Page 40 of Fractured Devotion
I open the folder. It’s just standard documentation. Audit entries from last week, cross-checked with interface logs. It’s all familiar. All mine. Which makes it worse. I don’t remember misplacing it.
I rub a hand down my face. Maybe I’m tired. Maybe the fragmented sleep from last night is catching up.
But I don’t like gaps in my memory. Not when they concern people like him.
My gaze shifts to the small digital clock on my desk. It’s nearly 2 p.m. The afternoon is unraveling quickly, and I haven’t reviewed the second half of the patient simulation module.
I reach for the tablet.
Alec’s folder sits beside it. The one with the flash drive. I still haven’t opened it. It sits like a stone, heavier than itssize should allow. I press the screen and bring up the internal diagnostics to keep my mind from veering off.
There’s no corruption. No forced rewrites. The data’s clean.
But the feeling in my chest isn’t.
I look back at the file Kade brought in.
And I try to shake the unease.
But I fail.
I keep trying anyway.
However, the air never clears.
It clings to the edges of the room, my thoughts, and the back of my throat like smoke that doesn’t burn but smothers. I scroll through the patient simulation logs, my eyes tracking the data with mechanical precision. My fingers know what to do even when my mind drifts. Even when the phantom heat of Kade’s nearness resurfaces like a bruise I can’t explain.
Since he left the folder, since he leftmestanding with that look, I haven’t been able to exhale fully. He didn’t say anything threatening, and he didn’t touch me. But he didn’t need to. He exists like a scalpel: sharp, sterile, and meant to pierce.
The logs blur.
Somewhere between lines of code and archived entries, a sound interrupts me. A tap. It’s delicate, not a knock. Not quite. I glance up.
Mara.
She slips into the room like she always does,moving like a metronome—measured, exact, and with no wasted motion. She holds a sealed container and a slim black notepad, her fingers wrapped too tightly around both. Without a word, I motion for her to enter.
“Dr. Varon,” she says softly, placing the items on the side table. Her eyes don’t rise immediately. “You asked for theadditional samples from the interface deterioration set. I ran the variant overlays again.”
I nod, gesturing to the desk. “Show me.”
Mara approaches, a little slower than usual, like she’s walking underwater. Her notes are exact, her margins neat, her annotations cut with mathematical clarity. Her voice remains composed, threading through the data as she explains, pointing to a subtle rise in deviation from last week’s trial batch.
“That shouldn’t happen,” I murmur.
“No,” she agrees. “Unless someone altered the behavioral tags between runs. Which I didn’t.”
Her voice drops even further. “I checked the logs against my admin timestamp. There was another user access early this morning. About 4:27 a.m. Level Two credentials. Not me.”
My head lifts slowly. “Who?”
She hesitates before saying, “It was scrubbed. I tried tracing it, but whoever did it rerouted the access trail through three internal servers. Intentionally.”
A muscle in my jaw tightens. “That shouldn’t be possible.”
Mara looks like she wants to say more. But instead, she hands over the folder, closes the container, and takes a single step back. I catch her watching me. It’s not out of curiosity but something softer. Guarded, but watchful.
“You’re the only one who caught this?” I ask.
