Shattered Read Online Free Page B

groaned. “No swimming, Quinn, you know that.” She just didn’t know why. No one did, except for Jude. And he was keeping his mouth shut; it was the one thing I’d let myself ask him for.
    â€œWho goes down there to swim?”
    â€œNot that either,” I snapped. But the small black cube was still in my pocket.
Just for emergencies
, I told myself. Like I always told myself.
    â€œYou’re just endless amounts of fun,” she complained.
    â€œFeel free to go bother someone else. It’ll be hard, but I’ll get over it.”
    There was a pause. “Just get your ass down here,” she said. “Oh and, Lia?”
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œSeriously. Lose the shirt.”
    Like Quinn said, swimming wasn’t exactly the only reason, or even the main reason, to trek across the grounds to the neo-mod steel-and-glass erector set that housed the pool. Nor was it the only reason I stayed away. The solar panels along the ceiling served double duty as net-linked screens, so you could fine-tune your zone and your backstroke at the same time. Or, as was mostly the case these days, so you could project a dizzying strobe show of light, color, and sound that made the perfect cooldown for anyone coming off a dreamer.
    That’s what we called them.
    Of course, usually when you dreamed—or should I say when orgs dreamed—they dreamed alone. Even cradled in each other’s arms, they were alone in the dark inside their own heads. For orgs, sleep was the ultimate isolation. Dreamers, on the other hand, didn’t require sleep. They required nothing but a tiny black cube, an ocular uplink, and the will to disappear into madness for anywhere from five minutes to forever. Thanks to the dreamers, mechs could, in their own way, regain their dreams. And thanks to the dreamer links—yet another of Jude’s “unofficial” updates—they didn’t have to dream alone. Hence the mechs sprawled across the pool deck, twitching and keening, and the bodies lining the pool floor, amorphous shapes wrapped together in the rippling water, their brains melting into a shared madness.
    You didn’t have to touch to have a linked dream, but I heardit helped. Water too made things more intense. At least, that’s what I heard. I’d never tried it myself. These days water made things a little
too
intense—and the idea of dropping a dreamer in public repulsed me.
    Quinn was waiting outside, and she wasn’t alone. I scowled at Jude. Typical of Quinn to drag him along. “What’s he—” I stopped.
    It was Jude, but also . . . not Jude.
    â€œSeth, this is the girl I was telling you about.” Quinn shot me a wicked smile. “Seth’s not interested in staying, but . . .” She raised her eyebrows. “I figured you could change his mind.”
    He had Jude’s face—the harsh, angular lines, the bland beauty we all shared sharpened by raking cheekbones, hooded eyes, full lips built to smirk. But he wasn’t smirking, and his eyes—slate gray, not Jude’s flashing amber—darted from Quinn to me to the ground and back again. His flesh was an unbroken plane of creamy peach without any of Jude’s swooping silver circuitry, and his long, muscled arms looked like org arms, without the transparent panel Jude wore on his left bicep, showing off his internal wiring like a badge of honor.
    This guy, this
Seth
, looked normal, in a way all of us on Quinn’s estate had accepted we would never be. But he also looked like Jude.
    â€œDon’t zone on me, Lia,” Quinn warned. “It’s only weird for a minute. You get over it.”
    Easy for Quinn to say. She had a custom-made body and face, tailored to her exact specifications. Unlike Jude, who’dbeen plucked from life in the gritty city to serve as one of BioMax’s first experimental subjects—it was strictly off-the-rack for him, a body and face the