VANE
I have a job that would make you want to scrub your skin with steel wool until you bleed.
But in Limania, you wouldn't even feel the scrub. You wouldn't feel the sting. Not unless you paid someone like me to feel it for you.
My name is Vane. I am a Proxy. That is the professional term. In the streets, they call us "Thirds" or "Flesh-Cables." I am a human bridge. I am the person who stands between two people and connects their dead nerves so they can experience the illusion of intimacy.
I work for the Silent Body Syndicate. They own my nerves. They own my reflexes. And most importantly, they own my silence.
"You are a pipe, Vane," my supervisor, Miller, tells me every single morning. He has eyes like cold pebbles and a voice that sounds like a sliding morgue drawer. "Water goes through a pipe. The pipe doesn't taste the water. The pipe doesn't keep the water. The pipe stays dry. Do you understand?"
I always nod. "I understand, Miller."
For five years, I have been a very good pipe. I have felt a thousand orgasms that didn't belong to me. I have felt the phantom warmth of a thousand kisses intended for someone else. I have been a witness to the most private moments of strangers, and every time the session ends, I reset. I empty myself. I go back to my gray apartment, eat my gray food, and wait for the next set of nerves to plug into mine.
I'm expensive. I'm a Grade-A model. I'm supposed to be empty.
But tonight, the pipe started to leak.
The session was at a penthouse in the Diamond District. The air up there is different. It's filtered and chilled, smelling like expensive ozone and the kind of floor wax that costs more than my monthly rent. My clients were a couple named the Kents. They were beautiful in that jagged, plastic way rich people are. Polished. Perfect. And completely, utterly numb.
They looked at each other with the kind of boredom usually reserved for looking at a grocery list.
"Position four," Mr. Kent said. He didn't look at me. To him, I wasn't a man. I was a biological appliance. I was a high-end router for his pleasure.
"Yes, sir," I said.
I stripped to my waist and stepped between them on the heated silk rug. I felt the familiar hum of the neural-link sensors embedded in the walls. I closed my eyes and opened my mind. I practiced my breathing. I made myself hollow.
This is the ritual: I touch his hand. I touch her cheek. I become the circuit. When he kisses her, he doesn't feel her skin. He feels my nerves reacting to her skin. I am the one who processes the heat, the pressure, the friction. I translate it and beam it back into their brains via the Syndicate's tech. They get the thrill; I get the exhaustion.
It started normally. A dull rush of borrowed warmth. A spike of artificial adrenaline.
Then, it happened.
In the middle of the session, a sharp, white-hot pain stabbed me right in the center of my chest. It wasn't the usual flow. It was heavy. It felt like someone had poured molten lead into my veins. It was sticky. It was... permanent.
Usually, the sensations pass through me like a breeze through a screen door. This time, the door slammed shut.
I felt Mr. Kent's desire, but it didn't leave. It hit a wall inside my ribs and stayed there. It started to claw at my lungs. It was followed by Mrs. Kent's secret—a dark, cold wave of resentment that felt like swallowing crushed ice.
I gasped. My back arched. My heart, which is supposed to stay at a steady 60 beats per minute during a session, suddenly exploded into a frantic gallop.
"Is there a problem, Proxy?" Mrs. Kent asked. Her voice was like a razor blade wrapped in velvet. She pulled back, looking at me with pure annoyance.
I was gasping for air. The pleasure and the pain were swirling together in my stomach, thickening into something solid.
"No," I choked out. My skin felt like it was on fire. "Just... a neural spike. The connection is strong tonight. My apologies."
I forced myself to finish. I forced the "pipe" to stay open, but I could feel it bursting. I was holding onto things I wasn't allowed to have. I was keeping their ghosts.
When the session ended, they didn't thank me. They never do. Mr. Kent just tapped his tablet to authorize the Syndicate's fee, and Mrs. Kent went to the mirror to fix her hair. They looked satisfied. They looked "full."
I felt like I was carrying a bomb.
I stumbled out of the penthouse and into the elevator. The moment the doors closed, I collapsed against the mirrored wall. I was shaking. My vision was swimming with purple spots.
I didn't go back to the Syndicate office to check out. I couldn't. I ran. I ran through the rainy streets of Limania, past the neon signs and the shivering crowds, until I found a public restroom in a subway station.
I slammed the door and locked it. My breath was coming in ragged stabs. I ripped open my shirt, my fingers fumbling with the buttons.
I expected to see a bruise. Maybe a burn from the sensors.
I saw something much worse.
Right over my heart, there was a mark. It was about the size of a coin. It was a deep, bruised purple, and it was pulsing. It looked like a tattoo of two hands tangled together, but it wasn't ink. It was under the skin. And it was glowing with a faint, sickly light.
"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."
I rubbed it. I grabbed a paper towel and tried to scrub it off with cheap soap. I scrubbed until my skin was raw and red, but the mark stayed. It didn't just stay—it got brighter.
And then the "Hearing" started.
As I touched the mark, I heard a voice in my head. It wasn't my voice. It was Mr. Kent's. I hate her. I hope the ship she takes to the colonies sinks.
Then another voice. Mrs. Kent's. He doesn't know I've been emptying the accounts. One more month. Just one more month.
I fell to the floor, clutching my head. I wasn't just storing their pleasure. I was storing their intent. I was keeping their filth.
This is the "Malfunction" we are warned about in training. The "Sensory Storage Syndrome." It's rare. It's supposed to be a myth. They tell us that if a Proxy ever starts to keep the data, their brain will eventually liquefy from the pressure of too many lives.
I looked in the cracked mirror of the restroom. I looked like a ghost. I looked like a man who was about to be erased.
If the Syndicate finds out, they won't just fire me. They'll "Recalibrate" me. They'll take me to the basement of the clinic, open my skull, and scrape my brain clean until I don't even remember my own name. I've seen the "Recalibrated" ones. They walk the halls like zombies, drooling and staring at nothing.
I pulled my shirt back on, my hands trembling. I had to hide. I had to get to my apartment and find a way to cut this thing out of me.
I pushed open the restroom door and stepped back into the station.
A woman was standing there.
She wasn't a traveler. She wasn't a beggar. She was wearing the sharp, silver trench coat of the Sensory Morality Police. The "Smellers." They are trained to sniff out illegal sensory data like bloodhounds.
Her name was Vora. I had seen her at the Syndicate headquarters before. She was known for being the most effective hunter in the city. They said she could feel a lie from a block away.
She was leaning against a pillar, watching me.
"You look heavy tonight, Vane," she said. Her voice was low, almost a purr. She didn't move toward her weapon. She didn't call for backup. She just looked at my chest, right where the mark was hidden under my shirt.
"I'm just tired," I said, trying to push past her. "Long shift."
She stepped into my path. She was taller than me, and her eyes were a strange, piercing amber. She leaned in close, so close I could smell the ozone on her skin.
"You're not just tired," she whispered. She reached out a gloved hand and touched my chest, right over the pulsing tattoo.
I flinched. The mark roared in response. I felt a surge of Mr. Kent's hatred and Mrs. Kent's greed hit me all at once.
Vora's eyes widened. She didn't look angry. She looked... jealous.
"You're full," she breathed. "You've got a leak, Vane. And it smells delicious."
"Let me go," I hissed.
"Oh, I'll let you go," she said, stepping back and smoothing her coat. "For now. But be careful. When a pipe bursts, it makes a terrible mess. And I'm the one who usually has to clean it up."
She watched me as I backed away. She didn't follow me. She just stood there, smiling.
I ran. I didn't stop until I was inside my apartment with the deadbolt turned.
I went to my kitchen and grabbed the sharpest knife I owned. I sat on the floor, stripped off my shirt, and looked at the purple hands on my chest. They were glowing brighter now. A new line was forming—a thin, golden thread trailing down toward my stomach.
I pressed the tip of the knife against the edge of the mark.
I just had to cut it out. A small incision. A little bit of blood. It was better than being Recalibrated.
But as the blade bit into my skin, a wave of warmth washed over me. It wasn't the Kents' filth. It was something else. A fragment of a memory from years ago. The feeling of real, hot sun on my face. The smell of salt water. The sound of someone laughing—really laughing.
I haven't seen the sun in years. Nobody in Limania has. The sky is always a ceiling of gray smoke.
I lowered the knife.
The memory was beautiful. It was the most real thing I had ever felt. And I realized then that if I cut the mark out, the memory would die. The sun would go out.
I looked at my hands. They were solid. They were mine.
For five years, I had been an empty pipe. Tonight, I was a thief. And as I sat there in the dark, listening to the rain hit my window, I realized I didn't want to be empty anymore.
I wanted to keep it. I wanted to keep all of it.
Even if it killed me.