Chapter 33
Olivia – POV
It's been a week.
Seven days since I stepped outside. Since I heard Sebastian's voice. Since I breathed air that didn't taste like prison walls and broken promises.
This morning, my father came into my room without knocking. No good morning. No explanation. Just a sharp command:
"Pack your bags. We're leaving."
I begged him. I cried—God, I cried. I held onto the doorway like it might stop the inevitable, pleaded with every inch of me that still believed in mercy. But he didn't even look at me. He just walked away.
So here I am. Packing a suitcase I don't want. Folding clothes I won't need. My fingers are shaking too hard to grip the zipper.
Where are you, Seb?
You promised. You looked me in the eye and told me you'd take me away from here. You said we'd run if we had to—that you'd come for me.
So why aren't you here?
Is it too late? Did they already break us?
I sit on the edge of the bed, my suitcase half-open and useless. My heart pounds against my ribs like it wants to escape this place more than I do. Tears slip down my cheeks, silent and bitter. I wipe them away, only for more to fall.
I miss you so much, Sebastian. I miss your voice. Your laugh. The way your hand fits around mine like it was made for me. I want to feel you. Hold you. I want to run to you and never look back.
Why does love have to be this hard?
Everything was going right—until it wasn't. Until it all spiraled. Now, every step I take away from you feels like I'm being erased.
By afternoon, I'm in the back seat of the car. Trapped between silence and steel. My mother stares out the window like I'm not even there. My father grips the wheel with that same cold, calculated anger he always wears like a suit.
I try to speak. "Where are we going?"
No answer.
I glance out the window. We've passed the city limits. No signs of the airport. No traffic. Just trees.
I ask again. "Where are we going?"
"You don't need to know that," my mother snaps without turning around.
My chest tightens. "I'm not going anywhere with you unless you tell me."
I reach for the handle. It doesn't budge.
"Open the door!" I yell, panic flaring in my throat like fire. "Let me out!"
"Shut up!" my father growls. "You've started talking too much lately."
Tears spring back to my eyes. I press my palms against the window, heart thudding like a drum.
Please, Seb. Please, where are you?
We keep driving deeper into the woods, the road getting narrower, the sun slipping behind the trees. It's going to be dark soon.
I don't know what they're planning. I don't want to know.
Then—
Boom.
The car jolts. A loud, sharp hiss fills the air.
All four tires.
The car swerves wildly, and my father slams on the brakes. The vehicle groans to a stop. He curses and throws the door open, stepping out into the growing shadows.
"What's happening?" I whisper. "What… what is this?"
Sebastian's POV
I moved fast.
The second her father stepped out, I lunged from the trees and jammed the needle into his neck. He barely had time to grunt before his knees buckled and he collapsed.
Her mother screamed. Eve appeared like a shadow from the other side, her movements fast and fluid, and plunged another needle into her arm. She dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
I sprinted to the back of the car, yanked the door open—
There she was.
Olivia.
She was curled up, shaking, her face pale and blotchy, eyes wide and red from crying.
"Liv," I breathed. "Liv, it's me."
She didn't move, like she couldn't believe it. Like I was a dream she didn't trust.
"Shhh, don't—don't cry. I'm here. You're safe now." I pulled her into my arms.
She was ice-cold.
"Sebastian…" she whispered, her voice broken. "What's happening?"
"We're getting you out. That's all that matters. Come on. We have to go. Now."
"But—my parents—they—what did you—"
"Don't ask. Please. Just trust me."
I helped her out of the car and into the darkness, guiding her through the brush, down a side path Eve had cleared. She kept glancing back like she was expecting the nightmare to follow.
Olivia's POV
My legs barely worked. My thoughts were a storm. But I followed him.
We moved fast through the trees, into an alley I didn't recognize, and then into a building that looked abandoned—boards on the windows, dust in the air, silence so heavy it made my chest hurt.
And then I saw him.
Vince.
Standing at the far end of the room like he'd been waiting.
The man from the party. The one who warned me away from Sebastian. Who looked at me like I was a mistake.
I froze. Panic shot through me. I backed into Sebastian, my voice just a whisper:
"What the hell is he doing here?"
Seb's arms tightened around me. "He's with us."
"No," I said, shaking my head. "No, he's not. He threatened me. He told me to stay away from you—he terrified me."
"I did," Vince said, his voice low. "And I was wrong. I've regretted it every second since."
"You scared me half to death!" I snapped, pushing away from Sebastian, tears still burning behind my eyes. "And now I wake up in some shack in the middle of nowhere and I'm supposed to believe you're one of the good guys?"
Sebastian stepped between us. "Liv, please. Just sit. Let us explain."
I didn't want to sit. I didn't want to breathe. But I let Sebastian guide me to an old chair in the corner, my knees weak beneath me. My hands were shaking. My throat was raw. I wanted to scream, to cry, to go back in time and erase the past week. To go back to when he whispered he'd never let them take me.
"You said you'd come," I whispered to him, eyes brimming.
"You said you'd protect me. I waited. I thought—I thought you weren't coming."
Sebastian dropped to his knees in front of me, his voice barely holding steady.
"I wanted to come sooner. But if I had... they would've taken you somewhere we couldn't find. Vince tracked them. He made this possible."
I looked up at Vince. "Why now? Why help us now?"
Vince's expression darkened. "Because I've already lost one girl I loved to this nightmare. I won't lose another."
"What… what are you talking about?" He pulled a worn photo from his jacket and handed it to me. A girl with soft eyes and a crooked smile. Standing beside Vince, arms wrapped around his waist.
"Maya," he said, voice catching. "She was my everything. We tried to get out—years ago. She found something, a list of names. Files. And then she died. Murdered by Sebastian's father."
I know you have found about Project Echo and also you have fpund the file about you
"Project ECHO wasn't just about observing emotional children. It was about manipulating them. Breaking them. You were test subjects in your own home."
"You were part of your own experiment. Separate. Focused on emotional deprivation and control. Long-term psychological conditioning. They wanted to see how a child would react to love that was constantly withheld—how far you'd go to prove you were worthy of it."
My stomach dropped. "That's not—no."
"They monitored you for years," Vince said. "Your patterns. Your relationships. How you reacted to isolation, silence, emotional punishment. How long you'd keep chasing approval from people who never gave it."
He was telling us all the things that we read on the files... but hearing it from someone, from Vince—someone who lived it—it's so real. Like everything we've been told since childhood was a lie. Everything. Our whole lives... built on a script someone else wrote.
I felt like I'd been punched. "So… it wasn't me. I wasn't broken. I was being tested?"
"Yes," he said. "From the start."
I stumbled back a step, nearly tripping over the chair behind me. Sebastian caught me.
"My whole life," I whispered. "I thought I was the problem. That I was hard to love."
"They made you believe that," Vince said. "Because that was the point. They needed you to feel abandoned. That was the experiment."
My hands were shaking. "They never loved me. Not once."
Sebastian squeezed my hand. "Liv…"
I yanked it away, my voice cracking. "Don't. Don't tell me it's okay. It's not okay!"
"No, it's not," Sebastian said quietly. "But none of this is your fault."
I looked between him and Vince, tears streaming down my face.
"My parents gave me away without ever lifting a finger. They watched me suffer and took notes on it."
Vince's jaw tightened. "That's what they do. Break people to see what's left. But you're not broken, Olivia. You survived. That matters more than they'll ever understand."
I swallowed hard. "So what now? You think I just hide here? Try to move on like nothing happened?"
"We fight," Vince said. "We dismantle this thing. From the inside."
"No," Sebastian said quickly. "She's not a part of this."
I turned to him. "Excuse me?"
"You've already been hurt enough," he said, his voice low. "I won't risk you again."
"Sebastian…" I walked up to him. Placed my hand on his chest. "You once told me, when everything was falling apart, that we're in this together. Remember?"
He swallowed hard. Nodded.
"Then stop trying to push me away now. I'm not your variable. I'm not your weakness. I'm your person." My voice trembled. "I'm in this. Every moment. Every risk. You don't get to protect me by locking me out."
His jaw tightened. I could feel him breaking, trying to resist. Trying to hold the pain in.
But I saw the way his eyes softened, how he bowed his head and rested his forehead against mine.
"We're in this together," I whispered.
He nodded once. "Together."
Sebastian's POV
That night, the safehouse didn't feel safe.
Vince was inside at the cracked table, piecing together maps, photographs, and old records like he was assembling the bones of a ghost. Eve was long asleep. But I couldn't be in that room. Not with the weight of everything we'd just told Olivia. Not with the quiet.
I stood on the balcony, a cigarette burning between my fingers, watching the dark stretch across the hills. The stars felt too distant. The air too still. Like the world had been holding its breath since the moment we pulled her out of that car.
Olivia came out quietly, wrapping my hoodie tighter around her frame. Her hair was tied up messily, and her face still held traces of dried tears, but her spine—God, her spine was made of iron.
She leaned against the railing beside me, silent for a minute.
"Give me one?" she asked.
I looked at her, startled. "You don't smoke."
"Maybe I do now."
I hesitated, then handed her one and lit it for her. She took a drag, coughed a little, then scowled.
"God, that's disgusting."
I let out a dry chuckle. "Told you."
She stared out at the night, lips parted like she was holding in the scream that'd never come out.
"I hate them," she said quietly.
I didn't need to ask who. I just listened.
"They didn't just control me," she continued. "They designed me. Conditioned me. I wasn't their daughter—I was their fucking experiment."
She paused. Then looked at me. "How do you live with that?"
I took a drag. The smoke burned a little more than usual. "Some days I don't. Some days I just breathe and pretend it's enough."
She nodded like she understood too well.
"I thought maybe I was just unlovable," she whispered. "That's why they were always so cold. That's why nothing I did was ever enough. Turns out, they wanted me to feel that way."
I didn't say anything. I didn't trust my voice not to break.
She turned to me, her voice harder now. "I want to be angry, Seb. I want to burn it all down. I want them to feel it."
I met her eyes. "Good. You should. Hold on to that."
She looked down at the cigarette, then flicked it over the balcony railing and leaned into me. Her head found my chest. Her hand found mine.
"I thought when I found out the truth, it would make things clearer. But all it did was prove how deep the damage goes."
I wrapped my arm around her. "I know."
"I still feel like that scared little girl in the back of the car. But now she's holding a lighter."
She laughed bitterly against my shoulder.
"Liv," I murmured, "you're not just the product of what they did. You're what they didn't see coming. You care. You fight back. That's not what they built you for."
She looked up at me with eyes made of steel and heartbreak.
"You said you'd give me a life."
I nodded. "I will."
She leaned up and kissed the corner of my mouth.
"You already have," she whispered.
and then she lean onto me and kissed me forgetting everything that was going on at the moment and what was there for the future.