Read Under the Skin for Free Online Page A

felt a sympathetic ache. He knew how it felt to be so tense that bending was unimaginable.
    Minoru's hands were fisting tightly at his sides, and Padraic was suddenly tempted to go over there and kiss them.
    The image was surprisingly sensual. If Jenner hadn't been in the room, if his poorly developed sense of self-preservation hadn't stopped him, Padraic might have done it anyway.
    He couldn't help a very small, bitter smile, though, when he realized Minoru could have just about every part of him except the tech.
    * * * *
    When he realized that Padraic wasn't going to budge, Minoru made sure that the American technician at least wasn't going to be fumbling with poor tools. He produced a set of diamond-edged instruments that looked like a combination of surgical scalpels, dentist's equipment, and beauty supplies, all rolled together, and Padraic recognized enough of them to feel confident in starting.
    "Okay, do either of you know CPR?"
    Jenner sullenly raised his hand, and Minoru nodded.
    "How about emergency treatment for seizures?"
    Jenner's hand stayed raised, and Minoru shook his head.
    "I don't suppose either of you have nitroglycerin on you?"
    "This is ridiculous,” Jenner spat.
    "No,” said Padraic, feeling remarkably calm. “If my blood pressure skyrockets, nitroglycerin can keep it down to a manageable level. I've used it before."
    "It's not ridiculous because you might need it,” Jenner growled. “It's ridiculous because you shouldn't be doing this at all."
    "I disagree.” Padraic shrugged and took off his shirt. Was it his imagination, or were the metallic parts of the jacks hotter than they were before? He pressed the pads of his fingertips against them, but he couldn't tell. He wished he were back in his apartment in Milwaukee, but then he glanced at Minoru almost instinctively and realized that that wasn't true.
    Padraic looked around and dragged the other empty chair up to the full-length mirror in the bathroom. He sat down and pulled as close to the mirror as he could. He was skinnier than he thought he would be, and the violet rings under his eyes made him look half-dead. He glanced up and caught a glimpse of Minoru hovering in the doorway. He smiled at Minoru's reflection and managed to surprise one out of Minoru himself.
    Look sharp, he told himself. One wrong move here and you're going to be roasted from the inside out. One jittery twitch and your brains are going to be splattered across the inside of your skull.
    The thought made him feel surprisingly giddy, and that was normal at least.
    He pried the interface off, and without it in the way, he could definitely feel the heat from the small set of wires and chips that were so neatly arranged there. It wasn't a dry electric heat, either; he thought it felt kind of... “wet” would be the best way to put it. That could be tricky. That could be bad.
    Padraic shrugged internally. It didn't have to be either, really. He picked up a tool with a threadlike rubber probe and started to work.
    He started with the basics: connectors to leads, pins all unbent, no physical barriers interfering with the data transfer. When the working surface was slightly smaller than a playing card, there just wasn't much to check. He sighed and realized from the crick in his neck that more time had passed than he thought.
    There was no sign of infection, either. The skin around the interface was a little pink from the pressure he had been exerting on the plate, but it didn't have the hot-to-the-touch feeling of a bio-jack rejection.
    Working while looking in a mirror was something that Padraic had had to perfect. He realized that he was leaned in so closely that his breath was fogging up the glass, and he pulled back, hearing his back pop a little.
    Playing with his own organics, trusting his life to his own reflexes and his own ideas of what bioware could and should be, those were certainly normal enough. The audience, however, was not. Jenner was staring out of the window,