"The Fugitive" meets "Blade Runner" with a Kevin Brooks kick in this heart-stopper about a boy who discovers he's not one hundred percent human. It was just supposed to be a routine exam. But when the doctors snake the fiber-optic tube down Robert Smith's throat, what they discover doesn't make medical sense. Plastic casings. Silver filaments. Moving metal parts. In his naked, anesthetized state on the operating table, Robert hears the surgeons' shocked comments: "What the hell is that?" "It's me," Robert thinks, "and I've got to get out of here." Armed with a stolen automatic and the videotape of his strange organs, he manages to escape, and to embark on an orphan's violent odyssey to find out exactly who--exactly what--he is. Grade 9 Up—A lonely teen, Robert Smith finds himself involved in events totally out of his control. A foster kid with a stomachache, he arrives at the hospital alone for a routine endoscopy. Not fully anesthetized, he hears the doctors claim that his insides aren't human. Unidentified men with guns swarm in, Robert bolts, and finds himself on the front page of the newspaper accused of stabbing one of the doctors. His subsequent flight begins a grisly string of events where murder, alcohol, and fear abound. Conveniently the one person Robert runs to, Eddi, the ex-girl of an acquaintance's brother, not only takes him in but is an expert in creating fake IDs. With a duffle full of cash from her business, they escape England to her house in Spain. In Tejeda, the young people find love and begin a "normal" life together until the men in suits show up and destroy it all. Scattered throughout the novel are Robert's existential questions, "How do I know anything is real?" This is surreal science fiction with a dismal ending. Loose ends abound, so many that readers are left feeling cheated. Who or what Robert is are never made clear; nor is the identity of the men who are after him.— Kathy Lehman, Thomas Dale High School Library, Chester, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. HB During a routine endoscopy, a doctor finds something inside Robert that makes no sense -- metal filaments, pipes, and wires, all hidden under a casing designed to fool such mundane exams. Escaping the sinister men who order a doctor to "cut that thing open," Robert teams up with Eddi, a charismatic thief with her own agenda. Being operates at top speed, at once a conventional chase adventure, a psychological thriller, and a romance. While the duo alternately hides and flees, Robert struggles to come to terms with his apparent inhumanity; and as his relationship with Eddi evolves from distrust to companionship (an element of sweetness that lightens an otherwise bleak tale), he uses it to convince himself that he's just like everyone else: "I looked like a human. I thought and felt like a human. Did it matter that I wasn't a human?" Poetic descriptions of Robert's mysterious hardware are terrifying and beautiful -- within him resides "a subatomic dome, a dark cathedral, a perfect abomination" -- and shade the book with a tense self-loathing. More than his pursuers, Robert is running from himself. A lifelong foster kid, both his street smarts and vague past are entirely believable, making his disorientation that much more powerful. Brooks takes the fantasy of being special -- Robert is uniquely strong and possessed of a singular, if shrouded, heritage -- and mines its dark side with grit, compassion, and intrigue. CLAIRE E. GROSS Kirkus During a routine exam, 16-year-old Robert Smith feels the scalpel's slice and helplessly views metal and plastic parts inside his stomach wall. Who, or what, is he? Like a character from Robin Cook's medical thrillers, the teen breaks out of anesthesia, throws down with the bad guys and executes a daring escape. Trusting nobody, Robert decides to hide out with Eddi, a former acquaintance. His protector is a 19-year-old master criminal running her own fake ID business. Here the story grinds to a glacial pace and the author turns his suspense story into a character-driven work. Over 200 pages feature Robert droning on about his current dilemma, mysterious background and destiny. Eddi and Robert have roles more like cloak-and-dagger spies than frightened teens, and conflicts are easily solved. The story limps along until the final 18 explosive pages. After being teased by early suggestions of an action story, readers may be satisfied by the gruesome ending. However, it's more likely that once the opening premise fades, teens will give up on this title. (Fiction. YA) . . . PW Starred Brooks's (The Road of the Dead) latest novel wraps high-speed, adrenaline-laced adventure around a thought-provoking exploration of the very nature of identity and existence. A routine endoscopy goes terribly wrong for 16-year-old Robert when the camera discovers that the boy's belly is filled with a network of mysterious, inhuman machinery. Rousing