Excerpt!
She couldn’t see them through the car’s blacked-out windows, but it was obvious. The simple fact that the vehicle had the shine of something new was enough to give the Agents away. Being from The Vault, or The Northern Territories, as Fletcher’s part of the country was known officially, she rarely saw any cars on the road at all; cars in such impeccable condition were all but complete anomalies. Why do they even bother plastering the Department of Reclamation’s seal on the doors? She wondered.
That hideous seal. Words failed to capture how much Fletcher both loathed and feared it. The great red and black per bend crest, showcasing a scroll of parchment in one half and a tasseled mortarboard in the other, had always been reviled by citizens of The Vault. It meant that someone hadn’t paid their dues, and The Department of Reclamation had come to collect.
The Department of Reclamation employed the Agents who did the strong-arming for The Federal Bureau of Education. While the BOE housed the bookkeepers, The Department of Reclamation’s Agents handled the unseemlier work… and their work was generally quite unseemly. The Governing Council of The Unified American Territories had long ago authorized Reclamation Agents to use brute force “in the event of necessity.” More often than not, visits from Agents did end in violence—if not on their first visit, when a potential Reclaimee received their Notification of Violation, then most definitely on their second visit, when the Agents returned to take the Reclaimee into custody. Reclaimees seldom initiated said violence, of course; Fletcher had heard that most cried or begged for just a few more moments with their loved ones. They would be flogged once or twice and give up or otherwise be knocked out with narcotics. Occasionally, a Reclaimee would try to escape. Those individuals had it much worse. Fletcher closed her eyes and, although it pained her to do it, allowed herself to envision the brutality Agents inflicted upon braver people: Arms twisted so violently that shoulders snapped out their sockets, fingers bent backward with such force that the metacarpals fractured, skulls cracked against living room floors. She shuddered as if her skin had been kissed by an icy wind.
Reclamation Agents were no strangers to The Vault, considering it was the part of the country reserved for the impoverished, the destitute and the disillusioned—those who needed “excessive assistance” from the Government. Those like Fletcher. She would need at least ten more fingers to be able to count the number of times she had seen Agents in her neighborhood in the last week alone. Watching these two men march toward her home, she couldn’t help but wonder if they had come for her this time.
“Fletcher,” her father’s voice boomed through the dimness of her room. “Can you come out here, please?”
“I’ll be right there.”
She peered into the tarnished mirror atop her bedside table. Using the remnants of daylight to aid her vision, she pulled her long blonde hair up into a ponytail. “Alright,” she sighed to herself, her sharp jawline clenching and her hazel eyes burning with angst. “If they are here for you, you’ll find out soon enough.”
This is your future.
The United States of America has been gone for over a century.
In its place, The Unified American Territories—a nation divided, the impoverished and the wealthy are separated by a looming steel wall. In the Northern Territories—The Vault, as it is known by its inhabitants—the government rules with an iron fist: All citizens are tested for intelligence and aptitude, thrust into compulsory higher education and saddled with insurmountable debt. All student loans are granted and controlled by a branch of the regime called The Federal Bureau of Education. Failure to repay their debt consigns borrowers to the Knowledge Reclamation Process, a mysterious government-sanctioned brainwashing program that strips them of their education with dire mental and physical side effects.
Fletcher Daniels is a recent college graduate struggling to stay ahead of her arrears. After a visit from Reclamation Agents, she knows her life is about to change for the worse. Enter Youth Opposed to Reclamation, a scrappy band of rebels who try in their own small way to bring some relief to the people of The Vault by smuggling as many potential Reclaimees to safety as possible. When Fletcher meets and falls for fellow female YOR member, Sparrow, her world is twisted away from the one she once knew even more radically. The group offers Fletcher a chance to escape her fate, but through them, she sees the promise of bringing real change to The Vault. History has taught her that even the smallest rebellions can trigger revolutions. It’s time for history to repeat itself.
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Kristen Zimmer is the author of The Gravity Between Us, which spent 12 weeks as the number one best-seller in both the Lesbian Fiction and Lesbian Romance genres on Amazon. It was listed as one of USA Today’s “10 Best books to read for Pride 2018” and in December 2021 was named one of Reader's Digest '50 Best Romance Novels of All Time'
That same year, her follow-up novel, When Sparks Fly, debuted as the best-seller in Lesbian Fiction and Lesbian romance, and clung to the spot for four weeks.
Her latest novel, Forbidden Girl, a dark mafia sapphic romance, is available now.
Kristen lives in Salem, Massachusetts— yes, where the witches were.
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