His Private Hell - Chapter 29: Chapter 29

The plan was reckless.
Infiltrate a black-market tech bazaar outside Tangier where Seraphina’s stolen Lazarus core was rumored to be changing hands. Blend in. Find it. Steal it. Leave no trace.
But nothing ever went to plan when you were bait.
Darcie stood in the center of the roaring club, neon lights pulsing like a synthetic heartbeat. Her silver veins were hidden beneath a custom suit—black mesh laced with suppression nodes, a thin line of cold steel running along her spine.
She could feel it.
The pull.
The code inside her reacting to the proximity of the stolen core.
“I’ve got a signal,” Walter’s voice buzzed in her ear. “North quadrant, far wall. Data density matches Lazarus firmware.”
“Confirmed,” Astrid added. “Heat signature spiking. She’s here.”
Eella’s voice was calm but razor-sharp. “Stay close to me.”
Darcie didn’t look back, but she felt Eella’s presence like a magnet at her back.
“I always do,” Darcie whispered.
She moved through the crowd—glittering patrons, augmented dealers, women and men laced with chrome and malice. At the center, a woman in a midnight cloak stood alone, watching her like a spider sensing a tremble in the web.
Seraphina.
Darcie’s pulse jumped.
Her smile was slow, almost amused. “Come to surrender?”
“No,” Darcie said. “I came to finish this.”
Seraphina tapped a ring on her finger. Instantly, every screen around them flashed with Darcie’s image.
“Fugitive. Property of Lazarus Initiative. High-value weapon. Extract alive. Reward: unlimited.”
The room stilled.
Then chaos erupted.
Dozens of mercs turned toward Darcie at once.
Guns. Bolts. Restraint webs.
She didn’t hesitate.
Darcie launched herself into the air, using the momentum to grab a support beam and swing, flipping over the first wave. She landed hard and punched a merc straight through his exosuit. Sparks flew.
Eella was already moving, slicing a line through the chaos with a plasma blade.
“Get to the core!” she shouted.
Walter yelled through comms. “I’ve rerouted exit doors—west side, ten seconds!”
Astrid dropped an incendiary smoke bomb. Ollie and Garrison cut power to the crowd’s cyber optics.
Darcie made it to Seraphina, who stood calmly holding the glowing core in one hand.
“It’s already bonded to me,” Seraphina said. “Take it and you’ll destabilize again.”
Darcie stared at the woman who could have been her future.
“I’m done being controlled,” she said—and reached for the core.
The moment her fingers touched the casing, it burned.
Pain ripped through her body like a storm of fire and lightning.
Seraphina smiled. “You’ll die without it. Or worse—become me.”
Darcie held on.
Because this time, she wasn’t alone.
Eella tackled Seraphina from behind, dragging her off balance. The core slipped from her grip and rolled across the floor.
Darcie snatched it just before a bolt of plasma seared the wall beside her.
She shoved it into the disruptor Walter had built—an ugly cube of repurposed tech wired with fail-safes—and slammed the latch shut.
The core screamed.
Not audibly—but in her head.
The echo of every version of her that had ever existed—all the ghost-code fragments that Lazarus had tried to suppress.
Her body convulsed once, then went still.
And the room went quiet.
Seraphina blinked. “What have you done?”
Darcie straightened. Her eyes burned silver. But her voice?
Human.
“I gave the weapon a soul.”
⸻
Back at the bunker, Walter ran diagnostics while Darcie floated in a suspended gel chamber, the disruptor core embedded in the floor beneath her.
“She stabilized,” he said. “The data’s syncing. The new AI lattice is taking root.”
“Meaning what?” Astrid asked, arms crossed.
“Meaning she’s in control. No more overrides.”
Eella stared through the glass, her fingers splayed over it.
“She looks…calm.”
Walter nodded. “The core can’t hijack her anymore. But it also means—”
“What?” Eella’s voice sharpened.
“She’s becoming something else. Not Lazarus. Not fully human either. Something new.”
Eella didn’t flinch. “Then we meet her where she is.”
When Darcie finally woke, she sat up slowly, the gel sliding off her like liquid silver.
She stepped out of the pod naked, unashamed.
Eella handed her a towel, but didn’t look away.
“You’re still you?” she asked quietly.
Darcie smiled. “I’m more me now.”
Her body shimmered faintly. The silver veins were still there, but softer—less invasive. A part of her, not a cage.
They stared at each other.
Then Eella took her hand and pulled her close.
Their kiss was desperate, hungry.
A need to prove they were still here.
Darcie lifted her, slammed her against the wall of the observation room, devouring her mouth with wild, unrestrained hunger.
Eella gasped as Darcie’s hand slid between her thighs, her breath catching in her throat.
“You’re not afraid?” Darcie whispered against her skin.
“Terrified,” Eella admitted, biting her lip. “But I’d rather burn with you than be safe without you.”
Darcie kissed her again, slower this time.
“I’m not the girl you rescued,” she murmured.
Eella met her gaze. “No. You’re the one who saved herself.”
Their lovemaking was fire and fury.
A collision of danger and devotion.
Darcie’s hands left glowing prints along Eella’s hips.
Eella’s nails raked over Darcie’s back, drawing blood that shimmered like mercury.
It wasn’t soft.
It was survival.
And when they collapsed afterward, tangled together on the cold floor, Eella whispered the one thing neither had said in days.
“I missed you.”
Darcie buried her face in her neck. “I never left.”
⸻
The next morning, they gathered for what Walter called “The Reckoning.”
Because they weren’t done.
Seraphina was still out there.
But so was Lazarus.
And now they wanted their weapon back.
Darcie stood before the group, hair damp, eyes bright.
“I won’t run anymore,” she said. “They want to finish the job? Let them come.”
“We’ll fight,” Ollie said. “But what’s the strategy?”
“Turn the mirror back on them,” Darcie said.
Garrison frowned. “Meaning?”
“We make their secret public. Dump the Lazarus files. Expose every program, every experiment. Let the world see their sins.”
Astrid whistled. “You want to start a war.”
“No,” Darcie said.
“I want to finish one.”