Reborn to Love Mr. Right – Episode 62
Hayden described the recovered memory before pain medication blurred it. He had held a surgical blade beside the continuity chamber while Arianna bled across her wedding dress. He could not remember whether he caused the wound.
Arianna listened from the other side of the hospital room. Fear entered without erasing trust. She told him they would treat the memory as evidence requiring context, not a verdict.
The scan showed no permanent injury, but doctors warned against further exposure to archive frequencies. Hayden’s Guardian identity carried more intact sensory memory than anyone expected. Iteration Zero might be provoking recovery deliberately.
Investigators compared the blade from his memory with laboratory equipment. A sterile cutting tool was missing from an emergency medical kit. The kit also contained blood-clotting agents and sutures.
The detail suggested treatment rather than attack, though it proved nothing. Arianna focused on what could be verified instead of choosing the interpretation she preferred.
Donald found construction plans showing a second camera behind the continuity chamber. Its film would capture the angle hidden from the first sequence. The camera box remained sealed inside a concrete wall.
Opening it required damaging the chamber, which Iteration Zero warned would erase her. Arianna authorized the work. An identity that demanded preservation over truth had already answered part of the moral question.
Technicians cut through the wall and recovered the camera. Its reel showed Iteration Zero inserting one master key while Hayden tried to stop the activation. A power surge threw her against broken glass.
The wound came from the console, not Hayden. He used the surgical blade to cut fabric away and stop the bleeding. When she fought him to reach the second key, he restrained her wrists long enough to close the injury.
The footage cleared him of the physical attack, but it did not resolve the accusation of betrayal. Hayden had refused her chosen reset and disabled the chamber while she begged him to continue.
Arianna asked what happened afterward. The reel ended with Hayden carrying the injured woman from the laboratory. Iteration Zero’s later fate remained hidden.
Hayden recovered another fragment: Donald had already died in that timeline, and Victor controlled both companies. Arianna believed resetting was the only way to save everyone. Hayden believed another reset might erase her completely.
Neither choice had offered certainty. Their conflict was not between love and betrayal but between two forms of fear. Iteration Zero preserved only the version that justified her anger.
The older Arianna interrupted every screen in the laboratory. She accused the present version of accepting Hayden’s interpretation because it protected romance. “He chose the world over us,” she said.
Present Arianna replied that Hayden chose a living person over a desired outcome. She might disagree with him, but refusal was not ownership when both master keys required consent.
Iteration Zero released another memory. Hayden signed documents declaring Arianna mentally incompetent and transferred her Taylor voting rights to himself. The papers appeared authentic.
Donald’s attorneys found the same documents inside the forgotten timeline records. Hayden had used emergency guardianship after the laboratory injury. For six months, he controlled both Taylor and Scott assets.
Hayden did not defend the decision before reviewing its consequences. Authority obtained for protection could still become abuse. He asked investigators to reconstruct every transaction he approved.
The first records showed him selling Arianna’s personal estate and closing her access to company accounts. The pattern resembled Derek’s takeover closely enough to make Arianna’s stomach tighten.
Then one hidden transfer appeared: every sold asset had moved into a trust bearing Arianna’s sole future signature, inaccessible to Hayden. He had stripped her visible wealth to hide it from Victor.