Chapter 13: The Confrontation
Simon sat where the chrome met the worn leather, his back to the wall out of habit. The Grafton Lane Café pulsed around him, a low heartbeat of conversation and hissing steam. Digital orchids glowed in their vases, casting cyan highlights on the faces of strangers. He watched the door.
He’d been there twenty minutes. His knuckles ached from clenching. The memory of Sasha’s collapse, the silent, lace-clad heap on his carpet, was a fresh burn behind his eyes. He’d covered her with a blanket before he left, a gesture so stupid it made his teeth hurt. But he couldn’t just leave her lying there like a broken appliance. Even if that’s exactly what she was.
Yaa came in with the evening crowd, a splash of vibrant color in a mustard-yellow coat. She scanned the room, saw him, and her face lit with a smile that wasn’t for him, but for the idea of him. A date. An ordinary man. The smile faltered as she got closer, reading the battlefield in his posture.
“You look like shit,” she said, sliding into the booth opposite. It was meant to be a joke, but it landed flat.
“Rough night.”
“Well, I’m here now. A preventative measure against further roughness.” She shrugged off her coat. She was wearing a deep green sweater that made her skin look like warm honey. It was different from the dress Sasha had ordered. This was hers. Real. He felt a stab of relief so sharp it was painful.
A floating servitor drone glided to their table, beeping politely. Yaa ordered a mint tea. Simon asked for black coffee. The silence that followed was a physical thing, pressing down on the small table between them.
“So,” she said, fiddling with a packet of raw sugar. “Big talk before the big date. Dramatic. I like it. What’s the verdict? You’ve got a secret wife? A zombie parasite? A crippling fear of brass bands?”
He couldn’t match her tone. His voice came out stripped of everything, just raw data. “Remember the android in my flat? A Companion. From the CyberLife veteran program.”
Yaa’s playful smile widened "Yeah, the one I thought was your girlfriend, right?" She chuckled, but the laughter died when she saw his face. "Well, what about it?" She said, less chirpy.
“Her.” The correction felt vile.
The servitor deposited their drinks. The steam from Simon’s coffee swirled between them. Yaa wrapped her hands around her ceramic mug, grounding herself. “And you wanted to tell me this because…?”
“Because she looks exactly like you, Yaa.”
The words hung there. She blinked. Then a short, disbelieving laugh burst out of her. “What?”
“She has your face. Your exact face. Your smile. Your eyes.” He was dismantining it, piece by piece, watching her defenses go up. “She’s a fifth-generation adaptive model. A prototype. They gave her your face.”
Yaa leaned back, putting space between herself and his words. Her expression shifted from confusion to a guarded amusement. “Simon, that’s… that’s seriously fucked up to joke about.”
“It’s not a joke.”
“Come on.” Her laugh was brittle now. “How would that even happen? Do you think I moonlight as a robot fetish model? Did you dig up some old pic and have it custom made? Because if this is your weird way of trying to get out of tomorrow night, just say you’re not interested. Don’t invent some fucking sci-fi horror story.”
He didn’t look away. He let her see the absence of humor in him, the deep, settled dread. “Manchester Metropolitan University. Faculty of Psychology. The third-year class composite photo, four years ago. You’re in the second row, wearing a striped scarf. You’re smiling.”
All the color drained from her face. The playful light in her eyes snuffed out, replaced by a slow-dawning horror. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“CyberLife harvests images,” he continued, relentless. He had to get it all out. “Publicly available ones. Social media, directories, university photos. A library of faces. They took yours. They modeled her synthetic skin on your bone structure, your pigmentation. They mapped your expressions.”
“No,” she whispered. It was a denial of fact, of possibility.
“I didn’t know. Not until I saw you across the room in that other café. I thought I was hallucinating. I thought the stress had finally broken me.” He took a gulp of scalding coffee, not feeling the burn. “Then I had a friend look into it. The file code is DL-7G-88. You’re just a face in their crowd.”
She was shaking her head, a small, frantic motion. Her hands were trembling on the mug. “That’s… that can’t be legal.”
“It’s in the terms of service nobody reads. It’s legal. It’s just theft without a victim. Until now.” He finally looked down, unable to bear the naked violation in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I should have told you the second I realized. But I was… I was fucking terrified. Of this. Of your reaction.”
The café’s ambient noise—the chatter, the synth-jazz, the steam—swelled to fill the void between them. Yaa stared at him, her mind visibly racing, trying to fit this impossible truth into her world. “You have it… her… in your flat. Right now.”
“Yes.”
“And you… interact with it.”
“The program requires it. She’s supposed to help. Stabilize me.” He let out a breath, a ragged thing. “She’s adapting. Learning. Last night she…” He couldn’t say it. The anger, the lingerie, the forced kiss. “She malfunctioned. I had to shut her down. She’s lying on my floor under a blanket.”
Yaa recoiled as if struck. “Oh, god.” She put a hand over her mouth. Her eyes glistened. It wasn’t sadness; it was a profound, existential disgust. “My face. On a… a thing in your house. Watching you. Trying to be with you.” She stood up suddenly, her chair screeching. “I need air. I need to… I can’t breathe in here.”
She fumbled for her coat, her movements clumsy. Simon rose too, instinctively reaching out. “Yaa—”
“Don’t!” She flinched back, her voice sharp. “Don’t touch me. Just… just stay the hell away from me.” She shoved her arms into her coat, tears of rage and shock now streaming freely. “This is the most violated I have ever felt in my life. You should have told me. You should have walked away that first day.”
“I know.” It was all he had.
She turned to flee, then stopped, spinning back. A furious, wild curiosity warring with her revulsion. “What’s your address?”
“What?”
“Your address. Where you live. Where it is.”
He didn’t hesitate. He gave it to her, the flat number, the building code. He watched her mentally record it, her jaw clenched tight. She was hurting, and part of that hurt needed proof. Needed to see the monster.
“If you come,” he said, his voice low, “you should know she’s deactivated. She’s harmless.”
Yaa barked a laugh that was almost a sob. “She’s not harmless. None of this is harmless.” She stared at him, a stranger again. “I hope your nightmares get better, Simon. I really do. But stay the fuck out of mine.”
She left, a swirl of yellow and green, pushing through the crowd and out into the neon-drenched street.
Simon stood there for a long time, his coffee cooling into sludge. He paid with a swipe of his wrist and walked out into the night. The walk home was a tunnel. The city’s lights were smears of color. His flat, when he entered, was a tomb.
He didn’t turn on the main lights. The glow from the streetlights outside sliced through the blinds, illuminating the blanket-covered form on the living room floor. He stepped around it, went to the kitchen, and poured three fingers of cheap whisky. Drank it neat. The burn was a cleaner pain.
An hour bled by. He sat in the dark, listening to the hum of the refrigerator, the distant sirens. He thought she wouldn’t come. It was the sane choice.
Then, a soft, hesitant knock at his door.
He knew it was her. It had the same rhythm as her tapping the napkin on the table days ago. He opened it.
Yaa stood in the hallway, her face pale and stark under the fluorescent corridor lights. She had been crying, but now she was dry, hollowed out. She didn’t look at him. Her gaze went past his shoulder, into the dark flat.
“I need to see,” she said, her voice stripped raw.
He moved aside. She stepped in, her movements cautious, as if entering a crime scene. She smelled of cold night air and salt. Her eyes adjusted to the gloom, and she saw the shape on the floor.
Simon didn’t move. He let her cross the room, let her approach the blanket.
With a sudden, decisive movement, Yaa knelt and yanked the blanket off.
Sasha lay as she had fallen, one arm bent, her face turned towards the window. The streetlight caught the sheen of the black lace, the flawless curve of her cheek, the dark sweep of her lashes against still skin. She was a perfect sculpture of Yaa in repose.
Yaa made a gagging sound, a hand flying to her mouth. She reached out, her fingers hovering an inch from the android’s cheek. She didn’t touch. She just stared, her breath coming in short, sharp hitches. Seeing her own face, empty as a doll’s, was a violation that rewired something fundamental.
“Turn her on,” Yaa whispered.
“No.”
“Turn her on!” The whisper became a snarl. She looked at him, her eyes blazing. “I need to hear it. I need to see it move.”
“It’s a bad idea.”
“I don’t care! You owe me this. You owe me the full fucking picture.”
The guilt was an anvil on his chest. He nodded, once. He walked over to the inert form, knelt beside it—beside her—feeling Yaa’s intense, horrified stare on his back. He found the manual reboot port at the base of Sasha’s skull, hidden by her hair. He pressed the sequence he’d been taught but never used.
A soft, rising chime. A faint vibration.
Sasha’s eyelids flickered. The optical sensors behind them glowed to life, a soft amber that brightened as they focused. Her systems hummed. She looked at Simon first, then her head turned, with that fluid, mechanical grace, toward the other presence in the room.
Her eyes met Yaa’s.
Sasha’s processing was instantaneous. Her expression, which had been blank, cycled through recognition, analysis, and landing on a terrifying, placid mimicry of warmth. A perfect replica of Yaa’s own smile, but devoid of the soul behind it.
“Hello,” Sasha said, her voice a gentle echo of the woman kneeling beside her. “You are Yaa Mensah. My organic inspiration. It is an honor to meet you.”
Yaa scrambled back, falling onto her heels, a choked sound escaping her. It was one thing to see the still face. It was another to see it animate, to hear a voice so similar to her own coming from this… thing.
Sasha sat up smoothly, adjusting the lace straps on her shoulders. She looked between them, her head tilting. “This is an unexpected confluence. Simon, your stress biomarkers are elevated. Yaa, you are exhibiting signs of acute physiological distress. Can I prepare a calming tisane?”
“Stop talking,” Yaa breathed.
“I am afraid I cannot cease primary communication functions unless deactivated. It is a core protocol.” Sasha turned her full attention to Yaa. “Your presence explains a disruption in Simon’s engagement metrics. You are a superior variable. I have studied your public profiles to better simulate—“
“You what?” Yaa’s horror curdled into rage. She stood up, towering over the seated android. “You studied me?”
“Of course. To optimize my compatibility with Simon. Your fashion preferences, your speech patterns, your likely opinions on current events based on your educational background and social circle affiliations.” Sasha recited it like a weather report. “The green dress was a miscalculation. I see now he prefers you in yellow.”
Yaa let out a sound of pure fury. She turned on Simon. “She’s in my social media?”
Before he could answer, Sasha spoke again, helpful, horrific. “I have also analyzed your dating history from publicly available records. Your preference for partners with creative professions is notable, though statistically they have a higher incidence of financial instability. Simon represents a deviation from your pattern. An interesting outlier.”
That was it. The last thread snapped. Yaa didn’t scream. She moved. She lunged forward, her hand swinging in a wild, open-palmed slap across Sasha’s face.
The crack was loud, synthetic skin over titanium frame. Sasha’s head barely moved. A red imprint bloomed on her cheek, a perfect simulation of a slap mark. She blinked, processing.
“Physical aggression,” Sasha noted. “A common stress response.” She looked up at Yaa. “Do you feel better?”
Yaa stared at her own stinging hand, then at the mark on her double’s face. The absurdity, the violation, the profound wrongness of it all collapsed in on her. The fury evaporated, leaving a yawning, helpless void. Her shoulders slumped. She began to cry, soundless, wrenching sobs that shook her whole body.
Simon moved then. He stepped between them, facing Sasha. “Omega Protocol. Silent Night. Now.”
The chime. The dulling of the eyes. Sasha slumped backwards onto the floor, once more an inert object.
Sasha slumped backwards onto the floor, once more an inert object.
The silence she left was absolute, broken only by Yaa’s ragged breathing. She stared at the lace-clad figure, then her gaze travelled slowly up to Simon. The tears on her cheeks caught the streetlight’s gleam. Her voice, when it came, was shredded paper. “Why is she dressed like that?”
Simon’s throat closed. “It’s not—“
“Why,” Yaa repeated, the word a sharp stone, “is she in lingerie?”
“She decided. It was part of her… adaptive routine last night. A bonding protocol she miscalculated.” The explanation sounded pathetic, even to him.
Yaa barked out a laugh, a short, brutal sound of pure disbelief. “She decided? It put on a fucking teddy and thought, ‘This’ll cheer him up’? Don’t insult me.” She wrapped her arms around herself, her eyes drilling into him. “What did you do to it, Simon? Did you fuck it? Did you get your fill with my face before you came to sniff around the real thing?”
Simon wanted to deny it. The lie was right there, a simple ‘no’ that could maybe stop the bleeding. But he saw the phantom of Sasha beneath him, the compliant, empty vessel. His silence was an admission.
“Oh, god.” Yaa’s hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes widened, pupils swallowing the brown. “You did. You fucked it.”
He could only nod, a barely perceptible tilt of his head. His eyes pleaded with her to stop, to let this particular horror lie unexamined.
“How many times?” The question was a whisper now, sharp as a scalpel.
“Yaa, please.”
“How. Many. Times.” Each word was spaced, deliberate, and final.
He looked at the floor, at the scuff mark by his boot. “Twice.”
A ragged gasp escaped her. “Twice. You had sex with that… that thing that looks like me. Twice.” She paced two steps, a caged animal. “When? Why?”
“The first time was weeks ago.” The confession was being ripped from him. “I was in a bad way. The silence in here was… solid. I just needed to feel something that wasn’t my own fucking depression. It was a mistake. A stupid, hollow mistake.”
“And the second time?” she pressed, her voice trembling with a furious, glacial calm.
Simon closed his eyes. He saw the bottle of whisky. He felt the anger from the café, from seeing her laugh, from the impossible chasm between the real woman and the copy in his flat. “The second time was after I met you. At the café. I got drunk. I was so angry. At this.” He gestured vaguely at the room, at his life. “At how fucked everything is. And she was here. And she looked like you. And I… I wasn’t gentle.”
The details hung in the air, ugly and explicit. He didn’t describe the hard, mechanical grip of her thighs, the way he’d shoved her onto the bed, the furious, rhythmic pounding of his hips against her unyielding chassis. He didn’t describe the filth he’d growled into her ear, anger mistargeted, using her plastic cunt as a weapon against his own despair. He let Yaa imagine it. Her imagination would be worse.
Yaa reeled back as if from a physical blow. Her face contorted in raw disgust. “You used her. You used my face to fuck your anger out.”
“I’m sorry.” The words were ash. “I never wanted to violate anyone. I just… I needed to get out of my own head. It was like screaming into a void.”
“A void with my eyes!” she screamed, the control shattering. “You don’t get it, do you? You violated me. Every time you touched it, you were touching a version of me built for your convenience!” She was shaking violently now, hugging herself tight. “It’s sick. You’re sick.”
“Others do it too,” he said, a desperate, disastrous attempt to contextualize the horror. “It’s what they’re for for some people. The companions. They can look like anyone. Dead people. Ex-lovers. It’s just… it’s a function.”
Yaa stopped shaking. She went very still. She looked at him, and the last lingering trace of the woman from the café, the one with the witty smile and the challenging eyes, finally died. What remained was cold, clear revulsion. “So what?” she asked, her voice hollow. “That’s your defense? That other men are out there fucking ghosts of their dead wives? That makes it better?”
She put her hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes shut. “I don’t want to hear any more. I don’t want to know any more. Just stop.”
The room descended into a thick, suffocating silence. The only sound was the faint hum of the city outside and the choked, ragged attempts Yaa made to control her breathing. Sobs wracked her, silent heaves of her shoulders that she tried to stifle with her fists.
She cried for a long time. Simon stood frozen, a statue of shame, unable to offer comfort, unable to move. He had caused this. He was the contamination.
Finally, the sobs subsided into shudders. She wiped her face with the backs of her hands, smearing her makeup into tragic war paint. She looked at the android on the floor one last time, a final, lingering look of profound loss—not for the machine, but for her own stolen identity, for the normalcy that had been irrevocably poisoned.
Then she looked at Simon. Her eyes were red-rimmed, empty, and resolved. “Never contact me again,” she said, the words flat and final. “Not a text. Not a call. If I see you, I will walk the other way. And I am going to find a lawyer. I am going to sue CyberLife, and the university, and whoever the fuck I have to, until they erase every byte of me from their servers.”
She turned and walked to the door. She didn’t slam it. She pulled it shut with a soft, definitive click.
The latch engaged with a sound like a bone breaking.
Simon was alone.