Page 10 of Fractured Devotion (Tainted Souls #1)

I try to pretend I can get some sleep, maybe it’ll just have some pity and take me under, but somewhere around two in the morning, I stop pretending.

I lay in the dark with one leg tangled in my bed sheet, my heart thudding in rhythms that don’t belong to any dream.

My apartment smells like lemon antiseptic and sleep deprivation.

I haven’t touched the lights since I walked in.

I know I locked the door. I know it hasn’t opened. And yet something, maybe the kind of fear that doesn’t have a name, buzzes under my skin like static. It’s not loud. Just… patient.

I sit up slowly, my hand pressed to my collarbone like I can pin my body into silence. My journal rests on the side table, half open. I don’t remember writing last night. I don’t remember placing it there, either.

Except I don’t remember writing: “He watches when I’m not looking. He waits for the part of me that never stopped screaming.”

My breath hitches. I don’t write like that.

The air in the apartment feels too still, too curated. I sweep my fingers along the baseboard, where the molding meets the tile. There’s nothing obvious. No wires, no light leaks. But I know how to hide surveillance. I used to install it myself.

By four, I’m showered, dressed, and pacing in silence. The windows of my primary apartment remain blank mirrors, reflecting nothing but the dark inside.

I make tea that I won’t drink and stare out toward the clinic’s direction, waiting for the first light to break.

This morning, the distance between here and Miramont feels exaggerated, like the air has grown heavier between each step I haven’t taken yet.

I stare out the window, watching the muted outline of the clinic barely emerge through the haze, and for the first time, I regret not sleeping in the backup apartment three floors above it.

That sterile room might have offered more than just predictability. If I’d gone there instead, I could’ve walked straight into the clinic hours ago, pored over the data, and maybe even put this unease to rest before dawn.

Instead, I’ve been pacing the walls of my own isolation and wasting time in a space that offers nothing but old echoes and the kind of silence that breeds paranoia.

At five-fifty, I lock up, my coat wrapped tight around me, and walk the long path in silence. The fog is still thick, curling around the trees like breaths, like something sentient. I pass no one.

By six, I enter through the south entrance of Miramont, my pass key buzzing faintly against the reader. The hallways are still mostly asleep, lit only by the blue glow of maintenance monitors.

I head to the cognitive lab. The scanner takes a beat longer than usual to read me in. My desk is untouched, my mug still rings the same stain onto the coaster.

But when I boot my terminal, I get a brief error: “Access restricted.”

I try again. Same.

It doesn’t make sense. My clearance is level three. I wrote half the protocols myself.

I don’t panic, not outwardly. But my stomach turns slowly as if on command.

On my way back to the elevators, I pass Dr. Reyes in the east corridor. He’s sipping something probably three hours too old.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” he asks, his voice low.

“Didn’t try,” I say. We fall into step without agreeing to.

“They restricted you already?” he glances sideways.

“You saw?”

“It’s always someone. This week, it’s you. Last month, it was Hughes. They cycle the leash.”

“What are they watching for?”

He shrugs. “Whatever makes you flinch.”

“And if I don’t?”

Reyes gives me a look that almost smiles, almost doesn’t. “Then they start worrying why not.”

I say nothing. But something inside me aligns with the silence.

Back at the elevator, I press the button for the eighth floor. Miramont spans the lower five levels. A labyrinth of labs, recovery suites, and administrative compartments.

While the sixth and seventh floors are officially designated for archive storage and server maintenance, they’re rarely trafficked. They’re quiet, transitional spaces that most staff barely acknowledge.

The backup apartment sits alone at the very top, three floors above the clinic, isolated by design. I’ll check the backup apartment. I’ll check everything.

The elevator hums low, an almost imperceptible whir that fills the silence like tension strung across bone. I press my knuckles to the metal railing behind me, grounding myself as each floor ticks past.

Six. Seven. Eight.

When I get to the eighth floor, the doors slide open with a soft hiss. The hallway is dimmer up here, the kind of sterile half-light meant to discourage loitering.

A faint scent of bleach lingers in the air, sharper than it should be, as if someone recently cleaned but didn’t care to mask the smell.

My steps echo as I walk the short corridor to the backup apartment. No one else is supposed to be up here. Not this early, not ever, really.

This place is a relic of convenience, built for overnight crises and grant deadlines, not habitation.

I unlock the door and step inside.

It’s colder than I expected.

The apartment is exactly as I left it three days ago. Pristine, bare, and impersonal. The kitchenette hums faintly, and the cot-style bed sits stiff in its corner, untouched. No sign of intrusion.

There’s no misaligned chair, no smudged screen. Still, I scan it with the precision of a surgeon.

Then I notice it. It’s just a detail, but it’s enough.

The side drawer is open by half an inch. It probably just shifted when I opened it last time and didn’t close it properly.

The contents—neuromapping pens, lens covers, and a small encrypted USB—are still there, neat and aligned, just as I remember. But I still pause longer than I should, trying to recall if the USB has always been at that angle. Maybe it has. Maybe I’m just tired.

The mind fills in gaps when it lacks sleep, and mine has been running on empty for too long.

I rise slowly, shut the drawer, and sit on the edge of the bed.

I’m not afraid. Not angry.

Calculated.

It leaves a whisper of discomfort, but not enough to sound the alarms. Just a prickling at the edge of my nerves, a signal that I might have missed something.

I won’t call it suspicion. Not yet. Just curiosity, measured and calm. The kind that earns answers only if you let it sit long enough without forcing the shape of them.

I boot up my tablet and check the backup logs. Nothing jumps out. No breaches, no silent flags. A string of maintenance pings shows up, timestamped between midnight and 4 a.m. Routine enough.

But I study the patterns anyway, telling myself it’s just a professional habit, not paranoia.

I close the tablet.

Still, a part of me itches. It’s a subtle flicker, like standing too close to an invisible pulse. I tuck the tablet away and stand.

Maybe I just need sleep. Or maybe I need a distraction. Something with a sharper focus than shadows and half-open drawers.

By the time I return to the fifth floor, the clinic is in full motion. Carts clatter down corridors, and interns murmur nervously behind frosted glass. I slip into the flow easily, my shoulders squared, my pace efficient. No one stops me. No one questions my presence.

Inside the diagnostics lab, Harper is already there, her coat too crisp, her hands too eager. She looks up like she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t, even though her screen only shows an open patient file.

“You’re early,” she says too brightly.

“So are you.”

She laughs nervously and slides her chair back. “Thought I’d get ahead on the Roth samples. Dr. Rennick wants them cleaned up before noon.”

I nod and move past her to my terminal. It logs me in this time without a hitch. No restriction, no friction. Like nothing ever happened.

Harper lingers behind me. I can feel it.

“Did you get some rest?” she asks.

“Eventually.”

“You seemed… I don’t know. Distant yesterday. Not that you aren’t always a little distant, but… sorry. That sounded—”

“Fine,” I say, not unkindly. “I’m fine.”

I turn slightly, just enough to catch her expression. She’s chewing the inside of her cheek, her eyes flicking down and away. She wants to say more. I see the tilt of her head and the way she worries the sleeve of her coat. But then she turns away.

Just as Harper ducks out to retrieve another file, I notice Mara slip in through the opposite door, her movements efficient but hushed. She gives me a quick, unreadable nod and sets a sealed tray of testing vials on the side table.

“Dr. Varon,” she says softly, her voice precise.

“You’re earlier than usual,” I reply, not turning fully.

“Scheduling changes,” she answers. “Dr. Rourke is shifting the timeline on the Draper cases. He wanted the diagnostics team prepped.”

I glance toward her, and for a beat, her gaze flickers—not with guilt, not with anxiety, but with a kind of muted calculation. Something she doesn’t say lingers in the air.

“Thank you for the update,” I offer, nodding slightly. She nods once in return, already retreating, her clipboard held tight to her chest.

It could mean nothing. Or it could mean she knows something I don’t.

For the next hour, we work in quiet syncopation, the hum of machines filling the air between us. I catch Harper watching me twice, but I pretend not to notice.

Later, when she leaves to retrieve another file, I sit back and exhale. A bead of sweat slips down my spine despite the chill.

My thoughts drift again to the backup apartment, to the drawer. Maybe it was exactly how I left it. Maybe nothing at all was wrong, and I’m just looking for ghosts where only routine lives.

Maybe the pattern shifted on its own. Drawers do that sometimes when the building hums with too much cold air and recycled pressure.

It’s not a red flag. Not even a yellow. Just a wrinkle I’ll smooth out later.

Carefully and discreetly.

After the day’s work settles the edge off my nerves.

I step out of Diagnostics just before noon, my limbs tight from too much stillness and a headache blooming faintly behind my eyes. I tell myself I’ll walk it off, but the moment I turn the corner near the stairwell, I see Alec.

He’s leaning against the wall outside pathology with his sleeves rolled up, reading something on his tablet. When he looks up, his expression softens just slightly.

“Hey,” he says. “Was starting to think you were dodging me.”

“Maybe I was,” I answer, flat but not unfriendly.

He pushes off the wall with an easy shift of weight. “Fair enough. You got a minute?”

I glance past him toward the corner where the hallway bends toward the break lounge. It’s mostly empty.

“A minute.”

We walk in tandem, not speaking until the hum of voices fades behind thick lab doors. He doesn’t look at me right away. He never pushes. That’s always been his difference.

“I heard about the access restriction this morning,” he finally says.

“Reyes told you?”

Alec nods. “They flagged your activity at 0400. That’s what I heard, anyway.”

I shrug. “They like keeping tabs.”

“I don’t think they’re just watching,” Alec says, stopping near a side alcove that houses a defunct console and two abandoned chairs. “I think they’re trying to shape the way you move.”

“That’s not new,” I murmur as we both ease into the chairs, the old plastic creaking beneath our weight.

He exhales. The look in his eyes is unreadable for a beat, then it resolves into concern. It’s a familiar kind of patience that doesn’t feel like pity but something softer.

“You didn’t sleep last night.”

I glance at him, then away. “What gave it away?”

He gestures gently to the way I’ve been wringing the hem of my sleeve without realizing it.

“Ah.” I drop it.

He shifts closer, his voice soft. “Whatever’s eating at you, you don’t have to name it. But you can bring it to me.”

“I’m not ready,” I say. It’s not a wall. Just the truth.

“I can wait.”

We sit in silence for a while. The artificial lighting buzzes faintly, and I let the rhythm of it settle into my bones.

“There was a drawer,” I finally say. “In my backup apartment. It wasn’t closed all the way.”

He doesn’t speak. He just waits.

“I don’t think it means anything. But I noticed.”

“That’s what matters,” Alec says. “Not that something happened, but that your instinct caught it.”

I look at him. I really look.

He’s the only one who hasn’t tried to dissect me yet.

“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” I admit.

“You’re surviving. And that’s more than enough for today.”

He reaches over, not to touch, but to offer proximity. A gesture. A bridge.

And for a moment, I allow myself to rest there, just long enough to breathe without second-guessing.