Kevin Chong

The worst part about wearing someone else's body is the moment you wake up inside it and forget, for exactly three seconds, who you are. For Nira Voss, sixteen and desperate, working as a "Wearer" for SkinDeep's high-tech towers is the only way to survive. The pay is premium, and every credit goes toward the proprietary medication keeping her eleven-year-old brother's failing heart beating. All she has to do is rent out her mind, slip into a bio-engineered blank canvas, and test the product for the global market.
Non-invasive consciousness transfer. No risks. That's what the corporate manuals claim. But the manuals are lying. When Nira fits into Skin 0219, a striking next-gen prototype, the neuro-sync reveals a horrifying flaw. Deep within the bio-circuitry, a voice answers back. Her name is Lux. She was sixteen when she died, and she is still awake, trapped as a silent ghost inside her own stolen flesh while strangers rent her hands by the hour.
As the network updates begin to wake the remnants across the towers, Nira finds herself entangled in a vast, illegal corporate scaffolding program. With a monitoring tech tracking her every micro-expression and a ticking clock counting down to the end of her Fit, Nira must weaponize the very network that imprisons them. Partnering with a defiant digital phantom, Nira prepares to pull off the ultimate data heist to expose SkinDeep to the world.
But in a city run by corporate oligarchs, making a stand means risking everything and if Nira fails, she won't just lose the money keeping her brother alive. She will become the next ghost buried alive in the dark. Step into Second Skin - a pulse-pounding, cyber-noir techno-thriller exploring the terrifying boundaries of human identity, corporate greed, and the unbreakable bonds of family.