Reborn to Love Mr. Right – Episode 37
Hayden’s father had left the tracker behind deliberately. Security footage showed him receiving a call before entering the car, then dismissing two guards and changing the route himself. Whoever contacted him knew what could make the chairman abandon protocol.
Scott Global traced the call to a recording of Hayden’s late mother. The voice claimed evidence existed proving she survived the crash for several hours and asked her husband to bring the master key alone. Grief had opened the door that threats could not. The recording even reproduced the pause she once used before saying her husband’s name.
Hayden blamed himself for giving his father the key, but Arianna refused to let responsibility settle where manipulation placed it. The chairman had made a dangerous choice; the person exploiting his loss still owned the deception.
The convoy’s last camera image came from North Road. That route connected the repair shop, refinery, and old Scott research properties, forming the physical spine of Victor’s network. Police divided teams among six possible destinations.
Derek requested an emergency interview from federal custody when news of the chairman’s disappearance reached him. His attorney said he recognized the recorded message and could identify where it originated. Arianna suspected another bargain, but time made listening necessary.
Behind reinforced glass, Derek looked diminished without expensive clothes or an audience. His future memories had begun developing gaps since Donald and Hayden survived. He could still recall outcomes, but the paths leading to them were disappearing. Each changed event removed another piece of the identity he had built around winning.
He identified the voice recording as part of Victor’s original archive tests. Hayden’s mother had dictated research notes in a lakeside communications station north of the city. Victor kept every recording after her death. Nothing personal remained sacred once he decided human grief was useful data.
Derek claimed he visited the station in the first future with Victor. It housed a transmitter capable of sending archive packets without public networks. The master key would allow someone to reconnect Witness directly and stop relying on fragmented files. A stable connection could reveal everything the future sender had deliberately withheld.
Arianna asked why he was helping. Derek admitted Victor intended to erase his memories once the experiment succeeded. Whether that threat was scientifically possible mattered less than Derek’s fear of losing the only advantage he had left.
“I remember owning everything,” he said. “If those memories disappear, what was the point of coming back?” Arianna answered that a second life was never a guarantee of restored possessions. It was a chance to choose differently, which he had wasted.
Hayden ended the interview and sent the station coordinates to police. Derek called after Arianna, warning that future Ivy worked with Hayden after Arianna’s death. The archive packets existed because the two of them spent years trying to prove her murder.
The revelation explained why Witness knew Hayden so well. In the first future, grief had connected him to the woman whose testimony imprisoned Derek. Their alliance had built the evidence now crossing backward.
Police reached the lakeside station and found Hayden’s father tied inside the broadcast room. The evidence case rested on a console, still sealed. No kidnapper remained, suggesting the goal had been forcing him to deliver the key rather than harming him. A speaker continued playing his wife’s voice after officers cut the ropes.
Hayden freed his father while technicians examined the equipment. The chairman admitted the recording had not merely used his wife’s voice. It repeated a private phrase she spoke on the night Hayden was born, something Victor should never have possessed.
The station archive contained personal recordings taken from the Scott home. Evelyn had allowed Victor to install surveillance while claiming the devices protected the family. Hayden’s childhood had been another data source in their experiment.
Arianna opened the evidence case. The master key appeared untouched, but its internal seal had been pierced by a microscopic probe. Someone had copied its contents while the chairman followed the recorded instructions.
The transmitter activated before technicians could disconnect it. A connection request appeared from Witness-I.R., accompanied by a warning that refusing would permanently erase every future packet. Accepting could expose the entire present-day archive to whoever waited beyond it.
Hayden’s father wanted the system destroyed. Ivy asked them to connect, believing her future self had already saved multiple lives. Arianna understood both fears: the archive had protected them and manipulated them with equal precision.
She authorized a limited connection through an isolated terminal. The screen filled with static before older Ivy appeared. Her scar was fresh, and blood darkened the collar of her shirt.
“Arianna, if you can hear me, the timeline is collapsing around this room,” future Ivy said. “You have forty-eight hours to stop Victor from turning graduation into the event that sends you back again.”