Page 139 of Fractured Devotion
The irony is delicious.
They tried to turn my mind into a blueprint. And now I’ll return the favor, with interest.
Each line of code is a wound reopened.
Each override is a scalpel turned inward.
I code with fury, but it’s not wild. It’s surgical. Every line and every command is purposeful. I know this system intimately. I know its nervous tics, its hidden handshakes, and the ways it gaslights users into thinking compliance is their own choice.
They trained us for this, with mandatory coding and encryption drills from the moment we joined the clinic. They called it an operational necessity. But everyone understood the real lesson. It was self-reliance. No waiting for IT, no third-party oversight. When something needed to be erased, concealed, or unearthed, we did it ourselves.
And right now, I don’t need an analyst. I need precision.
Because the system blinked at me tonight, just for a second. And I’m not letting it go.
Not anymore.
I write through the night. My fingers cramp, and my eyes blur. But still, I write.
Until the first stable build compiles.
Heretic_L1: Autonomous Liberation Loop, prototype unstable.
I don’t test it yet.
But I don’t need to.
Because for the first time in a long time, I know what I’m building.
It’s not salvation. Not healing. Not even revenge.
I’m building freedom.
And I intend to release it like a virus into every room that ever tried to own me.
Even if it kills me.
Chapter 42 – Alec - Code Drift
Morning light cuts through the windows, pale and cold, spilling across the room in thin slats. The files Reyes and I recovered from the corrupted auxiliary cache are still cold in my hands as I plug them into the air-gapped analysis terminal.
I’ve gone over them a dozen times already, but something in the embedded layers keeps tugging at me, whispering like an unfinished sentence, like a second language woven beneath the primary code.
Reyes stands beside me, cradling a mug of that awful chicory brew that he swears sharpens focus. He doesn’t speak. He just sips, watching as my fingers move over the terminal, fast and precise.
The room smells of wire insulation, morning chill, and the lingering bite of menthol lozenges.
“There,” I say, pausing the scroll on a subroutine buried six levels down. “This wasn’t authored by Kade.”
Reyes squints. “What makes you sure?”
I highlight the fragment. It’s an old syntax. It’s not just outmoded. It’s archaic. It’s structured more like handwritten logic loops, the kind they used in behavioral constructs a decade ago.
“This was ported in from something older. Possibly something pre-Echo.”
Reyes leans in. “Which means…?”
“Kade didn’t build this. He just inherited it.”
