His Private Hell - Chapter 93: Chapter 93

They didn’t sleep.
Garrison drove like the devil was at his heels. Maybe he was. Maybe he always had been.
Eella sat beside him, drenched in silence, her lips cracked from blood, her eyes wide and unblinking. The image of Darcie strapped to the gurney wouldn’t leave her. It was seared into her skull—like a warning. Or a curse.
“She’s alive,” she whispered again, like saying it would make it true in a way that didn’t hurt.
“Barely,” Garrison growled. “Astrid won’t wait long.”
“What does she want with the original files?”
Garrison’s jaw clenched. “Leverage. There are things in those files that could ruin every dynasty in the east. And I hid them for a reason.”
“You knew they existed?”
“I created half of them.”
Eella stared at him.
The air in the car felt thinner now.
“You were part of it,” she said slowly. “The 33rd. The experiments. The mind reconditioning. You were in it.”
He didn’t deny it.
“I was the reason it worked.”
Eella turned her face away. “Then maybe you deserve hell.”
“I already live there,” he said darkly. “You’re just the first light I’ve seen.”
The car screeched to a stop at a crumbling underground garage, its entrance tucked beneath a forgotten medical building. The sign above it was faded, the letters rusted and broken: Cordell Institute of Behavioral Sciences.
She shivered. “Why here?”
Garrison’s eyes locked on the rearview mirror. “Because this is where the 33rd really began. Not the high-rise. Not the penthouse. Here.”
He pulled a lever beneath the dashboard. A hidden platform rumbled open in the far corner of the garage.
Eella stepped out. The smell hit her first—chemical decay and dust.
They entered the elevator. Garrison typed a passcode.
But the numbers didn’t light up.
Instead, the panel slid aside to reveal a retinal scanner. He leaned forward.
ACCESS GRANTED.
The elevator dropped. Not down like gravity. Down like death. Silent. Endless. Until finally—
A chime.
The doors opened.
Eella stepped out into a corridor painted in white and blood.
The lights above flickered. There were cameras in every corner. No windows. No doors except one—massive, steel, bolted shut like it housed a monster.
And it did.
Garrison approached the door and pulled out a key. Not digital. Not biometric. A key of bone.
He slid it in.
The door groaned open.
And there she was.
Darcie.
She hung from suspended restraints, her feet barely brushing the floor, her head slumped forward. Electrodes laced her skull. Her wrists were raw. Tubes ran from her arms to a screen pulsing with numbers.
“Darcie!” Eella ran forward.
But Garrison caught her by the waist. “Don’t touch her. She’s wired to a failsafe.”
Eella’s breath came out broken. “She’s not moving.”
“She’s alive. Barely.”
A voice crackled over a speaker.
“You came,” Astrid purred. “Welcome to the genesis of your damnation.”
Eella turned toward the speaker in the ceiling. “Let her go!”
“You really think this is about her?” Astrid laughed. “No, sweet girl. It’s about you. And him. And the seed you don’t even know you’re carrying.”
The room spun.
“What?”
Garrison’s eyes snapped to Eella.
Astrid continued, voice gleeful. “You thought the kiss was just a distraction? That I didn’t drug you, just a little? Let’s just say… if you bleed now, it’s not just from me. It’s from him too. My little science project.”
Eella staggered back. “No. No, that’s not possible.”
“You’ve been marked, sweet girl. Inside and out.”
Garrison lunged at the speaker, slamming it with the butt of his gun. Sparks flew.
Darcie groaned.
The sound cracked Eella open.
“Help her!” she screamed.
Garrison rushed to the console, typing fast, hacking the interface.
Eella moved to Darcie, cupping her bloodied face. “It’s me. It’s me, please wake up.”
Darcie’s eyelids fluttered.
“E…Eella?”
Tears flooded her eyes. “I’m here. You’re okay. We’re getting you out.”
Darcie coughed, blood staining her lip. “She’s not done. She’s inside… she’s inside all of us…”
The restraints snapped open.
Darcie collapsed into Eella’s arms.
But then—the lights died.
Red alarms spun.
AUTODESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED.
Garrison cursed. “She’s blowing the place.”
“You have sixty seconds,” Astrid’s voice sang.
Darcie screamed. “The other test subjects—she didn’t kill them. They’re here. Caged.”
Eella’s pulse exploded.
“There’s a whole wing underground. They’re alive.”
Garrison growled. “We don’t have time.”
Eella turned to him. “We’re not leaving them.”
“You’ll die.”
“Then I die.”
She handed him Darcie. “You go. I stay.”
“Eella—”
“I was part of this, too. I let it happen. This is my penance.”
He stared at her like she was breaking him.
Then he kissed her—once, hard, brutal.
“I’m coming back for you,” he said.
She smiled through tears. “You better.”
He ran, Darcie in his arms.
Eella turned into the dark.
She broke through the sealed corridor using the emergency override.
The hallway beyond was carnage—metal doors, screaming from within.
One by one, she unlocked them.
Some were children. Some were grown. All were broken.
She herded them through the chaos, smoke thickening.
And behind it all—a final door. One she hadn’t seen.
Marked with her name.
Subject Zero: E. Cordell.
She stood frozen.
Then opened it.
Inside—
Mirrors.
Dozens of them.
And videos. Of her. As a child. As a teen. Drugged. Tested. Rewritten.
She wasn’t a bystander.
She was the blueprint.
She was the first.
Astrid’s final whisper echoed through the fire:
“You were always mine, baby girl.”