25. Ellie #2
He leans against the wall close enough that I can smell him. That cologne that will never not mean devastation. His eyes travel back up my body, and I know exactly what he’s remembering. What he’s planning for later. The smile at the corner of his mouth promises he’s not finished with me yet.
Diana approaches with the syringe.
"This won't hurt," she says softly, "though you might experience some disorientation as the boundaries between your scattered consciousness begin to dissolve."
No. No, I don’t want that.
I try to pull away from the needle. My body doesn’t respond.
I need those boundaries. They’re the only thing keeping me from—
The syringe slides into my IV line before I can finish the thought.
Heat spreads up my arm from the IV. Elbow, shoulder, chest. My fingers go numb first, then my hand, then my entire arm feels like it’s floating somewhere separate from my body. The ceiling tiles start to breathe, expanding and contracting like lungs.
"Perfect," Diana murmurs, checking my pupillary response with a penlight. "Phase one initiated."
"Shall we proceed with the conditioning video?" Grace asks.
Diana nods. "Queue the Blackthorn series."
The screen above me flickers to life again.
This time, it shows surveillance footage, Killian in action for the Order.
The images are so graphic I want to close my eyes, but the drug won’t let me.
Killian hunting his victims through shadows.
Killian interrogating a terrified man, breaking his fingers one by one.
The sound of the man’s screams terrifying, even through the surveillance feed.
Killian, with blood coating his hands, his face full of rage that I’ve never seen in person but somehow still recognize.
"This is who you've developed feelings for," Grace narrates as the footage plays. "This is the real Killian Blackthorn. Not the version you've experienced, looking for rehabilitation for his crimes."
I try to close my eyes. My eyelids won’t cooperate.
Or maybe they do close, and I can still see through them.
I can’t tell anymore. The footage keeps playing, and the walls between different parts of me start to dissolve.
The professional who analyzes. The victim who endures.
The woman who let Killian in. They’re bleeding together, all of them screaming at once.
"Your heart rate is elevated," Diana notes, watching the monitors. "Good. Emotional integration is beginning."
Something warm trails down my cheek. Tears.
"Progress," Grace murmurs approvingly.
On screen, Killian executes a kneeling man with a bullet through his head. One shot, and the body crumples. Not the death made to look like natural causes that I've been told the Order likes. The timestamp shows this was seven years ago, before his imprisonment.
“But let me show you where it really started,” Grace says. “Diana, pull up the Grand Metropolitan footage.”
The next monitor flickers to life. I recognize the hotel immediately. The timestamp shows a date I know by heart.
The night my father died.
A younger version of me stumbles out of a hotel room, trailing after the ambulance crew and my father’s lifeless body. I watch myself break down, my desperate pleas for help that I cannot hear through the silent footage.
And in the corner of the frame, barely visible in the dark, stands Killian.
I feel physically sick.
He was there. That night.
"Do you understand now?" Grace asks, her voice gentle. "You were never random. Killian chose you specifically because of your father. Because of what you represent to him."
He was right fucking there.
Watching me grieve. Watching me fall apart.
No. No, no, no.
“He killed my father.” The words come out broken. Not a question. A fact. A horror. “Killian killed my father and then he… came for me. Planned everything. It was always…”
“That’s when we first knew we were losing him,” Grace says softly. “The conditioning was breaking down. He was developing... inconvenient attachments.”
“What-” I can’t finish. Can’t breathe. Can’t process the reality that I let my father’s killer inside me.
“You, Eleanor. You were the beginning of his downfall. The first crack in our perfect weapon. After that night, his performance deteriorated rapidly.”
Grace's smile is triumphant as tears flow down my face, pooling on the steel table. I'm gasping for air that isn't there. This is what she wanted. The exact moment the old Eleanor Hart ceases to exist.
"Finally, we reach an understanding. Yes, Dr. Hart. Killian didn't just know your father. He was sent to terminate him. He started connecting the dots about Project Ghost. Killian was given the assignment. Ordered to kill the very person who created him. It’s ironic, really. Of course, Killian didn’t know the full truth then.
But you? Your existence, what you would become to him?
That was the one variable we never anticipated. ”
The words don’t make sense at first. They’re just sounds, syllables that my brain can’t quite arrange into meaning. Then they detonate.
The sound that comes out of me is animalistic and broken, tearing up my throat.
“You were never random, darling,” she continues, her voice still so soft. “Killian chose you specifically.”
The room spins until the walls are a vortex. The drug in my system tries to smooth the edges of the horror, but it can't. Not this time. Killian killed my father. He sat across from me in my office. He touched me. He slept in my bed. He killed him.
"The second dose," Diana says, preparing another syringe. "This will accelerate the dissolution of identity boundaries."
"Wait," I manage, turning my head to look at Grace. "Why me? Why now?"
She leans close, her platinum blonde hair falling forward like a curtain.
"Because, my dear, you are the final piece. The daughter of the creator, Killian was a masterpiece, but he has a fatal flaw: he can still feel. I don’t want to kill you.
I want you to carry on the legacy. You’re going to help us build a thousand more just like him, and this time, they won't have hearts to break. "
The second injection burns as it enters my bloodstream. The ceiling above me shatters into a thousand pieces, like my consciousness splintering before my eyes.
"Tomorrow," Diana's voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, "we begin rebuilding you into someone new."
My vision tunnels, darkness creeping in from the edges. The last thing I see is Reed pushing away from the wall, approaching the bed. I try to move, but my body doesn’t belong to me anymore. Just meat on a table.
"Should I prep her for the scanner?" he asks.
"Yes," Grace's voice, distant now. "And Reed? Remember, damaged goods lose value."
I feel him undo the restraints and scoop me from the metal table. I don't have the ability to resist, even though I want to. His laugh follows me into unconsciousness, a promise that tomorrow will bring fresh horrors I cannot yet imagine.
The darkness takes me, and I go willingly because unconsciousness is better than being awake for Reed.
I am already lost.