Page 29 of Fractured Devotion (Tainted Souls #1)

I don’t sleep. Not really. I sit on the edge of Celeste’s backup cot with my elbows on my knees, staring at the wall like it might blink first. She’s in the corner, breathing softly and evenly, but I don’t trust it. That kind of stillness isn’t peace. It’s self-preservation.

I’ve been running logs in my head all night. The anomalies, the duplication of her access credentials, the hidden layers in Rourke’s systems, and Kade. Always Kade. Like a hairline fracture running through every system I dig into.

She finally speaks. “Did you find anything else?”

I glance over my shoulder. She’s sitting up, her legs folded under her, her hair a chaotic halo of defiance. “Just more confirmation that we’re being watched. Kade hasn’t accessed any new logs directly, but someone’s ghosting under his signature.”

She frowns. “So it could be someone framing him?”

“Or he’s better at hiding his tracks than I thought.”

She pulls her knees tighter. Her eyes are sharp. They’re not afraid but fed up. Tired of being everyone’s project.

“Then we need a name,” she says.

“We need access,” I correct her. “And we need help.”

Celeste raises an eyebrow. “You want to bring someone else into this?”

I nod. “Someone I trust.”

Her lips thin. “Who?”

I hesitate. “Reyes.”

Celeste lifts an eyebrow, her expression shifting into something more thoughtful. “Reyes? I actually did brief him about it. He was my mentor when I first got here. One of the few people who didn’t treat me like a fragile case file.”

“Exactly. No one watches him because they think he’s useless. But he’s already flagged inconsistencies in the deep files. We just have to nudge him.”

She leans back. “I’m just worried. What if he tells Rourke, thinking he’s helping out?”

“Then we burn everything and disappear, but I will make sure he doesn’t tell a soul. I’ll let him know there’s no one else to trust for now.”

It’s a grim kind of partnership we’re building. It’s not based on trust but necessity. And it’s the best either of us can do.

And right now, it’s enough.

By 9 a.m., we’re at the clinic.

We don’t walk in together because that would draw attention.

I go in first, through the rear entry, swipe my badge, and nod at two technicians in the hallway without meeting their eyes.

The lab feels too sterile today, everything gleaming and humming like it’s trying to drown out the rot underneath.

I find Reyes in Lab C, seated in front of two open monitors and a cluttered desk full of analysis reports. He’s frowning at a 3D scan of a neural profile and tapping his pen absently against his knee.

“Reyes,” I say, my voice low.

He doesn’t look up. “Busy.”

“It’s about the duplication anomalies,” I add.

That gets his attention.

His gaze snaps up, his eyes narrowing behind those round glasses. “You’ve seen them too?”

I nod. “Some overlap with Celeste’s access logs and patterns that shouldn’t exist. You flagged them?”

Reyes stands. “Six days ago. I sent a preliminary report to Rourke, but no reply. Then yesterday, the entire batch of flagged entries was wiped from my queue. Wiped, Alec. Like they never existed.”

I glance at the door, then step in farther. “We need to talk. Somewhere less… traceable.”

He squints at me. “You’re serious.”

“As a fucking heart attack.”

It takes him two minutes to pack up. We meet Celeste outside the building, at the far end of the parking lot where the surveillance coverage drops off—an intentional blind spot for smoke breaks that no one ever takes anymore.

Reyes looks from her to me, then back again. “You really think this has to do with Trial 14?”

“I think it does,” Celeste says. “And we need your help connecting the last threads.”

Reyes rubs his face. “If we do this, we’ll need access to Rourke’s server room. And not just logs but the original behavioral cascade models.”

“Can you get us in?” I ask.

He nods slowly. “With the right timing, yes. But we’ll need a cover.”

Celeste steps forward. “Then let’s build one.”

The three of us stand there for a moment. It’s reckless, and it’s borderline suicidal.

But it’s also the first plan that feels like it might work.

We split again right after because it’s safer that way. Too much proximity, and we’ll get flagged, tracked. One pattern deviation, and the wrong eyes will start watching.

I take the elevator up to the diagnostics wing to stall. I make it look like a routine check-in. Rourke has eyes everywhere, and it doesn’t take much for paranoia to bloom into consequence.

When I pass the east corridor, I catch Kade leaning against the window near the stairwell with his phone in hand, his eyes scanning the courtyard below like he’s waiting for a ghost to appear.

He sees me.

I don’t stop, but I feel the weight of his gaze lock onto me.

I head straight for the testing lab and log in to the terminal just to keep up appearances. For the next thirty minutes, I review meaningless diagnostics until the system logs confirm Celeste has returned to her office.

Then I slide my badge, exit the wing, and double back to the sub-basement archive room, one of the only places left without a live feed.

Reyes meets me there fifteen minutes later, pale, the sound gone out of him.

“I pulled a scrape from the legacy server,” he whispers. “It’s worse than we thought.”

He hands me a slim drive.

I plug it in, and the files load.

Trial 14: Subject Conditioning Parameters. Trial 14: Behavioral Reinforcement Loops. Trial 14: Memory Submersion & Fragmentation.

My throat tightens as I scroll.

Celeste’s name is on every single one.

I look at Reyes. His voice is tight when he says, “She’s been in it from the beginning, Alec. This wasn’t a continuation.”

“It was the plan all along.”

“Yeah.” He nods grimly. “And someone made sure she’d never know it.”

We exchange a look.

We need to move faster.

Because if Kade suspects what we’re doing, we’re already too late.

The elevator ride back up is slow. Too slow. I keep my hands tucked in my pockets, but my brain is spinning.

Reyes walks a few steps behind me, keeping a casual distance. We look like coworkers on break, not two men carrying the key to a buried crime.

We go our separate ways again at the lab wing. I take the far corridor that leads toward central administration, just to throw off any potential tail. The weight of the drive in my pocket feels like it’s dragging gravity with it.

I stop by the second-floor supply closet, pull out my tablet, and encrypt the files Reyes gave me into three separate directories, masking them beneath maintenance report codes.

One copy goes into a hidden folder I’ve been using for years.

Another, I upload to a private cloud that’s encrypted beyond belief, and the third, I bury inside a public diagnostic cache with a fragmented key I’ll deliver later.

It’s not enough. But it’s something.

A ping flashes across my screen. It’s a message.

Unknown ID: You’re pulling at threads that don’t belong to you.

I freeze.

Another one comes immediately after.

Unknown ID: Stop. Or we’ll pull back.

There’s no traceable signature. It’s routed through anonymized layers that feel too familiar.

This is not Kade.

This is bigger.

I close the message, wipe the trace, and slip the tablet back inside my jacket. My breath is steady, but only because I force it to be.

Back in my office, I sit down and let the silence settle around me. I need to talk to Celeste. Tonight.

We need to set the plan in motion. Not tomorrow, not next week.

Because whoever’s watching knows we’re looking.

And next time, they won’t just send messages.

They’ll send something worse.