Page 26 of Skyn (After the End #3)

War Machine

I’m standing outside Iku House in a short, backless shimmery dress, waiting on Ben. We’re supposed to meet Josh and Dru for drinks, dinner, and maybe a little light statecraft—because nothing says diplomacy like sharing small plates with your ex and your stepsister.

Every time a railcar passes, its light hits the sequins on my dress and turns the whole street into a disco.

I never noticed before how many black iroko trees line the walkway to Iku House.

The family motto—Rest with the Ancestors—is carved into the stone like a benediction.

It hits me now, harder than it should: this family is obsessed with death.

It was always there.

The trees. The seal. The way Ben speaks in variables and necessary losses.

He’s always running the numbers.

We worked all day to save thirty thousand people. Ben and I were a team. I fed him questions, and he fed me formulas. I hunted data, and he ran simulations. It was elegant.

I wasn’t sure why people had to die. Not at first. But Ben’s calculations were airtight—cold, precise, and merciless in their logic.

I kept scouring the IS, desperate to find another solution. Some hidden corridor of possibility. Some string of code that unraveled the certainty. But it all came back the same.

The same equation. The same answer.

Too many people.

Too few resources.

To keep the balance, some had to go.

One family—calm, moral, mathematically gifted—had to decide who and how.

And now, I’m standing here and realizing, with a clarity that scrapes the inside of my ribs, I’m now an Iku.

My plan isn’t fully formed. It’s not mathematically sound. It doesn’t glide across a console in neat lines of code or satisfy Ben’s need for equilibrium.

But I want something fairer. Something where the poor don’t always pay the debt of the rich.

And Josh could be part of that. He made it out after all, and he still remembers what it cost.

Ben is, oddly, excited to meet Josh. This should be a warning.

A little light going off in my skull. But it isn’t.

Because he is so human tonight. Breathlessly, devastatingly, overwhelmingly human.

I’ve stopped thinking of his cybernetic parts, his surgically curated perfection.

Because without the dampeners, Ben is ferocious.

He is imaginative. He is messy and unrestrained, tempestuous and voracious, burning with so much life that I don’t know how to hold it all.

Had I met this man first, he would have awed me down to my socks.

But, in the world he inhabits, these are traits to be ashamed of. Lily does not love this Ben. And she is going out of her way to punish him for becoming him.

The railcar screeches to a halt in front of me, so it must be 7:00 on the dot. I don’t hear him approach.

But I say, “On time is late.”

“Illogical. On time can be only one thing: on time,” Ben says.

Ben Iku is the picture of aboveground nobility.

His velvet jacket is immaculate, the kind of deep, rich blue black that must cost a year’s worth of work credits.

His cybernetics gleam and throw fragmented reflections across the walls.

For a split second, my heart stutters at his profile—the clean line of his jaw.

Because, of course, I fall in love with the Grim Reaper.

Very on brand to find a man whose family is hell-bent on getting rid of me and the whole sector.

The cart is impossibly tiny and jolts us to and fro. But we go over our scripts.

The plan is simple: Go to Josh’s apartment.

Be very sweet, very humble, and compliment his advancement in life.

Get him to invite as many people from the half city as possible to the end-of-year ball.

He can testify on behalf of the whole sector.

He likes to feel important. So I’ll give him a stage and hopefully he and the masses can convince these elites that they’re outnumbered. And that Ben is in his right mind.

Ben’s eyes have glazed over. “How long is this ride?” His fingers tickle up my thigh.

“Do not even think about it. Just sit,” I say.

He grumbles and looks out the window, but eventually he pulls me onto his lap anyway—just to have me a few feet closer, he says.

We’re here.

We squeeze out of the tiny car, and every eye in the street is on us. I thought Josh’s thirty-second-floor apartment would be penthouse level on a sleek glass-front high-rise. But it is not.

It’s sixty stories of crumbling concrete and rusting metal, the windows like jagged teeth, some broken, others covered with ragged sheets of plastic flapping in the wind.

Barely clothed children peek out through the shattered panes on the fifth and sixth floors, their wide eyes hollow and curious.

They lean against railings that look too loose to hold their weight.

I feel something cold settle in my stomach.

I always knew they lived differently here.

I rush passed the Half-City in railcars.

But I still imagined comfort, abundance, something clean and effortless.

It’s not the raw desperation of the mines, but it feels worse.

Because suffering is pain plus memory. We didn’t know another life in the mines.

We were born into hunger, into darkness; they make sure you don’t dream too big.

But up here? Shit…people remember.

Up here, they are left behind, and they know it.

That’s the kind of shit that turns people into revolutionaries.

* * *

The elevator was not a good choice, and I need a stomach settler as I walk into the landing of the thirty-second floor. Ben, who opted for the stairs, is already there, a tiny bead of sweat at his temple.

I start to tumble around with words to say, but we’re at the door now, and Dru throws it open with too much force, her wide smile stretching tight across her face.

“Fawl! Oh my God, how are you?” Her voice is bright, but there’s something brittle underneath, like she’s grinding her teeth.

I step inside. The apartment is…small. Cozy, if you want to be kind.

I glance at Dru, her shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders, hiding the gleaming cybernetics that were once her pride.

Now she covers them like a shameful secret.

I know why. Up here, the shine of our belowground mods is like a neon sign of inferiority.

And someone up here made sure she knew it.

“Are you having a good time aboveground? Isn’t it everything?” Dru says.

“No,” I say, my voice quiet. “I don’t love it up here. They treat us like shit.”

Dru’s face crumples for a second before she quickly pulls me into a tight hug, her body shaking against mine. “I’m sorry,” she breathes. “I’m so sorry, Fawl. Is he cruel?”

When she pulls away, her eyes are wet, lashes spiked. Of all the things I expected to feel tonight, compassion for Dru was last on my list.

“Dru, no.” I turn to look at Ben, who slips his jacket off and fills the room with his clean scent. “Not at all.”

“Josh told me such terrible things. I know that we”—her voice grows quieter—“that I put you in this position.”

“Josh has an overactive imagination.” I smile.

She stiffens. Her gaze goes glassy, almost animal—like she’s listening for a sound only she can hear. “Josh has been…” Her voice drops again. “He’s different up here.”

Her eyes flick around the room, nervous. I don’t quite catch the warning in her expression before she flinches, startled by the sudden presence of Ben’s massive form approaching behind me.

“Oh, Dru, this is my husband, Dr. Iku,” I say.

Ben offers her a nod, his gaze lingering on me for a moment too long, as if he’s trying to measure something—my resolve, maybe. His eyes flick over to Josh, who came rushing in from the kitchen. A dish towel is slung over his shoulder, and his face is flushed.

He seems…different. Smaller.

“Fawl! You’re late, but, stars, you look good enough to eat.” His voice drops a register. “Ben.”

Josh leans closer to me “God, the aboveground has been so good to your skin.” He reaches over and runs his thumb across my upper arm. My muscles stiffen beneath the clamminess of his fingers.

Ben moves in without hesitation, placing his hand exactly where Josh touched me, like he’s wiping it clean.

Warmth.

Possession.

A quiet, simmering claim.

Dru sighs but never looks up from tossing the meager salad she’s prepared.

Josh moves in front of me and blocks our path to the seats.

“How about drinks first?” He motions toward the stained cushions of the couch instead of the dining chairs.

“Fawl and I have so much to catch up on. Ten years is a long time to love a person,” Josh says, and Dru freezes with her hands over the salad.

“Indeed,” Ben says, “and then to leave her so unceremoniously… Why, it must have torn you up inside.” The edge in his tone is unnerving. And he moves emphatically toward the dining room. His warm palms are at the small of my back.

Okay, we don’t need chair-throwing Ben. I give him a look. We need this idiot please be nice, I say through a series of blinks.

“The world really is upside down.” Josh says affably. “To think, a simple mine woman married to a machine.”

You could hear a rat piss on cotton in this room.

I jump when Dru slaps the salad down, and a little piece of overripe tomato flops onto the table.

“Fawl isn’t a simple mine woman, Josh. She is a Diamond,” Dru says.

“If she were not a Diamond, she would still not be a simple mine woman,” Ben says.

I glance over at Josh to find him staring daggers at Dru.

Ben pulls out my chair, which wobbles slightly beneath his hands. I sit down, and all four of us stare at each other with questioning expressions. This dinner, only thirty minutes in, already feels three days long.

Josh’s big fake smile falters—just a flicker, but it’s enough. He didn’t anticipate this. He assumed, like so many others, that I’m a throwaway fetish. I think of Ben’s fine linen jacket soiled and ruined in the filthy chair.