The Counterfeit Voice

1 Austin knelt on the hardwood floor of my apartment, his hands cradling the polished mahogany box like a sacred relic. With practiced reverence, he unlatched the brass filigree clasp. "Nora, sweetheart," he murmured, his hazel eyes wide and swimming with that manufactured devotion I used to mistake for worship. "Sing 'Silver Lining' for me today. Just one pass." Silver Lining. Of course. It was always that song. In my past life, that was the very first melody he had asked me to feed into the box. When the final note dissolved into the quiet room, he had pulled me into his arms, burying his face in the crook of my neck, whispering that my voice was God’s personal gift to him. Three months later, when Whitney Davenport stood on the national stage under a blizzard of golden confetti, clutching my trophy and singing that exact same ballad with my exact resonance, Austin had held her the exact same way. Some men don’t write love letters. They write templates, waiting for a fresh recipient. "Why aren't you singing, babe?" Austin’s thumb pressed into a hidden brass catch near the base. From the seam of the inner velvet lining, a needle—slender as a strand of silk, glowing with a faint, predatory crimson—extended a fraction of an inch. In my first life, I had believed him when he told me it was a mechanical acoustic stylus, a rare nineteenth-century patent designed to capture the organic timbre of the human voice. It wasn't until I was choking on my own blood in the backstage corridor that her father, Dean Davenport, leaned over me and whispered the truth: the needle drew out the resonant essence of the vocal cords, thread by microscopic thread. Sing into it for a hundred days, and your voice ceased to exist in your own throat. It transferred cleanly, irrevocably, into whoever held the master vessel. I reached up, my fingers lightly brushing the front of my throat. "My neck aches today, Austin. Can we skip it? Just for this afternoon?" The warmth in Austin’s smile flickered, freezing around the edges for a split second before snapping back into place. "Just one track, Nora. The collegiate showcase is three months away. You can’t afford to be fragile right now." Fragile. He had used that word when I was shivering with a hundred-and-two fever, forcing me to sit upright for an hour while the red needle hummed against the air. I thought he was looking at me with frantic concern. Now I understood the panic in his eyes: every minute I rested was a minute Whitney had to wait to steal what was mine. I took the box into my lap, pulling my lips into an obedient, bruised pout. "Let me eat something first. My blood sugar is low." Relief washed over his features, and he reached out to ruffle my hair with casual condescension. "That’s my girl. I knew you’d be sensible." If they were so eager to harvest a voice, I decided then and there to give them a harvest they would never forget. Ten minutes later, I carried the antique mahogany box down to the campus dining hall, sliding it discreetly onto the metal ledge beside the hot-food pick-up window. The lunch lady, a broad-shouldered woman named Donna who had worked the line for twenty-five years, was currently bellowing at a sophomore across the steam trays. "Crispy chicken basket is eight bucks! You don't like the price, don't eat it!" "Donna, come on, it was six-fifty last week!" "Last week the price of poultry hadn't jumped, and my ex-husband hadn't bounced his child support check! Eight bucks! Move the line!" Inside the box, the crimson needle pulsed with a sudden, erratic shimmer. I carried my tray to a corner booth by the window. My phone vibrated against the laminate tabletop. Austin: Did you finish the session? I snapped a quick, angled photo of the closed lid resting on the table and typed back: Just finished. Feeling completely in the zone today. He fired back a kissing-face emoji instantly. A heartbeat later, a notification popped up in the three-person group chat set up for our showcase production team. It was from Whitney Davenport: Did she suspect anything? Same room at the boutique hotel tonight? Two seconds later, the message was unsent. A private direct message from Austin lit up my screen within ten seconds: Whitney was asking about the audio mixing suite. Don’t read into it, babe. I stared at the glowing glass. In my past life, Austin disappeared every Wednesday evening, claiming he was in the sound booth calibrating the high-frequency monitors. Every time he came back, his flannel collar carried the faint, powdery trace of gardenia petals—Whitney’s signature perfume. They hadn't been tuning equipment. They had been tuning positions. I sent back a docile smiley face. Of course I trust you. After all, a dead girl doesn't climb out of the grave just to argue. She climbs back to watch the performance from the front row. On Tuesday, I walked the mahogany box straight into the varsity men's dorms. The front desk proctor barely glanced up from his tablet. "No unescorted guests after hours." I offered the box to Austin’s roommate, a six-foot-four defensive end who was heading through the turnstile with a gym bag. "Could you leave this on Austin’s desk? He told me he needs ambient, real-world acoustics to calibrate our mix." The linebacker looked at the ornate box with mild bewilderment. "Ambient noise?" Ten minutes later, the third floor of the athletic tower erupted into its standard afternoon symphony. Down the hall, someone was butchering a Bon Jovi hook, howling so far off-key it sounded like a dying lawnmower. In the communal showers, an offensive tackle was belting vintage country ballads at top volume. Across the hall, an open door echoed with frantic controller clicks and violent, high-decibel profanities: "Push the lane, you idiot! What are you doing, camping in the weeds like you’re waiting on a tax refund?!" In the corner of Austin's room, the crimson stylus glowed with electric, frenzied enthusiasm. When Austin finally tracked the box down and brought it to the rehearsal studio that evening, his face was the color of curdled milk. "Why the hell was this in my dorm room?" he demanded, slamming the door behind him. I wrapped my arms around his elbow, looking up at him with wide, guileless eyes. "You said great vocal work needs life. You said it needs raw, organic texture." "It’s supposed to record your voice, Nora!" "Did they not sound passionate?" Right on cue, from the open courtyard below the studio window, a drunken frat brother belted out a thunderous, operatic fragment of a commercial jingle. I nodded thoughtfully. "Such raw emotion." Austin’s jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched beneath his skin. He couldn't smash the priceless device, so he spent five agonizing minutes buffing the polished wood with the sleeve of his sweater. Sitting on the leather sofa behind him was Whitney. She was draped in Austin’s oversized corduroy jacket, the collar pulled just low enough to reveal a fresh, reddish bruise on the slope of her collarbone. In my previous life, I had asked why she was wearing his jacket. Austin had claimed she had a sudden drop in blood pressure and was shivering, so he lent it to her as a gentlemanly gesture. I had felt so guilty for my petty jealousy that I bought her an artisanal box of dark chocolates the next morning to apologize. Looking back, the chocolate was probably helpful. They had spent all night burning calories; they needed the glucose. "Nora, you look exhausted," Whitney said, pulling the jacket tighter and shifting slightly closer to Austin on the couch. "Are you taking your vitamins?" I stared at the mark on her neck, letting my voice waver with fragile exhaustion. "My throat is burning. It hurts to swallow." Austin immediately looked away, checking the clasp on the box. "That’s normal vocal fatigue. Professional singers push through it." "Maybe we should pause for a few days," I whispered, pressing my palms to my throat. "I'm terrified I’m doing permanent damage." A heavy silence dropped over the studio. Whitney let out a soft, pitying chuckle. "Nobody said conservatory training was easy, Nora. I vocalize until midnight every single night, and I don't whine about it." Of course she didn't whine. At midnight, her vocal exercises were happening in hotel sheets with Austin. I was the one doing the heavy lifting for her vocal cords. I was the one sustaining her boyfriend. Austin stepped between us, sliding the mahogany box onto the table in front of me. "Just thirty more minutes, Nora. Once you win the national showcase, everything changes. I’ve already put down deposits for a global multi-cam broadcast—eight dedicated camera angles, sixteen concert-grade line arrays, and front-page algorithmic placement on every streaming platform." In my past life, he told me that broadcast was his grand romantic surprise for me. It was only when the stage lights blinded me that I realized the lens was never calibrated for my face. I chewed on my lower lip. "Did that cost a lot of money?" "Nothing is too expensive for your future," he said smoothly. Whitney looked at him, her lips curving into a secret, triumphant smile. Under the shadow of the mixing desk, Austin’s index finger brushed the back of Whitney’s knuckles. When I looked up, their hands snapped apart. They genuinely believed that even if I saw them, my naive little brain would never connect the dots. Austin had always referred to Whitney as "like a little sister." A sister he kissed with tongue. "All right," I said softly, pulling the box toward me. "I’ll do the thirty minutes." Austin smiled, resting a hand against my cheek. "That’s my girl." I stood up to fetch a bottle of water from the cooler. In the reflection of the studio's double-paned acoustic glass, I saw Austin lean down and press his mouth against Whitney’s lips. Whitney kept her eyes open, locking her gaze with my reflection, arching a single, taunting eyebrow. I lifted the water bottle and gave her a small, pleasant smile. She blinked, slightly thrown by my lack of reaction, before rolling her eyes in dismissive contempt. She thought I was blind. She didn't know that my eyes had been shattered open on the concrete floor of a theater in another life. This time, my vision was crystal clear. On the thirtieth day, Dean Davenport called for an interim acoustic test. He ushered me out of the master recording suite, allowing only Austin to accompany Whitney inside. Standing in the carpeted hallway, with my ear pressed against the soundproof seal, I heard Whitney open her mouth. The first sustained vibrato came through the monitor. It was terrifyingly accurate—a seventy percent match to the natural, velvet warmth of my upper register. Whitney’s voice shook with manic excitement. "Another seventy days, Dad? Will I completely possess it?" Dean Davenport’s voice was low, clinical. "Don't get ahead of yourself. The harmonic spectrum has too much noise floor right now. The timbre is unstable." Austin let out an arrogant snort. "Nora does whatever I tell her to do. If it needs cleaning up, I’ll make her re-track every single session." I looked down at the mahogany box tucked inside my tote bag. They thought the dining hall and the varsity dorm were just careless flukes. They had no idea what kind of acoustic palette I was about to curate for them. On Wednesday, I set the box beneath the bleachers during the varsity track meet. The head coach blew a steel whistle directly above it for two consecutive hours. On Thursday, I left it in the auditorium podium while the Dean of Students rehearsed his annual campus conduct address. "Listen to me, freshmen! Zero tolerance for indecent exposure in the botanical gardens! And I don't want to see anyone doing tactical push-ups behind the athletic shed after curfew!" On Friday morning, I tucked the box behind the plumbing fixture in the second-floor library restroom. In the adjacent stall, a graduate student was sobbing hysterically into her speakerphone: "He told me he was single! He swore he lived alone! His kid is in seventh grade, Sarah! Seventh grade!" It was a deeply moving piece of human drama. I let the box capture the full forty-minute breakdown. By the time Whitney went in for her next calibration, she barely made it through the opening phrase of the ballad before a piercing, deafening whistle tore out of her throat. Dean Davenport ripped his studio headphones off with a curse. Austin burst out of the control booth, his face flushed. "Nora! What the hell are you doing when you record at home?" I pressed a hand to my reddened throat, letting my eyes fill with helpless tears. "I’m just singing the scales you gave me. Is it bad?" "It’s full of acoustic garbage! Why does it sound like a steam valve?" "Maybe... maybe my voice is breaking down, Austin." I let a single tear spill over my lashes. "Should we just drop out of the showcase?" "No!" His response was violently fast, almost savage. Catching himself, he immediately dropped his tone back into a manipulative purr. "I mean... we’ve come too far, Nora. If we quit now, all that preparation, all that sacrifice... it’s gone." I knew that script by heart. In my past life, when I started coughing up streaks of blood on day eighty, he had said the exact same thing about not wasting our hard work. Back then, I thought he meant my hard work. He meant their heist. Austin pulled out his phone, flashing a financial confirmation screen in front of my face. "Look. I’ve already locked in the broadcast contract. I bought the promotional packages. I even leveraged the equity on my condo, my car, and the family trust shares my dad transferred to me into the competitive showcase syndicate." I gasped, putting on a show of total shock. "You put all your money into the betting pool? On who?" He pinched my cheek affectionately. "On you, obviously." I looked at the transaction ID at the bottom of the screen. I recognized that alphanumeric string from my past life. That ticket was tied to contestant number seven. Whitney Davenport. In my first life, when Whitney took the crown, Austin cleaned out the syndicate pool, walking away with a multi-million-dollar windfall. He had taken my voice, my songs, and my life to fund their luxury lifestyle. This time, he had gone all in. Everything he owned was on the table. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing out loud. "What if... what if she loses?" Austin scoffed, brimming with unchecked hubris. "Whit—I mean, how could an elite vocal performance lose?" He caught his slip with smooth arrogance. Whitney walked out of the vocal booth, handing him a water bottle with a radiant, condescending smirk. "Austin means the classical-pop division is a lock for us. Nora, you aren't getting cold feet, are you?" I shook my head, wide-eyed and meek. "Never." That afternoon, I took the box to the city zoo. At the primate exhibit, three baboons engaged in a territorial screeching match right against the glass. In the aviary, a peacock shrieked its mating call at the top of its lungs. Finally, at the petting paddock, an agitated alpaca leaned over the wooden fence and sneezed a wet, viscous cloud of saliva directly across the hand-carved mahogany lid. The zookeeper rushed over, mortified. "Miss, I am so sorry! Let me get some paper towels!" I wiped the brass latch with a smile. "Don't worry about it at all. It was just contributing to the arts." That night, Austin took the box for the final overnight transfer sequence. The moment he left my apartment, I sat at my laptop and uploaded every single original composition, every dated draft manuscript, every rough voice memo from my phone, and every multi-track stem to the United States Copyright Office portal and a secure, time-stamped digital vault. The confirmation email chimed on my screen. The registration timestamp was dated exactly three months before Whitney Davenport’s name had ever been associated with a single note. My phone rang. It was Austin. "Nora, tomorrow is the final transfer session. Whitney is coming over to keep you company during the warm-ups." I looked at the official federal registration certificate glowing on my monitor. "Sounds wonderful," I said softly. A stolen voice might be tricked into wearing a different face. Time-stamped metadata, however, never lies. The night of the National Collegiate Vocal Showcase, the university’s grand auditorium was packed to its three-thousand-seat capacity. Flanking the proscenium were sixteen towering stacks of line-array speakers. Eight high-definition broadcast cameras hovered on mechanical jibs, sweeping over the sea of spectators and industry scouts. Outside, the giant LED screen on the plaza mirrored the stage in pristine 4K. Austin wore a tailored midnight-blue suit, pacing backstage with a headset clamped to his ear, barking orders at the tech crew like an executive producer. "Raise the jib on camera three! Check the international feed routing! Leave the syndicate betting portal open until the final sixty-second countdown—maximize the volume!" A stagehand approached him, holding a digital clipboard. "Mr. Ross, leveraging your entire asset portfolio on contestant Davenport is an extreme risk. If the judging panel—" Austin cut him off with a patronizing wave. "She’s not losing. After tonight, her vocal cords are going to be the most expensive commodity in the commercial music industry." I stood just beyond the green room door, hearing every syllable clearly. In my past life, he had whispered those exact words into my ear while I sat at my vanity mirror: Nora, you’re going to be the most expensive voice in the country. It was never a compliment. He was just calculating his profit margin on the meat. Austin turned and spotted me, his expression tightening briefly. "When did you get here?" "Just now," I said, my voice timid, innocent. "Where is my wardrobe? I thought I was performing after the intermission." He hesitated, then grabbed my wrist, pulling me into the shadow of the lighting rig. "Nora, you aren't going on tonight." "What? Why?" "Your vocal cords are too inflamed," he whispered, his tone dripping with fake urgency. "Whitney is going to perform your set as a surrogate test. If she takes the grand prize, I’ll bring you on stage during the press conference and publicly credit your songwriting." Surrogate. In my first life, Whitney was my surrogate singer. My surrogate champion. My surrogate heiress. And finally, the surrogate sleeping in my boyfriend’s bed. She was truly the most generous woman alive. I reached up, clutching my throat, letting my lower lip tremble. "Austin... my chest hurts so much. Can we please just stop? I have this horrible feeling that if this keeps going, I’ll never be able to speak again." An ugly flash of impatience darted across his eyes. He caught both my hands, squeezing them tight enough to leave red marks, though his voice remained as sweet as poisoned honey. "Don't lose your mind now, Nora. Tonight is the culmination of everything. I spent thousands on the broadcast infrastructure, the platform features, the global syndication—all so the world could hear your soul." I looked toward the stage, where Whitney was adjusting the in-ear monitors. "But that isn't me out there." Austin leaned in, his breath warm against my ear. "She represents you. What’s the difference between you and me, Nora? We're one and the same." That line was familiar, too. When he took my first copyrighted lead sheet, he said lovers didn't need legal boundaries. Then he registered the publishing under Whitney’s name. He had drawn the boundary line with surgical precision. I lowered my eyes, nodding faintly. "Okay." Austin let out a long, satisfied exhale. He leaned down and pressed a dry, lingering kiss to my forehead. "The second this showcase ends, Nora, I’m putting a ring on your finger." Ten feet away, Whitney caught sight of the kiss, her expression instantly curdling into pure venom. The moment Austin turned back toward the audio board, Whitney strode over, her four-inch stilettos clicking sharply against the stage floor. "Did you hear him?" she hissed, leaning close, her eyes glittering with cold malice. "Global syndication. Ten million concurrent viewers. Once I finish this set, you won't even be qualified to tune my guitar strings." I looked down at the hem of her designer gown, gently smoothing away a stray thread near the silk seam. "Then you'd better give them an unforgettable show, Whitney." "Obviously," she sneered, tilting her chin up. "Some things naturally belong to people who actually have the pedigree to hold them." In my past life, holding my crystal trophy under the stage lights, she had said those exact words to my face. When I demanded to know if she felt any shame stealing another woman's life, she laughed, calling me a pathetic peasant who couldn't protect her own property. And when Austin pushed me backward off the mezzanine railing, Whitney had stood right beside him, watching my body plummet toward the orchestra pit, not a single drop of blood touching her pristine white hem. The emcee’s voice boomed through the auditorium speakers: "Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome tonight’s presumptive frontrunner—the extraordinary Whitney Davenport!" The crowd erupted into thunderous applause. On the master monitor, the global streaming counter ticked past twelve million viewers. The syndicate betting pool spiked to its absolute zenith. Austin stood at the master control console, his face glowing with triumphant euphoria as he slammed the master fader up. "Lock the betting portal! All eight camera feeds, track Whitney!" Center stage, Whitney lifted the gold-plated microphone. In the front row of the VIP box, Dean Davenport gripped the railing, his knuckles white with greedy anticipation. Austin caught my eye from across the technical bay and flashed me a confident, thumbs-up sign. They truly believed the hundred-day harvest was complete. They truly believed my voice, my music, and my soul were trapped inside that wooden box, ready to be poured into Whitney’s throat. Whitney looked down at me from beneath the spotlights, her lips parting in the glorious, arrogant smile of a victor. The opening orchestral sweep filled the hall. Whitney drew a deep, theatrical breath, lifted the mic to her lips, and began to sing—