Chapter 28 up

Chapter 28 up
The sound of the helicopter blades slicing through the morning air of Jakarta sounded like a dying heartbeat in Felicia's ears. Inside the cramped cabin, smelling of hydraulic fluid and ozone, she lay with her body still encased in the scorched remnants of the Garuda armor. Andre sat beside her, gripping her hand with a tremor he couldn't hide, while Elena sat hunched in the corner with three glowing laptops, her face deathly pale in the blue light of the monitors.
Felicia felt no physical pain—her nerves had been numbed by the massive system overload from the virus and the EMP blast. But inside her mind, there was something far more agonizing: the ruins of the mental fortress she had built over two decades.
"We’re almost at the safe coordinates," Elena’s voice broke the silence. "General Susilo is waiting in an underground bunker near Bogor. Felicia, I managed to pull the last of the data from the Architect’s control center before the tower blew. There was one folder that wasn't encrypted by the Obsidian code. It was labeled 'Fali'."
Felicia turned her face away from the window. "Fali... my mother’s nickname for me."
"It’s not a war plan," Elena continued, her voice dropping to a whisper. "These are sensory memory recordings. Felicia, you have to see this. It’s the final piece that explains why your mother did what she did."
Elena leaned forward and placed a pair of augmented reality (AR) goggles over Felicia’s bruised face. Andre moved to stop her, worried that Felicia's mental state would shatter completely, but Felicia gave a small, firm nod. She needed the truth, no matter how sharp the blade that would pierce her soul.
The world around Felicia vanished. Suddenly, she was no longer in the vibrating helicopter. She was in a sterile, white laboratory. The timestamp indicated twenty years ago.
Through the perspective of a hidden camera, Felicia saw the figure of Ratna, her mother. Ratna looked much younger, but her eyes carried a weariness that Felicia as a child had never noticed. Ratna stood before a large incubation tube. Inside, a five-year-old girl was sleeping with thin wires attached to her scalp.
The child was Felicia.
"Subject 01 shows a 92% neural synchronization," a man's voice echoed from the background. It was the voice of her father—The Architect. "Incredible, Ratna. She is our masterpiece. The Garuda Protocol will be the bridge for human evolution through her."
Ratna didn't respond with pride. Instead, she looked horrified. "She is not a subject, Ibrahim. She is our daughter. You are dissecting her mind as if she were nothing more than lines of code."
"I am giving her immortality!" Ibrahim’s voice rose. "The world out there is rotting, Ratna. War, famine, hate. With Garuda, we can erase all of it. One unified mind, no secrets, no betrayal. Felicia will be the queen of a peaceful new world."
The recording jumped to a different date. This time, in a dimly lit study. Ratna was speaking to a man in a military uniform—a young General Susilo.
"I can't let him do it, Susilo," Ratna whispered desperately. "Ibrahim has gone mad. He plans to activate the global transmission in two weeks. He’ll use Felicia as the primary transmitter, but the process will erase her original personality. She’ll be a hollow shell containing nothing but algorithms."
"So what is your plan, Ratna?" Susilo asked.
"I will steal the armor prototype and the core memory. I’ll hide Felicia in the orphanage where I was raised. But Ibrahim will track her. He’ll never stop searching for his 'asset'."
Ratna paused, tears falling down her cheeks. "There is only one way to break his digital trail. I have to trigger an emotional spike so massive that it burns out the internal circuits in her brain, making her untraceable by Obsidian’s satellites. I have to make her hate me. I have to make her feel like she’s lost everything."
The scene shifted one last time. This was the night of the orphanage fire.
Felicia saw her younger self cowering in the corner of a smoke-filled room. She saw Ratna enter with a torch in her hand. The face that Felicia had remembered for twenty years as cold and murderous was, in this recording, a mask of suppressed agony.
"Mommy... why?" little Felicia cried.
Ratna didn't answer. She threw the torch onto a pile of mattresses. In the recording, the camera caught something Felicia hadn't seen that night. As Ratna turned to leave, she reached into her pocket and gripped a black circle necklace—the symbol Felicia had always viewed as a mark of betrayal. On the back of the pendant, tiny letters were engraved: To protect you, I must become the monster.
The recording ended with the sound of explosions and screams. Felicia’s vision returned to the helicopter cabin.
She pulled off the AR goggles with trembling hands. Tears flowed freely, soaking her oxygen mask. For twenty years, the fuel of her life had been revenge. She had hated the people who burned her orphanage, she had hated her mother for being "weak," and she had hated her father for becoming a monster.
Now she realized a far more bitter truth: Her mother hadn't burned the orphanage to kill her, but to erase her from her father’s radar. Ratna had sacrificed her own soul—and her daughter’s precious memories—just to give Felicia a single chance to live as a human, not a tool.
"Felicia? Are you okay?" Andre asked anxiously.
Felicia took a deep breath, a raspy voice emerging from her throat. "My mother... she didn't betray me. She saved me in the most cruel way a mother could imagine."
"And now?" Elena asked softly. "The Architect has fallen, but the data I saw shows that the protocol doesn't stop just because he’s gone. There’s a second 'Node' that activated automatically in a hidden location. If we don't shut it down, the global transmission will still happen within 24 hours."
"Where is the location?" Felicia asked, her eyes flashing with a new, purer determination. No longer driven by blind rage, but by the desire to honor her mother’s sacrifice.
"In the heart of Jakarta," Elena answered, showing a digital map. "Beneath the National Monument (Monas). Obsidian built a subterranean facility there decades ago, using government infrastructure projects as a cover."
"General Susilo has remnant forces that can help us," Andre added. "But they can only provide a surface diversion. To get to the server core, you have to go in yourself."
Felicia looked down at her metal-encased hands. Her Garuda armor was a wreck, but she could feel the tiny circuits beneath her skin still pulsing. Her mother’s legacy—and her father’s curse—were still inside her.
"Prepare what's left of our gear," Felicia commanded. "Andre, I need you to coordinate the diversionary attack with the General. Elena, you need to hack into the Monas system and disable their laser sensors."
"But Felicia, your body won't survive another battle," Andre protested. "The EMP damaged your nervous system."
"My body might be broken, Andre," Felicia stood up with great effort, aided by the partially functional hydraulics of the suit. "But my mind is clearer than ever. My mother burned my world so I could survive. Now, I’m going to burn Obsidian’s world so no other child has to feel what I felt."
The helicopter began to bank toward a hidden valley at the foot of Mount Salak. Below, rows of military trucks and armed personnel were ready to move. General Susilo stood in the center of the clearing, awaiting the arrival of the weapon that had finally found its soul.
Felicia looked out the window toward the distant lights of Jakarta. Beneath those towering buildings, a digital monster was preparing to swallow the free will of millions.
She reached into her tactical pocket and pulled out the necklace she had found in the Old City bunker. She gripped it tight, feeling the cold metal bite into her palm.
"It’s not over yet, Mother," she whispered. "I’m going to finish what you started. I may be his masterpiece, but I will be the Architect's undoing."
As the helicopter landed, dust swirled, obscuring the view. Felicia stepped out with a heavy but steady stride. In front of her lay the final war. A war not for power, not for blood debts, but to decide if humanity would remain masters of their own minds, or merely pawins in a design created by the architects of hate.
"Everyone, get ready!" Andre shouted to the General's troops. "We move on Jakarta in one hour!"