Chapter 308 - 307: She Is the One Who Killed Cecilia Caldwell!

Chapter 308: Chapter 307: She Is the One Who Killed Cecilia Caldwell!

"Be careful, he’s very smart," Simon continued to warn us, looking quite neurotic.

I gave a perfunctory nod and rubbed Adrian’s head. "Adrian, listen to Mommy. We’re going to hide behind the door. You run out and lure the people outside in."

Adrian nodded and obediently ran outward.

"Adrian..." Ace had noticed Adrian and Stella early on. She frowned and questioned me, "Theoretically speaking, they are my children."

Ace had clearly guessed that the people from The Genetics Organization used the fertilized eggs of Sebastian Lancaster and Cecilia Caldwell to cultivate the second generation of experimental subjects.

"You’re overthinking it. They are Cecilia and Asher’s children." I shielded Stella behind me.

Stella and Adrian had actually noticed Ace early on too. She looked exactly like their mother, but they knew she wasn’t.

"If we’re talking about genetic similarity, Cecilia and I are a perfect one-to-one replica," Ace said, crouching down next to Stella. "Come to Mommy. She’s not your mommy..."

Stella shook her head, hiding behind me, and whispered, "She is Mommy."

Ace frowned. She seemed unable to understand why the two children would recognize me as their mother when she was clearly the one who looked more like Cecilia.

"I suggest you back off. Now is not the time to fight me for the children," I warned Ace.

Ace scoffed coldly, stood up, and retreated behind Killian Lancaster.

Julian Fletcher, meanwhile, had clearly kept his eyes fixed on Stella the whole time. After all, that was Cecilia’s child with someone else. Even if she was an experimental subject, she still reminded him of the unborn child Cecilia had carried in her womb. I could see the remorse, helplessness, and despair in his eyes.

Unfortunately, what’s lost is lost. What good does regret do? There is no such thing as a perfectly mended mirror; no matter how you piece a broken mirror back together, the cracks will always remain.

Outside the door, Adrian ran out. Upon seeing the masked person, he quickly darted back.

The masked person, having just finished arguing with Owen Foster and preparing to leave, saw Adrian running out with his hands tied behind his back and instinctively reached out to grab him. Since he was just a child, most people would assume he posed no threat.

However, just as the masked figure reached the doorway, Gigi deliberately knocked something over inside the room, creating a loud clatter.

Our gazes instantly locked onto Gigi. She looked back at us with an innocent, nervous, and frightened expression. This proved one thing: there was something wrong with Gigi.

Hearing the commotion, the masked person at the door stopped in their tracks, instantly on high alert. Just as they were about to call for backup, I quickly rushed out and kicked them away, pinning them against the wall to forcibly tear off their disguise and see who it really was.

But the person suddenly laughed, the sound eerie and bizarre.

"Stop playing games. Let me see who you really are." A few of us stepped forward to pin them down, and I reached up to tear off the silicone mask.

The moment my fingers touched the mask on their face, people from The Resistance arrived, aiming their guns at us.

"Nobody move, or we’ll kill him!" I quickly trapped the masked person in front of me, wrapping my arm tightly around his neck.

The gunmen exchanged glances.

Suddenly, the person trapped in my grasp struck. Pulling a knife from out of nowhere, he thrust it toward my abdomen. I instinctively grabbed his wrist, our eyes meeting.

Those eyes... they were eerily familiar.

"Retreat!" I shouted, telling the others to run first. Julian Fletcher stepped forward to help me but was nearly hit when the gunmen opened fire. "Grab the kids and go!" I yelled at him.

He hesitated for a few seconds before scooping up the two little ones and fleeing quickly.

"Mommy..."

"Cece!!"

Adrian and Madeline Quinn called out to me anxiously.

"Zeke Shaw! Get them out of here!" I shouted as I wrestled with the masked person, urging them to run.

Seeing that the situation was turning dire, Simon led everyone out through the secret passage he had found.

Taking advantage of the masked person’s struggle, I tore open his sleeve. Beneath the baggy cargo clothes was, sure enough, a slender, frail arm. On the inner side of the arm was the red birthmark I had been looking for.

In that instant, my breath caught in my throat. It was him... It really was.

No, to be exact, it was *her*.

Seeing that I had bought everyone enough time to escape, I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender.

The masked figure in front of me pressed the mask tightly against her face. I had thought she was wearing a standard mask, but it turned out to be the kind of adhesive appliance used in special effects makeup. In the rush, there was no way to simply peel it off. She had used makeup techniques to transform herself into a man.

How did I know she was a woman? When I was holding her hostage just now, I felt her neck. The Adam’s apple was fake.

It was a dead giveaway. She was definitely a woman disguised as a man.

Moreover, suddenly everything made sense. Because she was a woman—slender, physically weaker, and lacking a man’s brute strength—when she orchestrated the serial murders, she manipulated killers into killing other killers. She used the perpetrators to eliminate the victims. She had no reverence for life. She was utterly apathetic, treating human lives as worthless as dirt.

"You’re the one who killed Cecilia..." I said, holding my hands up and staring at the person before me. "You killed her..."

Cecilia’s memories from right before her death perfectly merged with the person standing in front of me. Under the effects of the drugs, Cecilia had slowly slipped into a coma. In her struggle, she had scratched her attacker’s arm and seen that red birthmark...

Now I finally understood why this person hadn’t just killed me outright. Instead, she had drugged me, knocked me out, and placed me inside a glass display cabinet. She had a sick, twisted desire to turn me into an art piece to provoke everyone. Her so-called "most perfect masterpiece."

Her fake Adam’s apple had a voice-altering magnetic patch attached to it. The voice she produced was raspy and bizarre, like someone with damaged vocal cords. That was why, in the beginning, I had suspected Asher, and even suspected Charlie who was already dead, but I had never once suspected that the culprit was a woman.

Furthermore, during the scuffle just now, I noticed that the soles of her shoes were very thick. She was wearing height-increasing insoles, deliberately making herself taller. For a woman, she wasn’t short—probably around five foot seven. Add the interior and exterior lifts, and she truly looked like a man who was around five foot ten. Therefore, from the very beginning, none of us had ever considered the possibility of a female suspect.

"You’re a woman... and you went through all this trouble to use makeup and disguise yourself. You were afraid we’d recognize you, weren’t you? You must be someone we know well. Let me guess who you are..." I watched her warily, trying my hardest to figure out her identity. She was the true mastermind hiding behind the serial murders.

"It was me who killed her," the masked woman laughed eerily, snatching a gun from her subordinate and aiming it at me. "Silvia Lynch, you know too much..."

"If you kill her, do you think Sebastian Lancaster will obediently work for us? If he really is the CEO of Astraeus Group... it would be utterly detrimental to our goals. Why make such a powerful enemy?" Just as she was about to fire, Owen Foster ran over and eyed the masked woman with vigilance.

The masked woman was clearly hesitating as well; she understood my value.

"She won’t be able to guess your identity. She can’t die yet. She’s an important experimental subject for the organization, and a crucial chess piece for us. We need to use her to overthrow the organization..." Owen Foster reminded her again, approaching cautiously.

The masked woman let out a cold sneer and struck me hard with the butt of the rifle.

My vision went black, and I collapsed to the ground.

"Those people’s hands are mostly healed. It won’t affect the collection of their fingerprints and palm prints anymore," I heard Owen Foster say in my dazed state.

"Excellent. Then let’s see if Sebastian Lancaster is truly the CEO of Astraeus Group..." the masked woman laughed bizarrely. As if that wasn’t enough to vent her hatred, she kicked me viciously in the stomach.

On the verge of losing consciousness, I let out a muffled groan.

She hated me... Her hatred for me was completely undisguised. I wondered who it could be.