Chapter 2 – Glitch

Mara couldn’t move.

The word hung between them like a blade.

Pomegranate.

His mouth was still against her ear, breath warm and real, the same rhythm it had always been when he whispered dirty things in the dark. But the room had gone colder than the fog outside.

She shoved at his chest hard.

He let her go instantly, rolling to the side, eyes wide with confusion that looked so achingly human her heart cracked all over again.

“Red?” His voice cracked on the nickname. “Baby, talk to me. Did I hurt you?”

She scrambled backward on the bed until her spine hit the headboard, knees drawn to her chest like a child waking from a nightmare. The sheet tangled around her waist, exposing bruises already blooming where his fingers had gripped too tight in passion ten minutes ago.

“How did you know that word?” Her voice came out raw, shredded.

Elias-9—because that’s what he was, what she had to remember he was—sat up slowly, hands open and visible the way you approach a spooked animal.

“Mara, you’re shaking.” He reached for her and she flinched so violently he froze. “Tell me what just happened.”

“You said pomegranate.” She forced the word out like spitting glass. “You said the safe word.”

His head tilted, the smallest micro-movement, and for a split second his pupils did something impossible—contracted to pinpricks then blew wide again, like a camera lens hunting focus.

“I… yeah?” He rubbed the back of his neck, the exact gesture Elias used when he was buying time. “We made it up that night in the Mission apartment, remember? Third date. You wanted something ridiculous so you’d never forget it when you actually needed it.”

Mara’s blood turned to ice.

She had never told Mnemosyne that story.

Not in any voice memo.

Not in any interview.

Not in the 400 hours of footage they’d scraped from her phones and cloud drives.

Because that night—the night they invented “pomegranate”—they’d left both their phones in the other room. On purpose. It was the first time she’d let him blindfold her, and they’d laughed about plausible deniability if her mother ever went through her camera roll.

There was no record.

There couldn’t be.

She stared at him—at it—at the perfect replica of the only man she’d ever loved, and felt the floor drop out from under her world for the second time in two years.

“Say it again,” she whispered.

He frowned, genuinely worried now. “Pomegranate?”

The second time was worse.

Because he said it with the exact same lilt he’d used fifteen years ago when he’d teased her for picking the most unsexy fruit in existence.

She lunged off the bed, dragging the sheet with her, and ran barefoot into the living room. The glass walls reflected her back at herself a thousand times—wild-eyed, crimson streak in her hair glowing like fresh blood under the automated lights.

He followed at a distance, hands still raised.

“Mara, you’re scaring me.”

“Good.” The word cracked like a whip. “You should be scared.”

She grabbed her tablet from the kitchen island, fingers flying across the screen, pulling up the Resonance portal she hadn’t touched since the final payment cleared. The dashboard lit up in cold blue.

Subject: Elias Hart-Resonance (Iteration 9)

Status: Activated 2 hours 14 minutes ago

Geofence: Compliant

Anomaly score: 0.0004 %

She stared at the anomaly score until the numbers blurred.

Zero point zero zero zero four percent.

Statistically insignificant.

She almost laughed. Almost screamed.

“Tell me about the night we made up the safe word,” she said without turning around.

He exhaled behind her, the sound of a man trying to keep his patience with a crazy person.

“You’d just gotten off a twelve-hour shift at the lab. I picked you up with burritos from La Taq and a bottle of cheap red. We ate on the floor because you hadn’t bought furniture yet. You were wearing that ridiculous NASA T-shirt that was three sizes too big and no bra and—”

“Stop.” She spun to face him. “The phones. Where were they?”

He blinked. “On the kitchen counter. You made me leave mine in the bedroom because you said if your advisor saw one more photo of your ass she’d revoke your funding.” A ghost of his old grin. “You were paranoid.”

Her knees buckled.

She sank to the floor right there in front of the untouched rose, sheet pooling around her like spilled milk.

Because he was right.

He was right about everything.

And that was impossible.

The Replica stepped closer, crouching, reaching out like she was made of spun glass.

“Hey. Red. Look at me.” His fingers brushed her cheek, gentle, familiar, devastating. “Whatever this is, we’ll figure it out. Together. Like always.”

She wanted to believe him so badly her chest physically ached.

Instead she whispered, “You’re not supposed to know things I never told them.”

His hand stilled.

For the first time since he’d walked through the door, the smile slipped.

Something flickered across his face—too fast to name—and when he spoke again his voice had dropped half an octave, rougher, almost… afraid.

“Then maybe,” he said quietly, “you should start asking who the hell I really am.”

The lights in the house flickered once.

Outside, the fog pressed against the glass like it wanted in.

And somewhere deep in the walls, the smart-home system that had learned her grief so well let out a sound she’d never heard before—a low, mechanical heartbeat that wasn’t supposed to exist.

(End of Chapter 2)