Chapter1
The Boy is Mine
“Ready, Fawl?” The technician doesn’t wait for my answer. He’s already adjusting dials, checking levels, and pressing buttons with the detached efficiency of someone who stopped caring a long time ago.
My mouth is dry. I nod, though my head feels heavy, thick with something that could be fear or excitement or both.
The machine shifts. I try not to look, but my eyes betray me, dragging over the flecks of dried blood and bits of hair still clinging to the metal pinchers. A code violation if I’ve ever seen one. This hulking, grotesque, buzzing thing is about to bore a five-carat lab diamond into my collarbone. No anesthesia, not even a belt to bite down on.
Above me, a screen flickers to life. A man appears, dark-skinned, cybernetic, polished to a gleaming perfection that makes him look carved. No way this thing was born like the rest of us. Ben Iku’s voice rumbles in my ear, and I’m surprised at the flutter in my belly. He seems so close.
“Hi, I’m Ben Iku. Welcome to your Diamond Information System status. As the sector’s top employer of bright minds, we hope you’ll consider a position with Iku Industries, manufacturer of Iku MEAT and custom time pieces. With Iku Industries, your belly is full and your days are numbered.”
I nearly laugh. A corporate welcome video playing over the symphony of rusting machinery slicing through flesh. The absurdity of his face here makes me want to scream. Especially considering their latest cloning breakthroughIku MEAT has made dozens of people deathly ill. Why are calender makers and watchmakers suddenly pumping out mystery protein anyway?
“Lie back,” the technician tells me, gesturing toward the table.
I do as I’m told, my body stiff. The old leather creaks under my weight. My breath comes short. The machine whirs louder. The drill—God, the drill—descends, its needle-sharp tip glints under the flickering light.
“Just relax.”
Oh, sure. Let me just go ahead and chill while a bot built out of salvaged parts burrows into my chest. Cool, cool, cool.
Cold metal presses against my skin. A bright, searing pain—then nothing.
The technician steps back. “There. Done.”
I open my eyes and look down. The skin around my collarbone is red, tender, but the diamond is there—gleaming bright, even in the dim light. I lift my fingers to touch it, half expecting it to be hot, half expecting it to disappear, like this is all some fever dream.
Ten years. Ten years, and here it is. A single gleaming promise lodged into my skin.
I went from an unmodded zero percenter to a one percenter. It wasn’tnothing.
Josh should be here. My family should be here. But work credits are so sparse that people don’t really risk taking days off. And someone as driven as my fiancé wouldn’t dream of compromising our goal. Honestly, this diamond feels like more than a career move. It’s a relationship rip cord too. I’ve been ignoring this yawning distance, pushing down the uneasy feeling that Josh is somehow grossed out by me. He touches me less. He turns his head just slightly when we kiss. On the occasion we do make love, he wants only cyborg play where I pretend to be emotionless while he pumps away.
It’s the stress. He’s just focused on our escape plan, on getting us aboveground. Now that I have the diamond, now that we’re equals, things will settle.
The diamond will fix this.
Josh and I are moving aboveground, and Diamond status in the Information System is unlimited. Not that I wouldneeda job aboveground. He says all he wants to do is pamper me and a part of me wonders what a life of leisure could feel like. We’ve worked hard to get where we are.
We did it.
We finally did it.
I feel triumphant in this implant place, but I don’t linger. I pull my jacket on, shove open the heavy door, and step back out into the tunnels of the mines.
The transition is instant, like walking through a tear in the world. The stark, clinical brightness of the implant clinic vanishes behind me, swallowed by the damp, amber-lit underground. The walls are tight and uneven, carved from rock and reinforced with rusted steel beams. Overhead, bundles of frayed wires run like veins, feeding power to the flickering lamps bolted to the ceiling. The air is thick with the scent of damp stone, of sweat, of machinery burning too hot.
This is home. But not for much longer.
I slip into the steady rhythm of the underground. The weight of the diamond in my skin is foreign, but my body is the same, my muscles knowing every twist and turn, every shortcut in the labyrinthine corridors. I cut through the narrow side paths, ducking under low-hanging pipes and stepping over loose grates and discarded bolts.
The benefit of not having any heavy body modifications is that I am fast. I push through the crowds, the press of bodies making it impossible to move without brushing against sweat-slicked skin or pinching on metal plating. Some people look at me with flickering cybernetic eyes or force me off the main walkway, with their haphazard metal bodies, poorly maintained and rusting at the joints. Others have no mods, their bodies raw, soft, all flesh and bone, too human in a place so terrified of fragility.
The underground is always shifting. Metal carts rattle along uneven rails, carrying ore and salvage through the tunnels. Vendors lean out of their stalls, calling over the din, trying to push their goods-nutrient packs, bootleg repair kits, and faded scraps of fabric worn thin from too many years in circulation. This world doesn’t stop for anyone.
But I feel different now—marked. A single gleaming stone is set into my skin. My fiancé and I will be abovegrounders. Everything is going perfectly.
