Skinned

by Robin Wasserman

  “You want something concrete?” he asked. “How about the way it feels to walk for the first time?”

  There was something new in his voice, something ragged and unrehearsed, like he’d gone off his script and wasn’t sure how to find his way back. He sounded like I felt: lost.

  “Or to know that nothing can ever hurt you again, not for real?” he continued. “How about never having to be afraid?”

  I was afraid all the time.

  If he knew how that felt, if he could understand that and had found a way to fight back, maybe I’d been wrong about him. About it all.

  “That’s why, isn’t it?” I said softly. “Why you don’t talk about before.”

  He looked away. “I told you. The past is irrelevant for us.”

  “I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about you.” Without knowing why, I wanted to touch him, to rest my hand on his hand, his knee, his shoulder. I wanted contact. “I’m talking about whatever happened to you. Want to talk, Jude?” I said. It wasn’t a question, it was a challenge. “Talk about that. Talk about how you ended up here. How you’re just like the rest of us.” I paused, not sure I should keep going. And when I did, it was in a whisper. “Broken.”

  He raised his eyes off the ground and looked at me. “I’m not broken. And I don’t need your pity.”

  Pity hadn’t even occurred to me. Why would it when we were the same? “I’m not—”

  “Save it for yourself,” he said, his eyes flashing again, a yellow-orange that looked like flame. “Drown in it, for all I care. I don’t need it. I know what I am. I’m proud of what I am.”

  “So that’s why you did this to yourself?” I asked. “Turned yourself into some kind of…”

  “Freak?”

  “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “Because you’re a coward,” he said.

  “Shut up.”

  “Afraid to say what you think. Afraid to do…anything. Afraid to accept the truth.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You can’t face facts about what you’ve become, and so you’re missing it.”

  I had never met anyone so disgustingly smug. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “I know enough,” he said. “I know all you care about is what people think, and whether you look cool. Guess what? You don’t. Not to them.”

  “Why are you so obsessed with all this us-and-them crap? There is no them. There is definitely no us.”

  “Why are you so determined to lie to yourself?” he retorted. “They know you’re not one of them. When are you going to wake up?”

  “What the hell do you want from me?” I shouted. It was too much. It was too much for one day, too much on top of everything. I couldn’t deal. I shouldn’t have to. “You want me to walk away from everything, to pretend the past never happened and that I’m not the person I know I am?”

  “That would be a start!”

  “I’m not going to destroy myself.” I tried to make my voice as cool and cutting as his. “Not for you. Not for anyone.”

  “That job’s done. You don’t have to do anything. Just acknowledge the wreckage and walk away.”

  I stood up—and this time, although he grabbed my arm again, I didn’t hesitate. His fingers wrapped tight around my wrist. He was the only mech I’d ever touched. “Don’t come looking for me again,” I said. “Ever.”

  “Trust me,” he said coldly. “I won’t have to.”

  “I’m going now.” I didn’t move.

  “I’m waiting.” He was still holding my wrist.

  “Screw you.” And then, somehow, my hand was on his chest. His fingers tightened on my wrist. He yanked me toward him. Or I lunged. He grabbed my waist. Or I dug my hips into him. Whatever he did. Whatever I did. Our faces collided.

  Our lips collided.

  I clawed at his shirt, digging into the fabric, struggling for the fake, silvery skin that lay below. His lips were rough; his kiss was rough. Hard and angry, or maybe that was me, hating him, wanting him, wanting his hands on my body—anyone’s hands on my body—even if it didn’t feel the same, it felt right, it felt, for the first time since the accident and the fire and the darkness, I felt, and I sucked at his lips, and he bit down, a sweet, sharp pain, and I imagined I could taste the iron-tanged blood on my tongue.

  But there would be no blood.

  I shoved him away.

  For the second time that day I wished I could throw up.

  He came toward me; I jerked away.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  I couldn’t believe I had done it.

  I wanted to do it again.

  I had to get away.

  “Don’t do this,” he said, an edge in his voice. “Don’t question it, not now, not when you’re so close.”

  “To what?” I spat out. But I knew. To him. To grabbing him again. To his body. To our bodies, together.

  To feeling.

  I took another step back.

  “To letting go,” he said. I couldn’t believe he was back to that, spewing his bullshit, like I was a dutiful member of his flock. “I told you, it’s the key to accepting what you are—”

  “Spare me.” I hated him. This wasn’t about me, I realized. Not for him. This wasn’t about need, about raw want. Not for the high and mighty Jude, who’d risen oh so far above all those nasty org instincts. This was just about his stupid campaign. His pathetic philosophy. This was just about him being right. About me being wrong.

  “Don’t do this,” he said again, closing his hands over mine. But I was done.

  “Go.” I felt as cold as I sounded.

  “You don’t want that.”

  I met his eyes. They were, as always, unreadable. Like mine. “You. Don’t. Know. What. I. Want.” Nice and slow, so he would understand.

  “Maybe not.” Jude shook his head. “But neither do you.” He pressed something into my palm—the sharp-edged cube, the one he’d called a dream. “Not yet.”

  I looked down at the tiny black box, turning it over and over in my hands.

  When I looked up again, he was gone.

  I’m not stupid.

  I wasn’t stupid then, either.

  I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust his little black box or his mysterious “program” or his unshakable convictions. Least of all those.

  On the other hand, I didn’t have much to lose. And I had too much I wanted to forget.

  I uploaded the program.

  There was a brief burst of flickering light, then nothing.

  For several long minutes, nothing.

  Then the world started to glow.

  Pain first. Pain everywhere. Nowhere. I was nowhere. It burned. I burned. Pain like the fire, pain like the flames peeling away my skin. Hot, searing hot. Then cold, like ice. Steel.

  I was standing. I was spinning. I was lying on my back. I floated in the sky. Stars shot from my fingertips. Trees bowed at my feet. I was leaping off a cliff, I was in the water, in a whirlpool, sucked below. I was drowning. I was flying.

  I was in the black. But the colors shimmered. They exploded from the dark. I was color. I was light. I pulsed green, I sang out purple, I screamed red. I cried blue. The monsters swarmed out of the deep. Spider tentacles and red eyes, and they wanted me to die, and I wanted to die, and I was death, black and empty, bottomless, null.

  I would destroy them. I would destroy them all.

  It began at the center of me, at the center of it all, small and warm and glowing, a sun, and it swelled. It grew. I tingled with its warmth. There were no words, not for this. This was beyond words. This was cool grass brushing a bare neck. This was dark-chocolate ice cream melting on a tongue. This was his body, heavy on mine, his breath in my mouth, his skin on my skin. It was everything, it was life.

  It was over.

  Nothing was left but an absence. And his voice, which I understood, as I came back to myself, was only in my head.

  “If you’re listening to this, I suppose that means
I was right. You’re welcome.”

  I was lying on my back. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. The sky looked close enough to touch, but I knew that was just the heavy, gray clouds. I reached out anyway. Nothing but air.

  “You’ve just experienced an electrical jolt to your limbic system—or at least, the circuitry that mimics an organic limbic system. It overwhelmed all the mood-simulating safeguards, cycling through a random series of preprogrammed emotional stimuli. Take the most intense b-mod you’ve ever experienced, multiply it by a thousand, and—Well, I guess now you know what happens.”

  I closed my eyes. I felt like I had a headache, but that wasn’t possible. I didn’t get headaches, not anymore. Still, something felt swollen and tender. Fragile. Fuzzy. I wanted the voice to stop.

  “Direct stimulation of the cortex is the best way to simulate intense emotion and sensation in mechs. It supplies you with the somatic responses you miss while conscious, all those nasty animal responses to emotion. Some say it makes you feel like an org again.”

  I had never felt so empty. I wanted it back, all of it. I needed it. I wanted to live in that world of darkness and light, where I had been frightened. Angry. Happy. I had been alive there, and I wanted to return. I wanted to stay.

  “I say it’s better than the orgs will ever know. And admit it or not, you agree.”

  I wanted him to shut up. I wanted him to keep going. I wanted him to come back, I wanted a body to match the voice, hands and shoulders and neck and lips. I hated myself for wanting it.

  “See you soon.”

  IN THE DARK

  “Touch me and I’ll kill you.”

  What’s this for?” Auden asked when I gave him the box wrapped in silver foil. He’d been avoiding me for days, but I finally cornered him at lunch. He’d found himself another secluded corner to hide in, far away from mine.

  “I just wanted to,” I said, feeling a little awkward. I couldn’t say I was sorry, not really, because then we would have had to get into what I was sorry for. And neither of us wanted to touch that because we both knew: I was sorry for not wanting him the way he wanted me. But that meant I couldn’t tell him the other part of the truth, that I needed him. It didn’t matter if he was an org and I was a mech; it didn’t matter what Jude thought. Jude who was like me, but didn’t understand me at all. Who knew nothing.

  Auden opened the box. He pulled out a gray bag with a smart-strap that would heat up whenever a new message came in. The front flap had a full-size screen and the back doubled as a pocket and a keyboard, perfect—as the pop-up had said—for the stylish guy who needs to link on the go. Not that Auden was stylish, or did much of anything on the go, but it looked good. Definitely better than the ragged green sack he toted around everywhere. I might not have been cool anymore, but my taste still was.

  He looked confused.

  “Thought you could use a new one,” I said.

  Auden didn’t take it out of the box. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “I wanted to,” I said again.

  “Really, you shouldn’t have.” He sighed, and finally picked up the bag, flipping it open and glancing inside before placing it back in the box. He didn’t even notice the smart-strap much less the board and the screen. “But thanks, I guess.”

  It looked like the symbolic approach wasn’t working. Did he not get that I was trying to spare him even more embarrassment? Shouldn’t he be grateful?

  Especially since, when you think about it, he was the one who should have been apologizing. I wasn’t the one making unreasonable demands or throwing a temper tantrum when I didn’t get what I wanted.

  But I’d lost the moral high ground when I’d given in to Jude. Even if Auden didn’t know—could never know—I knew.

  “I’m sorry about before,” I said. If he really wanted to talk about it, then fine. We’d talk.

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I wish it hadn’t happened.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said.

  “No, I’m glad you did.” Lie. “We should be honest with each other.” Lie number two. “And what I said? About wishing I could go back to the way things were before? I can’t…I can’t take that back. But, Auden, you have to know, you’re the only good thing that’s happened to me since the accident. The only thing.” Truth.

  Except for yesterday, some rebellious part of my brain pointed out. Except for Jude. Except for what he did. And what he gave me. But that was nothing. That was already forgotten.

  Lie number three.

  “You don’t have to say that,” Auden said.

  “I do.” I smiled nervously. “Are we okay? I really need us to be okay.”

  “Me too,” he said, and gave me a tight hug.

  Now or never, I decided. “So, now that we’re friends again…any chance you want to do me a favor?”

  Auden let go, laughing. “Now I get it. That wasn’t a gift, it was a bribe.”

  “No! Well…maybe a little.”

  He sighed. “What do you need?”

  “Jude and the rest of them are going out again tonight.” I winced at the expression on his face, stranded somewhere between suspicion and disgust. “I want to go. I thought maybe you’d come with me.”

  “Back to the waterfall? Are you crazy?”

  I shook my head. “They’re doing something else tonight. I don’t know what. It’s some kind of big secret.”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time: Are you crazy?”

  “You’re the one who talked me into going last time,” I pointed out. “Remember all that stuff about facing up to my fears, meeting people who were like me and could understand what I’m going through?”

  “Remember how it turned out that Jude was an asshole and all his little followers were daredevil nut jobs who thought killing themselves might be a fun way to pass the time?”

  “They weren’t trying to kill themselves,” I said.

  “They were doing a pretty good imitation of it.”

  “Auden, you know it’s different for us.”

  “Us? Since when—”

  “You know what I mean,” I snapped. “It wasn’t that dangerous. They were just having fun.”

  “Exactly. What kind of person thinks that’s fun?” He scowled. “A seriously messed-up person. Or a person who can’t think for himself.”

  “Or maybe a person who’s not a person at all. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “No!” Auden sighed. “You know I don’t think that way about you. I just don’t get why you’d want to go back. What’s the point?”

  I wasn’t sure why I wanted to go back.

  It wasn’t because I wanted another dose of whatever Jude had to give me. I’d promised myself it wasn’t because of that.

  “They’re trying to test their limits,” I told him, “and to explore the possibilities of this thing. To enjoy it a little. Is that so bad?”

  “When did you start talking like that?” he asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Like…I don’t know. Like him.”

  “Look, if you don’t want to go with me, I’ll go by myself,” I said, annoyed. “No big deal.”

  “It is a big deal,” he said. “Whatever they’re doing, I’m sure it’ll be dangerous. And stupid. I’m not letting you go by yourself.”

  “I don’t need you to protect me,” I said, even though that’s exactly what I’d asked of him—and I’d asked knowing he would never be able to say no.

  “Too bad. That’s what you’ve got.”

  “What’s the point?” Auden asked.

  “Because we can,” Jude said. “Because why not?”

  Auden pulled me away from the group. He was still carrying his hideous green bag. “This is a bad idea.”

  “You’re the one always talking about the people stuck living in the cities,” I said. “Don’t you actually want to see one?”

  “Not like this,” he mumbled. “Not by ourselves. At night.” But I
knew I had him.

  There were ten of us, including me and Auden. Again, no one had wanted him to come along, but I’d insisted, and Jude had gone along with it. As before, everyone else went along with Jude.

  “You can leave, if you want,” I offered, and I was almost hoping he would take me up on it. I wanted him there, I did. But even I knew he didn’t belong.

  Auden shook his head. “You know the city people; they hate mechs more than anyone,” he said. “Most of them die before they hit forty, and you’re going to live forever. You really think that’s a good combination?”

  “I think Lia trusts me,” Jude said, appearing behind us and resting his hand on my shoulder. I shook it off. “Maybe you should give her a little more credit.”

  I glared at him. “Don’t touch me.”

  He just smiled. “I’ll give you two a minute,” he said. “We’re leaving in five. Stay or go.”

  Once he was gone, Auden gave me a weird look. “What was that?”

  “What?”

  “The two of you.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He headed back toward the group of mechs waiting for their field trip to begin. “Let’s just go.”

  We took two cars. Jude and Auden sat in the front seat of ours, not talking. I squeezed into the back with Quinn and some guy whose name I didn’t hear the first time—and didn’t get much chance to ask a second time, since he spent most of the ride with his tongue down Quinn’s throat. I looked out the window.

  The skyline carved dark, jagged chunks out of the sky. The car sped along swooping bands of concrete, a purposeless, unending sculpture of roads that dipped over and under one another, splitting, merging, crisscrossing; so much space and all of it empty. Even without the curfew no one would be stupid enough to enter a city at night. And no one who lived there had a car. That would have guzzled too much fuel; that would have made it too easy to get out.

  We parked on a narrow street. Without a word Quinn and the other mech began collecting armfuls of debris from the gutter while Jude pulled a stained beige tarp from the trunk and draped it over the car. The gutter trash went on top.