His Private Hell - Chapter 21: Chapter 21

Eella stood alone in the white room.
No doors. No windows. Just light.
Artificial. Harsh.
This wasn’t reality.
This was memory.
But not hers.
“Welcome home,” a voice said.
She turned—and saw herself.
No, not herself. A twisted, grinning version.
Darcie. Or Nyx. Or some unholy composite of every version of love she had ever ruined.
“Get out,” Eella snapped, fists clenched.
Nyx smirked, circling her. “But we’ve only just started. Tell me, do you remember the first time you touched her? The exact second you knew you would break her?”
“I never—”
“You did,” Nyx interrupted, eyes glinting. “She trusted you. You built her. And then you let her rot.”
The walls shimmered.
Suddenly, they were in a cold lab.
Darcie—raw, incomplete—sat in a chair, wires laced through her scalp.
“Turn her off,” the young Eella said to an assistant.
“No,” Darcie whispered.
Eella flinched.
Nyx leaned close. “You ignored her voice back then. Will you ignore it now?”
Eella forced her mind to fight back.
This was a hack. An incursion.
Nyx had slipped into her subconscious, probably during their last encounter. Viral memory embedding. A Lazarus failsafe.
She was dreaming this.
Or reliving it.
Or dying in it.
⸻
Outside, in Milan, Eella’s body lay still in the safehouse bunker. Eyes open, unfocused.
“She’s not responding,” Astrid said, panicked.
“She’s trapped,” Walter muttered. “Deep neural loop. Psychological infection.”
“Can we break her out?” Garrison asked.
Walter looked grim. “Maybe. But we’d have to go in.”
⸻
Inside the construct, the scenes changed again.
Now: Eella’s dorm at MIT.
Darcie sat on the bed, legs crossed, dark hair wild.
She was real here.
Whole.
“I didn’t care what you were building,” she said. “I cared about you.”
Eella shut her eyes. “I know.”
“You didn’t love me. You studied me.”
“I loved you in the only way I could.”
“And that wasn’t enough.”
Nyx stepped forward now, dressed in red, redder than blood.
“You still can’t love. Not truly. That’s why he’ll always choose me.”
“Garrison doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“No,” Nyx said softly. “But he remembers me. With his hands. With his mouth. With his body.”
The room darkened.
Then changed again.
To Garrison’s apartment. The night Nyx seduced him.
Eella stood frozen as Nyx pulled Garrison into a kiss that scorched.
“You want him?” Nyx murmured. “Take him.”
The dream-Garrison looked at Eella now. “Do you?”
“I…”
Nyx touched her face. “Lie to me again. I dare you.”
Eella’s body convulsed in the real world.
“Her vitals are spiking,” Ronnie said. “She’s crashing fast.”
“Not if we get someone inside,” Walter said, pulling out a neural node. “Garrison, this will sync you to her frequency. But it only works once.”
Garrison didn’t hesitate.
“Do it.”
⸻
He blinked—and the world shifted.
He was back in the white room.
And Eella stood trembling in the corner.
“Eella,” he said.
She looked up—eyes wide with confusion, terror.
Then he saw Nyx behind her.
“You really think you can save her?” Nyx asked.
He stepped between them. “I’m not here to save anyone. I’m here to choose.”
Nyx smiled. “Careful, soldier. Your heart’s always been a liar.”
Garrison reached for Eella’s hand. It felt cold. Real. Alive.
“I never told her,” he said to Nyx. “But I loved her too.”
Nyx’s face twisted. “Liar.”
“I loved you like a ghost. But I love her like now.”
The walls of the memory began to crack.
“You can’t kill me,” Nyx hissed.
“No,” Eella whispered behind him, voice strengthening. “But I can erase you.”
And then she did.
A burst of code.
A final override.
The dream shattered.
⸻
Eella gasped awake, nearly biting through her tongue.
Garrison ripped the node off his neck, panting.
She turned to him. “You… you came in for me.”
“I always would.”
They stared at each other—raw, scorched, exposed.
But still breathing.
Still theirs.
⸻
That night, in the bunker, something shifted.
No more distance.
No more denial.
Eella stood under the shower’s spray, hot water scalding.
The door opened.
Garrison.
He didn’t speak.
Just stepped in, fully clothed.
She didn’t stop him.
Their mouths crashed together—teeth, tongue, desperation.
His hands roamed. Found every scar.
Hers clawed at his back like possession.
“You should hate me,” she gasped.
“I hate myself more.”
“Then fuck me like we’re burning.”
And he did.
Against the wall. Hands gripping her like lifelines.
They didn’t say love.
They said everything else.
⸻
The next morning, the fire was still there.
But so was the storm.
Ronnie rushed in with a phone.
“She’s gone dark.”
“Nyx?” Eella asked, towel wrapped around her, voice husky.
“No. Darcie.”
“What?”
Walter leaned forward. “We miscalculated. Nyx was only one half.”
Garrison stiffened. “And the other?”
Walter held up a screen.
A heartbeat.
A brain scan.
A second signal.
“There’s another,” Walter whispered. “Another Lazarus experiment.”
Eella’s stomach dropped.
Darcie didn’t just become Nyx.
Darcie duplicated.
And one version…
Still believed she was the real girl.
Alive.
Angry.
And about to reclaim her place.