Chapter 3: The First Change
The penthouse was a cathedral of quiet after the bass-throbbing chaos of the club. Only the distant sigh of the surf twenty floors below filtered through the floor-to-ceiling glass. Ava stood on the balcony, the cool night air raising goosebumps on her arms. She watched the steady pulse of car lights along Ocean Drive, a structured order she craved.
Inside, Maddie moved through the open living space, pouring two glasses of champagne. The sounds were small and precise: the pop of the cork, the glug-glug of the pour, the soft click of a glass on marble.
“You did good today,” Maddie said, coming up behind her. She didn’t touch her at first, just stood close enough for Ava to feel her presence.“Seriously.You handled James. You handled the stares. I know it’s weird for you.”
Ava didn’t turn. “Weird doesn’t cover it.”
“Come on.” Maddie’s hands settled on her hips, thumbs rubbing small circles on the bare skin above the waistband of her borrowed silk shorts.“You were the hottest one there.Everyone was looking at you. At my creation.”
The possessiveness was back, edged with a drunken warmth. Ava felt her new body respond to the touch, a traitorous softening. Adam’s mind recoiled, but the distance between thought and instinct was widening, a gap filled with confusing feedback. “They were looking at a science project.”
“They were looking at a woman.” Maddie turned her around, her eyes dark in the moonlight. She traced Ava’s lower lip with her thumb.“My woman. And I’m… turned on.By you.This is new.”
The kiss wasn’t gentle. It was claiming, fueled by gin and a triumph that felt like ownership. Ava participated, a part of her leaning into the familiarity of Maddie’s taste, the shape of her mouth. But another part floated above, detached, watching the tiny woman in the tiny shorts being maneuvered backwards into the cool, sterile bedroom.The sex was different. Before, with Adam, Maddie had been competitive, meeting force with force.Now, she was a sculptor admiring her work. Her hands charted every new curve, her mouth followed.She whispered praise not to Adam, but to Ava’s body. “So soft here… God, you’re so small, I could just… perfect, so perfect.” The words warped inside Ava.They felt good.They felt sickening.
Afterwards, they lay tangled in the damp sheets. Maddie traced the line of Ava’s spine, a contented hum in her throat.The condo was silent.It was in this silence that Ava saw her chance.
“Maddie.”
“Hmm?”
“The app.” Ava propped herself up on an elbow, looking down at Maddie’s satisfied face.“Just for a few minutes.Turn me back. Let me be Adam.Just to feel… normal. To feel like me for a second.Then you can change me right back.A reset.”
Maddie’s smile faded. She blinked up at the ceiling.“Ava…”
“Please. It’s been days in this… skin.My brain’s starting to fog.A quick hit of me.Our secret. A reward.” She used Maddie’s language, bargaining with a chips she didn’t have.
A long sigh.Maddie sat up, the sheet pooling around her waist. She looked at Ava—really looked. At the pleading in the big, glasses-magnified eyes, at the delicate set of the jaw.Something flickered in her expression.Pity?Guilt?“Okay. Okay, fine.A quick reset. But you tell anyone, and I’ll lock you in this body forever.”
She padded naked to the closet, retrieving her sleek, encrypted tablet from a hidden compartment in her suitcase.The screen glowed to life, casting a blue pallor on her face. She tapped, inputting her passcode. The app opened, a deceptively simple interface with a pulsing, helical DNA strand.Ava’s heart hammered.This was it. Five minutes of solid ground.Five minutes of his own voice, his own hands, his own height.
“Reverse last somatic transformation,” Maddie muttered, scrolling. “Temporary reversion… duration slider…” She set it for five minutes.“Ready?”
Ava nodded, her throat tight.
Maddie tapped ‘Execute.’
The screen stuttered.The DNA graphic froze, then pixelated. A spinning loading icon appeared.“Weird,” Maddie mumbled.She tapped it again.Nothing.
“Is it working?” Ava asked, feeling no different.“It’s lagging. Stupid thing.” Maddie frowned, jabbing the screen with more force. She backed out of the menu and went to the main dashboard. “Maybe just initiate a full masculine profile temporary overlay…”
As she scrolled, her finger slipped. It dragged across a sub-menu labeled ‘Neurolinguistic Modulation.’
“Shit,” she hissed, trying to cancel.Too late.
A new screen flashed.Vocal & Cognitive Pattern ‘Bubbly’ v.4.2 Selected. Application: Immediate.Duration: 48-hour lock.Confirm?
In her haste, Maddie hit ‘Confirm’ instead of ‘Cancel.’
The tablet vibrated once.A cheerful chime sounded.
Ava felt it instantly.A pressure behind her eyes, a subtle rewiring in her tongue. It was like a key turning in a lock deep in her brain.She opened her mouth to swear.
What came out was a breathy, high-pitched giggle. “OMG, what was that, like, a weird tingle?”
The voice was Ava’s, but the cadence was alien. A upspeak lilt that turned every statement into a question. The words felt sticky and stupid in her mouth.Maddie stared, the tablet forgotten in her lap.Her eyes widened.
Ava tried again, panic boiling up. “Maddie, what the fuck did you do?” It emerged as, “Mads, like, what did you even do? That was sooo weird and not in a good way?”
She clamped her hands over her mouth. Her eyes, wide with horror, screamed everything her voice could no longer articulate.
Maddie snatched up the tablet, frantically navigating.“Shit, shit, shit.It’s locked.Forty-eight hour lock. ‘Bubbly’? What the hell is ‘Bubbly’?” She read from the screen, her voice dropping to a horrified whisper. “Injects colloquial speech patterns, reduces syntactic complexity, enforces upbeat vocal tonality… Oh, god, Adam, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry?SORRY?” The fury was volcanic, immense. Ava launched herself off the bed, aiming for a roar.What came out was a petulant, squeaky torrent. “You like, ruined my voice!I sound like a total bimbo! This is, like, the worst thing ever?Fix it!Fix it right now!”
She stomped her foot. The small, bare foot made a pathetic thump on the polished concrete floor.
A bizarre, strained noise escaped Maddie.She was trying to stifle it, her hand pressed to her mouth, her shoulders shaking. A snort broke through.Then another. It wasn’t laughter born of cruelty, but of sheer, uncontrollable cognitive dissonance. The sight of Ava—the furious, diminutive woman with her hands on her hips, her face red with rage—spewing a torrent of valley girl complaints was… absurd.
“It’s not funny!” Ava shrieked, which translated to a high, “It’s so not funny? Shut up!”
Maddie doubled over, tears streaming down her face, the tablet clutched to her chest. “I’m sorry,” she gasped between breaths.“I am, I really am! But your face… and the voice… ‘Like, the worst thing ever?’”
Ava stood there, trembling. The fury was still there, a white-hot core inside her. But it was now encased in a layer of humiliating, bubbly sound.Every attempt to express it would only deepen the joke. She turned and marched to the window, staring out at the dark, indifferent ocean.
She pressed her forehead against the cool glass.Inside her mind, Adam was screaming, a raw, guttural, silent roar. Outside, all she could manage was a tiny, breathy sigh.
“This is so messed up,” she whispered to the city lights.
And it was.