Page 9 of Skyn
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 thatissomething
“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 oneinsidethe Iku compound? Askinbride?” 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,wecatch 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.”
Chapter4
Fucking Aluminum
The Information System office looks smaller than I remember.
Or maybe I imagined it grander. The rows of old data terminals flicker, and the low hum of processing servers is more peaceful too. Before I say yes to the shopkeeper, I need to know if anything can be salvaged. My life with Josh is over, but what about my lifeperiod?
I move to my old desk. There’s dust.Dust. On my terminal. It’s only been a few days. The mines are so dramatic.
“You’re back,” someone says behind me.
