Page 129 of Fractured Devotion
I storm out of the room, the hallway blurring around me.
I need answers. From Kade.
Right now.
Before I decide to break him open and see what spills out.
Kade answers on the first knock. I don’t wait for an invitation. I step into his office like I’ve done it a thousand times, like I belong here. The office smells like scorched cinnamon and burnt ozone. The windows are covered, and the lights are too low.
He watches me from the center of the room, his shirt half-buttoned, his expression unreadable.
“You saw something,” he says. It’s not a question.
I nod.
I move past him without a word and sit at the edge of his desk. My hands are still shaking, but I fold them tightly in my lapand keep them steady. He follows, silent, until we’re facing each other in the dim amber light.
“Project Celestia,” I say.
A muscle ticks in his jaw.
“You knew?” I ask.
“I suspected,” he replies.
“Bullshit.”
He says nothing.
“I watched myself,” I say, my voice cracking. “In a gown, in a closet, terrified. Someone filmed it. Someone documented my panic like it was data to be mined. And you… you’re telling me yoususpected?”
His eyes close. “Celeste—”
“Don’t.” I stand now, pacing a tight circle between his desk and the window. “How long have you known?”
He exhales slowly. “I found fragments, years ago. Before I came here. Echo has deep storage clusters and memory cores that no one wants to admit still exist. I wasn’t supposed to see them.”
“But you did. And you never told me.”
“I didn’t know if they were real. The files were corrupted. Some of them were intentionally degraded. And I didn’t know it wasyou.”
I turn sharply. “Don’t lie to me.”
His voice drops, dangerous now. “I didn’t knowuntil recently.”
“What changed?”
“You started remembering.”
The words fall between us like a crack in concrete.
“And you just let it happen?” I whisper. “Watched it unfold like another experiment?”
He steps toward me. “I didn’t know how deep it went. I didn’t know you’d be the child in that room.”
“And when you figured it out? What then? You just kept watching?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
