Page 53 of Fractured Devotion
When I’m alone again, I don’t sit. I don’t breathe.
Something’s wrong.
Not just with the system but with the pattern. With me.
The dreams weren’t just echoes. They were warnings.
And now they’re starting to align.
Somewhere in this building is someone who thinks they know how to reach inside my head.
They have no idea how deep it goes.
But they will.
It’s almost noon by the time I push the door open and step into my office. The air is too still, too curated. There’s the scent of over-sanitized surfaces—bleach and eucalyptus—and something else beneath it. It’s familiar and unplaceable. My coat slides from my shoulders as I walk to the window and draw the blinds halfway. The natural light eases the migraine that’s been twisting behind my eyes all morning.
I haven’t slept. Not really. I just drifted.
I let the sounds of the clinic rise and fall beneath me—the mechanical hum, the occasional sharp clatter from the diagnostics wing, and footsteps that never seem to know where they’re going. I ignore the tablet for now. Instead, I walk to the center of the room and sit on the edge of the small chair beside the observation desk. I keep my hands still on my knees with my eyes closed.
Then I let my thoughts scatter.
I think about the van.
It was there again last night, parked at the same angle across from the main entrance. It’s black and intentionally nondescript. And more importantly, it’s still.
I saw it again this morning on my way into the clinic. It’s back again, and it doesn’t even look like the usual shuffle of early-morning delivery drivers or maintenance shifts.
It didn’t belong. And that kind of stillness is never casual.
Whoever is behind it isn’t here for observation. They’re here to pressure. Or to extract something.
The question is what, or who?
I press a palm to my forehead and lean forward slightly. This isn’t new. Surveillance is stitched into the bones of this place. The walls know more secrets than I do. But this… this felt external. Detached. As if someone’s watching, not because they need data, but because they want leverage.
I reach for the flash drive Alec gave me.
My fingers trace the edge of the casing, cold and unyielding. There’s more buried in these files than I’ve dared to look at. The segments I’ve accessed already stirred enough—blurred outlines of data that shouldn’t have survived tribunal erasure. And embedded within them? A name I haven’t spoken in years.
Langdon Varon.
My stepfather.
The man who used to hum lullabies through the door while I hid beneath it. The man whose breath I felt on my skin before I knew what threat truly meant. The last time I saw his face, or at least parts of his face, it was covered in blood that wasn’t mine.
My hand clutches the edge of my desk, and my nails dig slightly into the finish.
He’s in here. Well, not explicitly, but between the audio glitches and memory files, I see the patterns. The sequences he made me repeat, the masks, the red door. It’s all here, waiting to bleed back into the present.
I’m not ready.
But I open the file anyway.
The interface flickers. A soft hum pulses through the speakers, subdued and rhythmic, like the echo of a swallowed cry. Then comes the footage, though it’s not from the clinic. It’s not from any institution I recognize. This is a personal log, and a child’s voice speaks in the background, soft and conditioned.
“Tell me what you are.”
