Page 44 of Fractured Devotion (Tainted Souls #1)

I’m back in Diagnostics. Alone this time. The door is locked, the lights dimmed to their lowest setting, and the screens flickering low like the room is holding its breath. The last time I was in here, I cracked open a file that ripped something loose in me. I haven’t been the same since.

I should be terrified. But I’m not.

I should be somewhere else, sleeping, recovering, stabilizing. But I’m here. Digging. The need to know has settled behind my ribs like a second heartbeat.

Echo’s backlogs are like a minefield of half-formed ideas and broken protocols. I bypass the interface overlays and dig directly into the root structure. It’s like peeling open a corpse to study where the rot began.

And that’s when I see it.

A buried directory tagged PROJECT CELESTIA . There’s no author signature, no timestamps, and no explanation. Just a path to a single executable. A compressed video file.

The second I open it, the screen fills with static. And for a moment, it looks like nothing.

Then—

A girl. Maybe seven, with thin arms and dark braids. She’s wearing a hospital gown two sizes too big, and she’s sitting in a white room. There’s a closet in the corner, and a man’s voice is humming off-camera. Humming something soft. A lullaby.

My mouth goes dry.

The girl is me.

She glances up at the camera, blinks twice, and then—

A door slams.

The humming stops.

And she screams.

It’s not loud and not theatrical. Just raw, instinctual terror.

She rushes to the closet and throws herself inside. The camera doesn’t follow. It just keeps rolling.

I step back from the console like it’s burned me. My hand finds my mouth. I don’t remember this.

But in fact, I do.

Not as a memory, but as a sensation. A cold floor, splinters in my knees, gardenia and iron…

I shut the file. My hands are trembling.

I thought Harper’s death broke something in me. But this…

This fractures the foundation.

Someone was filming me, studying me. Long before I had a name for what was happening.

And only one person has ever hinted at knowing more than they should.

I storm out of the room, the hallway blurring around me.

I need answers. From Kade.

Right now.

Before I decide to break him open and see what spills out.

Kade answers on the first knock. I don’t wait for an invitation. I step into his office like I’ve done it a thousand times, like I belong here. The office smells like scorched cinnamon and burnt ozone. The windows are covered, and the lights are too low.

He watches me from the center of the room, his shirt half-buttoned, his expression unreadable.

“You saw something,” he says. It’s not a question.

I nod.

I move past him without a word and sit at the edge of his desk. My hands are still shaking, but I fold them tightly in my lap and keep them steady. He follows, silent, until we’re facing each other in the dim amber light.

“Project Celestia,” I say.

A muscle ticks in his jaw.

“You knew?” I ask.

“I suspected,” he replies.

“Bullshit.”

He says nothing.

“I watched myself,” I say, my voice cracking. “In a gown, in a closet, terrified. Someone filmed it. Someone documented my panic like it was data to be mined. And you… you’re telling me you suspected ?”

His eyes close. “Celeste—”

“Don’t.” I stand now, pacing a tight circle between his desk and the window. “How long have you known?”

He exhales slowly. “I found fragments, years ago. Before I came here. Echo has deep storage clusters and memory cores that no one wants to admit still exist. I wasn’t supposed to see them.”

“But you did. And you never told me.”

“I didn’t know if they were real. The files were corrupted. Some of them were intentionally degraded. And I didn’t know it was you .”

I turn sharply. “Don’t lie to me.”

His voice drops, dangerous now. “I didn’t know until recently .”

“What changed?”

“You started remembering.”

The words fall between us like a crack in concrete.

“And you just let it happen?” I whisper. “Watched it unfold like another experiment?”

He steps toward me. “I didn’t know how deep it went. I didn’t know you’d be the child in that room.”

“And when you figured it out? What then? You just kept watching?”

“I was trying to protect you.”

I laugh, sharp and humorless. “By withholding the truth?”

His eyes darken. “By not handing you a loaded gun made of your own trauma.”

We stare at each other, the space between us full of something jagged. It’s not hatred and not anger, but something older. Something too deep to name.

“You think this ends with silence?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer.

“Wrong,” I say. “It ends with fire.”

Kade’s mouth is a hard line now. He leans against the desk beside me, not quite sitting, just close enough that I feel the heat radiating from him. The silence doesn’t soften. It hardens.

“I don’t need protection,” I say.

His voice comes soft, but honed to a point when he says, “You think knowledge makes you invincible?”

“No,” I reply. “But lies make me disposable.”

That finally lands. His head tips forward, and his hands flex once at his sides.

“I didn’t want to give you more reasons to hate me,” he says softly.

“You’re not that noble.”

“No,” he admits. “I’m not.”

The words sit heavy between us. I move away from the desk, pacing again. My legs shake, and I hate it, but I keep moving. A corner of the desk catches my eye. I notice a small matte black device tucked under a case folder.

It’s the flash drive I always keep with me on my person. Hidden and secured.

He follows my gaze.

“You opened it,” I say.

“Yes,” he tells me.

“You copied it.”

“I didn’t alter anything.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I say.

He stays still. “You shouldn’t have left it unattended.”

“I didn’t.”

That earns a flicker of surprise in his expression. Good. Let him feel it. Let him wonder just how much I know.

I walk to the window and press my fingers against the glass. My reflection blurs in the tint. I look like someone else. I feel like someone else.

“You saw my triggers,” I say. “The closet, the lullaby. You watched them respond. You had the patterns before I did.”

“I didn’t create them,” he states.

“No,” I murmur. “But you knew how to work them.”

He doesn’t deny it.

And that, more than anything, fractures something in my chest.

“I wanted you,” I say, my voice brittle. “Even though I had an idea of what you were. Even when I suspected. What does that make me?”

His answer comes too quickly. “Mine.”

I flinch. “No,” I whisper. “It makes me compromised.”

His breath catches, but he doesn’t reach for me. He knows better now.

I press my palm flat to the glass, and something inside me folds inwards, bitter and hollow.

“I don’t know what’s real anymore,” I whisper.

“I do,” he says, stepping close enough that I feel his shadow behind me.

“You’re not allowed to answer that,” I tell him.

The window fogs slightly under my breath.

Outside, the sun is just beginning to rise.

And I realize I haven’t slept in over thirty hours.

I’m running on code and resentment and ghosts.

And the worst part?

I’m still not ready to stop.

Kade stays motionless, his breath too shallow to stir the air. I can feel him there, a presence at my back, heavy with an unspoken intensity, radiating intensity he won’t name out loud.

I turn around. His eyes are waiting for me, steady and sharp.

“I’m not done with this,” I say.

“I never thought you were.”

I take a step closer. “You didn’t protect me. You didn’t warn me. You let me walk into a memory designed to ruin me.”

He inclines his head. “You survived it.”

“You don’t get credit for my survival,” I say coldly.

“No,” he says. “But I saw it. All of it. The way you looked at that screen, and the way you didn’t blink. You didn’t collapse.”

“Not in front of you.”

His jaw tightens.

I walk past him unhurried and with purpose, forcing him to pivot and follow my movement. When I reach the center of the office, I stop and turn. “You knew exactly what that footage would do to me.”

“I had a theory,” he says.

“Then why not stop it?”

“Because some fractures aren’t accidents. They’re the start of new structures.”

“You wanted me broken,” I say.

“I wanted you free,” he corrects.

The contradiction stings. I stare at him, really stare, until I see the edges of fatigue around his eyes. He looks carved from stone and shame.

“I don’t know what you see when you look at me,” I whisper.

He breathes in and replies, “A weapon still sharpening.”

I shake my head. “I’m not your project.”

“No. You’re my proof.”

“Of what?”

“That trauma doesn’t have to end in ruin.”

I laugh softly and joylessly. “You sound like Reyes.”

“No. Reyes believes in hope. I believe in control.”

We stand in silence again. It’s colder now. More dangerous.

I glance at the desk, at the flash drive, and at the history he unearthed without permission.

“You should destroy it,” I say.

“I can’t,” he says with a sigh.

“Then give it to me.”

He hesitates.

And in that half-second of pause, I see the truth.

He won’t. And it’s not because he’s keeping it for leverage. Not even for curiosity.

But because somewhere in that corrupted footage is the only version of me he’s convinced is real.

And he doesn’t want to lose it.

“I don’t need your version of me,” I say, my voice low. “I don’t care what it means to you, or what it proves. That girl doesn’t belong to you.”

Kade doesn’t respond, not with words. But his expression shifts, just slightly, enough for me to see the crack behind the mask.

“She doesn’t even belong to me,” I add. “Not anymore.”

I walk past the desk, reaching for the flash drive. He doesn’t stop me. I curl my fingers around it and feel its weight. It’s deceptively small, like trauma always is.

He watches me, still as death.

“I’m not asking for permission,” I tell him.

“You never have,” he murmurs.

I slide the drive into my coat pocket with calculated intent, leaving nothing to chance.

“You think you care for me,” I say. “But you don’t. You only love what I survived. You love the shape of my damage because it mirrors yours.”

His jaw flexes. “That’s not true.”

“It is,” I whisper. “You’ve built your obsession like an altar. And I’m tired of bleeding on it.”

He steps forward, just one step. Enough to shorten the space between us to a breath.

“I want you to hate me,” he says. “If that’s what it takes to make you real.”

I blink. “I don’t need to hate you. I just need to stop letting you define the terms.”

His gaze doesn’t soften. “You already changed them.”

That silences me longer than it should.

He’s not wrong.

I’ve turned his tools back on him. I’ve taken the power he wields like a blade and buried it deep in his own flesh. And now he bleeds just like the rest of us.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I say.

“No,” he agrees. “You’re afraid of what I made you see.”

I open the door. “I’ll see myself out.”

“Celeste—”

“Keep the rest of your ghosts. I’ve already met mine,” I say.

The hallway outside is colder than I remember.

And for once, I don’t flinch from it.

The walk down the hallway feels longer than it should. My footsteps echo louder than usual, too clean, too sharp. The flash drive in my pocket feels radioactive. Like if anyone looks too closely, they’ll see my childhood glowing through my skin.

I don’t go to my office. I don’t even go to the diagnostics wing.

Instead, I go to the observation level. The one Harper used to sneak into before her shifts. The one that overlooks the old therapy chambers, which are mostly vacant now and lit from below with those sterile fluorescence lights that make everything look surgical.

I lean against the glass and watch the blank chairs. The walls are still lined with two-way mirrors. Echo is always watching, even when no one is sitting behind the glass. That’s what unnerves me most, how we built something that doesn’t stop observing even after everyone leaves.

The girl on the footage—me—wasn’t just scared. She was conditioned. Reactions repeated until they weren’t reactions anymore. They were like architecture, neural bricks, and emotional blueprints.

And someone designed it.

Maybe not Kade. Maybe not Rourke. But someone. And now it’s on me to name them.

I slide the flash drive from my pocket and hold it in my palm.

I could destroy it right now. I could throw it into the stairwell incinerator, wipe every copy, clean the record, and pretend I never saw what I saw.

But I won’t.

At least not yet.

The truth is ugly. It’s raw. But it’s mine now.

I turn and walk back down the corridor, taking my time now.

The drive stays in my pocket.

And the ghosts in the glass watch me leave, reflected in silence.

Because even when you look away, the mirrors remember.