Page 44 of Fractured Devotion
But I was. From a distance. Back then, it was just a file. Just a theory.
The girl in those videos wasn’t broken. She was unfinished. All edges, no center. A threat no one understood yet.
Now she’s something else. Something more dangerous.
The logs in Reyes’ office say she’s accessed restricted trials and resurrected simulations no one else dares touch.
Not even me.
Yet.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees, my fingers steepled beneath my chin.
She’s pushing back now. Planning something. Alec’s presence is a tell. His concern is too visible, and he forgets that she doesn’t respond to comfort. She responds to friction. Challenge. Heat.
I should be the one to offer it, but not yet. Not until I know what’s on that flash drive.
Not until I see how far she’s willing to go alone.
Because when she finally steps into the dark, truly steps, I need to be the only one waiting there.
And she needs to believe it was always her idea.
I descend to the fourth floor when I hear the lab doors hiss open. It’s Harper, again, alone this time. She walks fast, but not confidently. It’s like she’s carrying something too sensitive and doesn’t want anyone to notice it slipping through her hands.
I fall in step behind her, two corridors back. I don’t need to hear what she’s saying to the console or what she’s entering into the terminal in Room 4B. I already traced her key signatures three nights ago. She doesn’t encrypt her side logs. Rookie mistake.
She leaves ten minutes later, and I slip in after. The smell of printer ink and metal still hangs in the air. She left the system running.
The log details a sleep-response spike in Subject 3-19. It’s connected to one of Celeste’s private simulation streams. It’s not logged in the main trial registry and not reported. It’s buried behind dummy test names and sample redirect codes.
But it’s her work, precise and razor clean. It has her design all over it.
She’s running something unsanctioned.
And more than that, purposeful. Like she’s building something. Or reviving it.
I want to touch the terminal. I want to sit in her data and break it apart. But I don’t. I’m not ready to be seen in it yet. Ifshe’s guarding this, it means she’s not ready to let anyone get too close.
Which means she’s still deciding who to trust.
I lock the room behind me and head back toward the central elevators.
In the hallway, I pass Reyes.
He gives me a tight nod. It’s measured. Not quite suspicion, not quite welcome.
He knows something too.
But the thing about this place is that no one talks directly. We all just dig, pull threads, and wait to see who unravels first.
I return to my temporary office and close the blinds.
Then I pull out the personal rig I smuggled in through maintenance weeks ago. It’s small and obscure. Off the grid.
I run the predictive sim model again, this time aligning Celeste’s recent access patterns with three known trial variants from the sealed list Rourke buried under committee clearance.
The model spits out a match ratio of 87%.
