Read Online Skinned -1 by Robin Wasserman - Free Book Online Page A

hours later. But the brain was programmed to wake in the event of a loud noise. A survival strategy. The footsteps weren’t loud, but in the midnight quiet of floor thirteen they were loud enough.
    “Sleeping Beauty arises.” A girl stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the hal way fluorescents, a cutout shadow with bil owing black hair, slender arms, and just the right amount of curves. “I guess I don’t get to wake you with a kiss.” She stroked her fingers across the wal and the room came to light. I sat up in bed.
    It wasn’t a girl. It was a skinner.
    I knew it must be the one Sascha had told me about, the one I was supposed to be so eager to bond with. I was mostly eager for her to get out and leave me to the dark. She didn’t.
    “You’re her,” I said. “Quinn. The other one.”
    She crossed the room and, uninvited, sat down on the edge of the bed. “And here I thought I was the one and you were the other one.” She held out her hand.
    I didn’t shake.
    Instead I stared—I couldn’t help it. I’d never seen another mech-head, unless you counted the vids. Or the mirror. So this was what my parents saw when they looked at me.
    Something not quite machine and not quite human, something that was definitely a thing , even if it could lift its hand and tip its head and smile. It was better at smiling than I was, I noticed. If you focused on the mouth and looked away from the dead eyes, it almost looked real.
    “You’re Lia,” Quinn said, dropping her hand after realizing I wasn’t going to take it. “And yes, it is nice to meet me. Thanks for saying so.” I didn’t speak, figuring I could wait her out until she got bored and left. But the silence stretched out; I got bored first.
    “Quinn what?” I asked.
    “Lia who?” she said. “Or Lia when? Lia why? If you want to play a game, you have to fil me in on the rules. But fair warning: I play to win.” So did I. At least, when I was in the mood. Which I wasn’t.
    “What’s your last name?” I asked.
    “Doesn’t matter.”
    “I didn’t ask if it mattered, I just asked what it was.”
    “It was something,” she said. “But now it’s irrelevant.”
    I didn’t get her, and suspected that was the idea, like she thought I’d be so intrigued by her ridiculous air of mystery that I wouldn’t kick her out. I wondered if Sascha had put her up to it. If so, they were both seriously overestimating my level of curiosity. “What do you want?” I knew I sounded like a sulky kid. I didn’t care.
    “Heard your parents final y showed. Figured I would see how it went.”
    They’d driven two hours for a fifty-minute visit, then gotten the hel out.
    “Great,” I said sourly. “Heartfelt family reunion. You know how it is.”
    She raised her eyebrows. It was a nice trick, one I resolved to master myself. “Not real y. My family’s not an issue.”
    “Too perfect for ‘readjustment pains’?” I used Sascha’s favorite phrase for anything and everything that could possibly go wrong.
    “Too dead.”
    “Oh.”
    I refused to feel guilty. Not when she’d so blatantly manipulated the conversation to reach this point. “Sorry.” I lay back down again and turned over on my side, my back to her; universal code for “go away.”
    “Don’t you want the details?” Quinn asked, sounding disappointed. “The whole poor little orphan saga, from tragic start to triumphant finish?” If I’d stil had lungs, I would have sighed. Or faked a yawn. “Look, if Sascha sent you in here to give me the whole ‘you should be grateful for what you have’ guilt trip, I’m not interested. Yeah, it sucks that your parents are dead, but that doesn’t make mine any easier to deal with.” Silence.
    I couldn’t believe I’d just said that.
    “I’m sorry.” I twisted in bed, risking a glance at her face.
    She raised just one eyebrow this time, which was even more impressive. “Yeah. You are.” She turned away, revealing a broad swath of artificial flesh