The Replica of Rot (2025)

The Replica of Rot (2025)

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Chapter 1: The Architect of Flesh

The air inside the Next Genetics headquarters in Palo Alto was scrubbed so clean it tasted metallic. It was a cathedral of glass and white polymer, a place where the wealthy came to purchase time.

Dr. James Williams stood before the observation window of Lab 4, his reflection ghostly against the bubbling tanks of nutrient gel beyond. James was a man composed of sharp angles. His cheekbones were severe ridges beneath skin that seemed too tight for his skull, and his eyes were the colour of sterile steel. He wore his lab coat not as protection, but as a vestment.

Inside the tank, a liver pulsed rhythmically. It was a 'Type-O Universal,' grown from a proprietary synthetic scaffold. It was perfect.

"Efficiency is up twelve percent, James," a voice said.

James didn't turn. He knew it was Director Halloway. "It should be fifteen. The cellular adhesion rates are lagging in the third quadrant."

"You’re a perfectionist. That’s why you’re the frontrunner for the Section Chief promotion next month."

James allowed a thin, bloodless smile to touch his lips. He had been working for Next Genetics for ten years, knitting flesh from code. But the work here was impersonal. Spare parts. Tires and mufflers for the biological machines of the elite. Halloway didn't know about the basement in James's home. He didn't know that James had moved past organs and was flirting with the concept of the soul.

"I just want to ensure the product is viable," James said, smoothing his thinning, slicked-back dark hair. "Biology is messy. It requires... discipline."

Chapter 2: The Porcelain Doll

The Williams residence was a modernist block of concrete and cedar perched on the cliffs of Malibu. It was a house designed to look at the ocean but never touch it.

Alice Williams sat at the marble vanity, staring at her reflection. Once, her face had been on billboards from sunset Boulevard to Times Square. She had the kind of beauty that was almost aggressive—high brows, ice-blue eyes, and a jawline that could cut glass. But the modelling years were over, replaced by the role of the trophy wife.

She applied her cream with trembling hands. She felt heavy, a deep, pelvic gravity that had been dragging her down for weeks.

"James?" she called out. He was late. He was always late.

When he finally arrived, he smelled of antiseptic. He kissed her cheek, but his eyes were scanning her, dissecting her. "You look pale, Alice."

"I feel tired, James. Just tired."

Two days later, the diagnosis came. It wasn't the flu. It wasn't stress.

Dr. Aris sat them down in his plush office. "It’s cervical cancer, Alice. Aggressive. It has metastasized to the lymph nodes and the liver."

The world went silent for Alice. The white noise of the air conditioner roared. She looked at James, expecting tears, expecting shock.

James was staring at the MRI scans on the lightboard. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the tumor. He was studying the rate of growth. "Stage four," James muttered, his voice devoid of tremor. "Irreversible cellular corruption."

Chapter 3: The Decay

The decline was not poetic. It was a graphic dismantling of a masterpiece.

By Chapter 3, the Alice that had graced the covers of Vogue was gone. The chemotherapy ravaged her quickly, stripping the golden hair from her head in clumps that clogged the shower drain. Her skin, once luminous, turned the colour of wet ash.

James watched it all. He didn't sleep in the guest room; he stayed right there, observing.

One evening, Alice lay in the master bedroom, the smell of sickness—a mix of copper and rotting fruit—hanging heavy in the air. She vomited into a basin James held.

"I'm ugly," she whispered, her voice a dry rattle. Her eyes were sunken into dark, bruised sockets.

"You are failing," James said softly, wiping her mouth. It sounded affectionate, but his eyes were cold. "The biological mechanism is collapsing."

He began taking samples. It started under the guise of medical monitoring. He drew blood. Then, while she slept in a morphine haze, he performed biopsies. He scraped skin cells. He took hair follicles from her brush. He wasn't trying to cure her. He was archiving her. He looked at her wasting body not with pity, but with the frustration of a man watching a beautiful machine rust.

Chapter 4: Termination

The end came on a Tuesday night. The coastal fog had rolled in, pressing against the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Alice’s breathing had changed, shifting to the Cheyne-Stokes rhythm—long pauses followed by gasping breaths. James sat by the bed, his hand resting on her wrist. He wasn't holding her hand; he was monitoring her pulse.

She opened her eyes one last time. They were milky, unfocused. "James..."

"Shh," he soothed. "Let go, Alice. The vessel is broken."

She exhaled, a long, rattling sound that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards. Then, silence.

James stood up. He didn't call the coroner immediately. He had a window of viability. He worked quickly, efficiently. He extracted a substantial amount of bone marrow from her iliac crest while the body was still warm. He took a sample of the cerebrospinal fluid.

He looked at the corpse of his wife. She looked like a discarded marionette. "Obsolete," he whispered. Then, he picked up the phone to play the grieving widower.

Chapter 5: The Basement

The funeral was a closed-casket affair. James played the part well, accepting condolences from Next Genetics executives. But his mind was downstairs.

The basement was soundproofed, temperature-controlled, and accessible only via a retinal scan. It hummed with the power of a stolen server farm. In the center of the room stood the Genesis Chamber—a modified bio-reactor James had built from stolen Next Genetics tech.

He fed the data into the system. The DNA sequence of Alice Williams. But not the Alice who died—he edited out the genetic markers for the cancer. He patched the flaws. He optimized the telomeres.

"Initiate sequence," James commanded.

The tank filled with a translucent, amber fluid. Nanobots, stolen from the experimental division, began to weave the protein lattice. This wasn't natural growth. This was accelerated biological 3D printing.

James spent his nights down there, sleeping on a cot. He watched as the skeleton formed, white and pristine. He watched the musculature wrap around the bone like red velvet. He watched the organs bloom. It was the ultimate act of creation. He was God, and Alice was his Adam.

Chapter 6: Rebirth

It took three months of accelerated gestation.

The figure floating in the tank was fully grown. She was nude, suspended in the amber liquid, her hair floating like a halo. It was Alice. But it was Alice from ten years ago. The Alice before the stress, before the cancer, before the age.

James drained the tank. The fluid receded with a gurgling hiss.

The glass door slid open. The body slumped forward, catching itself on the rim. Wet, gasping, the clone fell onto the sterile mats James had prepared.

She coughed, expelling the oxygenated fluid from her lungs. She looked up, her eyes wild, unfocused, terrified.

James wrapped a towel around her shivering, perfect shoulders. He touched her skin. It was warm. It was flawless. There were no scars. No blemishes.

"Alice?" he whispered.

She blinked, her pupils contracting in the light. She made a guttural sound, her vocal cords unused.

Chapter 7: The Implantation

Physically, she was perfect. Mentally, she was a blank slate.

James moved her to the "recovery room" in the basement. He hooked her up to the Neural Mapper. He had spent years digitally recording Alice—her voice patterns, her memories (extracted via a highly illegal experimental therapy she thought was for migraines), her personality matrix.

He uploaded the life of Alice Williams into the empty vessel.

Day by day, the light returned to her eyes. She remembered the wedding. She remembered the taste of wine. She remembered the smell of the ocean.

By the end of the month, James brought her upstairs.

"I had a terrible dream," Alice said, touching her face. "I dreamt I was sick. I dreamt I was dying."

James smiled, pouring her coffee. "It was just a nightmare, darling. You had a fever. You've been bedridden for weeks, but you're better now. You're perfect."

Everything seemed normal. She walked the house. She cooked. She laughed. James had his wife back, but better. She didn't complain. She didn't age. She was his creation.

Chapter 8: The Glitch in the Soul

The cracks formed in the silence.

Alice was in the shower. She was scrubbing her body, the water steaming hot. She reached for the mole that had always been on her left hip—a small, brown beauty mark she had hated but lived with.

It wasn't there. The skin was smooth, alabaster white.

She froze. She checked her knee, where she had fallen as a child and left a jagged white scar. Gone.

Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in her chest. She got out, drying herself frantically. She looked in the mirror. She looked too symmetrical. Her face was the face of her modeling photos, not the face she saw last year.

She began to dig. James was careless in his arrogance. She found the basement key card in his study.

Descending into the lab was like walking into the stomach of a beast. She saw the tank. She saw the monitors. And then, she saw the disposal logs.

Subject: Alice Williams (Original). Deceased. Cremation confirmed.

She found the video logs. James talking to the camera. "The original unit failed due to genetic weakness. The replacement is exceeding expectations. Memory integration at 98%."

She wasn't Alice. She was a meat puppet. A ghost haunting a body grown in a jar. The resentment didn't come as sadness; it came as a glacial, murderous rage. He hadn't saved her. He had replaced her.

Chapter 9: The Hunter

Alice stopped eating. She realized she didn't really need to; her metabolism was engineered to be hyper-efficient, but she kept up the charade.

She began to follow him. She drove the Audi he had "bought" for her to Next Genetics. She used her old pass—James hadn't deactivated it.

From the observation deck, she watched him. She saw him standing over other tanks, other organs. She saw the way he looked at his assistants—with sneering superiority.

She saw him laughing with a young intern, his hand lingering on her arm. He looked vibrant, powerful. He was feeding off his success, off his "resurrection" of her.

She planned it in the dark. She knew the layout of the house. She knew the chemistry of the lab. She knew exactly what drugs he kept in the safe.

She wasn't just a clone; she was an improvement. Her hearing was sharper, her strength slightly enhanced. She watched him from the shadows of the parking garage, her eyes reflecting the fluorescent lights like a predator's.

Chapter 10: Soil and Pine

It was their anniversary. James came home to a candlelit dinner.

"You look breathtaking, Alice," he said, loosening his tie.

"I feel... new," she said, sliding a glass of red wine across the table.

He drank it. It took three minutes. The Succinylcholine—a paralytic agent she had synthesized in his own lab—took hold.

James's glass shattered on the floor. He tried to stand, but his legs were lead. He fell back into the chair, his eyes wide with confusion, then terror. He couldn't move. He couldn't speak. He could only see.

"You fixed my hip," Alice said, standing over him. Her voice was devoid of emotion. "You removed the scar on my knee. You forgot that the flaws were the history, James."

She dragged him. It was shockingly easy. She pulled him by his expensive Italian ankles through the sliding glass doors, out into the expansive garden.

She had already dug the hole. It was deep, smelling of wet earth and worms. Beside it lay a simple wooden crate, barely big enough for a man.

She rolled him into the box. James stared up at her, tears of pure panic leaking from his paralyzed eyes. He was fully conscious. He would feel everything.

"I am not Alice," she whispered, leaning close to his ear. "Alice is dead. I am just the cancer you forgot to cut out."

She nailed the lid shut. The sound of the hammer striking the nails echoed in the night. She pushed the crate into the hole.

She began to shovel the dirt. Thud. Thud. Thud. She didn't stop until the ground was flat.

Chapter 11: The Drop

Alice stood on the Golden Gate Bridge. It was 3:00 AM. The fog was thick, swirling around the orange cables like ghosts.

She looked down at the black water, hundreds of feet below. But she wasn't aiming for the water. She was looking at the southbound lane of the highway beneath the span, where the headlights of early morning trucks cut through the gloom.

She had finished her purpose. She was an abomination, a loop in nature that needed to be closed. She couldn't live as a copy. She couldn't live with the memories that weren't hers.

She climbed the railing. The wind whipped her hair—hair that would never grey, never fall out.

"Goodbye, James," she said to the wind.

She leaned forward and let gravity take her.

She didn't scream. She fell silently, a perfect angel