Page 90 of Fractured Devotion
Chapter 30 – Celeste - The Eye That Watches
It’s been a week since Alec and Reyes pulled me aside with the first whisper of evidence, something subtle but troubling buried in Echo’s backend systems. It started with minor data drift, things that could be chalked up to server lag or human error, but Alec is too meticulous to let it go. And when he looped Reyes in, they found more, such as login timestamps during hours no one should be active and cross-linked command chains sent from terminals never assigned to active sessions.
It all circles one question. Who’s inside our system that shouldn’t be?
Lately, everything feels like a shifting mirage. The stories, the suspicions, the whispered truths… they’re constantly evolving, making it harder to trust anything or anyone. I’ve been keeping my distance from Kade, holding him at arm’s length with every excuse I can muster. But that space is starting to wear thin. Without solid proof to tether these suspicions, I’m not sure how much longer I can keep pretending I don’t want answers, or him.
I meet Alec and Reyes in Reyes’ office after hours. The windows are blacked out, a pot of untouched coffee steaming between us. Alec looks sharper than usual, tension tight across his shoulders. Reyes flips through printed logs, his fingers slightly shaking as he slides the latest page in front of me.
“These entries here—” he points, “—they mimic the neural mapping update protocol. But they’re too frequent. And they’re not targeting inactive files. They’re overriding baseline sessions.”
My stomach knots. “You mean the live data?”
Alec nods. “Someone’s adjusting Echo’s calibration in real time by rewriting reaction thresholds and altering memory loop access triggers. It’s not massive yet, but the pattern is there.”
I sift through the papers, my eyes scanning the highlighted timestamps. There… an anomaly. At 3:17 a.m. Access granted under Harper’s terminal ID. Then again at 5:02 a.m., almost two hours later. Same ID and same function, but from a completely different network node.
“That’s not possible,” I whisper. “Harper wasn’t even in the building at that time.”
“She’s the only one whose credentials show up consistently in these logs,” Reyes adds, his voice low. “That’s why Alec came to me.”
I shake my head. “No. Harper’s paranoid and meticulous, but she wouldn’t risk this. She wouldn’t sabotage the system.”
Alec doesn’t say anything immediately. He slides a tablet across the desk. “These are the most recent logs I was able to extract,” he says. “I found a terminal echo in Lab C. It mimics Harper’s credential ID, but something’s off. The pattern is too precise to be a coincidence.”
The screen flickers as I tap through the feed. There it is again—Harper’s ID—tethered to an unauthorized dev protocol. Experimental. Dangerous. The kind of scripts that only core-level engineers should have access to.
“She’s either involved,” Alec mutters, “or being framed with remarkable precision.”
I study the logs and the echo commands. Some of it tracks back to a static IP embedded within the records vault. Reyes leans closer, his eyes narrowed. “That room’s been cold since last fall. Nobody should be using that network node.”
A chill rolls down my spine, and I frown. “You think someone’s rerouting through Harper’s ID from the vault?”
Alec nods once, slowly. “Or she’s more involved than we thought.”
There’s a beat of tense silence.
But my mind is already spinning. I’ve defended Harper and sworn by her caution. Her ethics. But this… it feels like betrayal. Or worse, like she’s slipping and becoming part of the shadows we’ve been chasing.
The meeting ends, tense and unresolved. I retreat to my office, needing some space to think. The scent of ink hits me as I close the door behind me. It’s familiar and grounding.
I sit and reach for my journal. It’s my tether to sanity, the only place I let the raw noise of my thoughts bleed without filter. But as I flip it open, a sharp dread coils in my stomach.
There, scrawled in the margin of the last page I touched are the words:Celestia remembers.
It’s not my handwriting. And not my ink.
Not my memory.
My breath hitches.
The name hits me like a static charge. It’s not a memory I recognize, but one that scratches at the walls of my mind. I don’t know how it got there—on the page or in my thoughts—but it doesn’t belong. I’ve never written it. Never even heard it spoken. And yet, something about it feels… coded and intentional. Like it was left for me to find. Or worse, like it leaked from a part of me that I no longer control.
I slam the journal shut.
My heart races.
Someone is messing with me and digging into my mind, or my space. Again.
