Page 15 of Fractured Devotion
He doesn’t respond. He just stares blankly at the wall, his eyes unfocused.
I end the session immediately, and the monitors blink back to idle as the orderlies guide him out.
Back in the corridor, I press a hand to the wall, grounding myself. My throat is tight. It could’ve been my imagination. A projection. But I know the cadence of those words. I’ve lived with them clawing at the edges of my memory for years.
And now they’ve escaped.
Somehow, I’m certain of one thing. That voice wasn’t his.
The rest of the day bleeds through clinical tasks, data streams, and procedural reviews. I review an incident report flagged by Kade Lorran—something about a corrupted firewall during our recent surveillance glitch. The details are vague, but what catches my attention is a backdoor protocol that shouldn’t exist.
I encrypt the file and move it to my private cache.
When I return to my office, Harper is waiting just outside, hugging a tablet to her chest.
“Is there something you need, Ms. DuVall?”
She fidgets, then extends the tablet. “I ran some follow-up algorithms on Subject 58’s neuro-echo pattern. I thought you might want to review the deviation curves.”
I take the tablet. The work is clean. Overeager, but not sloppy.
“Next time,” I say, “wait until you’re asked.”
Her smile falters, then brightens again. “Yes, Dr. Varon. Thank you.”
I close the door behind me.
Evening drapes itself over the windows before I realize how late it is. I power down my systems, but the screen lingers longer than it should before going black. There’s static fuzz and a flicker. Then nothing.
I stare at my reflection one last time, trying to find the fracture Alec saw.
But I’m not broken.
I’m just unfinished.
The walk back to my apartment is short but restless. The air outside is cooler than it was this morning, tinged with the sterile scent of rain that never quite fell. As I turn the corner past the clinic’s east wing, the sky fades from bruised dusk into a deeper, haunted navy.
Inside, the silence settles around me like a second skin. I set the tablet down, slip off my shoes, and retreat to the window. I don’t journal tonight, and I don’t check the feeds. I just stand there, watching my reflection grow fainter in the pane until all that’s left is my silhouette.
The words from earlier loop in my head like a recording stuck in a groove.What did he whisper in your closet?
I clench my jaw. I don’t flinch.
But I know this isn’t over. Something is reaching back through time and scraping at the layers I’ve buried. And whoever or whatever is behind it, they’re getting closer.
This story isn’t done with me yet.
Chapter 7 – Kade - Threads Beneath the Surface
The sky is just beginning to bruise with pre-dawn when I rise, my muscle memory driving me more than I thought. I haven’t slept. Not really. Sleep is indulgent. A weakness I can’t afford in this place.
From the terminal console in my quarters, I sift through surveillance logs. I haven’t yet secured live access to Celeste’s apartment, but the recordings from her office and the common halls are enough to keep me tethered. Last night, she lingered at the glass wall longer than usual, unmoving, watching her reflection until the screensaver swallowed it whole. I watched her do nothing for thirteen minutes and seventeen seconds.
She doesn’t realize that stillness is a language too.
I toggle through angles. The lab corridor, observation deck, and east wing security terminal. None of it scratches the itch beneath my skin. The script is quiet this morning.
The corrupted surveillance node—the one that triggered the blackout—wasn’t my doing. I checked the diagnostics three times. Someone else accessed the backdoor protocol. The timestamp aligns with a three-minute window during the system reboot. Too convenient. I don’t like coincidences. And I sure as hell don’t trust ghosts in machines.
