Page 22 of Fractured Devotion
“You’re earlier than usual,” I reply, not turning fully.
“Scheduling changes,” she answers. “Dr. Rourke is shifting the timeline on the Draper cases. He wanted the diagnostics team prepped.”
I glance toward her, and for a beat, her gaze flickers—not with guilt, not with anxiety, but with a kind of muted calculation. Something she doesn’t say lingers in the air.
“Thank you for the update,” I offer, nodding slightly. She nods once in return, already retreating, her clipboard held tight to her chest.
It could mean nothing. Or it could mean she knows something I don’t.
For the next hour, we work in quiet syncopation, the hum of machines filling the air between us. I catch Harper watching me twice, but I pretend not to notice.
Later, when she leaves to retrieve another file, I sit back and exhale. A bead of sweat slips down my spine despite the chill.
My thoughts drift again to the backup apartment, to the drawer. Maybe it was exactly how I left it. Maybe nothing at all was wrong, and I’m just looking for ghosts where only routine lives.
Maybe the pattern shifted on its own. Drawers do that sometimes when the building hums with too much cold air and recycled pressure.
It’s not a red flag. Not even a yellow. Just a wrinkle I’ll smooth out later.
Carefully and discreetly.
After the day’s work settles the edge off my nerves.
I step out of Diagnostics just before noon, my limbs tight from too much stillness and a headache blooming faintly behind my eyes. I tell myself I’ll walk it off, but the moment I turn the corner near the stairwell, I see Alec.
He’s leaning against the wall outside pathology with his sleeves rolled up, reading something on his tablet. When he looks up, his expression softens just slightly.
“Hey,” he says. “Was starting to think you were dodging me.”
“Maybe I was,” I answer, flat but not unfriendly.
He pushes off the wall with an easy shift of weight. “Fair enough. You got a minute?”
I glance past him toward the corner where the hallway bends toward the break lounge. It’s mostly empty.
“A minute.”
We walk in tandem, not speaking until the hum of voices fades behind thick lab doors. He doesn’t look at me right away. He never pushes. That’s always been his difference.
“I heard about the access restriction this morning,” he finally says.
“Reyes told you?”
Alec nods. “They flagged your activity at 0400. That’s what I heard, anyway.”
I shrug. “They like keeping tabs.”
“I don’t think they’re just watching,” Alec says, stopping near a side alcove that houses a defunct console and two abandoned chairs. “I think they’re trying to shape the way you move.”
“That’s not new,” I murmur as we both ease into the chairs, the old plastic creaking beneath our weight.
He exhales. The look in his eyes is unreadable for a beat, then it resolves into concern. It’s a familiar kind of patience that doesn’t feel like pity but something softer.
“You didn’t sleep last night.”
I glance at him, then away. “What gave it away?”
He gestures gently to the way I’ve been wringing the hem of my sleeve without realizing it.
