Page 35 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

My chest still echoes with the tremor of Elias’s departure.

For a heartbeat, the corridor holds its breath with me—then exhales, pressing cold against my skin like it wants me to follow, or stay behind.

Lydia stands beside me now, still as a blade before a fight. We made our way down here in silence after Elias disappeared into the tunnels. Her steps never faltered. Mine did—but only once. Just long enough to look back.

Now the room around us feels like the kind that remembers things. Stone walls hum faintly with the heat of data and old betrayals. Elias said this place was meant for watching, for triangulating movement and heat trails. He didn’t mention how claustrophobic it would feel without him.

The moment he disappeared through the far corridor, something shifted. Not the light. Not the air. Something smaller. Something in me.

And then the feed cuts out on the tablet.

Not a glitch. A silence with intention.

Lydia noticed it too. Her head tilted, just slightly, her mouth pressing into that unreadable line she wears. The monitor on her wrist pulsed, red for a fraction of a second, before the screen blanked to black.

“Vault relay just snapped,” she muttered.

Not loud. Not shocked. Just like she expected it to happen.

And that’s when I knew:

We’re not alone down here.

We never were.

Lydia continues watching the heartbeat feed of Elias’s tag as it tracks deeper into the underlayers. Her fingers rest loosely against the tablet, but I know better. She’s ready to gut anyone who flinches wrong.

I breathe slowly. Through the nose. Hold. Let it out.

I’m not scared.

I’m angry.

Whoever was behind that feed had access to a door Elias locked. If Lydia’s clearance was the one used to breach it, this isn’t just infiltration. It’s surgical. Precise. The kind of betrayal that doesn’t come from outside.

And the worst part?

It worked.

Because for one long, sickening second, I thought we were ahead.

I glance again at the screen on Lydia’s wrist. Nothing but Elias’s vitals and a low-lit map that pulses like a threat. He’s deep now. Too far to pull back easily.

“You’re not going after him,” I say.

She lifts a brow. “He doesn’t want me to.”

“Has that ever stopped you before?”

A beat. Then she smiles—just a little. It’s cold. But it’s real. “Depends who’s bleeding.”

“You think Vale’s in with him?” I ask quietly.

Her gaze narrows. “If he is, he won’t stay there. Not with a signal like that pinging his trail.”

I nod once. Tension coiling tighter across my shoulders.

Then I turn away.

To our left, half-concealed in shadow, is a narrow stairwell—unmarked, steel-framed, unremarkable. The kind of access route you don’t see unless you’re looking for an escape.

I move toward it.

Lydia doesn’t stop me. She just watches.

“I’m not staying down here,” I say.

She exhales, sharp and low. “Don’t get clever.”

I glance back. “Too late.”

She tosses me a palm-sized jammer without a word.

I catch it, slide it into my back pocket.

“Ping me if you hit anything real,” she adds. “And you run silent unless it’s that.”

I nod and step into the stairwell, swallowing the pressure that builds behind my ribs as I climb.

Each step feels louder than it should. The kind of sound that gets measured in regrets.

When I reach the first landing, I press my ear to the wall. Nothing. Then—faint hum. Not directional. Not sharp. Just…present.

Something’s still online.

I follow it. Another level. Then one more.

At the top is a door. Steel-core. Lead-lined. A door meant to stay closed.

I push it open slowly.

The room beyond is long. Low-ceilinged. Lined with racks of old servers blinking to themselves like they’ve forgotten what silence is.

There’s a body in the chair.

Not dead.

Sleeping.

I pause. Step in fully. Let the door whisper shut behind me.

The figure stirs. Straightens. Then turns.

I freeze.

Not because I recognize him.

But because I don’t.

He’s young. Mid-twenties, maybe. Sharp features. Hair cropped close. Not military. Not civilian. That in-between look of someone who’s spent too long behind screens and not enough time in the world.

He looks at me like he expected someone else.

And then he smiles.

“Mara, right?”

I step closer. Slowly. “Who the hell are you?”

He shrugs. “Let’s say I’m Kinley, I’m someone who’s been watching longer than you’d like.”

My pulse trips. My fingers brush the edge of the jammer.

He sees it. Lifts a hand, mock-surrender. “Hey. No threat. If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have let the door lock behind you.”

“That supposed to be comforting?”

He laughs. “No. But it’s true.”

I don’t smile.

“I’m not with Vale,” he adds.

“Then who are you with?”

A beat. Then: “Nobody. Not anymore.”

I scan the room. Data feeds everywhere. Half-archived logs. Shadows of files I don’t recognize. Images of me. Elias. Even Lydia.

“You’ve been collecting,” I say.

“Observing,” he corrects.

I don’t move. “Is that better?”

He shrugs again. “Not worse.”

My hand tightens on the jammer.

“You’re not going to kill me, Mara.”

That makes me stop. “Why not?”

He leans back in the chair. “Because I’m the only one who can prove who Vale’s working with. And I know where they’re going next.”

I step forward slowly, shadows sliding across my boots.

“Talk,” I say.

His eyes flash.

And the real story begins.

He doesn’t move. Just stares up at me like he’s waiting for me to sit first. I don’t. I don’t need to. Not until I know which way this tilt will fall.

I watch his hand. Fingers relaxed, not near any weapon. Still, I know better than to assume he’s harmless. The room itself is a weapon—wired, shielded, low enough beneath the surface to evade most surface-level scrapes. You don’t build something like this if you’re not planning to vanish into it.

He turns one of the monitors. Not fully toward me—just enough that the glow spills onto the wall beside us. The screen pulses once, then flickers into a grid of files.

Some of them show images—grainy, timestamped frames from cameras I don’t recognize. Others display map overlays, file trees, comms logs spliced together in fragmented layers. I spot an exterior picture of the clinic.

The way the data’s sorted—tags, aliases, fragmented shells that cross-reference patient records, surveillance hits, and something deeper. Buried beneath the noise.

It doesn’t feel like random intel.

It feels built.

Maintained.

“You’ve been watching us,” I say, breath threading tight through my chest.

He doesn’t deny it. Just smiles, faint and thin. “I didn’t just watch. I helped shape the net they watch with.”

The hairs rise on the back of my neck.

“You were in the system,” I murmur.

He nods once. “I was the system. Or at least, part of the backbone that made it work.”

I move toward him one step. “Who were you feeding?”

His face stills. Not a flinch. Not a lie either.

“First? The same people Elias walked away from. The ones who built Eidolon. Who built the burnt trees and staged the silences.”

“And now?”

“I’m freelance.”

I laugh, low and sharp. “You’re a traitor.”

He doesn’t deny it.

“Vale?” I ask.

He lifts a hand. “He wants power. Legacy. He wants to burn Elias from the inside out. But he’s just the flame. Not the match.”

I narrow my eyes. “Then who is?”

His gaze locks onto mine. No blink. No smile now.

“Name won’t mean much. Not yet,” he says. “But it will.”

“Try me.”

He hesitates. Then: “Aras Volker.”

The name lands like a dropped blade.

I don’t recognize it. Not from Elias. Not from the data I’ve seen. But something about the way he says it—sharp, reverent, like he’s naming a ghost that still bleeds—makes my skin crawl.

“Who the hell is that?”

He exhales. “The architect behind everything you’ve stepped into. Vale is his smoke screen. His scalpel. The real hand never casts a shadow.”

My pulse stutters.

Because I don’t need to know the name to feel its weight.

“You’re going to show me everything,” I say. Low. Flat.

He nods. “I will. But not here.”

“Why not?”

He looks up. “Because in three minutes, this room burns. Auto-kill on all files. Deep-scrub. And whoever triggered the Marseille node already knows you’re in here.”

I freeze.

He lifts a second passkey and offers it like an afterthought. “Come with me, Mara. You want to know the truth? I’ll hand it to you. But you’ll never be able to unsee it.”

I don’t take the key from his hand. Not yet. I look at it like it might bite me. Because I know what this means. What it could cost.

Behind us, the screen starts a soft countdown in the upper right. Two minutes, forty seconds.

“You built all of this to erase it,” I say.

“Everything that matters lives outside the record,” he replies. “The rest is noise.”

The seconds bleed down. My feet feel heavier than they should. My body knows something my brain hasn’t caught up to yet. Maybe it’s the look in his eyes—the calm. Not the kind that comes from safety. The kind that comes from resolve.

“I don’t trust you,” I say.

“Good,” he answers. “That’ll keep you alive longer than trust ever could.”

I take the key.

He exhales like he didn’t know he was holding his breath.

The exit isn’t through the main door. It’s through a narrow seam in the wall I didn’t see until he pressed a coded panel near the floor. The whole thing shifts inward with a quiet hydraulic hiss. He ducks through first. I follow.

We enter a tight corridor that smells like old stone and ozone. The light is low, with red emergency stripes marking the floor. The hum of servers fades behind us.

“Where does this go?” I ask.

“Deeper. Then sideways. Then out.”

“Out to where?”

His smile is tight. “You’ll see.”

We move fast. Not running, but not slow either. Every turn is too smooth to be chance. This was designed as an escape, and it’s been used before.

At the next junction, I see scorch marks on the wall. Not recent. But not ancient either.

“Someone got out the hard way once,” he says. “Learned from it.”

“Who?”

He doesn’t answer.