Chapter 53

“What do you mean, ‘she was already helping herself’?” Adeline demanded. Her voice tore through the sterile silence of the room, sharp with confusion.

Mrs. Roger looked past Adeline, her gaze distant, fixed on a memory only she shared with the patient. “If Williams went home and hid her bruises, it wasn’t shame. It was protection. Her mother was sacrificing everything, surviving on her late husband’s pension, trying to hold her daughter’s future together. Williams believed she was the one destroying that dream. She blamed herself for being weak.”

Adeline felt the first deep stab of empathetic pain.

“Her starvation and self-mutilation were never simple suicide attempts,” Mrs. Roger continued, her voice low. “She was trying to weaken her senses, to stop her heart from seeking revenge for the injustice she endured. She tried to starve the monster growing inside her. When the first hospital forced her back into reality, they revived the suffering and pushed her toward suicide again.”

The air in the white room turned painfully cold. Adeline saw the teenage Williams clearly in her mind: skeletal, huddled, trying to consume herself before hatred consumed others.

Mrs. Roger glanced at the walls, the cameras, the neatly stored medical devices. “In a final desperate attempt, her mother, helped by a new benefactor brought her here. We understood the real problem. What she wanted was not justice, but destruction. And ethically, we could not give her that. If we followed the traditional path, she would have been locked away for life.”

Silence thickened around them.

“So, we used an old wartime method. A modified version,” she said at last. Her hands clasped tightly. “We helped her craft a parallel world. A world where she never failed, never broke, never suffered. A world where she held absolute control. Self-worth was no longer something she begged for; it became the fixed center of her existence.”

Adeline held her breath, unable to look away.

“But this method required burying everything else. The tragedies. The memories. The emotions that made her human: love, fear, joy, attachment.” Roger’s voice cracked on the last word. “What emerged was Dr. Niran Williams. Brilliant, logical, untouchable, and entirely alone.”

Adeline’s whisper came out dry. “Why didn’t you tell her mother?”

Roger turned toward her, eyes clear and unsettling. “And what did you expect us to tell her mother? her daughter was suffering because she was forcing herself not to slit the throats of the people who made her life hell? She wanted to burn that school down. She planned to kill everyone and then kill herself. Only a small piece of goodness remained in her, a piece that could vanish at any moment. I had two choices. Transform her or imprison her forever. The real Williams had already buried herself alive.”

Adeline felt her revulsion dissolve into pity and terror. She looked around the room: the monstrous drawings, the immaculate order. Dr. Niran Williams was the polished mask, the sanitized version of a buried horror. Her flawless professional image. Her precision. Her control. The center had not harmed her; it had merely imprisoned her true self.

“Is that why you kept this room?” Adeline asked, voice trembling. “You knew there was an expiration date on this parallel existence. The nosebleeds, the tremors; they’re the pressure of two worlds colliding. The true Williams is resurfacing.”

“Yes. I knew it would happen,” Mrs. Roger replied calmly.

“No. You don’t understand the severity.” Adeline stepped forward. “Williams is not losing control; she is losing the mechanism that allows control. When faced with a problem her logical persona cannot solve, she digs deeper into her mind for a strategic answer. And the deeper she digs, the closer she gets to the original Williams.”

Adeline swallowed hard. “When the two meet, the outcome will be catastrophic. Dr. Niran Williams is predictable. The original Williams is not. You did not cure her. You built a labyrinth to hide the exit.”

She explained the symptoms that were appearing more frequently. Then she asked the question that chilled the room: “What happens if the barrier breaks and the real Williams returns?”

“Dr. Niran Williams would do anything to protect the image she built. She would never allow even the smallest flaw to appear. But if the original Williams takes control, the culprits from the past will pay, and so will anyone in the Doctor’s current life. Attachment is a weakness.”

Adeline remembered Williams pinning her down with effortless precision, her eyes flat and cold. Something had always been wrong. Now she understood.

Romaric’s intervention hadn’t startled her because the part of her that felt had gone dormant.

Yet one doubt remained. “Are you telling me you created someone incapable of loving, feeling joy, crying, or connecting? You call that saving her?”

“She is a doctor,” Mrs. Roger insisted. “She saves lives. People call her the magic hand that heals. Tell me, would you rather see a serial killer or a miracle worker?”

“And now that the miracle worker is cracking, what do you have to say?” Adeline asked.

“You must bring her back. We can still—”

Adeline leaned back and let out a short, disbelieving laugh that echoed down the corridor. “Oh my God.” She started gathering the documents, her movements frantic.

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Roger asked in alarm.

Adeline strode toward the office, eyes burning. “How old was Williams when she left?”

“Twenty. Why does it matter?”

“She is thirty-eight today. You have no idea what grew out of that trauma. If she remembers this place, she will burn it to the ground. And you know it.”

“What are you planning?” Mrs. Roger stepped in front of the door.

“I’m going to get her out of there.”

Mrs. Roger seized her arm. “Stop. If you do that, she will suffer terribly. Her suffering fueled her hatred, and you will not be able to control her.”

“Let go of me!” Adeline shouted, adrenaline flooding her.

“She has grown. She has influence. She is meticulous.”

Adeline tore her arm free. “Did you ever check the dangers of your method? I thought this place was the safest solution, but now I see Miss Kai once again trusted the wrong hands. This method was abandoned for a reason.”

Mrs. Roger went pale.

“It was abandoned because after a period of time, memories returned gradually. And when it did, the pain was so overwhelming that the subject lost their mind. They committed suicide. You did not heal Williams. You added a countdown. I would rather she suffer trying to live than die without knowing who she is.”

“Then you are choosing for her,” Mrs. Roger whispered.

“You chose for her, too,” Adeline replied, picking up the last videotapes. “Did you ask her mother whether she wanted this hollow version of her daughter?”

“She wanted her daughter alive.”

The bitter exchange ended in suffocating silence.

Mrs. Roger could not stop her. The butler helped Adeline collect the entire archive, a history too cruel to show the mother. Adeline knew she had to protect Kai from this last unbearable truth.

“Adeline,” Mrs. Roger called softly. “You sound intelligent, and I see you hate my method. But I tried to save a teenager.”

Adeline looked at the old woman who clung to her justification. She now understood the terror of the situation. The original Williams was emotional, impulsive, and untrained. Dr. Niran Williams was strategic, ruthless, logical, and increasingly violent only because she was fighting the resurgence of her buried self.

If Dr. Niran Williams won, she would become a flawless strategist who enjoyed inflicting suffering without understanding the desire behind it. If the original Williams won, she would seek revenge and erase the Doctor. One identity had to die.

Mrs. Roger finally understood the horror she had nurtured for two decades.

Later, in the cold luxury of her hotel suite, Adeline did not undress or turn on the lights. She sat on the edge of the bed with the files scattered around her and wept. It was raw, uncontrollable grief for the girl who starved herself to be loved. The pain was unbearable. Could someone suffer so much that they lost their humanity?

Her path was clear. She was going back. But first, she had to speak with her professor. The fight for Williams had only begun.

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