Reclaiming Shilo Snow Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE SOFI SNOW NOVELS

  “An action-packed kick in the pulse. Mary Weber kills it with this conclusion to Sofi Snow’s story. You will hit a point where you just. can’t. stop. reading. And when you finally turn that last page, you’ll be ready to jump into round two.”

  —NADINE BRANDES, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF A TIME TO DIE AND FAWKES, FOR RECLAIMING SHILO SNOW

  “Weber creates a fascinating future with a captivating gaming aspect, complicated political and personal relationships, and a constant watchful alien presence. Readers will wonder what will happen with each turn of the page. Suspenseful and romantic, this intense story should intrigue teen and adult fans of Caragh O’Brien’s Vault of Dreamers series.”

  —RT BOOK REVIEWS, 4½ STARS, TOP PICK! FOR THE EVAPORATION OF SOFI SNOW

  “A cool vision of future Earth that realistically reflects an increasingly multicultural world.”

  —KIRKUS REVIEWS, FOR THE EVAPORATION OF SOFI SNOW

  “The fan-fight world itself is intriguing, and as Sofi deals with Miguel and tries to recover Shilo, this offers the best of both science fiction and romance.”

  —BOOKLIST, FOR THE EVAPORATION OF SOFI SNOW

  “A smart, intriguing adventure of high-tech futuristic gaming. Mary Weber takes readers on an intergalactic journey intertwined with complicated family issues, politics, loyalty, secrets, and betrayal.”

  —WENDY HIGGINS, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR, FOR THE EVAPORATION OF SOFI SNOW

  “Mary Weber spins a compelling tale with lyrical beauty and devious twists. The Evaporation of Sofi Snow is the kind of book teens and adults will devour and talk about—endlessly.”

  —JONATHAN MABERRY, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF MARS ONE AND ROT & RUIN

  PRAISE FOR THE STORM SIREN TRILOGY

  “There are few things more exciting to discover than a debut novel packed with powerful storytelling and beautiful language. Storm Siren is one of those rarities. I’ll read anything Mary Weber writes. More, please!”

  —JAY ASHER, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THIRTEEN REASONS WHY

  “Storm Siren is a riveting tale from start to finish. Between the simmering romance, the rich and inventive fantasy world, and one seriously jaw-dropping finale, readers will clamor for the next book—and I’ll be at the front of the line!”

  —MARISSA MEYER, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE LUNAR CHRONICLES

  “Intense and intriguing. Fans of high stakes fantasy won’t be able to put it down.”

  —C. J. REDWINE, AUTHOR OF DEFIANCE, FOR STORM SIREN

  “A riveting read! Mary Weber’s rich world and heartbreaking heroine had me from page one. You’re going to fall in love with this love story.”

  —JOSEPHINE ANGELINI, INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE STARCROSSED TRILOGY, FOR STORM SIREN

  “Elegant prose and intricate world-building twist into a breathless cyclone of a story that will constantly keep you guessing. More, please!”

  —SHANNON MESSENGER, AUTHOR OF THE SKY FALL SERIES, FOR STORM SIREN

  “Weber’s debut novel is a tour de force! A story of guts, angst, bolcranes, sword fights, and storms beyond imagining. Her heroine, a lightning-wielding young woman of immense power and a soft, questioning heart, captures you from word one and holds tight until the final line. Unwilling to let the journey go, I eagerly await Weber’s (and Nym’s) next adventure.”

  —KATHERINE REAY, AUTHOR OF DEAR MR. KNIGHTLEY, FOR STORM SIREN

  “Mary Weber has created a fascinating, twisted world. Storm Siren sucked me in from page one—I couldn’t stop reading! This is a definite must-read, the kind of book that kept me up late into the night turning the pages!”

  —LINDSAY CUMMINGS, AUTHOR OF THE MURDER COMPLEX

  “Don’t miss this one!”

  —SERENA CHASE, USATODAY.COM, FOR STORM SIREN

  “Readers who enjoyed Marissa Meyer’s Cinder series will enjoy this fast-paced fantasy which combines an intriguing storyline with as many twists and turns as a chapter of Game of Thrones!”

  —DODIE OWENS, EDITOR, SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL TEEN, FOR STORM SIREN

  “Readers will easily find themselves captivated. The breathtaking surprise ending is nothing short of horrific, promising even more dark and bizarre adventures to come in the Storm Siren trilogy.”

  —RT BOOK REVIEWS, 4 STARS, FOR STORM SIREN

  “Fantasy readers will feel at home in Weber’s first novel . . . Detailed backdrop and large cast bring vividness to the story.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, FOR STORM SIREN

  “Weber builds a fascinating and believable fantasy world.”

  —KIRKUS REVIEWS, FOR STORM SIREN

  “This adventure, in the vein of 1980s fantasy films, has readers rooting for the heroes to smite the wicked baddies. Buy where fantasy flies.”

  —DANIELLE SERRA, SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, FOR STORM SIREN

  “Mary Weber’s debut novel ref lects an author sensitive to her audience, a stellar imagination, and a killer ability with smart and savvy prose.”

  —RELZ REVIEWZ, FOR STORM SIREN

  “A touching and empowering testament to the power of true love and of knowing who you are, Siren’s Fury is a solid, slightly steampunky follow-up to the fantasy-driven first book that will leave you with a sigh—and a craving for the next volume in the series.”

  —USATODAY.COM

  “A perfect conclusion to this delightfully brave trilogy, Siren’s Song will leave you eager to read whatever falls from the pen of talented author Mary Weber next.”

  —USA TODAY

  “This series comes to a close with an intense pursuit of good by evil, with the fate of all in the hands of teenaged Nym. She is consistently inconsistent in her feelings and fears, truly human in her characterization, and a champion accessible to readers who can identify with her insecurities.”

  —RT BOOK REVIEWS, 4 STARS, FOR SIREN’S SONG

  “If you’re looking for your next fantasy series, definitely pick up The Storm Siren Trilogy. The story, the characters, and the writing style impressed me so much, and I can’t wait to see what the author has in store for her readers next!”

  —LOVE AT FIRST PAGE, FOR SIREN’S SONG

  OTHER BOOKS BY MARY WEBER

  The Evaporation of Sofi Snow

  THE STORM SIREN TRILOGY

  Storm Siren

  Siren’s Fury

  Siren’s Song

  Reclaiming Shilo Snow

  © 2018 by Mary Christine Weber

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Epub Edition January 2018 ISBN 9780718080952

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Weber, Mary (Mary Christine), author

  Title: Reclaiming Shilo Snow / Mary Weber.

  Description: Nashville, Tennessee : Thomas Nelson, [2018] | Series:

  Evaporation of Sofi Snow
; 2 | Summary: Sofi Snow, the most wanted teenager alive, travels to the icy, technologically brilliant planet of Delon, but as she tries to find her brother Shilo and warn those on Earth of Delon’s dark designs on humanity, Sofi feels herself unraveling and questions the very existence of reality.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017045022 | ISBN 9780718080945 (hardback)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Science fiction. | Virtual reality--Fiction. | Brothers and sisters--Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.W425 Re 2018 | DDC [Fic]--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017045022

  Printed in the United States of America

  18 19 20 21 22 LSC 5 4 3 2 1

  For the almost 30 million precious humans

  currently being trafficked and enslaved . . .

  We hear you.

  We value you.

  We are coming for you.

  Contents

  Praise for the Sofi Snow Novels

  Praise for the Storm Siren Trilogy

  Other Books by Mary Weber

  The Taking

  1. Inola

  2. Sofi

  3. Miguel

  4. Inola

  5. Sofi

  6. Miguel

  7. Inola

  8. Sofi

  9. Miguel

  10. Inola

  11. Sofi

  12. Miguel

  13. Inola

  14. Sofi

  15. Miguel

  16. Inola

  17. Sofi

  18. Miguel

  19. Inola

  20. Sofi

  21. Miguel

  22. Inola

  23. Sofi

  24. Miguel

  25. Inola

  26. Sofi

  27. Sofi

  28. Miguel

  29. Inola

  30. Sofi

  31. Miguel

  32. Inola

  33. Sofi

  34. Miguel

  35. Inola

  36. Sofi

  37. Miguel

  38. Sofi

  39. Miguel

  40. Sofi

  41. Miguel

  42. Sofi

  Ten Months Later . . .

  My Playlist of Thank-Yous

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  THE TAKING

  Four years to the day after the alien planet arrived above Earth, Sofi’s papa had collapsed on the rickety front porch of their buttermilk-yellow farmhouse. The suffocating heat from the late-August eve had dragged the two of them outside while Shilo slept on the Best Couch—christened as such due to the sagging divot created from years of use that cradled one’s body like a velvet glove.

  The child’s light snore had been drifting through the window, while the humid warmth kept Sofi and her dad sipping iced tea on the creaky swing just to create a bit of hot breeze. The radio played old Twenty One Pilots songs and the fields played cicadas. Sofi thought how funny it was that those bugs could barely last a winter but the species as a whole had survived the Third and Fourth World Wars.

  Which was about all one could say for the human species as well.

  They’d survived.

  Two minutes later Sofi heard a soft gasp and looked over as Papa’s heart sputtered, then squeezed.

  His writhing limbs went limp as his body slipped off the aged, weathered seat, and Sofi screamed and dropped her cup, which shattered across the white wood porch planks.

  She tugged Papa’s sallow head into her lap and focused on drawing deep breaths. As if she could breathe for him and inflate his sagging chest. Her brown hand wrapped around his big farmer one as her tears drip-dropped on his cheek and trickled into his bristly beard.

  “Call your mother,” he mouthed. “She’ll take care of you.”

  “No, she won’t.” Sofi shook her head. “Papa, please don’t leave. Don’t go.”

  Papa’s gaze twitched and widened on her small face as she hovered before he moved it away toward the moon and her dead half sister, Ella’s, star—until his focus settled glassy-eyed on the shiny planet, where it stayed. As if in indication of something more, of something ten-year-old Sofi already knew:

  Somehow the aliens were responsible. And, eventually, they’d be the death of them all.

  Then in the next breath he was gone, and she and Shilo were suddenly alone.

  Sofi pulled out her inhaler and sat there sucking in its mist—scared to yell for help because the only help around was the kind that helped themselves to anything that wasn’t theirs.

  The cicadas stopped chirping. The breeze stopped whispering. And Sofi stopped believing in anything beyond her own two hands and the brother currently still burrowed and snoring on the Best Couch.

  The following morning her CEO mom sent down a coroner from the Corp 30 office in Manhattan’s metropolis.

  “Heart gave out,” the man said, voice squeaking like the porch board he stood on.

  Sofi glowered. As if she hadn’t just told him the exact same thing five minutes ago. As if his professional assessment changed anything or made it any more real.

  He bit his wet cigar and stared down at her. “So why didn’t you call your mom last night when it happened?”

  Her small fingers stroked her brother’s hair as Shilo let out a sob and pressed his head against her side, his body wrapped like a fist around her scrawny chicken legs. “Would she have come?” Sofi growled.

  The man took the corpse. Took a last look at Sofi and the five-year-old boy, both who glared at him like he was the hand of Satan. Then strode to his fancy hovercar, mumbling that a nanny would be sent out this evening, on order of CEO Inola.

  Except thirteen hours later it wasn’t the nanny who appeared.

  It was something else entirely.

  And it took them before anyone noticed.

  1

  INOLA

  Update: Sofi Heather Snow, age 17

  • FanFight Gamer, Daughter of Corp 30’s CEO

  • Reclassified Status: Imminent Terrorist Threat #1

  • Required Action: Alert for immediate worldwide dispersal

  The moment earth’s united world council officially placed seventeen-year-old Sofi Snow at the top of their Imminent Terrorist Threat list, a siren went off in the circular downtown building, and she became the most wanted teenager alive.

  Corp 30’s CEO, Inola, stood next to the podium in the center of the room located in the heart of Old America’s shiny Manhattan metropolis and eyed the sea of raised hands. All of which had just finished voting her daughter onto that list.

  The fact her daughter was currently on another planet—let alone the one that’d mysteriously appeared near Earth in 2031, eleven years ago—didn’t matter. Nor that its humanlike society was capable of annihilating humanity in a heartbeat.

  If anything, that was the point.

  Sofi had found a way up to their icy, technologically brilliant environment from an Earth that was, in many ways, still broken and rebuilding. Meaning she was far more capable than Earth’s leaders had accounted for. And the clock was ticking on what she’d do next.

  She’d already been there over thirty-six hours.

  When the resulting siren went off, ringing through the United World building and making half the council members in the room jump, Inola didn’t flinch. Didn’t move. Didn’t do anything other than observe them all with her cool, calculating gaze. Even as the sound meant that texts were being sent to every tech-head, soldier, and peacekeeper, warning them of Sofi’s new status.

  A terrorist of the most dangerous sort, the messages would read.

  “A brilliant mind that could hack our darkest secrets,” the messages would mean.

  “The girl who might just start a war with the Delonese,” the Council was really saying. “And we need them far more than we need her.”

  A moment later those raised hands dropped, the three hundred faces suddenly looking Inola’s direction—some in humility, others in victory—as the alarm shut off and her own Corp 30 vice presid
ent, the perfidious Ms. Gaines, stepped from the podium after demanding the vote.

  Inola let a smile flicker around her lips. She swept her gaze over the lot of them before lifting it to the room’s single ceiling window through which the shiny ice-planet glittered just beyond the day-lit moon. Sofi, a threat?

  They can’t even begin to fathom.

  Tick, tick, tick, tick . . .

  2

  SOFI

  Sofi accidentally bit her tongue as Miguel’s arm snapped across her chest, pressing her short frame back into the thin shadows of the medical room, three stories beneath the ice-planet’s wintry surface. The storm of alien boots and voices surged and frothed, then crashed with clipped heels in a wave down the narrow hall toward the spot where she and the nineteen-year-old ambassador stood. “Have they been located?” “They’re not to reach the surface!” “Find them before they engage with the populace!”

  Stay still. Stay silent. Sofi’s breath stuck to the sides of her lungs, like frost on a window, waiting to crack against her rib cage at the grief keening through her bones. Her stomach threatened to retch all over again.

  This alien planet had looked so crisp and peaceful in its orbit beside Earth’s moon—like a snowflake glittering against the black backdrop of space. Who would’ve known the metallic world beneath its crust was so barbaric?

  So calculated.

  The siren continued blaring.

  Sofi thrust her emotions down and slid her hand to Miguel’s arm as a robotic voice rose above the rest. “The sensors in the vent-wing just triggered; it might be them! Return Ambassador Alis to Lord Ethos while we apprehend Girl-Sofi.”

  The instructions were followed by an abrupt silence.

  “C’mon, keep going,” Miguel murmured. “Search another sector.”

  An elongated second went by. Then, as if in response to him, the cadence of shuffling boots resumed and the officers stamped away in their matching strides, scraping against Sofi’s spine. She wanted to toss a giant bowling ball in their direction, just to watch them all topple like the monstrously efficient pinheads they were. Good gad, they’re heinous.