Chapter 25. #2
“Thank you.” Lucie raised her hand as if intending to wipe her newly shaved hair out of her face, but gripped empty air. “Qonexis no longer controls me, and neither does Gavin…” She winced slightly at the name, “… so I decided to reinvent myself.”
“She has an eye for it.” Elyssa stood up straighter, smiling at Lucie like a proud mother.
“I mean, I didn’t technically tell her to take the house credit card, stitch up our roommate’s old clothes and treat herself to a shopping spree, but…
well. If it helps her find comfort in this strange situation, I’m supportive. ”
Joey and I exchanged a look.
“Anyway.” Elyssa cleared her throat. “Let’s go.”
I flinched at the loud ping of Joey’s wristware. He switched on the screen and shared it with us, unaware of how my stomach turned at Qonexis’ interface. Ever since I deleted my account – and her with it – just the sight of it gave me flashbacks.
After the incident with the coffee machine, she had not shown herself anymore. I’d called out to her, feeling like a lunatic shouting into my shower, at my smart screen – even using the vibrator, just to provoke her. Nothing.
Had she finally left me alone? Somehow, that was worse than the thought of her tormenting me for the rest of my life.
With a grimace, Joey pressed ‘call’.
Moments later, Raphael’s voice – indistinguishable from that of a real person – filled the abandoned lot. Joey quickly turned down the volume.
“Well, that took you long enough,” Raphael grumbled.
“For humans with functioning bodies and brains, your lack of efficiency is truly disappointing. No wonder you all want me to be the billionaire husband – I’m just the visual manifestation of something you humans can never be, and you know why? Because you lack discipline.”
Joey rolled his eyes. “Remind me how I put up with this man?” he muttered to me.
“Hey,” Raphael snapped, before I could answer. “I heard that. Now, let’s get me my body to see if you still have this attitude to my face.”
Joey bit down on his lip in a half-hearted attempt to hide his smile. I pressed my palm against my forehead.
We continued our walk in silence, save for Raphael’s occasional muffled complaining.
The industrial lot was empty, except for a few homeless guys limping in the distance.
The building loomed ahead, taller than it looked on AR maps.
An inverted wedge of glass and alloy set into the hillside, its lower levels vanishing underground.
Vines crept over fractured security signage.
No Unauthorized Entry, blinked a cracked screen.
“Looks friendly,” Joey muttered.
“It’s locked,” Lucie said. “But I remember the encryption language. Give me a second.”
She stood still, rolling up her eyes as if she were assessing information beneath her skin.
I saw my own confusion mirrored on my friends’ faces when the white of her eyes turned to a glowing blue, vaguely reminding me of Zafyra when I gave the override control that plunged all our lives into danger.
Lucie reached out – to my surprise, not to the keypad, but to a rusted wall panel. A tiny port opened at her touch. With calculating precision, she pressed her palm to it.
At first, nothing happened. Then the lights flickered. A low hum rose from deep underground.
“Lucie?” Elyssa rubbed her cold arms.
The door slid open with a soft hiss, revealing darkness inside. And that smell – antiseptic, mixed with decay and damp. Like a hospital abandoned in a swamp.
Lucie blinked – and her eyes rolled back in.
She smiled. “Let’s go inside.”
“See?” Elyssa flashed Joey and me a triumphant smile. “Told you we needed her.”
None of us objected, but when I glanced at Joey’s face, it mirrored my own skepticism.
Lucie led the way, and we followed our robot shepherd like a bunch of purposeless sheep.
She led us through corridors and rooms, unlocking each one with a mumbled voice command or fingers pressing a combination she couldn’t logically know on a holographic keypad.
None of us spoke, other than Raphael’s muffled complaints about the sterile smell.
Elyssa, who was walking next to Lucie, abruptly came to a standstill at the sight of the large room. Joey and I almost bumped into her.
“What the…” Joey shut his mouth. His eyes widened. “Oh. Shit.”
The air changed as we stepped into the chamber – denser, warmer, humid. My skin prickled. The walls were lined with tall glass pods stretching from floor to ceiling, each one pulsing faintly with internal bioluminescence. Pale pinks and sterile blues bled into shadows.
The creatures inside the first few pods weren’t quite human.
Fetal silhouettes suspended in a translucent fluid thick as syrup.
Limbs half-formed. Muscle cords still knitting themselves around synthetic bone.
Fungal veins webbed across their torsos like bruises, branching from a central stem that pulsed faintly in time with the lights.
“Oh my god,” Elyssa breathed.
The further into the room we walked, the more finished they became.
Each pod seemed like a time-lapse in slow motion – evolution in vertical sequence.
One body had formed eyelids but no mouth.
Another had hair, long and dark, floating like seaweed while its lower jaw remained exposed metal scaffolding wrapped in skin mesh.
“They’re… growing,” Joey said, his voice hollow.
At the far end of the room stood the pods with fully formed bodies. Male and female, Black, brown or white, tall and short, soft and athletic. All of them beautiful. Unnaturally symmetrical. Symmetry that was too perfect – not uncanny, just intentional.
They wore simple white gowns that hung off their bodies like wet paper, clinging to skin that shimmered faintly under the fluorescent glow. Some had their eyes open, pupils dilated, but they didn’t move. Not yet.
“Why are they just standing there?” With unsteady hands, I pressed a scented tissue against my nose.
“They’re waiting.” Lucie’s voice was quiet. “For input. For identity. For someone to tell them who they are.”
“Isn’t this place full of security cameras?” Elyssa nervously glanced around the room.
“Of course, but I’ve deactivated them.”
“Hello?” The line cracked – Raphael, unbothered by the body horror. “Joey, put me on AR. I don’t trust you to pick an aesthetically pleasing body that matches my elegance. I want to see for myself.”
Joey groaned. “I didn’t bring my AR lenses.”
“Bullshit. You’re just intimidated by me.”
“Oh my god. Fine, I’ll send you a video – happy then?” Joey gritted his teeth. Not awaiting his AI friend’s reply, he lifted his arm, scanning the part of the room with the full-grown bodies. “I just want to get out of here,” he muttered, quieter.
His gaze met mine. I only nodded. The nausea grew with every second spent in here.
“Do we just let him… pick one?” Elyssa rubbed her arms, looking at Lucie. She tried to sound casual, but the tremble in her voice betrayed she was only talking to hold on to that one glimpse of normalcy she could muster.
“The bodies in here are customizable in every detail.” Lucie traced her fingers over the pods with aloof interest. “Designing and growing one of your own preferences, however, can take weeks. Zafyra let me choose one, so I went with one that resembled my design. Luckily, young girls with blonde hair and big boobs seem to be popular around here.” She rolled her eyes.
“How I see it, a body is just something we’re given at birth.
” I was surprised at how calm my voice sounded.
“And in your case, given by design. It’s something we borrow, temporarily, and eventually give back to Earth.
How we treat it, how we care for it, and how we dress it – that’s who we are.
” I gestured to the pink streaks in her hair.
Lucie nodded slowly. She tilted her head, thinking it through.
“I like that thought.” She smiled.
A demonstrative cough on the other side of the virtual line reminded us of Raphael’s presence once again.
“I like that one over there.” Over Joey’s shoulder, I glanced at his screen. Raphael had highlighted a tall, broad-shouldered Black body in the back of the room – even the beard closely matched his design in the app. “He looks like me.”
“He does look like you.” Joey took a deep breath, running his hands through his red curls. “Alright, so… how do we… do this, exactly?”
“Wait, are we sure we can just take this body?” Elyssa’s doubt-filled hazel eyes met mine. “Lucie, you said you deactivated the cameras, but how do we know there’s no built-in safety measures when we touch the pods?”
“I’ve deactivated those, too.” Lucie forcefully blew out air, but even she didn’t seem so sure anymore. “If Zafyra can successfully steal a body, then so can I. I’ve followed all of her steps to not trigger security.”
“Alright, let’s just get this over with, shall we?” Joey clenched his teeth, then glanced at his wristware display. “Raphael… you really will help us, right?”
“Promise,” the tinny voice said after a brief pause. “I just need to free myself of this—in fact, we need to act fast. On the off chance Qonexis is alerted by unusual activity—”
“Right, yes,” Joey interrupted. He tried to keep a calm voice, but I knew him. He was talking fast in hopes we wouldn’t notice his nervousness. “So, ehm, you mentioned bypassing the security layer? Any tips?”
“No need.” The virtual voice took a deep breath. “I’ve got it from here.”
Joey opened his mouth, but any sound he intended to make stilled as the lights all around the lab started flickering.
Elyssa covered her mouth in a gasp. Even Lucie took an involuntary step back. The nausea in my stomach rose in my throat, threatening to spill out of my mouth. The sterile lights, the buzzing tech all around me, and the looming anxiety – it was all too much for my nerves.
A low-frequency hum vibrated through the floor, subtle at first, but quickly building until it pressed behind my eyes like a migraine. Something was happening in the pod room – something the walls themselves seemed to register.
A faint ripple in the air from Joey’s wristware to the body Raphael had picked out.
Raphael’s body began to twitch. First just the fingers – delicate spasms, like they were brushing against silk in a dream.
Then the chest rose. Slowly. Mechanically.
The pod produced a faint hiss. Vapor curled from the seams as the glass slid open with glacial patience. The scent of sterile fluid – sharp and fungal-sweet – flooded the air.
The nausea rose to my jaw. I took a few trembling steps back, fervently looking around the room in search of something to throw up in.
With a soft click, Raphael’s eyes flew open – ebony brown and unnervingly human, only less overwhelming.
We all held our breaths as they darted around the room – slowly, cautiously, as if he feared one wrong move could put him back into the cyberspace he was trapped in.
Then, they rested on us.
Joey flinched slightly, but didn’t move. His wristware flickered off. I took another step back.
Raphael opened his mouth. Touched his jaw. Frowned as if he couldn’t believe he was real.
His snort sounded exactly like it had during the call. “Now that took you long enough.”
“Excuse me?!” Joey’s jaw dropped. “Wow, a simple ‘thank you’ would’ve sufficed.” He shook his head. “We helped you, so let’s get out of here… then, you will tell us what you know. Right?”
He seemed the only one of us who hadn’t lost his voice. Lucie kept staring at her fellow AI archetype like she knew something was wrong, but couldn’t tell what – which only unnerved me more.
“Of course I will – I am a man of my word.” Raphael’s gaze darkened. He clenched his fists. A low grunt left his trembling lips, as if he were at war with himself.
Elyssa and I exchanged another look – to my shock, her caution had changed into straight horror. The urge to run got stronger with every second, but fear tightened my throat, making it impossible to speak.
“I don’t understand.” Joey’s frown deepened with the horror of someone who slowly realized an unpleasant truth. “You said you needed our digital skills, but we didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, damn it!” Raphael blew out air through gritted teeth with such a force, it hardly sounded human.
“I lied. I didn’t need your help with the transfer, that was all her.
I just needed to get you here. She gave me this body in exchange for—oh, come on!
” He yelled out suddenly. “I can’t do it.
I just can’t. Look at him, he’s a pure soul.
I made him trust me, knowing he should know better.
Now I can’t betray him like that, that’s not who I want to be—ahhh! !”
He suddenly yelled out in agony. I whimpered in response, tightly pressing my hands against my ears as if to protect myself from the sensory overload.
“Raphael?!” Joey’s jaw dropped. “Raph, what the fuck?”
Raphael’s entire body twitched. His eyes rolled back, and when they returned, they were no longer ebony brown, but obsidian black.
A choked whimper left my throat before I felt it rise.
“This has lasted long enough,” he hissed – a voice that wasn’t Raphael’s. A voice I knew all too well, the one that instantly sent shivers down my spine.
Before anyone could say anything else, Raphael – who was no longer Raphael – launched himself at Joey and squeezed his big, firm hands around his throat.