25 Mar Second Skin

Part I

The conference room at Argenesis Biotech was as sterile as a surgical suite, the kind of place designed to inspire confidence. A wall of glass separated the attendees from the laboratory beyond, where scientists in crisp white coats moved with quiet efficiency among sleek workstations. A large projection screen at the front of the room displayed a single word in bold, futuristic lettering: Nuevaderm.

Jordan Reyes leaned back in his chair, flipping open a notebook. He had covered more than his fair share of medical breakthroughs over the years, and most had turned out to be little more than overhyped gimmicks wrapped in layers of corporate spin. Still, Argenesis had a reputation for delivering on its promises, and the whispers about their latest project had been particularly insistent. A synthetic skin that could heal injuries instantly. Wounds closing in seconds. Burn victims walking away from trauma without so much as a scar.

The woman at the podium, Dr. Naomi Tanaka, exuded the quiet authority of someone who knew the weight of the moment. Clad in a tailored suit, her dark hair pulled into a severe bun, she let the murmuring crowd settle before she spoke.

“We stand on the precipice of a new era in regenerative medicine,” she began, her voice steady but edged with excitement. “For years, we have relied on traditional wound care—stitches, grafts, transplants. But those methods are inefficient, slow, and—most importantly—imperfect. Nuevaderm changes everything.”

A video flickered to life on the screen behind her, showing a deep laceration on a test subject’s forearm. A dropper released a milky, translucent fluid onto the wound. Within seconds, the torn skin knitted together, the gash sealing as if it had never been there at all. The room was utterly silent.

“This is not a bandage. It is not a graft. Nuevaderm is a living polymer designed to integrate seamlessly with human tissue, responding at a cellular level to repair and strengthen the skin.”

The video continued, now showing microscopic footage of Nuevaderm bonding with living cells. The synthetic material did not merely coat the skin; it became part of it, merging so completely that it was indistinguishable from natural tissue.

Jordan watched the demonstration with a mixture of skepticism and unease. The implications were staggering, but there was something about the way the synthetic layer moved that unsettled him. It wasn’t just repairing. It was growing.

* * * * * *

Eric Matheson had always prided himself on being the kind of man who didn’t dwell on fear. It was a necessity in his line of work. When you spent your days running into burning buildings, hesitation could mean the difference between life and death.

The fire had started in an old apartment complex on the east side of the city, a structure well past its prime. He had been inside when a section of the ceiling collapsed, trapping him under a wave of burning debris. His gear had protected him—mostly—but his left arm and shoulder had taken the brunt of it. By the time they pulled him out, his skin was a ruin of charred flesh.

The doctors had warned him about the long recovery process, about the likelihood of skin grafts and permanent scarring. Instead, they offered him an alternative.

“There’s a clinical trial,” the specialist had told him. “It’s experimental, but the results so far have been remarkable. It could restore full function. No scars.”

He had agreed before they even finished explaining the procedure.

Now, sitting on the edge of his hospital bed, Eric unwrapped the bandages for the first time. He had been told what to expect, but nothing could have prepared him for the sight of it.

The skin was smooth and unblemished. Perfect. Not just healed—renewed. There was no discoloration, no ridges where the grafts should have been. It looked as if the fire had never touched him at all.

He flexed his fingers experimentally, watching as the skin stretched and shifted with the motion. It felt different. Not numb, exactly, but more aware than before—as if his skin was paying attention.

* * * * * *

Detective Angela Locke was used to missing persons cases. Most of the time, they ended predictably—runaways, domestic disputes, the occasional unfortunate accident. But the case that had landed on her desk that morning was different.

The man’s wife had come in hysterical, clutching a photograph as she begged someone to listen.

“He’s not missing,” she had whispered. “He’s wrong.”

Locke had taken the statement with the same professionalism she always did, but as she sat in her squad car outside the missing man’s apartment, a sense of unease settled in her gut. The wife’s description had been vague—he’s not himself anymore—but something about the way she had said it had left Locke feeling as if she had stepped into something deeper than the usual domestic dispute.

She rapped on the apartment door, glancing down at the file again. Michael Cardenas. Forty-two. Recently underwent a Nuevaderm procedure. No prior history of erratic behavior.

The door opened a crack, and Locke caught a glimpse of a man standing in the dim interior.

“Mr. Cardenas?”

The man hesitated. His eyes darted to her badge, and for a moment, it seemed as if he was going to slam the door in her face. Then, slowly, he stepped back, allowing her inside.

Something about him immediately struck her as off. His posture was stiff, his arms held unnaturally close to his sides, as if he were unsure of how to move them. The light overhead cast subtle shadows on his face, and she realized with a jolt that his skin didn’t crease the way it should when he blinked.

“I… I don’t think I’m me anymore,” he whispered.

* * * * * *

Naomi sat alone in her office, deep in concentration. The official reports had all been favorable. No significant side effects. No reason for concern.

But the raw data told a different story.

She scrolled through the logs, her fingers tightening around the mouse. There were anomalies—small, at first. Discrepancies in sensory feedback. Minor irregularities in tissue response. But the most recent cases were impossible to ignore. Patients reported sensations that should not have been possible. A handful of them exhibited behavioral changes.

She hesitated, then opened a secure file hidden deep in the system. A video feed flickered to life, showing a patient in an observation room. He sat on the edge of his cot, motionless, until, without warning, he raised a hand to his forearm and peeled the skin back.

Naomi swallowed hard. The flesh beneath was not human.

Part II

Eric had never been the kind of man to obsess over his own body. He had always trusted it, knowing what it could endure, understanding its limitations. But the past few days had changed that. There was something unnatural about the way his skin reacted to injury.

The first time it happened, it was a minor cut—so small he might not have noticed it at all if it hadn’t sealed shut within seconds. He had been in the kitchen, slicing vegetables, when the knife had slipped and nicked the tip of his finger. There had been a sharp sting, a bead of blood, and then, before his eyes, the wound had closed itself.

He had stared at his finger, flexing it, rubbing the skin to see if there was any lingering sensitivity. There was none. It was as if the cut had never been there.

By the second time, he was no longer able to dismiss it as a fluke. A splinter had lodged itself in his palm while he was repairing a broken chair in his apartment. He had felt the sharp prick, had watched the tiny sliver of wood embed itself just beneath the surface. But as he reached for a pair of tweezers to pull it free, the skin simply pushed it out.

A wave of nausea had gripped him as he saw it happen. The flesh around the wound had rippled slightly, shifting in a way that reminded him of time-lapse footage of vines growing and curling around trellises. The splinter had been expelled as if his body had rejected it outright.

It wasn’t just the healing, though. His fingertips were growing more sensitive by the day. Textures that had once been familiar now felt overwhelming. His clothes felt abrasive against his skin, the sensation of air moving over his body made him shiver involuntarily, and the simple act of touching smooth surfaces sent a strange, almost electrical sensation up his spine.

At night, he found himself scratching. He would wake to find his nails digging into his forearms or trailing across his chest. The sensation was not pain, nor was it an itch in the traditional sense. It was something deeper, something beneath the skin.

* * * * * *

Jordan had spent enough years chasing dead-end leads to recognize when something wasn’t right. Every time he got too close to a story with real stakes, there was always someone willing to make it disappear—corporations, government agencies, even private entities with enough resources to bury the truth under layers of misdirection.

The man he had come to see had been one of Argenesis Biotech’s top researchers until six months ago, when he had abruptly resigned. His name was Daniel Mercer, and according to the sparse information Jordan had been able to dig up, he had been involved in the Nuevaderm trials from the beginning.

The address Jordan had tracked down led him to a dingy motel on the outskirts of the city, the kind of place where people went when they wanted to disappear. The room door was already cracked open when he arrived.

Mercer looked like a man who hadn’t slept in weeks. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin pale, and his hands trembled slightly as he gestured for Jordan to come inside.

“You shouldn’t have found me,” Mercer muttered.

“I think you wanted me to,” Jordan replied. “You wouldn’t have left a digital trail if you didn’t.”

“You don’t understand what you’re getting into,” Mercer said, rubbing at his face. “Nuevaderm wasn’t ready. It isn’t ready.”

Jordan flipped open his notebook. “Tell me why.”

“There were… irregularities. We knew the material was adaptive, but we underestimated the extent of its integration. It doesn’t just heal—it assimilates.” Mercer’s hands clenched into fists. “We started seeing cognitive changes in early recipients. Personality shifts. Some of them described feeling detached from their own bodies. Others… they stopped feeling human at all.”

Jordan narrowed his eyes. “You mean psychologically?”

Mercer shook his head. “I mean physically.”

* * * * * *

Detective Locke had seen plenty of violent deaths in her career, but the crime scene she stood in now unsettled her in a way she couldn’t quite define.

The victim had been found in his apartment, torn apart in a manner that suggested a frenzied attack. Blood soaked the floor, the walls, even the ceiling. The body itself had been reduced to pieces, the limbs separated from the torso, the flesh shredded.

But it was the skin that caught her attention. The crime scene tech had pointed it out as she arrived. Despite the sheer brutality of the attack, the skin itself remained intact. It was as if something had stripped the body down to its raw components and then discarded what it no longer needed.

The sheet of synthetic flesh lay discarded on the floor, whole and unbroken. The coroner stood beside it, his face pale. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he murmured. “It’s like he… stepped out of it.”

* * * * * *

Eric had always been a rational man. He didn’t believe in superstition, he didn’t buy into conspiracy theories, and he certainly didn’t let his mind wander into the realm of paranoia. But as he stood in front of his bathroom mirror, the sick weight in his stomach refused to settle.

He had noticed it that morning—something beneath his skin. It wasn’t a rash. It wasn’t swelling. It was deeper than that. A network of thin, root-like fibers traced just beneath the surface, following the lines of his veins. He touched his arm experimentally, pressing his fingertips against the skin. He could feel them shifting in response, subtly adjusting to the pressure.

A wave of revulsion rolled over him. He grabbed a razor blade from the counter and pressed the edge against his forearm. The moment the blade bit into his skin, the reaction was instantaneous. The flesh moved. It didn’t simply heal—it resisted. The cut was barely a fraction of an inch deep when the skin tightened around it, sealing the wound as though it had never been there.

Eric stumbled back from the mirror, the razor clattering into the sink as he stared at his reflection. The thing looking back at him had his face, his eyes, his body.

But it wasn’t him.

Not completely.

* * * * * *

Naomi sat in the dim glow of her office, staring at the raw data on her screen. The evidence was undeniable. The material wasn’t just bonding—it was taking over. The affected patients weren’t healing. They were being replaced.

A video feed played in the corner of the screen, showing a test subject in an observation room. He sat on the cot, his arms wrapped around his body as he rocked back and forth. Then, without warning, he reached up and pulled.

The skin sloughed away, unraveling in smooth, unbroken sheets. Naomi’s hands trembled as she paused the feed. The patient’s face had been removed, but beneath it, something else remained.

Something that was still watching her.

Part III

Eric’s first thought upon waking was that something was wrong. His limbs felt sluggish, weighed down by a deep, unfamiliar fatigue. His throat was dry, and a strange, metallic taste lingered at the back of his tongue, as if he had bitten into a coin.

He sat up, the room tilting slightly around him. His bedsheets were tangled, damp with sweat, and as he moved, he felt something stick to his fingers. Blinking against the dim morning light filtering through his blinds, he looked down and saw the blood. His hands were coated in it. Thick, dried smears darkened his fingers, crusted beneath his nails, staining his forearms.

A bolt of panic shot through him as he scrambled out of bed. His mind clawed for memories of the night before, but all he found was blankness—a gap where time should have been. The last thing he clearly recalled was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at the strange, fibrous network beneath his skin.

He stumbled into the bathroom now, nearly tripping over his own feet. Flicking on the light, he braced himself against the sink and examined his reflection.

His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot, but the worst part, the part that sent cold dread seeping into his bones, was the dried blood beneath his fingernails. It was thick—too much to have come from a minor cut.

His stomach churned. He forced himself to check his body for injuries, but there was nothing. No wounds, no cuts, not even a bruise. His skin was perfect. Untouched.

Then where had the blood come from?

* * * * * *

Detective Locke sat across from Daniel Whitaker, his hands clenched together on the table between them. He was a wiry man in his late forties, his face lined with the kind of exhaustion that came from too many nights of lost sleep. His wife, Mara Whitaker, had undergone Nuevaderm treatment two months ago following a car accident that had left her with severe burns.

“I know how this is going to sound,” Daniel said, his voice hoarse, “but that woman in my house isn’t my wife.”

Locke had heard similar statements before—typically in cases involving dementia or psychiatric breaks. But something about the way he spoke, the raw certainty in his voice, made her listen carefully.

“She looks like her. She sounds like her,” he continued. “But she doesn’t… move the same way. She doesn’t sleep like she used to. She breathes differently. It’s subtle, but I know.” His fingers tightened around each other. “The first week after the procedure, everything seemed normal. The wounds healed fast, faster than the doctors expected. She said she felt better than before.”

Locke jotted down notes, nodding for him to continue.

“But then little things started happening. She started sitting too still. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and she’d be sitting up in bed, just… watching me. She said she was having trouble sleeping, but the way she looked at me…” He swallowed. “Then last night, I reached for her hand and—”

He broke off, rubbing his hands over his face.

Locke waited. “What happened?”

“She flinched.” His eyes were wide now, feverish. “Like she didn’t expect me to touch her. Like she had to remember how to react.”

* * * * * *

Jordan had not been able to shake the growing feeling that he was in over his head, but when he saw what had been done to Daniel Mercer, the final piece of certainty snapped into place.

The former Argenesis researcher had been found in a downtown alley, his body barely recognizable. He had been skinned—but not entirely. The synthetic layer had remained intact in some places, stretched taut over muscle and sinew.

But the most disturbing part was what the coroner had found at the scene.

The Nuevaderm had not simply detached from his body. It had twisted and crawled, as if separating itself.

The forensic team had retrieved the discarded layer from where it had slumped against the alley wall. Even now, beneath the sterile lights of the morgue, Jordan could see the faint, unnatural twitch of the material.

“It’s still active,” the coroner murmured, his voice tight with unease. “It hasn’t stopped reacting.”

Jordan stared at the remains, his mind racing. Mercer had tried to warn him, trying to tell him that Nuevaderm wasn’t healing people—that it was replacing them.

* * * * * *

Eric sat in his living room, the blade in his hand feeling heavier than it should. The panic from that morning had settled into something closer to cold resignation.

He had felt it beneath his skin. The shifting.

And he couldn’t take it anymore.

Pressing the razor against his forearm, he inhaled sharply and made the cut. Pain flared instantly, sharp and clean, but it was not the pain that made his breath catch. It was the reaction.

The skin screamed.

The sound wasn’t external—it wasn’t something his ears registered in the air. It was inside him, vibrating through his bones, reverberating from his skull down into his spine. It was a noise his body wasn’t meant to hear, something that had been lying dormant beneath the surface.

He gasped, his fingers twitching, but the cut had already sealed.

The blade clattered onto the floor. He lifted his arm again, staring at the unbroken flesh.

He had no control over it anymore.

* * * * * *

Naomi had known, from the moment she saw the results, that Argenesis would never allow the truth to come out.

She had spent the past several nights poring over the research, compiling her findings into an encrypted drive. The evidence was undeniable. The material wasn’t just bonding—it was rewriting. The patients who had undergone the procedure were not healing. They were being consumed.

She had sent a final, desperate email to one of her trusted contacts, attaching everything she could before wiping her office computer. It wasn’t enough. The product was already out. Thousands of people had received it. Some were only in the early stages, but others…

Her stomach twisted as she thought about what she had seen on the security footage and heard in the abandoned testing facility—the whispers, the quiet hum of something moving just beneath the surface.

She reached for her phone, intending to make one last call, but before she could dial, her screen flickered and went dark.

The power in her office cut out.

She wasn’t alone anymore.

Part IV

Eric had turned his couch against the door. The windows had been covered with bedsheets, every reflective surface in the apartment draped with whatever fabric he could find. He didn’t want to see himself anymore.

He knew what was happening. He had known for days.

His hands no longer obeyed him the way they once did. When he reached for objects, there was a hesitation, a strange lag between intent and motion. Sometimes his fingers twitched at his sides, curling and unfurling as though testing their own independence.

And then there was the voice. It wasn’t audible; he couldn’t exactly pinpoint with his ears. It was deeper than that—inside him. A whisper at the edge of thought, threading through his mind like a parasite, its words tangled in the fabric of his own consciousness.

“Let go.”

He hadn’t left the apartment in three days. The hunger gnawed at him, but eating was an ordeal. His jaw felt stiff, his throat foreign. Drinking was easier than chewing. When he swallowed, he could feel the movement all the way down, as if his body was rediscovering how it functioned.

But worst of all was his voice.

The first time he tried to call for help, the words caught in his throat. When he forced them out, the sound that emerged wasn’t his own. It was wet and guttural. Someone else’s.

He hadn’t tried again since.

* * * * * *

Jordan ran a hand through his hair as he sat across from Detective Locke. The evidence was overwhelming. There were too many cases now, too many victims who weren’t missing so much as changed.

“It’s not just psychological,” Jordan said. “This isn’t trauma. It’s physical.”

Locke drummed her fingers against the table. She had spent years dealing with unexplainable crimes, but this—this was something worse. It was methodical. Deliberate.

“We need to go public,” Jordan continued. “People need to know.”

Locke shook her head. “It’s too late for that.” She pushed a folder across the table. “This came in an hour ago. Reports from all over the city. Attacks. Violent episodes. People turning on their families. It’s escalating.”

Jordan hesitated before opening the folder. The first photo made his stomach turn. A woman, her face peeled away in a single, intact sheet, lay in the middle of a dimly lit kitchen. There was no sign of a struggle, no blood—just the skin, discarded like a shed husk.

The second image was worse.

The person beneath the skin was still alive.

* * * * * *

Eric sat perfectly still, watching his own hands with detached curiosity.

They were moving again, independent of his will. The fingers flexed and twisted, exploring their own range of motion, testing the way the skin shifted over the bone.

The whisper in his mind was no longer distant. It was immediate. Present.

“It’s time.”

His lips moved before he could stop them. No words came, but the movement was enough. He raised a trembling hand to his mouth. Something was wrong with his tongue.

It pressed against the roof of his mouth, unresponsive to his attempts to shift it. The sensation was dull and distant, like touching a limb that had fallen asleep. Panic surged through him as he pried his lips apart and forced himself to the mirror he had failed to cover.

At first, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. The panic nearly gave way to relief. But when he opened his mouth again and tilted his head forward, he saw it.

His tongue was gone.

In its place, the inside of his mouth was smooth and seamless, fused together with the same unnatural texture that now made up his skin.

He could no longer speak.

* * * * * *

The first emergency broadcasts came in the early evening. Reports of erratic behavior, sudden acts of violence, entire households going silent overnight.

Then the videos started.

Security footage captured figures moving strangely in their own homes, standing in the dark for hours before silently stepping forward and peeling away their own faces. Some seemed confused by what they found beneath. Others stared at their reflections, motionless, their new forms twitching. Some attacked. Others simply left, walking into the night with an eerie, unsettling calm.

It was no longer an isolated event.

* * * * * *

Naomi had known she would not leave the building alive.

Her office door had been locked for hours, her messages ignored by the few colleagues who might have listened. She had seen the security footage. The test subjects were becoming something else, wholly unrecognizable.

When the power in her office flickered, she knew they were coming for her.

She sat perfectly still as the door creaked open, as shadows stretched into the dim glow of her computer screen. The figure that stepped inside was familiar. The synthetic skin covering its face was flawless, unbroken, a mask of inhuman perfection. The eyes, however, were too still, the breathing too measured.

It was the same man she had spoken to days ago.

But she knew, without a doubt, that he was no longer human.

A slow, unnatural smile stretched across his face.

Naomi did not scream.

* * * * * *

The official recall of Nuevaderm was announced two days later.

The government assured the public that all affected individuals would receive treatment, and that there was no ongoing threat. The incident was labeled a “containable anomaly.”

The city returned to normal, the headlines faded, and the world, as it always did, moved on.

But in quiet rooms, in darkened streets, in places where no one was looking, those who had been changed remained.

Some had vanished entirely, their husks discarded like the remnants of a molted shell.

Others remained behind, watching and waiting.

* * * * * *

Argenesis released a statement a month after the recall. They called it “a recommitment to transparency.” A new press conference was scheduled—same building, same stage, same familiar logo. The media came in droves, drawn by promises of “next-generation biomedical advancements.”

The speaker was Dr. Naomi Tanaka.

She stepped up to the podium with a calm, composed expression. Her voice was steady, her hair pulled into the same severe bun she’d worn at the original launch. Her skin was flawless—too flawless.

“The setbacks have been addressed,” she said to the crowd. “Nuevaderm is ready.”

Jordan Reyes sat in the back of the room, notebook open in his lap, hands trembling slightly, a bead of cold sweat forming near his brow. He hadn’t been invited, but he had to be there. Had to see it for himself. See her for himself.

The face was Naomi’s. The cadence was hers. But her eyes never blinked. Her chest never rose to breathe. And when she smiled, it was wider than it should have been. No one else seemed to notice. Jordan fidgeted in his chair and swallowed hard.

“Humanity’s evolution was inevitable. It was never a matter of ‘if’ but of ‘when,’” she said. “And thanks to Nuevaderm, the wait is over. Why be you… when you can be new?”

The room erupted in applause.