Sixteen-year-old Kleo Clemens has imagined the day she'd receive an historian internship one million and twenty-two times since she was eleven. But the military snatches that chance from her when they attack her university in search of the History of the Universe, the world’s greatest treasure.
The Capitoline government will do anything to get their claws on the History, and not just to deal the rebels vying for their freedom. It’s a digital database that predicts the future—or, in military verbiage, can guarantee absolute victory in any war, including a WWIV. And the deuced President is ambitious enough to test that theory at the expense of the entire world. Well, hang that. Kleo would hand over her beating heart to the government before the History. Her dad devoted his entire life to the database. It’s all she has left of him.
With the History stuffed in her pocket, she flees to the south to deliver it to the rebels. On the way, her rival and former best friend Gavriel swindles his way into helping her. She has to depend on their teamwork to save the History and, with it, the freedom of the two billion people left on earth. Too bad Gavriel has already proven he’ll desert her when she needs him most. And with the government’s finest soldiers hunting them down, trusting the wrong person is as good as serving Capitoline her bloody heart, and therefore the History, on a solid diamond platter.
SECONDARY is a young adult science fiction novel with a steampunk edge. I'm currently writing the fourth draft.