The world is in chaos: war, plague, global ecological collapse. Parents everywhere seek sanctuary for their precious children, the future of mankind. For those who are rich and powerful enough, safety can be found—for a price—at the Clothos Academy. Run by a mysterious man known only as Sarge, set in a former monastery atop a sheer cliff on a tiny island somewhere in the Mediterranean, Clothos will admit only one hundred students before it is sealed off—perhaps permanently—from the terrors outside.
But all is not as it seems. The pupils are so-called starlets best known for their empty heads and eating disorders; troublemakers one step away from incarceration; and junior royals too embarrassing to be let out in public. And the staff isn't much better, from the alcoholic doctor to an ancient monk with secrets of his own.
And the dangers from which these castaways are being protected? Prerecorded, ready to be trotted out whenever Sarge needs to terrify his little flock. And yet…
Some dangers are real, as two boys discover when they hack the Academy's self-contained computer network and connect, for a brief but disastrous moment, to the outside world. Worse, a stranger has entered the Academy. And he has brought Death.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Kit Reed was the author of more than a dozen novels; her last book, Mormama, was published in 2017. Her short novel Little Sisters of the Apocalypse and the collection Weird Women, Wired Women were both finalists for the Otherwise/James Tiptree, Jr. Award.
Her short fiction was published in various anthologies and magazines including Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Yale Review, and The Kenyon Review. She also wrote psychological thrillers under the name Kit Craig.
She died in 2017.