The air inside the old facility was thick with mildew and silence. Annah stepped cautiously through the rusted door, each footstep echoing down the long, tiled corridor. She could feel him,Kariuki,like a shadow moving through her blood. Even without seeing him, she knew he was close. He always was.
The building smelled like memory. Like pain. It was where he had first brought her for "therapy" during her darkest spiral. A place where he whispered truths into her until they felt like her own thoughts. Until the hatred, the desire for justice, wasn't his anymore,it was hers.
But now, something in her had cracked open.
She wasn't here as his patient. She wasn't here as his instrument.
She was here for the truth.
Her fingers gripped the knife tucked into her coat, but it felt heavier than before. Not with fear,but with doubt. Did she still need it?
The hallway forked,left toward the old therapy rooms, right toward the observation chamber where he kept his records.
She went right.
The walls were papered with patient profiles, most of them scorched from time and weather. But in the observation chamber, a corkboard glowed under a single dim lamp. There, pinned with surgical precision, were photos of every person she had killed Mbithi,Kevin Langat, Pastor John, Wendo. And among them, other faces she didn't recognize. A hidden ledger of grief.
Mwirigi
At the center was a photo of a girl. Twenty four. Smiling .
Njoki Kariuki.
Beneath the photo, scribbled in neat handwriting: The origin of all pain.
Behind her, a voice spoke. Calm. Familiar. Cold.
"You found her," Kariuki said.
Annah turned slowly. "She was your reason."
"She is my reason."
His face was worn, more human than she remembered. But his eyes held that same void of empathy,just burning purpose.
"You used me," she said.
"No. I freed you. You were living in a cage built by liars and cowards. I gave you purpose."
"You gave me blood. Not peace."
Kariuki took a step closer. "Do you feel peace now, Annah?"
"No," she whispered. "But I feel something you don't expect. Clarity."
A beat passed between them. Then his lips curled into a bitter smile.
"I hoped it wouldn't come to this."
"I hoped it would."
Stella's tires screamed against the tarmac as her car climbed the narrow road up Ngong Hills. The facility loomed ahead,a forgotten place with locked records and a buried past. She had enough on Kariuki to demand a tribunal, maybe even a life sentence if she could prove the manipulation and vigilante orchestration.
But she wasn't chasing a file anymore.
She was chasing Annah. Because if she didn't get there in time, two brilliant minds, both broken by loss, would burn each other to the ground.
The radio buzzed with updates she didn't want. " Court order suspended. Governor Kamau,has called a press briefing. They're trying to make it vanish."
"Of course they are," she muttered.
The political machine had always been the rot behind the murders. Mwirigi, Wendo, Langat, the preacher,all protected by old money and silenced justice. And Kariuki had spent almost a decade sharpening Annah into a scalpel for retribution.
Stella wasn't sure if Annah could be saved. But she was sure she had to try.
She parked and drew her weapon, stepping into the building just as thunder rolled across the hills. Every part of her training warned her this was a trap, but she moved forward anyway.
"Annah!" she called. "I'm here. You don't have to do this."
Her voice bounced through the empty corridors.
No answer.
She turned a corner,and found herself staring at a wall covered in photographs. She stepped closer. Every victim. Crossed out. Numbered. Timelined. And in the center, the same girl. Njoki.
Stella's breath caught.
"This is the root."
A voice echoed from down the hall.
"You always were clever, detective."
She turned and found Kariuki standing just ahead, calm as ice.
"But you're late."
Gun raised, she stepped forward. "Where is she?"
"She found her truth. Now let her decide what to do with it."
A few minutes before
Annah stood a few feet from Kariuki, her hand shaking slightly. The knife gleamed under the dim light. So many times she had imagined this moment returning here, ending the madness.
But now, the man before her wasn't just her tormentor. He was a man who had buried his child. Who had rebuilt himself from rage. He had shaped her because he had failed to save his daughter. And now he stood waiting, not begging, not resisting.
She stepped closer.
"Do you feel better now that they're dead?" he asked.
"No," she said. "But I feel real."
"Then you know what must be done."
"Do I?"
"You were born from pain, Annah. Just like me. You can't run from it."
"I don't want to run. I want to choose."
A silence fell. And then Stella's voice echoed in from behind them.
"Annah. You have a choice. Right now. You can end it. Not with a knife. But with truth."
Annah had turned to leave when she heard what Dr. Kariuki had said.
What was she supposed to do with this truth now?
Stella's heart pounded in her chest as she stepped between them.
"Both of you lost someone. And both of you made the world bleed for it. But this doesn't have to end in another body."
Kariuki narrowed his eyes. "She won't listen to you."
"She already is."
Stella looked at Annah. "You're not his weapon. You're not a broken soul needing fixing. You're someone who was hurt and that doesn't make you unworthy of healing."
Annah looked down at the knife. Then at Kariuki.
"You made me strong," she said. "But you also made me a monster."
"You were always capable of it," he replied. "I just brought it out."
She stepped forward knife raised.
Stella didn't move.
Kariuki didn't flinch.
Then Annah turned the knife around handle-first and dropped it at his feet.
"I'm done," she said.
Kariuki's expression didn't change. But for the first time, his eyes looked hollow. Defeated.
Stella stepped forward and placed him under arrest.
Later That Night
The facility echoed with the hum of squad cars and flashing blue lights. Forensics teams filed in. The story would be hard to swallow: a therapist who turned his patient into an avenging angel. A political cabal that killed a girl and buried the truth. A girl killed in a hospital .A detective who almost lost her mind trying to put the pieces back together.
But there was justice now. Real justice.
Stella watched as Annah sat quietly in the back of the ambulance, hands trembling but eyes clear.
She would face the law. But she would do it as someone free from Kariuki's grip.
The final confession hadn't come from Annah.
It had come from the man who thought he could turn grief into control and lost everything to it.