Page 155 of Fractured Devotion
My tablet lights up.
It’s a new message from Reyes.
Subject:Entry Found. Channel Delta Uploaded. Be careful with this one.
I open the file.
Encrypted layers fold back one by one, like old skin peeling under fire.
Then the footage begins.
It’s grainy and dated.
It shows a child. The child is maybe six. Maybe seven.
Sitting on the floor of a small, windowless room. Her knees are drawn up, her arms wrapped tight around her legs. A soft light pulses from the wall behind her. There’s music playing, an old lullaby, distorted by age. Then, a man’s voice cuts in, deep and instructive. She flinches at the sound, but doesn’t move.
I pause the footage.
Because I already know what happens next. I remember it now.
The mask. The scent of antiseptic. The sound of the latch turning behind me.
It wasn’t a dream.
It wasn’t an implanted script.
It was my life.
I close the tablet and lean back in my chair, feeling the throb return—not the erotic kind, but the one that pulses behind your eyes when truth demands more than you’re ready to give.
This isn’t over.
But the version of me who questioned whether it ever really happened?
She is.
Chapter 46 – Alec - Pattern Recognition
The light in Reyes’ lab always hums wrong. Like it’s pretending to be fluorescent, but there’s something else underneath—a faint buzz that doesn’t match any known current. I rub the back of my neck as I lean over the terminal, the screen’s glow turning every new discovery into something clinical and cold.
But today, the discoveries aren’t theoretical. They’re personal.
“Pull it up again,” I say.
Reyes taps a few keys, and the sequence unfolds. It’s not a video this time, but metadata. Line after line of file references, signatures, and upload origins. A trail.
“That one,” I point, narrowing my eyes. The origin code has been obfuscated and then buried under dummy data.
“That’s from the Echo prime server. Level 4 permissions only,” Reyes mutters. “This isn’t Celeste’s work. Someone upstream did this. Years ago.”
“Rourke?”
Reyes shrugs. “If it were just him, the metadata would be clean. This looks… layered. Like a committee of shadows.”
I let that sit.
It’s not one monster. But many.
