Wired (Skinned, Book 3) by Robin Wasserman Read Free Book Online Page A

fade into the background if you didn't. It was a free-for-all that let the luxe class imagine, for a safe, limited time, that they too lived in a lawless city of anything goes. No one was different, because there was no same. It was the kind of engineered, officially sponsored freak zone I was forced to hate on principle--officially endorsed transgression being a contradiction in terms.
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    That was in principle. In practice I loved it. Anyone could wander through. Anything could happen.
    It had become a standard postargument routine for me and Riley. We sat in the same spot each time, a stone bench at the edge of the chaos, and over the course of a slow, quiet morning we eased into each other. Never talking about the argument the night before, staying a safe distance from combustible topics, musing about the weather or the trees or the naked man sprouting a peacock plume. Maybe that was the real reason we kept gravitating back to Anarchy. It was a guaranteed supply of safe, meaningless conversation. And that's what we were doing when I told him--carefully, safely --that Jude had resurfaced.
    I didn't tell him the truth about what had happened the last time we'd all been together.
    And I didn't tell him about the kiss.
    "We have to find him," Riley said. He folded his hand around mine. It had been six months, and I was used to the fact that his hand was larger than it had been before, that our palms nestled differently now. His hand no longer felt like it belonged to a stranger. I had known this new Riley, in this body, longer than I had known the last one.
    But that was the problem. I couldn't stop thinking in terms of the old Riley and the new one. I knew the different body didn't make him a different person. At least it shouldn't have. But there was something that didn't fit the way it had before. It wasn't the larger hands or the sturdier build or the darker skin.
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    This body was as handsome as the last, maybe more so, because there was a confidence about him that hadn't been there before, a new comfort with the body and the way it looked and moved. This was the face he'd grown up with. I wondered if, during all those months in a generic mech body, he'd felt like a stranger to himself.
    Now he felt like a stranger to me.
    The old Riley had been there with me the night of the explosion; the old Riley, my Riley, knew what he'd done to Jude; he knew what it felt like to have the building collapse around him and watch the flames draw closer. This Riley never had those memories, because he'd been backed up on the computer before that night happened. If we were nothing but our memories, then this Riley was ... different.
    Someone, something had died in that fire. But I wasn't allowed to mourn him. I wondered if Riley did. I would never ask. Questions like that hung in the space between us, the silence we pretended wasn't there.
    "If he's back, he must want our help," Riley said.
    "He didn't look like he wanted help." I hadn't repeated the cryptic words Jude had offered me. You'll know where to find me, he'd said, certain I could solve his riddle, and certain I would want to. "He looked like he wanted a party."
    "If he's back, why not tell me?" Riley sounded hurt.
    "I don't know."
    "You don't think he blames me?"
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    "He can't," I said, because it was too late to tell him the truth: that Jude most certainly blamed Riley, for shooting him, for setting the secops on him, for betraying him, for choosing me.
    "If he's been hiding from us, he has a good reason."
    "Probably."
    It was another gift to him, this pristine version of Jude, who deep down, despite all evidence to the contrary, was a good guy. An imaginary Jude deserving of Riley's imaginary friendship. The fairy tale was real to Riley, and who was I to say that didn't matter? Maybe real was a matter of perspective.
    Maybe I would tell myself anything to justify keeping my mouth shut.
    "You think we should let this go?" he asked.
    It occurred to me that he should let this