Blurb:
When Fawn awakens in
the middle of a burning house, her memories are completely gone. She doesn't
know who or where she is. She doesn't even know her own name. Though two people
come to her rescue who claim to be her parents, she doesn't recognize them.
They don't look like her either. Yet she doesn't have any place to go, so she
finds herself following them.
As Fawn grows
accustomed to her life, though she still has no idea who she is, she meets her
neighbor, Gavin. Gavin is tall and sweet with bright blue eyes. Unlike the rest
of the world, he appears to understand her. He too has had a troubling past.
The two of them form a tight alliance. It's them against the world. Soon Fawn
comes to realize she has feelings for Gavin.
Unfortunately, that's
when trouble rekindles in her home life. A strange man named Ark hunts after
her, calling her Model 29. Soon she comes to realize she isn't what she
appears. She's a robot, a robot hidden from society so her abilities wouldn't
be used for evil. Now not only does Fawn have to be scared of Ark, but she has
to worry about what this means for her and Gavin.
Author:
Stephanie Campbell had
her first book published at the age of seventeen. Now, at twenty, she is still
wacking away at her computer, one day at a time. When she isn’t reading or
writing, she likes to dance, take karate lessons, and run. After all, you never
know when you’re about to be sucked into another world.
Excerpt:
Chapter One
When she opened her
eyes, glowing orange danced along the nearby walls, making it near impossible
to see her surroundings. Heat pressed in at all sides, entrapping her within
its painful grasp. Black smog billowed around her, filling the dark room. Standing,
she attempted to see through the hot madness that surrounded her. She should
run, but she couldn't remember where the door was. She couldn't remember where
anything was. When she searched her memory, she couldn't even remember her
name.
Stumbling forward, she
avoided a smoldering couch. As she passed the couch, she squinted through the
inferno and spotted a once white wall was now painted by the fire and became
black. Somewhere the wall had to have a door, she just had to follow it until
she found it. She tripped over something on the floor but kept moving. She
didn’t search long. A door, her ticket out, was just a few feet from her,
partially ajar.
The opening made her
heart lift and tingle. Hope. Yes, that was the word she was searching for. She
rushed outside as relief exploded in her heart. She wanted to get away from the
heat, which still reached through the door with wanting, hungry hands. As she
teetered down the front steps, cold enveloped her feet for the first time. When
she looked at herself, she realized something was wrong.
She was naked. Her
skin pebbled with goose bumps. The tingling sensation disappeared like the
smoke lifting into the night. Relief was replaced by angry needy monsters that
grasped at the center of her chest and tightened. A painful ache filled her
insides. Sadness and fear. She recognized the sensations, could feel them.
She looked around. Why
was she outside naked? And why had she been in the house when it was on fire?
Shakily, she turned
her gaze away from the rough wilds of the forest in front of her to stare at
the inflamed house again. The house was small and stood grey and lifeless.
Though she could recognize how the house must have once appeared, she didn’t
have any sense of nostalgia toward it. The terrain—the thick trees in the
distance and the old car sitting out in front of the ruins—was foreign. This
was all new to her.
As she gazed at the
house, fire burst through the window, causing the pane to shatter. She cried
out for the first time as a rush of adrenaline and an urge to run filled her.
She turned away from the house and toward the dark forest. Should I try to run
through it? Her palms grew sweaty, and she found it hard to even inhale she was
so tense. No. She didn’t want to go through there. Her gut warned her against
it. So she stayed for uncountable minutes that oozed by in front of the fire
until she heard a new sound. It was the sound of shrill, high-pitched wailing
which caused her to cover her ears with her hands. Where was it coming from?
The noise. I don't
like the noise. She gazed at the dark forest, her fists clenched at her sides.
She would rather face the darkness of the forest than the noise. She stumbled
toward the woods. As she walked, she stared at everything around her. Every
crackle of the leaves distracted her. She saw a small, strange, furry animal.
She wracked her brain until the word came. Squirrel.
All she could do was
slowly name her surroundings, which was like seeing a picture of a distant
relative she'd never been introduced to.
As she teetered, her
brain abuzz, she tried to figure out where she was and who she was. Why had she
woken up entrapped in an orange glowing jail? Why was she in the middle of a
dark wood with thick trees that touched the sky? Who was she? Was it normal to
feel such nasty, pressing feelings inside of her heart?
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