Skinned by Robin Wasserman
Author:Robin Wasserman [Wasserman, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: BluA
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2009-08-11T05:51:13+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 smallish 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 all, 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 telling anyone where I was going. But I had come this far; I was going in.
After all, 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, literally, since a few of them were on the floor, writhing against the cheap carpeting—or against one another—their eyes rolled 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 walls, gray floor, a couple of cheap couches set at haphazard angles to the walls 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 tall, 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 all 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 metallic 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 freaks were all streaked with silver, their skin painted with whirling diagrams or stripped away, wiring exposed.
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Hero by Michael Grant(1157)
Skinned by Robin Wasserman(1092)
Mockingjay (The Final Book of The Hunger Games) by Suzanne Collins(1068)
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins(1065)
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi(939)
the 5th wave by rick yancey(929)
The Power of Six (I Am Number Four) by Lore Pittacus(913)
02 The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore(902)
The Hunger Games - 01 - The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins(880)
The Hunger Games - 03 - Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins(877)
Mockingjay (The Final Book of the Hunger Games) by Suzanne Collins(845)
Alienated by Melissa Landers(828)
Crewel by Gennifer Albin(827)
Insignia by S. J. Kincaid(818)
Mockingjay (Hunger Games Trilogy) by Collins Suzanne(795)
The Lake House by James Patterson(790)
Pure by Julianna Baggott(773)
Six's Legacy by Pittacus Lore(767)
The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore(742)