Page 38 of Fractured Loyalties (Tainted Souls #2)

“Or someone wanted us to think that.”

I crouch beside the body. My gloved hand moves to the breast pocket. No ID. No tracker tag. But there’s a small scrap tucked beneath his collar. Folded.

I take it out.

Unfold it.

It’s a photo.

Old. Yellowed at the corners.

Me and Jori. Standing on the bridge in Berlin. Fifteen years ago.

My throat tightens.

“He had this on him?” Mara whispers.

I nod. “This doesn’t make sense.”

Kinley leans in. “It does if Jori wanted it to. That’s not a message for me.”

He looks straight at me.

“It’s for you.”

The lights overhead flicker once. Then stabilize.

We’re no longer alone.

Movement.

A shift in pressure, barely perceptible—but real. Somewhere beyond the far wall, something activates. Not the slam of boots or the whine of machinery. Softer. Intentional.

“Hold,” I say. Not loud. Not urgent. Just the word. And they freeze.

Kinley draws. Mara doesn’t, but her spine aligns like a bowstring pulled taut.

A hiss opens in the far right seam of the chamber. Then a slice of light—a vertical line that expands until it becomes a doorway without a frame. It’s not architectural. It’s surgical. A precision aperture formed by heat, glassy at the edges where the metal’s been scored.

Someone walks through it.

Not fast. Not slow.

Measured.

He’s unarmed. At least visibly. Dressed in fitted black. Combat boots, matte gloves. His face isn’t familiar. But the energy in the room bends toward him like gravity. Not power. Intent. The kind that comes with authority no one dares question aloud.

Mara shifts closer. Barely. I don’t acknowledge it, but I feel it.

The man stops just inside the new opening. He looks first at me, then at Kinley, then finally settles on Mara.

“Elias Voss,” he says. “Still dragging ghosts into unfinished corridors.”

His voice is polished—refined, but not soft. Not rehearsed either. It sounds like someone who never has to raise it to command a room.

“I don’t know you,” I reply.

“No,” he says, stepping forward. “But I know you. I know what you did in Marseille. In Rostov. I know the name they call you in dead zones.”

My grip on the SIG tightens. “You’ve got ten seconds to explain why I shouldn’t remove your tongue.”

He smiles. “Because this isn’t your story anymore.”

Kinley stirs. “Volker?”

The man gives a slight nod. “He used that name, once. A mask, like any other. The real story isn’t his identity. It’s what’s converging here.”

Mara speaks for the first time. “Convergence of what?”

He turns toward her. His gaze doesn’t slide—it lands.

“You. Him. The lines you’ve both crossed and can’t walk back.”

I step forward. Not raising the gun yet. “You’re here for us.”

“I’m just a messenger,” he says. “You can burn your sins later. But what lives in this facility is older than you think. And it’s awake now.”

The lights above shift tone—subtly—but enough for my brain to register it as a warning.

He turns to leave.

But he pauses and looks over his shoulder.

“And Elias—when the next door opens, don’t follow the blood. Follow the silence. It’s the only thing that won’t lie to you.”

Then he’s gone.

The aperture closes behind him without a sound.

The room breathes differently now.

And the wall to our left hums. A square begins to glow, blue and steady.

A new path.

Not marked.

Not mapped.

But pulsing—like a vein under glass.

Waiting to be opened.

The square glows brighter as we approach. It doesn’t beep. It doesn’t blink. It just waits, like it knows it has the only answer we don’t.

I reach it first.

No hesitation this time. I press my hand flat against the surface.

A hiss. A slide. The wall splits inward, revealing a narrow corridor pulsing in that same dull blue light. But it isn’t just light—it’s a kind of current. Like static on skin, or adrenaline without release. Mara inhales sharply behind me. Kinley says nothing.

The corridor isn’t long. But it’s steep. It descends in a sharp spiral, reinforced walls lined with rivets and blackened glass. We descend in silence, each step hollow and sure.

At the base is a door. Seamless, wide, and locked.

Until the panel above it flashes green.

Then it opens.

And we step into a cathedral made of servers.

Rows upon rows of tall towers, black and chrome, humming with the sound of untold data. Ceiling high. The floor cooled. The air is cold enough to bite.

Mara walks past me before I speak. She moves to one of the towers, fingers grazing a console. No security keypad. Just a retinal scanner.

She hesitates.

“Don’t,” I say. “They’ll log you.”

“I already exist in their files.”

“No. Not like this.”

I step forward, pull a disposable contact disc from my belt. Kinley watches as I fit it to the scanner. My eyes. The disc glows red, scans, then burns itself out in a curl of ash.

Access granted.

The wall behind the first server shifts. Not back—down. A platform descends like a stage curtain, revealing something worse.

A screen. Wall-sized, seamless, humming with static.

It flickers.

Then plays footage.

Not news. Not archives.

Us.

Mara, in the hallway, days ago. Talking to someone on the phone. Her expression frayed, barely composed.

The timestamp shows it’s real. Not doctored. But the angle—

“Where is that feed coming from?” Kinley asks.

I don’t answer.

The image changes.

Me. Killing someone. Brutal. Messy.

Then again. Another kill.

Then footage from Marseille.

All of it. All of it catalogued. Edited. Scored.

Mara turns slowly toward me.

Her voice is a thread of breath. “This Volker guy and his people have been watching since before we met.”

“No,” I say. “They’ve been watching me. You were the side effect.”

“What does he really want?” she asks, sounding more angry than curious.

Kinley’s voice cuts in, sharp. “He wants to own Elias all to himself, to do his bidding exclusively.”

Mara doesn’t look at him. She’s still watching the screen.

“You said we were ghosts,” she murmurs. “But ghosts can’t be seen like this.”

The screen blinks again. A final clip loads.

My body clenches.

It's someone standing beside a body half-shielded by firelight, Jori.

Alive.

Or it was. The frame flickers. The clip ends.

Then the feed dissolves. And the room lights dim.

A voice—mechanical, calm—fills the space.

“Authorization confirmed. Subject ready for retrieval.”

I lift my weapon.

“No,” I say.

The room doesn’t respond.

But behind us, the door we entered through seals with a hiss.

And from above, something begins to lower—metal limbs, curved hooks, mechanical arms folded like praying mantis spines.

Mara breathes out. “We need to run.”

“We can’t,” Kinley says. “Not yet.”

The lights go red.

And I finally understand:

This isn’t the archive.

It’s the trial.

There’s a sound above us. Like a spine bending too far backward. Mechanical. Organic. A groan of pressure forced into movement. The hooked limbs unfold slowly, angular and precise, like they were waiting for someone to fail.

Mara steps toward me, but I raise a hand to hold her back.

“They’re not weapons,” I say.

“Then what are they?”

Kinley answers. “Surveillance anchors. Behavioral scan arrays.”

Translation: They’re here to observe us. Record us. React.

The room’s lights pulse again. Red, then white, then something too faint to name. My neural implant—low-frequency, tactical-grade—syncs for a second, flickers on something unfamiliar. A pulse runs through the back of my skull. A neural tap echoing through the walls—ancient but not obsolete.

The screen flashes again. This time, it’s not footage. It’s code.

Blocks and blocks of it, cascading like rainfall. Mara’s name embedded. My tag. Kinley’s name. Then more. Dozens more. Names we thought buried. A graveyard of operatives, contacts, enemies—looping through a ledger no one should have access to.

“This is the pattern vault,” I mutter.

Kinley inhales sharply. “I thought they destroyed it.”

“Apparently not.”

Mara points toward the next bank of servers. “Look.”

Rows of vials. Real ones. Encased in reinforced coolant glass. Blue fluid. Labeled.

“Memory harvest,” I say.

Mine.

Hers.

Maybe even Kinley’s.

Mara presses a palm to the glass. “This is why they lured us in.”

“Not to kill us,” I say. “To complete us.”

Kinley turns toward me. “We’re in the submission loop.”

My jaw tightens. That term. Submission. It means more than surrender.

“It means rewriting.”

“They want to rewrite us,” Mara says quietly.

“They want to own us, me,” I correct.

The arms above shift again. A slow hiss like something about to drop.

“No sudden moves,” I say. “Let me think.”

Because if this is what I think it is…there’s only one way out.

Not through force.

Through reset.

My pulse spikes as I step toward the console. Mara moves beside me, silent, waiting.

I tap the edge of the interface. It reads my biometrics instantly.

A message scrolls across the screen:

Subject: EIDOLON. Access Level: Prime. Execute Command: Purge / Submit?

Submit is highlighted.

Mara’s fingers find mine. “Don’t.”

“I’m not.”

I shift the cursor.

Purge.

“Wait,” Kinley snaps. “If you do that—”

“They’ll lose everything,” I finish. “Every copy. Every trace. The whole pattern vault collapses. They lose their leverage.”

“You’ll trigger a failsafe.”

“I’m counting on it.”

Mara whispers, “Then let me do it with you.”

Her hand covers mine.

And together, we press confirm.

The room goes black.

Then all hell begins to break loose.