Nicki had changed

Rick (using Tiffany's money) bribed an Uber driver to let him use his car for the evening, then went to pick up Nicki at the café she'd recommended.

He hardly recognized the woman when she emerged. She was still Nicki but she somehow looked younger, more innocent, less developed.

He grasped her chin and turned her face so he could see her up close. "Okay Nicki. What the hell happened to you?"

"Wh--what do you mean?"

"Come on, you know you've changed."

"I've been sick. I guess this is just a side effect."

Although he was watching her closely, he didn't see the signs, obvious to someone on bio-DNA, that she was lying.

"What kind of sick?"

I've been puking all night and my skin gets all bloody. It's completely disgusting. Do you think I could have caught something at the gym?"

"No I don't. Have you been taking medication?"

"Yeah, my dad took me to this gross doctor. He pawed at me and said I was sick and gave dad these pills he makes me take."

"Have you noticed anything else changing?"

"Yeah, I think I'm going crazy. It's like I can see beneath people's skins. Almost like I can see what they're thinking, except I can't. But I can tell when they're lying sometimes and I never used to be able to. Anyway, where are you going to take me?"

He'd been planning on taking her to bed, getting her talking, satiating her body. But that plan had changed. Sure Nicki was eighteen but she didn't look eighteen. Thanks to the bio-DNA her father, with the help of whatever crooked doctor he'd conned into helping him, had somehow turned back her biological clock, creating every pedophile's ultimate dream... a "woman" who was of legal age but who was physically young.

He consulted his burner phone and came across a coffee shop in Allen offering a live folk guitar performance. That sounded good to him... public enough that he didn't have to worry about having to perform sexually but with enough background noise that he could talk to Nicki without fear of being overheard.

Somewhat to his surprise, Nicki didn't object. Apparently her father never took her anyplace so plebian so she though folk guitar sounded exotic and strange.

Once there, he bought Nicki a beverage only remotely related to coffee, found a secluded table, and plopped down beside her.

She draped herself over him, stroking his thighs and chest. "I thought you'd want to go someplace more private."

"How have you and your father been doing since your mother's death?" he asked.

"Oh, great. Dad is really busy at work but he's doing to take me to New York again next weekend."

"And how do you feel about your new appearance. You know you look really young now."

"You know what's funny. That intern who took your job. She's been sick too and she's also looking really young. It must be some new kind of disease."

It was a disease all right. It was Dan Hughes's pedophilia disorder in action. Rick shouldn't have been surprised Dan was using bio-DNA to pursue his fetishes but he was. Surely he saw the danger in treating people without their consent although, come to think of it, maybe the intern had consented.

"But you'd rather go back to looking like yourself, right?"

"Well hopefully that will happen soon."

That was something Rick wouldn't count on. Especially as Dan apparently controlled the app that let the user modify bio-DNA's performance.

"Tell me about the creepy doctor, Nicki."

"He was weird. He looked more like some sort of bodybuilder than a doctor. He had a shaved head and was probably six six or maybe even bigger. And his office was at Dad's plant and he didn't have a nurse or anything. Dad said he was the company doctor and he could see me right away. It's one of the privileges of being an executive."

There were a lot of privileges of being an executives... including being able to dispose of an inconvenient wife and replacing her with an artificially de-aged daughter.

"Hey," Nicki continued. "This place is boring. Let's go someplace where we can dance."