Skinned -1 by Robin Wasserman

Author:Robin Wasserman [Wasserman, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Mysteries & Detective Stories, Fiction, General, Family, Teenage Girls, Social Issues, Science Fiction, Death & Dying, Fantasy, Fantasy & Magic, Friendship, School & Education, Love & Romance, Family & Relationships, Death; Grief; Bereavement
ISBN: 9781416936343
Google: 11vAwj_7edYC
Amazon: 1416936343
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2008-09-09T07:00:00+00:00

ONE OF US

“If you can’t remember something, did it really happen?”

The car took an unfamiliar route, depositing me at some smal ish house a little too close to the city for my comfort. There was a security field around the property, which lifted as I drove through. No one was waiting outside for me. I wondered if Quinn had already arrived. Or changed her mind about coming in the first place. It was, after al , slightly insane, showing up at a random spot in the middle of nowhere just because some anonymous message told me to. It was more than slightly insane to do so without tel ing anyone where I was going. But I had come this far; I was going in.

After al , what was the worst that could happen? It’s not like I could die.

I knocked. When the door opened, the blue-haired girl from the support group stood behind it. “You?” I asked, surprised. The girl—Ani, I remembered—had spoken even less than I had at the session, revealing only that, aside from the technicolored hair, she was kind of blah.

“Sort of me,” she said softly. “But not just me. Come in.” She stepped aside.

The place was crawling with them. Mech-heads. Skinners. Freaks. And I mean, crawling, literal y, since a few of them were on the floor, writhing against the cheap carpeting—

or against one another—their eyes rol ed back, their fingers spasming. It was as if they were tripping on Xers, but I knew they couldn’t be, because they were like me.

No, I thought, trying not to stare, although they wouldn’t have noticed. Not like me.

The house was sparsely furnished: white wal s, gray floor, a couple of cheap couches set at haphazard angles to the wal s and each other, and not much more. Ani took a seat on one of them, settling back against Quinn’s arm. Quinn looked like she was home. There was an empty space next to them. I didn’t sit. On the other couch slumped a tal , lanky mech-head with brown eyes, brown hair, and a sour look on his waxy face. And next to him, staring at me with flickering orange eyes, someone familiar. Jude something, one of the earliest skinners. A year ago he’d been everywhere on the vids, hitting parties, crashing vidlifes, popping up on al the stalker zones. And then, a month or two later, people had gotten bored—or he had—and he’d disappeared. A month was longer than most insta-fame lasted; he’d been lucky.

He’d also been a brunet. But now he was…something else. His hair gleamed silver, and the color bled down his face, streaking his forehead and cheeks with a metal ic sheen.

His bare left arm was etched with the snaking black lines of a circuit diagram. But his right arm, that was the worst of it. The pseudoflesh had been stripped away, replaced by a transparent coating that glowed with the pulse and flicker of the circuitry underneath.

He wasn’t the only one. The writhing

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