Page 4 of Skyn (After the End #3)

Metal Clits

Which is why I’m here, pulling petals off a papier-maché posy in the trade market while he and Dru pack up.

The market is a show, always a spectacle.

Vendors, covered in grease and grime, shout from their stalls, hawking their goods with a desperate kind of energy, their booming curses and promises bouncing off the twisting narrow passageways.

It’s the same every day—men outshouting each other, elbowing for space, hustling like their lives depend on it. And, sometimes, they do.

“I’m telling you, they’re poisoning us.”

The voice comes from a man so round he looks like he might roll away if pushed too hard. It’s a feat, really; staying fully fed down here takes a lot of work.

“You going on a hunger strike or something?” one of the others says, and they all erupt in laughter.

But the big man doesn’t back down. “The boss’s grandson said it himself,” he insists, leaning in close, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush.

“Yeah? And you seen him since, that damn fool?” scoffs a wiry guy, spitting on the ground and dragging a grimy sleeve across his forehead. “Those machines up there don’t love their own, never have. Wouldn’t think twice about—” He makes a slicing motion across his neck. “—punishin’ him real good.”

The big man just laughs, shrugging. “I’ll take whatever punishment they dish out,” he says with a crooked grin. “Probably just a spanking from his skin bride.”

That sets them off again, real howling now. They jostle each other, knocking shoulders, and falling over each other with raunchy jokes, tossing out vivid, filthy fantasies about what they'd do if a skin bride ever landed in their laps.

Skin brides are a peculiar concept when you think about it.

Just unmodded people nothing more. And yet, the moment some machine from above decides to cast their gaze downward and pick one, suddenly, they are transformed—not by surgery or mods, mind you, but by the sheer act of being desired by someone with social currency.

That’s all it takes. The Machine’s status alone makes them—what? Valuable? Coveted? A prize?

It makes you wonder if the shit isn’t all just made up to make you feel bad about yourself. These men down here who pant over a skin bride cross these same people, these same unmodded bodies, every day on the street without so much as a second glance.

That’s the truth of it, the thing they’ll never say out loud. We’re all taught to hate ourselves until the right person loves us. No one questions it, not really, because we’re too busy waiting for that one touch of grace that might redeem us.

I pass racks of secondhand cybernetic parts, some still stained with oil, others polished to a gleam.

I bought Josh’s parts from a shop like this.

I was so proud of myself. Yes, the price in work units cleared me out, but who needs work units when you’re soon to be the pampered little wife of an abovegrounder?

It’ll take me seven years to get back to where I was six months ago.

The noxious combination of smells from the hard-fried street food and engine grease from the repair stalls stings my eyes, and I barely dodge a sludgy stream of viscous blueish fluid sliding toward an open drain.

“What? Are you blind? You almost stepped in a manhole!” Screams a blackneck, bearing the signature layer of grime that gathers at the collar.

“Cover your fucking manhole, you belowground cretin,” I say back. No real venom in it, just sporting.

“Hey, you’re down here with me, you naturalist kook,” he spits back.

“Call me a naturalist again, and you’ll lose your other eye. Do you know how many codes you’re currently breaking?”

“Oh, fuck off.”

I flash my collarbone to him, letting him see the diamond glint. “Should I look it up?” I pretend to connect to a neuro-link by tapping my temple.

He covers the hole with a sullen kick of his rusty metal boot and shoulder-checks me with enough force to knock me into another storefront.

“Another violation!” I shout to his back.

The shop owner frowns when he sees me slide my greasy body down his freshly washed windows, lips pursing in disapproval. His eyes flick over me—dirty coveralls, scuffed boots, unwashed hair—but they don’t land there. No, his gaze snags on the gleam at my collarbone. The diamond.

His eyes narrow.

An organ dealer can sell anything to anyone, they say, but I wouldn’t know. No one’s ever tried to sell me anything. I don’t even look like I have work credits to spare.

My hair is brown at the roots, the ends spiraling out in wild orangey-yellow coils.

Mine red, it’s called. My mother once said I look like fall.

That’s how she named me. Later, they’d find out the preponderance of redheaded, blonde-streaked children in the belowground isn’t genetic at all. It’s a protein deficiency.

I was the last of the children born to famine.

Food science moved fast. The Iku family effectively ended hunger in Sector Two, erasing it as neatly as an equation on a whiteboard. And because of it, they rule. Not like tyrants—nah, that shit demands too much effort. The Ikus reign with benevolent hedonistic neglect.

They give us food, so we owe them everything.

When the shopkeeper crooks his little finger at me, motioning toward the sizzling meat, I don’t even try to resist. Food is something no one turns down in the mines.

I lift my chin and step inside. The aroma hits my nose, spicy and rich, and my stomach growls in response.

Next to the grill, a sign sits propped up like an afterthought, its message written in loopy, careless script: 1 Kidney for Your Dream Life. Live Aboveground. Ask Me How!

Nothing says trustworthy like a vendor who trades organs and sells meat.

“Where’s the packaging?” I ask, playing along, though my eyes flick to the waste bin behind him, which is overflowing with dehydrated MEAT boxes.

“Ha. Very funny,” he says, pointing to the trash with his forehead, like he couldn’t care less. The blood from the fresh cut sizzles on the iron, the crackle filling the silence between us.

“So, uh,” he starts, looking around like he’s checking for eavesdroppers. “You a Diamond?”

I hesitate. Only one reason why he wants to know. He has information to buy or to sell. I was too flashy with my new status.

I’m not about to tarnish my status to help this guy make a quick buck.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I say, but my heart picks up speed.

He gives a slow nod as if he understands. “You just shouted it to the entire thoroughfare, so if you are trying to keep it pinned…”

Okay… Points were made.

He sticks a toothpick into the sizzling meat, his fingers thick and calloused, and hands it to me like a peace offering. His nails are jagged and dirty, like the edges of the mines. The shopkeeper isn’t old, but he has the look of someone worn down by life.

“That rock shifter. He’s a big deal, huh?” He doesn’t even bother saying his name. He doesn’t have to. Everybody knows.

I don’t pretend not to know who he’s talking about either. I’ve heard the whispers, the way people’s voices dip whenever they mention Josh.

“Everyone in the mines knows what he did to you,” he continues, sticking another piece of meat onto the grill, “but they’re afraid to cross him. Dreamin’ of that aboveground connection, you know?”

So that’s why no one’s been giving me the poor-girl treatment.

I expected more solidarity from the women, something more than the silent pitying glances they threw my way. But they all cozied up to Dru, desperate for her to bestow some kind of friendship on them, maybe sponsor their ascent one day.

“They used to clamor around me,” I say, more to myself than to him. They complimented my unmodded body and sighed over Josh’s one-word comms.

The shopkeeper snorts, a low, knowing sound. “They’re just waitin’ to see who comes out on top, girl. Ain’t no loyalty down here, just survival.”

I bite into the MEAT, tender and delicious. “Did you get any of the tainted rations?”

“I did. I was surprised those machines up there even let us know.”

“Right? I was shocked we got the warning.”

“Mark my words, that’s going to be the last you hear from that man Ben. He’s going to have an unexplained ‘accident.’ We’ll never hear from him again.”

I don’t know Ben, can never hope to ever know an Iku, but I quietly wish him well. If an Iku can’t survive losing favor with his friends and family, what hope do I have?

I finish the MEAT and nod a thank you, prepared to beg for my placement back at the knowledge center. I quit it in anticipation of being a hotshot aboveground. Now I have to crawl back and beg for a spot under the same people who dumped me for Dru. Somehow, this hurts more than being dumped.

“Wait!” The shopkeeper seems to use all his strength to yell. “You could still, uh…get aboveground if you wanted to.”

I don’t like the way he says it. Like I just stepped from Hell into some new circle of pain I didn’t even know existed—Hell Plus: now with more creeps!

There’s a second way to get aboveground.

It isn’t in the brochures, isn’t in the radio-drama storylines where self-made titans claw their way out of the mines, hoarding work credits for some ungodly number of years until they finally, finally earn their place among the gleaming towers. That’s the respectable way to make it.

But for those who with limited hardware and a soft mouth, there’s a shortcut.

A contract in a low-level brothel would get you through the checkpoints.

No years of scraping for credits, no lottery odds stacked against you.

Just a different kind of currency. You’d lick metal clits until your jaw ached for eighteen hours.

You’d service cocks designed for efficiency, not pleasure.

The little finger-shaped things are all the rage aboveground. Or so Josh said.

But you’d be aboveground.

You’d see the goddamned sun.