27. Ellie
ELLIE
The current hits. A live wire buried deep in my spine, vibrating through my teeth and rattling my bones until I'm not a woman anymore, only a set of nerves being shredded. My lungs seize. I can only feel my nervous system vibrating in waves of prolonged torment.
“Fifteen seconds,” Grace says. Her voice is soft. A mockery of every person who ever spoke to me with kindness. “You’re responding beautifully to the therapy.”
I strain against the leather. The straps dig into my wrists. The steel table is cold beneath my back. Through the tremors, I feel it. Reed's hand. Pressing hard across my nose and mouth, sealing off the air.
"That's your old life burning away. Your brain doesn't know whether to scream or breathe. Isn't that beautiful?"
The current stops abruptly. But Reed's hand stays clamped over my face.
I thrash against the restraints. Twisting.
Fighting. My lungs are screaming. Burning for air that won't come.
I try to turn my head to find air somewhere, anywhere, but his grip is iron.
I can't think past the need to breathe. My body can't fight both the electricity and suffocation.
It chooses air. It's always going to choose air.
"See?" Grace says. She leans down to hum in my ear. "Your body is learning to be grateful for him. He's the only thing standing between you and suffocation."
I want to tell her she’s wrong. I want to deny it.
But my throat is raw. My thoughts are fragments.
Rolling into corners I can’t reach. She's rewired me.
When Reed's hand lifts, when that first breath comes, it feels like mercy.
Even though he's the one who took the air away.
Even knowing that's exactly what she wants.
The current hits again. My back arches. Reed's hand clamps down over my face before I can scream. His other hand presses my sternum, keeping me pinned. The agony is a noise I can't make. A bone-deep vibration with nowhere to go. My lungs are burning. Grace leans closer. Her eyes are dark.
“Excellent progress,” she says, biting her lip as she writes. “You’re a strong one, Ellie.”
Progress. The word is a blow to my solar plexus.
She’s right. The woman who walked in here had spirit.
Had gumption, for Christ's sake. That woman is being sanded down.
Layer by layer. I can feel the wood beneath showing through.
In her place, a hollow thing is hardening.
Something that flinches at raised voices.
That feels sick gratitude when the machines go quiet.
That feels grateful when Reed lets me breathe.
"Now then." Grace gestures to Reed. His hand lifts from my face. I gulp air like a drowning woman. She sets down her clipboard. “Let’s discuss what you’ve learned about Killian. About what he really is.”
The mention of his name is a different kind of current. It hurts worse than the electricity.
“You know what he is,” she says. Her fingers trail through my sweat-soaked hair. “The weapon your father helped create. The Ghost who killed your father.”
The evidence is burned into my mind. I can’t deny it anymore.
“And yet you still love him,” she says. Her voice is full of disappointed sympathy. “Even knowing he murdered your father. Even knowing your father’s research created the monster who destroyed him. Do you understand how that makes you complicit?”
She’s not lying. That’s the part that actually kills me.
Even with my skin still buzzing from the current, I’d still reach for him if he walked through that door.
I want the man who destroyed my world to be the one who saves me from it.
I’m still looking for the person I saw in my kitchen at 3am, even though I know that person is a murderer.
“That’s the sickness we’re treating,” Grace says. She starts to prepare another syringe. “You’re still addicted to the trauma. Your father was a good man, Ellie. And his killer seduced you. Made you betray everything Gregory stood for.”
The needle slides in. The drug is a heavy tide rising in my veins, dragging my consciousness underwater.
“Tell me about the time he first touched you,” Grace commands. She settles into the chair beside my table as if this is just another therapy session.
I try to hold onto the memory of Killian’s hands.
But the drugs are pulling it apart. I know what she’s doing.
Forced association. Corruption of memory.
But knowing doesn’t stop it. The shame is already bleeding into everything.
Fragments. Killian’s face. Smothering in smoke.
Turning black. Grace’s voice. The darkness that eats him. Eats me.
Dr. Hart... where is she?
Noise. It’s just noise.
Underneath, I’m changing.
“He made you want him,” Grace says. Her voice is soft and deadly. “He killed the man you called father, and you opened your legs for him like a grateful whore.”
“No,” I whisper. But the word lacks conviction. How can I argue? How can I defend loving someone who destroyed my family?
“Yes,” Grace says. The word is final. “And deep down, you know it’s true. That’s why you feel the guilt rotting in your stomach. Because you betrayed your father’s memory for good sex and a few pretty lies.”
Reed moves closer. He produces a scalpel. He tests the edge against his thumb. A bead of blood wells up. Grace doesn’t stop.
“I’m going to help you, Ellie. We’re going to cut out the infection.”
The blade comes. Deep cuts along my inner thighs.
Reed's fingers press into the wounds, spreading them open.
The same hands that smothered my nose and mouth, taking me to the brink of unconsciousness over and over.
Grace's voice won't stop. It won't let me escape. Part of me recognizes what she’s doing. But it doesn’t help. They are cutting him out of me. The words are everywhere. In my blood. In my bones. I’m changing.
Because she’s not just torturing my body. She’s dismantling the parts that remember how to love. Every memory of Killian is being held to the fire, curling and turning to ash. Every second of happiness is now evidence of how easily I was bought.
Time has stopped. My skin feels brittle.
Parched. The sweat on the table has cooled.
The salt in my eyes has crusted. My throat is raw from gasping for air that doesn't come often enough. The fluorescent hum is the only pulse left in this room. Pain. Pleasure. Blurred. Reed follows her instructions like a well-trained dog. He watches me with a blank face. He can’t be more than twenty-two. Smooth skin. A killer in training.
“You’re a strong one, Eleanor,” Grace says. She checks my pulse. “But everyone breaks sooner or later. I want to see what’s left when you do.”
I want to scream that she’s wrong. I want to find a single shred of defiance. But when I look inside, I find only slivers. Pieces of a woman I don’t recognize. And Grace’s voice in all the spaces between.
“I can see the cracks, Eleanor,” Grace says. “The girl who walked in here was a disease. We’re just the surgeons. We’re cutting away the infection so you can breathe.”
She signals Reed again. He moves to adjust the straps. But the air in the room shifts. A hum in the walls. A change in the building’s pulse. Grace tilts her head. Listening.
“Probably the generator,” Reed says. His hand drops to the holster at his hip.
Grace’s expression is stone. “Right on schedule.” She checks her watch, then moves to the monitors. Her fingers fly over the keys.
“Interesting. We appear to have visitors.”
Even through the drugs, it hits me. Hope is a broken piece of glass in my throat. Every time I breathe, it cuts.
Grace sees it. Her smile is cold.
“Oh, you think someone’s coming for you?” She walks back to the table. “How na?ve. Do you think he’ll still want you after this? After what you’ve become?”
She leans close. Her breath smells of mint and stale coffee.
“Look at you. Broken. Used. You know what he is now, Ellie. Do you think he can bear to look at the wreckage he caused? Do you think he wants a reminder of what his sins cost?”
The words find every wound on my body and pour salt in. She’s right. How can he look at me? How can he touch the skin Reed has marked? How can he love a woman who knows he’s a killer, and still wants him?
“You’re not the woman he fell in love with anymore. You’re damaged. A constant reminder of his greatest shame.”
The lights flicker. Red emergency light. And in the distance—
Gunfire.
Grace’s smile is a wound. “Well then. Let’s give him a show, shall we?”
Reed moves. He has heavy metal restraints in his hands. Permanent ones. And I understand. Whatever’s happening outside this room, I won’t live to see the end of it. Killian is here. I can hear the gunshots, the final, monstrous heartbeat of this facility. But he’s too late.
Grace won’t let him find me.
She’s only going to let him find a corpse.