Exiles by Ashley Saunders

Author:Ashley Saunders [Saunders, Ashley & Saunders, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

The last time Jade was in Manhattan, the borough had been covered in three feet of snow. Yates had taken his Adsum students on an elaborate field trip to the city that never slept to imbue the reformed waifs with a little art and culture. Jade remembered the first few days of flashy Broadway plays, mustard-covered street hot dogs, a private Statue of Liberty helicopter tour, an exclusive inside look at high-flying Wall Street firms. Lazing in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow next to Crys, back when silence between them meant comfort and ease, not the hollow sound of a broken bond.

And then Snowzilla hit. Millions of people along the Eastern Seaboard were pummeled with the biggest blizzard ever recorded, and the sun-worshipping Californians were caught smack in the middle of it. Jade was freshly fourteen and had never seen snow before, much less been buried in it. And while for most young people it was a day for sledding and lobbing snowballs and building snowmen, for Yates’s Adsum sibs, it was an opportunity to be of service. Yates put them to work aiding the low-income neighborhoods whose power had gone out, delivering water and hot meals, setting up generators for those with no heat.

The consummate bicoastal Savior, Jade thought now as she hopped off the escalators that led from the HyperQuest portal into the Main Concourse of Grand Central. It was three a.m., which meant Jade had the rare pleasure of moving through the immense transportation hub unimpeded, no tourists’ camera flashes ruining the view of the celestial vaulted ceiling like the last time she was here.

She pulled the terry hooded cloak she’d filched on the pod higher over her shoulders, the better to hide the makeshift sling she wore underneath. Popping her own arm back into place was not one of the more pleasant experiences of her life, but she’d lived without health care long enough to learn how things were done. Google was her doctor. And grit was her painkiller. Suck it up and carry on: the modern can-do spirit.

Yates’s voice suddenly rang across the terminal. He was calling for her by name.

Jade searched for the source, finding a young couple loitering beneath the famed opal glass clock near the information booth, watching news clips on their phones. Jade drew closer, catching a glimpse of their screens over their shoulders. Yates was on a stage, pleading into the camera, looking every bit the Savior. “I hope you are watching and hearing this. Quest is the safest place for you right now. Come home.”

The clip cut to two satellites rocketing across the sky, an eternal memorial for Zoe and Khari, then to a wide shot of the thousands of Questers packed inside Summit Auditorium, wholly ignorant to the fact that they were listening to, believing, the young women’s murderer.

But right now, Jade only had eyes for one Quester. Rhett, near the front of the stage. When he’d returned to campus, he must have told Yates that the Exiles had found Khari’s resting place.

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