Replication - chapter 16 (with images) (Patreon)

The city streets are gray and frozen. The windshield wipers smear a thin layer of road salt across the glass.

I park the car and walk up the stairs. I unlock the door to the apartment and drop the keys in the bowl.

I do not shift for three days.

I let the body run unmanaged. The bone structure slumps into the unremarkable curves of the default form. The pale skin remains pale. The dark hair hangs limp past the collarbone.

The apartment takes on a stale, closed-in smell. The smell of a space where a person has stopped participating in the hours. I wear gray sweatpants and a loose t-shirt. The breast tissue drags against the cotton, unsupported and aching. The bleeding from the cycle has stopped, leaving a hollow throb in the lower pelvis. The physical toll of the shedding endometrium is a recurring fact. The cramps radiate through the lower back, a grinding pain that ibuprofen barely touches. The body builds something up every month and then tears it back down. I get to feel the whole thing from the inside now.

I lie on the bed, looking up at the water stain on the ceiling.

I drink tap water from a glass and eat dry cereal over the sink. The food in the refrigerator spoils. I throw a container of take-out away when the smell breaches the plastic lid.

There’s no one to call. Rafa is cut off. My family in Texas doesn’t know this pale woman exists. The world is the square footage of this apartment now.

On the fourth morning, I get up. The hardwood floor is freezing against the soles of my feet.

I walk into the bathroom. I turn on the overhead light.

The woman in the mirror looks worn through. Dark crescents sit under her eyes, like she hasn’t slept.

Kate isolates herself. She values security. She has no close female friends. Two years with a controlling partner narrowed her world. She’s carrying a child, navigating a damaged relationship with a man she knows lied to her. She’s starved for a connection.

She needs a confidante.

I close my eyes and start the build.

I avoid the copper-brown of my own skin. That color belongs to a ghost. I pull a shallow, warm olive tone up from the melanin layer. Just enough to break the sickly hospital white. I round the jaw, softening the angles. I drop the cheekbones. The process is smoother now, the mesh yielding to the sustained mental pressure with less resistance than when I forced the male architecture.

The eyes are mine. I change the setting and drop the brow. I allow the fine lines at the corners to deepen. The fatigue of the last three days remains in the tissue. I let it show. It makes the face approachable. It makes the face belong to someone who has lived a life and accumulated some damage. I widen the mouth slightly. I dial back the symmetry. I need her to look a little disorganized.

I loosen the rigid tension in the shoulders. I let the spine curve naturally and allow the breasts to rest, dropping the defensive compression. The hips widen into their biological default. The thighs touch when I stand.

I open my eyes.

The woman in the mirror is assembled for warmth. She looks thirty-five. She looks plausible, like someone who would listen to a complaint and offer a tissue.

I spend an hour practicing the voice. I strip the clinical edge and remove the medical authority. I keep the pitch in the middle register. Soft. Patient.

I practice the smile, avoiding the bright, predatory flash Leila used on Mark. I construct a quiet, closed-mouth smile. A smile that offers safety.

I name her Claire.

I look at Kate’s schedule, the access still available, probably forgotten about. She attends a yoga class on Tuesday mornings. A studio on the north side, four blocks from her new apartment.

I dress carefully. Black athletic leggings. A faded gray tank top. A worn navy fleece zip-up. I drive to a sporting goods store and purchase a cheap purple yoga mat. The foam smells of chemicals.

The yoga studio is a converted warehouse space. The lobby smells of eucalyptus and herbal tea. The receptionist hands me a clipboard. I sign in under the name Claire.

The studio room is heated. The air is thick. The temperature hits the skin, a blanket of moisture.

Women occupy the room. Female bodies breathing in the heated air.

I find a spot in the first row. I unroll the purple mat and sit cross-legged and wait. The instructor enters. A woman with a serene voice that’s working too hard at it.

A room full of women breathing in the heat. It’s a space built for an exposure I have no right to be borrowing, and being in it feels like trespassing. The body doesn’t share the discomfort. The heat and the close quiet of the room work on it the way they work on everyone in here, and I sit with the low pull of that and hold Claire’s shoulders soft and unthreatening.

Kate walks in three minutes before the class begins.

My breath catches. I drop my gaze to the wooden floorboards.

She’s wearing dark blue leggings and an oversized white t-shirt, carrying a dented metal water bottle.

She’s eleven weeks pregnant now. The physical changes are invisible to a casual observer. The stomach under the t-shirt is flat. The clinical knowledge overlays the visual data. I know the dimensions of the uterus expanding behind the abdominal wall. I know the fetus is growing.

She finds an empty space in the front row, to my left. The placement is good. The class itself puts our bodies in shared physical space.

She unrolls her mat and sits down heavily. The exhaustion I saw from the car last week remains etched into her posture.

The class begins.

I follow the movements. The poses require a flexibility I didn’t possess a few months ago. The female joints yield. The hips rotate openly, the bone structure accommodating the stretch. The connective tissue pulls without tearing.

I focus on Kate’s back. The line of her spine under the white cotton. The shift of her scapula.

She struggles. Her balance is off. The center of gravity is shifting, and her muscles haven’t adapted. She drops out of a modified warrior pose twice. She presses a hand to her lower back, rubbing the lumbar vertebrae. I wobble on the standing poses, losing my footing.

Claire isn't an athlete, she's just a woman trying to survive a Tuesday morning.

The heat exacerbates the physical toll. The breast tissue pulls against the thin fabric of the sports bra. The sweat pools between the breasts and runs down the sternum. The moisture gathers in the crease of the thighs.

The class ends. The instructor turns off the overhead lights. The room is plunged into a dim, amber glow.

We lie on the mats for five minutes of forced stillness. The heated air settles over the floor.

I track Kate’s breathing. Slow. Labored. The sound of a woman carrying a physical burden she’s unused to.

The lights come up. The women begin rolling their mats. The low hum of conversation starts. Bags zip. Water bottles clink.

I sit up. I reach for my water bottle.

I knock it over.

The plastic cylinder hits the wooden floor. It rolls forward, crossing the short distance to Kate’s mat. It bumps against her knee.

She looks down and picks it up.

I scramble forward on my hands and knees. I let my face flush with the heat. I widen the eyes, letting my breath catch.

“I am so sorry,” I say. The voice is Claire’s. Soft. Apologetic.

Kate hands the bottle back. She looks at my face.

She doesn’t see Julian. She doesn’t see a threat. She sees a tired, clumsy woman in a gray tank top with sweat dampening her hairline.

“It’s fine,” Kate says. Her voice lacks the sharp, defensive edge she uses when she feels managed. She offers a thin, exhausted smile. “It happens.”

I stay seated on my mat. I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. The skin is slick.

“I have zero balance today,” I say. “I think the heat is finally getting to me.”

Kate pauses. She slings her canvas bag over her shoulder.

“It’s brutal in here,” she agrees. “I almost walked out twenty minutes ago.”

“You looked like you knew what you were doing. I was just trying not to fall on anyone.”

Kate laughs. A genuine, short sound. The laugh she gives when something lands.

“I definitely do not know what I’m doing,” she says. “My back is killing me.”

“Sciatica?” I ask.

She blinks, surprised by the accuracy of the guess. “Yeah. It started last week.”

“I had it bad a few years ago. You want a trick that actually works?”

I offer a stretch. A simple, clinical adjustment of the piriformis muscle, repackaged as folksy gym wisdom. I demonstrate it on the mat, crossing one leg over the other, leaning forward.

Kate listens. She drops her bag. She tries the stretch on her own mat, mimicking the angle.

I watch her face change. The tension goes out of her lower back and she exhales, long and shaky.

“Oh,” she breathes. “That actually helps.”

“It saves lives,” I say. I offer the smile. The closed-mouth, safe smile.

Kate sits up. She looks at me properly.

“I’m Kate,” she says.

“Claire.” I reach out.

Our hands meet. Her skin is warm. My pulse thuds against the forced cartilage of my jaw.

I touch the woman carrying my child. I shake her hand, warm under my palm, and I want to pull her in and I let go instead.

“Do you come to this class often?” Kate asks.

“Trying to. Just moved to the neighborhood.” I pick up my purple mat. “I’m still figuring out the schedule.”

“It’s hit or miss. The instructor today is better than the Thursday one.”

We walk out of the studio together. The transition from the heated room to the cool lobby air raises goosebumps on my bare arms.

I don’t push. I let the interaction breathe.

“Thanks for the stretch, Claire,” Kate says at the door.

“Anytime.” I pull the fleece zip-up over my shoulders. “See you next week maybe.”

“Yeah. See you.”

She walks down the street. I stand on the sidewalk and watch her go.

I turn and walk toward my car. The hips swing against the fabric of the leggings.

The espresso machine spits steam. A sharp hiss that cuts through the low murmur of the café. The barista knocks the metal portafilter against the rim of a plastic trash bin. Twice. The thud vibrates through the floorboards.

Kate holds the ceramic mug with both hands. Her knuckles are white against the dark green glaze. She ordered peppermint tea.

The table is a small circle of distressed wood, barely large enough for the two cups. Her right knee rests against my left thigh. The wool of her winter coat is draped over the back of her chair. The air in the room smells of roasted beans, wet wool, and the vanilla lotion she’s used every morning for two years.

I keep the olive skin locked. The asymmetrical cheekbones. It takes a fraction of the energy the Julian face took. The mask settles into the Claire persona with a lazy relief. The shoulders slump into a soft curve. The spine rounds.

“The editor wants to cut the entire third chapter,” Kate says. She stares into the dark liquid in her mug. “He says it disrupts the pacing. The pacing of a book about grief. It makes no sense.”

I listen. I don’t offer a solution. Julian managed her problems. Claire receives them.

“They always want to cut the parts that actually breathe,” I say. The voice is pitched in the middle register. Soft. Patient.

Kate looks up. The tension around her mouth eases a fraction. “Exactly. It needs the space. The absence is the point.”

Her knee shifts against mine. The bodies overlap without the rigid, invisible boundaries that governed every interaction I ever had with her.

The smell of her does something to the body before I’ve registered it, the vanilla lotion, the nearness of her, and the heat comes up before I’ve registered it, and I shift my weight and it doesn’t help.

I cross my legs, trying to crush the sensation through physical pressure. The friction only intensifies the heat.

“My ex used to do that,” Kate says.

I freeze. The coffee cup halfway to my mouth. I lower it back to the saucer. “Do what?”

“Try to solve it.” She traces the rim of her mug with her thumb. “If I complained about work, he’d give me a flowchart. He couldn’t just let a complaint exist in the air. He had to fix it so he didn’t have to listen to it anymore.”

It lands square in the chest. I take a breath and hold the warm, open smile. “That sounds exhausting.”

“It was.” She looks at the window. The condensation pooling on the bottom edge of the glass. “He’s gone now. Mostly.”

She doesn’t mention Mark.

We finish the drinks and walk to the train station. The winter air is brutal, a sharp wind sweeping off the concrete. We stand on the platform. The cold cuts through the navy fleece zip-up I’m wearing.

“Thursday?” she asks.

“I’ll be there,” I say.

The train arrives. The doors slide open. She steps inside. She turns and offers a small wave. I nod. The doors close.

I walk back to my car with the wind in my face and the wet between my legs cooling, the body still running its own response to a woman who can’t know who I am.

Wednesday morning. The screen of the burner phone lights up on the kitchen counter. A text from the number she typed into it at the yoga studio.

My back is in actual agony. That stretch only worked for an hour.

I wipe the counter with a sponge. I pick up the phone. I use my thumbs. The span of the hands is narrower. The reach is different.

Foam roller. Or I can walk you through the other one tomorrow before class.

The reply is instantaneous.

Please. I’ll buy the coffee after.

Thursday morning. The studio room is heated. The air is thick and wet.

Kate looks worse. The nausea is visible. The pale skin, the dark circles under the eyes. She skips half the poses in the sequence. She spends ten minutes in child’s pose, her forehead pressed against the foam mat, her breathing shallow and ragged.

I stay on the mat next to her, modifying my poses so she doesn’t feel exposed. I drop out of the warrior sequence early. I sit cross-legged and drink water.

The class ends. We walk down the hall to the locker room.

The metal benches. The smell of chlorine from the pool down the hall. Damp towels piled in a canvas bin. The room echoes with the sound of running showers and hair dryers.

Kate opens her locker and drops her canvas bag on the bench.

She grabs the hem of her sweaty white t-shirt and pulls it over her head.

I look at the floor. The gray tile. The grout lines. I count them. One. Two. Three.

She stands in her dark blue sports bra and leggings. The bare skin of her shoulders. The curve of her stomach.

I spent two years negotiating for inches of space with her, managing her moods and calculating approaches. Now she undresses two feet from me with the unthinking permission of female space.

She unhooks the clasp of the sports bra. The fabric falls away.

I turn my back and dig my fingernails into the slats of the locker door. The heat goes up into my face, the pull settling low the second I hear the fabric come off. I close my eyes. It doesn’t help. I can see her bare shoulders with them shut.

“You okay?” she asks. Her voice comes from behind me. The rustle of cotton. She is pulling on a dry shirt.

“Just dizzy from the heat,” I say. I force the pitch down. “The room was a sauna.”

“It’s awful.” A zipper closes. “I’m ready when you are.”

I turn around. She's dressed in a thick gray sweater and dark jeans. The ache in my groin doesn’t recede. I’ll carry it for the rest of the day.

Friday afternoon.

The coffee turns into lunch. She doesn’t want to go back to her apartment yet. We walk to a diner two blocks from the studio. The cracked vinyl booth. A smell of fryer grease and old coffee.

She orders dry toast and ginger ale.

I order a salad I don’t eat.

She stares at the toast. The rain outside turns to sleet. The ice pellets click against the plate glass window.

“The ginger helps,” I say.

She looks up. “With what?”

“The nausea.” I keep the voice flat. I let the observation sit in the air between us.

She blinks. The hand holding the glass of ginger ale tightens. The knuckles go white. She looks at the window, then at the table. She looks at my face.

She’s running the assessment of the stranger sitting across from her. The evaluation of the risk.

She takes a slow breath.

“Is it that obvious?” she asks.

“Only to someone looking.” I pick up my fork. I push a piece of lettuce across the white ceramic plate. “You skipped the twist poses yesterday and today. You’re exhausted. And you’re drinking ginger ale with dry toast.”

She lets out a short, hollow laugh.

“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”

She doesn’t elaborate and I don’t push.

We sit in the diner for an hour. She eats half a piece of toast. The sleet outside turns into a freezing downpour. The sidewalks glaze over into gray glass.

I pay the check.

“My car is three blocks away,” I say, looking at the freezing rain.

Kate pulls her wool coat tighter around her shoulders. “My place is around the corner. Come up. Wait out the worst of it.”

“If you’re sure,” I say.

“I’m sure.”

We walk the short distance to her building. The wind bites at the exposed skin of my neck. My boots slip on the slick sidewalk.

The lobby. The elevator. The third floor.

She unlocks the door and pushes it open.

I walk into the apartment.

The green velvet chair sits near the tall window. The books are stacked on the coffee table. The smell of roasting garlic is gone, replaced by the dusty smell of closed windows and winter heating.

I scan the room.

A single pair of men’s shoes sits by the console near the door. Size eleven. Brown leather. Mark’s shoes.

A dark overcoat hangs on the rack.

His presence here is thin. A pair of shoes, a coat. The thing I watched from the street last week is in here too. He’s in the space but it isn’t his.

Kate drops her keys into a ceramic bowl on the console. The same bowl we bought at a street fair two springs ago. The glaze is chipped on the left edge.

I take off the navy fleece and hang it next to Mark’s coat. The fabric brushes against the wool of his sleeve.

“Water?” she asks. She walks into the small kitchen.

“Please.”

I sit on the sofa. The cushions yield under the weight of the wider female pelvis. I keep my knees together and rest my hands in my lap. Claire’s posture.

Kate returns with two glasses of ice water and hands me one.

She sits on the opposite end of the sofa and pulls her knees up to her chest. She wraps her arms around her shins above her wool socks.

The sleet hits the window glass.

I drink the water. The ice hits my teeth.

She rests her chin on her knees and stares at the blank screen of the television mounted on the far wall.

“I have a medical thing,” she says. The voice is stripped of inflection.

She stops and closes her eyes. She corrects herself.

“I’m pregnant.”

I widen the eyes. I let the mouth part slightly, drawing a soft breath.

“Oh,” I say. “Kate. That’s… wow.”

She doesn’t look at me. She keeps her eyes on the blank screen.

“I’m eleven weeks.”

I know. Ten weeks and five days in the records room. Plus three days. I know the measurement of the fetus. I know the heart rate.

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

“Terrified.” She rests her forehead against her knees. “I’m terrified.”

“Does Mark know?”

The name hangs in the air.

She shakes her head. The movement is small. “No.”

I wait. I let the silence run.

Kate lifts her head. She looks at the window. The gray light from the winter afternoon casts long shadows across her face.

“I can’t keep it,” she says.

The words land in the middle of the room. I stop breathing. Everything in the chest goes tight.

The child, the nearly four centimeter fetus with a heartbeat of one hundred and fifty-two beats per minute, is the only physical anchor I have left to my own existence, the only piece of Julian Reyes that survived the amber fluid in the Somatics lab, and she’s going to erase it without knowing what she’s erasing.

I stare at her. The mask holds, the olive skin, the soft eyes, the patient set of the mouth. Whatever’s happening behind it doesn’t reach the surface. None of it shows.

“I made the appointment,” she says. Her voice is dead. “I’m going to end the pregnancy. And I haven’t told him.”

I set the water glass down on the coffee table. The glass clinks against the wood.

“Okay,” I say. I reach across the sofa cushions. I place my hand over hers.

Her skin is freezing.

I sit on her sofa, holding the hand of the woman who threw me away, listening to her plan to end my child, and I give her a warm, understanding smile.