Author Biography

Teri Terry is the award-winning author of several books, including the Slated trilogy, and has been published in the US, Germany, Australia, Canada, and France. She lives in England.

Excerpt from Book

Chapter 1: Callie I panic when I return to the house and my brother, Kai, isn''t inside. Has he vanished while I was searching for Shay? Have they both left me behind? But I soon find him behind the house, standing on the cliff and gazing at the sea. His arms are crossed, his body rigid. He stares at the waves breaking on the rocks, far below, like he is thinking of joining them. I''m afraid. Don''t leave me too, Kai. I need you. I say the words even though I know he can''t hear me. Shay wasn''t just Kai''s girlfriend and my friend: she was also the only one who could see or hear me. Now that she''s gone I''m powerless to reach him. I place myself between him and the cliff''s edge. If I move close to him, I feel a resistance, the same as if I push against anything-- a person, a rock, a door. They all feel the same to me. I stare at his eyes. They''re hazel--almost green now in the sun--and are full of rage and pain. He is my brother, and there is nothing I can do to help him. Nothing I could do to stop him if he decided to step over the edge. I could go with him, fly down the cliff, watch his body smash on the rocks and break and bleed and die, but I would just go on and on. It''s hard to die when you''re already dead. But I''m hurting too. Shay left both of us. I want to tell him this, and the frustration of not being seen or heard makes me howl and wave my fists at the sea. Kai looks towards me, his eyes startled. Did he hear something? When I screamed in the underground institute at the techs who vacuumed up my ashes after Dr. 1 had me cured in fire, they jumped. Then later one of them whistled along when I sang. Maybe Kai can hear me, even if only a little? Kai! I''m here! I shout the words out with all that I am. He frowns, then shakes his head, and turns and walks back to the house. Maybe he can sense me, at least a little, but he doesn''t believe it. At least I''ve interrupted whatever he was thinking as he stared at the rocks and the sea. Inside he paces back and forth. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a letter. It looks all crinkled, like he''d rolled it into a ball and then smoothed it out again. He looks at it but moves it around too fast for me to see what it says. He stuffs it back in his pocket and flops on to the sofa. "Callie, are you there?" I''m here, I''m here! I want to cry when I hear his voice; when I hear him say Callie. "Shay''s left. She says she didn''t take you with her, that you''d want to stay with me. That I should talk to you." He wraps his arms around himself like he''s trying to hold something in. "She''s gone to turn herself in at the air force base, to tell them she''s a carrier and that the epidemic started here in Shetland. In case . . . in case that goes wrong, she says we shouldn''t follow. We should leave the island and go back to the mainland. Tell everyone we can about the origin and spread of the epidemic and don''t let them cover it up. "She says that I should tell you that she''s sorry." His voice is bitter with anger. "Like being sorry makes it all right!" He raises his hand in a fist, but then his body seems to collapse in on itself. "Shay, how could you?" he whispers. He fights it, but his shoulders are shaking. And . . . and . . . he''s crying. Kai--my big brother--is crying? This is so wrong . It makes me twist up inside like I''m about to cry, too, but tears are something I don''t have anymore. And, even worse: there is a horrible feeling gnawing inside me. It''s my fault. Isn''t it? It''s my fault Shay left. She thought she was contagious; that everyone--including her mother--caught it from her and got sick and died. I let her think this; I didn''t tell her the truth. I didn''t tell her that it was me who was the carrier all along. It never occurred to her, what with me being dead: who ever heard of a contagious ghost? But all the major centers of the epidemic--from the beginning when it spread from Shetland to Aberdeen, then to Edinburgh, and then to Newcastle and beyond--were places I''d been. The disease always hit soon after I was there: it had to be me. Later, when Shay got sick and survived, she could see and hear me. She was the only one who could after I was cured--apart from the dying. After that, the disease did follow wherever she went--but only because I was there too. She''d never even been to Aberdeen or Newcastle. She''d explained that away by saying there must have been other survivors in those places, but I never found any when I was there. She would never have left Kai and me if I had told her the truth, but . . . No! It''s not my fault; none of it. Everything goes back to Dr. 1. He''s the one who did this to me. He''s the doctor who gave me the illness in his lab underground. When I survived and changed, he cured me in fire and turned me into whatever it is that I am now. It''s his fault. Everything I''ve done from the beginning--getting Kai and Shay to come to this house on Shetland to find the source of the epidemic, and then not telling Shay that it''s me who is the carrier, not her--was all to get at Dr. 1. I wanted to go with Shay. Once she tells them Dr. 1 is the one who started the epidemic, they''ll hunt him down. I want to be there when they find him. That''s why I couldn''t tell her the truth--she wouldn''t have turned herself in if she''d known she wasn''t the carrier. But she left without me. Why? Why didn''t she take me with her? Kai cries, and the rage and heat inside me strengthens, grows--a fury that could destroy and swallow the world. Dr. 1 must pay for what he''s done. Chapter 2: Shay Before I can finally take off the biohaard suit that the solders made me wear, I''m locked in a small, sealed room. Even without the suit, the claustrophobic feeling of not being able to breathe fully is still there. One wall of the room is glass--very thick glass. Dr. Morgan is on the other side of this transparent wall with two men--older ones, not the same ones who came out to get me earlier. All three are in uniform. They''re talking, but I can''t hear them. I knock on the glass. They continue talking, but then a moment later Dr. Morgan reaches for some controls, and I can hear them clearly. "Hello, Shay. Sorry about the barrier." She gestures at the wall between us. "Are you more comfortable without the suit?" I shrug. "Sure. Yes." She smiles, but there is an edge to it. "Now, Shay, we''ve found out a few things about you." She looks at a tablet in her hands. "Such as . . . you are wanted in connection with a murder. Also, it says here that you were reported as immune?" "I didn''t kill anybody!" Then I realize that''s not true: many, many people have died because of me, haven''t they? I sigh and cross my arms. "I mean, I didn''t shoot that boy they say I did." She nods, a careful look on her face, disbelief in her aura. No. No way. Are they not going to believe anything I say because I was framed by SAR? I grip the edges of the table between me and the glass and lean forward. "Listen to me. You have to listen." "We''re listening," she says. "I had the flu. I thought I was going to die. My mother did die." I push the pain away. "And we went back to Killin--" "We? That''d be you and Kai Tanzer, currently also wanted after mysteriously going missing from a police cell in Inverness. Do you know where he is now?" "No. Anyway, I said I was immune, like Kai. We helped at the hospital tent in Killin. Then this creepy lieutenant from SAR--" "SAR?" "Special Alternatives Regiment of the army." She half raises an eyebrow, and I can see it: she''s never heard of this regiment. How can that be? I know this is an air force base, not an army one, but I wouldn''t have thought they were so separate that they didn''t know the names of each other''s regiments. "Anyhow, this lieutenant--Kirkland-Smith, he said his name was--came looking for me and said he knew I was a survivor and that SAR were taking me away to help study the epidemic, but he was lying. They wanted to kill me." "How did you know he was lying?" "I just did." "I see. Try this, Shay. I''ll tell you two things--one a lie, and one the truth, and you tell me which is which." "Seriously? Aren''t there more important things to be--" "Humor me. Please." I stare back at her, then shrug my shoulders. I''ll go along with anything, if it''ll help them believe me. "Okay, fine," I say. "All right. My middle name is Hannah. My middle name is Helen." As she speaks, I study her aura: the waves of color that surround her, unique to her, change with her thoughts and feelings. When she says Helen there are ripples of silver blue, and I feel the truth within them. When she says Hannah her aura is disturbed, with slashes of mustard and green--it''s a lie. "You lied about Hannah; your middle name is Helen." "That''s just a fifty-fifty guess," one of the men says. They''ve been silent until now. "Try again," he says and gives me a list of ten possible middle names for himself. I roll my eyes. "Your middle name is Monteroy. Congratulations on middle name weirdness. Can we carry on now?" He nods. "Impressive," Dr. Morgan says. "Okay, so let''s just assume you knew this lieutenant was lying. And then?" "I ran away. They shot at me and hit me in the ear." "That wasn''t that long ago. I didn''t notice any injury?" I shrug. "I healed it." "Really." "Oh, f

Details