Chapter 74

Chapter 74: Chapter 74

Ingrid felt something twist painfully inside her as she watched the scene. She had known that the original Ingrid had suffered, but seeing the girl’s desperation with her own eyes was different from merely remembering fragments of her past. The girl wasn’t asking for love anymore; she was willing to become a servant in her own home just to avoid being thrown away. Yet the people she was begging didn’t look moved by her tears, and the woman she clung to merely stared down at her with disgust.

The younger woman suddenly kicked the girl’s hands away. "Then go and die!" she shouted. "Nobody wants you here, so why don’t you just disappear? You’d be doing everyone a favour if you stopped showing your face!" 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

The girl fell backward into the snow, her hands scraping against the frozen ground as she tried to catch herself. The young man looked away, while the two older people remained silent, making no attempt to stop the woman or help the girl rise. Their faces held no trace of pity, and the younger woman’s cruel words seemed to satisfy her rather than trouble her conscience. Ingrid wanted to scream at them, to demand how they could treat their own daughter like that, but she had no control over the memory unfolding before her.

Another surge of pain ripped through her head, and the snowy scene shattered.

This time, Ingrid found herself inside a large manor. The walls were decorated with expensive paintings, and the floor beneath her feet was polished so thoroughly that it reflected the light from the ceiling. The original Ingrid stood near the centre of the room, looking uncertain as several people gathered around her with poorly concealed amusement. Before she could understand what was happening, someone seized her arm and forced her toward a metal object positioned beside a chair.

She wasn’t as fat so this was a memory before the first memory that was shown to her. But the next moment, electricity tore through her body.

The original Ingrid and Ingrid now screamed as the current passed through her, her muscles locking while she struggled desperately to pull away. The people surrounding her burst into laughter, treating her pain as though it were the most entertaining thing they had witnessed all day.

The blonde haired girl and her brother stood beside her, their lips twisted into one cruel smirk as they amped up the voltage.

"You begged that you would do anything as long as you get to stay with us. This is nothing right? You’ll let us play this little and harmless prank on you, right?" The girl laughed, her laughter sounding like twinkling bells.

"Stop pretending! The voltage isn’t that high! As punishment, I’ll bring it even higher!"

In the examination room, Ingrid screamed again. Her body strained against the restraints as the machine forced more memories into her mind. Scenes of humiliation, rejection, and cruelty flooded through her so quickly that she couldn’t process one before another took its place.

She saw the original Ingrid being mocked for her weak Beast Core, being pushed aside whenever her family gathered, and being treated as though her existence were an embarrassment they wished they could erase. Each memory came with its own sharp burst of pain, leaving Ingrid unable to distinguish the suffering she was witnessing from the agony the machine inflicted on her.

"Stop the procedure!" one of the technicians suddenly shouted.

The words barely registered with Ingrid. Her head felt as though it were being crushed from the inside, and she couldn’t stop screaming as another wave of memories slammed into her. The machine’s hum grew louder, its screens flickering rapidly while the technicians scrambled to adjust the controls. One of them reached for a switch, but before she could touch it, sparks burst from the equipment beside her.

A loud sound filled the room. The machine connected to Ingrid’s head began shaking violently, and several screens went dark at once. Sparks flew from the control panels, followed by sharp popping sounds as cables overheated and pieces of equipment began breaking down.

The technicians shouted over one another, rushing to disconnect the wires and shut off the power, but the damage spread faster than they could contain it. Another machine erupted in a shower of sparks, forcing two operators to stumble backward to avoid being struck.

"What is happening?" Jowe’s grandfather roared, his earlier confidence disappearing beneath a furious expression. "Shut it down! Turn the entire system off immediately!"

"We’re trying!" one of the technicians shouted back. "The controls aren’t responding! Something is interfering with the system!"

The room descended into chaos. People hurried between the machines, desperately attempting to stop the damage, while others shouted instructions that were drowned out by the alarms. Ingrid could barely keep her eyes open, but she slowly became aware that the crushing pressure in her head was beginning to fade. The pain hadn’t disappeared entirely, and her body felt impossibly heavy, yet the sudden silence inside her mind gave her enough strength to open her eyes.

Her vision blurred as she looked around the room. Smoke drifted from several damaged machines, and the technicians were still scrambling to save whatever equipment remained functional. She couldn’t understand what had happened or why the memory search had suddenly gone wrong, but she was too exhausted to care. All she wanted was for the pain to stop and for someone to remove the wires from her head.

Then she saw Jowe’s grandfather standing beside the platform.

His face was twisted with fury as he stared down at her, his eyes burning with a rage that made it clear he blamed her for the destruction around them. Ingrid tried to focus on his expression, but the room began spinning, and the faces surrounding her dissolved into indistinct shapes. Her eyelids grew heavier with every passing second, and she could no longer keep them open.

The last thing Ingrid saw was Jowe’s grandfather’s furious face. Then everything went black.