His Private Hell - Chapter 28: Chapter 28

For six days, Darcie didn’t move.
Eella kept vigil by her side in the frozen shell of the Greenland lab, her fingers laced with Darcie’s despite the cold turning her skin pale.
The others came and went—Walter updating code, Astrid taking guard shifts, Ollie and Garrison debating escape routes. But Eella didn’t leave.
Because Darcie’s body was warm.
And that meant something was still burning inside her.
On the seventh night, her eyes opened.
Not all at once—first a flutter, then a flash of silver light beneath lashes.
Eella jerked upright. “Darcie?”
Darcie blinked slowly, like rebooting.
“Where am I?”
“Safe,” Eella whispered, choking on the word. “You’re safe.”
Darcie looked at their joined hands, then at her own skin—no longer glowing, but faint silver veins still traced her forearms like lightning scars.
“I feel…” She paused. “Quiet.”
Eella touched her cheek. “You looped the core. You broke it.”
Darcie nodded. “Then why do I still hear the static?”
Before Eella could answer, the lights flickered.
The ground vibrated.
And somewhere above them, an aircraft engine roared.
Astrid’s voice crackled through the intercom. “We’ve got incoming.”
Darcie sat up. “Kozlov?”
“No,” Eella said. “Worse.”
⸻
The woman who stepped into the lab wore black armor laced with cobalt filaments.
Her face was half-machine, half-beauty. A brutal hybrid of science and seduction.
“Who the hell are you?” Astrid demanded, gun already drawn.
“I’m the failsafe,” the woman replied.
Darcie stepped forward.
“You’re Seraphina.”
The woman smiled.
“I’m impressed.”
Seraphina walked like she owned gravity. Behind her, two mech-soldiers carried canisters marked with the Lazarus insignia.
“I designed the Lazarus system for continuity. In case Nyx or any of her shadows failed, I would overwrite.”
“You’re a synthetic override,” Walter muttered.
“A successor,” Seraphina said. “And the system recognized its new hub last week.”
She looked at Darcie.
“You.”
Eella stepped in front of her. “You’re not taking her.”
Seraphina didn’t even blink. “She’s not yours. She’s code now. The human part’s incidental.”
Darcie met her gaze.
“No,” she said. “I chose to be the mirror. That means I can choose to break you too.”
Seraphina tilted her head. “You think you’re still in control?”
And then Darcie screamed.
Her knees hit the floor.
Silver flooded her veins again.
The Lazarus code was reactivating.
Eella dropped to her side. “What’s happening?!”
“She’s pushing the override,” Walter said. “Seraphina’s using the core against her.”
“I’m not,” Seraphina said sweetly. “She is. It’s already inside her. I’m just giving it a purpose.”
Darcie writhed, her back arching unnaturally. Her voice fractured into static.
“Get her out of here!” Astrid shouted, opening fire.
Seraphina deflected the bullets with a flick of her wrist, eyes glowing blue.
Walter screamed into the system core, trying to reboot the neural inhibitors.
Garrison dragged in the EMP rods.
But it was Darcie who ended it.
She stood.
Bleeding from her nose.
Pulsing with silver light.
And she smiled.
Not at Seraphina.
At Eella.
“I’m not the weapon.”
Her voice came in layers, distorted but clear.
“I’m the damn firewall.”
She shoved her palms forward.
The entire lab lit up.
The blast sent Seraphina crashing into the far wall, her mech guards disintegrating in the arc.
Darcie fell to one knee, chest heaving.
“Did I…win?” she whispered.
Eella ran to her. “You survived. That’s enough.”
But Seraphina’s voice echoed from the smoke.
“You’ve only delayed it.”
And she vanished.
Literally—molecular fade.
“Cloak tech,” Walter muttered. “She’s got access to spectrum-phase travel.”
Astrid cursed. “So what now?”
Darcie looked at them, her face pale and wet with blood.
“Now… we go hunting.”
⸻
The team moved underground—literally.
They relocated to an old NATO command bunker buried beneath Rome. Hidden beneath catacombs, the tunnels were cold and damp, but safe—for now.
Darcie stayed in isolation.
She was stable, but only barely. The core inside her was still active, trying to recompile.
Walter worked on designing a suppression tether.
Eella refused to be anywhere but at Darcie’s side.
She watched the woman she loved flicker between pain and steel, softness and danger.
One night, Darcie pulled her close.
Their breaths shared.
Bodies electric.
“I feel it,” Darcie whispered against Eella’s lips. “Every time I touch you, it tries to rewrite the moment.”
Eella touched her jaw. “Don’t let it. Fight it.”
“I am,” Darcie murmured. “But if I lose…”
“You won’t.”
And then they kissed.
Longer this time.
Rawer.
Their clothes peeled away, not out of lust—but survival.
Because in the middle of hell, they needed something human to cling to.
They made love slowly, reverently.
Darcie’s hands trembled with restraint.
Eella’s mouth traced each scar, each flickering vein, whispering truths between kisses.
“I love you,” Darcie said, as her back arched.
“I know,” Eella breathed, tears in her eyes. “And that’s why you’ll live.”
Their bodies moved like synced code.
A rhythm only two broken people could understand.
And when Darcie climaxed, the power flared beneath her skin—but didn’t overtake her.
Eella kissed her until the light dimmed again.
Until Darcie was just…Darcie.
Breathing.
Real.
And holding on.
⸻
The next morning, Walter presented his prototype: a neural net laced with memory imprints from Darcie’s past.
“If we can stabilize her identity through emotional anchors,” he explained, “the system won’t overwrite her. It’ll defer.”
“Like building a moral operating system,” Garrison muttered.
“Exactly.”
But there was one problem.
They’d need Seraphina’s data core to execute the full override.
Which meant one thing.
A trap.
Darcie volunteered to be the bait.
“You’ll never survive a direct sync,” Walter warned.
Darcie smiled faintly.
“Then we better make sure she’s too distracted to finish it.”
Eella didn’t argue.
She suited up.
And kissed her one more time before the fall.