How do you bury something that was never alive?

London, in the year 3034.
Seventeen-year-old Serena has just enrolled at a prestigious academy, staffed entirely by robots. When the headteacher is found destroyed, Serena crosses paths with Kristopher, the troubled son of a detective. Can she and Kristopher find out who would destroy a robot—before Serena becomes the prime suspect?

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	Preorder
GENRE Sci-Fi Dystopian Mystery	EBOOK Amazon Kindle Smashwords Nook Apple Google Play Kobo	PRINT Amazon
Available: August 17, 2026
Teen

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Excerpt

Chapter One

Three weeks ago, Naomi nearly died. Today, she wishes she had.

At least, if she was dead, she wouldn’t have to sit here, in this icy hypertrain station, wondering which will get her first—frostbite or boredom.

A cough racks her body, and she wonders if she’ll ever get rid of this sore throat. The Extras find it harder to shake off any form of sickness. That tends to happen when access to healthcare and medicine is denied. The young, of course, have an advantage.

At seventeen, though, Naomi doesn’t feel particularly youthful. Her chest still feels tight and she wishes her nose would stop running. Jess tells her she was feverish and they thought she was a goner.

Naomi doesn’t remember any of that. Her fingers are white with cold and she flexes them, hoping to get the blood moving. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Jess and the baby, huddled in the corner of a shop door. Jess is feeding him, her head constantly darting in different directions as she makes sure no one else is around. Jess will be in trouble if anyone notices the baby. Usually, she keeps him hidden out of sight. 

Naomi checks the station clock. It’s early. Probably safe enough to feed him. But Jess needs to hurry up. The first trains will be arriving soon, ready to belch out people who have places to go and money to do things with. A couple of pigeons flutter around, heads bobbing in search of food. They’ll be lucky if they find any.

The lucky ones. That’s what they call the Exceptionals. The people who still have jobs, functions, money, status. Not people like Naomi or Jess or any of the Extras who huddle in the windswept train station, hoping for a bit of luck to blow their way. It never does.

Jess shuffles over. “They said by the year 3034, we’d all have mansions.”

Naomi barks out a laugh. “They also said AI wouldn’t take our jobs and look.”

Jess huddles closer for warmth. Naomi has no idea how old she is. The worry lines and greying hair probably make her look older than she really is. Naomi doesn’t really care. She and Jess stick together, like all the Extras do. Safety in numbers.

Jess tucks the baby under her thin coat and slips the pacifier tenderly into his mouth.

She talks to him in a low voice, saying words he can’t possibly understand just to soothe him. “You see, little one, you’re born an Extra. That means you don’t officially exist. You won’t get a house. You won’t get a job. You’ll live your life taking what food and shelter you can get and making the best of it all.”

The incongruousness of her sing-song voice combined with the chilling words makes Naomi’s fists clench.

“If you were an Everyday, of course, it would be different,” continues Jess. “The Everydays get the few remaining jobs. And the Exceptionals... well, they’re top of the food chain. They live in houses bigger than this train station.” Jess wipes a dribble from the baby’s nose. “It’s been this way ever since the late 2060s. When the powers that be decided the robots could do all the work and then there were no jobs left for the humans. And then the governments started cracking down on babies like you being born...”

“Jess, for AI’s sake,” snaps Naomi. She doesn’t think she can stand a history lesson, not when the aftereffects of it are still painfully raw and she has to live them every day.

“I have to keep him quiet!” hisses Jess. “And it would look weird if I sing to a baby that isn’t meant to exist!”

Naomi shrugs. If he cries, maybe someone will find him and take him away. And maybe it’ll be to a better life than the one Jess can give him. Nobody ever knows what happens to the Extra babies that get removed. Or who leaves behind the babies that randomly appear. They’ve had three babies abandoned in their station this past week. Jess always takes them in. Naomi can never understand that. She barely has enough to feed her own baby, let alone three other mouths.

“I took you in, didn’t I?” Jess always says when Naomi questions her. “When you were left here, I made sure you didn’t starve. I kept you alive.”

Naomi never says what she always thinks. Sometimes, I wish you hadn’t. She knows if she said those words aloud, the hurt would fill Jess’ kind brown eyes. And Naomi wouldn’t hurt Jess for the world.

Naomi never knew her parents. Never knew if they were the ones who left her behind or if someone else had done so for some reason. For years, when she was younger, she used to wait for the hypertrains to come in. She used to hope against hope that her parents would come looking for her, that she’d been left behind by mistake, that they were desperately wanting her. Or, when she got a little older, she’d have the age-old fantasy that every abandoned Extra child did: that she was secretly an Exceptional who had just been left behind by mistake and one day her real parents would come back for her and restore her to a lifestyle of warm beds and filling meals—the kind of life she can only dream about. And then, as she got older still, she realised no one was coming for her. This was her life. And it was always going to be this way.

The hypertrain whooshes silently in, coming to a dead stop with alarming abruptness. Naomi likes this moment, when the station goes from bare to bursting at the seams. She always finds the juxtaposition of quiet to frantic fascinating. The way it changes so fast. The way, for hours, she’s alone with her thoughts and then suddenly there’s no peace to think, only urgency, only activity. She enjoys watching the people hurrying along, a flock of sheep scattering in different directions. If she’s in a particularly good mood, she might make up stories about where they’re going, what they’re doing.

“It must be term time,” Jess says, nudging Naomi. “Look. The Lynwood Academy girls are here.”

Sure enough, there’s a snottering of them. That’s the collective noun Naomi picked out for them.

Naomi hates the Lynwood Academy girls. Every three months, they go to their boarding school, or they come home to their families. Today, they are going. Each of them in a perfect, bright blue uniform with perfect, made-up faces and perfect lives. They’ll never have to wonder what hunger feels like. They’ll never experience that ever-present gnawing inside, the one that Naomi and Jess and every one of the Extras live with, because even if they scavenged all day, there’s never enough food to go around.

One of them turns her head and looks at Naomi curiously. She’s probably never seen an Extra up close. Naomi sticks out her tongue. If this girl wants a freak show, she’ll give her one.

“Don’t get too close,” one of the other girls warns. “They still haven’t got rid of the Extras in here.”

“What do you think I’m going to do? Bite you? Give you some terrible disease?” snaps Naomi. The girls don’t reply. Nobody ever replies to an Extra, except another Extra.

“Don’t antagonise them,” hisses Jess.

“Why?” Naomi shrugs. “Who cares what they think?” And the unspoken question what can they do that’s worse than this?

Jess walks away slowly. Naomi knows she’s trying not to catch anyone’s eye, hoping to slip away unnoticed. Jess has more to lose.

Naomi laughs bitterly to herself. That’s the one consolation of having lost everything. There’s nothing left to lose.

The shops are opening now, getting ready to serve their first customers of the day. Shutters rattle as they’re pulled back, doors click open. The girl who locked eyes with Naomi walks to the coffee shop, her heels clicking on the hard floor. “A latte please,” she says, in that plummy, posh accent all the Exceptionals have. She smiles her thanks at the AI shopkeeper (seriously, who smiles at a robot?) and then strolls casually over towards Naomi.

“Hey.”

She can’t be talking to Naomi.

It’s an unwritten rule that the Exceptionals never talk to the Extras. Ever.

And yet, here she is, standing in front of Naomi as if it’s perfectly natural to do so.

Naomi glares up at her, acutely aware of the contrast. The girl’s shoes are perfect, looking barely worn, pink and pretty. Her blue blazer looks brand new and Naomi imagines sinking her arms into it, feeling the warmth envelop her. Her own shoes are full of holes and, honestly, she might be better ditching them and going barefoot for all the good they do. Her coat is threadbare. Someone left it behind one day and she snagged it before the Station Bot could get it. But that was years ago and now it barely keeps the cold out.

“I’m Serena,” offers the girl.

“Hooray for you,” mutters Naomi.

“Coffee?” Serena holds the cup out with a smile.

“Screw your charity,” bristles Naomi.

“Oh, go on.” Serena kneels down beside Naomi and presses the cup into her hands. “You’ve probably never had coffee before, have you?”

Naomi has, actually. A long time ago when a man left his cup behind, half-drunk and stone-cold. She hadn’t really liked it, but her hands wrap around this cup, and she discovers warm coffee is a world apart from someone else’s leftovers.

Heat bleeds into Naomi’s palms, almost too hot to be comfortable. It’s the first time her hands haven’t felt like blocks of ice. “Thanks,” Naomi mumbles. But the question ticks in the back of her mind. What does this girl want in return?

“How old are you?” Serena tilts her head towards Naomi, staring like she’s trying to memorise everything about her.

“Mind your own business. You can keep your coffee if it comes with a free interrogation.”

Serena ignores her. “You look about seventeen. Am I right?”

Naomi stares back. Maybe this is a fever dream. Maybe her influenza became so bad, she fell unconscious and this is all her imagination.

But Serena just smiles at her. “It’s meant to be my first day at Lynwood. Have you heard of it?”

“It was the first school to trial a staff made solely of AI. It basically proved to everyone that humans aren’t needed anymore. Lynwood Academy is pretty much the reason why I’m here. So, yeah, rich kid. I’ve heard of it.” Naomi didn’t mean to say all that. She hadn’t realised how close her resentment was to spilling out.

Serena sighs. “I’m not keen on it either.”

“Why are you telling me?” demands Naomi. “Why are you even talking to me? The Exceptional never talk to the Extras.” Let alone buy them cups of coffee.

“Well, I’ve never seen an Extra before. I wanted to see what you were like.”

“And are you satisfied?”

Serena shrugs. “You’re rude. You smell. And you look like you wouldn’t know designer shoes if you tripped over them.”

“You smell too. Like...like a cloud of perfume,” Naomi snaps. Not her best comeback, really.

Serena laughs. “Listen to me. I don’t have much time. What would you say if I told you I could get you out of this cold station and change your life?”

Naomi rolls her eyes. “I’d say you were mad.”

“So are you in?”

Naomi doesn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

 

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