Page 133 of Fractured Devotion
“It is,” I whisper. “You’ve built your obsession like an altar. And I’m tired of bleeding on it.”
He steps forward, just one step. Enough to shorten the space between us to a breath.
“I want you to hate me,” he says. “If that’s what it takes to make you real.”
I blink. “I don’t need to hate you. I just need to stop letting you define the terms.”
His gaze doesn’t soften. “You already changed them.”
That silences me longer than it should.
He’s not wrong.
I’ve turned his tools back on him. I’ve taken the power he wields like a blade and buried it deep in his own flesh. And now he bleeds just like the rest of us.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I say.
“No,” he agrees. “You’re afraid of what I made you see.”
I open the door. “I’ll see myself out.”
“Celeste—”
“Keep the rest of your ghosts. I’ve already met mine,” I say.
The hallway outside is colder than I remember.
And for once, I don’t flinch from it.
The walk down the hallway feels longer than it should. My footsteps echo louder than usual, too clean, too sharp. The flashdrive in my pocket feels radioactive. Like if anyone looks too closely, they’ll see my childhood glowing through my skin.
I don’t go to my office. I don’t even go to the diagnostics wing.
Instead, I go to the observation level. The one Harper used to sneak into before her shifts. The one that overlooks the old therapy chambers, which are mostly vacant now and lit from below with those sterile fluorescence lights that make everything look surgical.
I lean against the glass and watch the blank chairs. The walls are still lined with two-way mirrors. Echo is always watching, even when no one is sitting behind the glass. That’s what unnerves me most, how we built something that doesn’t stop observing even after everyone leaves.
The girl on the footage—me—wasn’t just scared. She was conditioned. Reactions repeated until they weren’t reactions anymore. They were like architecture, neural bricks, and emotional blueprints.
And someone designed it.
Maybe not Kade. Maybe not Rourke. But someone. And now it’s on me to name them.
I slide the flash drive from my pocket and hold it in my palm.
I could destroy it right now. I could throw it into the stairwell incinerator, wipe every copy, clean the record, and pretend I never saw what I saw.
But I won’t.
At least not yet.
The truth is ugly. It’s raw. But it’s mine now.
I turn and walk back down the corridor, taking my time now.
The drive stays in my pocket.
And the ghosts in the glass watch me leave, reflected in silence.
