Page 5 of Skyn (After the End #3)

Not that I’m morally opposed to using what I have to get what I want. It’s just…how can I be sure this shopkeeper has any real access? Scams like this run all the time.

“You still have healthy fat deposits,” he says.

“A nice hip width, strong legs from climbing in the mines. Some people in high places get really turned on by those.” He gestures to my breasts.

“Or anything that makes you look soft and fertile—less like a machine. I’m not talking about a skin house. I’m talking about an actual job.”

“You know of a real position up top?” I lean in.

Aboveground jobs are impossible. Even a job wiping asses requires years-long waiting lists, vetting, byzantine connections, and bribes—so many bribes.

He gives me a tight little nod, and I’m on him like a starved dog.

“How? What is it? Who do you know? If you expect me to stare down any one-eyed snakes without—”

“Settle down.” He smirks, wiping his hands on his apron, the grease from the sizzling meat now smeared across his stained shirt. “It’s real hush-hush. Discretion at the highest levels, but the requirements are… Let’s just say unconventional.”

He hands out the last of his sample meats and waves the rest of the hungry hopefuls away. He erases the price on the box and doubles it. Those waiting for samples crash into his store and buy every single one on display.

I make the get-on-with-it signal with my hands.

“They want the ugliest.” His hand flutters in my direction. “Not my words.”

Ugly. That should sting, but it doesn’t. I’ve been hearing worse my whole life. If they’re kind, they say unfortunate. I barely even flinched. The hook was already in. “Define ugly.”

“Unmodded. With that starvation-red hair.”

“But I do have this,” I say, pulling down the collar of my dress, revealing the smooth, glinting diamond embedded in my collarbone, swollen red and angry.

“I know but—” He leans in, eyes widening. “Holy fish guts,” he mutters, licking his lips. “That’s hypo platinum, isn’t it? Premium grade?”

“Had to be,” I reply, shrugging. “I’ve got allergies.”

“Damn.” He whistles under his breath, his fingers twitching like they want to touch the diamond, as if maybe it’ll rub off on him. “Never seen one up close.”

“What are they paying?” I ask.

He steeples his fingers. “Five years of work credits.”

My eyes bug out.

Five years of work credits. That’s enough to buy myself real beauty.

Legs polished, hips reshaped, skin flawless.

I could get out of this place, be something.

I could look like I belong up there, flawless and untouchable.

But I don’t trust him, not one bit. His eyes gleam too much, like he has a trick hidden up his sleeve.

“What’s your cut?” I ask, keeping my voice steady.

He leans back, smirking. “None of it.”

I stare at him, waiting for the punch line “None?”

“I don’t need the money. I want aboveground access to the IS.”

I knew it. This shit could get me killed. “Information, huh?”

He nods, his expression hardening. “I had—have a sister who left nine months ago. Pregnant and all. Just here today, then gone. And she’s not the only one.

Young women and men have been leaving the mines.

Their families are being paid ridiculous sums. But no one ever sees them again.

They send notes, sure, but they don’t sound like themselves.

Like they’re…I don’t know…happy in some different world.

I think my sister found a new sector. One with abundant resources. ”

“You think someone is secretly making a new sector? That would be world news. That’s an insane theory.” I lean in.

“Look, I can only get so far in the IS before I’m blocked. But someone got terraforming permits, someone is manufacturing human skin, someone is systematically shutting sections of the underground down—choosing people.”

“Oh my God, you think it’s a controlled burn.”

The Burn was a natural catastrophic event. Controlled burns are not.

We are in full tinfoil hat territory now. Controlled burns are heavily rumored, loosely connected events whispered from sector to sector like old war songs.

You’d hear it in passing, under someone’s breath:

That wasn’t an accident

That wasn’t a drought.

Every explosion that took out a transit hub, every electrical surge that shut down half a city block, every mysterious “supply chain interruption” that left kids starving in the Half-City someone always said it was a controlled burn.

And it was ridiculous. Right?

Except I frequent the information system quite a bit, and sometimes the numbers added up too clean. And the people who spoke the loudest about it tended to go quiet shortly after.

It was probably nothing.

It had to be nothing.

He shrugs slowly, but he looks scared. We should all be. If this theory gets out, it’ll cause mass hysteria.” Something sinister is going down. They’re going to blow this place to chunks and I need to know where everyone’s going.”

For the second time in three days, the wind is knocked out of me. Does he want me to stop a controlled burn? With what, my tits? This is insane.

“What if I can’t find anything?”

“You will. I’ve never tried a Diamond before.”

The room suddenly feels too small. “Josh says…” I shake my head, unsure why I even brought his name into this. “I hear that my Diamond status won’t matter up there.”

He shrugged. “Josh is an idiot. Your Diamond status will get you access no one else has. And this burn feels different. Official.” He leaned in, lowering his voice. “Iku-level shit.”

He pulls a slender wand out of a sack, and I flinch. “What are you doing?” I lean back.

These wands they use to determine your percentage are cheap; they aren’t actually mod detectors but nickel detectors. Nickel is the most common alloy.”

I put my hand up. “I know.”

He runs the wand over my torso.

Nothing.

He smiles. “This is brilliant. You’re showing up zero. This is brilliant.”

I still have a few more questions.

I exhale sharply, rubbing at my temples. “Those work credits won’t matter much if I’m dead,” I say flatly. Just because I’m a Diamond doesn’t mean I can waltz around leaking information about a controlled burn without consequences.

“If that happens, I’ve got a letter ready. It’ll go public. Officials can’t just disappear a Diamond. It’ll be a mess, a scandal.”

I level him with a look. “But I’ll be dead,” I repeat, slower this time, for emphasis.

He shrugs. “If they’re planning a controlled burn, we’ve only got weeks anyway,” he says, like we’re talking about the weather. Then, a pause. A shift. “If they’re not—worst case?” He shrugs again. “You’ll be on your back for a few weeks. Before you find an IS worker to help you aboveground.”

I bark out a laugh, ugly and humorless. Thinking of how the IS workers hated me for giving up on the work. “Yeah, foolproof plan.”

“They want a skin bride,” he says.

He lets the words fall. And they land like a stone in my stomach.

Now that is something

“They hate the unmodded,” he says, shaking his head.

He didn’t have to tell me. The Matriarch started a legendary temperance campaign against skin brides that politically went nowhere but still very much socially stigmatized the group aboveground.

It’s more than a stigma. This is a particularly high-risk request. I’ve heard stories—all the mine folk have—about how some brides disappear forever, how some reemerge months later, haunted and silent, with more scars than skin.

“But now they want one inside the Iku compound? A skin bride?” He lets out a low, humorless laugh. “This request is wild. The pay is even wilder.”

My mind is racing, turning this over, trying to make sense of it.

The concept of a skin bride was ripped of all its past contexts.

It isn’t about love, about companionship; it’s about possession.

If a machine buys you, you’re a bride. If you do the buying, you’re a groom.

Gender doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is the transaction: flesh for credits.

Why become machines if you’re going to yearn for something so irrevocably human?

It doesn’t make sense. The whole world is built on the premise that modification is progress, that human desire is dangerous, and that stripping away flesh means stripping away weakness. And yet, the more metal they become, the more they want us.

Hypocrisy never surprises me. People are often parodies of themselves.

The openness of it is the shock. Something’s off.

The sector’s highest, coldest, most untouchable caste, known sector wide for their sterile chastity, suddenly developing an appetite for flesh and bone?

And involving an organ trader in that scheme?

“How did you come by this information?”

“People trust you when you’re discrete.” That’s all he says about that.

I don’t want to think about how many other favors he has carried out for the wealthy.

“Listen, something you gotta know is this: the elite start acting funny,” he says, shaking his head, “then we pay attention. When the machines sneeze, we catch the flu.”

I nod, though I doubt I can give him the information he wants.

“You’ve got three hours,” he says, his voice soft now. “They choose tonight.”