Page 32 of Fractured Devotion
No sounds.
I’m in and out in under five minutes.
By the time I arrive at the clinic, my pulse is steady, my pace normal. No one notices, and no one asks, as usual. I swipe in, pocket the badge, and take the west stairwell two steps at a time.
By the time I reach my terminal, Celeste is still in her office, reviewing files. The light catches her jawline as she leans closer to the screen.
I lean back, the monitor’s glow painting silver lines across my forearms. She’s there. Close, real, and unknowingly near. My fingers twitch against the edge of the console.
I shouldn’t crave the air she breathes, the way her mouth softens when she concentrates, and the rare tilt of her head that sends her hair spilling loose over one shoulder. But I do. And it’s not clinical. It’s not calculated. It’s something else. Something primal that gnaws through reason.
I want to get closer.
But I catch myself, just in time. My jaw locks tight, and I force the thoughts down where they belong.
Not yet.
I shift in my seat, my eyes narrowing on the screen as if that can dull the ache. She looks up, but not at me, not through the feed. She just looks away, lost in her own world.
And I stay still, reminding myself of the lines I haven’t crossed.
Yet.
Chapter 12 – Celeste - What the Silence Carries
I’m halfway through my second cup of tea when I realize I’ve been staring at the same screen for fifteen minutes. The cursor blinks at the top of the file like it’s judging me, like it knows I haven’t typed a single word worth saving. My office is still and gray, filled with the soft hum of equipment and the delicate weight of early morning silence.
I close the file.
There’s no use pretending today will be normal.
My body is in the clinic, but my mind’s been trailing off ever since I left my apartment. I’m restless. There’s a whisper of something behind everything, a tension I can’t quite place. It isn’t about work. It’s something else. And it clings to my shoulders even as I try to shake it off.
I press my hands to my face and drag them down slowly, then lean back into the chair, exhaling. A knock sounds at the door, sharp and intentional.
“Come in,” I say.
Mara enters, her silhouette crisp, her hair pinned in its usual no-nonsense twist. She doesn’t hesitate.
“You asked for the log updates on Simulation 14, Dr. Varon,” she says, stepping forward with a black folder pressed precisely to her side. “I also flagged inconsistencies in the bioreactivity thread. I ran the comparisons three times to be sure.”
I sit up straighter. “Show me.”
Mara opens the folder with the kind of mechanical grace I’ve come to recognize—not coldness, but habit. Her precision is her protection. Every page she lays out is annotated in her handwriting, sharp and angled. It reminds me of mine when I’m running on barely any sleep and too much caffeine.
She hovers just behind me as I scan the data. She’s not intruding, but close enough that I feel the steady hum of her focus.
“You caught this on your own?” I ask.
She nods. “The pattern wasn’t obvious at first. But the fluctuations weren’t following baseline degradation curves. I thought it might matter.”
It does.
I glance up at her, noting the way her fingers flex around the edge of the folder.
“You did well,” I tell her.
A flicker, just a breath of something unguarded, crosses her face. Gratitude? Uncertainty? It vanishes before I can decide.
