Veronica Rothis well acknowledge for penningthe Divergent series , but her latest project leg out of YA : sci - fi thrillerChosen Ones , her first novel aimed at adults . The book is out today and io9 has a racy extract to share .
Here ’s a verbal description of the story , to bug out :
Fifteen year ago , five average teenagers were singled out by a prophecy to take down an impossibly powerful entity wreaking mayhem across North America . He was know as the Dark One , and his arm of choice — ruinous upshot known as Drains — leveled cities and claimed thousands of life . Chosen Ones , as the teens were known , gave everything they had to vote down him .
Crop of the cover for Chosen Ones. Full cover is below!Image: John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
After the Dark One fell , the world go bad back to normal . . . for everyone but them . After all , what do you do when you ’re the most far-famed people on Earth , your only education was in magical destruction , and your purpose in life is now fulfill ?
Of the five , Sloane has had the hardest time adjusting . Everyone else pick the PTSD — and her huge posture job — but really , she ’s shroud secrets from them . . . closed book that keep her tied to the past times and alienate her from the only four people in the globe who understand her .
On the tenth day of remembrance of the Dark One ’s defeat , something unthinkable materialise : one of the Chosen Ones dies . When the others foregather for the funeral , they discover the Dark One ’s ultimate finish was much bigger than they , the government , or even divination could have foretold — bigger than the world itself .
And this time , fighting back might take more than Sloane has to give .
Now here ’s the full cover , followed by the single excerpt , which plunges you right into Sloane ’s preternaturally troubled world .
SOMETHING WAS THERE .
Sloane felt it as soon as she passed through the threshold .
Being inside the geodesic dome that domiciliate ARIS ’s public - facing front tummy , Calamity Investigation and Restoration ( CIR ) , felt like being inside a elephantine golf game ball . The structure was massive and whitened , the roof made of small triangular panels that held together in a curve . Fluorescent visible radiation shone between the control board , so the whole place glowed like a Halloween ornament , making everyone ’s skin appear green . The people who rushed back and off inside it wear either the received government garb — mordant or gray suits with boring ties and silken hair — or clean hazmat suits with the goon down .
Agent Henderson waited for them by the entree , checking his bulky watch . He held a leather file folder against his chest . When Sloane had first met him , aright after Bert ’s death , he had been the definition of strapping — improbable , brawny , and energetic — but he had gone soft around the middle since the Dark One descend . There was grey-haired mixed with the cherry - brownness of his face fungus now . He had a wife and two children , a mortgage , and a retreat plan .
“ Hey , guys , ” he order with a grim grin . Sloane squint at him a piddling . He looked . . . not right . Or maybe that was just the unsettled feeling inside her talking .
Something was there , in the Dome . She could still feel it .
“ How was the golf cart ? ” Henderson ask .
“ One sin of an locomotive engine in that thing , ” Albie say .
“ Yeah , how much torque does it get , like three hundred and sixty - nine foot - pound sterling ? ” Ines order . “ And the RPMs ! ”
“ I forgot about this small drollery tag squad , ” Henderson said , waggling his finger between Ines and Albie . “ See anything uncanny out there ? ”
“ We passed a séance in progress , but that seems fair standard for that crowd , ” Matt say . “ Has anyone managed to speak to the all in yet ? ”
“ Allegedly , ” Henderson said , shrug . “ fairly sure it was a humbug , but I wo n’t rule anything out any longer . You okay , Sloane ? You do n’t look so dear . ”
deception , that was what it was . It had to be . She feel that tingling in her chest of drawers , right behind her breastbone . But she had never felt magic at a Drain site before . She was more likely to experience the opponent , a form of limpness in the air , like something had wilted .
“ Thanks , ” she managed to say to Henderson . “ Just what everyone likes to hear . ”
They said good-by to Scott , who give a cheerful wave before return to his golf pushcart , and Henderson lead them across the springy irregular floor — grey — down an equally gray hallway with temporary walls hem them in on either side . It had been ten years , but the structure still await like it had been define up only to be take down . There were no office , just foresightful table packed with computer monitors and convoluted cord .
If the Drain site was a bicycle cycle , they ’d started off walk its circumference , then turned down one of the spokes and were walk toward the nub .
As they near it , Sloane saw that the midsection of the website was surrounded by glass panels from floor to cap . cluster of floodlights aimed white beam in . Whatever was get out of the Drain site , ARIS wanted to get a very close flavour at .
But it was not the source of the witching Sloane feel . The prickling pass around from Sloane ’s chest of drawers to her belly . She seek to focalise on the meeting room Henderson had taken them to , where his partner — Eileen Cho — waited . She was spin a shut laptop in circles on a table . The right wall was all windows , show the Drain site , where wads of doer in the distinctive white hazmat suits walk along the sharpness , gesturing at each other and take samples with metal tools .
The Drain had driven a volcanic crater late into the ground , so deep that some of the workers looked baby - size of it from where she place upright . When Sloane first saw a Drain web site , she had expected it to be a undifferentiated substance , like the airfoil of the Sun Myung Moon . But there were still remnants of what had been there : break planks , crumbling brick , glob of mineral pitch , bits of previous cloth . They were reminder that this seat had once been a suburban street . People had lived here . And they had die here .
“ — Ten Years Peace celebration , ” Cho was saying . “ We wish Bert could be here to see it . ”
Ines and Matt were nodding , but all Sloane could think of was the push-down store of file in the bottom drawer of her desk , the ones she was say early on in the first light before Matt got up . The Bert that appear in those files was n’t quite like the one she recall . The Bert she remembered would never have called Sloane a “ stray dog . ”
“ All right there , Sloane ? ” Cho asked her . Her tomentum was in a loose knot at the base of her cervix , and her clit were cockeyed . Cho always look like she had gotten dressed in the dark . It was part of what made her good at her job — she was warm and clumsy , and you felt like she was someone you could trust . Bert had had the same quality when he turn up on Sloane ’s front lawn in his decrepit Honda .
Sloane was tapping each tingling fingertip against her ovolo in turn , trying to fight normal smell back into them somehow . “ What ’s going on here ? ” she enunciate .
“ I see your small - talk science are ever improving , ” Henderson said . “ countenance ’s posture . ”
Once they had all settle in their chairwoman , Henderson pointed a remote at the wall of windows . They all lit up aristocratical , show a background with a blanched pointer . Cho had opened the laptop computer , and was press a picture file labeled 1ICI45G. They all star at the pinwheel as the file loaded — as ever , Sloane was blown away by how finicky government tech was , and she might have comment on it if she had n’t been focused on how tingly her finger palpate — and then the footage played across all five windows at once .
“ This is footage taken from a fishing gravy boat west of Guam in the Pacific , ” Henderson said . “ Five days ago . ”
The video was n’t crisp , played on such large screens , but it was clear-cut enough for Sloane to get a sense of the waves that stretch in all guidance , the swollen bellies of cloud about to unleash rainwater , the careen of the boat as it charge through the pee . It almost looked like it had the last prison term she was on the sea — but she was n’t go to guess about that now .
Then the ocean went prostrate as a pond , the gravy holder stilling . She see something moody moving just beneath the surface . It pierce the calm and shot up straight into the air . Another fall out , and then another , too fast for Sloane to identify the object , which were each as magnanimous as a man — no , bigger ; the view was just flatten by the camera slant . Whatever the things were hovered in midair over the water , which set out to move again , the sauceboat bob along like a rubber duck in a bathing tub .
The camera zoomed in on the object , and Sloane understand they were trees . Not just trees , but pine trees , dingy needles clayey with water . There were maybe thirty , all attend at different heights , like fart chime .
“ What , ” Ines aver , “ the shag . ”
“ That ’s what I read , ” Henderson reply . “ Would you launch the 2nd one , Cho ? ”
Cho closed the first and clicked on the 2d , tag 2ICI45G.
“ Australia , ” Cho say to introduce this one . The footage opened on a stony beach with the sunshine just beginning to rig over the water . The land around it , even the dry grass that grew on the side , glowed orange .
“ Are you sure ? ” a virile vox asked from behind the camera .
“ Yeah ! ” came the chirped reply . The camera swung to the side , bear witness a massive bowlder as tall as a house with others lean up against it , as if part of the incline had crumbled off at some point in history and the rubble had been left there . There were silhouettes of slender bodies on the boulders , beer bottles balanced next to them . Sloane spotted the association of bikini , the scratch hems of jean shorts , the brim of a baseball cap .
The photographic camera zoom in on a daughter no older than sixteen with a red - and - white - striped bikini top and a flat , tanned stomach . She wore her sun - streaked hair loose around her shoulder . She had turn toward the camera and was waving .
“ If it does n’t work this time , I ’ll just descend in the H2O , ” she said with a shrug . “ You commemorate ? ”
“ Yep ! ” the human with the camera replied . “ Go on ! ”
“ Okay , watch ! ”
The sunlight burn down orange behind the girl as she lifted one ft , skinny arms nurse out from her sides , and stepped into the air next to the boulder , over the water . She then lifted up her other infantry so she stood on nothing at all . Sloane could see the light of the sky beneath her heel — there was only emptiness beneath her , yet she was n’t falling .
Half a dozen voices triumph with astonishment , fist in the air , bottles clinking together , the camera shudder as the one who hold it gave a vociferation .
“ I ’m gon na take another footstep ! ” the girl phone out , and before anyone could object , she did , tilt out , apparently into the sky —
Her body tipped , not onward , but sideways , her foot ripped from beneath her . She screamed as her hair throw away toward the water in a Sunday - bleached curtain . She fall , but not toward the ocean — she fell up , toward the clouds , her arm flailing , her screeches echoing over the rocks . The camera followed her as she turn smaller and small , a midget black shape against the clouds . And then she was gone , and the world with the camera was screaming . “ Barbara ! Barbara ! ”
The footage ended , leaving the screen down in the mouth again . They were all tacit this time .
“ The third , please , Cho , ” Henderson said .
The Indian file was 3ICI45G. And the footage had been filmed underwater ; it was dismal , cloudy , and dreamlike , the surface undulating with light . Sloane thought again about the Dive , her last trip to the ocean , the odour of salt and seaweed on the melodic phrase — and she felt the tingling again , not just in her fingertip this time , but all the way up to her elbows , as if her arms were asleep . She shook them out , watching as a diver go into the tv camera ’s line of sight , eyes harbour by the pondering masquerade . The anatomy jab a finger down , and the camera swing in that guidance .
Sloane saw what she think was a bunch of seaweed grow along the ocean floor ; the person agree the camera swam nearer , the movement smoothen . Shafts of lightness smooth through the surface , refracted by the waves , onto neat rows of plants , their long , sharp farewell shifting as the water did . The plunger swam closer , and Sloane go steady a large metal structure on wheels with a bar arching softly away .
She recognized it . It was an irrigation pivot , like the sort used to irrigate the fields around her hometown .
Sloane lean nigher to the windows as she realized the neat rows of plants along the ocean floor were not seaweed , but stalks of corn . The shadow of a tractor tower in the distance . The diver swam over the corn , whizz along in on the integral husks among the leaves , then under the alloy arch of the irrigation system of rules , where the tractor was in full vista . As was the man still sit down atop it , trapped there with his knees under the steering cycle , his weapons system floating toward the surface .
Cho stopped the footage so that effigy remain fixed on the filmdom for a few seconds before she closed it .
“ That was in Hawaii , three weeks ago , ” she say . “ We have n’t been able-bodied to identify the man , but the lady friend from the second clip , Barbara Devore — she ’s been miss for a month now . ”
“ It has to be magic , ” Matt said . “ Right ? There ’s nothing else it could be . ”
“ It certainly decrease under the family of the supernormal , ” Henderson suppose . “ We have done extensive investigations on each of these incidents as well as hundreds of others that have occurred over the preceding decade . We ’ve been able to confirm that these are not dupery . ”
“ There are always supranormal occurrence here and there , ” Cho said . “ But they seem to be happening nigher and nearer together , and they ’re becoming more legion . ”
“ Do you . . . ” Albie swallow so hard Sloane could see his Adam ’s orchard apple tree force its means down . “ Do you think the Dark One is back or something ? Is that why you asked us to do here ? ”
Sloane felt a burning in her breast , and she was n’t indisputable if it was the same matter have the tingle in her arms or if it was just execute - of - the - mill terror . She could n’t sit still any longer — she perplex up , pace around her chair .
“ What is it ? ” Cho aver .
“ Ca n’t a gallon do a good , honest-to-god - fashioned step back and forth without getting questioned ? ” Sloane respond .
Henderson chortle a little and said , “ No , we do n’t think it ’s the Dark One . We have n’t run into any evidence of his rejoinder — there are no actors present at any of these incident , see ? No one wielding magic — but magic is happening anyway . It seems to us . . . well , the prevailing theory in ARIS , anyway , is that it ’s like a malfunctioning radio . It ’s creepy when it starts playing medicine out of nowhere , but it does n’t intend anything sinister . ”
“ You ’re sound out that our satellite is like a malfunctioning radio , ” Matt say , “ and that does n’t alarm you ? ”
“ Obviously it alarms us , ” Cho said . “ But I ’ll take the source of Earth ’s magic being tear or . . . whatever this is . . . over the Dark One any day . ”
Sloane was moving , now without meaning to , toward the double door across the room . Her body was fire , and as she drew closer , she smack something sulfurous and chemic and intimate . Her custody had smelled that way after she did conjuring trick .
With the artifact .
The Needle of Koschei .
She had n’t known when she go with a crew of ARIS broker to the middle of the Pacific Ocean how much the Needle would be her . In the ending , she had been so desperate to get rid of it that she had chewed it out of her own hand .
The others had go quiet . Or maybe she just could n’t hear them over the pulsation in her ear . She did n’t try the handle of the door , just pressed both palms against them and drew a long , dumb breathing time .
She feel Matt stomach behind her . She did n’t need to wait to roll in the hay it was him ; she knew the shape of him , the heat of him . How closely he dared to stand , so their arms were almost affecting . And not because they were dating — no , engaged , she reminded herself — but because that ’s how Matt was : not afraid to get secretive to anyone .
“ What is it ? ” he ask .
“ You do n’t feel it ? ” she said .
“ It feels weird in here , but no more than usual for a Drain situation , ” Matt order . “ Why ? What do you feel ? ”
Sloane stare at the scar on the back of her right helping hand . A vane of thick tissue paper , paler than the rest of her skin . “ It ’s been get to me since we got here . They made something novel , ” she said . “ And it ’s through these doors . Somewhere . ”
“ Okay , ” Matt said , touching her shoulder . “ Okay , lease ’s go sit down and ask them about it . ”
Sloane nod . On some level , she recognized that she would palpate embarrassed later . But for now , she just let Matt take her bridge player and result her back to the mesa . Henderson , Cho , Albie , and Ines were still sitting there , looking confused .
“ Well , I guess that ’s as sound a segue as any , ” Henderson say , scratching at his byssus . “ Uh — since these incident have been increasing in frequency , we ’ve step up certain program we were already working on . It seems important to understand what exactly magic isand how to apply it , so — we’ve develop a gadget that we conceive channels magic . You reacting to it that mode , Sloane , is really really encouraging . ”
“ You have n’t tested it ? ” Ines said .
“ Not yet , ” Cho said . “ We were hoping you might agree to assist us . You are , after all , the only mass we are cognizant of who have successfully maintain conjuration before . You ’re less likely to induce a catastrophe . ”
Sloane tasted copper . She wished she had keep back the empty potato - chip bag with her .
“ Did you go for a wand ? ” Ines said . “ Or , like , an orb ? Or is it a elephantine cock ? Please say it ’s a giant power hammer . ”
“ No , ” Sloane said .
“ Yeah , you ’re ripe , it ’s the government , so it ’s probably a boring box , ” Ines said .
“ No , ” Sloane enounce . “ No , we are n’t going to help you quiz your fucking weapon system . ”
“ Slo , ” Matt enunciate . “ Just because it uses trick does n’t mean it ’s a weapon . ”
Cho posture down in the chair across from Sloane and folded her custody on the table . Her fingerbreadth were thick at the metacarpophalangeal joint , and callused . Sloane had heard her say , once , that she like John Rock climbing .
“ for acknowledge how to secure whatever it is that ’s broken , ” Cho say , “ we postulate to understand how magic works and how it ’s used . So we have made a tool — that ’s all . ”
“ You expect me to believe you develop this affair so you could keep teenage girls from diminish into the sky ? ” Sloane scowled . “ You were already making it before you actualise something was wrong — you just said that . ”
“ We are a leg of the political science concerned with scientific advancement — ” Cho began .
“ I studied history , ” Sloane break up , swallowing down the look of stemma in her mouth . “ And I sleep together what move the government to invest in scientific advancement . We only have rocket salad that go into space because you cat were trying to blow up Soviets . This is just another Space Race . ”
“ Even if it is a arm , ” Henderson said , “ would you rather Russia or China figure it out first , Sloane ? And do you think they wo n’t be racing to harness magic themselves ? ”
“ I would rather governing stopped playing the who - can - destroy - each - other - faster game , ” Sloane snapped . She knew by the ringing in her pinna that she was panicking .
“ Yeah , well , I ’d rather open up up a goddamn ice cream shop , ” Henderson said . “ But we all have to deal with world . ”
“ Countless people have died because of legerdemain , ” Matt say . “ Right here , in this smear , actually . It ’s happened mighty in front of us . And you require us to be complicit in something that might make for more of that ? ” He sounded choked . Sloane had n’t hear him sound that way in a long time . “ After what we ’ve realize — after what we ’ve done ? ”
He did n’t know the one-half of it , Sloane suppose . He did n’t know a damn thing about what she had done , and it would appease that way .
Beside her , Albie was staring at his hand , curl over the boundary of the tabular array . His fingers had once been agile enough to fold the most intricate origami Sloane had ever seen . He had seek to learn her once how to make a Harold Hart Crane , and the sitting had ended in a pot of crumpled paper . But the hurt sustain from their time as captive of the Dark One had submit the feeling from his fingertips , so he had give up the hobby . Now those hands were trembling .
“ Albie , ” she allege .
He did n’t look at her . “ Is n’t it . . . ” He cleared his throat . Albie was shorter than average , with thinning blond hair that bewilder up in all the wrong places and a hunch forward posture from the lasting legal injury done to his prickle . He was nobody ’s Chosen One , not now and not ever . “ Is n’t it important to know how to apply it , though ? ” he say . “ So it ca n’t be used against us again ? ”
“ Albie , ” Matt said . “ You ca n’t think of that . ”
“ Do n’t give me that Hero Voice , ” Albie say , his own phonation shaking . “ Nobody ever used conjuring trick against you — any of you!—the path the Dark One used it against me . Whether it ’s a tool or a weapon or a freaking plush toy , I ’m not going to pose back and let the relaxation of the world count on out how to do it to us without us knowing how to do it back . Mutually assured destruction . ”
Sloane reached for words and came up empty . He had a spot — she had been kidnapped by the Dark One , too , but he had n’t done to her what he had done to Albie , had n’t attack her physical structure and left her with no feeling in her hands and no manner to rejoin the fight .
He had done something else . damage her without so much as concern her .
“ If people cash in one’s chips because of your service , ” she said finally , her pharynx ache , “ you ’ll have to channel that around . ”
“ And if people die because I do n’t avail ? ” he state , meeting her eyes at last . “ Either agency , we ’ll conduct it . We always do . ”
Excerpt from Veronica Roth ’s Chosen Ones reprinted by permission . Copyright John Joseph Adams / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt .
As an contribute fillip , you may also see a dissimilar excerption from Chosen Ones than the one we ’ve provided above , from the Audible versionread by actor Dakota Fanning .
Veronica Roth ’s Chosen Ones is out today ; you could order your right of first publication here .
https://gizmodo.com/theres-something-for-everyone-on-aprils-giant-list-of-n-1842479214
For more , make certain you ’re following us on our Instagram @io9dotcom .
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