Page 146 of Fractured Loyalties
And it’s not Vale.
I trace the IP triangulation on the system. The signal’s bouncing, masked under a sublevel comm route. But the signature is Lydia’s.
No—wait.
Not Lydia.
Someone using her channel clearance.
My pulse hits vertical.
Whoever built this doesn’t just want to hurt her.
They want to rewrite the whole fucking narrative.
I burn every trace. Wipe the system, then rig it to collapse the grid under a code string only Lydia and I know.
Then I run.
Because whatever’s watching her from inside my system?
It was built from someone I trusted.
And I don’t trust them anymore.
Chapter 25 – Mara - The Ones Who Watch
My chest still echoes with the tremor of Elias’s departure.
For a heartbeat, the corridor holds its breath with me—then exhales, pressing cold against my skin like it wants me to follow, or stay behind.
Lydia stands beside me now, still as a blade before a fight. We made our way down here in silence after Elias disappeared into the tunnels. Her steps never faltered. Mine did—but only once. Just long enough to look back.
Now the room around us feels like the kind that remembers things. Stone walls hum faintly with the heat of data and old betrayals. Elias said this place was meant for watching, for triangulating movement and heat trails. He didn’t mention how claustrophobic it would feel without him.
The moment he disappeared through the far corridor, something shifted. Not the light. Not the air. Something smaller. Something in me.
And then the feed cuts out on the tablet.
Not a glitch. A silence with intention.
Lydia noticed it too. Her head tilted, just slightly, her mouth pressing into that unreadable line she wears. The monitor on her wrist pulsed, red for a fraction of a second, before the screen blanked to black.
“Vault relay just snapped,” she muttered.
Not loud. Not shocked. Just like she expected it to happen.
And that’s when I knew:
We’re not alone down here.
We never were.
Lydia continues watching the heartbeat feed of Elias’s tag as it tracks deeper into the underlayers. Her fingers rest loosely against the tablet, but I know better. She’s ready to gut anyone who flinches wrong.
I breathe slowly. Through the nose. Hold. Let it out.
I’m not scared.
