Rent is due.
I wouldn’t even have this problem if Dad hadn’t Ghoststreamed me the minute I turned eighteen. No warning, no conversation—just out. Like the second the clock hit midnight, I stopped being his responsibility.
One day I was his kid, the next I was extra weight he couldn’t wait to drop. He didn’t even help me pack. Just tossed a garbage bag at my feet and told me to figure it out. Like I was supposed to magically know how to survive with nothing.
I finally landed a loop work job, but it turns out loop work just means credscrape enough to cover rent and bills. Forget food. Forget living.
Decent is a lie people tell you when they don’t want to admit how close you are to drowning.
I eat cereal for dinner most nights. Sometimes dry, because milk is a luxury now. Synthetic dairy’s cheaper, but it tastes like melted plastic and algae.
Most nights, I sit in this tiny apartment, counting the change in my pocket like it’s some kind of ritual. I add it up twice, even though I already know the answer: not enough.
Cred chips. Microcoins. Some old-world pennies I still keep out of habit. The actual numbers don’t matter anymore. Half the time, digital credits vanish before you can blink—auto-deducted by rent bots, utilities, mandatory building security fees.
What’s left clinks together in my pocket like loose teeth. All sharp edges and no solutions.

The neighbors were fighting again.
Same voices, same pattern. I could practically script it at this point.
Thin smartwalls don’t keep much out—not sound, not cold, not the feeling that you’re trapped in someone else’s life. I sat on the floor by the window, knees pulled to my chest, listening to every slammed cabinet and muffled curse from the apartment next door. Same argument as last time. Probably the same ending, too.
A crash. A door slam. Someone crying into a pillow.
I stopped trying to tell if it was the husband or the wife anymore. It didn’t matter. Sad is sad.

Part of me wanted to turn up the old flatscreen in the corner, drown them out with some late-night infostream selling bio-blenders or cut-proof kitchen bots I could never afford. But I didn’t.
I already knew the script of those, too.
Noise is company when you don’t have any.

I picked at the corner of the rent envelope on the table. It wasn’t sealed yet. Half of me wondered what would happen if I just… didn’t send it in this month. Let the whole thing fall apart. Let the eviction drones show up, clipboard screens in hand, fake-apologizing while they neural-swipe the locks.
They always fake-apologize. Like it’s not their fault. Like it’s just business.
But I always send it. Somehow.
Even if it means skipping meals or pawning something else I care about.

That’s the part nobody tells you about upgrading—not the doctors, not the shiny holo-brochures at the clinic. They don’t mention how it feels to stand on the edge of something huge, like surgery, while everything else in your life is barely holding together.
The pamphlets all say gender euphoria like it’s a coupon you clip and redeem. They don’t tell you about counting coins on the floor at midnight.

I’m supposed to go in next week. Bottom bio-up. Fully covered—thank God for medi-net. But medi-net doesn’t pay rent.
Medi-net doesn’t keep the heat grid on or the cooler box working.
And what’s the point of finally getting the body that feels right if I end up homeless in it?
What’s the point of fixing the mirror if the world outside the bathroom door is still broken?

My phone rang.
I flipped open my lousy burner—a plastiplex flip model you can still find at pawn hubs. The plastic creaked like it might snap in half if I pressed too hard. I can’t even afford a real holo-screen, not with rent, bills, and everything else hanging over me.
The buttons were worn down. The screen scratched. Half the time the battery barely held a charge.

“Hello?” My voice came out scratchy.
Like I hadn’t used it in hours. Which I hadn’t.

“Hey, Isabella, whatcha doing?”
I rolled my eyes so hard it almost hurt. “Chelsea, do you have to say that every time?”

There was a pause, then a soft chuckle on the other end. “Well, yeah. You did pick Isabella from that one-hundred year old TV show Phineas and Ferb.”

Her voice always had that edge of teasing—the kind that made you want to smile even when you didn’t mean to. Old shows still make the rounds on the retro-streams. Stuff like that sticks.

I sighed, pressing my forehead against the window glass. It was cool and a little grimy, but I didn’t care. “Just because I like the name doesn’t mean you have to keep quoting the show.”

The grime left a faint smudge on my skin, but I didn’t bother wiping it off. The apartment’s auto-cleaners stopped working months ago. The landlord never sent repair bots.

“Fair enough.” Her voice softened. “So… signal check—how are you holding up?”

That’s the part that always gets me. The shift from teasing to real. Like she knows exactly when the smile drops off my face, even through a cheap burner.

I hesitated. Could’ve lied. Could’ve said fine. But my throat caught instead.
“I’m scared, Chelsea.”
“I know.”

She said it easy. Like breathing. No judgment, no fixing. Just knowing.

“My surgery’s next week, and I—” My voice cracked. “I don’t even know if I’m gonna have a place to come home to after.”
“I’ve told you—you can move in with me,” she said, soft but firm.
That tone meant business.

“I know.” I pressed my lips together, staring at the chipped plastiwall near the window frame. “I just… I don’t want to be a core-load.”

The paint coating peeled like old skin, curling at the corners. I picked at it sometimes without noticing.

There was a rustling sound on the other end—probably Chelsea shifting in her sleep pod or pacing her kitchen barefoot on the solar-tile floor like she always did when she got serious.

I pictured her in pajama pants, pacing between the synth-fridge and the hydrowave, the burner pressed to her cheek. Her kitchen was always too cold at night.

“You’re not a core-load, Iz,” she said. “You’re my patch family. Family’s not supposed to sleep on cold apartment floors worrying about rent the week before an upgrade.”

Her voice cracked a little, like she hated that this was even a conversation we had to have.

My throat tightened. I hated how kind she was. Kindness always hit harder than cruelty when you don’t feel like you deserve it.
Cruelty? You can armor up for that. Kindness gets under your skin.

“I just—what if I’m not ready?” I whispered.
“For what? To not be homeless?”

I let out a shaky laugh, but it wasn’t funny. Not really.
“For… all of it.”

I glanced down at the paperwork spread across my lap.
The smartpaper flickered slightly under my fingers. The holo-text looked heavier than it should. Like if I dropped it, it’d crash through the floor.

Womb Synthesis Procedure.

Those words stared back at me in bold letters on the smartpaper screen. It had taken me a while to decide. Weeks of back-and-forth, late-night Net searches, vid calls with doctors, scrolling through support forums until my eyes burned. Implantation? No uterus? Synthetic? Biological? I’d gone in circles until I finally landed here.

Full internal construction. Full reproductive capacity.

It’s not like the old days—not like back when trans women had to choose between a reskin and a life. Now, the tech exists to grow organs, synthesize tissue, connect everything the right way. The whole system, not just the surface.

And yeah, it’s expensive. But not for me—not this time. Universal medi-net covers it, finally. After decades of protests, lawsuits, and system overrides, they added trans reproductive care to the list. First in pilot programs, then globally.

I was lucky enough to be born late enough for that.

But even now, it’s still scary as hell.

No one talks about that part. They hype it up in the holo-brochures—“true womanhood,” “fully affirmed anatomy,” “seamless integration.” But nobody warns you about sitting on your floor at 2:00 a.m., wondering if you’re really ready to version swap your body that much.

This isn’t just surgery. It’s creating something that wasn’t there before.

I’m not just getting a vagina—I’m getting a womb.
A uterus, ovaries, the works. Biotech-grown, but fully functional. If everything goes well, I could get pregnant someday.

That’s the part that freaked me out the most. Not the pain, not the recovery—the possibility. The idea of making life with a body that never had the chance before.

And then there’s the lesbian thing.

Or—technically—a transbian. That’s what many people call it. I’ve never liked men. Not even once. It’s always been women. Always.

So for me, this isn’t about pleasing anybody else. It’s about having a body that feels like mine. One that does what it’s supposed to, not one I have to explain to someone in a bedroom later.
It’s about breathing without flinching when I see myself.

So for me, this bio-up isn’t about pleasing anyone else. It’s about being comfortable in my own skin. About looking in the mirror and not feeling like I’m wearing someone else’s body.
It’s about breathing without flinching when I see myself.

“Hey, Isabella? You still there?” Chelsea’s voice crackled through the phone, cutting into my thoughts.

I blinked, realizing I’d been tracing the same line on the screen over and over like it might change something if I just kept touching it.

“Yeah,” I breathed. My voice came out small. “I’m here.”

“You went quiet.”

“Sorry. Just… neural spin.”

“Neural spin’s dangerous this late at night,” she joked, but her tone stayed soft. She knew better than to push.

“What’s on your mind?”

I looked at the papers again, my stomach twisting.

“I’m scared, Chels.”

“I know, babe.”

“I’m scared I’m gonna finally get this—finally fix this thing I’ve carried my whole life—and then lose everything else.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. The words felt raw in my mouth.

Chelsea sighed into the phone. “You’re not gonna lose me.”

I swallowed hard. “I know.”

“And you’re not gonna lose a place to sleep either,” she added. “Not on my watch.”

There was a noise at the door—a soft scrape, then the rustle of paper sliding against the plastifloor.

My heart jumped into my throat.

My cat Bean, naturally, jumped at it like the paper was a toy she’d been waiting for all day.

“Chels, hold on,” I whispered, phone still pressed to my ear.

I crossed the room, heart thudding.

A single sheet lay just inside the doorframe, half-curled like it didn’t even want to be here.

I picked it up with shaky fingers.

Big bold letters at the top:
NOTICE TO VACATE

The holo-text blurred for a second, like my brain refused to read it.

“Isabella?” Chelsea’s voice crackled in my ear. “What is it? What just happened?”

I pressed the paper against my chest. My eyes burned.

“They’re kicking me out,” I whispered.

“How could they do that?” Chelsea’s voice shot up, sharp with anger now. “It’s only one month late! Don’t they need a court order or something?”

“Yeah,” I croaked. “Technically, yeah—they’re supposed to.”

“So this isn’t even legal?”

I sank down onto the floor, my back against the door. My knees hugged up to my chest.

The smartpaper flickered between analog texture and holo-projection like it couldn’t decide what century it belonged to.

“Welcome to baseline bug housing, Chels,” I whispered. “They count on people like me not fighting it. Poor, queer, no backup plan. We’re easy targets.”

AI landlords don’t care about ethics. They care about efficiency. And the algorithm always says: Evict the unprofitable.

Chelsea went quiet, but I could hear her breathing—tight and quick, like she wanted to punch someone but couldn’t reach through the phone.

I always wonder how the past was like because in 2125, you can call anyone instantly from anywhere.
You just can’t make the world fair.

“I’m coming over,” she said finally.

“No—Chelsea, you don’t have to—”

“Shut up, Iz. I’m already grabbing my keys.”

The phone went blank.

Chelsea had hung up. No goodbye—just action.
Like I’m coming over meant there was no room left for argument.

I stayed there on the couch, phone still in my hand, staring at nothing.

The walls glowed faint blue from the static ads they projected sometimes—cheap apartment perks in grindloop towers like this. Rent subsidized if you let the walls run ads while you sleep.

Tonight, I didn’t even notice what they were selling.

Everything felt distant. Like I wasn’t inside my body anymore.

And then the tears came.

Quiet at first. Just a sting in my eyes, a lump in my throat.

But once the first tear slid down my cheek, the rest followed like they’d been waiting all night for permission.

I buried my face in my hands and let it happen.

The holo-clock blinked past 2:00 a.m., pulsing silently.

Everything I’d been holding back—the fear, the anger, the what-if-this-goes-wrong core-load—poured out in slow, shaky breaths.

I was supposed to be excited. This upgrade was supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel.

But right now?
It just felt like another thing I might lose.

****

Ten minutes later, there was a knock at my door.
I wiped my face on the sleeve of my hoodie, even though I knew I still looked like hell. Eyes red, nose running. Didn’t matter. Chelsea had seen me worse.
She’d seen me at three in the morning once, face streaked with mascara and snot after my first code-crash. She didn’t flinch then, and I knew she wouldn’t now.

When I opened the door, there she was—standing in the hallway with a stack of moving boxes under one arm and a roll of packing tape dangling from her wrist.
Her hair was tied back in a messy bun, pajama pants tucked into sneakers, like she’d barely paused to get dressed before racing over. Her keys hung from a lanyard looped around her wrist, swaying as she shifted the boxes. Her holo-glasses blinked softly in standby mode. She must’ve forgotten to turn them off.

“Hey,” she said softly.

I blinked at her, my stomach twisting. “You didn’t have to—”

“I know I didn’t have to.” She pushed past me gently, like it was already decided. “But I did. So scoot.”

Her shoulder brushed mine as she stepped inside, bringing with her the faint smell of peppermint gum and cold night air. The hallway’s recycled oxygen always smelled sterile, but somehow she still carried outside code with her.

I stepped aside.

Chelsea set the boxes down by the couch and looked around my apartment like she was sizing it up for battle. Her lips pressed into a tight line, like she was holding back the kind of lecture only a best friend could get away with.

Her eyes flicked to the stained plasticarpet, the half-dead window plant that barely got enough LED light, the sagging bookshelf I’d found on the curb last year. She didn’t say a word, but I could tell what she was thinking.

“This place hard lags anyway,” she muttered, tearing a strip of tape with her teeth. “You’re coming home with me.”

I didn’t have much stuff.
Mostly clothes. A few books. My old flatscreen that barely worked unless you smacked the side of it just right. That was about it.

Half my wardrobe was thrift store hoodies and shirts from Pride events. My books were dog-eared and secondhand, paperbacks so worn the spines didn’t even crack when you opened them.

Most normal people read on ocular stream or in full-sensory holos. But me? I liked paper. Paper feels real.

Still—I felt overclocked.
My chest was tight, like everything was happening too fast and not fast enough at the same time. Like I couldn’t breathe right.
Packing meant it was real.

Chelsea popped open one of the boxes and started folding my hoodies into it like this was just any other Tuesday night. Like we were getting ready for a softpatch night instead of an eviction.

Her hands moved fast—muscle memory from every time she’d helped me clean up after a bad night or reorganize my closet when I was glitching. She didn’t ask what went where. She just knew.

Bean padded out of the bedroom—tail flicking, eyes half-lidded like she didn’t give a damn about what was going on. She hopped onto the couch, gave the room a lazy once-over, then picked the nearest empty box and climbed right in.

Like this was all for her.
Her box now.

“Hey, Bean,” Chelsea said softly, scratching behind her ears before going back to packing.

Bean purred, low and lazy, as if everything was fine. As if home wasn’t shifting beneath our feet.

I watched them—Chelsea moving through my life like she belonged there, Bean acting like nothing had changed—and something in my chest cracked a little more.

The part of me that wanted to stay strong? It faltered.
The part that thought I could handle this alone? Ghoststreamed.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I whispered.

Chelsea didn’t look up. She just kept folding.
The sound of cardboard creasing and tape peeling filled the space between us.

“Too late,” she said. “We’re already doing it.”

****

About an hour later, everything I owned—and one frightened, wide-eyed tuxedo cat—was crammed into the back of Chelsea’s car.
Her EV hatchback hummed quietly, battery pack glowing faint green under the dash. It wasn’t big enough for all the boxes, but Chelsea made it work.
The seatbelts were looped awkwardly around the stacks like that would somehow keep my life from stream-locking in the backseat. My backpack sat at my feet, stuffed so full the zipper barely closed.

Bean was curled up in her carrier, pupils huge, breathing fast like the world was ending.
Maybe for her it was. For me too, in a way.

Her fur puffed up slightly, ears twitching with every new sound—the soft whoosh of auto-traffic, the low drone of delivery drones overhead. Her little pink nose pressed against the carrier door, fogging it up with each sharp breath.

I wanted to tell her it was going to be okay, but the words stuck in my throat.
I didn’t know if it was true.

I sat in the passenger seat, clutching the keys to the apartment. My hand was tight around them, metal digging into my palm.
The sharp edges left little crescent marks in my skin. I welcomed the sting. At least it meant I could still feel something.

Then, finally, the anger bubbled up.

“Fuck this apartment,” I said, my voice sharp in the quiet car.

The words came out louder than I expected. Louder than the core-load in my chest.

Chelsea glanced at me but didn’t say anything. Just let me have it.
Her fingers flexed slightly on the steering wheel, but she kept her eyes on the nav-display.

We pulled up to a red light, and that’s when I saw him—a homeless man sitting near the curb, wrapped in a tattered blanket, eyes glazed over from cold or exhaustion or both.
He looked like part of the sidewalk. Like someone the city had forgotten how to see.

No one even stopped for people like him anymore—not with AI social services scanning for biometrics instead of talking to people.

I rolled down the window without thinking.
Cold air rushed into the car, biting at my face.

“Hey, you,” I called.

My voice cracked a little, but it still carried.

He blinked, looking up slowly like he wasn’t sure I was talking to him.
His face was lined and raw, lips chapped, eyes the color of old denim washed out too many times.

“There’s a room available for the rest of the month. Or as long as you want.” I held the keys out through the window, dangling them from my fingers. “Go softpatch in there.”

The keys jangled quietly in the air between us. My heart pounded, but my hand stayed steady.

Chelsea stared at me, eyes wide—but she didn’t stop me.
She knew better than to interrupt whatever this was.

The man shuffled closer, confused but cautious. His fingers brushed mine as he took the keys.
His hand was cold. Bone-thin. Nails cracked. He looked at me like he wasn’t sure if this was a trick.

“Why should I care what happens now?” I mumbled—not really to him, just to the night air.

The neon streetlamps painted everything in soft violet. The world kept turning, like none of this mattered.

Chelsea reached over and squeezed my hand.
Her palm was warm against mine, steady. Her thumb brushed across my knuckles once, grounding me.

“You still care,” she whispered. “That’s why.”

Bean meowed softly from the backseat, like she agreed.
Or maybe she was just hungry.
Same thing, really.