Chapter 7: The What-If Whiskey
The silence in David’s car was heavier on the return trip, saturated with a shared, nauseating understanding. Lexi sat perfectly still in the back, her large hands resting on her knees, staring out the window at the blur of the city. She hadn’t spoken since the conference room.
Back in the apartment, the familiar clutter felt sinister, a waiting room for a life that might now be permanently adjourned. Lexi went straight to the bathroom and locked the door. The sound of the shower turning on, a roar of white noise, followed a moment later.
David paced, running his hands through his hair. “A settlement. They actually offered a settlement. Like it’s a fender bender.”
“It’s a coffin with a signing bonus,” Lila said, her voice flat. She shrugged off her jacket and tossed it onto the armchair, missing the pile of mail. She watched Marcus.
He stood in the center of the room, feeling the cool air from a vent play across the bare skin of his arms. He was still in the sleek, expensive outfit, the uniform of his short-lived defiance. It felt ridiculous now. A costume for a performance that had ended in a corporate ambush. He walked to the window, looking down at the traffic, a river of normal people going about their normal days.
The shower stopped. A long time passed before the bathroom door opened.
Lexi emerged wearing a pair of David’s sweatpants and a t-shirt that strained across her chest and shoulders. Her short hair was damp, spiky. Her face, Marcus’s own face, was set in a mask of pure, uncomplicated fury. She walked to the kitchenette, opened a cupboard, and pulled out a bottle of cheap whiskey. She didn’t get a glass. She unscrewed the cap, took a long, searing pull, and set the bottle down on the counter with a definitive thud.
“So,” she said, the word scraping out of her. She looked at Marcus. “The pretty one gets the payout. The monster gets the therapy. That’s their math.”
“It’s not—” Marcus began.
“It is,” Lexi interrupted, her voice low and final. “You saw how they looked at you. They see a viable product. A happy accident. They look at me and they see a liability. A thing that needs to be contained.” She took another drink. “They’re not fixing us. They’re just deciding which mistake is easier to live with.”
Lila moved to the counter, leaning against it. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying they win if we play their game.” Lexi’s eyes, so familiar and yet so alien in their fury, locked onto Marcus. “They gave you the ‘advantageous’ body. The one that gets looks on the street. The one people want to touch.” She said it without malice, just a brutal, grinding fact. “You could take their money. You could have that life they’re dangling. A fresh start. No more shitty apartment, no more debt. Just… be Lexi.”
The words hung in the air, toxic and seductive. David stopped pacing. Lila went very still.
Marcus turned from the window. He walked to the counter, reached past Lexi, and took the whiskey bottle. He found a mostly clean tumbler by the sink, poured two fingers, and knocked it back. The burn was a welcome shock, a focal point in the swirling unreality.
“Bro,” he said, the old word feeling strange in his new, lighter voice. He looked at David. “What do you think?” He gestured vaguely at himself, a sweeping motion that took in the hips, the chest, the everything. “I mean, maybe I should think about it. I’m twelve years younger now. I’m twenty-two. Maybe I go off and do it—the Pasadena mansion, a Range Rover, start a family.” He gave a brittle, humorless laugh. “I mean, it’ll be weird being a mom, and I’m not really into dudes, but I always wanted a family of my own.”
David stared, his mouth slightly open. He let out a choked, nervous laugh. “You’re… you’re seriously considering keeping it?”
Marcus shrugged. The motion made the silk of his top slide across his skin. He felt Lila watching the movement. “It’s a lot to throw away,” he said, his tone deliberately casual, as if discussing a stock option. “A fresh start. No more student loans, no more shitty apartment. I could just… be someone else.”
“But you’d be a woman,” Lila said, her voice soft but edged. “Is that really you? Or is it just the path of least resistance with a really good benefits package?”
Marcus met her eyes. He saw the confusion there, the concern, and beneath it, that flicker of something else—the attraction that complicated everything. He didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know,” he admitted, the facade cracking. “I don’t know who ‘me’ is supposed to be anymore. The guy who wanted muscles is gone. The guy who saved every penny is gone. What’s left is… this. And a check that makes the problem go away.”
Lexi made a sound like a wounded animal. She slammed her fist down on the counter. The empty takeout containers jumped. “Don’t you get it? That’s what they want! They want us to believe this is a choice! They want to split us up. They want you to take the money and disappear into a nice, quiet life where you never complain, and they want to stick me in some ‘adaptive care’ facility until I learn to be grateful for being a giant fucking science project!” Her breath was coming in ragged heaves. “They broke us. This isn’t a gift. It’s the debris.”
The truth of it slammed into Marcus, cold and clearing. He was doing it. He was playing their game, looking for the angle, trying to balance the ledgers of his old life. Accountant logic applied to a spiritual catastrophe.
He looked at his hand holding the glass. The fingers were slender, the nails neat. A woman’s hand. He imagined it holding a check with seven zeroes. He imagined it signing the confidentiality agreement. He imagined it steering a Range Rover through gates, into a life of permanent, paid-for fiction.
Then he looked at Lexi’s hand, still clenched on the counter. A man’s hand. His hand, or what should have been. Scraped knuckles, blunt fingers. It was trembling.
He poured more whiskey into his glass. Then he picked up the bottle and poured a hefty measure into a coffee mug for Lexi. He slid it toward her.
“You’re right,” Marcus said. The words felt true. “Screw their math.”
He raised his glass. After a beat, Lexi picked up the mug. They didn’t toast. They just drank, a pact sealed in cheap bourbon and mutual ruin.
“Okay,” David said, exhaling slowly. “Okay. So no settlement. What’s the move? Lawyers? The media?”
“The media would love us,” Lila said dryly. “For about a week. Then we’re freaks on daytime talk shows. ‘I’m a Man Trapped in a Bombshell’s Body!’”
“We need leverage,” Marcus said, the old analytical part of his brain clicking back online, fueled by anger and whiskey. “Something they want more than our silence. Something that makes fixing us cheaper than not fixing us.”
Lexi’s eyes narrowed. “The procedure. The data. My template—the one you were supposed to get—it’s still on their servers. It’s mine. It’s my body. They’re holding it hostage.”
“And my original neural map,” Marcus added. “The ‘Marcus Hale’ baseline. It’s in there too, connected to your… to this body’s biology now.” He gestured at himself. “It’s a proof-of-concept for their screw-up. They can’t just delete it. There are protocols, backups.”
David’s eyes lit up with a hacker’s gleam. “If we could get it… if we could prove they have the capability to reverse it but are choosing not to for liability reasons… that’s not just a lawsuit. That’s criminal negligence. That gets the medical board involved. The real authorities.”
“How do we get it?” Lila asked. “Walk back in and ask nicely?”
The shower’s steam had finally cleared from the bathroom door. Marcus looked at his own reflection in the dark television screen across the room. A distorted, slender shadow in expensive clothes.
“No,” Marcus said, a strange, cold calm settling over him. He looked at Lexi. “We don’t ask. They think they’ve categorized us. The acceptable mistake and the unacceptable one.” He picked up the whiskey bottle, studied the label. “Time to break the categories.”
He finally unzipped the sleek trousers, stepping out of them, and pulled the silk tank top over his head. He stood there for a moment in just the boutique’s delicate, lacy briefs, feeling utterly exposed and strangely powerful. He walked to the pile of his own borrowed clothes—the soft jeans, the oversized hoodie. He started putting them on, covering up the body that was supposed to be his ticket to a easy future.
“We go to war,” he said, pulling the hoodie over his head, his voice muffled by the fabric before emerging. “Not with lawyers first. With their own system.” He looked at David. “You said the Continuity Department was a ghost. Let’s find its heartbeat.”
Lexi watched him, the fury in her eyes tempering into something harder, sharper. She gave a single, slow nod. The monster and the pretty one. They were on the same side.
The solidarity in the room felt fragile, a soap bubble moment before the pop.
Marcus pulled the hoodie’s strings tight, hiding the plunging neckline of the clinic’s borrowed undershirt. “We find their weak point. David, you still have that friend in data security? The paranoid one who always talked about backdoors?”
“Yeah, but he charges—” David started.
“We’ll pay him in scandal,” Lexi cut in, her voice a gravelly scrape. “This is the motherlode of corporate scandal. He’ll salivate.”
Lila was watching Marcus, her arms crossed. She saw the way his jaw was set, a hard line she recognized from when he’d talk about finally saving enough for his procedure. It was his ‘burn the boats’ face. But now it was on a face with high cheekbones and wide, anxious eyes. The disconnect was still jarring.
“This is insane,” Lila said, but she was smiling a little. “We’re going to, what, digitally burgle a multi-billion dollar biotech firm?”
“Technically, we’re just retrieving stolen property,” Marcus said. He flexed his hand, staring at it. “My body’s blueprint. My life. It’s theft.”
He sounded so sure. The whiskey and the rage were a potent cocktail, weaving conviction into his words. For a second, he believed it. They all did. The plan was pure catharsis, a glorious middle finger to the woman in the tasteful suit.
Then the catharsis evaporated, leaving the cold, hard floor of reality under his feet.
His eyes drifted to the window again, to the city lights promising anonymous lives. The lawyer’s words replayed. A significant sum. A fresh start. The sheer black top was a heap on the floor, a puddle of potential. He’d felt its power in the boutique mirror. It wasn’t him, but it was something. It was a key.
The silence stretched. Lexi and David were leaning over David’s phone, already muttering about encrypted partitions and firewall protocols.
Marcus’s breath hitched. The numbers in his old life had never added up, not really. He’d been treading water. This was a tsunami, but it had washed him onto a completely different shore. A shore with palm trees and a mailbox on a gate.
“Okay, no,” he said, the words rushing out like a surrender.
Everyone turned. He wasn’t looking at them. He was staring at the dust motes dancing in the lamplight.
“I’m not gonna risk the payout.” He finally looked at Lexi, his expression crumbling from resolve into a raw, shameful plea. “I’m sorry. You can sue them. But I’m gonna make do with this.”
He gestured at his own body, a quick, frantic motion.
“I mean, I’m sure any guy would… would give me that life now.” He let out a shaky, desperate laugh that sounded nothing like laughter. He turned to David, his voice gaining a manic, planning momentum. “So, David. You want to go with me? I think I found a house I like. Online. It’s got a pool. In Pasadena.”
The room froze.
Lexi’s face went utterly blank, a window slammed shut. The coffee mug was still in her hand. She looked down into it, then slowly, deliberately, poured the remaining whiskey onto David’s stained carpet.
David just blinked, his mouth agape. “Marcus, what the hell are you talking about? Two minutes ago you were ready to declare war.”
“That was two minutes ago!” Marcus snapped, his voice cracking. “This is now! This is real! That money is real. This… this body is real. I can either spend the rest of my life fighting a hospital to put me back in a body that was mediocre, or I can accept the upgrade and live like a goddamn queen!”
He was pacing again, his new hips giving the motion a different sway, an unconscious parody of his old anxious stride.
“It’s an upgrade, Lexi,” he said, turning to her, begging her to understand. “You got the defective model. I didn’t. It’s not fair. But I can’t throw my ticket away because yours is worse.”
Lila pushed off the counter. “So that’s it? You’re just… stepping into the fiction? The mansion, the Range Rover? You’re going to be their happy ending?”
“What’s so happy about this?” Lexi whispered. The sound was hollow, defeated. It killed the last of the heat in the room. She looked at Marcus, really looked at him, seeing the terrified accountant peering out from behind Lexi’s beautiful eyes. “You’d really do it. You’d sign the papers, take the money, and let them erase me.”
“They’re not erasing you,” Marcus mumbled, but it was a weak lie. The confidentiality clause would be absolute. He would have to vanish. Lexi would be stuck, a public, unsolvable problem.
“Yeah,” Lexi said. She stood up, her large frame unfolding to its full, intimidating height. “They are. And you’re handing them the pen.” She didn’t sound angry anymore. She sounded tired. “Enjoy the pool, Marcus.”
She walked to the door, her movements heavy and final.
“Lexi, wait,” David said, stepping forward.
“Let her go,” Marcus said, the words tasting like ash. He couldn’t meet David’s eyes. He stared at the dark, whiskey-soaked spot on the carpet.
The door closed with a soft, precise click. The sound was infinitely worse than a slam.
Lila let out a long, slow breath. She looked from the door to Marcus, who was now just a slender, pretty woman shrinking inside a borrowed hoodie. The would-be revolutionary had folded in under five minutes.
“Well,” she said, her voice devoid of its usual irreverent laugh. “That happened.” She picked up her jacket. “I need air. And a drink that isn’t in this apartment.”
“Lila—” Marcus started.
“Don’t,” she said, holding up a hand. She looked at him, and the complicated warmth from before was gone, replaced by a clear, chilly assessment. “You just made your choice. You don’t get to ask for comfort from the people you’re leaving behind.”
She left, too.
The silence was absolute. David sank into the armchair, the mail crunching underneath him. He rubbed his temples.
“She’s right, you know,” David said finally. “About any guy. You could probably walk into a bank tomorrow and get a loan just by smiling. You could get a lot of things.”
Marcus hugged himself. The thrill from the boutique was a distant, mocking memory. This wasn’t armor. It was a cage he’d just agreed to decorate himself.
“I know,” he whispered.
He walked to the bathroom and locked the door. He didn’t turn on the light. In the dark, he faced the mirror, a pale smudge in the gloom. The beautiful stranger stared back, her eyes wide with a panic he recognized as his own.
He had the winning ticket. It felt like a sentence.