Page 29 of Skyn (After the End #3)

The Council Gala

Five minutes inside the Council Gala, and Ben looks like he might lose his cookies or his nerve.

At least he looks like he belongs here. I had to force this sleek, perfectly tailored black suit onto his body—nearly transparent in the right sleeve and down one leg to show off his magnificent shoulder and thigh.

Since going off the dampeners, he hates the captivity of fashion. He calls it designed to restrain.

“Are you ready for whatever they might throw at us?” Ben’s voice, smooth and low, tugs me back from my own thoughts. I glance up at him, hooked onto his arm like a fishing lure, bobbing slightly with every step.

My hair is arranged in two elaborate puffs on either side of my head, affixed with tiny fairy drones.

Everything about my outfit screams cloud.

I’m floating around in this gauzy little tulle minidress, so ethereal that I half expect to vanish in a puff of soft pink, leaving nothing behind but a whisper of perfume and a pair of what Ben says are excessively spectacular legs.

“Throw at us?” I tilt my head, trying to match his easy confidence. But, inside, my stomach is performing a whole damn circus routine.

Exactly seven minutes in, and I secure my first passive-aggressive compliment. A personal best, surely.

It comes from a man with thinning hair and a cybernetic eye nestled beneath his brow.

“Ah, the eldest Iku,” he says, his voice dripping with enough faux warmth to frost a cake, “and his sk—”

His words stall mid-syllable when Ben’s eyes flick up, something nearly imperceptible but absolutely lethal in his gaze. The rest of the sentence withers on the man’s tongue.

But it’s his wife who lands the more refined blow. She leans in just enough to show interest, her voice syrupy sweet. Her eyes sweep over me, her face all chrome except for the thin slash of her wet mouth.

“All that skin!” she marvels, her voice lifting an octave like she’s genuinely impressed by my gall to exist. “Oh, you’re so brave for wearing such a tiny little dress.”

I smile back—hard. We’re locked in a smile-off to the death.

Ben pulls me deeper into the ball, and I finally allow my face to relax.

“Good job, Fawl. Balls like these are a different kind of underground mine. Stay in places where there is always enough air and light.”

I look up, and it’s as close to a confession of love as I can bear. “That’s always next to you.”

He looks down and nods. “So be it, wife.”

My heart picks up its pace as we get closer to the sea of metallic-silk gowns and polished shoes. I feel the weight of gazes landing on us, sliding over me and Ben with hunger. I’ve never felt in danger of being eaten more than I do right now.

“Let them talk,” Ben whispers, as if reading my thoughts, his breath warm against my ear. “We’re here to make sure they do.”

My first inclination that things are about to veer into disaster is Josh.

He’s standing by the far wall, looking as out of place as a splash of blood on white linen.

Honestly, what the hell is he doing here? He all but screamed that he wouldn’t help us. But I see people from the half city here. A sizable crowd. Maybe he’s come to his senses?

Poor guy still has that unfinished quality about him—like a loaf of dough that never quite rose. Half-formed and sagging. His cybernetic arm looks like crumpled aluminum in this room, and his boxy suit droops over his shoes by several inches.

His eyes flick over me like he’s measuring me against something else. Someone else. Probably his own sad version of who I should have been. The hint of heat in his gaze tells me all I need to know.

Ben’s been right about Josh from the start, hasn’t he?

Josh sees value in me only because someone like Ben—a machine—has claimed me, touched me in public, laid his hands on my unmodded flesh like it’s worth something.

Ben, by sheer force of will, has created my value in Josh’s eyes.

And that, in turn, exposes the ugly little truth: Josh was never disgusted by my body.

His revulsion was never about me. It was about himself—his shame, his insecurities, and his small, sad worldview.

What would the radiocasters have him do now?

Glancing around the room, I spot a few more unmodded guests—two men and one woman—standing beside their impeccably be-chromed partners.

They’re like rare animals, striking against the modded masses.

And they’re watching me. But their looks are different from Josh’s.

They’re not confused. They’re curious. Maybe even a little impressed.

For the first time, I feel something strange—like I’m part of some unspoken uprising. The Cocktail Party Rebellion.

Ben’s eyes follow mine to Josh, narrowing slightly. “I bet he looks better in your memory.”

“I hope you can say the same for her.”

Lily is making her entrance, gliding down the marble steps like a bird descending from a mountain perch.

Every head swivels in unison to watch her.

She’s draped in a floor-length gown of deep-purple feathers, each one shimmering, giving the illusion she’s cloaked in something alive, something lethal.

But what really sets the crowd abuzz isn’t the feathers, no matter how meticulously they’ve been stitched to her gown.

It’s her shoulders—gleaming, smooth, and unmistakably new.

The SKYN overlay, that coveted, expensive procedure to make cybernetics indistinguishable from real flesh, has clearly been completed recently.

Her skin, if you can call it that, still has that too-perfect sheen, like a marble statue that hasn’t yet settled into itself.

A shift ripples through the crowd. I see people surreptitiously comming their cyberneticians for emergency appointments.

“She took it.” Ben’s voice is barely above a whisper, yet it cuts through the air like a blade. He starts barreling toward her, and I hold him back.

“She’ll come to us, Ben. Everyone is looking for an emotional reaction from us.”

Ben’s jaw ticks, but he relents. They’re already slicing up his things. Already treating tonight as a forgone conclusion.

And she does come to us. Or, rather, glides.

“Lily,” I say in that practiced, breathy way as she passes by. I pause, because I’m a good student, and she squirms. “Wow, almost healed. You’ll look and feel real in no time.” I, too, graduated from the Girls School of Nice Nasty Shade.

Lily, poor Lily, has bought into every glossy lie society ever told her—about her value, her beauty, and her desirability. She thought it was armor, something that couldn’t be touched. And maybe, for a while, it was.

She’s the kind of woman who’s never had to imagine what it feels like to be second choice, to be overlooked or ignored.

Ben shocked her.

But I understand something Lily never will: that her desirability is a currency, but it’s not the market. And her value, like that of most women, is at the whim of a fickle god. So now she’s stapling skin over her cybernetics because her plan A has a mine wife.

Ben hisses “thief” under his breath.

She hisses back, “You are Iku. You must reap. All I did was agree.”

He doesn’t get a chance to reply because Ben’s younger brother, Michael, approaches us, flanked by other members of the board.

They’re all here—Lily’s Oggun clan in silver, the Oshun tribe in shimmering yellow, the brash Shangos in rippling red.

I’ve never seen the council all together. Michael, Ben, and the other Ikus, of course, are dressed in heavy black.

Hell of a welcoming committee.

“Ben.” Lily’s voice is now high and sweet. “So glad to see you on your feet. We were all terribly worried.”

Ben’s hand finds the small of my back. I feel the tension coiled in him, and I think again about how he might react without his dampeners.

“I wasn’t sure you’d be able to attend tonight, given…everything,” Lily continues, making sure all the council members hear her concern. “It’s been a lot to adjust to, hasn’t it? The dampeners, the sudden decisions… Such a whirlwind.”

Lily’s smile widens, soft enough for only those close by to hear, but loud in its implications. The ballroom hums around us, oblivious, but those in the small circle of business partners surrounding us exchange uneasy glances.

Michael slides into the conversation like a snake slipping through tall grass. “I told Lily she was overreacting. Let a man have his secrets. I’m sure whatever he does at that lab twenty-four seven is for the greater good of the company.”

Ben’s face darkens, but he keeps his silence. It takes more strength to temper yourself in provocation than to be drugged out of a reaction.

I can imagine the slow, simmering anger building in him—but that’s the plan, isn’t it? Try to goad him into irrational behavior now that he’s off his dampeners.

I want to pull him away, but it’s too late.

Business partners and council members hover around us, trying to catch an earful of what’s unfolding.

Lily slides her arm through Ben’s brother’s own, and…

Wow. I see it. I see exactly what she’s doing.

The SKYN, the brother, the innuendo—she’s constructing a whole spectacle, and it lands with perfect precision.

Ben finally sees it, too. His grip on his glass tightens, and I get nervous that it may shatter in his hand.

Council members are exchanging glances that may as well be flashing red warning lights. The ballroom grows heavier by the second, thick with murmurs just out of earshot, the clink of glasses, and the too-loud laughter that only ever happens when people are whispering things they shouldn’t.

I pull Ben aside, my heart pounding harder with each breath. “I think it’s go time,” I whisper, my voice tight.

He turns to me, eyes blazing, jaw locked like he’s holding back something ruinous. His gaze keeps cutting between Josh and Michael. He wants to punch through something. I can see it.

“Not right now, Fawl.” His voice is low and dangerous, barely restrained. The heat rolls off him, the tension wound tight in every muscle.

“Right now.” My voice comes out sharper than I mean, but I don’t care. The room is shifting—not in our favor. Every conversation he’s not in feels like it’s setting a trap. The ballroom’s turning into quicksand. “Ben, trust me.”

He exhales hard, fighting to stay in control. His eyes dart across the space, scanning for threats, seeing them everywhere—in whispers, in sidelong glances, in smirks and lifted glasses.

My pulse hammers. The air’s thick, and I feel the ground sliding out from under him. They’re trying to undo him in real time, piece by piece.

His gaze slides over to the diamond on my shoulder. He gets it. These people are rats, fleeing before the ship even starts to sink. I see it happening. I see it happening now.

Then a commotion breaks out near the front. While Ben and I are locked in this quiet tug-of-war by the door, the announcement slips in. I don’t hear the setup, but I hear the line that matters—

Lily’s voice rings out across the crowd, eyes locked on me: “Michael and I are pleased to announce our marriage at the sector magistrate this afternoon.”

I see Ben stiffen, feel the moment land in his chest like a blow.

I give him space. It’s not easy, watching the world organize your downfall like a party.

“It’s time,” I say again.

Finally—finally—he gives a small, tight nod.