Page 43 of Fractured Devotion
I reach for my tablet and begin encrypting a private clone of the logs. If this thing spreads, I want proof that hasn’t passed through anyone else’s hands. Especially not the official chain.
My fingers move steadily over the keys, but inside, I’m unraveling. I’m not panicking. Not yet. But I’m alert in a waythat makes everything else fade. The sound of my breath, the cool hum of the room, and even the soft tick of the wall clock.
Whoever accessed those files wasn’t looking for patient data. They were looking forme.
I pause, then save the file to an offline partition, locking it under a triple-tier authentication protocol I haven’t used in years.
The flash drive still sits in the center of my desk.
I stare at it.
Then I speak into the silence, “Not this time.”
And I begin to plan what comes next.
Chapter 15 – Kade - Fractured Calm
From the surveillance wing on the east corner, I watch the corridors come to life. Lights hum into awareness, and movement stirs on the third floor. An intern arrives too early. Harper. Predictable. Always trying to prove she’s more than what she is.
Celeste arrives twenty minutes later.
There’s no hesitation in her stride, but it’s the kind of control one wears like a shield, not in ease. Her coat doesn’t swing, her hands stay deep in her pockets, and her shadow cuts clean along the tiled wall like she’s carved out her place here. Like it belongs to her.
But it doesn’t.
Not yet.
I don’t follow her immediately. There’s no need. I’ve already done what I came to do during the dead hours. I copied network logs, mapped access pings, and mirrored last week’s system purges onto a hidden loop.
No one’s noticed.
No one but her, probably.
I slip out of the wing and onto the main floor through the side hall, all casual confidence, like I haven’t just crawled through Miramont’s digital bloodstream. Alec walks past me in the corridor without noticing.
He’s distracted.
Good.
When I approach the diagnostics wing, Mara’s voice carries softly from inside. The door isn’t shut all the way, so I listen without guilt.
Celeste’s voice comes softer than usual, fatigued, but still steady. I don’t make out words, just the weight of them. When Mara leaves, she passes me without making eye contact.
I start moving, but I don’t enter Celeste’s lab. Not yet. Instead, I cross to the archive bay two rooms down, unlock the console, and begin scrubbing traces of a second access point Mara almost spotted alongside the 4:27 a.m. ghost log.
She’s sharper than she lets on.
Celeste hasn’t flagged it officially, which tells me more than any surveillance footage ever could.
I linger for seventeen minutes.
Then I make my way upstairs. The lounge on the sixth floor is empty at this hour. Forgotten and half-used. From here, I can watch the courtyard without being seen. Celeste’s window glints faintly under the morning gray.
She’s behind it. She always is by now.
When I close my eyes, I can see the way she stands with her arms crossed, the tension like a wire across her collarbone. I’ve always noticed that edge of control, evident in the stills and transcripts Rourke showed me, even before I ever stepped foot inside Miramont.
She thinks no one remembers and that no one is watching.
