Page 158 of Fractured Devotion
Under what name? Celeste Varon.
Varon.
The same alias Rourke used.
It’s not subtle.
He wasn’t just training her. He was renaming her.
Reclaiming her.
Fuck.
I scan the physical notes Reyes printed. One file buried in the folder catches my eye. It’s an old report from a memory integrity analysis, and it’s signed by someone named Dr. Langridge.
The note reads:“Subject shows unusually high resilience to induced false memory layers. Subject appears to consolidate trauma as a motivator rather than an inhibitor. Recommendation: modify memory bindings, introduce maternal-loss anchors, and suppress paternity narrative to increase dependence on clinical authority figures.”
My stomach turns.
They saw the wreckage of her life and stepped in with open arms.
They offered her structure, answers, and education under the guise of care.
And in exchange, they rewrote everything.
This wasn’t a rescue.
It was an occupation.
They didn’t just absorb her. They shaped every damn belief she’s ever had about herself.
I grip the table’s edge until my knuckles pop.
This isn’t research.
This is cult-level psychological warfare.
And Rourke? He wasn’t the originator.
He was the handler.
But someone else funded it. Someone else gave the order.
And they’re still out there.
The overhead lights in my office flicker once as Reyes steps inside, then they stabilise.
Reyes stands beside my desk, setting down a portable case stuffed with printouts, loose notes, and a foldable grid of red string and pins. He opens it on the table, and I help him reassemble the makeshift map across my whiteboard. Photos, labels, Post-its.
It’s a conspiracy theorist’s fever dream, except it’s real. Every piece has a name. A consequence.
“So what now?” Reyes asks from behind me, his voice lower than before.
“Now,” I murmur, tapping a line that runs from Meridian Kinetics to a black-barred memo titled ‘Phase Sustainment,’ “we follow the money until we find the puppet masters.”
Reyes folds his arms. “They used Celeste to refine a control system. And now she runs the place they built it in. Either she breaks it, or it breaks her.”
The silence is heavy.
