Page 48 of Fractured Devotion
They’re trying to map how I think.
I shut the system down and lock my door.
And I start to write again. A new protocol. A fail-safe. A contingency not even Trial 14 could predict.
Because someone’s coming for me.
And they’ve made the mistake of not striking first.
It’s late into the night when I finally step outside again. The air hits differently today. Cooler, sharper, like the sky is pressing in, lower than usual.
I don’t go home right away. Instead, I make a detour to the bakery near my apartment, the one with the flickering sign and bitter tea. I never complain about it anyway. I’ve been here before on evenings like this, when my skin feels too tight, and the clinic’s walls echo in my head.
The same waitress greets me with a blink of recognition. I’ve been here enough times that she no longer asks my name, just what I’ll have. Tonight, she senses something different. I don’t offer a smile.
“Tea,” I say. “Something black. Strong.”
She nods.
I take the same corner table, the one that’s always angled just right near the window. I’ve made it my own through repetition. It has a familiar view and predictable shadows.
After the waitress brings my tea, my eyes drift to the left, beyond the glass, to where the black van has been parked for days now. Unmoved, idle, and watching.
I’ve noticed it before, once after a late shift and again last week when I returned from the clinic and found it sitting across the street under a broken lamp. Each time, I waited for it to move, but it never did.
I don’t tense. Instead, I sip the tea slowly and let the warmth fill more than just the space behind my ribs. Then, I pull out my own backup tablet, the one I keep off Miramont’s grid.
I run a clean scan. There are no traces from last week. Nothing from the clone user either. But I don’t need data to tell me what I already know.
Someone’s already too close.
I send a secure ping to a third-party channel. It’s an old favor owed. I only write two words:trace plate.
By the time I look up again, the van is gone.
It was not driven away. It just… vanished.
I set the cup down carefully, and for the first time in days, I smile.
They blinked first.
I stay a few more minutes in the bakery, finishing the tea that had long since gone cold. The van’s absence lingers like a trick of light—part relief, part bait. My fingers drum against the rim of the cup while I run and rerun scenarios in my mind.
What did they want?
What have they already gotten?
The waitress returns to clear my table. She glances once at the empty seat across from me, then back at my face, and smiles like she knows something I don’t. It’s the smile people give women who sit alone too often, as if loneliness is something you choose.
But tonight, I don’t feel alone. I feel watched. I feel catalogued.
And I’m done feeling like prey.
By the time I make it back to my apartment, the city’s gone quiet. It’s not still, just… wary. The way it gets before a storm that you don’t see until it’s overhead.
I reset every alarm in my unit. I double-check the tablet’s network, clean my boots, and stack my coat like a trigger trap near the door, all silent signals to tell me if anything shifts in the night.
Before I sleep, I do one last thing.
