Chapter 192 Helson's death?

Chapter 192 Helson's death?
Anya's POV

My phone, the one Marcus had given me, suddenly buzzed with an incoming message, it was from the Darklord.
Get to the safe house. Wait for me there. I'm coming.
I showed the message to Marcus.
"Then he's alive," Marcus said, and there was relief in his voice. "If he can message you, he's alive."
We drove for an hour, then another. The safe house was different from the strong hold, it was hidden in a ravine, concealed by rock formations and old-growth forest. It looked abandoned, but when Marcus keyed in the access code, the door slid open.
Inside, it was equipped like a command center with communication systems, medical supplies, and weapons caches.
I collapsed onto a cot, my entire body shaking with adrenaline crash.
"We need to contact Lara," I said. "We need to tell her what happened."
Marcus was already activating the communication system.
"Stronghold, this is Marcus," he said into the headset. "We have Anya. Facility is compromised. Victor is... the situation is complicated."
Lara's voice came back almost immediately.
"Status report. Now."
Marcus gave her the abbreviated version, and after, there was a long silence.
"And the Darklord?" Lara's asked finally.
"The Darklord is en route," came the answer.
Lara said finally. "Keep Anya safe until he arrives."
The comm cut off, and I spent the next forty minutes staring at the communication system, waiting for the Darklord to appear, a confirmation that he was alive.
Thirty minutes in, my phone buzzed again. It was another message from the Darklord.
I'm delayed. Pursuing something. Don't leave the safe house under any circumstances.
"What does that mean?" I asked Marcus. "Pursuing what?"
"I don't know," Marcus replied. "But if the Darklord is pursuing something, it means it's dangerous."
We waited, forty minutes became fifty, and fifty became an hour.
Then the communication system crackled to life again.
"Anya," it was Lara's voice, but she sounded scared. "Tell me everything that happened at the facility, please don't leave anything out."
I described the consciousness transfer. How Victor's consciousness had merged with Helson's body, how Helson had fought back by shutting down his own biology. How the chamber had powered back up, and Helson's voice had come from inside it.
"He was regenerating," Lara said quietly. "The consciousness transfer chamber can reconstruct biological material. It's not just for transferring consciousness. It can rebuild bodies from neural patterns."
"What are you saying?" I asked.
"I'm saying that Helson didn't die," Lara replied. "I'm saying that whatever came out of that chamber wasn't just a consciousness hybrid. It was a physically reconstructed body, but stronger, enhanced, and possibly unstoppable."
My blood went cold.
"The Darklord is hunting it," Lara continued. "He's trying to track it before it reaches the stronghold or any civilian population — or you."
"Where is he?" I demanded.
"We don't know," Lara admitted. "He's gone silent."
I stood up, moving toward the weapons cache.
"What are you doing?" Marcus asked.
"Going back out there," I replied. "I'm not leaving him alone."
"You're unarmed and untrained for combat, and you have no power to go against a creature like that," Marcus said. "You'll be killed."
"Probably," I agreed, grabbing a weapon. "But I'm not staying here while he's out there fighting something that used to be my husband."
I was heading toward the door when the safe house's alarm system activated.
Motion detected. Approaching from the north.
Fast. Too fast.
The door burst open, and the Darklord stumbled through, covered in blood that wasn't his. His clothing was torn. His face carried new scars. But his eyes were burning with that a powerful fury.
"It's alive," he said between gasps. "It's tracking us. It's—"
He didn't finish the sentence because the sound of something moving through the forest at impossible speed cut him off.
The Darklord pushed me toward the back of the safe house.
"There's an exit in the back," he said. "Go. Now."
"I'm not leaving you," I said.
"You are," he replied, and his voice was absolute command. "You're going to take Marcus and go to the stronghold. You're going to tell Lara everything, and you're going to make sure that whatever comes out of this facility is stopped."
"How?" I demanded.
"The consciousness transfer chamber has a kill switch," the Darklord said. "A self-destruct mechanism. If you can access the chamber's core, and activate the self-destruct, it will destroy anything that was reconstructed by that machine. Including Helson."
The sounds outside were getting closer.
"Go," the Darklord commanded.
Marcus grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the back exit.
I was resisting, fighting against him, but he was stronger. He forced me through the back door and into the forest beyond.
Behind us, I heard the safe house's front door explode inward, the Darklord roar a challenge, and then combat that sounded like it was tearing the building apart.
"Keep moving," Marcus said, pulling me deeper into the forest.
"We have to help him," I insisted.
"He bought us time," Marcus replied. "Now we use it."
We ran through the darkness, the forest tearing at our skin, our breath coming in ragged gasps. Behind us, the safe house was coming apart, its walls were already collapsing, and the equipment already exploding, and then came the sound of the creature in Helson moving through the destruction like it was nothing.
We reached Marcus's vehicle and threw ourselves inside. He gunned the engine and accelerated away from the collapsing safe house.
In the rearview mirror, I saw a figure emerge from the ruins — Helson's figure.
But his body was wrong now, his muscles too large, and his movements too fluid. His left side was pure energy, crackling with the consciousness transfer chamber's power. His eyes were burning with a scientifically evil power.
He looked directly at our vehicle and smiled, then he was moving. Faster than the vehicle and faster than anything should be able to move.
"He's coming after us," Marcus gasped.
The vehicle swerved as something impacted the back bumper, Helson had caught us already.
"Drive faster," I said.
"I'm already maxed out," Marcus replied.
Helson's hand came through the rear window, the glass shattering. I felt his fingers brush my hair, and I knew in that moment that if he got a real grip, he would pull me out. He would take me back to the consciousness transfer chamber, because he still sees me as his wife.
I grabbed the nearest weapon and fired backward through the broken window, but the bullets passed through Helson's body without slowing him down.
"He's not entirely physical," I realized. "He's part consciousness. The bullets pass right through him."
Helson's grip closed on the vehicle's frame, and he was pulling himself up. His face came level with the window, and I saw the conflict in his features. Two consciousnesses still fighting for dominance inside one body.
"Anya," Helson said, and his voice was split between his own and Victor's. "Help me. Please. I'm still in here. I'm still fighting. Help me."
"How?" I demanded.
"Kill me," he gasped. "Kill the body and end this."
But his other hand was reaching for me now, pulling me toward him. Victor's consciousness surging forward, trying to drag me out of the vehicle.
Marcus swerved hard, trying to throw Helson off. The vehicle went into a skid, and for a moment, I thought we were going to flip, but because of the struggle of two consciousness, Helson lost his grip and fell away.
We accelerated forward, leaving him behind, but in the rearview mirror, I watched as he stood up, and the electrical energy around his body flared brighter as he began to run after us.
We were already running out of road. Ahead of us, the forest opened up into a cliff face, it was a hundred-meter drop to the ravine below.
"Marcus," I said quietly.
"I see it," he replied.
He was slowing the vehicle, looking for a way around, but there wasn't one. The cliff face stretched for kilometers in both directions.
Behind us, Helson was getting closer.
"We have to jump," I said. "We have to find another way down."
"There isn't one," Marcus replied. "This is the end of the road."
The vehicle came to a complete stop at the cliff's edge with Helson fifty meters away now. Thirty. Twenty.
His body was becoming more translucent. The consciousness transfer chamber's energy was consuming him, destroying him even as it was keeping him alive. Victor and Helson, fused together, tearing apart from the inside as they accelerated it.
"I'm sorry," Helson gasped, his voice now completely different. Not quite human anymore. Not quite anything. "I tried. I tried to fight him, I tried to save you. I'm sorry."
And then he leaped. He didn't jump at the vehicle, he jumped at the cliff face, his body beginning to fall into the ravine below. And as he fell, the energy around him exploded outward, creating a shockwave that hit our vehicle, and we went over the cliff.