Page 48 of Fractured Devotion (Tainted Souls #1)

Rourke’s private office is exactly as I remember it—sterile, silent, and designed to keep you from relaxing.

There’s nothing personal on the walls and no furniture that isn’t strictly functional.

Just a glass desk, a backlit terminal, and a single chair that feels more like a stage prop than a seat.

I sit anyway. Because that’s the role I play today.

He doesn’t look up at first. He just types something into his terminal with one hand while swirling a tumbler of something gold in the other. When he finally acknowledges me, his smile is all teeth and calculation. “You’re late.”

“You’re drinking.”

He chuckles and sets the glass aside. “Don’t mistake this for a luxury. It’s insulation.”

I say nothing. My fingers rest calmly on my thigh, but my right hand itches to check the drive I’ve hidden. It’s not on me. It’s in a shell terminal back in my quarters. A ghost drive with a live clone of Echo’s experimental interface logs, the same one he thinks I’m here to deliver.

“Where is it?” he asks.

“She hasn’t cracked the final layer yet. The encryption is deeper than we thought. She won’t move recklessly.”

“Then make her,” he says sharply, his voice slicing cleanly through the room. “I don’t need excuses. I need that interface.”

I lean back, letting the edge of his threat pass without comment. He doesn’t scare me, not in any meaningful way. But he does annoy me.

“You think force works on her? It doesn’t. That’s why you needed me in the first place.”

He taps a key on his desk. The lighting shifts subtly. “Remind me what I needed you for again? To seduce a compromised scientist? To drag your feet while she unravels the system from the inside?”

I don’t react because that would please him too much. Instead, I lean forward, lower my voice, and make him work to hear it.

“You needed someone who could speak her language. You needed someone who could get close without triggering her defenses. And you got what you paid for. She talks to me, sleeps near me, and shares data with me. You think that happened by accident?”

He studies me for a long moment. Then, with a sigh, he waves his hand like he’s swatting a fly.

“You have until the next full cycle. If the interface isn’t in my hands by then, you become disposable.”

I nod once, stand, and turn to leave.

“Kade.”

I pause.

“You do remember what happens to liabilities in this place, yes?”

I smile faintly. “I remember everything.”

I don’t go straight back to my office. Because that would be too obvious, too clean.

Instead, I walk a loop through the southeast wing, past Diagnostics, and down through the lower labs.

My reflection follows me in the black glass panels.

It’s cold and unreadable. A man-shaped problem with no solution left in him.

Rourke’s threat doesn’t stick, but it lingers like old blood on the tiles. Just enough to stain, but not enough to sting.

I should delete the drive. Or better yet, hand it over and walk away. But I won’t. Because the moment I do, I become exactly what he thinks I am—replaceable.

The truth is, I haven’t decided who I’m playing for anymore. The cartel? Rourke? Celeste?

Or just myself.

The lights in the north hallway buzz low, flickering as I pass beneath them. A tech rounds the corner and glances up, startled. She nods once. I nod back.

There’s a scent in the air—acetone and printer resin. It clings to the sterile walls like guilt.

I need to be alone.

So I cut through one of the maintenance accessways behind the surgical suites, where there are no cameras and no guards. Just reinforced doors and insulated corridors that no one’s supposed to use except custodial staff. I punch in the override code and step inside.

The hush is immediate.

And then it hits me. The shape of her. Her scent.

It’s not perfume, not lotion. It’s something underneath. Skin and static.

I inhale slowly.

She’s been here. Within the hour.

She never leaves a trace, but I always find her anyway.

Because that’s what obsession is.

It’s not a choice.

It’s a magnetism too precise to escape.

By the time I return to my office, I can feel the pulse in my jaw. It’s not anger. Not quite. It’s something closer to anticipation. Or dread. I can’t tell the difference anymore.

I shut the door behind me and flip the deadbolt out of reflex. The room smells like warm plastic and faint electricity. My eyes go straight to the decoy terminal in the corner, the one I tucked the ghost drive into. It’s still there. Still blinking.

I don’t touch it. Not yet.

Instead, I sit down, close my eyes, and run my hand over my face. The weight of her presence still clings to my skin, like a touch I haven’t earned. And maybe never will.

She looked at me differently this morning.

Not with trust.

Not with fear.

But with calculation.

Like she’d started to understand just how deep I’d already cut into her. And how much deeper I’m willing to go.

I shouldn’t want her to figure it out.

But part of me does.

Part of me needs her to know how fucked up this whole thing is and needs her to look at me and say it, to say she sees it. So I can finally stop pretending that I don’t care.

I grab a pill from the bedside drawer, dry swallow it, and lie back.

But I don’t sleep.

Because in three hours, I’m supposed to meet her again.

And this time, I won’t be the one watching.

Two hours later, I’m still wide awake, tracing the contours of the ceiling with my eyes. I can’t shut it off—my brain, my nerves, my need.

I sit up, grab the decoy terminal, and pull the chair close. The ghost drive fits into the port like a needle into skin. Smooth. I open the cloned files and scroll through directories, watching the coded strings pulse across the screen.

Folders open like confessionals. They’re not hers exactly, more like hers filtered through layers of project scripts, system patches, and emotional triggers.

A few tagged logs sit at the bottom of the directory.

ARCHIVE_ECHO-10X03 OBS-SIGNAL-RED7 USER-TAG-C0Z

My fingers freeze over the last one.

C0Z.

My mouth goes dry. That’s not her current tag. That’s not an active identifier.

That’s a legacy string. It’s one I’ve only seen once, back when I was granted root access to the earliest Echo dev builds. Before the clinic rebooted and before her name was public.

I click it.

The file unfolds.

It’s a video.

It’s grainy with low resolution. It’s also timestamped and borderline corrupted.

I see a small room with white walls. A child—dark-haired, no older than eight—sits against the corner.

Her knees are tucked to her chest, and there’s a mask on the table beside her.

A voice behind the camera says, “Trigger B.”

The girl jerks.

Then she screams.

It’s not loud, and it’s not the volume that undoes me. It’s the pitch. It’s the same one I heard on the corrupted audio she accidentally leaked.

She screams like her lungs are glass.

Then she bites her own arm.

But not like she’s throwing a tantrum.

Like survival.

I slam the terminal shut and eject the drive with trembling fingers.

I don’t know if Rourke’s ever seen this file. But I don’t care.

Because I know what it means.

She wasn’t just part of Echo.

She was the prototype.

My hands don’t stop shaking even after I’ve tucked the drive back into the false bottom of the equipment case. The image won’t leave me—her as a child, fractured and weaponized before she even knew her own name.

I sit back down and breathe through my teeth. Everything in me wants to destroy the file, to erase it from every system, every node, and every node Rourke might have access to. But that’s not an option. Not yet.

It’s leverage now. Not data.

I copy the video, store it under a new encrypted partition on my secure terminal, and set it to erase if tampered with. No backups, no cloud. Just me and the code.

After, I write a single-line entry in my own offline journal.

“Project C0Z confirms prototype theory. Interface trauma loop predates current structure. Cross-reference with Rourke’s Phase 1 iterations. Possible theft of source identity.”

I don’t add a timestamp, and I don’t sign it. This entry isn’t for anyone but me.

A sound in the hallway startles me. I slide the case back into the storage slot and shut the terminal off.

My breath slows again.

But the knowledge doesn’t.

This isn’t just about what they did to her.

It’s about what they took from her.

And somehow, I’ve become the one person who knows.

I’m not a savior.

Just a witness.

And that’s almost worse.

I press my palms against the desk, feeling the cold press into my skin. The lights overhead hum low, casting long shadows across the terminal. The weight of what I’ve just seen presses against my ribs like a stone too heavy to move.

I close my eyes and breathe once through my teeth.

I can’t tell her. Not yet.

If I show her that file, it’ll split her open, though not like the last time. Not in pieces. It’ll destroy something final in her, the part that still thinks she has any choice left in who she becomes.

And maybe that’s what Rourke wants. Maybe that’s what he’s always wanted. To prove there’s no such thing as healing, only obedience.

But not with her. Not if I can help it.

Outside, the clinic lights flicker, and an alarm barks three times in the distance before it silences.

Something’s happening.

And not just in the system.

In her.

She’s starting to remember things I never wanted her to see.

And I don’t know what she’ll do when she finds out I’ve known all along.

Because there are only two ways this ends now.

With her breaking free.

Or with both of us buried in what we built.