There was screaming now.
Screaming and confusion.
Fallon's face, once calm and controlled, twisted into fury as the video clips kept rolling. Her own voice sounded threatening, mocking, unfiltered blaring through the ballroom speakers. Teachers stared in shock. Parents, some who had supported Providence quietly slipped out of the crowd.
One by one, the students' tablets, watches, and phones lit up with a single message:
"You are not a pawn. You are the revolution."
Amara's hands trembled. "This wasn't us."
"No," Toni whispered, "this is bigger. Someone else hacked Providence."
"Someone inside," Adrian added, stepping to their side. "Someone powerful enough to flip the whole system."
The lights flickered again.
The screen went black.
Then: silence.
Until the glass behind the podium shattered.
Ina moved first fast, sharp, robotic.
She lunged at Amara.
Toni blocked with a chair.
Adrian pulled Amara back just in time, but Ina wasn't hesitating.
Fallon shouted something in a strange code language.
Ina froze.
Not from confusion, but from programming.
And in that second of pause, Amara reached for the emergency panel under the table near the stairs.
She punched in a code she saw once in her father's study.
A door opened under the stage.
A tunnel.
Toni grabbed Adrian.
Amara turned to the students.
"Now!"
Some of them still froze.
Others moved fast racing to the tunnel opening before the guards could block them.
---
Author's Note:
This underground tunnel system was designed as a government "panic escape route" during the school's original military phase. It was later adapted by Providence to move key subjects in and out unseen. Amara's father helped install it.
--
Once inside, it was dark and cold.
The lights buzzed above them. Long steel corridors stretched forward.
Amara, Toni, Adrian, and a few others led the way.
Behind them: chaos.
Screams. Gunshots.
But ahead answers.
"I knew this place existed," Amara said. "My father mentioned 'the skeleton of the school.'"
Toni nodded. "Then we're walking through the bones."
They came to a locked gate.
Adrian found the fingerprint scanner.
"No way this still works."
But he pressed his thumb.
Click.
The gate slid open.
Amara blinked in shock. "Wait..."
The corridor ahead wasn't dusty or abandoned.
It was clean.
Well-lit.
And full of rooms with glass walls.
Each room had a label: Candidate X, Candidate S, Project Rebirth, Project Silence, Data Pool: Memories.
Toni stepped forward, stunned.
"These aren't students. These are... copies."
One glass chamber flickered to life.
Inside it, a girl that looked exactly like Toni.
Same face. Same body. But her eyes were silver.
"Is that—?" Amara started.
Toni whispered, "They cloned me."
---
Behind them, the sound of boots echoed down the tunnel.
Fallon was coming.
And this time, she wasn't alone.
But up ahead, another chamber opened.
And someone stepped out.
Older.
Scar across her cheek.
Eyes familiar.
It was the original founder of the Providence Protocols.
She looked straight at Amara.
"Welcome to the real Providence. You're late."
---
End of Chapter 39