Skinned Read online

  I was.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered as we waited at the elevators. “It’s not like they’ll work for us.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” Wasn’t it obvious? “We’re not supposed to leave here. The elevators are probably programmed.”

  “Have you actually tried?” Quinn sounded bored, like she already knew the answer.

  “No, but—”

  “I have.” The elevator door opened, and as I hesitated, she asked again. “You coming?”

  It had never occurred to me that I would be allowed to leave floor thirteen. Of course, it had never occurred to me to want to.

  “The other floors are biorestricted,” Quinn said, nodding toward the skimmer that would collect and analyze our DNA samples. If, that is, we’d had any to give. “But the ground floor’s all ours.”

  “Where are we going?” It felt strange to be talking to someone new after all this time. I had no reason to trust her. But I did.

  It’s because she’s like me, I thought. She knows.

  But I pushed the thought away. It was like I’d told Sascha. Quinn and I had nothing in common but circuitry and some layers of flesh-colored polymer.

  “Field trip.” She smiled, and, again, it killed me how much better her expressions were than mine, how much more natural. In the dark it had been easy to mistake her for someone real. No one would make that mistake about me. “Don’t get too excited.”

  The grassy stretch bounding the woods was larger than it had looked from the lounge window. The grass was beaded with dew, cold drops that seeped through the thin BioMax pajamas, but that didn’t bother me. Just like the brutal wind raking across us didn’t matter.

  “Can you imagine actually seeing the stars?” Quinn asked. She’d selected a dark swath of grass sandwiched between the floodlit puddles of light, then stripped off her clothes and let herself fall backward, naked against the brush. I kept my clothes on my body and my feet on the ground.

  At least at first.

  “Get down here,” Quinn had commanded.

  “Look, Quinn, it’s okay if you…but I don’t—”

  She laughed. “You think I brought you out here for that?” She stretched her arms out to her sides and down again, stick wings flapping through the grass. “Shirts or skins, I don’t care. Just lie down.”

  I wasn’t about to take orders from her.

  But I lay down.

  “You used to be able to see them. Stars and planets and a moon,” she said now, pointing at the reddish sky.

  The back of my neck was already smeared with dew. But she’d been right. It felt good to lie there in the grass, in the dark. The sky felt closer.

  “You can still see the moon.” The telltale white haze was hanging low, making the clouds shimmer.

  “Not like that,” Quinn said. “A bright white circle cut out of pure black. And stars like diamonds, everywhere.”

  “I know. I’ve seen.”

  “Not on the vids,” she said. “That doesn’t count.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “If you say so.”

  We were quiet for a minute. I stared up, trying to imagine it, a clear sky, a million stars. Most of the vids I’d seen came from just before the war turned the atmosphere into a planet-size atomic dust ball. The dust was mostly gone—along with the people who’d built the nukes and the nut jobs who’d launched them and the thousands who’d gone up in smoke in the first attacks and the millions who’d been dead by the end of that year or the next. Along with the place called Mecca and the place called Jerusalem and all the other forgotten places that exist now only as meaningless syllables in the Pledge of Forgiveness. The dust was gone, but the stars had never come back. Pollution, cloud cover, ambient light, whatever chemicals they’d used to cleanse the air and patch up the ozone, the law of unintended consequences come to murky life. Someone would fix it someday, I figured. But until then? No stars. My parents talked about them sometimes, late at night, usually when they were dropped on downers, which made them goopy about the past. But I didn’t get the big deal. Who cared if the sky glowed reddish purple all night long? It was pretty, and wasn’t that the point?

  “Why are we here, Quinn?”

  She clawed her fingers into the ground and dug up two clumps of grass, letting the dirt sift through her fingers. “So we don’t miss any of it.”

  “What?”

  “This. Feeling. Seeing. Being. Everything. The dew. The cold. That sound, the wind in the grass. You hear that? It’s so…real.”

  I didn’t know I’d had the hope until the hope died. So she wasn’t the same as me, after all; she didn’t understand. She didn’t get that none of it was real, not anymore, that the dew felt wrong, the cold felt wrong, the sounds sounded wrong, everything was wrong, everything was distant, everything was fake. Or maybe it was the opposite—everything was real except for me.

  I’d been right the first time. Quinn and I had nothing in common. “Whatever you say.”

  “It feels good, doesn’t it?” she asked.

  “What does?” Nothing did.

  “The grass.” She laughed. “Doesn’t it tickle?”

  “Yeah. I guess.” No.

  “It’s like us, you know.”

  “What, the grass?” I said. “Why, because people around here are always walking on it?”

  “Because it looks natural and all, but inside, it’s got a secret. It’s better. Manmade, right? New and improved.”

  Just because the grass—like the trees, like the birds, like pretty much everything—had been genetically modified to survive the increasingly crappy climate, smoggy sky, and arid earth, didn’t make it like us. It was still alive. “The grass still looks like grass,” I told her. “Seen a mirror lately? There’s no secret. We look like…exactly what we are.”

  “You got a boyfriend?”

  “What?” Under other circumstances I would have wondered what she was on. But I knew all too well she wasn’t on anything. If there were such a thing as a drug for skinners, I’d be on permanent mental vacation.

  “Or girlfriend, whatever.”

  “Boyfriend,” I admitted. “Walker.”

  “You two slamming?”

  “What?”

  “You. Walker. Slamming. Poking. Fucking. You need a definition? When a boy and a girl really love each other—”

  “I know what it means. I just don’t think it’s any of your business.”

  “I’m only asking because…Well, have you? Since, you know?”

  The thought repulsed me. The idea of Walker’s hands touching the skin, the look on his face when he peered into the dead eyes, the feeling—the nonfeeling—of his lips on the pale pink flesh-textured sacs that rimmed my false teeth. The thick, clumsy thing that functioned as a tongue. Would I even know what to do, or would it be like learning to walk again? Or worse, I thought, remembering the grunting and squealing. Like learning to talk. And that was just kissing. Anything else…I couldn’t think about it. “Have you?” I countered.

  She shook her head. “But look at my choices. Like I’m going to slam Asa?”

  “You trying to make me vomit?”

  “Good luck with that, considering the whole no-stomach thing.” She laughed. “Obviously options are limited. And I’ve been waiting a long time.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Longer than you. Four months, maybe? But that’s not what I’m talking about.” She didn’t offer to explain.

  This girl was completely creeping me out. But not in an entirely bad way.

  “So you haven’t, uh, had any visitors?” I asked finally. “No guys or…whatever?”

  “No guys. No whatevers.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why?” Quinn sat up, crossing her legs and resting her elbows on her knees. “According to you, it’s not like I’m missing out on much family fun time.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Go ahead,” she said.
r />   “What?”

  “Ask. You know you want to.” Quinn brushed her hands through her long, black hair, smiling. “I love this,” she said, dropping the inky curtain across her face, and then giving her head a violent shake, whipping the hair back over her shoulders. “They got it exactly right.”

  She was crazy, I decided. It was as if she liked living like this.

  “Go ahead, ask,” she said again. “I really don’t care.”

  “And I really don’t want to know,” I lied. “But fine. Why no visitors?”

  “Dead parents, remember?”

  If she wanted to act like it was no big deal, so would I. “Yeah. You said. Poor little orphan. But there’s got to be someone.”

  She lay back down in the grass, turning her face away from me. “Doctors. Staff. No one important. Not that it matters now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because everything’s different now. Once I’m out of here? It’s a new life. Anything I want. Anything.”

  “How did they die?” I asked quietly.

  “I thought you didn’t want to hear the tragic saga?”

  “Maybe I changed my mind. Unless it’s too hard for you to talk about.” But I didn’t say it the way Sascha would have, all fake sensitive and understanding. I said it like a challenge, and that’s the way she took it.

  “Okay, but I’m just warning you, it’s quite tragic. You’re going to feel pretty sorry for me.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  “It was a car accident,” she said.

  I flinched. And even in the darkness she must have seen.

  “Yeah, weird, isn’t it? Who gets in car crashes anymore? But here we are. Statistically improbable freaks.”

  “Were you in the car? When it…”

  “I was three. We were—” She paused, then barked out a laugh. “This is the first time I’ve ever had to actually tell someone, you know? I didn’t know it would be so…”

  “You never told anyone?” That was too much, too soon. Especially from a girl who wouldn’t even tell me her last name.

  “It’s not like you’re special or anything. I just don’t…I don’t meet a lot of new people. Or I didn’t. Before.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I was three,” she said quickly. “We were going to visit someone, I don’t even know who. I just remember they got me all dressed up, and it was exciting. I mean, they must have taken me off the grounds before, at least a couple times, but I guess I was too young to remember. I remember this, though. I remember being in the car seat, and listening to some song, and playing some stupid vidgame for babies—You remember, the one with the dinosaurs?”

  I nodded.

  “I was winning. And then—I don’t know. I don’t remember. Next thing, I wake up, and I’m in a hospital. They’re dead. And I’m…” She threaded her fingers through her hair, then let her arms fall across her face. “It was a bad accident.”

  “You were hurt.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Bad?” I guessed.

  “Worse.”

  “Worse than what?”

  “Than whatever you’re picturing. Worse.” Her voice hardened. “Let’s just say that prosthetics and organ transplants and all that? Fine. Great, if you’re an adult. But when you break a three year old, it’s not so easy to put her together again.”

  Enough, I thought. I get it. But I didn’t say anything. And she didn’t stop.

  “Picture a room. Lots of machines. A bed. People to shovel in the food, shovel out the shit, shoot up the painkillers. People to clean. People to do anything and everything. And in the bed, well…a thing that eats and shits and gets high and gets cleaned and the rest of the time just pretty much lays there.”

  But I didn’t want to picture it. “How long did it take?”

  “To what?”

  “To recover.”

  “Who said I recovered?”

  “I just assumed….”

  “Sorry to disappoint, but that was it. That room. That bed.”

  “But what about school? What about friends, or…” Or a life.

  “I saw it all on the vids. Same thing, right? That’s what you said.”

  That’s what I had said.

  “I had it all,” she said. “Stuff to read. People to talk to. Vids to watch. The whole network at my fingertips. Well, not fingertips. There weren’t any of those. But I got by. Massive amounts of credit will do that for you. And then as soon as I turned sixteen…”

  “What?”

  She stood up. “This,” she said, sweeping her arms out and spinning around. “This body that actually works. This life. Anything I want.”

  “You did this to yourself?” I asked, incredulous. “On purpose?”

  “Did you hear anything I said?”

  “I did, I get it, I just can’t imagine anyone actually choosing…this.”

  “You obviously don’t get it. Or you would see this was better than anything I could have had. And from what I hear, anything you could have had, after what happened.”

  I should have known. The inevitable you-should-be-grateful guilt-trip bullshit. Like she knew anything about me.

  “You let them kill you,” I said. “You walked in here—”

  “Walked.” She snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  “—and asked them to kill you. To chop up your brain, make a copy, and stick it into some machine.”

  “Damn right. Quinn Sharpe is dead. I would have killed her myself, if I could. You’re walking around here all day sulking—yeah, I’ve been watching; you’ve been too busy whining to notice—when you should be celebrating. You should be fucking ecstatic.”

  “Look, I get it, I do. It makes sense, why you’d want to do it. And I get why this would seem better for you than before. But it’s different for me. What I was, what I lost—It’s different.”

  Quinn shook her head. “The only difference is that you don’t get it, not yet. It doesn’t matter how you got here. What matters is that we’re here, now. The past is over. The people we were? Dead. Like you would be. Like you should be. Dead. You want the rest of your life to be a funeral? Or you want to actually live?”

  That was my cue. I was supposed to jump to my feet and clasp her hands, spin in circles, somersault through the grass, dance in the moonlight, drink in the fact that I could swing my arms and pump my legs, that I was alive, in motion, in control. I was supposed to embrace the possibilities and the future, to wake up to a new life. It would be the turning point, some kind of spiritual rehabilitation, an end to the sulking and the self-pitying, a beginning of everything.

  I lay still.

  “You’ll figure it out.” She shrugged. “I’m heading back up. You coming?”

  “Later.”

  Shooting me a wicked grin, Quinn sprinted back toward the building, her hair streaming behind her and shimmering under the fluorescent lights, her clothes abandoned in a pile by my head. She ran flat-out, full-speed, running like she didn’t know how, arms flailing, feet stomping, rhythm erratic, running like little kids run, without pacing or strategy, running like nothing mattered but the next step. Running just to run. I wanted to join her, to race her, to beat her, and in that moment I knew the legs could do it. I knew I could do it.

  I lay still.

  I’m not like her, I told myself. Quinn’s life had sucked. Mine hadn’t. Quinn needed a new start. I didn’t. Quinn, if she wanted—because she wanted—was a different person now.

  I wasn’t.

  No wonder my father had treated me like a stranger that afternoon. I was acting like one. I was sulking in my room, I was snapping at people who were only trying to help. I was shutting myself off, shutting myself down; I was spewing self-pity. I was lying around, standing still, wasting time wondering what I was going to do and who I was going to be, when the answer was obvious. I was the same person I had always been. I was Lia Kahn. And I was going to do what Lia Kahn always did. Get by. Get through. Work. Win.


  I wasn’t a skinner. I wasn’t a mech-head. I was Lia Kahn. And it was about time I started acting like it.

  One week later they sent me home.

  FAITH

  “God made man. Who made you?”

  Someone must have tipped them off, because when we got home, they were waiting.

  Getting into the car was hard enough. When it lurched into motion I curled myself into a corner, shut my eyes, and tried to pretend I was back in my room on the thirteenth floor, standing still. I wasn’t afraid of going home. Lia Kahn had nothing to fear from her own house. It was just the ride—the pavement speeding underneath the tires, the sat-nav whirring along, veering us around a corner, a tree, a truck…

  I linked in, picked a new noise-metal song that I knew I would hate, turned the volume up too high, and waited for the ride to end.

  Except that when the car stopped, we still weren’t home. The music faded out, and a new voice shrieked inside my head. “An abomination! We shall all be punished for her sins!”

  I cut the link. Opened my eyes. A sallow face stared through the window, mouth open in a silent howl. When he saw me watching he extended his index finger, and his lips shifted, formed an unmistakable word. “You.”

  My father, behind the wheel even though he wasn’t actually using it, pounded a fist against the dash. The horn blared. My mother stroked his arm, more a symbolic attempt to calm him down than anything that actually had a prayer of working. “Biggest mistake they ever made,” he muttered. “Programming these things not to run people down.”

  “Honey…” That was symbolic attempt number two. Except in my mother’s mind, these things actually worked; in the fantasy world she inhabited, her influence soothed the savage beast.