The Seamstress Of Skin

Once, in a world where the surface had turned to ash and the sky hummed with static, the rich lived sealed in glass, while the rest toiled below, in underground colonies lit by flickering fluorescents.

In one such colony lived Ilya, a seamstress, though not of cloth, but of skin.

Ilya worked in the Vaults, where the elite’s synthetic bodies were crafted. The surface dwellers had long ago replaced their weatherworn flesh with artificial perfection, skin that shimmered faintly in the light, skin that healed, skin that never aged. The workers below never saw these marvels on themselves. They only stitched, calibrated, and polished, their own bodies raw from acid air and the chemicals used to manufacture the skin.

But Ilya was clever with her hands and cleverer with her mind.

By day, she embroidered dermal lattices with gold-thread nerves. By night, from scraps and discards, she wove something else. She stitched tiny fragments into sleeves, collarpieces, ankle sheaths, until she had enough to pattern a full set. Slowly, secretly, she built a skin. Not just any skin, but one fit for the biometric gates of the world above.

She dreamed of walking in light, of air that did not burn, of tasting the sun like honey on her tongue.

On the night she finished, she wrapped herself in the suit. It clasped at her neck like a kiss. She approached the checkpoint, where machines scanned for tissue tags, heart signatures, worth.

The guard drones beeped once, then paused.

Her heart fluttered, rehearsed calm slipping for a moment.

The drones beeped again, louder.

Within seconds, metal arms descended. They sliced through the synthetic marvel she had built, peeling it from her as one might skin a grape. They worked with expert precision, leaving her alive just long enough to hear the verdict:

Unregistered. Unauthorized. Confiscated.

The skin was whisked away to be polished and sold, now even more valuable for its defiance.

Ilya was left at the colony edge, discarded among slag and bone. No one marked the place where she fell, but for weeks after, the workers spoke in hushed voices of the seamstress who had tried to make herself whole.

Above, in their glass structures, the elite praised the new fashion line. The marketing banners called it The Rebel Collection, skin inspired by “true grit,” a tribute, they claimed, to the indomitable spirit of those below.

And beneath the earth, the colony stitched on.