Chapter 2: The App's First Glitch
The morning light through the tangled wires of the window felt accusing. I woke up tangled in Maddie’s sheets, the scent of her shampoo on the pillow, and a deep, residual hum in my nerves. The memory of last night—her lips, my gasp, the way my whole body had arched into that simple touch—flooded back with a hot wave of shame.Adam would have recoiled. Ava had leaned in.
Maddie was already awake, sitting cross-legged on the floor with her back against the bed, her phone glowing in the dim room.The blue light etched tense lines on her face.
“You’re watching me sleep now?” My voice was rough with sleep, but the cadence was wrong.The low, morning rasp I was used to was gone, replaced by something smoother, lighter. It still startled me.“I’m watching the readouts,” she said, not looking up. Her fingers swiped across the screen.“Neural integration spiked overnight. It’s… stable.Remarkably stable.”
“Great.So reverse it. Twelve hours are up.” I pushed myself up on my elbows, the sheets pooling around my waist.The movement felt fluid, effortless. My new center of balance was already becoming familiar, a betrayal written in muscle memory.
Maddie bit her lip.“That’s the thing.”
The two words landed like bricks in my gut. “What’s the thing?”
“The app is… glitching.” She finally looked at me, and for the first time since she’d filled the syringe, I saw genuine fear in her eyes. “The reversal sequence won’t initiate.It’s like it’s locked. There’s a new protocol in the code I’ve never seen before. A ‘consolidation phase.’ It’s mandating a seven-day stabilization period before any further morphological changes can be applied.”
The numbers on her screen blurred in my vision.Seven days.A week. “You built the app.”
“I stole the app.The core programming is lab proprietary. I just slapped a user interface on it.” She threw the phone onto the carpet in a sudden burst of frustration. It bounced with a soft thud.“I tried to override it.I tried a hard reset. All I managed to do was trigger a secondary subroutine.”
A cold dread tightened my chest. “What secondary subroutine?”
“Sensory amplification. And a… a vocal calibration tweak.” She winced.“Say something else.”
“Maddie, like what the fuck did you do?” I demanded. But the words came out wrong.My intention was fury, a low growl. What emerged was higher, clearer, with a breathy, upward lilt that made the question sound like a plea. It was my voice, but polished, feminized in a way that felt artificial. Like a bad actress playing dumb.Hearing it, a bolt of pure horror shot through me. I clasped my hands over my mouth.Maddie looked away, guilty. “The override attempt conflated some files.It’s locked in a ‘persona sustainment’ algorithm. Probably to protect the structural integrity during consolidation.Your voice will default to that… setting… unless you consciously force it lower. And the sensory stuff… it’s dialed way up. Permanently, for the week.”
I swung my legs out of bed, my heart hammering against my ribs—smaller, faster beats than I was used to.“Ohmigawd. So I’m stuck like this? Talking like a fucking… like this? For like a week?”
“We’ll fix it,” she said, scrambling to her feet.She reached for me, but I stepped back. Her touch was the trigger for all this.“We just have to ride it out.Keep a low profile. It’s just seven days.”
“A low profile,” I repeated, my traitorous voice making it sound like a naive question. The dissonance between my racing, male anger and the feathery sound of it was torture.I turned and marched toward the bathroom, needing to see the proof, the prison.
The reflection was the same as last night.Ava. But the eyes that stared back were wide with a panic that felt entirely my own. I tried to glare, to summon the grimace Adam would have worn.The face in the mirror softened it into something like pouted concern. I slammed my palm against the glass.The sharp pain was immediate, blinding in its intensity. I cried out—a short, high sound—and cradled my hand. The pain wasn’t just stronger; it was layered, textured, echoing through the smaller bones.The sensitivity wasn’t just for pleasure. It was for everything.Maddie appeared in the doorway. “We can’t stay holed up in here for a week.We’ll go insane. I know it’s a risk, but… let’s go out.Tonight.My friend’s having a thing in Miami. A party.It’s loud, anonymous.We’ll just be two girls in the crowd. It’ll… normalize this.Make the time pass.”
The idea was terrifying. To take this fragile, hyper-sensitive form, with its stupid voice, into a crowd of strangers. But the alternative—a week trapped in this apartment, with Maddie’s worried eyes and my own spiraling thoughts—seemed worse.“Ugh fine,” I said, forcing the word down into a lower register. It took physical effort, like pushing against a current.It came out strained, but deeper. “But like we gotta leave if it’s too much.”
“Deal.” She tried a smile. It didn’t reach her eyes.The party wasn’t a party.It was an organism. The sound was a physical weight, the bass thumping through the polished concrete floor and up into the delicate bones of my feet. Blue light from the pool rippled across ceilings hung with fake ivy and neon signs buzzing with obscenities. Bodies were everywhere, slick with sweat and pool water and cheap perfume, a dizzying mosaic of tanned limbs and glittering eyes.
I clung to Maddie’s side, a constant anchor in the chaos. I’d worn one of her dresses, a simple black slip that felt like wearing nothing at all. Every brush of fabric, every stray gust from a fan, was a distinct event on my skin. The sensory amplification was a live wire, the world turned up to a deafening, blinding volume.
A guy with mirrored sunglasses sloshed his drink, the vodka-citrus spray catching my arm. The sensation wasn’t just wet; it was cold, sharp, invasive.I flinched hard.
“Sorry!” he yelled over the music, his eyes dropping from my face to my neckline and back. “Can I get you a fresh one?”
“Nopes!” I said, but the music stole the word. It came out as a breathy chip.He just grinned, assuming agreement, and melted back into the crowd.
Maddie leaned in, her mouth close to my ear.Her breath was warm.“See? You’re just another girl here.No one’s looking for Adam.”
But they were looking at Ava. Constantly.A glance across the pool, held a second too long. A smile from a guy by the keg, open and inviting.The attention was a current, and I was standing in the river. It was unnerving, but there was a slippery, unexpected power in it too. I could see the calculation in their eyes, the interest.I knew that look.I’d given that look. Understanding it from this side was like gaining access to a secret language.
“I like need air,” I said, the strain of keeping my voice controlled starting to ache in my throat.“Real air. Not this recycled bass.”
She nodded, pointing toward a sliding glass door leading to a balcony overlooking a darker, quieter stretch of beach. We wove through the pulsing mass, the press of bodies a torrent of unintentional touches. Each one—a hand on my back to move past, a hip brushing mine—sent a jolt through my system, a cascade of input my brain scrambled to process.
The balcony was a relief. The salt air was cool, the roar of the party reduced to a dull throb through the glass.I leaned on the railing, gulping in the night.
“You’re handling this,” Maddie said, joining me. She was watching my profile, not the ocean.
“Like I have a choice,” I replied, letting my voice lift into its programmed, easier range.It was exhausting to fight it.The words floated out, light and effortless. “It’s so loud in there omg. And everyone is, like, so close.”
Even to my own ears, it sounded vapid and I hated it. Empty. Maddie’s smile tightened slightly at the corners.“Just try to stay present,” she said, her scientist tone returning. “Observe the differences in social navigation. It’s fascinating data.”
Before I could muster a sharper, lower retort, the balcony door slid open again. A taller figure stepped out, silhouetted against the party’s glow.“Mads? That you?”
Maddie turned, and her face lit up with a genuine, uncomplicated affection I hadn’t seen all day.“James! You made it!”
He stepped into the dim light.Her younger brother. I’d met him a handful of times as Adam—a lanky, quiet guy in his early twenties with a quick, sly smile.He’d always been polite, a little in awe of his big sister.
This version of him looked… different.Maybe it was the context. He’d filled out, his shoulders broader under a thin linen shirt. His eyes, the same dark brown as Maddie’s, swept the balcony and landed on me.They didn’t glance away.They held.
“Yeah, got a ride with some friends,” he said, but he was still looking at me. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”
“Oh! Right.” Maddie slid an arm around my shoulders, a possessive, girlfriend-y gesture.“This is Ava. She’s… visiting from out of town.Ava, this is my little brother, James.”
“Hi,” i meant to say but the filter left my words coming out as a “Ohmygod heyyy!” The friendly words slipped out in my default voice, bright and sweet.James’s smile deepened. It wasn’t the polite smile he’d given Adam. It was slower, more appreciative, loaded with a confidence that felt new.“Ava. Cool name.” His gaze did a quick, unmistakable journey down my dress and back up. “Visiting from where?”
My mind blanked.I was a terrible liar on a good day. “Um like Up north,” I finally got out, trying to layer some depth onto the words.
“She’s staying with me for a bit,” Maddie jumped in, her arm tightening around me. “Just girl time, you know?”
“Got it,” James said, his eyes crinkling. He took a sip of his beer, still looking at me.“Well, welcome to Miami. You picked a good night for a party.” He leaned back against the railing, his posture relaxed, dominant. “So, Mads.You been keeping this one hidden? She’s a lot cuter than your usual friends.. Look at those hips”
Maddie laughed, a forced, tinny sound. “Shut up, James.”
He just kept smiling at me, a direct, unbroken line of attention that felt like a spotlight. The power I’d felt inside the party curdled into something else.A vulnerability. He was Maddie’s brother.He was supposed to be safe. But the way he looked at Ava—the easy appraisal, the assumption of access—it didn’t feel safe at all. It felt like a door had been opened, and I had no idea how to close it.
Maddie was chatting about his job, but James’s responses were perfunctory.His focus was on me. On the way the sea breeze tugged at my hair, on the nervous way I was tracing the edge of my plastic cup.
“You seem a little overwhelmed, Ava,” he said, cutting through Maddie’s chatter.His voice was soft, concerned.“Those parties can be a lot. You want me to grab you a water or something?”
The offer was kind.Normal. But it felt like a trap. Every instinct screamed to drop my voice, to tell him to back off in the tone he’d understand.To be Adam.I opened my mouth. “That’s so sweet of you,” I heard myself say, the bimbo lilt ringing like a clear bell in the night air. But anything to get a break from his hungry stares for a moment. He turned and went towards the bar as I looked back to Maddie trying my best to convey my fear and horror at the attraction from her brother.
“It’ll be fine!” Maddie said “better his attention than one of these other creeps, we’ll give him the slip soon and he’ll never have to know Adam ever touched the state of Florida.”
I wanted to think everything g would be alright but Inside my head, Adam was screaming.