Page 17 of Fractured Devotion (Tainted Souls #1)

The flash drive is exactly where I left it. I don’t remember falling asleep, and I don’t remember dreaming either.

But I feel watched.

I push myself upright at a measured pace, peeling myself from the too-warm indent I’ve made. There’s no sound in the apartment, no lights flickering, no doors ajar, and nothing that shouldn’t be.

And still, something feels off.

I cross to the kitchenette in measured steps, my bare feet moving on the tile without a sound. The kettle clicks as I turn it on. Tea again. Routine is my anchor, even when the ritual tastes like nothing.

I scan the small space while waiting. Everything is in its place. But that can also mean whoever touched it knew how to leave it that way.

The tea burns my tongue, but I drink anyway.

By 7 a.m., I’m at the clinic.

I walk through the lobby like I belong, which I do. But there’s a different charge to the way people glance up this morning. There’s something lingering behind their eyes. Curiosity or caution. Maybe both.

I nod at Harper as I pass Diagnostics. Her mouth opens like she wants to say something. She always has something to say, but I don’t slow down. I take the elevator straight to the top floor, to my backup apartment.

There’s something I need to check.

Inside, the scent of antiseptic still clings faintly to the air. The drawer I closed days ago remains sealed, undisturbed. I pull it open again and sift through the contents.

Everything is still aligned, still untouched. Except the USB stick. It’s turned slightly by millimeters. It’s not enough to call it tampering, but it's enough for me to know it wasn’t me.

I stare at it.

And then I take it and slide it into my coat pocket.

Downstairs, the morning meeting with Rourke is already underway by the time I arrive. He doesn’t look up as I enter. He just gestures to the empty seat beside him.

“Missed your punctual streak,” he murmurs without warmth.

I don’t answer.

He talks for seventeen minutes about projected budgets and accelerated timelines, the usual corporate veil stretched over questionable ambition. I hear every word and none of them. My mind is on the top floor, still circling that drawer.

When he finishes, he turns to me. “Trial 14?”

“Still theoretical,” I lie.

“Is that your professional or emotional assessment?”

“Both.”

He smirks like that’s a joke. Like he knows I’m always lying.

I leave the meeting with a headache blooming just beneath my left eye. Alec is waiting for me at the end of the hall, his arms folded.

“Did you sleep?” he asks.

“Surprisingly, yes.”

He doesn’t push. He just walks like a steady shadow beside me. I don’t say much. But the nearness of him keeps my lungs from folding in on themselves.

Later, in my lab, I check the system logs again. And there it is. A shadow tag I didn’t see before. A clone user string, almost identical to mine.

Almost.

Someone’s been watching. Not just me, but through me. Into the systems. Into my files.

They’re not trying to steal the flash drive.

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.

I pull out the flash drive and slide it into a new casing. One that’s not labeled and not traceable. Then, I split the data across two drives, burying half in my secured off-network server, and the rest, I drop into a slim black envelope and seal it.

Tomorrow, Mara will find it in her lab kit with a note that says, “Open only if I disappear.”

I don’t trust easily.

But I trust the version of her who hesitates before lying.

Then I kill the lights.

And for the first time in days, I let the dark settle over me like a second skin.