Skin Deep (Chapters 1 and 2).

Skin Deep

Chapter One – The Seal

The airlock door closed with a hydraulic hiss, and the steel groaned as though the earth itself were swallowing them whole. Dr. Lena Ward didn’t breathe until the final bolt clamped into place. She pressed her palm to the cold metal, her reflection a pale smear in the polished surface. That’s it, she thought. No going back. Not ever. Behind her, the group shifted uneasily in the corridor, their faces washed white by the LED lights that buzzed overhead. The shelter was immaculate—too immaculate. Every surface gleamed as though it had been polished an hour ago. The white walls stretched endlessly, broken only by air vents that hummed with mechanical life.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Marcus Hale’s voice filled the silence. He stood at the head of the crowd, tall and broad-shouldered, his suit still crisp despite the chaos above. His smile was wide, too wide, like a politician on stage. “You are the lucky few. You’ve made it. Safe. Secure. Untouched by the disaster raging outside.” He spread his arms as though unveiling a miracle. “The world above is poison. Air that will burn your lungs in seconds. Skin that will blister on contact. Here, in my shelter, you are untouchable. The filters are state-of-the-art. The food supply is calculated to last five years. Everything has been thought of.”

No one clapped. Lena felt her daughter Eli’s hand slip into hers. The girl’s fingers were icy despite the heat trapped in the sealed space. Eli leaned close and whispered, “It smells like bleach in here.”

“It’s just the filters,” Lena murmured, though she tasted it too—an acrid, chemical bite that settled at the back of her throat. Marcus continued, his voice smooth. “Dr. Ward will serve as our medical officer. If you have any concerns, she will address them. Otherwise, I ask that you follow the routines. Routines are survival. Structure is life. Panic is death.” His gaze swept the room. No one dared challenge him.

But Lena noticed Claire—the young woman with the crucifix around her neck—crossing herself silently. And Dr. Kim, the biochemist, kept adjusting his glasses, blinking too often, as though doubting what he had agreed to. We’re not untouchable, Lena thought. We’re entombed. The days crawled.

Every morning, the shelter lights flared on at 7:00 a.m. sharp. A chime echoed through the halls, synthetic and cheerful, like a shopping mall jingle. They sterilized their hands at the dispensers, ate rations that tasted of chalk, and gathered for mandatory exercise in the wide central chamber. Marcus insisted on speeches—small pep talks delivered from the balcony above, as though he were addressing shareholders instead of frightened families. “The outside will never touch us,” he’d say. “Here, we endure. Here, humanity begins again.”

Lena focused on her duties. Blood pressure readings, wound care, and listening to endless complaints of headaches, dizziness, and fatigue. Stress, she told them. Always stress. The body rebels under pressure. But then the skin started peeling. At first, it was Marcus’s assistant—tiny flakes drifting from her forearms, like dandruff but thicker. Lena reassured her with lotion, explaining dry air. But the flakes grew larger, curling like sunburned skin, until pale sheets collected in her bed at night. Within days, others followed. Hair loosened in clumps. Nails split at the edges. A man showed her his back, raw and weeping where skin had sloughed away entirely.

Lena wrote everything down in her notebook, her handwriting neat but her pulse frantic. Explanations, she scrawled. Stress. Dehydration. Vitamin deficiency. But late at night, in the silence of her bunk, she admitted the truth to herself. She had no explanation. One evening, Eli pressed her face to the observation screen in the cafeteria, staring at the blurred footage of the city above. Smoke curled through broken towers. The air shimmered like heat over asphalt, though Lena knew it wasn’t heat at all.

“Mom,” Eli whispered gently, “what if it’s not real?”

“What?” “The footage. What if it’s just a loop? What if they’re keeping us here for something else?”

Lena’s chest tightened. She opened her mouth to scold, to say Don’t start conspiracies, but the words wouldn’t come. Because she had thought the same thing. The cameras never shifted. The haze never changed. Always the same ruined skyline. Always the same empty streets. She forced a smile. “It’s real, Eli. It has to be.” But she wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. The first scream came three nights later.

Lena bolted upright, heart hammering. The sound tore through the shelter—high, raw, not human. She rushed into the corridor and nearly collided with Eli, who was shaking violently. “I saw him,” Eli whispered, her voice breaking. “Dr. Kim. Mom—his face… Lena pulled her close, stroking her hair. “Shh. It’s okay. It’s okay.” But it wasn’t. Down the hall, Dr. Kim’s lab door was sealed. Behind it, muffled noises thudded against the steel. A rasping voice bled through, words distorted, wet.

“Just a rash,” he muttered. “Give it time. Give it time.” “Dr. Kim!” Lena pressed her ear to the door. “It’s me. Let me in. I can help.” “No.” A heavy thud rattled the door. “Don’t look at me.” Silence. Then a gurgle, deep and inhuman, vibrating through the wall. Lena staggered back, pulling Eli with her. And for the first time since the doors had sealed, she wished she had stayed outside.

Chapter Two – Symptoms

The shelter was too quiet. Not the peaceful kind of quiet Lena used to crave after long hospital shifts, but a smothering hush, heavy and unnatural. The air vents hummed steadily, never wavering, like an artificial heartbeat echoing through the corridors. She began to hate the sound—it reminded her that the air was borrowed, processed, recycled. Each day, she made her rounds, notebook in hand, pretending the pattern of symptoms was random.

Day 6: Marcus’s assistant—skin flaking, both forearms. Lotion ineffective.

Day 7: Thomas—nausea, dizziness, hair thinning at the crown.

Day 8: Claire—rash spreading down spine, blistering.

She scribbled her observations in neat rows, her handwriting sharp even as her hands trembled. She didn’t let them see her fear. “Stress reactions,” she told them, were always the same line. “The body is under strain. We adapt.” But the looks they gave her said they didn’t believe her anymore. One evening, as she prepared Eli’s ration—a tasteless slab of protein paste—Marcus appeared at their table. He loomed over them, his smile stretched tight.

“Dr. Ward,” he said smoothly, “a word?” Lena set her fork down, already tense. “What is it?” He lowered his voice. “You’re frightening people.” “I’m frightening people?” Lena blinked at him. “They’re the ones peeling like old wallpaper. I’m just keeping track.” “Your tone,” Marcus said, leaning closer, “is one of doubt. And doubt spreads faster than disease. We can’t afford it here.” Eli shifted uncomfortably. “She’s just doing her job.”

Marcus’s smile flickered. His eyes, Lena noticed, were bloodshot, the whites faintly yellow. He looked ill, though he was doing his best to hide it. He straightened. “You’ll reassure them. Tell them the filters need calibration, that’s all. Nothing more.” “And if that’s not true?” Lena asked flatly. Marcus’s smile widened, showing too many teeth. “Then you’d better hope they believe it anyway.”

That night, Lena dreamed of skin sloughing off in sheets, clogging the vents like paper. She woke gasping, drenched in sweat. Eli curled beside her. “Mom,” Eli whispered in the dark, “my arm hurts.” Lena snapped on the light. Eli’s wrist was raw, a rash blooming up toward her elbow. The skin looked tight, shiny, as though something underneath pressed against it. “Don’t scratch,” Lena said quickly, grabbing gauze from her kit. Her hands shook as she wrapped her daughter’s arm. Eli watched her, eyes wide. “What if it’s starting?”

“It’s not.” Lena forced steadiness into her voice. “It’s just irritation. You’ll be fine.” “Promise?” Lena swallowed hard. “Promise.” But the word tasted like ash. Two days later, Dr. Kim stopped showing up to meals. Whispers spread fast. People claimed to hear noises from his lab at night—wet scraping, muffled groans, the sound of glass shattering. Marcus waved it off as “private experiments.” Lena tried to check on him. She knocked, called his name.

From behind the steel, his voice came, distorted, thick with mucus. “Don’t… open… door.” “Kim, you need help. Let me see you.” “Don’t look. Don’t… look at me.” A thud rattled the wall. Then silence. Lena pressed her ear to the cold steel. What she heard wasn’t silence after all—it was breathing. Labored, wet, inhuman. She stumbled back, heart slamming against her ribs. When she turned, Eli was standing in the hall, pale as milk.

“You heard it too,” Eli whispered. Lena wanted to deny it, to lie for her daughter’s sake. But her throat locked around the words. “Yes,” she said finally. “I heard it.” And the worst part was the thought that followed, unbidden, crawling into her mind like a parasite: What if the air out there was never the danger at all? What if it’s the air in here?