Page 25 of Skyn (After the End #3)

Controlled Burn

We leave the island that afternoon, and I am limber as a noodle, boneless and buzzing, wrung out in the best possible way.

When we step out of the railcar, the afternoon sun drenches us in gold. I feel it press against my bare shoulders, warm, weighty, and for once, I don’t flinch. I look straight up at the bright, endless sky and feel nothing but light.

I turned something horrible upside down.

I’m a diamond. Sharp, unbreakable, cut just right for pressure.

Josh was wrong about me, and I’ll tell him so tonight. Him and Dru, both of them perched in their smug little tower of assumptions.

Inside, I stare at my body in the mirror. Unmodded. Loved. Those things can happen at the same time.

I slather lotion over my own skin. I take care of it—a small, decadent rebellion.

Then, a knock. The mannies. They have never knocked before.

I call out, and they pause again before stepping inside. Another new feature, courtesy of Ben—privacy settings and automatic REM shutoff. The machines are learning boundaries, which is more than I can say for most men.

And then—they freeze. Like…midmotion.

Clunk. A heavy necklace clatters to the floor. A jar of cream rolls under the bed.

Their pupils go red. Then, in eerie synchronization, they whirl around and race downstairs.

My stomach drops to my knees. Something is so wrong.

I hear furniture scraping, crashing.

And I know it’s Ben.

* * *

I step onto the main floor and walk into chaos. Raucous screams. A holopad held high.

Lily. Ben’s little brother, Michael. Ben’s grandfather—seriously, what is his name? They all look up at me pleadingly when I tumble down the stairs.

Lily is recording.

And Ben, my husband—he looks wild. My heart is breaking. It has only been two weeks since his transition. This is all too much too fast. His body coils, tensed, vibrating with anger. A chair is hoisted high above his head; his knuckles show yellow through shaking brown hands.

Lily sighs. A touch of sadness, like she’s narrating the death of a wild beast. “Off his dampeners. He is an animal.”

What in the hell happened? I think. Is he about to throw this chair?

“Ben! No!” I shout.

His body locks. The chair halts. But he does not lower it.

“They’re taking my research, Fawl.” His voice is hot with fury and a little panic. “They’re taking the lab.”

My chest tightens. “Wait—the SKYN synthesis? We just had a breakthrough. We just built the prototype. They can’t do that.”

Lily tucks her holopad away, satisfied. “We can when the head Iku is declared non compos mentis.”

“Look, Ben. We get it.” Michael stands. “You won your little game. This whole thing is starting to embarrass the family.”

“You should be embarrassed to have done it at all.” Ben lowered the chair. His voice still trembles with anger, “But now that the deed is done, I must say I rather enjoy my punishment.” His eyes are a welder’s torch on me.

“No one is saying you have to give up your skin bride.”

“Bride,” Ben repeats, stepping toward his brother with a deadly calm that makes everyone in the room tense. “Say bride.”

Michael backs up a step, his eyes flicking around the room, scanning for safety like he might find it behind a potted plant or someone else’s silence. “Okay, okay,” he says, hands raised halfway in mock surrender. “Your bride.”

Michael grins, but it’s thinner now. “Look, I’m just saying—I know the untold delights of the flesh,” he adds, leaning in. He stage-whispers, “Sex without the dampeners is mind-blowing, right?”

Ben doesn’t answer, and Lily shifts uncomfortably. Ben’s temple ticks, which makes me afraid this confrontation alone might overtax his splintered system.

“But to continue to elevate her like this, as if she’s your equal… It’s dangerous.”

It occurs to me that Ben is winning whatever little psychological war they laid out for him. They expected him to bolt at the sight of me. No, their plan depended on Ben’s outright rejection of me.

I didn’t know if it was strategic or just dumb, but Ben’s actions were—how did he say it? Illogical.

Something wild and green, like roots or vines, stretches out of my chest. This is how love is supposed to feel.

I turn to Lily. “How could you record this? I thought—” I was going to say, I thought you loved him. But I’m not sure I ever believed that.

She turns to me, amused. Not unkind, but pitiless.

“You thought what?” Her smile sharpens. “Let me let you in on the big, wide world, little mine girl.” She steps closer.

“If you’re an old family up here, you have a job to do.

A job the entire world depends on. I am Lily Oggun.

We are medical leaders. We build hospitals and forge weapons and tools from the iron in the mines.

If we don’t do that job, society falls apart. ”

I shake my head. None of this makes sense. “Ben is doing his job. He’s closer than ever. He’s on the cutting edge. I’ve been with him. It’s all he eats, sleeps, and breathes.”

“Fawl—” Ben walks toward me, and his voice is different now. Low. Warning. He looks guilty. But…why? He’s doing good things.

Lily grins. “Oh my God,” she says, delighted. “She doesn’t know.”

Michael chuckles. “Wow. This is awkward.”

A new, cold kind of dread seeps into my ribs. “What?” I look around, confused now, unsteady. “What don’t I know?”

I glance at Ben, and he opens his mouth, but Lily steps in front of him. “You think the Ikus are scientists?” She laughs. “That’s adorable. That’s Ben’s little hobby. It’s cute. But that’s not the work.”

The room tilts.

I swallow. “Then what is?”

Lily’s smile drops. “The Ikus manage the societal purges.”

A ringing fills my ears. “Purges.”

“Oh my God, I can’t with her,” Lily groans.

Michael shrugs. “The controlled burns. Yes, sweetie. We orchestrate them. And this year, thanks to Ben’s incompetence”—he spreads his hands—“there’s nothing.”

A beat.

Then Michael smirks.

“Well.” He shrugs. “That’s not entirely true.”

I can barely whisper, “What did you do?” But I am looking at Ben for the answer.

Michael licks his teeth. “I wanted to show Mother my innovation. Because Ben had gotten too distracted with SKYN.” Micheal sighs. Shrugs again. “So, I had the brilliant idea to poison the meat supply.”

The controlled burn. Ben is meant to be the architect of the burn. And every sixty years, the Ikus play God.

For fifteen days, I have lived inside the numbers, let them crawl under my skin, let them whisper their secrets. I have followed the smoke back to the fire.

Every sixty years. Thirty percent of the population.

Not a natural disaster. Not even close.

It’s not just the mine collapse. It’s not just the earthquakes or the outbreaks. None of it was natural. Even the famine that turned my hair red.

It is surgical.

The memory of data pulses in front of me, rows of numbers. I sit with it, and it seeps into my bones.

For a moment, I do not breathe. Then, when I do breathe, it is shallow, careful. They don’t just let people die. They make it happen. To keep the numbers clean. To keep the sector “functional.”

I stare at Ben. They kill us. Belowground. To maintain balance. I don’t have to ask. I already know. But I ask anyway. My voice comes out strange, like it belongs to someone else. “Is it only us?”

Ben doesn’t look at me. And that tells me everything. A laugh bursts out of me, too broken.

And then I do something stupid.

I run.

I bolt upstairs to Ben’s console, hands moving fast, wild, and desperate. My heart pounds, my breath hitches, but my fingers do not hesitate. I send it. I send everything to the shopkeeper. He was right. So let it cause panic. Let it cause a revolution.

“Fawl.” Ben’s voice is urgent and raw. He followed me upstairs.

He steps toward me, hands outstretched, careful, like I’m an animal backed into a corner. “I alerted the authorities,” he says. “I didn’t let it happen.” His voice cracks on the last word.

I whip around, my breath coming too fast, too hard. “Fifty people died, Ben.”

He winces but his voice is steady. “Twenty thousand were slated to.”

I stare at him, pulse roaring in my ears. “You’re a monster.”

Ben flinches like I struck him. “I am a scientist,” he says “Not a killer. Fawl, please.”

His voice is raw now. Pleading. “I will not do it, Fawl. I promise you.”

“Ben—”

He cuts me off. “I can’t change anything without my tools.” His shoulders sag. “If they take all my research, they will decimate your sector with or without me. Help me figure this thing out.”

I guffaw. “Help you figure out how to kill twenty thousand people?”

“Help me fix this. I don’t want to murder anyone. But our sector cannot sustain overpopulation. Every sector is allowed only so many resources. We keep detailed population data, and if we do not cull, we will all die of famine. In sixty years’ time.”

Something sharp twists in my chest. I want to hate him.

But I know he’s not lying. Sectors all around us rise and fall in violent uprisings, while mysterious peace reigns in Sector Two. We have been an outlier. And now I know why.

I clench my fists, force my breath to steady. “You have to have a hearing.”

Ben’s brows knit. He can’t follow my thinking. “What?”

“If they want to declare you non compos mentis, you must have a hearing. The full board.”

Ben exhales and shakes his head. “That’s weeks away. That’s—”

“No.”

I touch his console and flip to a specific date. “The council meets at the end-of-year Council Gala,” I say. I think of our little dinner with Josh. He can finally be good for something. I’m cooking up a plan. But it’ll take time. When it’s time for the gala, we’ll give them a show.