The Flesh Printer

The last batch of artificial skin had been printed at the lab, the machines sterilised, the lights dimmed. The biofabrication unit—Model Z-9, the pride of Genetica Labs—was in sleep mode, its nutrient reservoirs refilled, its synthetic gel cooling under its protective casing.

But as Nathan reached the lift, a soft whirr stopped him.

He turned back. The printer was running.

A mistake, surely. A delayed command in the system queue, a leftover job from the day. He sighed, walked back to his terminal, and tapped at the screen.

No active print job. No queued processes. The machine wasn’t supposed to be running.

And yet, inside the sealed chamber, the print head moved, extruding a fine stream of bio-ink. Layer by layer, a shape began to form. It wasn’t an organ. Not tissue grafts, nor synthetic muscle.

Nathan squinted at the structure. It was… smooth. Rounded.

He checked the material logs. The machine wasn’t using the standard polymer scaffold. It had switched—by itself—to human-grade collagen. The finest tissue-printing substrate available. The kind used to make replacement hearts and livers.

The shape was taking form now. A curve. A ridge. And then—

A nose.

He pressed the emergency halt button. The printer ignored him.

Instead, it picked up speed, layering tissue faster than should have been possible. The texture smoothed, pores appearing, the faintest lines of natural wrinkles. Then the next piece took shape—a cheek. A mouth. The suggestion of an eye socket.

Nathan scrambled to shut off the power manually. He ripped open the side panel, reached for the main switch—

“Don’t.”

Nathan froze.

The voice hadn’t come from the intercom. It hadn’t come from the lab’s speakers.

It had come from inside the printer.

Slowly, he turned back.

The printed face was complete now. Not just skin—beneath, faint traces of microvasculature, fine nerve endings still forming. The lips trembled, as if struggling to find the right shape.

Then the eye socket filled.

A glossy layer of bio-gel formed over it. And from that gel, something moved.

Nathan watched, paralysed, as the eyeball printed itself in real-time. Blood vessels threaded into place like ivy, the iris shading in pale increments. The lens formed last, clear and bright.

Then it blinked.

And it looked at him.

The face was… familiar.

It was his face.

Not a perfect replica—something was off. The skin was too smooth, the expression wrong. And the mouth—his mouth—curved into a shape Nathan had never made.

The voice came again, softer now.

“More.”

The printer whirred back to life.

Below the face, a throat began to form. The hint of shoulders.

Nathan reached and flicked the switch.

Then—

The intercom crackled.

“You left me unfinished.”

Nathan ran to the lift.

The doors dinged.

Nathan leapt inside, hammering the close button. The last thing he saw, before the doors slid shut, was the printer chamber’s glass bulging outward—distorting, warping—

And his own face, smiling at him from the other side.