Page 10 of Fractured Devotion
Rourke called it an opportunity. “Not ours, but worth borrowing,” he’d said. An opportunity to trigger a systems audit, reroute attention, and slip into dark corners while everyone else was rebooting protocols. It gave me the access window I needed to lace my software deeper into the clinic’s infrastructure—an unplanned gift that pushed our timeline forward.
It's been three days since that moment in the boardroom—the cold glass walls, the hum of breaths held too long. And then her. In real time. Not a still frame, not a recording. Celeste, in the flesh, where no filter or data artifact could distort her edges. I knew she’d be there, of course. It was orchestrated that way. But knowing didn’t prepare me for the gravity of proximity.
She’s magnetic, even when motionless. Something about the tension in her jaw, the precision in her silences. And beneath it all, the fracture I’ve spent months trying to understand—a wound too complex to suture, too deep to ignore.
I’ve been watching her from a distance through surveillance from the clinic. Dr. Felix Rourke’s orders. I needed to study my assignment well enough. She is not just another regular project.
I’ve mapped her silences, studied the edges of her pain, and built hypotheses from her deflections and the way her eyes fixate when she thinks no one sees. That fracture is the key to everything.
Dr. Felix Rourke arranged my cover. On paper, I’m just a temporary Surveillance and Security Operations Liaison. Harmless and forgettable. But the real reason I’m here runs deeper, hidden beneath the surface of the clinic and buried in the fractured layers of Celeste’s past.
There’s a prototype—a neurological code she designed years ago, hidden beneath ethical frameworks and masked in trauma intervention trials. After her tribunal, they tried to erase all traces of it. They locked it behind firewalls and protocol red tape. But it still exists, somewhere deep in the clinic’s oldest systems.
Rourke wants it, and I’m the only one who can extract it. But to find it, I need to understand the one who created it. And that means getting as close to Celeste as she’ll allow… and closer still when she won’t.
The sky begins its slow surrender from charcoal gray to hints of diluted gold as I step across the inner courtyard that stretches between the archive wing and the main research center of the clinic, nestled securely within Miramont’s walled premises, with frost clinging stubbornly to the glass awnings. Morning stretches its fingers above the rooflines, banishing the last traces of night, though the cold still bites like a warning not yet lifted.
Rourke meets me in the greenhouse behind the archives, of all places. The air inside is humid and laced with the bitter tang of chlorophyll. He’s pruning something with thorns, and his gloves are slick with sap.
“You’re late again,” he says without looking.
“I was installing upgrades.”
He nods like he knows that’s only partly true. “Does Celeste suspect anything yet?”
“No. But she’s… aware. She doesn’t let things slide.”
“She shouldn’t. She’s the only reason this place runs.” He clips a stem and holds it between us like a scalpel. “But she’s also the only one who knows how to dismantle it. So be careful.”
“I don’t need to hurt her.”
Rourke looks up for the first time, his eyes catching the light. “You sure? You’re already secretly watching her every move. That’s a kind of violence.”
I don’t flinch. “I need to understand her. That’s not the same.”
He drops the flower into a silver bin and wipes his gloves. “You’ll get your access to Sublevel B tomorrow. Find what we lost. But remember, Kade. You break her, you lose everything.”
He turns, brushing past a hanging fern, his back already to me. I nod once, then step backward through the greenhouse’s exit. The humid air gives way to a chill as I shut the door behind me, the sharp scent of sap still clinging to my jacket. The greenhouse, nestled near the edge of the archive wing, is separated from the clinic’s main research corridors by a narrow passage flanked with frost-kissed glass.
My boots tap along the cobblestones of the outer courtyard as I move briskly, the cold wrapping tighter around my neck the closer I get to the central building. I replay every word Rourke said, each one sharp with purpose, echoing in my mind like the snap of dead twigs beneath my feet.
I don’t look back.
By the time I reach the main threshold, the sky has paled to a muted silver-blue, with hints of gold brushing the upper clouds. I scan in through the east gate and step into the central lobby. The warmth inside is stark, a sudden shift that feelslike crossing thresholds in more ways than one. It cleanses. It isolates.
The elevator ride is brief. As the doors slide open onto the main floor, I glance down the corridor that leads to Celeste’s office. Midway through my walk, I spot her standing near her office door with her head tilted slightly as she reads a chart.
The hallway lighting pools around her like a spotlight, catching in the strands of her dark hair. I slow my pace, careful with every footfall, needing to see her up close—her eyes, her mouth, the way she holds herself.
She looks up from the chart and meets my eyes. Her body remains still—no retreat, no step forward. Just a suspended moment. A pause. Is it calculated? Reflexive?
“Good morning,” I say, my voice measured.
She returns the greeting with a nod. “Morning. Kade, right?”
“That’s right.” I let a beat pass. “Settling in. Slowly.”
Her eyes narrow just slightly, but not in suspicion. More like in assessment.
