Page 157 of Fractured Devotion
Like they were testing something even deeper—
Reyes says it aloud, softly, “A long-term adaptation model.”
A child who is designed to be broken and rebuilt.
And she rebuilt herself into a goddamn weapon.
I step out of the lab, my boots scuffing against the worn floor tiles like they’re trying to argue with gravity. The hall outside is unnervingly still. My head’s still echoing with every line of code and every fucked-up breadcrumb we just uncovered.
The moment I turn the corner near Diagnostics, I see her. Celeste. She’s standing by the vending machine with her arms crossed, her profile cut in the clinical lighting like some beautifully angry goddess. Kade is with her. They’re close. Too close.
He’s leaning in like they’re speaking lowly and in private. And the way his fingers graze her elbow? It’s not guiding. It’s possessing.
I freeze.
Whatever they’re saying, she’s not pushing him away. She’s not stepping back. And it guts me in a way I can’t name without it sounding like betrayal. I watch her expression. It’s not soft, but not hostile either. It’s sharp and focused.
Like she’s learning him.
And it makes me want to break something.
He says something, and she tilts her head. Then she turns and walks away, leaving him standing there, hands in his pockets and smirking like he just won something. I catch his eyes for a split second before I move. He sees me, but he doesn’t say a word.
He just walks off like the corridor was always his.
I exhale a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
Then I hear footsteps behind me—smaller and quicker. Mara.
“That looked… intense,” she says, eyeing me sideways.
“Yeah.”
She raises a brow. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I tell a lie.
“That didn’t look like you’re fine. That looked like a man watching a woman he maybe sort of—definitely—wishes wasn’t talking to someone else. Especially that someone.”
I arch an eyebrow at her. “You done?”
She grins. “Just saying what everyone else won’t.”
I shake my head. But I’m not mad. Not really. It helps to laugh, even if it’s bitter.
Back in my office, the walls feel closer than usual, like the room has been breathing without me. I set Reyes’ data stack onthe table and sit in silence for a beat, letting the hum of the ceiling vent lull me into focus.
I start building a timeline. Every date, every document, and every name we’ve uncovered so far.
Celeste’s father: dead in 1990. Her mother: dead in 1996.
Celeste was admitted to state care under Rourke’s alias: 1996. Early neural mapping: 1997. Miramont test subject ID created: 1998.
And then there’s a decade of blank.
No school files, no photos, no public records.
Until she appears again at seventeen as a prodigy intern for a now-defunct branch of the Echo program.
