Page 155 of Fractured Loyalties
Before I can respond, my comm crackles to life.
“Elias?” Lydia’s voice is sharp, clear, urgent. “We’ve got movement. Someone, or something, has triggered the pattern vault.”
"We're already inside, and Mara is here too, with some guy," I tell her, eyes still locked on Kinley.
She curses quietly. "Be careful who you trust in there. We both know people in this network don’t leave loose ends."
Kinley hears the comm clearly. He meets my eyes without a hint of fear. “She’s right. But I'm no one's loose end. I've been tracking Volker longer than you. If you want to finish this, you're going to need what I know.”
“Wait, Volker is in on this?” Lydia’s voice cuts through the comm.
“More like the mastermind,” I respond.
I weigh Kinley in silence for a long moment, feeling Mara’s tension beside me, a quiet storm ready to break.
I turn slowly toward Kinley. “How long have you known? About Jori?”
“Long enough,” he replies. “Long enough to see Volker’s not just pulling strings. He’s tying nooses.”
I step forward once. Just once. He doesn’t back down, but his hand shifts slightly toward his belt—out of instinct, not challenge.
“You brought her here,” I say. “That was your mistake.”
“No,” Mara cuts in. “I chose this. I wanted to see. I needed to know what kind of war we’re actually in.”
“And now you do?”
She nods. “And I’m staying in it.”
There’s no hesitation in her voice. No flinch in her spine.
Good.
Because what waits ahead won’t spare her for sentiment.
I turn. “Then keep moving. We’re not done yet.”
The corridor ahead darkens as we enter it. This place is a fucking maze, I'm just looking at it from another point of view for the first time.
A new pulse hums underfoot—faint, rhythmic, and it's too precise for machinery.
It's like a heartbeat.
It grows louder the deeper we go. Not in volume—frequency. As if the tempo is adapting to our pace, recalibrating to match our breath, our footfalls. Or maybe it’s not a sound at all. Maybe it’s something older. Something under the floor that knows we’re here.
The corridor opens slightly, just enough to suggest we’ve passed a checkpoint. There are no doors. Just lines etched into the concrete—geometry that doesn’t belong in this century. A code built for machines, not men.
Kinley slows beside me. He doesn’t speak, but he nods once at the wall to our left. Embedded in the slab is a panel—thin, matte, low-resistance. It’s not lit. Which means it’s waiting.
I move first.
Two fingers to the panel. A shallow click. Then the air shifts. Heat, barely perceptible, ripples along my shoulders like static wind.
Behind us, Mara mutters, “Is that supposed to feel like that?”
“No.”
The floor tilts—so subtly it might be an illusion. But my balance knows better. This place isn’t mapped for gravity. It’s mapped for control. For disorientation.
