For a moment, she closed her eyes and let the air fill her lungs. Not the sterile, recycled oxygen of corridors and waiting rooms, but air with texture, damp with exhaust, hot with sun, salted faintly from the sea.

Then came the noise.

Horns, engines, brakes shrieking, the world's impatient orchestra slamming back into her body.

She pushed her hands into her coat pockets. The yellow fabric felt comforting. But something was wrong. A sharp edge. Something that didn't belong.

Her fingers found it: a small, folded paper packet.

She pulled it free, unfolding carefully. Inside: a black USB stick. On its back, written in block letters, almost like a child's scrawl:

THE SUBSTANCE.

A smaller scrap of paper fluttered out with it. Crumpled, barely legible.

It changed my life.

She stared at it while traffic howled around her, as if the chaos of the city had momentarily hushed into a private silence.

Then—

"Lizzie?? Lizzie Sparkle??"

Her head jerked up.

A man was squinting at her from the sidewalk. Fifties, balding except for a thin ring of hair, cheap glasses sliding down his nose. His grin was too wide, too eager.

"OMG, I can't believe it!" he said, hurrying toward her.

Elisabeth blinked. Nothing. A blank file in her memory.

"Fred! From 10th grade homeroom!"

Recognition didn't come, not really but she forced her face into a polite mask.

"Oh… Fred. Of course."

He laughed and ran a hand over his bare scalp. "Yeah, baldness runs in the family. No escaping it."

"Oh no, that's not what I—"

"You, however," he barreled on, "haven't changed! Still the most beautiful girl in the world. I've followed your career. What a success! Wow, wow, wow!"

She smiled faintly, her hand closing around the USB stick in her pocket. He didn't notice.

"And the funny thing is," Fred continued, leaning a little too close, "my mom used to buy your toothpaste. So every Christmas when I went home, brushing my teeth, I'd think about you."

Elisabeth froze. Her smile didn't move.

"Oh… that's—"

"She's dead now."

The words dropped between them. A beat too long.

"…creepy," Elisabeth thought, though she only nodded.

A taxi screeched to a stop at the curb then Fred brightened.

"Oh, that's for me! Hey, why don't we go for a drink sometime now that we've reconnected?"

She opened her mouth, but he cut himself off: "Oh, I'm stupid. Of course you're super busy…"

"Why don't you give me your card?" she offered, polite reflex.

"I'm not a card guy, but…" He plunged a hand into his pocket, producing a crumpled sheaf of papers. Not business cards, medical test results.

He fumbled with them, searching for blank space to write on, while Elisabeth's fingers curled tighter around the USB, as if it might vanish.

Fred dug into the pile of test results, flipping through them with clumsy fingers until he found a blank corner.

"What do we have here… okay, this'll do."

He scribbled a number in hurried strokes, then glanced up at her sheepishly. "Please don't look at my cholesterol levels. They're a disaster."

Before she could reply, he ripped off the corner of the page with his number scrawled across it. The flimsy scrap caught in a gust of wind, fluttered like a wounded bird, and landed face-down in a puddle of murky water.

"Oh God…"

Fred bent down, groaning as he fished it out. The soggy paper clung to his fingers. He wiped it against his shirt with an awkward laugh.

"Programmer's hands," he muttered. "Not much good away from the keyboard!"

The taxi behind him blared its horn.

Flustered, he shoved the damp fragment into Elisabeth's palm. His touch was clammy. "Now you've got it!"

He chuckled at his own pun, delighted, then leapt into the backseat of the cab. Through the window, he mimed the telephone gesture, thumb to ear, pinkie to mouth.

Call me.

And then he was gone, swallowed by traffic, leaving Elisabeth alone on the hospital steps, a wet scrap of paper in one hand, a USB in the other, the cacophony of the city roaring back around her.

---

The late-afternoon light bled gold across the city, pouring through the oversized picture window. Elisabeth stood there for a long moment, her silhouette etched against the glass, as if she were nothing but an outline waiting to be filled.

Behind her, the apartment looked immaculate, curated. A life arranged for appearances: the sleek lines of the furniture, the tasteful art, the framed poster of herself that loomed like a monument. In it, she smiled with predatory brightness, hips cocked, wrapped in a blue leotard that now felt like someone else's skin.

On the coffee table sat a bouquet of flowers, still in its crinkling plastic. A small card dangled from it:

Thank you for all these years with us. You were amazing!

Her eyes snagged on one word. Were. It landed like a slap, harder than any car crash.

She tore her gaze away, slid the USB into the side of her television, and sank into the couch.

The screen went black. Utterly black—so black it seemed to draw the room into itself.

A man's voice emerged. Deep. Slow and Measured. Beneath it, a faint static crackle, like the sound of a radio tuned just off frequency.

"Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself?"

Elisabeth blinked. The question lingered in the air, as if addressed only to her.

The screen remained empty. Nothing to distract from the words.

"We are merely the expression of a genetic code frozen at a precise moment. But your DNA conceals billions of other possibilities. Inside you, there is another you. Or should I say… billions of other you's."

Her throat tightened. She glanced up at the poster on the wall, the immortal Elisabeth Sparkle. The words wormed their way under her skin.

"One single injection unlocks your DNA, starting a new cellular division that will release another version of yourself. Younger. More beautiful. More perfect."

A tremor moved through her. Younger. More beautiful. The words struck like both temptation and threat.

And then it came:

The words blazed across the void of the screen in stark white letters, timed to the voice that resonated with finality—

THE SUBSTANCE.

Elisabeth sat frozen on the couch. The screen reflected faintly in her eyes, twin black mirrors filled with promise, with menace, with something she wasn't sure she wanted but could no longer ignore.

The title hung on the screen like a wound. THE SUBSTANCE.

Then, silence.

Elisabeth sat there, her breath shallow while waiting. The letters dissolved into blackness. The screen became a mirror again, showing only her reflection. For a long, empty beat, she wondered if it was over.

And then, an image.

A yellow lump of putty appeared on a white surface, filmed from directly above. It looked crude, dented and ordinary. Not gold, not glowing, just a cheap piece of blu tack under harsh laboratory light.

A man's voice returned, steady, almost reverent: You are the matrix.

Two hands entered the frame. Male hands. They grasped the putty and began pulling. Slowly. Painfully. Stretching it out until a fragment tore free.

Everything comes from you.

The detached piece was rolled between the palms into a second, smaller sphere. Smooth. Perfect. Its symmetry made the first lump seem grotesque, disfigured by comparison.

And everything is you.

The hands cradled the two balls, one in each palm, as if presenting twin offerings.

This is simply… a better version of yourself.

Elisabeth swallowed hard. She could almost feel her own body being pinched, pulled and reshaped.

You just have to share.

The left hand closed. The left ball vanished. The right remained.

One week for one.

Then the left hand opened again as the right closed.

And one week for the other.

The camera lingered. Two balls, side by side. Identical, yet not. Perfectly balanced.

A perfect balance of seven days each.

A pause. The silence deepened, heavy with unspoken consequence.

The one and only thing not to forget…

Words blazed across the screen:

YOU ARE ONE.

The camera returned to the two balls. The voice dropped lower, almost a whisper:

YOU CAN'T ESCAPE FROM YOURSELF.

And then, with brutal suddenness, the hands smashed the two spheres together. A wet smack. The screen went black.

Elisabeth remained motionless on the couch. The silence of her apartment pressed in on her. She stared at the blank screen until her eyes burned, then rose. Without hesitation, she pulled the USB from the slot, carried it into the kitchen, and dropped it into the trash.

It landed with a dull clatter against porcelain plates and crumpled paper.

For a moment she stood over it, waiting for something.

Nothing came. Only the faint hum of the refrigerator.

And then, faintly, as if underwater, came a muffled noise. Distorted. Indistinct. Something that might have been a memory… or a warning.

NOTE:

Advanced chapters are on Patreon (10 Chapters ahead)

Patreon Link: patreon.com/underthedraft (Copy & Paste To Your Browser)