Page 1 of Skyn (After the End #3)

The Boy is Mine

“Ready, Fawl?” The technician doesn’t wait for my answer. He’s already adjusting dials, checking levels, and pressing buttons with the detached efficiency of someone who stopped caring a long time ago.

My mouth is dry. I nod, though my head feels heavy, thick with something that could be fear or excitement or both.

The machine shifts. I try not to look, but my eyes betray me, dragging over the flecks of dried blood and bits of hair still clinging to the metal pinchers.

A code violation if I’ve ever seen one. This hulking, grotesque, buzzing thing is about to bore a five-carat lab diamond into my collarbone.

No anesthesia, not even a belt to bite down on.

Above me, a screen flickers to life. A man appears, dark-skinned, cybernetic, polished to a gleaming perfection that makes him look carved. No way this thing was born like the rest of us. Ben Iku’s voice rumbles in my ear, and I’m surprised at the flutter in my belly. He seems so close.

“Hi, I’m Ben Iku. Welcome to your Diamond Information System status. As the sector’s top employer of bright minds, we hope you’ll consider a position with Iku Industries, manufacturer of Iku MEAT and custom time pieces. With Iku Industries, your belly is full and your days are numbered.”

I nearly laugh. A corporate welcome video playing over the symphony of rusting machinery slicing through flesh.

The absurdity of his face here makes me want to scream.

Especially considering their latest cloning breakthrough Iku MEAT has made dozens of people deathly ill.

Why are calender makers and watchmakers suddenly pumping out mystery protein anyway?

“Lie back,” the technician tells me, gesturing toward the table.

I do as I’m told, my body stiff. The old leather creaks under my weight. My breath comes short. The machine whirs louder. The drill—God, the drill—descends, its needle-sharp tip glints under the flickering light.

“Just relax.”

Oh, sure. Let me just go ahead and chill while a bot built out of salvaged parts burrows into my chest. Cool, cool, cool.

Cold metal presses against my skin. A bright, searing pain—then nothing.

The technician steps back. “There. Done.”

I open my eyes and look down. The skin around my collarbone is red, tender, but the diamond is there—gleaming bright, even in the dim light. I lift my fingers to touch it, half expecting it to be hot, half expecting it to disappear, like this is all some fever dream.

Ten years. Ten years, and here it is. A single gleaming promise lodged into my skin.

I went from an unmodded zero percenter to a one percenter. It wasn’t nothing.

Josh should be here. My family should be here.

But work credits are so sparse that people don’t really risk taking days off.

And someone as driven as my fiancé wouldn’t dream of compromising our goal.

Honestly, this diamond feels like more than a career move.

It’s a relationship rip cord too. I’ve been ignoring this yawning distance, pushing down the uneasy feeling that Josh is somehow grossed out by me.

He touches me less. He turns his head just slightly when we kiss.

On the occasion we do make love, he wants only cyborg play where I pretend to be emotionless while he pumps away.

It’s the stress. He’s just focused on our escape plan, on getting us aboveground. Now that I have the diamond, now that we’re equals, things will settle.

The diamond will fix this.

Josh and I are moving aboveground, and Diamond status in the Information System is unlimited. Not that I would need a job aboveground. He says all he wants to do is pamper me and a part of me wonders what a life of leisure could feel like. We’ve worked hard to get where we are.

We did it.

We finally did it.

I feel triumphant in this implant place, but I don’t linger. I pull my jacket on, shove open the heavy door, and step back out into the tunnels of the mines.

The transition is instant, like walking through a tear in the world.

The stark, clinical brightness of the implant clinic vanishes behind me, swallowed by the damp, amber-lit underground.

The walls are tight and uneven, carved from rock and reinforced with rusted steel beams. Overhead, bundles of frayed wires run like veins, feeding power to the flickering lamps bolted to the ceiling.

The air is thick with the scent of damp stone, of sweat, of machinery burning too hot.

This is home. But not for much longer.

I slip into the steady rhythm of the underground.

The weight of the diamond in my skin is foreign, but my body is the same, my muscles knowing every twist and turn, every shortcut in the labyrinthine corridors.

I cut through the narrow side paths, ducking under low-hanging pipes and stepping over loose grates and discarded bolts.

The benefit of not having any heavy body modifications is that I am fast. I push through the crowds, the press of bodies making it impossible to move without brushing against sweat-slicked skin or pinching on metal plating.

Some people look at me with flickering cybernetic eyes or force me off the main walkway, with their haphazard metal bodies, poorly maintained and rusting at the joints.

Others have no mods, their bodies raw, soft, all flesh and bone, too human in a place so terrified of fragility.

The underground is always shifting. Metal carts rattle along uneven rails, carrying ore and salvage through the tunnels.

Vendors lean out of their stalls, calling over the din, trying to push their goods-nutrient packs, bootleg repair kits, and faded scraps of fabric worn thin from too many years in circulation. This world doesn’t stop for anyone.

But I feel different now—marked. A single gleaming stone is set into my skin. My fiancé and I will be abovegrounders. Everything is going perfectly.

I burst through the door of the Lamb Place; I must have rubbed my canvas overalls on every machine I passed because, by the time I get to the restaurant, I look like I just left an engine room.

Josh is sitting at our table, his head bent as he stares at a small oily screen. He is the most determined man I know. The first day I met him, he told me he was getting out of the mines, and I believed him. He never stops thinking of his next step.

And he doesn’t belong down here anymore, not since the augmentation. That shining new shoulder is a symbol, a ticket out of this place. I’m so proud of it—displayed by a cut out of the smart blazer, twinkling in the candlelight. I count three women elbowing each other when they pass him.

Sorry, girls, that boy is mine.

I slip over to our table, holding my certificate behind my back.

Josh meets my gaze, and whoa—something in his face makes the elation drain from my body.

I open my mouth, but he speaks first.

“Fawl.” His voice is soft, tired. “You’re late, and you look a mess…”

“I know, but let me tell you why—”

“Fawl. This is the nicest place in the sector.” It is. The tables are small, the chairs mismatched, and the ceiling hangs low. But by God, it’s one of the few spots belowground that serve Iku MEAT. Which, despite it killing nearly sixty people, It’s too high status for Josh to stop wolfing it down.

“This is the type of thing I’m talking about. We make plans—you show up when you want to. Dressed…how you want to. I just”—he glances over my shoulder to the painted mirrors pretending to be windows—“don’t think we’re aligned about what’s important to us.”

No, this… This isn’t right. The world around me narrows, and my vision tunnels to a pinprick.

The Soap Paradox—that’s what this is. It’s one of the defining features of my life in the mines, really. You squeeze a bar of soap too hard, and it shoots right out of your hand. Hopes and dreams? Just as slippery.

I thought I’d beaten it. I really did. Ten years ago, back in secondary school, there was this field trip aboveground.

I wanted to go more than anyone else. To see the sky, feel real air on my skin—God, it was all I could think about.

And then, on the day, I was the last to be called.

The final name on the list. But when my turn came? They’d run out of space.

It seemed the universe was having a little joke at my expense. Again. Because I know what comes next.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” Josh says slowly, but doesn’t look at me.

“Listening to these radiocasts…I’ve realized I need to grow.

To become more.” He pauses, and for a second, I think he might finally meet my eyes, but his gaze stays fixed on the door.

“I can’t keep doing this. Being with you. I can’t keep…holding myself back.”