Title: The Culling
Author: Ramona Finn
Genre: YA/Dystopia
Release: Get it HERE!
Synopsis In a solar system where The Authority decides who lives and who dies, only one of their own assassins can stop them.
Glade Io is a trained killer. Marked at a young age as an individual with violent tendencies, she was taken from her family and groomed to be a Datapoint, a biotech-enabled analyst who carries out the Culling. She is meant to identify and destroy any potential threats to the human colonies. But when she’s kidnapped by rogue colonists known as the Ferrymen, everything Glade thinks she knows about the colonies, and The Authority that runs them, collapses into doubt.
As the Culling begins, Glade is pulled between
two opposing sides, and with her family’s lives hanging in the balance, Glade
is unsure of who to trust—and time is quickly running out.
Thanks to the author for sharing a special excerpt from
The Culling, Book One
here on Writing Belle today! Enjoy! I awoke at the bottom of a pit of water. And with about three seconds worth of oxygen left in my lungs. My long hair tangled in my fingers as my panicked brain searched for a way out. My hands hit nothing, and my eyes were wide and saw only black. I was completely submerged and had no way of knowing which way was up. If there even was an up. My body rolled in the dark as my lungs screamed. I was going to drown. I was going to drown in the dark and quiet and that was it. The end of Glade Io. Dead and drowned in the dark. “Breathe.” A voice bit its way through the darkness and I startled, my lungs convulsing in my chest as they begged for air. “You can breathe,” the voice said again. I didn’t have a choice but to try. I was going to die either way. I gave up. Breath exploded as I reflexively released out and in, taking a deep, desperate gulp. I was greedy, lusting for air as I took huge drinks of it. The burn in my lungs subsided and my brain stopped swimming. I realized three things all at once. One, that I wasn’t in the complete darkness. There was a dim light maybe ten feet away from me. Two, that I wasn’t in water, though it rather felt like it. I was floating without gravity and the air had a strange quality to it, slippery and disorienting. Three, that three people were lining a wall ahead of me, and they were staring at me. Two of them were Cast and Sullia. On their knees with their hands tied in front of them. The third was a girl, tall, thin, and with no hair on her head. She stared at me with undisguised hatred as she held a gun toward Cast and Sullia. “Let her down,” the girl said in a surprisingly low voice. Husky. There was a buzzing, a click, and half a second later, I was tumbling to the floor. The strange air that I’d thought was water had receded and I was subject to gravity once again. “Get up,” a voice said from behind me. Still gasping on my knees, I looked behind me to see a boy of about Cast’s age. He was stocky and wide. He had a sturdy look about him that was offset by the pale, fragile blue of his eyes. I eyed his gun as warily as I had the tall girl’s, but the boy didn’t have the same ringing hatred in his expression. Allowing myself one more gasping second, I sat back on my haunches. It wasn’t more than a moment before I felt cold metal at my wrists and realized I was being shackled in the same way that Cast and Sullia were. The boy, pressing the gun into the side of my neck, dragged me up by the shackles and over to Cast and Sullia. “Up,” the tall girl said to all three of us. We followed them out of the strange, dark room and into a blindingly bright hallway. I hissed against the light and had to wonder how long I’d been out for if my eyes were taking this long to adjust. Still disoriented, my eyes burning, I gasped in surprise when the boy’s hand gripped my shoulder and shoved me sideways into a room not much bigger than a closet. I stumbled, barely getting my footing before the door slammed behind me, cutting out most of the light. Only pinpricks of stars from the tiny window at the top of the room illuminated anything. I heard two more slams just seconds later and realized these were holding cells for the three of us. Two sets of footsteps disappeared down the hall and a distant door slammed. “Glade?” Cast’s voice whispered in the dark from my left. “Yeah.” My voice sounded like it had been shaved to the bone. There was almost nothing left of it. Just sun-bleached feathers. “I-I,” his voice sounded years younger than he actually was. I thought involuntarily of my sisters. “I can’t feel my tech. My tech is dead. It doesn't look damaged, but it’s quiet.” My brow furrowed as I looked down at my own tech. My hands were shackled at the wrist, so I tipped my arms to one side to get a better view. The motherboard in my arm. It was as iridescent as ever, looking for all the world like it was working. I twisted my hands in the shackles so that I could just brush my fingers over it. But I felt no corresponding buzz in the tech on my face. I let my joined hands trace up to my cheek, something I almost never did. I gently slid my palm over the tech that was implanted there. I could feel its cool edges against my skin, but it was ominously quiet: no information, no attempt to sync. Nothing. I closed my eyes and attempted to sync. Nothing. I huffed out a frustrated breath. Again. Nothing. I froze, my blood turning to ice as I put the pieces together. For the first time in over two years, there was silence. There was no tug of war. There was no tech. There was only me. Only Glade Io in this skull of mine. I was both dismayed and relieved. Free and terrified. I hadn’t realized how much I’d relied on the tech – the constant whisper of it guiding me, informing me – until it was silent. Just a dead synthetic thing stuck in my skin.
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About the Author Ramona Finn writes about courageous characters who fight to live in broken, dystopian worlds. She believes a person's true characters is often revealed in times of crisis, and there is no greater crisis than the worlds that she drops her characters into!
She grew up sitting cross-legged on her town's library floor--completely engrossed in science fiction books. It was always the futuristic world or the universe-on-the-brink-of-extinction plotlines that drew her in, but it was the brave characters who chose to fight back that kept her turning the pages.
Her books create deep, intricate worlds with bold characters determined to fight for their survival in their dystopian worlds--with a little help from their friends. And, of course, romance is never out of the question. To learn more about Ramona and her books, visit http://ramonafinn.com. Also visit her on Facebook. Brought to you by:
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THE CULLING TRILOGY: YOUNG ADULT DYSTOPIAN ADVENTURE FROM RAMONA FINN
