Exiles by Ashley Saunders, Leslie Saunders

It was a gorgeous night for trespassing. A thick coastal fog had just rolled in, veiling the chilly valley and the soaring peaks above. Rhett imagined the thin, whitish curve of the crescent moon hanging somewhere overhead as the tip of Mother Nature’s fingernail, trying to scratch away the low-lying cloud obscuring her view.

Haven’t you learned by now? Rhett silently taunted her. These are Yates’s private mountains. No one gets to see what goes on in there.

At least, not until tonight.

Rhett stood at the center of the press of prying minds that had gathered outside the South Entrance of Quest Campus. The diffuse glow of red and blue strobe lights gave him the sensation of being trapped on a machine-fogged dance floor in some Sunset Boulevard club, but the rabid shouts of a dozen police officers snapped him from the trance. All around, reporters, gawkers, and a dozen or so tourists in “Hardihood” shirts held their arms aloft like tripods, trying to capture a glimpse over the solid iron gate with their cameras.

An elbow slammed into Rhett’s kidney as the mob pushed him nearer to the gate. He felt an eye-watering tug of his hair, then pain across his back as a pair of feet awkwardly attempted to scale his shoulders for a better look. Rhett tossed aside an enthusiastic teen who had the look of a budding Quester about him, then fended off a paparazzo who’d grabbed him by his throat, striving to take his place.

The snoops were turning barbarous. Everyone smelled blood. And the pack of ravenous inquisitors would have their scandal fresh and unadulterated. Before Yates’s PR team could cut away all the juicy bits, scrub up all the stains.

“Get back!” the nearest cop warned, taking out his baton.

“Sir—” a woman in full makeup and hair shouted, holding out a selfie stick to film the exchange. “Can you confirm that a distress call was placed from inside Adsum Academy?”

“Home or jail, take your pick!” a second officer bellowed.

Would they really arrest those with media IDs? Rhett had his own forged press badge pinned to his sweater, but it was no matter. He had his own way in. He moved unnoticed to the edge of the hullabaloo and slipped into the mist.

A security fence loomed out of the haze to his right. Steel pickets, six inches wide. Rhett squinted upward, noting the deceptively handsome bougainvillea trees lining the barrier. Vines wrapped arches over the high fence tops, their savage thorns masked by plush magenta petals that deterred any would-be climbers—in style, of course.

Rhett hugged close to the fence, his fingers brushing the cold thickset pickets as he tiptoed farther into the dark. “Forty, forty-one, forty-two . . .” he whispered aloud. Finally, after picket fifty-five, his fingers grazed only air, and he halted, smiling impishly.

Rhett had created this secret, person-sized entryway himself. Two nights prior, at the tail end of a weeks-long bender. Turned out, sleep deprivation and the anniversary of his pops’s funeral were the perfect combination to help Rhett upgrade from stalker to burglar.

He’d been watching Yates for months, desperate to dig up dirt, find a crack in his seemingly shatterproof reputation. But a man who could not only profit from disaster—the Yates Empire grew 50 percent richer in the aftermath of the 2040 Quake—but rebuild a demolished Los Angeles into his own image? That kind of man would not be so easily laid bare.

The wail of an ambulance drifted down from Adsum Peak. Music to Rhett’s ears—a siren’s call of intrigue. He glanced behind him, yanked a neck gaiter over his lower face, and squeezed through the double-gap pickets and onto the Quest Campus grounds.

Before he could even brush the fallen bougainvillea petals from his shoulders, he heard a bright, silvery trill as something—no, two somethings—zoomed past overhead.

Rhett ducked, cursing, thinking security was onto him. But the drones were headed up Adsum Peak, not down. Just more snoops, then. “Amateurs,” he sighed, stretching his quads and groin before setting off at a brisk run toward the narrow switchback road that led up the dusty mountainside.

In truth, Rhett was a sleuthing amateur himself. Self-taught, self-funded. A one-man team whose sole job and purpose was to damage Damon Yates. Not to kill him—no, that would be too easy. For Damon, not for Rhett.

Rhett wanted the tech billionaire humiliated, disgraced, baking in an overheated prison cell. Friendless and penniless, forced to spend the rest of his purposeless life remembering Rhett Wood and his pops.

It was a mile and a half to the top. Rhett ignored the cruel, relentless incline, the burn in his lungs and thighs, focusing on the road, watching for the headlights of autonomous vehicles. Quest AVs were stealth on wheels; you never heard one coming until it was too late.

He bolstered his nerve. He hoped he wasn’t too late.

For what exactly, he wasn’t sure. But a midnight distress call from the exclusive mountaintop boarding school, whose inaugural class was made up of a bunch of no-name street urchins? That had the sweet stench of scandal, ripe for the picking. Rhett could almost taste it. The revenge. The blackmail. He closed his eyes, picturing the axe he’d been grinding, all these long months, finally swinging loose, singing through the air as he took down a god.

Who had made the SOS call? Was it one of the Unfortunate kids Yates had plucked from the city’s quake-ravaged neighborhoods for his academy? Or maybe it was a Quester—no, a defector, ready to rip the protective veil off Yates’s mountain of secrets.

Grinning like a loon, Rhett split through the fog, the long dry fronds of the palm trees clapping boisterously in the wind, encouraging him onward. But the higher he ran, twisting his way up the peak, the more he lost his bearings. Was the sandy arc of Silicon Bay, the world’s hottest tech scene, to his right or left? Was the luminous haze hundreds of feet below him the clustered factories of Quest Motors, or was he staring down toward HyperQuest, Yates’s pioneering hyperloop company?

“We get you where you need at near supersonic speed.” Rhett muttered the aggravating tune, locking his eyes back onto the road ahead, certain at least where this strip of concrete led. After he made a last hairpin turn, Adsum Academy took shape on the blanketed horizon. He slowed to a prowl, barely flinching when he heard the muted buzz of another drone speeding toward the sprawling property.

Ever heard of a no-fly zone? he silently jeered at the surveillance drone. The thing hit an invisible shield of signal disruptors before it spun to the ground with a pathetic crash, joining the litter of other incapacitated aircraft that had been downed by the geofence. Rhett kept up his pace as he moved along the wide tree-lined drive, until he spotted a vacant police cruiser and ambulance parked just inside the open wrought-iron gate.

Where was the chaos of lights, the raised voices? Had he made it all this way for a false alarm?

The axe in Rhett’s mind began to dull, his promise of retribution slipping fast from his hands. He halted, on the verge of turning back, when a shrill, sputtering laugh reached him on the wind.

He bounded toward the sound. Within seconds he was scaling a ten-foot-tall stone fence, peering surreptitiously into a great, fanciful garden made all the more breathtaking by the pale figure at its center.

A strapping boy, no more than twelve, stood at the top of a three-tiered marble fountain dressed in nothing but a pair of lustrous boxer shorts with Adsum’s coat of arms on each thigh. One hand brandished a gun, the other tore at his dark, tangled mane. He howled tearful, incoherent words at a small huddle of students cowering in their silk pajamas on the damp grass below.

Rhett fumbled for his phone. Tapped to open its camera. Hit record.

A line of officers and paramedics stood by, empty-handed, deferring to a towering figure in billowy ocean-blue robes. Rhett zoomed in on the woman’s face and recognized her immediately as Yates’s second wife. The dean of the new academy. Rhett cocked his head, listening for fragments on the breeze.

“Darling, put the gun down,” the dean coaxed the boy. “Let’s figure this out together.”

“Stay back!” the boy roared. He kicked water at her with his bare feet before launching into another tirade directed at his classmates. “They’re listening to all of my thoughts . . . transmitting them . . . enemies of my father!”

“Maxen, please!” the dean pleaded.

Rhett couldn’t believe his luck. This wasn’t just any Adsum student. Maxen was Gen 2, the dean’s kid, Yates’s youngest son. Rhett aimed his camera at Maxen as he pointed the gun at anyone that moved.

“The Doc . . . where is she?” Maxen shouted. “We have to get her out. I have to get rid of her!”

The students shrieked, clinging together like a school of fish trying to scare off a predator. Maxen flew off the fountain, tackling the dean to the ground. “I won’t let them take my mind!” As his mother struggled to wrestle the weapon from his hands, a shot rang out, reverberating through the mist-covered mountains.

The students scattered toward the dormitory—all except a pair of twin girls, scrawny as stray kittens. They wore their hair in loose, chestnut-colored curls around their bony shoulders. The hems of their oversize silk pajamas were cuffed to their pint-size frames. They were identical in every way, except for the blood that leaked down one twin’s chest.

She clutched at her collarbone before collapsing into her sister’s arms.

Rhett must have made a noise. He might have even screamed “No!” Maxen’s turbulent eyes locked on Rhett’s. He jolted, attempting to scramble down from the wall, but his movements were too quick. Too careless. One slip was all it took, his pops once warned him. The tip of his boot slid off the slick stone. Rhett’s sweaty fingers grasped for purchase. Clutched nothing but empty air.

His stomach dropped first. Then his body. As he fell backward toward the pavement, he caught a glimpse of the scythe-shaped moon. Haven’t you learned by now? it taunted back at him. No one gets to see.

Rhett felt a vicious crack. And then nothing.