Chapter 69 The Choice Taken From Her
“Is there anything else?” I ask again, my voice barely above a whisper. “Anything you haven’t told me?”
The question sits between us like a loaded weapon.
Fred doesn’t answer.
That alone makes my stomach drop.
He looks away,just slightly,but I see it. The silence isn’t uncertainty. It’s avoidance. Guilt.
My gaze snaps to Darius.
He doesn’t deny it.
Instead, he reaches for the laptop on the bedside table.
The sound of it opening feels too loud in the quiet room. My pulse begins to pound in my ears, each beat echoing a warning I don’t want to hear.
“You don’t have to see this,” he says quietly. “But if we’re going to survive what’s coming,if we will move forward,then there can’t be any more lies.”
My throat tightens. “Show me.”
His fingers hesitate over the keyboard of the laptop I don’t notice on the bedside table.
Then he presses play.
The screen flickers to life.
At first, I don’t understand what I’m looking at,grainy footage, washed in dull gray and green tones. Surveillance cameras. Old ones. The timestamp in the corner makes my breath catch.
Years ago.
Decades.
The image sharpens.
A large underground room appears, sterile and cavernous, lined with metal tables and reinforced glass. People in lab coats move briskly through the frame, clipboards in hand. Their faces are serious. Focused. Detached.
And then—
I see him.
My father.
Younger. His hair darker, his posture straight, his expression calm in a way that punches the air from my lungs. He stands at the center of the room, speaking to a group of scientists. He gestures toward a monitor. Toward charts and data scrolling past too fast for me to read.
I shake my head immediately. “No,” I whisper. “That’s not—”
“He was overseeing the project,” Darius says softly. “Not watching. Directing.”
The footage cuts.
Another angle.
Children.
Small bodies on beds. Some restrained. Some crying. Some silent in a way that makes my skin crawl. The sound comes through faintly, distorted, but unmistakable,fear, pain, confusion.
My chest tightens painfully.
“Turn it off,” I say, my voice shaking.
But it keeps playing.
I see failed subjects,people convulsing, monitors flatlining, scientists rushing in too late or not at all. Bodies covered with sheets. Wheeled away without ceremony.
This isn’t an accident.
This is systematic.
This is planned.
And then.
The camera shifts again.
A small room. White walls. A single bed.
And on it.
Me.
I don’t recognize myself at first. I’m too small. Too thin. My hair is shorter, my face rounder. But I know. I know in my bones.
I’m strapped down, wrists and ankles restrained. My head turned to the side, eyes wide and unfocused. I’m screaming. Thrashing. Crying out for someone.
For him.
My father steps into frame.
He leans over me, his face calm, almost gentle. He places a hand on my forehead.
I feel sick.
“He said you were his greatest success,” Darius murmurs. “His only viable outcome.”
The footage jumps again.
I see needles. Monitors spiking wildly. My small body arching in pain. Scientists shouting numbers. My father barking orders not to stop, but to continue.
“Push it,” his recorded voice says, distorted but unmistakable. “She can take it.”
I sob.
I don’t even realize I’ve sunk to the floor until my knees hit it hard.
“This isn’t real,” I choke out. “This is doctored. It has to be. He loved me. He,he read to me. He held me when I had nightmares. He told me I was special.”
Darius kneels in front of me, his face etched with pain. “You were special to him,” he says gently. “That’s what makes this worse.”
The footage shows another bed beside mine.
Another child.
A girl.
She looks like me.
My sister.
She’s shifting,her body contorting, her features stretching beyond human limits. Her scream pierces through the speakers, sharp and animalistic.
Then—
She doesn’t change back.
The video freezes on her still form breathing, alive, but wrong. Stuck halfway between something monstrous and something heartbreakingly familiar.
“She never stabilized,” Darius says quietly. “She survived the transformation, but she couldn’t revert.”
I turn away violently, bile rising in my throat. I scramble to my feet and stagger toward the wall, pressing my palms against it like it can hold me upright.
“No,” I whisper. “No, no, no.”
My reflection in the glass looks like a stranger,pale, hollow-eyed, fractured.
“I wasn’t an experiment,” I say desperately. “I wasn’t. I was his daughter.”
“You were both,” Darius replies, his voice breaking. “And I think he convinced himself that made it acceptable.”
I slide down the wall, curling inward as the truth crashes over me in waves.
Every ache in my body. Every nightmare. Every moment I felt wrong without knowing why.
It wasn’t an accident.
It was engineered.
“I can’t—” I gasp. “I can’t be here. I can’t breathe in this place anymore.”
Darius shuts the laptop with a soft click, as if sealing something away that can never truly be contained.
“I don’t want any more secrets between us,” he says. “Not ever again. If you stay, you deserve to know everything. Even the things that make me look unforgivable.”
I laugh weakly through my tears. “That ship sailed a long time ago.”
I look up at him, my vision blurred. “Just… get me out of here,” I beg. “Please. I don’t care where. I just can’t stay in this room knowing what I know now.”
His hands tremble as he reaches for me, careful, like I might break.
“Take me home,” I whisper. “I need to be somewhere that doesn’t smell like lies and blood and memories I didn’t ask for.”
He pulls me gently into his arms, holding me like I’m something fragile instead of something dangerous.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs. “I won’t let anyone hurt you again. Not like that.”
I don’t know if I believe him.
But right now, belief isn’t what I need.
I just need to leave.
And as he helps me to my feet and guides me toward the door, one terrifying thought refuses to let go:
If my father did all of this.
What else did he set into motion that still hasn’t stopped?