Ms. CEO’s Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death – Episode 56
The task force intercepted the medical ship at dawn. Its crew surrendered without resistance, claiming Evelyn had been removed days earlier. Vale had used the vessel to keep investigators chasing a moving shadow.
Scarlett found the bracelet’s missing blue bead beneath a treatment chair. A microscopic inscription carried one word: Lighthouse. Evelyn expected her daughter to reach this room.
The ship’s server contained access logs for an abandoned ocean-monitoring station. It had once collected weather data for Asterion’s earliest navigation research. Vale purchased it through a shell foundation after Evelyn’s disappearance.
Investigators entered the station remotely before risking personnel. Beneath its empty surface buildings lay a laboratory powered by geothermal generators. It could operate unseen for decades.
The first recovered files revealed Lighthouse’s original goal. Evelyn wanted emergency systems to anticipate storms, infrastructure failures, and disease outbreaks. Prediction was meant to move help before disaster arrived.
Vale expanded the input from events to people. He ranked individuals by the possibility that they might resist governments, corporations, or his own authority. Prevention became punishment without an act.
Connor’s childhood, military record, and choices under Vale filled thousands of pages. Lighthouse had predicted his rebellion years before it happened. Vale kept training him because conflict improved the model.
Scarlett’s profile began when she was seven. Her refusal to accept Lynn as family raised her threat score. Her education, inheritance, and search for Connor increased it further.
Summer’s encrypted file sat above every other profile. The system called her a convergence subject because Evelyn’s civilian biometrics and Connor’s founder credentials existed in her DNA. Vale intended to use inheritance as authorization.
Connor wanted Summer moved immediately. Scarlett agreed to strengthen security but rejected disappearing into another secret shelter. Isolation would confirm Lighthouse’s prediction and teach Summer that her existence caused danger.
They explained the problem without technical horror. Bad people wanted to treat her family connection like a password. Summer answered that she was a person, not a password.
Connor recorded the sentence in her watch. It became the foundation of their security plan: no system would accept a child’s involuntary biology as consent. Cypher began coding that principle into Constellation.
Dr. Mara Chen identified another file hidden inside Lighthouse. Evelyn had embedded a children’s song into its navigation table. Scarlett recognized the melody immediately.
Evelyn used to sing about seven stars, a sleeping moon, and a lighthouse beneath the snow. Each verse contained a direction and distance. The supposed lullaby was an escape map.
The map ended at a decommissioned weather station on an island near the Arctic Circle. Vale’s shell companies supplied it through research flights. No official personnel had visited in nine years.
International authorities approved a reconnaissance mission. Connor’s restrictions prevented him from traveling, but new evidence also proved Vale had framed him during the drone attack. A court scheduled an emergency review.
Vale anticipated the move. Lighthouse issued predictions that the island team would cause an environmental disaster. Several governments withdrew aircraft support rather than risk public blame.
Richard arranged civilian transport under full disclosure. He did not conceal the funding or demand command. The task force accepted after independent inspectors cleared the aircraft.
Scarlett prepared to follow the map her mother had hidden inside a lullaby. Connor promised to join only if the court permitted it. Neither would turn love into permission to abandon their principles.
As the aircraft headed north, Lighthouse unlocked Summer’s file by itself. A red projection appeared over the Arctic station: CONVERGENCE SUBJECT REQUIRED BEFORE FINAL ACTIVATION.