Page 92 of Fractured Devotion
I nod and lie, saying, “I just needed the lights low.”
He steps closer, holding out his phone. “Reyes asked me to show you this. It’s from earlier today.”
The video is grainy, pulled from a hallway camera near the East wing. It’s Harper. She’s standing at a junction console. But she’s not doing anything. She’s just standing. For ten minutes.
“Was she assigned to that wing?” I ask.
“No. Her schedule had her logging samples in Lab D. This is two floors off-path.”
“Did she access the system?”
“Not on record. But the terminal went live for seventy seconds while she was there.”
The unease crawling through my veins coils tighter.
“She could be spiraling,” Alec says gently. “Or compromised.”
“I always thought she was loyal, always eager to do more.”
He says nothing to that. I look up at him, finally meeting his eyes.
“I want to believe her,” I whisper. “But what if I’ve already been compromised?”
His jaw clenches. “Then we find out how. And we stop it.”
But in his eyes, I already see the fear. The one I’m starting to share.
That it’s not just Harper who’s been compromised.
It’s me.
By the time I leave the clinic, it’s past 9 p.m. The parking lot is mostly empty, lit only by a flickering overhead lamp that buzzes like a dying insect. The air is colder than it should be for this time of year. I pull my coat tighter around me and walk faster, my heels clicking on the concrete. I don’t look back.
I shouldn’t be walking out like this, not with everything circling the drain, but I can’t sit in that office one minute longer. I can’t stand the press of recycled air and fluorescent light, or the thought that every surface might already be touched by someone else’s presence. My backup apartment is only three floors up, but I haven’t been back to my main apartment in over a week, not since Kade subtly warned me to avoid it for a while.
I did trust him. Until now. And suddenly, I can’t stand the thought of being steered anymore.
So, instead of heading back upstairs, I walk the five minutes to my primary apartment, my mind grinding through static. Once I step inside, everything feels too controlled. I can’tstay still. I grab my keys from the bowl by the door—a rare act, since I almost never drive to the clinic—and leave again. I need air. I need distance. I need to stop feeling like my life has been mapped out in someone else’s code.
The engine growls to life beneath me. I back out of the garage and take the long way out of the neighborhood, my hands tight on the wheel. There’s no music, just the hum of the tires and the distant hiss of wind through half-shut vents.
I don’t know where I’m going until I’m already outside the city, past the industrial corridor, and past the edge of where traffic cameras blink. The air here smells like wet asphalt and pine. I don’t come this way often anymore.
Fifteen minutes in, I take an unmarked turn down a narrow strip of road that cuts into the hills. It’s the road I used to take when I needed silence after therapy sessions. Back when I still believed silence was clean.
I park by a gravel clearing, kill the engine, and sit in the dark. My reflection, pale and hollow, stares back at me in the windshield. Just a shape in motion. I lean my forehead against the wheel for a brief moment before I raise my head back up and breathe.
Then, I see it.
A soft glow from behind a ridge. It’s not headlights. It’s something more muted, like a tablet screen or a console left running. It vanishes after a second. My pulse skitters.
I scan the tree line, but nothing moves.
Still, I step out of the car.
The air is biting. My boots crunch against loose stone as I move toward the ridge, my heart thudding louder than my footsteps. I crest the hill, expecting to find nothing.
But there’s a footprint, and it’s fresh. Too fresh.
