Page 34 of Fractured Devotion
I flinch.
He leans in slightly. “You don’t have to be alone this time.”
I look away. Outside the window, the wind lifts a tree branch, pressing it briefly against the glass. The moment passes.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He doesn’t respond. He just stands and walks to the door.
“Be careful, Celeste. Not just with the research, but with the people watching it.”
And then he’s gone.
I don’t move for a long time.
Later, I leave the office, the flash drive still warm in my pocket.
The clinic halls feel sharper than usual, and every glance feels like a blade. The nurses talk in hushed tones near the intake station, and I catch my name once. Maybe twice. But I keep walking.
Kade passes me near the stairwell. Our eyes meet briefly, and this time, he doesn’t just nod. “Morning,” he says, barely above a whisper, but sharp with an unnamed emotion.
“Morning,” I reply, keeping my tone neutral. Too neutral.
He looks like he might say more, but instead, he just holds my gaze for a beat longer, then continues on his way.
I feel the weight of it even after he turns the corner.
In my lab, I stare at the monitor again. This time, I open a new file. A new protocol.
Something darker.
Something unfinished.
Trial 14.
It’s not just the remnants of a discarded experiment but a restructuring of neural reactivity mapping pulled directly from the flash drive Alec handed me.
The first variant had shown erratic behavior, but what it revealed in its unpredictability had stuck with me. If pain couldrewrite memory, then with the right feedback loop, fear might overwrite desire. Or amplify it beyond restraint.
My fingers hover over the keys, then they move.
I begin layering the parameters, adjusting thresholds, and refining stimulus intervals. No subjects yet. Just theory and hypotheticals. But this isn’t routine work. This is old, dangerous ground. A secret buried deep enough that I had convinced myself it was gone.
But the shape is there.
The shape of something dangerous enough to work.
The room darkens as clouds slip over the sun, and the shadows on the floor elongate. In the dim, the noise in my head thins into focus.
I glance down at the interface, tempted to reopen the rest of the flash drive contents and dissect them until something screams meaning. But there’s danger in that. I know myself well enough to recognize when obsession is dressing itself as curiosity.
Still, I remain on Trial 14. The failed variant. Or rather, the one everyone thinks failed.
My hands move without thinking, launching sequences and mapping data clusters, my eyes scanning for anomalies no one else would even know to look for. This work,this stillness, is the only space where my lungs remember how to fully work.
A message blips onto my screen:Rourke wants a progress update before noon.
Of course he does.
