FAR GONE

Chapter 13

Jessica killed the engine after an hours of driving. The road had ended into a dirt clearing that opened up into a wall of towering trees. An entrance into a forest—it looked untouched, wild, and secret. My brows pulled together.

Jessica was the first to move. She pushed open the car door without hesitation and stepped out, her heels crunching over dry twigs. I followed, the air immediately damp and cooler against my skin.

I glanced around at the dark canopy stretching ahead, the kind of place that could swallow you whole.

“What are we doing here?” I asked, my voice low, cautious.

Jessica’s eyes cut toward me, steady, unreadable. “The truth you’ve never known about Milton…” she paused, her lips tightening, “…you’ll get to know it today.”

Something in her tone rooted me in unease, but I fell into step behind her as she led the way into the thicket. Branches scratched against my jacket, the ground soft with layers of rotting leaves. We came across a house in the distance. From afar, it looked abandoned with a slanted roof.

We approached, but Jessica suddenly lifted her hand to stop me. She crouched and pointed to the ground.

“Look carefully, Kael. Traps.”

I squinted, following her finger. The forest floor wasn’t natural. Beneath the scattered leaves were subtle signs—trip wires barely visible in the dim light, pits disguised under flimsy coverings, and metal jaws of bear traps, their teeth stained faintly with rust. One wrong step and your leg would be shredded.

A cold sweat slid down my spine.

“Follow only where I walk,” Jessica instructed. “Step for step.”

I nodded, my throat tight, and did as told. Every time her foot pressed down, I mirrored her precisely, careful not to deviate. The closer we drew to the house, the stronger the stench of damp earth and iron became.

At the entrance, she reached into a satchel and handed me a folded lab coat. “Put this on.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“You’ll understand in a moment.”

The weight of it in my hands was unsettling, but I shrugged into it, the fabric cold against my skin. Together, we pushed open the door.

The moment I stepped inside, the world tilted.

Outside, the building was rotting, a forgotten husk. Inside—it was something else entirely. Sterile white walls. The hum of fluorescent lights. Rows of surgical equipment. The tables were lined with scalpels, clamps, syringes. Glass tanks filled with a pale yellowish fluid. And inside them—

Heads.

Human heads. Preserved, their eyes sealed shut, their faces frozen.

The sight hit me like a fist to the gut. My stomach twist. I staggered back, pressing a hand against the wall for balance. My vision blurred as I fought the urge to vomit.

“What the hell is this place?” I managed to choke out.

Jessica’s gaze was hard, her expression laced with bitterness. “This is Doctor Milton’s special research house. A place no one in the world knows about.”

Her words punched harder than the stench. “What do you mean?” I demanded, my voice rising.

She took a step toward one of the tanks, her fingers grazing the glass. The pale face inside seemed to float, lifeless, like a grotesque museum exhibit.

“Do you remember the Clean Seed Project?” she asked.

I nodded quickly. “Yes—I remember it all too well.”

Her lips curved in a humorless smile. “Back then, the president launched it. They wanted to detect the psychopath gene in unborn children and terminate them before they were born. Thousands of families lost children. The people revolted. It became unbearable.”

I remembered. The riots. The protests. The tear gas filling the streets.

“But then Milton and his friend came,” Jessica continued, her voice sharp with disdain. “They campaigned, they spoke of freedom. Milton stood against the project. He promised every child deserved life. He said those born with the gene should be guided, nurtured, not destroyed. The world praised him. They called him savior.”

“Yes,” I said quietly. “I remember all of it.”

Her eyes snapped to mine, hard and unyielding. “But Milton Carroway is still running the tests, Kael. Not to save lives. To hunt them. Pregnant women are brought here. He scans for the gene. If it appears—he kills the child. He takes their brain.”

Her voice trembled with a mix of fury and grief as she pointed to the jars surrounding us.

“People worship him as a hero. But in truth?” She gestured at the grotesque gallery of heads. “He’s a monster wearing a mask. A butcher parading as a savior.”

I stared around me, the room spinning. Every glass jar was proof. Every lifeless face was another secret sacrificed in the name of his twisted science.

I leaned forward, my eyes narrowing at Jessica. “What exactly is he planning to do with all this?” My voice was low, dangerous, like a blade pressed against the skin.

Jessica hesitated, but then her words spilled out, sharp and grim.

“Milton doesn’t just deal in money or power, Kael. He’s playing god. He wants to use science—not to cure, not to build—but to dominate. He’s been funding a research to make genetic manipulation, bio-weapons, even mind-control serums. Imagine soldiers stripped of their will, bodies enhanced beyond human limits, their loyalty burned into them like branding on cattle. That’s his vision—an army that doesn’t question, doesn’t fear, doesn’t break. He calls it ‘the new order of men.’”

A bitter laugh slipped from her lips, but there was no humor in it. “To him, people are clay. Tools. Flesh to be molded into weapons. He doesn’t see them as human.”

I felt the air shift in my lungs, heavier, thicker. My hands clenched, the memory of blood and chains gnawing at my mind. So that was Milton’s endgame? To build an empire of monsters, crafted in labs and cages?

I exhaled slowly, voice gritted. “And what about Malik Radwan and his Black Serpent group? Don’t tell me that’s just coincidence.”

Jessica’s eyes darkened, and she leaned closer, her words dropping like poison into my ears.

“Malik was never free. He was part of Milton’s game. Don’t you see? Milton was the one who sold you and your men out to him. Every move Malik made, every ambush, every whisper—it all fed back to Milton. And when you nearly had Malik, when you had him bleeding and cornered… it wasn’t Malik’s luck that saved him. It was Milton’s hand. He pulled the strings. He made sure you were caged instead.”

The truth hit me like a hammer. My chest burned, rage clawing to be unleashed. My voice thundered in the silence of the room:

“So all this time… Milton was the architect of every problem. Every betrayal. Every death.”

Jessica nodded, slow and deliberate, her gaze fixed on me with the weight of unshakable certainty. “Yes, Kael. Every thread leads back to him.”