Page 19 of Fractured Devotion (Tainted Souls #1)

There’s a sound that only exists inside nightmares. It’s not a scream and not a whisper. It’s something in between. Something sharp and something you feel more than hear.

I wake up to it.

My chest lurches before my eyes open. The room is still, and the overhead light is off. Only the blue flicker of the weather display glows in the corner.

I sit upright, the blanket sliding from my shoulders as the couch groans beneath me. The book I never opened lies against my ribs, its spine warm from where my hand held it while I slept. I set it aside.

I should be calm.

But I’m not.

Something scratches at the base of my brain, just under the surface, like a scab lifting without consent. I feel it more than I understand it, a sliver of memory that doesn’t belong to this moment.

It started hours ago after the bakery. After the van left.

I’d walked home in the hush of midnight, acutely aware of the false silence. I didn’t look back, not at the bakery, and not at the shadowed curb where the van had sat for days. But I felt it. I always feel it.

The images are back now.

A hallway that’s too narrow, a door I was never supposed to open, fingers wrapping around mine, dragging me forward, and a voice that wasn’t soothing but slow. It was male. And familiar.

“No one else loves you the way I do.”

The voice fractures me.

I press both palms to my eyes, hard, and count backward.

Ten. Nine. Eight—

My breath comes back shallow, and I taste copper. I realize I bit my own cheek in my sleep again.

I don’t want to go to the clinic.

But I will.

Because the only thing worse than being watched… is wondering if you’re not.

I rise from the couch, stiff. The cold air licks at my legs beneath the thin fabric of my shorts as I gather myself in practiced silence. I drink some water, take a shower, and put on my clothes. The rhythm of pretending to be human.

By 6:30 a.m., I’m outside. The air cuts. The sun hasn’t risen, and I don’t wait for it.

The clinic is mostly dark when I arrive. The scent of antiseptic and artificial lemon hits like a drug I never agreed to take. I badge in through the east wing, the way I always do when I want to avoid conversation.

But this time, I’m not alone.

Light spills from Diagnostics.

And I know who it is before I see her.

Mara.

She’s hunched over the sequencing console, her brows tight, a steaming thermos perched precariously beside her elbow. Her hair is twisted back, loose strands curling against her cheek. She looks up when I enter.

“Morning, Dr. Varon,” she greets.

Her voice is softer than usual.

“Mara,” I reply with a nod, crossing to my desk. “Did you sleep here again?”

A faint flush fills her cheeks. “No. I just couldn’t.”

Neither of us can.

She hesitates, then clears her throat. “I pulled the logs you asked for. From the backup drive. There were anomalies, timestamp mismatches, and something weird in the retinal queue.”

I pause.

“Show me,” I say.

She spins the monitor and points.

I lean in as she scrolls the list of flagged entries with a hiss.

“These three were access attempts that didn’t pass through the usual nodes. There were no alerts triggered, but the path mirrors yours.”

“A clone.”

Mara nods. “I thought maybe Alec or Reyes, but the login metadata is masked.”

I step back, and my hand twitches toward the tablet in my coat pocket, the flash drive Alec gave me, and the logs inside it.

It was supposed to be sealed. Forgotten. Why is it syncing with live systems?

“Good work,” I murmur.

She gives a brittle smile. “Thank you. I, um, also ran checks on the lab cams like you asked. There’s something you should see. But not now. Only when you’re ready.”

Her gaze flicks toward the door.

I nod once and say, “Later.”

When I’m alone again, I don’t sit. I don’t breathe.

Something’s wrong.

Not just with the system but with the pattern. With me.

The dreams weren’t just echoes. They were warnings.

And now they’re starting to align.

Somewhere in this building is someone who thinks they know how to reach inside my head.

They have no idea how deep it goes.

But they will.

It’s almost noon by the time I push the door open and step into my office.

The air is too still, too curated. There’s the scent of over-sanitized surfaces—bleach and eucalyptus—and something else beneath it.

It’s familiar and unplaceable. My coat slides from my shoulders as I walk to the window and draw the blinds halfway.

The natural light eases the migraine that’s been twisting behind my eyes all morning.

I haven’t slept. Not really. I just drifted.

I let the sounds of the clinic rise and fall beneath me—the mechanical hum, the occasional sharp clatter from the diagnostics wing, and footsteps that never seem to know where they’re going.

I ignore the tablet for now. Instead, I walk to the center of the room and sit on the edge of the small chair beside the observation desk.

I keep my hands still on my knees with my eyes closed.

Then I let my thoughts scatter.

I think about the van.

It was there again last night, parked at the same angle across from the main entrance. It’s black and intentionally nondescript. And more importantly, it’s still.

I saw it again this morning on my way into the clinic. It’s back again, and it doesn’t even look like the usual shuffle of early-morning delivery drivers or maintenance shifts.

It didn’t belong. And that kind of stillness is never casual.

Whoever is behind it isn’t here for observation. They’re here to pressure. Or to extract something.

The question is what, or who?

I press a palm to my forehead and lean forward slightly. This isn’t new. Surveillance is stitched into the bones of this place. The walls know more secrets than I do. But this… this felt external. Detached. As if someone’s watching, not because they need data, but because they want leverage.

I reach for the flash drive Alec gave me.

My fingers trace the edge of the casing, cold and unyielding.

There’s more buried in these files than I’ve dared to look at.

The segments I’ve accessed already stirred enough—blurred outlines of data that shouldn’t have survived tribunal erasure.

And embedded within them? A name I haven’t spoken in years.

Langdon Varon.

My stepfather.

The man who used to hum lullabies through the door while I hid beneath it. The man whose breath I felt on my skin before I knew what threat truly meant. The last time I saw his face, or at least parts of his face, it was covered in blood that wasn’t mine.

My hand clutches the edge of my desk, and my nails dig slightly into the finish.

He’s in here. Well, not explicitly, but between the audio glitches and memory files, I see the patterns. The sequences he made me repeat, the masks, the red door. It’s all here, waiting to bleed back into the present.

I’m not ready.

But I open the file anyway.

The interface flickers. A soft hum pulses through the speakers, subdued and rhythmic, like the echo of a swallowed cry.

Then comes the footage, though it’s not from the clinic.

It’s not from any institution I recognize.

This is a personal log, and a child’s voice speaks in the background, soft and conditioned.

“Tell me what you are.”

A pause.

“A vessel.”

“Who do you belong to?”

“To the Monitor.”

My blood runs cold.

That name. The Monitor.

It’s the same name that surfaced in a report Alec shared with me six years ago—a radical psychiatrist linked to illegal trauma camps. He disappeared before prosecution. Until now, I thought it was just a coincidence.

It wasn’t.

I lean back in my chair, letting the ceiling blur as my vision swims.

I need answers. And I won’t find them inside this office.

A message pings on my tablet. It’s Mara.

Mara : “Have you seen this?” (Attached: footage timestamped last night.)

I open it.

It’s security cam footage from outside the lower diagnostics bay. It’s grainy, and a figure lingers too long near the emergency panel. Then the figure walks away. It’s not staff. There’s no badge.

My pulse tightens.

I quickly replied to her message.

Me: “Send me the raw feed.”

She does, within seconds.

I drop the file into a private thread I created months ago, just in case. It’s a ghost directory, and no one else can access it.

I’ll run facial recognition later. For now, I text Mara again.

Me : “Let’s talk tonight. Offsite.”

Mara : “Okay. Is something wrong?”

Everything is wrong. But I won’t say it.

Me : “I just want a fresh pair of eyes.”

I close the tablet and take a moment to steady myself.

I should go home, but the idea of walking past that van again makes my teeth itch.

I need something else. A shift.

I walk down the corridor, past Diagnostics, and into the cold air outside. The sun hangs low now, casting a thick haze over the courtyard.

And I see someone.

Kade.

He’s walking slowly, his hands tucked into his pockets, looking far too casual for this hour. His eyes catch mine, and he nods. I nod back.

We don’t speak.

But the air between us twists with something silent. Something not-quite-welcome. Not-quite-avoidable.

He keeps walking.

I watch his back until he disappears.

And I wonder, how much does he already know?

The sun is still out, though it’s sinking behind the treetops and casting everything in bronze. The lot is quiet, and a few stragglers head toward the secondary wing. I stand still for a while, not moving, just letting the cool air bite into my face.

It’s not clarity I’m after. It’s silence.

For a moment, I consider walking away and leaving early. The day’s weight sits heavy across my shoulders, and going home seems like the only thing that would make sense. But I don’t move. Not toward the lot, not toward the edge of anything. I simply breathe in, then out.

I turn back around, step through the clinic’s door, and let the familiar chill of its halls wrap back around me.

There’s still time left in the day.

And I’m not done yet.