Page 19 of Fractured Devotion
“I know she is,” he says. “And I want everything. Methods, motives. Especially if she’s creating something that could compromise the clinic’s structure.”
I take that in. Then, his mask slips, and for a moment, I see not a man protecting institutional legacy but someone chasing power he lost years ago.
“Keep tightening the frame,” he says again. “I want to see what spills when she breaks.”
I step out of Rourke’s office with a pulse of unease tightening in my chest. His candor unsettles me more than any silence ever could. There’s a deeper layer he’s only now choosing to reveal—one that paints this entire operation in a much darker shade. He’s not just curious about her breakdown. He’s hunting legacy and secrets buried too deep for the tribunal to uncover. And I suspect those secrets are the key to everything she’s building now.
And I need to know too.
By dusk, I return to my suite and cue up a side protocol—a layered program designed to intercept journal entries from any digitized files she transfers. It’s risky, but necessary. Her written voice might give me the clearest map yet.
Later, I scan the feeds. Celeste sits alone in her office. She’s working late, the corners of her mouth twitching as she reads something on her screen. Then she turns and looks directly at the camera.
She can’t see it.
But she feels it.
The hunter in me stills.
I press two fingers to the screen.
“Good girl. Stay curious. That’s how you come closer.”
And I wait.
I don’t move from the monitors.
The sky deepens into a heavy dusk. I wait and watch, hoping she’ll retreat to the upper floors, to her backup apartment. The one I can see. But sometime after nine, she exits through the main doors instead. A clean, clinical disappearance. No lingering.
I remain at the controls well past midnight, traffic cams pulled up on a secondary feed. Her apartment is quiet, the curtains drawn. There’s no view inside, only silhouettes gliding behind glass and curtains.
Still, I wait. And watch. And imagine what lies just out of reach.
Chapter 9 – Celeste - Echoes in Glass
I try to pretend I can get some sleep, maybe it’ll just have some pity and take me under, but somewhere around two in the morning, I stop pretending. I lay in the dark with one leg tangled in my bed sheet, my heart thudding in rhythms that don’t belong to any dream. My apartment smells like lemon antiseptic and sleep deprivation. I haven’t touched the lights since I walked in.
I know I locked the door. I know it hasn’t opened. And yet something, maybe the kind of fear that doesn’t have a name, buzzes under my skin like static. It’s not loud. Just… patient.
I sit up slowly, my hand pressed to my collarbone like I can pin my body into silence. My journal rests on the side table, half open. I don’t remember writing last night. I don’t remember placing it there, either.
When I check the entries on my tablet, the timestamp is wrong. It says 3:02 a.m. I was already collapsed on the couch by then. I check the handwriting with clinical detachment. It’s mine. Slanted, tight, controlled.
Except I don’t remember writing:“He watches when I’m not looking. He waits for the part of me that never stopped screaming.”
My breath hitches. I don’t write like that.
The air in the apartment feels too still, too curated. I sweep my fingers along the baseboard, where the molding meets the tile. There’s nothing obvious. No wires, no light leaks. But I know how to hide surveillance. I used to install it myself.
By four, I’m showered, dressed, and pacing in silence. The windows of my primary apartment remain blank mirrors, reflecting nothing but the dark inside.
I make tea that I won’t drink and stare out toward the clinic’s direction, waiting for the first light to break.
This morning, the distance between here and Miramont feels exaggerated, like the air has grown heavier between each step I haven’t taken yet.
I stare out the window, watching the muted outline of the clinic barely emerge through the haze, and for the first time, I regret not sleeping in the backup apartment three floors above it.
That sterile room might have offered more than just predictability. If I’d gone there instead, I could’ve walked straight into the clinic hours ago, pored over the data, and maybe even put this unease to rest before dawn.
