His Private Hell - Chapter 30: Chapter 30

The world burned in silence.
At exactly 02:14 GMT, every encrypted server across fifteen continents received a data packet traced to an anonymous node.
The content?
Every file from Lazarus Initiative’s deepest vault.
Test subjects. Failed prototypes. Executions hidden beneath medical jargon. DNA weaponization. Neural reprogramming. War crimes packaged as research.
And at the center of it all—Darcie 07X. The girl who survived.
The media frenzy ignited within an hour.
Governments scrambled to distance themselves. Allies turned on one another. Protesters took to the streets.
And in the shadows, Lazarus bled.
But Seraphina didn’t hide.
She struck back.
A counter-broadcast hijacked military satellites and flooded every device with a single message:
DARLINGTON is awake. The future is not human.
Darcie stood at the edge of the rooftop, watching the skyline flicker. Fires in the distance. Riots near the old neural labs. Revolution igniting faster than she could track.
“This is bigger than us now,” Walter muttered behind her.
“No,” Darcie said. “This is because of us.”
Eella came up behind her, fingers brushing Darcie’s spine. “Seraphina won’t let this go. She won’t disappear.”
“She doesn’t have to.” Darcie turned. “She wants us to find her.”
“She’s baiting you,” Eella warned. “Using the chaos to lure you out.”
“She knows I’ll come.”
“Then don’t.” Eella grabbed her wrist. “Let someone else take the fall for once.”
Darcie studied her. “If I don’t end this, there won’t be an after.”
Their eyes locked. No words left to disguise the truth.
They were running out of time. Out of lives to lose.
Darcie leaned in and kissed her—soft, slow. A silent promise wrapped in desperation.
“I’ll come back.”
“You always say that.”
“And I always do.”
This time, Eella let her go.
⸻
Astrid was already prepping gear in the hangar when Darcie arrived.
“The last Lazarus hub is in Lagon Arms, underground beneath a fake energy corp. Automated defense grid. AI-driven.” She paused. “If we walk in, we won’t walk out.”
“Then we’ll fly in,” Darcie said. “Hijack a drone swarm. Disrupt their grid.”
Ollie grinned. “You sound more like Walter every day.”
“He’s rubbing off.”
Walter smirked from behind the console. “About time someone appreciated my genius.”
Garrison handed her a blade—obsidian steel, vibrational edge. “In case tech fails.”
Darcie took it, nodding. “Thanks.”
She paused. “You don’t have to come.”
“We do,” Astrid said. “You’re not dying without us.”
Darcie smiled faintly. “Deal.”
The ride to Lagon was swift and brutal. Smoke covered the air like a second sky. Checkpoints burned. Civilians screamed. It was a warzone, and Seraphina’s name was etched into the ruins.
At the gates of the compound, the old world waited.
Sleek corridors. Silver-lit labs. Cryogenic vaults humming with dormant monsters.
Darcie moved through them like a ghost.
Until she found the throne room.
That’s what it looked like.
A cathedral of glass and steel.
And in the center—Seraphina.
Seated on a biotech throne fused with veins of glowing code, her body wrapped in living circuitry. Her face was perfection, but her eyes were war.
“You came alone,” Seraphina said, smiling. “Just as I knew you would.”
“You want me?” Darcie said. “Here I am.”
“I wanted you to see,” Seraphina murmured, rising. “What we could have become. If you hadn’t run.”
Darcie circled her slowly. “You’re nothing but what they built.”
Seraphina laughed. “And you’re not?”
“I was,” Darcie said softly. “But I unmade their god.”
Seraphina moved lightning-fast, striking at Darcie’s side. Blade met blade. Sparks flew.
Darcie pivoted, slammed a punch into Seraphina’s ribs—only to be thrown backward by an invisible wave of kinetic energy.
“You can’t win,” Seraphina hissed, stalking toward her. “You still bleed.”
Darcie grinned through the blood on her lips. “So do you.”
She triggered the core.
The disruptor strapped beneath her ribs flared—silver tendrils exploding outward like a sunburst.
Seraphina screamed.
Not from pain.
From recognition.
“You fused it,” she whispered. “The core. It’s part of you now.”
Darcie rose. “That’s right. And I’m not sharing it.”
They clashed again.
The room fractured—glass shattering, walls bending.
Astrid and Eella burst in seconds later, guns blazing, cutting through the remaining defense bots.
But the final strike was Darcie’s alone.
She drove the obsidian blade through Seraphina’s chest, straight into the core of the biotech throne.
The system shrieked.
And collapsed.
Seraphina gasped, grabbing Darcie’s wrist.
“You’ll become me.”
“No,” Darcie said.
“I’ll become something better.”
She twisted the blade.
Seraphina’s body shattered—code unraveling like smoke in sunlight.
When it was done, silence returned.
The throne dimmed.
And the war was over.
⸻
They stood on the edge of the world again, just like the beginning.
Darcie stared out at the reborn skyline—still damaged, still healing.
But no longer theirs to fear.
“She’s really gone,” Walter whispered. “Every system. Every trace. Gone.”
Eella took Darcie’s hand. “So what now?”
Darcie turned.
Her smile was soft, a little uncertain.
“Now…we live.”