FRACTURED DEVOTION
ALEX'S POV
I couldn't look at her strapped to that table without my hands shaking.
"Begin with basic compliance exercises," Powell's voice crackled through the intercom. "Standard protocol seven."
Protocol seven. Memory flooding exercises designed to break down emotional defenses. I'd watched it destroy Grace over eighteen months, turning a brilliant literature student into a hollow shell who smiled when they told her to smile.
"Alex." Jody's voice was steady, but I caught the tremor underneath. "Look at me."
I forced myself to meet her eyes. Brown eyes that had looked at me with trust just hours ago. Now they searched my face for something real, something that wasn't part of their psychological blueprint.
"The control panel is voice activated," I said, loud enough for the microphones. "Beginning session one."
The panel lit up blue, recording everything. But I stepped closer to Jody, close enough that the cameras couldn't see my hands.
I'm going to get you out, I mouthed silently.
Her eyes widened slightly. Then she closed them, preparing for whatever torture they expected me to inflict.
My finger hovered over the neural stimulation controls. One touch would send electrical currents designed to trigger traumatic memory recall. They'd done it to me when I was eight years old, strapped to a smaller version of this same table.
"Remember, Alexander, pain is just data," my grandfather had said, watching as they broke me piece by piece. "The weak feel it. The strong use it."
I'd been strong. I'd learned to compartmentalize, to separate the boy who cried for his mother from the young man who recruited vulnerable students. Twenty-two years of conditioning had made me perfect Circle material.
Until Jody Hopkins looked at me like I was worth saving.
"Subject appears responsive to handler presence," I said aloud. My hands moved to the restraint controls instead. "Beginning trust-building phase."
"Negative," Powell's voice snapped through the speaker. "Protocol seven requires immediate implementation. We don't have time for extended bonding."
"Psychological dependency is strongest when built gradually," I replied, loosening the restraints on Jody's wrists just enough to restore circulation. "Rushing the process could cause complete psychological break."
A lie. But one wrapped in enough Circle methodology that Powell might buy it.
"You have one hour," he said finally. "Then we proceed with intensive conditioning whether she's ready or not."
The intercom clicked off. I helped Jody sit up slowly, her legs dangling off the edge of the table. She rubbed her wrists where the leather had chafed.
"Why?" she whispered.
Because somewhere between explaining molecular orbital theory and watching her face light up when she solved complex reactions, I'd stopped pretending to care and started actually caring. Because she looked at me like I was more than the sum of my family's expectations. Because for the first time in twenty-two years, I wanted to be worthy of someone's trust.
"I never meant for any of this to happen," I said instead.
"But you knew. From the beginning, you knew what they planned to do to me."
My throat felt raw. "Yes."
She studied my face with the same intensity she brought to chemistry problems. "How long have you been doing this? Recruiting students?"
"Four years. Since I turned eighteen." The words tasted like ash. "Grace was my first assignment."
Jody's face went pale. "Grace. That broken girl in the cell."
"She wasn't broken when I met her. She was... brilliant. Funny. She wanted to write poetry that would make people feel less alone." I closed my eyes, seeing Grace as she'd been. Vibrant. Whole. "I told myself she'd be happy here. That they'd give her opportunities she'd never have otherwise."
"And instead they destroyed her."
"They made her compliant. Useful." The clinical language felt obscene now. "She'll be placed with a pharmaceutical executive as a personal assistant. Someone who can influence his decisions, access his files, report back to the Circle."
"A spy."
"More than that. They've conditioned her to believe serving the Circle is the highest form of love. She'll do anything they ask because she genuinely thinks it makes her valuable."
Jody was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible. "Is that what they want from me? To turn me into someone who thinks psychological slavery is love?"
The honest answer would break something in her eyes that might never heal. But she deserved honesty after all the lies.
"They want to condition you to believe that using your chemistry knowledge to develop chemical weapons is patriotic duty. That the people who die from what you create deserved it because they threatened national security." I forced myself to continue. "Eventually, you'd volunteer for increasingly dangerous assignments because pleasing them would feel like the only real love you'd ever known."
She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering despite the warm air. "How do you live with yourself?"
"I don't. Not really." I pulled out my phone, showing her a contact labeled 'M. Perry.' "I've been in touch with Detective Perry for three weeks. Feeding her information about missing students, Circle operations, everything."
"Three weeks." Her eyes sharpened. "Before you even met me?"
"After Grace's conditioning was completed. When I watched them load her into a car like cargo and realized what I'd helped create." I pocketed the phone. "Perry's been building a case, but she needs more evidence. Something that proves the Circle's reach extends beyond Ashford."
"And now you're risking both our lives to help her."
"I was already dead inside. At least this way, maybe some good comes from it."
Jody reached for my hand, her fingers warm against my palm. "Alex, whatever they did to you as a child—that wasn't your fault."
The simple kindness in her voice nearly undid me. "I've recruited seventeen students. Eleven are missing. Assumed dead."
"Because you were conditioned to believe you had no choice."
"I always had a choice."
"You were eight years old when they started breaking you." Her thumb traced across my knuckles. "Children don't choose their trauma."
Before I could respond, footsteps echoed in the hallway. Powell's voice carried through the door, speaking to someone I couldn't see.
"—schedule has been moved up. We need complete conditioning within twelve hours, not forty-eight."
My blood went cold.
"And if the subject proves resistant?" The second voice was my grandfather. Here. At the facility.
"Then we proceed with permanent solution protocols. Both subjects."
I squeezed Jody's hand, our earlier conversation about choices echoing in my head. My grandfather had made his choice twenty-two years ago when he decided his eight-year-old grandson was raw material for psychological conditioning. I'd made mine three weeks ago when I contacted Detective Perry.
Now came the hardest choice of all.
The door opened. Powell entered with my grandfather, followed by two guards carrying a steel briefcase that I recognized. Inside would be syringes filled with experimental compounds designed to either complete psychological reconditioning or cause what looked like natural cardiac arrest.
"Alexander." My grandfather's voice was warm, paternal. The same tone he'd used while watching technicians break my mind. "I understand you've developed an inappropriate attachment to your assignment."
"The attachment is strategic," I said, standing between them and Jody. "Enhanced emotional dependency will—"
"Will compromise your objectivity and endanger Circle operations." His pale eyes fixed on Jody with clinical interest. "The subject has become a liability. As have you."
Powell opened the briefcase, revealing rows of labeled syringes. "Standard procedure is to begin with the handler, then proceed to the subject. Less resistance that way."
"However," my grandfather continued, "you have one final opportunity to prove your loyalty. Administer the subject's final treatment personally, and we'll consider your rehabilitation rather than termination."
He held out a syringe filled with clear liquid. The same compound that had killed six students who'd proven resistant to conditioning.
"Choose wisely, Alexander. Your life depends on it."