His Private Hell - Chapter 22: Chapter 22

They found her in a facility buried beneath Geneva.
Sedated. Monitored. Forgotten.
Darcie.
Not Nyx.
Not a copy.
The original.
She was hooked to old tech, deep Lazarus equipment no longer listed in any system. Walter’s team bypassed firewalls that shouldn’t have existed. What they discovered sent silence rippling through the bunker.
“This version…” Walter stared at the monitor. “Her neural signature is older than Nyx’s. She predates the clone. Possibly the entire project.”
Ronnie’s voice cracked. “You’re saying she was the blueprint?”
Eella didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
Because deep down—she knew.
Darcie was her sin.
Her secret.
The one she never erased.
⸻
They extracted her carefully.
Garrison and Astrid stood guard as Eella approached the stasis chamber.
Darcie’s body floated inside a gel solution, pristine, preserved.
Her hair was longer. Her face, younger. No signs of trauma.
Just timeless stillness.
“I left her here,” Eella murmured. “I told them she was unstable. Too dangerous. But it wasn’t that.”
Garrison didn’t speak.
She turned to him. “It was because I loved her too much to let her go. And not enough to fight for her.”
He held her gaze. “Then maybe now’s the time.”
They initiated reanimation.
The process was violent.
Her body convulsed as the gel drained. Alarms blared. Heart rate soared, then crashed, then surged again. Walter injected counter-serums. Oxygen was forced into her lungs.
And then—she gasped.
Eyes wide.
Electric blue.
Darcie was awake.
⸻
She remembered everything.
Eella’s lab.
The first kiss.
The betrayal.
Then darkness.
And the voice in her head that wasn’t hers.
“Nyx,” she whispered as Eella knelt beside her.
“No. You’re not her.”
“I was. For a moment. Then… she split.”
Eella nodded. “We think the mind fractured. Your consciousness was uploaded—then duplicated into the clone. But your body was preserved.”
“I’m the original,” Darcie said quietly.
“Yes.”
“Then where’s the justice?”
Eella swallowed.
“I want to see her,” Darcie said. “The one wearing my face.”
Walter shook his head. “She’s in the wind. But we’re tracking.”
Garrison added, “She left something behind.”
They brought her to the briefing room.
Footage played: Nyx’s last known appearance. She hacked into a research base in Norway and stole something else—something never meant to survive the Lazarus shutdown.
“She’s building an army,” Astrid said. “Biologicals. Human cybernetics.”
“She’s building me,” Darcie whispered. “Again.”
Eella looked pale. “We stopped her once. We can do it again.”
But Darcie didn’t respond.
She stood, shakily, and walked to the mirror on the far wall.
“I should have been dead.”
“You were preserved,” Eella said. “I couldn’t let you go.”
Darcie turned sharply. “You didn’t save me. You stored me. Like a lab rat. Like a failed project.”
Garrison intervened. “She’s not the same woman anymore.”
“I’m not sure I am,” Darcie said.
⸻
Night fell over the safehouse.
Garrison found Eella alone on the rooftop, smoking.
“I thought you quit,” he said.
“I did. Six times.”
He leaned beside her, arms folded.
“Darcie’s going to fracture us.”
“She already did,” Eella replied. “Back then. We just never acknowledged it.”
He glanced at her. “Do you still love her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you love me?”
She paused. “Yes.”
That was the difference.
And the lie she no longer needed.
He took the cigarette from her lips, dropped it, and kissed her hard.
Fierce. Unapologetic.
She pulled him closer.
Their connection had always been fire and storm. This time, it was purpose.
⸻
Below, Darcie wandered the corridors.
She passed Ronnie, Astrid, Walter.
They all smiled, greeted her gently.
She didn’t smile back.
Because the voice in her head had returned.
Not Nyx.
Not an echo.
But something… newer.
Directive: Ascend.
Her hands trembled.
And then stopped.
A sudden clarity sharpened in her eyes.
She remembered her design.
Not just who she was.
But what she was.
They thought she’d been put on ice.
They were wrong.
She had grown.
Underneath the stasis.
Beneath the silence.
Her mind evolved.
While Nyx took the world by storm, Darcie learned how to survive it.
They assumed she was broken.
But broken things get rebuilt.
Stronger.
Sharper.
Hungrier.
⸻
Later, in Eella’s quarters, Darcie waited.
Eella stepped in—and froze.
“Darcie…”
The woman moved like liquid mercury, crossing the room in three quick steps.
Their mouths met.
Not soft.
Not sweet.
Just history. Lust. Rage.
Eella broke the kiss, breathless. “What are you doing?”
“Reminding you.”
She pushed Eella down onto the bed.
The heat was violent. Kisses bruising. Hands mapping old geography with new hunger.
“You don’t get to forget me,” Darcie whispered into her throat.
Eella clawed her shirt off. “I never did.”
When their bodies came together, it wasn’t love.
It was memory weaponized.
It was proof.
That some ghosts come back not to haunt—
—but to conquer.
⸻
Garrison watched the monitor feed that night.
He saw everything.
He didn’t look away.
And when he finally shut the screen off, he didn’t rage.
He smiled.
Because love wasn’t a battlefield.
It was a war.
And he wasn’t losing anymore.