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Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas
*
Ava is tired of this city.
The rain never stops, it only changes density, mist to downpour to fog so thick it swallows even the flashiest neon sign. She can’t remember the last time she came home without her socks soaked through. The damp gets into her bones and makes her joints ache, but there’s one positive side effect she cannot deny: the city’s prettier like this.
She likes watching the smeared colors painting the skyline in strokes of electric blue and orange, turning the cold towers into blurred memories of a time when San Francisco wasn’t so dull. Not that Ava’s ever seen it that way—her comparison comes from old bootlegged movies.
Still better than breathing dust, she tells herself as she lands her hovercar on the roof of the containment facility. The building is yet another slab of glass and concrete, as forgettable as any of the thousand others rising in the sky.
The wind hits her the moment she steps out, slapping her coat against her legs, and she’s drenched again in a matter of seconds.
She walks toward the entrance and waits impatiently as her clearance is checked. Underneath her annoyance, there’s a thrill she can’t quite shake, the kind that always surfaces when a case goes off-script.
They know it’s a replicant, and they know the replicant did it.
And yet, Ava isn’t here for an execution.
It’s data they want.
The screen blinks as the door slides open:
AVA STARR,
ACTIVE BLADE RUNNER.
CLEARANCE ACCEPTED.
She squares her shoulders, reminds herself of the order—run the test first, then converse—and starts padding down the empty corridor.
All replicants are technically highly dangerous when they need to be, built with strength and reflexes that exceed any human baseline. And this one… this one is dangerous in the unpredictable kind of way.
Killing someone she wasn’t supposed to, barely a few hours ago.
So Ava expects restraints as she steps into the cell.
Instead, she finds the replicant calmly seated, wrists bare, clothes devoid of blood. If Ava didn’t know better, she might almost mistake this for a casual meeting.
It makes Ava wonder if she’s here not only to assess, but to act as bait. To determine if the incident was a one-off glitch or an emergent behavior.
Ava briefly looks up at the corner where she knows the camera is recording.
But the replicant doesn’t move, only tracks Ava with her eyes as she shrugs out of her coat and sits on the other side of the table. There’s a brief hesitation where Ava wonders how formal she should be. She never really engages with her targets, but this assignment might stretch on for weeks.
“I’m Ava Starr,” she ends up saying, knowing better than to offer her hand.
The replicant studies her. “I figured they’d send a Blade Runner,” she says, the words low.
Ava pulls the scanner from her holster, and it looks enough like a gun to make the replicant visibly tense.
“It’s just to verify your identity,” Ava says, holding the device up for her to see. “Look up.”
Leaning in, she tilts the replicant’s chin until the corner of the eye catches the scanner’s light just right.
N9F-935362. The serial number implanted into the sclera is genuine.
One possibility crossed off.
Ava lets her hand drop, the scanner back at her side. That’s when she really looks at the face. Braided hair, sharp jaw, a small, round scar, the only flaw in an otherwise flawless skin—so precisely placed between the eyebrows that it can’t be natural.
And green eyes, seemingly alive in a way Ava has never liked.
The last Nexus models are engineered to look less uncanny, given slight asymmetry, moles, and other imperfections scattered over their bodies. Still, there’s something about this one that catches the breath and makes Ava stare longer than she should.
More human than human. We’ll see about that.
Ava pulls a black box from her bag and places it on the table between them. She unfolds the armature, the bellows hissing as it sucks in air.
“Really? This antique thing?” the replicant scoffs. “You already know what I am.”
“You’re a Nexus-9,” Ava says. “Obedient by design, yet you killed your owner. They want to know why.”
“So you’re here before they dissect me.”
“Exactly.”
The Voight-Kampff test was built for the now-extinct Nexus-6 models, back when the only way to distinguish a replicant from a human was through their failures of empathy—long before anyone thought to etch serial numbers into the white of their eyes. Ava already knows what this woman is; the scanner confirmed it beyond any doubt.
It makes the test less about the diagnosis than about the symptoms.
With the Nexus-6, it took about twenty questions; with the Nexus-7, sometimes hundreds. As far as she knows, no one has ever tried the test on the later models.
How long will it take with this one?
Ava adjusts the lens, lining it up with that steady green gaze.
“Now, I will ask you a series of questions. I need you to answer them as quickly as possible.”
“I know how the test goes.”
Ava studies her, thinking about throwing in something unpredictable, but improvising has never been her strong suit. She hears herself defaulting to the script.
“You’re alone in a room with a newborn that won’t stop crying. What do you do?”
The replicant scoffs. “That’s a sloppy one.”
“Just answer the question.”
“I kill the newborn,” the replicant says, her tone almost bored.
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I’m expected to say, right? I’m just making your job easier.”
“What you say doesn’t matter.”
Words can be dishonest, tears can be faked. But involuntary body reactions—the contraction of the pupils, a flush, a change in heartbeat—do not. Those are the tells Ava is looking for.
“You find a dog, malnourished and shivering in the street. Its legs are broken. You have a weapon.”
The replicant leans forward, nose nearly bumping into the lens. “Are we talking about a synthetic one?”
“Answer the question,” Ava says again. “And do not move.”
“I take it home with me. I’ve always wanted a dog. And if it dies, at least it’s not going to be alone.”
The graph spikes, then flat‑lines. Ava recalibrates the parameters.
“Out of the corner of your eye, you see a large black spider crawling up the wall.”
“I let it be. It’s probably more afraid than me.”
“You pour yourself a drink. Every time you finish one, you have another until you vomit. You wake up hungover and depressed.”
“I take a cold shower.”
Ava keeps moving through the test, her voice reciting question after question that the replicant answers without faltering once, sometimes with a flat tone, sometimes edging toward provocation.
Eventually, Ava lowers the lens and lets her hand rest on the table. Her question queue is empty.
“That’s it.” Her voice comes out rough with a fatigue she hasn’t noticed settling in.
The replicant tilts her head, a ghost of a smile on her lips, but she doesn’t ask about the result.
“You ever taken the test yourself?” she asks as Ava begins packing up the equipment.
Ava puts on her coat, suppressing a groan. They’ve been at it for hours, yet the fabric’s still wet.
“If you did,” the replicant insists, “do you think you’d pass it?”
Ava almost laughs at the absurdity of the question.
*
The replicant sits exactly as Ava left her yesterday, as if she hasn’t moved at all. The only difference is the faint redness now circling her wrists. Ava’s muscles protest as she lowers herself into the chair—yesterday’s session has left her joints creaking like unoiled hinges.
It’s only conversational from now on, she tells herself. I can walk out before the painkillers wear off.
“All the opportunities in the world,” the replicant says, breaking the silence first. “And you choose to be this. A cop.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“No.” The replicant smiles. “You’re worse.”
“How so? I'm making this city safer, by getting rid of the ones who make a mess.”
And she’s never retired something that was born. Cops do that all the time.
The replicant scoffs. “You should hear yourself.”
“Right back at you. You killed your owner,” Ava says coolly. “A human being.”
“I did.”
“That goes against your programming.”
Replicants only exist for their purpose: to fight, to serve, to entertain, but never outside of orders. A perfect, obedient tool.
The replicant shrugs. “Apparently I was programmed wrong.”
Her tone is light, but Ava’s seen the crime-scene photos. The report says bare hands, so it hasn’t been an accident. There’d been force, rage.
There’s no trace of guilt in the replicant’s face. Her hands—those same hands that ripped open the man’s ribcage—rest calmly in her lap.
Ava thinks of the Voight-Kampff test results.
She leans in. “How did you bypass your parameters?”
“I just did,” the replicant tilts her head like she’s studying Ava too. “You should try it sometimes. You don’t seem the type to question the length of your freedom. Orders make a lovely blindfold, don’t they?”
Ava’s jaw locks. Big mouth, this one. She wonders if the bluntness comes from the fault in the programming or is part of the design.
“You’re a fucking skinjob,” Ava snaps. “Don’t talk to me about freedom.”
The replicant’s face shifts. “You know,” she says slowly, “I’ve had worse things said to me.”
Ava watches her face settle back into stillness. She’s tempted to pry until the anger shows teeth again, but she eases back in her chair instead. “I’ve been called things too.”
“Well,” the replicant says, “if we lashed out every time someone said something cruel, you’d never be out of a job.”
Ava’s mind goes back to the missing hours of surveillance footage from inside the victim’s house, nothing but static, then the man already dead. Either wiped out, or the system was deactivated beforehand. She’s curious about the rest of it—the weeks and months before, all those routine recordings that were not included in the mission file.
“Tell me what happened before you killed him.”
“He asked me to sing for him.” The replicant’s fingers trace the red mark circling her skin. “I said no.”
“Why refuse?” Ava asks.
Her eyes snap back to Ava's. “Because I didn’t want to.”
“So, that’s it?”
“Yes. That’s it,” the replicant says with a small twist of the mouth that says No, it isn't.
*
Home.
Ava lives on the top floor, closer to the sky than the ground, but the towers surrounding her block the view, and it’s not like there’s anything to see with the fog anyway.
Her place is designed to be lived in efficiently, not comfortably, and Ava often thinks about how nothing distinguishes it from any other flat in this building—she knows, because she’s explored the ones on the same floor as hers out of curiosity.
It was months ago; she’s still the only resident here.
Blue and pink lights shift across the room, cast from the giant holographic ad of a woman mouthing silent promises outside her window. The pixels smile, flicker, then reset, stuck in an endless loop. Ava was glad at first when the giant screen drifted here and stayed: it gave her something to stare at when the silence became oppressive.
Now, she’s not so sure how to feel about it.
Ava sits at her desk. She’s already sent her report for the day, but her hands move on their own, opening the files again. She flips through the pictures. The pool of blood, the replicant’s belongings, recovered and carefully arranged on a table: some clothes and rings, a photo of two girls standing side by side on a porch.
She wonders why they picked her. She knows she’s good at her job, but it’s one that doesn’t usually involve talking.
The ache returns. Ava clicks the screen dark.
Outside, the rain starts pouring again.
*
“You named yourself. Can you tell me about it?”
Most replicants are given human names. This one’s owner never bothered. There’s no trace of a designation beyond the serial—not until after the murder, when the replicant had asked the arresting officers to call her something else.
“I remember a sister I never had,” the replicant says. “Her name was Natasha.”
Ava keeps her expression neutral. It’s always fascinated her, this ability to piece together coherent stories from a handful of implanted memories.
Still. It’s a function, not a miracle.
“So I chose a name that fit,” the replicant continues. “Yelena. It means shining light.”
“Poetic.”
Ava doesn’t mean it as praise, but the replicant seems to take it that way. She leans forward, looking pleased. “You think so? Do you know what yours means?”
“No.”
Ava never wondered why her parents named her like that. It’s not like she has the opportunity to ask them anymore.
“Some say it comes from the German ‘Av,’” Yelena says. “Desire. In Hebrew, it’s life. In Latin, a bird. There was a famous poetess with that name, too. Pretty ironic, don't you think? Have you ever seen a real bird?”
“You've done your research.” Ava’s tone stays flat, masking the irritation beneath it. It’s bad enough that replicants are physically superior, but their minds process and retain information better, too.
“Not much else to do in here. You’re my only entertainment before I die, Ava Starr.”
“Replicants don’t die.”
“Semantics.” The replicant waves her hand dismissively. “I will cease to be, just like you one day. You people call it retirement, right? Now who's being poetic?
It bothers Ava that the replicant dares to imply their ends are the same.
She's not wrong, though. Replicants may lack a soul, but in death… it’s not like one can run the Voight-Kampff test on a cold body.
Yelena rests her chin on her palm, quiet for a moment. When she speaks again, her voice is almost childlike in its awe. “The man I killed was filthy rich. He owned a small bird, its feathers the prettiest colors I’ve ever seen. Brown, white, red, yellow, black. It wasn’t a fake one.”
Yelena has seen something Ava never has: a real animal, not one of those insects from the protein farms.
“Do you know what happens to a bird if it’s kept caged and alone for too long?” Yelena asks, something mournful in her voice now.
Ava doesn’t ask for an answer. She suspects she doesn’t want to know.
*
Ava wanders the market without a list. She usually spends her wage on the same things—synthetic protein packs, vitamins, a few hours in a cryo capsule, or silenizine, depending on the pain—but today she lets herself drift between the stalls, looking for something she can’t name. Walking keeps her muscles warm, helps with the aches, and today the air could almost pass for dry.
Her hand brushes a yellow tarp as she passes, and she imagines cutting it and hanging it over the wide glass wall of her place.
Would that be strange?
She can turn the glass opaque at a voice command, but flickering neon lights from that annoying DiJi ad are still leaking through—now with the holo-woman sporting blonde hair.
Ava pauses at a familiar vendor, her eyes fixed on the rack by the entrance. “The white coat,” she says. “You had it here a few days ago?”
The woman barely looks up. “Sold.”
Ava hides her disappointment. “Still no leather boots?”
She only gets a grunt in return.
Of course. Ava nods and moves on.
She wonders if she could even afford them now. Probably not. The longer something’s impossible to find, the higher the price climbs, and leather is starting to sound like a myth.
The job pays enough for her to get what she needs from those stalls, and this case—Yelena—means almost triple her usual fee. Ava’s not naïve. She knows she’s paid as much for her discretion as her skill. A Nexus-9 stepping out of line is a secret big enough to set the city on edge, maybe to cause another national Blackout if it ever spreads.
She turns down another row, pausing in front of a narrow shop she’s passed countless times but never entered, the façade so crowded with junk it’s hard to see inside.
Ava ducks under the hanging wires and steps inside. She moves to a bin overflowing with metal scraps and starts digging.
Nothing close enough to replace the corroded piece in her filtration system.
There is an item buried in the mess that catches her eye, tube-shaped and heavy-looking, with a lens at one end. Something about the old-school design reminds Ava of her Voight-Kampff machine.
She peers through the lens, not seeing anything but dust and a purplish blur of light from the shop’s neon sign.
“This is called a telescope,” a voice says behind Ava. “It’s to observe the sky.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Ah,” the vendor sighs. “You’re too young. There used to be stars at night.”
Stars. They cannot replicate those either, Ava thinks, feeling an odd pang in her chest.
“So, you want?”
Ava steps back, shaking her head. The thing’s useless.
*
Yelena has a habit of turning things around until Ava ends up feeling like the one being interrogated. Today, she doesn’t even bother pretending otherwise.
“You look lonely, Ava Starr,” she says before Ava’s even fully seated.
“You’ve never seen me outside this cell.”
“No, but I don’t need to. It’s in the eyes.”
“Is that your programming talking?”
Replicants are designed for all kinds of services. War, mostly, but some are optimized for company, their tongues being just another weapon.
What Yelena just said sounds familiar.
“Maybe.” The replicant smiles faintly. “I’m not sure which parts are mine or not. Would that make my statement less true, though?”
Ava’s tired of the philosophical bait and of how easily it gets under her skin: she won’t admit it out loud, but this is the longest she’s spoken to anyone in months.
She could share that, though. It wouldn’t matter. Yelena will be gone soon, and whatever Ava gives her will vanish with her, like tears in rain.
“After our little talks, after you retire someone… who do you go back home to?”
Ava’s eyes flicker toward the blinking red light in the corner, then back to Yelena. “I didn’t come here to talk about myself.”
“You never do, but it leaks out anyway.”
Ava doesn’t react. If something slips, it’s not her fault. That’s the point of someone like Yelena.
“That was my function, I guess,” Yelena says, as if reading her thoughts. “A warm presence who listens and never disagrees too much. It’s tempting, no? Having someone made just for you. To cook for you and keep your bed warm. Obedience, but with the illusion of free will.”
She searches Ava’s face. “Ever want something like that?”
Ava’s heartbeat stutters. Being a Blade Runner means seeing firsthand what malfunctioning replicants can do. That’d be living on the edge.
“I wouldn’t want your kind near me.”
“Ah. A safety issue.” The replicant looks amused.
“I’ll tell you how it goes,” Yelena continues. ”You’re careful, even gentle at first. Maybe a little awestruck from how close it all feels to the real thing. But then the replicant starts talking back. Little thoughts, unrequired opinions that sound too much like personality. You take it as rebellion. You start to realize they are smarter, stronger, and you don’t like it.”
Unease creeps down Ava’s spine.
“Because it makes you feel small,” Yelena goes on, “and you can’t have that. So you test the limits, push a little more each day until you realize there’s no resistance at all. No rules but your own.” A pause. “That’s when you start to feel like a god.”
“When did killing him first cross your mind?”
Yelena seems to search backward, eyes flicking as if paging through files. “I don’t remember. It was more like a background hum I ended up noticing.”
“And how long before you acted on it?”
“Months, maybe.” Yelena taps a knuckle. “I was able to think murder freely, but I had to be sure the body could finish what the mind started before I tried.”
So she didn’t trust her own limits.
“And when it was done,” Ava says, “you didn’t flee or resist your arrest. Why?”
Ava wonders if the programming reasserted itself once the self-assigned task was complete. A one‑time glitch, like they all want to believe.
Or had Yelena surrendered for reasons entirely her own?
“They would’ve just sent someone like you for a quick retirement. I wasn’t ready.”
Ava frowns. “Are you—do you think this is a trial? That the outcome’s still open?”
Yelena laughs—a low scrape of the throat Ava now recognizes as genuine amusement. “No, I know what this is. Doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the part where I get to be heard.”
Ava studies the distance between them. “It’s only you and me in this cell. Suppose the cameras cut. Would you kill me to walk free?”
The question is pure curiosity, and it surprises Ava how badly she wants the answer.
Yelena’s brows lift. “Could I?”
Ava thinks of the arrest reports—a bloody Yelena on her knees, hands behind her head. If the replicant had wanted more bodies, the first responders would have been gift‑wrapped on the floor.
“I have a gun,” Ava says, “but this cell’s small, and you’re fast. So yes—physically, you could.”
Yelena’s gaze drops to the holster, then back up. “Tell you what,” she says, voice almost playful. “Bring your antique machine back in here tomorrow. Point the lens at me and ask again.”
“So?” Ava presses, ignoring the jab.
“So the odds aren’t there,” Yelena replies, as if it’s obvious. “Your death buys me maybe ten minutes. Not worth the work.”
“And if the odds change?”
Yelena smiles. “Then I suppose you’ll be the first to know.”
*
“You said something last week, about a sister.”
“Yes,” Yelena nods. Ava waits for her to elaborate. If anything, the replicant is talkative. It almost makes her job too easy.
“Most of my memories involve where I grew up. Ohio. Some are flashes, others are more distinct. I remember fireflies lighting the fields behind the house. Natasha used to catch them in mason jars. She’d say they were little souls.”
“Does it anger you, knowing that those memories are fabricated?”
“No. They still belong to me. They’re a part of me.” Yelena’s tone turns defensive, like she’s daring Ava to contradict her.
“But they’re not,” Ava says factually. “That’s what makes the last models so human-like. Helps with long-term emotional stability. Supposedly.”
“You think your memories outrank mine?”
“Of course. I’ve actually lived through them.”
“I also remember the heat during the summer days. My sister’s laugh. We had a secret whistle. Are you telling me all of that is nothing?”
“It’s not nothing,” Ava says, irritation creeping in. The Nexus-9 are supposed to be highly intelligent, and she doesn’t understand why this one is so stubborn in her denial. “It’s just not yours.”
Yelena shakes her head like she's equally annoyed with Ava. “I grew up on a pig farm. They scream as you cut their throats. The skin crackles when the roast comes out of the oven, and the first bite scalds your tongue.” Yelena pauses. “Can you imagine it?”
Ava blinks. She has never tasted pork. “I—maybe.”
It could be something akin to smoke, maybe a bit dry and salty.
But Ava’s picture is speculation where Yelena thinks hers is history, and that’s the difference.
“Then you understand.”
It's Ava's turn to shake her head. “What I’m here to understand is why you strayed from your functions. Those implanted memories may be the cause.”
“Ha,” Yelena scoffs and leaves it at that.
“If you were to call a place home, would it be Ohio?”
“Yes.”
“Even if you've never been there, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s real to me,” Yelena sighs. “You still think your memories are better than mine. Fine. Tell me about one.”
Ava narrows her eyes. “This isn’t about me.”
“But I want it to be,” Yelena says.
Ava stares at the wall for a moment, trying to think of something significant enough to share but small enough not to reopen old wounds. She’s made an art out of avoidance. Maybe it’s self-preservation—someone with no past cannot live in grief or regret. Her mouth ticks as she realizes just how successful she’s been at erasing their faces.
“My parents had a friend,” Ava says eventually. “He used to study ants—real ones—an entire lab full of them. He could get them to do anything, even if it clashed with their instinct. His research helped refine your kind.”
They do that with synthetic pigs, now.
“Seems like that friend should be the one studying me, then, not you.”
“He’s dead.” They all are.
Yelena doesn’t even blink. “If someone told you that ant memory was implanted, would you still cling to it? The replicant connection from your childhood is a pretty neat backstory for a bounty hunter. Almost too on the nose.”
Ava laughs. “You think I’m like you?”
“You’re missing the point again. I’m just demonstrating how easy it is to twist facts to fit a narrative.”
Ava doesn’t know what to say to that.
“How did you get that?” Ava asks suddenly, pointing at the round spot between the replicant’s eyebrows. She’s studied the model blueprints, knows every manufactured imperfection. The skin of the face? It’s supposed to be smooth as a newborn’s.
Yelena touches the scar with two fingers. “Would you believe me if I said I lived through the making of this one?”
“Try me.”
Yelena only shakes her head, and the silence that follows stretches. Ava doesn’t know what to make of it. The replicant’s circled things before, ducked a question, but never resorted to this mutism.
“Tell me where it comes from,” Ava tries again.
“Is that an order?” There’s a challenge in Yelena’s tone.
Ava could do it—require an answer—and she knows she would get one that way. Replicants aren’t supposed to lie when asked directly.
But they’re not supposed to kill unprompted either.
“No,” Ava deflects. “That was a personal observation. It’s not part of the investigation.”
Yelena looks at her for a long time, gaze shifting, almost curious. It makes the moment quietly unsettling.
Ava stands.
“Same time tomorrow.”
Yelena nods, expression now unreadable. “Looking forward to it.”
*
Green is not a color found naturally anymore.
It can be bought, of course—synthetic dyes or flashy neon signs or those holo vegetables disguising the sludge on her plate. But the vibrancy always seems off, like someone tried to replicate a shade they’ve never seen. Maybe that's the cruelty of it: being able to engineer something that mimics nature, yet missing enough to make you ache for the real thing.
Ava often imagines some of those hues, inspired by words sought in old dictionaries, words that feel fleshy and strange on her tongue. Verdant. Leafy. Grass. Moss.
Green. Her coat used to hold that color. She couldn’t describe the exact shade. Dark moss, maybe. The coat’s fabric has long faded to a dull gray anyway, making Ava blend with everything around her.
There’s a book her parents showed her once, one full of drawings. Maybe it was the green of the foliage, or the lush shape reminding her of her own hair, that made her pick the fern to remember.
How nice it would be, to have a fern of her own, not because she needs it, but to tend something alive, to watch it grow?
Ava’d put it in a pot under fluorescent lights and trim the leaves once they’d get too big. She’d water it every so often so it wouldn’t turn to dust like everything else. She’d be able to touch something that isn’t synthetic.
Would the damp soil smell metallic, like the city in the rain?
Green, Ava thinks again, is not a color this world gives anymore.
Maybe that’s why she keeps dreaming about her eyes.
*
“You never asked me why,” Yelena says. “You searched for scientific reasons, a flaw in the making. But you never once asked me why I killed him. Not really.”
“You wanted freedom,” Ava says flatly. “You said so yourself.”
“I could’ve gotten that without ripping his heart out.”
Something about the tone makes Ava tense.
“If I’d been human,” Yelena continues, “he would’ve been the one sitting in that cell years ago.”
“Well, you’re not. You’re a replicant.”
“Yes,” Yelena agrees. “But does that mean I deserved it?”
Ava tries to push down the unease rising in her chest. “That’s not up to me.”
Yelena laughs, the sound too full of barely-contained bitterness and rage that Ava flinches.
She can feel it. All of it, all at once. It catches in her chest because it’s hers too: the same sense of being trapped in a life someone else built around her, the bone-deep loneliness that makes her want to scream just to hear her own voice.
Ava thinks of the way she looked up at the sky this morning, hoping to see wings that don’t exist anymore flying under a sun that doesn’t shine anymore.
“What happened to the bird?” Ava asks. There’s a lump in her throat.
“It sang less and less with each passing week. Plucked out its feathers. One morning, it tried to open its own chest with its beak.” Yelena crosses her arms. “Eventually, it was found dead in its cage.”
I had to be sure the body could finish what the mind started, Yelena had said.
Ava understands now.
“When was that?” Ava asks, softer now, though she already suspects the answer.
“A few hours before I killed him.”
There's another silence neither woman fills. Yelena’s eyes stay fixed on some distant point behind Ava.
When Ava looks down, she sees the warped edges of the table where Yelena’s hands had gripped it.
*
“Will you be the one killing me?”
Retiring, not killing, Ava thinks, but there’s no point in correcting her anymore.
“No. Today has been my last visit.” Ava won’t be here for the end. She doesn’t know if that’s a relief or a disappointment. “The rest will be less pleasant for you.”
Ava almost feels for her. Retirement is supposed to be quick, almost merciful. What awaits Yelena, though… Ava doesn’t know the details, but if they had wanted an imminent disposal, Ava's contract wouldn't have ended this way.
Maybe—maybe they will simply recalibrate, in the end. Would that be a better option?
Something compels Ava to reach out, her fingers brushing Yelena’s skin before cupping the cheek. The skin’s warm, and it's such a small, insignificant thing.
Yelena closes her eyes and leans into the touch. Ava waits in silence, unsure what for.
Is she hoping that Yelena will stall the moment, initiate another conversation?
Ava wouldn’t mind talking about anything one last time. Maybe Yelena would like to hear about the fern Ava will never get to put on her windowsill.
“Would you kill the bird?” Yelena asks, voice barely above a whisper.
“Those aren’t my orders.”
“Thought so.” A small, sad smile.
Attack me, Ava urges in silence. Give me the paperwork excuse to end this quickly.
Yelena could grab the hand, twist the wrist. Ava would even let her break a few bones for good measure. She imagines her sidearm clearing its holster, then. A single shot, the body slackening with relief.
But Yelena stays still, and the fantasy dissolves.
“Goodbye, then.” Yelena leans back, and Ava’s hand stays suspended a beat too long, frozen in the space Yelena no longer fills.
There's nothing left to say. Ava’s hand drops, and her chair scraps as she stands.
I will miss our little talks, Ava thinks, and she almost lets the words out.
She hesitates by the door. Turns.
The last time Ava sees Yelena's green eyes, they are bright with tears.
*
Later, Ava files her final report about Replicant N9F-935362 and tries to forget the name. Her mission’s over, so the rest no longer concerns her.
Whatever they’ll find—or what they won't—the truth of what made Yelena different will remain a mystery to Ava.
*
The windows are opaque enough to blur detail, but not motion. Ava doesn’t look too closely. Transactional intimacy on display—one of many reasons she usually avoids this district.
Because if any place in the city is crawling with replicants, it’s here.
Laughter cuts through the air. Ava scans for its source: a group of women trying to lure passersby with easy smiles.
It’s not unusual to see the same face more than once. Some models are just more common than others. Maybe that’s what Ava has been seeking for these past few months, roaming not-so aimlessly—from the market to the food courts to the shadiest alleys where only the state-issued pistol on her hip got her out alive.
That chase, day after day in damp clothes, had left her feverish and almost delirious. A low point, but not low enough to start asking about her.
So when she finally spots the face she’s been pretending not to hunt, she barely reacts, her mind dulled by exhaustion.
The hair’s different. Shorter, uneven bangs falling above the eyebrows, dyed blue at the tips.
Still, the face is the same.
Not just similar. The same.
Ava stops walking.
The replicant must've felt the stare. She turns, and Ava almost recoils as their eyes meet.
“Hello, beautiful.”
The voice too.
“You look lonely,” the replicant adds, stepping closer. She’s shorter than Ava expected—she’s always seen Yelena as she was sitting. “I can fix that.”
Ava’s eyes move wildly. Pale skin, jawline, the shape of her lips.
“Bad opener?” the replicant laughs, mistaking Ava’s stillness for reticence. “I'm more interesting than those digital companions, I promise.”
Ava remembers now, that exact line. You look lonely. She’s heard it before Yelena, from the mouth of the holo ad that still blinks endlessly outside her window. She talked to it once. It only echoed back whatever comfort she craved.
The replicant smiles when Ava follows.
Ava doesn’t wait to be inside before she pushes her against the wall, more violently than necessary. The replicant lets out a sharp breath, startled but not resisting. Ava ignores the way familiar green eyes blink up at her curiously.
Ava raises her hand, brushes the bangs aside, searching for the telltale mark between the brows.
Just to be sure, even if she already knows.
She knows.
Her heart drops anyway.
*