His Private Hell - Chapter 63: Chapter 63

Eella awoke with a start, her body drenched in sweat, the aftertaste of his lips still burning her tongue. The ceiling above her was concrete—a rough slab of nowhere, echoing with the remnant sighs of tension and fear. She lay still for a moment, trying to remember how she had arrived here. The last thing she recalled was the hum of machinery, the cold leather of the chair, Darcie’s voice inside her head whispering truths that made her blood turn to ice.
Her hand found the razor-sharp edge of the nightstand. She gripped it, knuckles white, and rose from the mattress with cautious deliberation. The room was bigger than any prison cell—high vaulted ceilings, walls perforated with vents, lights dimmed to an ominous crimson. No windows. No doors she could see. Only one iron slab of a table in the center, stained dark.
A door slid open somewhere along the far wall, unseen but heard. Eella’s heart thudded. She swallowed hard, laid the razor on the table’s edge, and approached the darkness beyond the slit of the door.
Garrison stood there. His suit was torn, shirt stained, hair plastered to his temples with blood or sweat or both. His eyes were hollow, wild, a prisoner’s gaze locked in a king’s body.
“Why am I still alive?” she demanded. Her voice was raw with betrayal.
He said nothing, walked past her without touching. The crimson light flickered, revealing that they were suspended above rows of viewing platforms—an auditorium with seats carved into a vast pit. Spectators? Or nothing but stone.
“Why am I here?” she pressed.
He finally turned. His pupils were so dilated they looked black. “Because you never stopped being the experiment.”
Her breath caught. “I’m not—”
He roared, catching her by the shoulders and slamming her against the nearest wall. The impact knocked the air from her lungs. “Don’t lie to me, Eella. You know what you are!”
“Tear me apart if it makes you feel better!” she spat. “But I’m not your plaything!”
His face was inches from hers. “Oh, but you are. You’re every lie I ever told myself.”
She sent her knee up, catching him in the groin. He gasped, stumbled back. Eella seized the moment, backing toward the table, snatched the razor, pressing the blade against her own throat.
“Let me go!” she screamed.
He froze. His hand darted out, grabbing her wrist at the last second, yanking the blade away. Blood welled at the corner of her mouth from the raid of panic.
“I can’t,” he said softly, eyes unblinking. “I need you to stay.”
She spat blood at his feet. “You’re insane.”
“And you’re brilliant,” he said. “Your mind survived everything I threw at it. Yours is the only soul I can’t destroy.”
He released her. She stumbled forward, crumpled to her knees.
The auditorium lit up—scores of figures in the shadows, heads turning, cameras whirring. But no one stood, no one emerged. Just silent witnesses to their private hell.
Eella stood shakily. “What is this place?”
He stepped beside her, voice echoing. “This is the heart of Darcie’s legacy. The truth you demanded.”
At the far end, a curtain slid open. A long corridor, lined with steel doors. Each door bore a name. Not hers. Not his. Names she recognized—executives, relatives, victims. Darcie’s victims. Or his.
He led her forward. Stopped at a door engraved: “EELLA HART.”
Her name.
She froze. “What’s behind it?”
He opened it.
Inside: her apartment. Exactly as she’d left it, the razor still on the nightstand, the sheet tangled on the floor.
Eella’s reflection stared back—bleary, broken. She stepped in. The door shut.
Garrison barred it from outside.
She pounded the wall. “Open this!”
His voice came through the metal. “Look deeper.”
She pressed her face to the window. Through it, she saw herself lying on the table in this room, the razor in her hand, the blood on her skin. And then another door opened. Darcie stepped out. Her living, breathing ghost of a predecessor, wearing Eella’s face.
Eella staggered back, trembling.
Garrison’s voice: “Darcie’s copy. Project Lucidity. You and she—both versions—exist to perfect me. To save me from losing the only thing I ever loved.”
“Stop talking,” Eella whispered. “Stop this.”
He pressed a button. The window became a screen: footage of Eella, handcuffed in an alley; of Darcie, hysterical in a boardroom; of Garrison cradling both, begging, weeping. And overlaying it: furious graphs of brain scans, blood tests, psych evaluations.
“I tried to kill the code,” he said. “But it wouldn’t die. So I grafted it onto you.”
Tears slid down Eella’s face as she realized: every moment of obsession, every violent fusion between them, every betrayal was planned to feed his broken soul.
He opened the door behind her.
She rushed out. Fled down the hall, glancing through doors to see snapshots of her life: interviews, dinners, kisses… all staged, recorded. All evidence.
But when she reached the end—no door.
Only a blank wall.
She banged her fists. “You can’t trap me here!”
He emerged from the shadows, gun in hand. “You think you’ll just walk back into the world?”
“Unlock the door,” she begged. “Set me free.”
He leveled the gun. “There is no elsewhere. Only here. Only us.”
The lights dimmed. The auditorium seats filled. Clips of her screaming, crying, pleading flashed on the screens. The crowd leaned forward.
He cocked the gun. “Let’s begin again.”
Eella closed her eyes. Breathed. When she opened them, she had a plan.
She took a step forward.
“Do it,” she said, voice steady. “But know this: in hell, the final burn comes from within.”
He hesitated.
She smiled faintly—as Darcie once had.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
And then… Eella lunged.
The sound of gunfire, screams, the roar of the unseen crowd, and a single, shattering scream that echoes long after the screens go dark.