Chapter 8: The Confession
The kitchen light was a merciless white sun. It glinted off the stainless steel sink, the glossy tiles, the water ring left by Leo’s forgotten glass. It made everything too sharp, too real. Leo sat at the island, having yanked a grey tee-shirt on, his massive frame dwarfing the stool. He stared at the grain of the butcher block as if it contained the secrets of the universe.
Marcus leaned against the refrigerator, arms crossed over the thin mesh of his top. The cool metal seeped through the fabric. He’d chosen the outfit as armor, a deliberate fuck-you to the situation, but now it just felt flimsy. The memory of his own voice—“Fuck me, daddy tell me how much you like these boobs!”—echoed in his skull on a sickening loop. It wasn’t just what he’d said. It was the pitch, the cadence, the effortless way this body had produced the sound. A sound he would have catcalled from a car window a month ago.
Lara stood opposite them, her back against the counter, coffee mug cradled in both hands. She hadn’t made a fresh one; it was cold, from hours ago. She took a slow sip, grimaced, and set it down. The click of ceramic on quartz was unnervingly loud.
“Okay,” she said finally. Her voice was calm. Too calm. “First, ground rules. My house. My rules. If you’re going to have… emergencies of a personal nature, you will lock the door. I don’t need to see that. Ever again.”
Marcus flushed, heat climbing his neck. “It wasn’t an—”
“It was,” Leo interrupted, still talking to the wood grain. His voice was a low rumble. “It was an emergency. A stupid, panic-driven emergency. It won’t happen again.”
The finality in his tone stung. Marcus uncrossed his arms, pushing off the fridge. “Hey, don’t make it sound like I forced you. You were there too.”
“I was.” Leo finally looked up, meeting Marcus’s eyes. There was no anger there, just a deep, weary sadness. “And I shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t fair to either of us. We’re not in our right minds. Literally.”
The fight drained out of Marcus. Leo was right. They were piloting stolen mechs, with faulty controls and haywire feedback systems. He slid onto the stool next to Leo, leaving a careful gap. The leggings whispered against the metal. “So what now? You kick us out?”
Lara snorted. “Tempting. But no.” She rubbed her temples. “Look, the… interpersonal drama is a sidebar. A really loud, uncomfortable sidebar. The main event is still Silas Quinn. And I found something.”
That got their full attention. Leo straightened. Marcus leaned forward, the previous humiliation momentarily shelved.
“His company, Chronos-Leap Biomed,” Lara continued, pulling her laptop from the counter and opening it. “It went under about eighteen months ago. Chapter seven. Not a whisper since. Standard story—burned through venture capital, prototype failures, fraud allegations that never stuck. A ghost.”
“So a dead end,” Marcus said, slumping.
“Not quite.” Lara spun the laptop to face them. On the screen was a grainy, blown-up screenshot from a local business journal’s charity event. A group of men in tuxedos. She pointed to a figure on the edge. “Quinn.”
He was tall, gaunt, with silver hair swept back from a high forehead. He held a champagne flute but wasn’t smiling. He looked like a hawk surveying a field of mice.
“The article lists the attendees,” Lara said. “CEOs, philanthropists, investors. And one ‘Independent Research Consultant.’ Dr. Arthur Valdis.”
She tapped a key, and a second window popped up—a professional profile for a man in his fifties, with a tight smile and eyes that didn’t seem to match it. “Valdis was Quinn’s lead biologist. Specialized in radical cellular regeneration and epigenetic triggers. Published a few papers that the mainstream journals called ‘fanciful’ before he vanished from academia and went private. Worked exclusively for Chronos-Leap.”
“Where is he now?” Leo asked, his programmer’s brain latching onto the data.
“That’s the interesting part.” Lara closed the laptop. “He’s not in witness protection. He’s not dead. He’s… bartending.”
Silence.
“Bartending?” Marcus echoed.
“At a dive called The Rusty Nail, over in the old industrial district. Started about six months after the company folded. Clean social media, no interviews, lives in a studio apartment above a laundromat.” Lara’s eyes were hard, calculating. “A guy with that resume doesn’t tend bar unless he’s hiding. Or waiting.”
“Or he’s broke,” Leo offered.
“His severance package from Chronos-Leap was seven figures,” Lara said flatly. “He’s not broke.”
The implications settled over the kitchen, colder than the fluorescent light. A lead. A fragile, potentially dangerous thread to pull.
“We have to talk to him,” Marcus said. The decision was immediate, visceral. This was action. This was a direction, any direction, away from the static horror of his own skin.
“We don’t do anything,” Lara said. “I do. I’m the reporter. He’s a source. You two are walking, talking evidence of a crime so bizarre no one would believe it. You can’t just waltz in there.”
“He might recognize us,” Leo said, the thought clearly chilling him.
“He might recognize us,” Leo said, the thought clearly chilling him.
“From what?” Lara countered, her journalist’s skepticism a wall. “You don’t look anything like your old IDs. You’re a walking contradiction. He’d have to know exactly what he was looking for.” She studied them, a clinical assessment. “More likely, he’d just see a couple. A very… noticeable couple.”
The word hung in the air, charged and awkward. Marcus felt it like a physical touch. A couple. It was a cover story, a practical excuse. It also felt like a trap, another layer of fiction smothering him.
He couldn’t stand it—the planning, the caution, the way they were talking around the gigantic, pink elephant in the room. Last night.This body. The humiliating, electric, confusing reality of it all. The careful distance Leo was putting between them on the stool felt like a canyon.
“Forget it,” Marcus snapped, the words exploding out of him. He stood up, the stool legs scraping harshly against the tile. Both Lara and Leo flinched at the sudden movement. “Forget the cloak-and-dagger reporter crap. You want to know what’s really going on? Fine.”
He planted his hands on the cool island, leaning forward, his gaze drilling into Lara, then swinging to Leo, who looked braced for impact.
“I don’t want to turn back, Lara.” The declaration was too loud in the quiet kitchen. He saw Lara’s eyes widen, just a fraction. “I like this new life. Being the sexy girlfriend.” He forced a sharp, brittle laugh. “And Leo, you don’t either. I know you love being a sexy hunk. Admit it. All that power. People finally looking at you.”
The cruelty of it was intentional, a poison-tipped dart aimed at the most vulnerable part of his friend. He needed to shatter this careful, miserable silence between them, even if it meant cutting them both on the broken glass.
Leo’s face went completely still. Not angry.Not hurt. Blank. It was worse.
“Marcus,” Lara breathed, her voice a mix of horror and disbelief.
“What?” Marcus pushed off the counter, throwing his arms out. The mesh top stretched. “It’s the truth, isn’t it? Why are we even looking for this Valdis guy? To go back to being… what? You, a scrawny ghost who jumped at his own shadow? Me, some meathead laughing at guys like you from the squat rack?” His voice cracked, the high pitch betraying him. “This is better. This is easier.”
Leo finally moved. He stood, the motion slow and controlled, his new height making the ceiling feel lower. He looked down at Marcus, his expression unreadable. “Is that what you think?” he asked, his deep voice dangerously soft.
“Isn’t it?”
“No.” The single word was absolute. He didn’t elaborate. He just turned, his broad shoulders blocking out the light, and walked out of the kitchen. The floorboards didn’t even creak under his weight.
The silence he left behind was suffocating. Marcus stood there, his bravado evaporating, leaving a hollow, shaking core. He’d wanted a reaction, a fight, anything. He’d gotten nothing.
Lara let out a long, slow breath. She looked at her brother, really looked at him—the defiant stance, the trembling hands, the tears of furious frustration welling in his eyes. The performance was crumbling in real time.
“Oh, Marcus,” she said, her voice losing its professional edge, filling with a devastating pity. “You absolute idiot.”
The word hung between them, sharp as the kitchen knife block. It wasn’t anger in Lara’s voice. It was worse. It was understanding. It saw right through the mesh top and the leggings and the performative rage, straight down to the terrified, grieving man thrashing inside a stranger’s skin.
Marcus’s breath hitched, a wet, ugly sound. The tears he’d been holding back spilled over, hot and shameful. He swiped at them with the back of his hand, a childish gesture that felt alien with these slender wrists. “Don’t,” he choked out. “Just don’t.”
“Don’t what?” Lara pushed off the counter, her own composure fraying. “Don’t point out that you’re so scared you’re trying to burn down the only two people who give a shit? That you just called your best friend—the guy who’s stuck by you through this literal nightmare—a coward? For what?”
“Because he walked away!” Marcus’s voice shattered into a scream that echoed off the tiles. He gestured wildly toward the empty hallway. “He always walks away! He’s doing it now! He’d rather stare at a wall than deal with this… with me!”
“Deal with what, Marcus? Be specific.” Lara took a step closer, her eyes locked on his. “Deal with the fact that you just used him like a live wire to see if you could still feel something? Or deal with the fact that you did feel something, and it scared the hell out of you?”
The question was a surgical strike. It left him raw and exposed. All the confusing, electric sensations from the night before, the horrifyingly apt sounds that had come from his own mouth, the way his new body had responded on autopilot—it all curdled into a single, nauseating lump of fear in his throat. He couldn’t articulate it. So he deflected, armor sliding back into place with a rusty shriek.
“You don’t get it,” he sneered, forcing his spine straight, throwing his shoulders back in a parody of his old confidence. The movement made his new chest prominent, a fact he leaned into with savage irony. “You’re looking at your pathetic brother. But that’s not who this is.” He gestured down at himself, a frantic, sweeping motion. “This is an upgrade. Leo’s the one who can’t handle it. He’s scared of a real woman.”
“Marcus, stop.” Lara’s voice was low, a warning.
He couldn’t. The momentum was carrying him over a cliff. “He liked it, Lara. He was right there with me. Then he got all quiet and sad because his little nerd heart can’t process that he’s a sexy idiot now.” The words tumbled out, fueled by a toxic mix of humiliation and panic. He was constructing a new, easier reality on the fly, one where he was in control. “Well, I’m a bad bitch now, sis. A baddie. If Leo doesn’t want me, plenty of my gym bros would. They’d lose their goddamn minds.”
He finished, chest heaving, the silence ringing with the crass, hollow echo of his proclamation. He expected more pity. He expected disgust.
Lara just looked tired. Profoundly, world-weary tired. She picked up her cold coffee mug again, studied the dregs, and set it down with a final click. “Finished?”
The flatness of her response was a bucket of ice water. His bravado fizzled, leaving him shivering in the center of the bright, silent kitchen.
“Go to your room, Marcus.” She didn’t sound like his sister. She sounded like a warden. “Seriously. Go sit in your childhood bedroom with the Transformer posters and think. Think about who you’re trying to convince. Because it’s not me. And it’s definitely not Leo.”
She turned her back on him, opening the laptop, the click of the keys deliberately loud in the silence. The conversation was over. He had been dismissed.
He stood there for another ten seconds, waiting for a punchline that didn’t come. The fluorescent light buzzed. The refrigerator hummed. He was just a thing in the way. He turned and walked out, his bare feet silent on the floor. The distance to his room felt like a mile. He didn’t see Leo anywhere. The house was just a shell, holding their separate, private hurricanes.
He shut his bedroom door and didn’t lock it. He sank onto the edge of the twin bed, the comic book sheets gritty under his palms. He stared at Optimus Prime, frozen mid-transformation. He replayed his own words. Plenty of my gym bros would.
A cold, clear thought cut through the static. Which ones? Mike, who talked about women like they were protein shakes? Derek, who’d slap his old back and call him ‘bro’ with a voice full of glass?
The face that surfaced, clear and unbidden, was Leo’s. Not as he was now, but as he had been. Scrawny, in a faded video game tee, laughing at a bad joke over a pizza, his glasses slipping down his nose. The person who knew him. The person he had just vaporized.
A dry, heaving sob broke from him. He curled forward, his forehead pressing against his knees, the new, unfamiliar curves of his body folding in on themselves. He wasn’t a bad bitch. He was just bad. And he was utterly, terrifyingly alone.