Skinwork

Mika is one of the city's best skinwork artists, engineering living designs beneath the surface of her clients' skin with the precision of a bioengineer and the eye of an artist. When a client comes in for a routine removal consultation, Mika discovers that one of the botanical pieces she replicated is producing compounds it should never have been making.What begins as a technical anomaly turns into something far worse. The design is not just decorative. It is functional. Hidden beneath its beauty is a biological delivery system - one that has already spread from body to body through the ordinary culture of replication, fashion, and trust.As Mika traces the origin of the piece, she is forced to confront a brutal truth: she may have helped distribute a covert pharmaceutical technology disguised as art. Now she must uncover who designed it, what it is doing to the people carrying it, and how far it has already spread before corporations, regulators, and the wider public catch up.