Day One

Less than twenty-four hours earlier, Aloe Malone was sitting on a tattered couch, a distinct eagerness coursing through her veins. She shivered; her radiator was on the fritz again, sputtering from one side, cackling, rendering her tiny bachelor apartment bone-cold uncomfortable. She curled into a sweater, still freezing, slowly succumbing to the chronic, aggravating chill.

 

And then she laughed, her breath puffy with condensation. She’d worked her last shift at the diner, and said her meager and limited goodbyes—except the one owed to her crummy apartment.

“Sayonara, shithole,” she whispered under her breath.

Now, she squinted into the radiant sun: hot but not fierce, a tempered warmth that was perfect and satisfying. She pressed her feet into the fairy dust sand and gave her toes a wiggle. She’d never felt sand like this before: white, delicate, possibly otherworldly, like it’d been manufactured in a laboratory or harvested from another universe. Like someone had broken one million hourglasses to populate this beach.

She turned to her personal concierge, Amir. “Is this … real sand?”

Surely, it couldn’t be.

He nodded. “Real indeed. One of the many reasons we chose this location.”

This location: a mysterious venue somewhere on planet Earth. She’d love to know the actual coordinates and considered asking (for the third time) but confidentiality was part of the deal. If you wanted to live in the world’s most lucrative beachfront community, secrecy was paramount.

She nodded, somewhat attuned to the aftermath of drugs slugging through her arteries. The whole “going under” aspect had been daunting: a white mask, followed by slow, deep inhalations; counting down from ten, as requested; waking somewhere new and unknown— though it made good, logical sense. How else were people supposed to fly to a top-secret paradise without discovering its whereabouts?

Besides, look at this fucking view. The oceanfront, steps away, was a prism of blue light. Turquoise lapped at the shoreline, fading to a sumptuous cerulean. The sky was a lovely robin’s egg, swept with long, lazy clouds. Her eyes found the horizon. There was nothing in the distance, no islands, shorelines, or glimpses. Just pure, unadulterated space.

 

A wave drifted over her toes, warm as bathwater, and she instantly unwound. A salty gust of air filled her lungs, causing her chest to lift.

“Are you ready to continue with the tour?” Amir asked.

 

Even if Blue Haven seemed too good to be true.