Kiandra has to use her wits and tech-savvy ways to help rescue Edwy, Enu, and the others from the clutches of the Enforcers in the thrilling final novel of the Children of Exile series from New York Times bestselling author, Margaret Peterson Haddix. Since the Enforcers raided Refuge City, Rosi, Edwy, and the others are captured and forced to work as slave labor on an alien planet, digging up strange pearls. Weak and hungry, none of them are certain they will make it out of this alive. But Edwy’s tech-savvy sister, Kiandra, has always been the one with all the answers, and so they turn to her. But Kiandra realizes that she can’t find her way out of this one on her own, and they all might need to rely on young Cana and her alien friend if they are going to survive. Margaret Peterson Haddix is the author of many critically and popularly acclaimed YA and middle grade novels, including the Children of Exile series, The Missing series, the Under Their Skin series, and the Shadow Children series. A graduate of Miami University (of Ohio), she worked for several years as a reporter for The Indianapolis News . She also taught at the Danville (Illinois) Area Community College. She lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio. Visit her at HaddixBooks.com. Children of Jubilee CHAPTER ONE “Run! Hide!” my brother Enu screamed beside me. Enu had been trying to boss me around my whole life. Usually I resisted. But the sound I’d thought was thunder kept striking louder and louder behind us. It was the sound of marching feet. Enforcers’ marching feet. Coming toward us. I leaned forward, bent my knees, and shoved off the pavement, trying to launch myself through a gap in the crowd ahead. This is not my life, I thought. I was a tech geek. A coder. A hacker. A Why leave the couch when everything’s available online? type. I never ran. A hand grabbed my arm from behind. “We have to stay together!” someone yelled. Edwy. My little brother. The brother I’d never met until a few weeks ago. The one who’d always been kept safe. Until . . . well, a few weeks ago. “We need you!” he begged. Because I guess I was still barreling forward. Oh, momentum . . . It’s not just a scientific theory. I whirled around. There must have been hundreds of people around us scrambling to escape. Maybe thousands. Maybe the entire population of Refuge City. But I got something like tunnel vision: My eyes could focus only on five faces. Three belonged to twelve-year-olds: Edwy and his friends Rosi and Zeba. Two belonged to five-year-olds: Rosi’s little brother, Bobo, and a girl named Cana. Until a few weeks ago I’d never seen such young children in person, not since I was that age myself. When, of course, being that little seemed natural. But now it was hard to believe that such tiny human beings as five-year-olds were real. They seemed more like dolls or toys. “Kiandra, will you carry me?” Cana asked, raising her arms to me. “I’m scared.” Me too, kid, I thought. “Enu’s the one with muscles,” I said, backing away from her. Where was Enu? He’d shoved his way farther into the crowd ahead of us than I had, but I grabbed for his hand and jerked him back. Because suddenly it hit me that Edwy was right: We did need to stick together. With the Enforcers invading Refuge City, we wouldn’t be able to find one another electronically. How much longer would it be safe to use anything electronic at all? Not . . . able . . . to . . . use . . . electronics. . . . It was a horrifying thought. I glanced down at the stolen Enforcer communication device in my hand. We’d taken it from one of the Enforcers we’d battled out in the desert. I was mostly confident that I’d managed to disable any tracking built into the device, just as I was mostly confident that I’d blocked all the bioscans for the entire city, so the seven of us kids wouldn’t instantly be picked up as criminals. Now would be a really bad time to be wrong. “I want you to carry me, Kiandra,” Cana insisted, grabbing my waist. Now, what was that about? Granted, Bobo had already hopped up into Rosi’s arms, so she wasn’t available. But Cana had known Edwy her entire life—why wasn’t he her first choice? Or Zeba, who liked taking care of people? Or Enu, who really did have a lot of muscles and could have carried Cana on his back without even noticing? Cana wasn’t the only one staring at me with wide, terrified eyes. Rosi, Zeba, Edwy, and now even Enu were too. And Bobo probably would have, except that he’d just buried his face against his sister’s neck, letting her stare for both of them. Oh. Everybody thinks I have a plan. Everyone thinks I can save them. I tucked the Enforcer communication device under my arm and pulled out my mobile phone. “We need to find the best hiding place,” I told Enu. “Before we start running.” Someone or something—Enu? Zeba? Just the natural pressure of the screaming, fleeing crowd?—pushed us to the side, against the wall of a Ref City sk