Page 26 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

Years ago, I’m inside a military-grade simulation center off-grid in rural upstate.

My team is running disassembly drills, identifying threats and neutralizing them before they surface. She isn’t there physically.

But her dossier flashes across my HUD during database import. Vera Calloway: foster background, brilliant legal mind, uncanny emotional resilience.

I study the file, coldly at the time. At that age, I have no context for compassion. Only interest.

The line “I don’t trust people who can’t see themselves” had caught my attention like a puzzle sealed in ink.

I’d made a choice in that moment, an activation directive filed eight layers deep. Not a rescue mission. A variable flagged for future integration.

Let her rise and succeed. She might hold a key I wouldn’t otherwise recognize.

And now, years later, she walks into the crosshairs of someone smarter or crueler than me.

I climb back into the car. Order the driver to wait.

***

I approach the surveillance wall as if walking onto a battlefield. The screens glow. Rourke still at the console.

I discard the data drive onto the desk. Smoke threads off it in the cool air.

“Wick confirms,” I say, voice flat but tight. “They fabricated multiple digital identities tied to her birth record. They’re ready to publish or extort. But they left breadcrumbs, shards I can trace…if I want to.”

Rourke looks at me. “Do you want to?”

I don’t answer at once.

I pull a newly printed paper out of my drawer labelled “VERA ELAINE CALLOWAY,” but beneath, the line reads VERDETTE MORGAN—SSN: XXXXX. She’d changed it after being fostered and removed herself from her birth identity.

I stare at it.

I strike a match and set the edge aflame. The name curls to dust.

I watch.

Control is the first law. Identity is pliable. Names are weapons.

I extinguish the match.

“Deploy the posture,” I say, voice low, intent. “Keep her in the game. But move her off the board. She stays breathing, but I want eyes on the orchestrator. I want to know whose hand draws the smoke.”

I close my eyes, and let the silence settle.

The screens flicker, reflecting in my iris like surveillance beacons.

And in that dark glow, I recognize the shift.

Her power isn’t just in influence. It is in the control she holds over me.

And that, I will never relinquish.

The command wall glows, rows of screens mapping my world of power, influence, and surveillance.

I pause by the window, city lights blinking in my reflection, but I see nothing in the skyline unless it is reflected back.

I enter the server room, its hum an echo of my own heartbeat.

The screens are populated with fragmented feeds: Vera’s apartment, her phone usage logs, email metadata, Julian’s frantic activity, encrypted communication traces.

A spectral pulse, a constellation of data points all radiating from one person: Vera Calloway.

My phone buzzes. Rourke’s message: “Scans returning red. New clusters appearing in draft state. Whoever’s behind this is running out the clock.”

I close my eyes, thumb brushing the smooth bezel of my watch.

I power on the holoscreen in front of me. Projector lights crisscross in the air: plasma-glow lines tracing routes between VPN nodes, territorial boundaries in the digital undercity. Colors shift from cool blue to acid pink with activity.

I study the graph. A flare of data around Ridgehollow and Ridgewood—areas tied to both her past and Julian’s encrypted logs.

I step closer, flick through screens.

I select one timestamp from three days prior: Vera, at Ridgewood Archives, her teeth clenched, brows furrowed. Data: Access via proxy, login ‘CallowayV,’ masked but traceable by scratches in timestamps. I watch her hand lift a document. The slightest tremble.

It’s a crack. A deviation.

I instruct the system: Isolate timestamp. Extract audio. Compare heartrate from phone biometric sensors.

Seconds later: Heartrate spike. Vehicle idling near entrance. Unidentified male presence.

I lean back. The heat in my chest coils cold.

I tap a sequence on my tablet: “Initiate extraction protocol. Flag male presence. Record trajectory into city grid.”

My command is a ripple.

A few feet away, a drawer labeled MEMORIES stands halfway open. I close my eyes, walk to it, and pull on the handle.

Inside lie artifacts I’d never intended to preserve: a surveillance photo of Vera laughing in the library eight months ago; an old foster-home report stamped CONFIDENTIAL; a trial transcript where she’d shredded Miriad Equities. I close my hand around them.

My chest tightens with regret like a low hum in my choir of control.

I shut the drawer and return to the screens.

Rourke speaks “Tracing routes. Multiple endpoints collapsed into one RedGuard IP cluster, appears tied to a private contractor group in D.C. Same one credited for the PAC leaks.”

I close my eyes again.

I access a file: CALLOWAY_JULIAN_CONVERGENCE.

Notes read: “Collateral involvement: high alignment between Vera’s late-night calls and Julian’s address lines traced to her server location.”

I click through logs and two profiles converging into one network.

I pause.

My finger hovers over the delete command. I hesitate. I haven’t yet decided whom to erase—Julian, the contractor group, or something else. But the tick in my chest tells me Vera shouldn’t know until it is finished.

I glance at the artifacts in my memory drawer. Those traces of shared history. Strategy now needs to become personal.

I access OPERATION MIRROR NAME again.

Phase 5: Deconflict Julian routes. If he gets exposed first, Vera will stop hunting behind him. Allow him to scapegoat.

I delete the line.

I type: Phase 5: Stage Julian as disinfo target. Capture his outreach. Let it leak. But maintain offset path for Vera’s encrypted request.

I exhale.

My heart’s rhythm hums against my disciplined silence.

I press send.

I sit in the dark room, immersed in electrons, surveillance, and strategy, and close my eyes.

The hum lowers, and the screens brighten at dawn.

I open my eyes.

I whisper, “Protect her.”

Even I swore I’d never get close.

I pick up the photograph, Vera in that courthouse hallway all those years ago, and hold it between thumb and index finger.

I examine the curve of her jaw, the fire in her gaze.

I breathe.

I press the frame in front of the image.

“I’m not losing you.”

The cursor hovers over the CrypText message window.

I type:

Vera. They’re after your truth. And they’ll use every name they can find.

You want to fight? I’ll give you the battlefield.

But be sure you’re fighting with your weapons.

I pause, fingers steady.

I hit send and stand.

I no longer sit at the epicenter of control. I am captivated by uncertainty. And that is dangerous.

The screens flicker as dawn’s blue light finds its way beneath the shades.

I move to the window, hear the city hum beneath me, and press my forehead to the glass.

Names are weapons.

But so is purpose, and hers has become mine.