The book is packaged with a unique design, and features intricate black-and-white illustrations alongside the twisty stories.
Roth’s new book publishes Oct. 1 and isavailable for pre-order.
“Unless you give me a reason.”
Credit: Veronica Roth
She uncurled her fingers so the weapon would retract.
She was in a bar.
A dirty, hot one that smelled like smoke and sweat.
Ashley Mackenzie and Erin Fitzsimmons
“Not afraid of getting skewered by some kid,” they said.
Their face was rough with a salt-and-pepper beard, and there was grease under theirvery human-lookingfingernails.
“That’s too bad,” she said.
“I find a healthy amount of fear improves somebody’s likelihood of survival.”
Flickering, flickering, as their eyes moved.
“What can we do to improve yours, then?”
She smiled, all teeth.
The digital skin was more like .
stuffing some of its matter into an alternate dimension.
The skin was real, but it also wasn’t.
The ET was here, but it was also someplace else.
She didn’t have to understand the science of it, anyhow.
She just had to know what to look for.
The ET burst out of its skin like stuffing coming out of a busted couch cushion.
Matter bubbled up from the split, gelatinous and glowing purple-blue.
And stuck on the front of that head like sequins from a Bedazzler, a dozen shiny black eyes.
The smell hit her next, like a cross between stinkbug and sulfur.
They were harmless unless you commented on or otherwise reacted to their stench.
Then things could get ugly.
“Thanks for obliging,” Atleigh said.
She lowered her weapon, slow, and slid it back into the holster on her belt.
“What is it that you want, kid?”
the purpuramorph asked her, in a low rumble, almost subvocal.
Their vocal cordsburied somewhere in that purple mushwere actually similar to her own, somehow.
Atleigh took her phone out of her pocket and lit it up.
On the screen was a picture of a woman with long hairthe same auburn color as Atleigh’s own.
“You seen her?
She was in here last week sometime.”
“And if I have?”
“I just need to know if you spotted her talking to anybody,” Atleigh said.
“My customers are guaranteed a certain level ofdiscretion,” the purpuramorph said.
“I can’t go violating that just because some little girl asks me to.”
Atleigh’s smile turned into more of a gritted-teeth situation.
She rested the heel of her hand on the holster at her side.
“So what’s it gonna be?”
“Carrot, or stick?
Because I gotta tell you .
“I’m pretty fond of the stick, myself.”
She knew exactly where she was headed next.
Copyright 2019 by Veronica Roth
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