Page 35 of Fractured Devotion
I ignore it for now. I need five more minutes. Maybe ten. Just a little more time in this silence before I have to face the noise again.
Alec’s words echo.Brilliant. Dangerous. And completely alone.
Maybe that’s still true.
But maybe it doesn’t have to be.
A knock at the lab door breaks the stillness. I freeze, my fingers stilling on the keyboard.
“Dr. Varon?”
It’s Harper. Of course it is. Her voice always lands with just a hint too much eagerness, like she’s waiting to be noticed more than heard.
“Come in.”
She steps inside, clutching her tablet, her eyes flicking nervously toward the dark interface behind me.
“I just… I wanted to drop off the latest logs from the patient simulations. We had a spike in response rates during the recent sleep sequence. Thought you’d want to see it.”
I nod without turning. “Leave it on the table. I’ll review them later.”
A pause. Then, she asks, “You okay? You look… tired.”
“I am. But I’m working.”
She lingers a beat too long before setting the tablet down and stepping back. I hear the hesitation in her breath, like she wants to say something else but doesn’t.
When the door clicks shut behind her, I finally turn.
The screen blinks back at me. Trial 14’s data pulses in slow waves, waiting.
And I feel it again, that strange burn under my skin.
It’s not fear. Not excitement. But something in between.
I push back from the desk and cross to the window. Below, the courtyard is already alive with the thrum of midday routine—interns moving with determined steps, carts squeaking down tiled paths, and staff murmuring as they pass clipped notes and glances between them.
Amidst it all, I see Kade gliding through like he was made of shadow.
I watch him without knowing why. His pace is measured, his hands in his pockets, his face angled slightly downward as if he’s cataloguing everything and nothing. He moves with intent that feels too calm and too deliberate for this place.
I wonder briefly and irrationally if he senses me watching. If he knows I’m standing here, hidden behind thick glass and reflection, observing the careful calculation in every step he takes.
There’s a sharp elegance in the way he moves, a grace too refined to be purely professional. It unsettles something in me. It’s like he’s always hunting something unseen. Or waiting to be hunted himself.
A chill slips across my skin, though the room hasn’t changed.
I return to my seat.
There’s still more to do.
Much more.
My eyes flick to the corner of the monitor. It reads 11:47 a.m.
Shit.
The message from earlier flashes back into memory.Rourke wants a progress update before noon.I’d let it slide and buried it beneath the weight of Trial 14, but time has a cruel way of catching up.
