Page 21 of Skyn (After the End #3)

The Lab

For two days, Ben barely slept, barely ate, running on nothing but data and nerve endings, a live wire sparking against the world. His hedonism teetered from hyper-fixation on me to his work. I thought—hoped—he had burned through the worst of it.

I was wrong.

At three in the goddamn morning, I wake to find him sitting by my bedside.

Not pacing. Sitting. Hands folded. Perfectly still.

I startle so hard that I nearly fall off the bed. “God, Ben, don’t do that!” My pulse is a drumbeat against my ribs. “What—what is it? What’s wrong?”

He doesn’t blink. He barely breathes.

“Come with me,” he says.

That’s it. No explanation, no context. Just that.

“Ben. Where?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s top secret.” His voice is low, urgent. “No one has ever seen this before.”

I squint at him in the dark. “What are you doing?”

His lips twitch, the shadow of a smile flickering—uncertain, almost shy. “I’m being impulsive.”

I squeeze his hand. I don’t want to break whatever fragile thread we’re spinning between us.

We step into the rail car together, at least I think it’s a railcar.

The door whispers shut behind us. It’s quiet inside—unnaturally so.

There’s no grinding of metal; no jolt of wheels, and it’s quite conspicuously not attached to any tracks.

Yet it pushes through the night without them. The half city disappears behind us.

I feel it before I see it—the shift in the air, the impossible vastness yawning ahead.

My stomach drops. I have, of course, read about this. Oceans are 90 percent of the world.

But we’re not going to…possibly… God, it hurtles toward us at a pretty alarming speed. Black, placid, stretching into the horizon, so still that it looks like the end of the world.

“Ben.” I grip the seat. “Ben. We’re headed straight for—”

The water.

We plunge. The rail cart lifts off solid ground and into the abyss.

It should be cold. It should be shocking, a brutal crash against my skin.

Instead, the cart groans. A clear film domes over us, sealing in the air, enclosing us in a delicate shimmering bubble.

We’re bobbing in the dark, drifting forward.

After an hour of floating in that glorified hamster ball, vomiting twice, and making a failed attempt to claw my way out, through the mist, I see something appear. An island.

We finally step onto something resembling solid ground, though the sand is firm but unreliable, like a promise from a shifty uncle.

Ben is calm as ever, looking out toward the horizon, where the sun is rising in slow motion, painting the sky in shades of pink and violet.

Finally, he turns to me. “This, Fawl,” he says, voice low, “is my lab.”

My throat tightens. The lab. The mythologized, cloistered place that even his closest allies, including Lily and his own family, have never laid eyes on. Some say it’s a state-of-the-art research facility; others whisper of more sinister, Controlled Burn implications.

“This is everything I am,” he continues. “I know what people say about me. I know you’ve had to defend me, defend this place, without even knowing what you were fighting for. I wanted you to see it—all of it. Me.”

I’m trying not to choke on the conflicting emotions—seasickness from the journey and a tiny, treacherous bloom of compassion for the man.

Ben leads me down a sand path illuminated with fairy lights to a large building. He punches in a code without even glancing at the panel. Once inside, he puts his finger to his lips. I can hear snoring, soft and rhythmic, mixed with the faint tinkling of lullaby music.

“I’m working on the effects of skin-to-skin contact on cognitive function. Fawl, I think we’ve lost the beauty in humanity.” He holds both my hands. “For however long we have on this planet, the Burn has taught us nothing is guaranteed. Why not refocus on ancient human practices?”

I don’t fully understand all he says, but I understand his earnestness, and I understand what he’s allowing me into: his beating heart.

“This facility is one of the few places where new birthgivers get to stay with their nursing children for extended periods,” he whispers. His eyes gleam. “Mothers typically get—what? Three weeks of birth leave in the mines?”

It’s even less than that. No one wants to go that long without work credits. But Fawl doesn’t correct him

“Our theory is that the extra time creates well-adjusted children.”

I blink at him. “Sounds…wild,” I mumble. What do I know? He’s the scientist here. Did my own mother nurse me for more than a week? How would I know?

Am I fucked up?

But those nights when he was shaking with fever, when it looked like he might not make it, didn’t I cradle Ben to my chest? Didn’t his body seem to stabilize against all odds?

“Are these mothers…sleeping with their children?” I try to hide my discomfort. It feels oddly intimate, too intimate.

“Yes,” Ben replies simply, his tone devoid of judgment or hesitation. “We call it co-sleeping.” He pauses, then seems to consider me carefully. “Can I show you something?”

I follow him into a dimly lit room, its walls humming with the quiet authority of advanced technology.

The monitors flicker softly, each labeled with an unassuming number.

He presses a button marked room 207. “Listen,” he says, and I do.

I hear two heartbeats: one slow, deep, and steady; the other faster.

But, somehow, they merge, syncopated in a way that makes them sound like one.

“In every case,” Ben whispers, his voice thick with awe, “the heartbeats sync up.” He is so pleased with himself, he may burst if I say anything too encouraging.

A tear wells in the corner of my eye. Exhaustion, confusion, or the surprising warmth of this strange, beautiful lab—it’s impossible to pin down.

“It’s…nice,” I say. The words feel inadequate.

But it’s enough. Ben beams, and for a moment, he seems like…a man. Just a man desperate to be understood.

“Now, on to what I want to show you.”

Ben gestures toward his console, and I lean in.

Rows of articles, dates, and data pulled with surgical precision.

His work. His mind made visible. And I smile—because I know him.

I have known him for years, followed his infuriatingly linear research since I was a Bronze.

Ben is the stair-stepper, the man who moves forward one precise inch at a time and saves hours of footage displaying goosebumps.

I know exactly what he’s looking for.

I don’t even have to think. I reach behind him, fingers gliding past his shoulder, and call up three more articles from the IS.

Ben stills.

Double take. Triple take.

Then, with something soft, awed, completely unguarded, he pats the seat beside him. “Please, love, sit.”

Love.

The word lands low in my stomach, warm, unexpected. I let it settle.

And I sit. Now, we’re researching together, and, as he reads aloud, Ben’s voice tightens, breathless. “It fits. It all fits. My prototype SKYN is so close Fawl.”

Time folds in on itself. Hours and days collapse. The mannies bring hot coffee in the morning, crusty croissants by midday, bloodred wine when the sun is long gone. I don’t register the transitions, only that we are still here, that our hands move in tandem.

Ben builds the path, his console filling with ruthless, elegant logic, and I find the fractures. When he accelerates, I pull back, make sure we don’t miss the important things in the rush forward.

And it’s working. We’re working.

There’s a moment—when the fatigue sets in, when my body stretches and starts to give under the weight of the day—that I catch him watching me.

Not in the quiet way he sometimes does. No, Ben looks at me like I am part of the breakthrough on SKYN.

A way for this society to recognize the power of vulnerability, of humanity, again.

That night, we collapse together into one of the lab rooms, crammed in with the mannies, exhausted beyond words, ready to wake in six hours and do it all over again.

I could do this forever. With him.