Chapter 7: Surface Tension

A Chapter by PA1

(The Skin)

They called it the Skin District, but that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t a district�"it was a boundary.

A perimeter.
A barrier.
A mask.

And like all masks, it smiled.

Neon signs flickered above cosmetic clinics and aroma parlors. Holograms promised new layers, smoother tones, tighter pores, fresher selves. Street performers danced in the glow of digital billboards projecting beautiful lies: Corpus is fine. Corpus is strong. Corpus is one.

And the Skin, ever dutiful, never corrected them.

That was the Skin’s role�"to present well.
No matter what boiled underneath.

The Skin was not a single person. It was a collective, a patchwork of identities stitched together with polite gestures and practiced tone. But they all deferred to Derma�"the original, the prototype, the one who had been there when Corpus was still raw and pulsing and not yet ashamed of itself.

Derma lived in the Reflection Spire, a tall, obsidian monolith ringed with silver mesh and one-way glass. From there, she monitored appearance levels, public sentiment, environmental exposure, emotional leakage through micro-expressions, and�"most importantly�"the state of the Facade.

The Facade was everything.

If the Heart broke, the city could grieve.
If the Brain collapsed, the city could adapt.
But if the Skin cracked?

The whole illusion would shatter.

Derma stood before the Mirror Array now, her figure reflected in a thousand shifting shards. Each showed her a different version of herself�"calm, neutral, alluring, authoritative. She had long since forgotten which one was real.

Behind her, two assistants hovered�"identical, silent, surgically blank.

A new report filtered in. She didn’t read it; she felt it. The data came encoded in tactile sensation: subtle pressure, skin temperature variations, minor distortions in mirror latency.

Something underneath was wrong.

She turned to her assistants.

“Show me the truth,” she said, voice like velvet over a blade.

They hesitated.

That alone was new.

With a gesture, the wall of the room shifted. Images bloomed across its surface�"live feeds from Corpus. The Stomach Market trembled under pressure. The Liver District was dark. The Atrium’s pulse stuttered. Even the air shimmered wrong, twitching like heat haze over cold ground.

Worst of all were the faces.

People smiled. Laughed. Chatted.

But it was performance.

The micro-muscles betrayed them. The eyes blinked out of rhythm. The skin tensed in unnatural patterns. They were mimicking connection.

And the Skin saw the one thing it could never allow:

The surface was lying to itself.

Derma dismissed the images. The room faded to black. Her skin flushed slightly�"an autonomic reaction she hadn’t permitted.

She took a slow breath.

“We’re leaking,” she said. “Emotion’s seeping through the seams.”

Her assistants exchanged a glance.

“From where?” one asked.

“All of it,” Derma answered. “We’ve been applying makeup over bruises. No more cover will hold. The inner systems are failing. And we’re still smiling.”

The assistants said nothing.

Derma stepped forward and touched the glass.

For the first time in years, the reflection stared back without shifting. Just her. Pale, poised, exhausted.

She remembered the first mask she’d ever worn.

Not a literal one. Just a smile�"given too early, too often. The kind of smile meant to protect others from discomfort. It had worked. People found it reassuring. Pleasant. Palatable.

But behind it, she had never stopped screaming.

Now she saw the same smile across Corpus.
Millions of them. Holding the city’s flesh together.

But the scream had returned.

She paced now, hands clasped behind her back.

“We’ve lost internal coordination. The Heart is overfiring. The Brain’s looping. The Liver’s gone offline. Stomach’s holding back a flood. The Lungs are destabilized. And us?”

She tapped her temple.

“We’re pretending it’s fine. Still projecting health. Still tightening the seams. Still selling the illusion that Corpus is whole.”

The assistants remained silent. It was not their place to contradict her. It was their place to reflect.

She hated that.

She turned sharply.

“Run a Facial Integrity Audit. Full perimeter.”

One assistant blinked. “What parameters?”

“All of them,” Derma said. “I want to see what happens when people stop pretending. Strip the filters. Drop the enhancement layers. Show me the city’s raw face.”

The room shivered.

And then�"screen by screen�"faces changed.
Not in shape. In truth.

Smiles fell. Brows slackened. Mouths parted in silent confusion.
Grief. Anger. Disgust. Dread.
Not the kind of ugly you could surgically remove.

The kind that lived in the skin.

Derma watched, motionless.

Then, quietly:

“It’s worse than I thought.”

She turned to her assistants.

“Seal the outer Facade. Reinforce the Reflection Zones. No more illusion. No more cosmetic delay. We’re at the edge. If the Skin fails, the infection reaches the air.”

A beat.

“And send word to the Brain. Tell him: It’s time.”

As the order went out, the Skin District changed.
The lights dimmed. The advertisements flickered.
Polish peeled. Varnish cracked.
The mask�"long held, always smiling�"began to slip.

And for the first time in its life, Corpus looked at its own reflection and did not recognize what it saw.

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© 2025 PA1

Author's Note

The Skin was always going to be the liar. But not out of malice—out of survival.

We’ve all done it. Smiled when we didn’t mean it. Said “I’m fine” when we weren’t. Painted over the cracks because the world seemed to demand smooth surfaces, not honest scars.

In Corpus, the Skin is the threshold between inner chaos and outward calm. Derma represents what happens when we become too good at hiding. When image overtakes integrity. When “wellness” becomes a performance, and masks outlive the faces beneath them.

This chapter asks a simple question with a devastating answer:
What happens when the mask can’t hold anymore?

If the Heart holds emotion, and the Brain holds reason, the Skin holds the lie that everything’s under control. But no lie can live forever. And sometimes, the most radical act is to look in the mirror—and not look away.

— Oghogho Akpeli