audio gain slightly.

Vortan’s voice sharpened.

“You assured me Lyra Soren remained unstable.”

The room went still.

My pulse slowed dangerously.

Calder exhaled shakily through the speakers.

“She was unstable.”

Was.

Darius looked ready to rip the entire room apart.

Static surged again.

Then Vortan spoke lower this time.

“Can you stop her?”

Silence.

Long enough that everyone in the room noticed.

Then finally

“No.”

The word landed heavily through the speakers.

Not because Calder sounded defeated.

Because he sounded certain.

My beast stirred uneasily beneath my ribs.

Vortan swore softly under his breath.

“You told me the First Blood genes would prevent long-term control.”

“It should have.”

“Should have?”

Static crackled violently.

Then Calder again

Voice tighter now.

“She’s not behaving like the others.”

Something cold slid slowly down my spine.

Fred looked up from the console briefly.

Concern visible now.

Not for us.

For what he was hearing.

Vortan’s breathing roughened slightly through the transmission.

“What does that mean?”

Another pause.

Then Calder said quietly:

“It means Jack solved something before he died.”

The room seemed to contract around me.

Jack.

My father.

Darius’s hand found the back of my neck immediately.

Grounding.

Warm.

But even he looked unsettled now.

On the speakers, Vortan lowered his voice further.

“Can you replicate it?”

Calder laughed suddenly.

The sound hit wrong immediately.

Not amusement.

Nerves.

Fracture.

“You still don’t understand.”

Rain battered the windows harder outside.

Every person in the room leaned toward the speakers instinctively.

Calder’s breathing sounded uneven now.

Fear threading visibly through every word.

“We were never trying to create her.”

Silence.

Then Vortan:

“What?”

My pulse thudded once hard beneath my ribs.

Calder swallowed audibly.

“The hybrid project was containment research first. We wanted biological weapons later.” His voice tightened. “But Jack… Jack was trying to stabilize something else.”

The room went completely still.

Darius’s fingers tightened slightly against my neck.

“What something else?” Vortan snapped.

And then

Calder whispered:

“Him.”

Every instinct in my body screamed.

The room chilled instantly.

Not physically.

Something deeper.

Vortan sounded confused now.

“What are you talking about?”

Static distorted part of Calder’s answer.

“…should never have survived…”

Then clearer

“…the Architect .”

Fred looked sharply toward the transmission monitor.

“What the hell…”

Calder’s breathing became ragged.

Actually ragged.

Not the calm voice of a scientist protecting his research.

This sounded like a man hiding from a nightmare.

“You need to disappear,” Calder hissed suddenly. “Right now.”

Vortan’s voice hardened immediately.

“I am disappearing.”

“No.” Calder sounded almost frantic now. “You don’t understand, you’re a liability now that he got what he wanted ”

The transmission cut abruptly afterward.

Static exploded violently through the speakers before the signal died completely.

No one moved.

Rain hammered outside.

The war room stood frozen in absolute silence.