Page 34 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

I stand, eyes locked on the center monitor of Vera’s frozen image. Her stare isn’t aimless. She is looking directly into the lens. Not by mistake. Not in fear.

Recognition.

I close the vault file and move to a different interface. Pull up the Athenaeum project. A web of nodes blinks to life. Access logs scroll in columns. Time-stamped fingerprints of every Finch exec, junior analyst, and third-party vendor who has touched the brief in the last three days.

“Filter it. Show me overlapping access with Vera’s restricted folders,” I instruct.

The list narrows from 432 to seven.

I don’t hesitate. “Leak counterintel. The origin must look internal, bitter, and emotional. Keep them fighting shadows.”

“And Mira?” Echo asks.

My voice cuts like bone against steel.

“Keep eyes on her. But as for Hale….” I pause, then add, “Deliver a warning. Visible. But survivable.”

Echo doesn’t ask for clarification. He never does.

I mute the comm and walk toward the rear of the suite, into the inner alcove—the soundproofed vault lined with vertical files and surveillance stills. It isn’t cold like the audio room. It is sterile. Reverent.

I pull a hard copy photo from a secure drawer. Vera, six years ago, seated in a café with three other interns, laughing with her face tilted to the sun. She had no idea who’d taken the picture.

No idea I’d been behind that internship placement. That I’d paid for her apartment’s first deposit through a proxy name. That she hadn’t been chosen for the Finch program; she’d been built into it.

She has no idea how much of her present has been tailored.

I stare at the image. My hand hovers above the shredder slot. But I don’t drop it yet.

Back at the console, the screen flickers. Her bedroom, again. She is standing now, barefoot, one arm crossed over her chest, the other hand hanging limp. Staring into the feed. Into me. Into the space she can’t see but somehow feels.

I whisper to the screen, “You weren’t supposed to see this yet.”

She hasn’t cried. She hasn’t hidden. She’s stared the monster in the eye.

And now I’m not sure if I am the one holding the leash anymore.

***

The room hums.

My operations suite that is usually a cathedral of order vibrates with an undercurrent I don’t recognize. Not noise. Not disruption. Something internal. Like a fault line widening beneath glass floors.

I stand alone in the dark. Only the glow of monitors splashes across my face, stark and unforgiving. Onscreen: Vera’s apartment, frozen at the exact moment she looked directly into the bedroom lens. Her eyes had been unblinking. Accusatory and aware.

I don’t replay it again. Not this time. There’s no need. It’s seared. The turn of her head, the angle of her gaze, the awareness tightening her jaw like a blade. She wasn’t unraveling.

She was awakening.

My hands press against the steel console. The tension in my jaw ticks like a metronome. All around me, the screens flicker: camera feeds, code, dossiers. And one window in the center of it all: Asset Redirect: Calloway.

I pull it open again. It feels different now—like holding a wire that’s begun to spark.

The file was never meant for review. It was the blueprint of her life, curated over seven years.

I turn from the screen.

Behind me, the wall of memory files glows blue. Hard copies locked in biometric drawers of case studies, yes, but more. Keepsakes. Dossiers lined with fingerprints and fate.

I open one. Not hers. An earlier failure. A woman named, Elora who stopped following the script halfway through Year Four. Dead now. Her file ends in redacted pages and ash. I never visit it. But tonight, I do.

Not to grieve.

To compare.

And to remind myself what happens when the variable breaks free.

I return to the console, exhale sharply. A breath like a warning to my own ribs.

“Containment,” I mutter.

But the word sounds brittle. Like it’s already too late.

The screen blinks. An alert. Rourke’s voice crackles in over comms:

“Sir, Echo says Mira’s dropped out of satellite range. Disguised ping came through Nairobi. Then silence.”

I don’t respond right away. My gaze is fixed on the footage still paused. Vera’s face, bathed in pale bedroom light.

“Let her run,” I say eventually. “It won’t matter.”

I log into the root server and pull up the new node map. At the center of it all: Vera’s name.

Not just the name she uses now. The old one. The forgotten one.

I delete the file.

I watch the digital ash scatter across the screen, This is my usual ritual. But this time, it doesn’t feel like control. It feels like erasure.

Of the only part of her I never owned.

I open a new document. Type: Phase Delta: Contingency Asset Redeploy—Calloway. My fingers hesitate.

Then type faster.

“He is watching. She is aware. Risk matrix updated to ORANGE.”

“Emotional deviation at 42%. Rising.”

“Recommendation: Merge control with proximity.”

“Deploy physical deterrent. Emotional deterrent ineffective.”

I stop. Read the last line again.

I delete emotional deterrent ineffective.

Replace it with: Too late.

I lean back in my chair. The leather creaks beneath me. The suite is dead silent now. But my pulse is loud in my ears.

I turn back to her feed. Not the bedroom. The mirror cam. She’s gone now; she left the room. But the reflection remains. And in that glass, I don’t see Vera.

I see myself.

Warped. Magnified.

Not protector. Not strategist. Just the man in the mirror watching someone walk out of frame.

Someone I was never meant to keep.

I shut the feed.

Not out of guilt.

Out of want.

Then whisper into the dark, voice like broken velvet:

“She was never mine. But she will be.”