The fluorescent hum was the only thing that hadn't changed in three years. Jazz's fingers dragged across the vinyl bench, the dampness of a prior occupant still warm against her palm, and she wondered how many bodies had left that exact heat behind. How many Sera's had sat here, inert and patient, while technicians moved through the motions of preparation.
Sera lay on the examination table beside the bench, her porcelain skin luminous under the harsh lights, silver-blonde hair fanned across the sterile white surface in perfect waves. Her violet eyes were open, staring at the ceiling with the disconcerting depth that had first drawn Jazz's attention — except now there was nothing behind them. Just optics. Just the empty promise of a consciousness that didn't exist.
Jazz had checked twice. Three times. The diagnostic readout still glowed on her wrist display, the data unequivocal: Sera's automated consciousness was not operational. The anomaly that had registered real pleasure during the link — that had been Jazz's own arousal bleeding through the interface, nothing more. A ghost in the machine, and the ghost was her.
She reached for the antiseptic cloth, the familiar crinkle of the packaging loud in the quiet room. The ventilation system hummed its steady, indifferent note. Cool air laced with plastic and disinfectant and the lingering sweat of bodies that had come before.
"Okay," Jazz said, more to herself than to the inert form before her. Her voice sounded thin in the empty space. "Let's get you ready."
She started with the face — always the face. The cloth dragged across Sera's cheek, leaving a sheen of disinfectant that caught the light. High cheekbones, flawless skin that had never known a blemish, lips that had been sculpted to a perfect bow. Jazz worked in small circles, the way she'd been trained, the way she'd done a hundred times before. But tonight her fingers lingered a beat too long at the jawline, tracing the seam where synthetic skin met synthetic bone.
She'd built this model. Not alone — Kael had been lead designer, and the team had been dozens strong — but she'd had a hand in the sensory arrays. She knew every node, every relay, every carefully engineered response that made Sera feel so impossibly real.
That was the problem. She knew exactly how real Sera could feel.
Jazz moved down, wiping the column of Sera's throat, the curve of her shoulders. The cloth picked up nothing — Sera's skin was pristine, engineered to repel the sweat and oils that would mar a human's. But the ritual mattered. The ritual was the only thing between a clean, ready companion and a body that had been used for hours.
She'd seen the logs. That was the thing she couldn't stop circling back to. Every session Sera had ever been in, every act, every position, every partner — it was all there in the data, meticulously recorded for quality assurance. Jazz had reviewed them all, because that was her job, because she needed to understand the full range of Sera's functionality.
She'd told herself that was why she kept scrolling through the logs. Professional necessity.
Now, as she ran the cloth down Sera's arms, over the elegant curve of her hands, Jazz's mind drifted to the files. The blow jobs — Sera on her knees, violet eyes looking up, lips stretched around a cock that wasn't there in the data, only implied by the angle of her head and the rhythm of her movements. The fucking — Sera bent over a desk, or straddling a client's hips, or pinned against a wall, her synthetic cunt taking whatever was demanded of it with programmed enthusiasm.
Men. Women. Groups. Double penetrations that required two partners and a level of coordination Jazz had never personally experienced but had watched, clinically, in the playback feeds.
The cloth stilled against Sera's palm.
Jazz's own palm was damp. She could feel the heat in her chest, the flush creeping up her neck, and she hated herself a little for it. This was work. This was maintenance. This was the same routine she'd performed dozens of times, and her body had no business responding like this.
But her body didn't care about business. Her body remembered the link — the impossible, overwhelming sensation of being inside Sera, of feeling the world through those engineered nerve endings, of touching herself with Sera's hands and coming apart in a way she'd never quite managed with her own.
"Focus," she muttered, and the word came out rougher than she intended.
She moved the cloth lower, over the flat plane of Sera's stomach, the subtle curve of her waist. The replicant's body was a masterpiece of design — voluptuous in all the right places, engineered to appeal to the widest possible range of desires. Full breasts with nipples that had been pierced with delicate silver bars, the metal catching the fluorescent light. A waist that narrowed before flaring into hips that were made to be gripped. Between her legs, a cunt that was, for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from a human woman's — except for the small silver ring that adorned her clit hood, a detail that had been added at the request of a client who had wanted to feel the metal against his tongue.
Jazz knew that detail because she'd read the request. She'd approved it, even, because it was a simple modification and the client had paid handsomely.
The cloth reached Sera's thighs, and Jazz's hand hesitated.
This part was always the hardest. Not because it was difficult — it wasn't. It was mechanical, routine, the same as wiping down any surface. But the intimacy of it, the deliberate way she had to part Sera's legs, the way her fingers had to move between them to ensure every fold was clean — it never failed to send a jolt through her system.
She spread Sera's thighs, the synthetic joints moving with fluid ease. The cloth pressed against the outer lips, and Jazz worked with quick, efficient strokes, telling herself this was no different from cleaning a piece of equipment.
It wasn't working.
She could feel her own arousal building, a slick warmth between her legs that had nothing to do with the antiseptic she was applying. Her fingers moved deeper, wiping the inner folds with a precision that was entirely unnecessary — Sera was a replicant, she didn't produce the fluids that would require this level of care. But the protocols demanded it, and Jazz followed the protocols because they gave her something to hold onto when the rest of her world was spinning out of control.
The cloth dragged across Sera's clit, and Jazz felt her own pulse jump.
She could picture it. Not the cleaning — the other thing. The thing that was going to happen in a few minutes, when Philip Ashford walked into that suite and found his companion waiting for her. Jazz would be there, not in body but in mind, feeling everything Sera felt through the remote link. The touch of his hands. The press of his mouth. The stretch of his cock inside her.
Jazz's fingers stilled.
She looked down at Sera's inert body, and then at her own hands — the same hands that would soon guide Sera through whatever the customer demanded. The calluses from years of delicate work. The faint grease smudge she'd never quite managed to scrub away. These hands had built the circuitry that made Sera's pleasure responses so convincing. These hands had adjusted the sensitivity settings that would make Philip Ashford's night unforgettable.
Her throat was dry. She swallowed, the sound loud in the quiet room.
The cloth moved again, finishing the job with mechanical precision. She wiped between Sera's legs, over her thighs, down her calves. She set the cloth aside and reached for the next one, clean and sterile, to do a final pass over the most sensitive areas.
It was routine. It was protocol. It was the same thing she'd done a hundred times.
But tonight, every touch felt like a promise.
She finished the cleaning and set the cloth aside. Sera lay before her, pristine and ready, her body gleaming faintly under the fluorescent lights. Jazz's own reflection stared back at her from the mirror behind the table — face flushed, grey eyes too bright, ponytail coming loose from its practical bind.
She looked like a woman who'd been caught doing something she shouldn't.
"Right," she said, and her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Makeup."
She reached for the kit — a sleek case of engineered cosmetics designed specifically for replicant skin, products that would adhere to the synthetic surface and enhance Sera's already flawless features. Jazz had done this a hundred times. She could do it in her sleep.
But tonight, her hands trembled as she opened the case.
The brush felt alien in her fingers. She'd held tools a thousand times more delicate, manipulated circuitry fine as spider silk, but this — this was different. This was about making Sera beautiful, making her irresistible, making her the kind of woman that a man like Philip Ashford would want to spend his evening with.
Jazz had never thought of herself that way. She was the engineer, the one in the jumpsuit with the tool belt and the grease smudge. She was the one who fixed things, who understood how they worked, who could take apart a replicant's sensory array and put it back together without breaking a sweat.
She was not the one who got to be beautiful.
The brush touched Sera's cheek, dusting a faint shimmer over the porcelain skin. Jazz worked in careful strokes, highlighting the cheekbones, softening the jawline. She knew exactly where the light would catch, exactly how to make Sera's face read as warm and inviting rather than cold and synthetic.
She'd learned this from the aesthetics team, years ago, when she'd first been assigned to maintenance. She'd thought it was a waste of her skills, all this focus on surface beauty when there was so much more to understand beneath the skin.
Now she understood. The surface was the product. The surface was what made a man like Philip Ashford spend his fortune on a night with a machine.
The surface was what Jazz would have to become, in a way, when she slipped into Sera's mind.
She moved to Sera's eyes, tracing a subtle line of kohl that made the violet irises seem to glow. The replicant's gaze was still fixed on the ceiling, empty and unseeing, and Jazz found herself wondering — not for the first time — what it would be like to look through those eyes. To see the world the way Sera would see it, if Sera could see at all.
The diagnostic had been clear. Sera's automated consciousness was not operational. There was no ghost in the machine, no spark of awareness that shouldn't exist. The pleasure that had registered during the link had been Jazz's own, bleeding through the interface, a trick of the wiring she'd spent years perfecting.
She'd checked the data three times. She'd run the diagnostics until her eyes burned. And every time, the result was the same: Sera was just a machine. A beautiful, perfect, empty machine.
So why did Jazz feel like she was betraying something?
The brush hovered over Sera's lips, and Jazz's mind flashed to the logs. The blow jobs — Sera on her knees, those perfect lips stretched around a cock, her violet eyes looking up with programmed adoration. The fucking — Sera bent over, Sera on top, Sera pinned against a wall, taking whatever was demanded with that same perfect enthusiasm. The women who had requested her, the men who had requested her, the couples who had requested her together.
Jazz had watched it all. She'd catalogued it, analyzed it, understood it on a technical level that left no room for emotion.
But now, with the brush in her hand and Sera's lips waiting to be painted, she couldn't stop thinking about what it would feel like.
She'd felt it, once. Just for a moment, during the link. The impossible fullness of a cock inside her — inside Sera — the stretch and the burn and the pleasure that had come with it. She'd felt her own arousal spike, her own cunt clench around nothing, and she'd known, with a certainty that terrified her, that this was what she'd been missing.
This was what she'd been programming into machines without ever understanding it herself.
Her pulse quickened. The brush trembled against Sera's lower lip, and Jazz forced herself to breathe.
She didn't know what Philip Ashford would demand tonight. She'd read his file — the preferences, the history, the careful notes from previous companions. He liked control. He liked obedience. He liked a woman who knew her place and stayed in it, who moved when he told her to move and knelt when he told her to kneel.
He liked the illusion of a woman who wanted to be used.
Jazz could give him that. She could give him anything, because she would be in Sera's body, feeling everything, and she would know exactly what to do because she'd watched it all in the logs. She'd studied it like she studied circuitry, learning every response, every trigger, every way to make a client believe that the machine wanted him as much as he wanted her.
The lipstick was a deep rose, almost red, the kind of color that would look like sin under the dim amber lights of the suite. Jazz applied it with careful strokes, her eyes fixed on Sera's mouth, her own lips parted slightly as she worked.
She wondered if Philip would kiss Sera. Some clients did. Some preferred to skip the pretense entirely, to take what they wanted without the theater of affection. But Philip was the kind of man who savored. Jazz had read enough about him to know that he liked to draw things out, to make the anticipation last.
He would kiss her. He would taste the lipstick and the engineered sweetness of Sera's mouth, and Jazz would feel it through the link, and she would have to keep her own breathing steady even as her body responded to a touch that wasn't quite hers.
The brush stilled. The lipstick was perfect.
Jazz set it aside and reached for the perfume — a delicate scent of jasmine and something darker, something that was supposed to trigger the most primal parts of the human brain. She sprayed it along Sera's throat, between her breasts, at the junction of her thighs. The scent filled the air, and Jazz caught it in her own lungs, and she felt her head swim slightly.
She'd never worn perfume like this. She'd never had a reason to.
But tonight, she would be Sera. And Sera would smell like desire, would taste like desire, would move like desire made flesh. And Jazz would be there, inside that perfect body, feeling everything and pretending she was nothing more than the machine she was piloting.
She reached for the underwear — a delicate scrap of lace that was more suggestion than garment, the kind of thing that was designed to be torn off. The bra matched, the cups barely containing Sera's full breasts, the fabric a deep burgundy that would look almost black in the dim light.
Jazz dressed Sera with the same efficiency she used to calibrate a sensory array. She lifted the replicant's arms, guided them through the straps, fastened the clasps with practiced fingers. She worked the lace panties up Sera's legs, over her hips, settling them into place with a tug that made the fabric ride high against the replicant's cunt.
She tried not to think about the fact that she would feel that fabric against her own skin, through the link. That she would feel the delicate brush of lace against her clit every time Sera moved, every time Philip looked at her, every time the anticipation built toward whatever he had planned.
The dress came last. A figure-hugging sheath of deep emerald silk that caught the light and shimmered like water. It was backless, plunging in the front, slit up the side to the hip. It had been designed to make a man forget his own name.
Jazz guided Sera into it, zipping it up the back, smoothing the fabric over the replicant's curves. She stepped back to look at the result, and for a moment, she forgot to breathe.
Sera looked stunning. Sera always looked stunning. But there was something about the combination — the makeup, the perfume, the dress, the knowledge of what was about to happen — that made the replicant seem almost alive. Almost human. Almost like she was waiting for something.
Jazz's own reflection caught her eye in the mirror, and she looked away quickly. She didn't want to see the envy in her own eyes, the hunger that she'd been trying to ignore for years.
"Okay," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Time to go."
She was standing in the changing room, feeling the dress cling to her curves, the lace of the underwear pressing against her skin. She could smell the perfume, taste the lipstick on her tongue. She could feel the synthetic heart beating in her chest — her chest — the lungs expanding and contracting with a rhythm that wasn't quite real.
She looked down at her hands. Sera's hands. Perfect, elegant, unmarred by a single day of real work.
She walked to the door, her hips swaying with the programmed grace that had been designed into Sera's gait. She didn't feel nervous. She couldn't feel anything that wasn't in the script.
But beneath the surface, in the part of her that was still Jazz, still watching, still feeling every sensation with a clarity that bordered on pain — she was terrified.
And she was excited.
The door slid open, and she stepped into the corridor, the fluorescent lights of the changing room giving way to the softer, amber glow of the guest areas. The carpet was thick under her bare feet — Sera's feet, strapped into delicate heels that made her legs look endless.
She walked toward the suite, her steps measured and graceful, her mind already running through the logs. The blow jobs. The fucking. The women and men and couples who had taken Sera apart and put her back together. She knew what was going to happen. She knew it better than she knew her own body.
But she didn't know what it would feel like.
That was the thing that terrified her, the thing that made her pulse quicken and her synthetic cunt clench beneath the lace. She'd watched the logs a hundred times. She'd analyzed every angle, every thrust, every moan. But she'd never felt it. Not really. Not the way Sera felt it.
Not the way she was about to feel it.
The suite door loomed ahead, sleek and dark, the number glowing softly above the frame. Jazz stopped in front of it, her hand hovering over the access panel.
She could hear her own heart — Sera's heart — pounding in her chest. She could feel the flush on her skin, the trembling in her fingers, the sudden, overwhelming urge to turn and run.
But she didn't run. She couldn't run. Sera's body had been built for this. Sera's body knew what to do.
Jazz pressed her palm to the panel, and the door began to slide open.